11 KiB
[FF] What Trump was really up to
-
Author: u/None *
-
URL:
-
Score: 2
-
Created: 2016-12-09T00:24:59
Post:
Comments:
u/Empiricist_or_not [+10] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (2 hours later)
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
[removed]
u/None [+4] (2 days later)
SPIDERS, BLAM
u/Sophronius [+5] The Need to Become Stronger (a day later)
The topic of Hilllary corruption is one of those things that just confuses me. On the one hand, every rational person on the planet agrees that Clinton is better than Trump, and when I watch Bill Maher or read Paul Krugman or any of my usual sources of US news they all agree that the whole thing is overblown and stupid.
But then I listen to people on the left like Kyle Kulinski from The Young Turks (who seem fairly sensible), who are outraged and claim that there is vast evidence of Clinton corruption and that the establishment left just doesn't want to cover it because they want Trump to lose. Which I guess is plausible.
But then when pressed for said evidence, all I ever hear is claims of "pay to play" where Saudi Arabia gives money to the Clinton foundation for example, but there is never any evidence that that money is used for anything but helping children in need. So what's the problem supposed to be exactly?
The whole thing just confuses me.
u/eaglejarl [+8] (a day later)
Our politics descends into mudslinging pretty fast, and things have polarized between the Republicans and Democrats in the last few decades. Used to be that bipartisan bills got passed, but now the two parties are effectively at war. The Republicans need some way to shut Hilary down and she hasn't given them any major failures, so they need to invent and exaggerate scandals. They found a few -- money donated to a foundation that the Clintons control, the private email server that wasn't in alignment with regulations, etc -- and they blow them into giant news. It's all baloney -- they keep investigating her and there keeps being nothing there. Either she is the most brilliant criminal mastermind in the history of the world or she is the subject of an ongoing and successful smear campaign by her political rivals. (It's the second one.)
u/Sophronius [+4] The Need to Become Stronger (a day later)
I know that the Republicans and Democrats are at war (well, at least the Republicans are - I'm not sure anyone remembered to inform the Democrats) but that doesn't explain why the left hates her so much. That's the part that confuses me.
I mean, part of it is that they liked Bernie more and she was his opponent in the primaries, sure. But even before that. Was it just that she ran against Obama? But I think even Cristopher Hitchens wrote endlessly about the Clintons being corrupt. Why?
I suspect a big part of it is the fact that the left is focused entirely around this idea of 'rebelling against the system', which as a driving force has the critical flaw that whoever is leading the movement is also seen as an enemy. Kind of like the French revolution, where every time the leader of the revolution was beheaded for being in charge, and the next in command just kept stepping up thinking it would never happen to them.
Honestly the left just seems to have chronic backstabbing syndrome to me, sometimes.
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+4] (2 days later)
The left dislikes Clinton for a lot of reasons. Part of that is that she spent a year running against Bernie, and they perceive that as fighting against the policies that they supported, but it's more than that.
Bill basically ran as the most right-wing Democrat in a while, focusing on capturing the centrists at the expense of the left, and the left remembers this. He slashed welfare ("hands up, not hand outs), increased the number of people in jail when his party wasn't as tough on crime, and passed NAFTA. NAFTA, especially, lost the working class manufacturing-type leftists.
Hillary had to deal with this baggage, but also the fact that she was the most hawkish Democrat since LBJ. She wanted no-fly zones over Syria, for example, an idea that Obama, Sanders, and the left generally opposed.
And then there was her stupidly going against full legalization of marijuana when 60% of the country supported it.
And then there were the constant right-wing media attacks on her for several decades.
u/Sophronius [+3] The Need to Become Stronger (2 days later)
Yeah, I think you've probably hit the nail on the head there: Nothing generates hatred like the feeling that you've been 'betrayed' by someone you put your trust in. It's probably the same reason that the Left in England hate hate hate Tony Blair, even though he did not seem so terrible to me (awful decision to join the war notwithstanding).
I wonder, does the same phenomenon exist on the right? When right wing figures move to the left, do they generate the same kind of hatred? I'm trying to think of some, but when I think of people like i.e. Mitt Romney moving to the centre it doesn't seem to work the same way (though he did not actually become president).
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+2] (2 days later)
Oh, it absolutely does. See Eric Cantor, one of the most conservative Senators in Congress, who still wasn't conservative enough; he got primaried and beaten by David Brat, who thinks that free market economics only work because of Protestant Christianity. It also occurred with Paul Ryan and McCain, who both faced primary challengers from the Trump wing of the party this election, and at the Presidential level with Bush I, who faced a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan for raising taxes.
u/Sophronius [+2] The Need to Become Stronger (2 days later)
Well sure, I hear "X is not a real Y" a lot, but never the kind of sheer unfettered hate for one's own candidate/representative. The more I think of it, the more I suspect it's just a case of "Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love."
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+1] (3 days later)
That's probably a bad way of looking at it.
Trump got a lot of hate from centrist Republicans and libertarians, so they clearly didn't fall in line. And, well, Clinton got a lot of hate from leftists because she fought the left, in the same Trump got hate from centrists because he fought the center.
If you saw another run like 1992's Bush I, where he fought off a radical right-wing candidate, you'd see the right being just as pissed again.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
That is the best analysis of the issue that I've seen. Thank you.
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Please don't. HP:MoR is not realistic, nor is it intended to be. Donald Trump is not a pure evil mastermind. Acting as though a real politician matches the last popular movie/comic/whatever villain (Palpatine, Voldemort, Amanda Waller, whatever) is a petty and harmful habit.
Yeah, it makes you look cool and funny and it's an excellent way to signal cynicism or whatever, but I don't want any of it here, and I hope most of the community agrees. This sub is about rational fiction, not signaling how much we hate a politician.
EDIT: Okay, this is a weird thing to ask, but please don't downvote me? Or if you do, please tell me why you did? Downvoting is generally supposed to apply to posts that aren't constructive and civil (eg: posts filled with insults, spam, NSFW content), not things you disagree with. I personally want to see interesting posts upvoted on reddit, even if I don't like what they say, and garbage/uncivil posts downvoted even if I mostly agree with the content.
u/Sophronius [+6] The Need to Become Stronger (a day later)
Oh, lighten up. Eliezer Yudkowsky himself posted stuff like this on his facebook feed, and he's the person who started the whole concept of rationalist fiction. It's funny and interesting, and that's all that matters.
I think a big part of the reason Less Wrong failed was because people got the idea stuck in their head that in order to be objective one has to be politically neutral, which meant tolerating the Death Eaters that came to infest the place - somehow forgetting that the kind of person who becomes a Death Eater in the first place isn't exactly going to reciprocate when it comes to being tolerant.
If you're talking about things we don't want this community to become, "Den of Death Eaters" would be at the top of my list.
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (a day later)
I think that discussing politics can be great and enlightening, and I respect Eliezer Yudkowsky and his opinions; I think the "Trump is like Monroe" plan is neither discussing politics nor in accordance with EY's philosophy (whatever it's worth).
What this post does is tribal signaling, plus cynicism signaling. I think the intent behind this post is to wave a "Donal Trump is awful" flag (plus a "democracy is broken" flag), so we can all enjoy how we're all part of a group that despises Donald Trump. By comparison, EY's post was about how the media and the electorate (allegedly) create a perverse incentive system for politicians, plus a bit of dramatic cynicism-signaling on the side. I'm okay with that, because I like reading political analyses. I really, really do not like reading people engaging in tribal behavior, and I don't want any here, for what my personal opinion is worth.
You can believe that Trump is awesome or terrible, you can even argue for or against him in the appropriate threads, but as far as I'm concerned waiving tribal flags for any cause is beyond the line, whether that cause is against Trump, feminism, Nice Guys, Creationists or whatever.
u/Sophronius [+1] The Need to Become Stronger (a day later)
I didn't read it that way, but fair enough.
u/Sophronius [+3] The Need to Become Stronger (2 days later)
RE Downvoting: I downvoted you initially because of the hostile and irked tone in response to what I saw as an innocent post. Also see my reply below for why I think that kind of knee-jerk reaction to anything political is bad for the community.
I cancelled the downvote when I saw your reasoning, which I thought was fair. Bear in mind that every post in this comment section has gotten downvotes, which always happens whenever a controversial/political topic comes up, so I wouldn't take it personally. I do have sympathy for your 'no politics please' stance for that very reason though - it brings out a lot of status signalling behaviour which isn't exactly the finest aspect of our human nature.