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comment by oyster
oyster  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thoughts for a Wednesday Morning

    I also think it's healthy in the long-term for racism and sexism to come out in the open, because then we can identify it and deal with it head on.

This I agree with, I mean people actually believe him when he says he will be a president for all Americans even when he has already said he would rather let a woman die than allow a late term abortion. Woman aren't people to too many Americans and that's a reality that needs to be faced if anything will ever get better. When the video of him speaking about harassing/assaulting woman came out there were many posts on the internet talking about how woman actually spoke to the men in their lives about the female experience and their own experiences with assault that they never had before. Hell, it provided an opportunity for me to get mad and open up more about my own experiences.

Plus, I'm selfish because Canada is looking to boost immigration for educated people to come in and create new technology plus I think we have a prime minister who's got a knack for working things to his advantage.





johnnyFive  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The best way I can describe it is that I see a Trump presidency as our penance for the working class's failure to take some agency over their own lives, combined with the rest of the country's failure to even acknowledge there's a problem.

oyster  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think at the same time we have to understand why others are freaking out. As a woman if I lived in America I would not be comfortable knowing that should I get pregnant in the future, and have complications that need an abortion I might not have that option. It's very easy for some people to say the world hasn't changed but what they are really saying is their world hasn't changed. Many other people are uneasy and worrying about how their world may be changing shortly. Even if it's not policy changes they are worrying about how this affirms some people's sexist or racist ideas and how that will play out in their day to day lives.

johnnyFive  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree with you, but my point is that what you're saying goes both ways. I'm a middle-class, well-educated white guy. My job isn't going to be replaced by a robot anytime soon, and if it is, I'm part of a constituency that the government will take care of.

There's a significant swath of the population for whom that is simply not the case. Parts of our country are dying, and the wealthy on the coasts have been content, as they always are, to let them die. As Aaron Sorkin said in an essay about inner city unrest a year or so ago, "sometimes it's the brick." Trump is the brick.

Again, everything you're saying is true, and is a problem. But we can't fix that problem while blowing off other problems because we think the people they happen to are dumb. Even if they are, shouldn't we be taking the moral high ground? I used to scoff at the idea of a "compassionate conservative," but at least they're pretending there's something to be compassionate about. Now the Democrats scoff at "morals" in any way, shape, or form, and then have the gall to look confused when they lose.

Democrats specifically and the Left generally have become so scared of being labeled as "liberal" or "soft" or whatever that they've taken on the conservative playbook. Belittle your opponents, rally the base. Forget trying to convince other people that you have better ideas. Alienate everyone else so there's no chance of finding common ground. And then we express our horror at how divisive politics has become. But of course, that's the other team's fault!

My hope is that the Clintonite, neoliberal wing of the Democratic party is now well and truly buried, and that we can finally get an actual left in the U.S. again. In the meantime, Trump is our penance for failing to take seriously the middle 2/3 of our country (in terms of geography). Swaths of our country are dying, and the Democrats' only response (when they talk about the problem at all) are the same lies about jobs this and jobs that (while taking campaign contributions from the corporations and investor class that are all about outsourcing and technological replacement for workers), combined with what seems like a "handout" to people whose identities are tied into work. There's a total failure to understand the people they say they're trying to save. Two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, and the demographic with the highest suicide rate in the country are middle-aged white men in the mid-west. 46 per 100,000, while the gun homicide rate was 3.4 (as of 2014). But no, we have to ban assault rifles. Democrats are so scared of losing that they're unwilling to even consider changing the narrative. Trump had no such fear, and we see the results.

oyster  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree with you and I know you mentioned you didn't want to minimize the effects this will have on people's lives. I just wanted to reiterate and expand on that a little since there tends to be a general attitude of thinking people are over reacting when these things happen because some people can't really empathize with the other side. Although I do think bringing the shit out into the open will help in the long term I feel like it's important to point out it's still shit which I forgot to do in my first post. Otherwise that part of the message kind of gets lost.

johnnyFive  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, totally true. As I mentioned to blackbootz (also in this thread), it's a case of facing the inevitable. Those bad things will happen to some degree or another. All we have control over is what our response is going to be.