oraknabo

@canadianmath:

The problem here is that a lot of this seems to be post-election mythologizing to silence legitimate concerns about trump, racism, sexism and xenophobia.

The entire story of these forgotten rustbelt people is total bullshit. Those people have been ignored throughout my entire lifetime by Republicans, but they were thriving under Bill Clintion. I will agree that Clinton made mistakes by completing George Bush's work on NAFTA and repealing Glass-Steagle but you can't say he didn't care about the middle and working classes. Nearly everything Obama has tried to do was to benefit the poor and working classes. Though it was blocked and gutted at every turn, Obamacare was an attempt to empower people of any income level to have affordable health care. He took control of GM to protect the jobs and pensions of the exact manufacturing-dependent people these stories all talk about. He tried to pass huge stimulus packages to protect the same people from the recession. Those were whittled down at every opportunity by Republicans. I'm not saying Obama was perfect, but he never ignored these people.

This narrative of liberal elitism forcing good people to vote for an authoritarian misogynist sexual predator bigot is just more propaganda coming from right wing media sources.

If you voted for Trump you have endorsed racism, sexism and bigotry. It doesn't matter what your other motivations were. You can say you're just a decent, regular person but that doesn't acquit you for voting for a terrible one. Every time in history a terrible dictator won an election, I'm sure lots of people who voted for their "strong leadership" and populist or nationalist appeals thought they were good people too.

@canadianmath: I read a bunch of articles like that yesterday trying to genuinely understand their point of view and every one was riddled with logical fallacies.

I guess that's my fault for being a college educated elitist.

Maybe Trump will stick to his convictions about the electoral college and decide he should be the last president to be elected that way, fix it and then step down.

Nah. Probably not.

I'm starting to think liberals need to start a movement to get progressives to move out of big cities and blue states and flood the "flyover" country before the next major election.

I wouldn't be able to do justice to Haight's research in a summary, but you should check it out. He's not saying conservatives have no compassion, just that they reserve it for family and close friends while liberals extend theirs to other groups. This isn't just his opinion. He has done extensive research on the subject. I'd really recommend to anyone here to read some of it.

This has nothing to do with Haight, but I think the main difference between the two ideologies today is that liberals see all races and sexual orientations as part of the same family and see improvements in the lives of minority groups as something that improves life for everyone while white conservatives see it all as a zero sum game where only one group wins. Any time they see the situation for blacks, hispanics or gays improving, they see it as evidence of their decline. I'm not saying they haven't been in decline, but they jump too quickly to find racial scapegoats.

Also, fascism has a specific definition and it involves an authoritarian, highly militaristic, highly nationalistic, far-right government with a charismatic leader that favors heavy involvement between corporations and the state. This isn't so far from Trump's positions. I know the baggage the word fascist has so I call him an authoritarian which I think is pretty hard to argue if you've listened to him at all.

Check out Jonathan Haight's model of moral dimensions based on years of legitimate psychological research. Liberals show much higher levels of compassion in his studies across the board. Conservatives are much more focused on nationalism, justice and loyalty.

Fascism doesn't require these actions, only the ideology. The actions are born from the ideas and Trump has proven over and over that he fits the profile of authoritarian if not specifically fascism.

He says Putin is a real leader with high approval ratings ignoring that people die and go missing for attacking his regime.

He has made multiple comments and jokes about silencing journalists.

He's tried to incite violence against his political opponents.

He "joked" that we didn't need an election -- they should have just given it to him.

He's said if he tells the military to commit war crimes, they'll just do it no questions asked.

He's implied we should seize oil fields in the Middle East and Africa. Not "steal" them but "take" them.

He wants to get rid of lethal injection because it's not painful enough.

He's praised Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein and quoted Mussolini on Twitter.

I'm sure there a ton more I can't even remember now, but he has shown nearly no respect for the constitution, especially freedom of the press.

Also murderous dictators rarely do those kinds of things before obtaining power no matter how terrible their opinions are before they get it. Trump hasn't even been inaugurated.

@imsh_pl: Just because you can call these opinions elitist and point to them as reasons for this doesn't make them not true.

Can we at least stop saying a candidate who lost the popular vote but still won has a mandate? I just heard Paul Ryan say that a couple of hours ago. Maybe the unified republican government is a kind of mandate, but you can't say Trump has anything close to a personal one.

I feel like I woke up in a burning house and everyone is telling me just to calm down and keep living in it.

I knew there was a possibility that he'd win. I'd been telling everyone I know and they said it wasn't possible. What I never could have seen is that this idiot country would hand him the entire government. This is a nightmare. Get ready for abortion to be illegal at the least. The environment is fucked too.

I always laughed at people who overreact when the other side wins. Even when Bush was elected I thought things could still work out even though I had a hard time processing how he got reelected.

People who saw a socialist nightmare coming form Obama were just living in an echo chamber of right-wing radio but Trump really is the person we think he is and we've handed an Authoritarian the tools to make this country his own personal DPRK.

Thanks America.

There's also the possibility that it's been done for a while, but it's so advanced tech-wise that they're just waiting for everything else to catch up and the Vive & steam machine projects were their first steps to help bring about the state of technology required to play it.