I've been listening to The Obstacle Is the Way on the way to work, and one of its major themes is turning negative events into opportunities. That is, going through the negative to find the positive silver lining. With regard the the recent US election, we have a great opportunity here to improve the accuracy of our perception of the world. At least, I do, because the results of this election are entirely unexpected to me. Going off of the unofficial Hubski motto, what can be learned from this situation? This post is an attempt to explore and organize what I can observe from the election results, and what it means for the future.
We Live In a Media "Filter Bubble"
I based my perceptions of what would happen in the election based on reading my preferred news sources (FiveThirtyEight, NPR); occasionally glancing at CNN; browsing Reddit, Hacker News, and Hubski; looking at Facebook and seeing what people had to say; and talking to friends and family about the election. I trusted FiveThirtyEight most of all. Based on this information, I felt fairly certain that, despite a general distaste by my peer group for both candidates, the electorate would elect Clinton by a landslide. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And it wasn't just me. . . we were all wrong.
You may have heard about the idea of a filter bubble before. Basically it's the idea that our media sources are tailoring content to be what we would like to see (or, more disturbing, what we would like to not see). I got the idea and saw how it could be bad, but I thought that by understanding filter bubbles exist, I would be immune to their effects. But the vast difference in my supposedly informed expectations vs. the actual outcome shows me that I was mistaken. I looked at news sources that confirmed what I expected. I looked at websites that were filled with people who I could relate to and who had similar worldviews. My Facebook curated the posts that I saw. And even my Google searches were tailored to match my expectations. I knew this was a thing, but I didn't really grasp how it happened to me.
I am forced to conclude that while I looked at social media, searched Google, and looked at news sources with a certain group, there was an entirely separate group almost totally isolated from the first, that was looking at different social media, searching a different Google, and looking at different news sources. How else could I be so blindsided by popular sentiments?
Populism vs Establishment Is the New Right vs Left
It's been moving in this direction for a few years now. I predict that the trend will continue. How else can we reconcile the large amount of Bernie Sanders supporters who voted for Trump? The only thing they had in common was their populist stances. People that feel supported by the status quo vs. people that don't seems to be the new norm to me, rather than differing opinions on policy. I can guarantee many Trump supporters don't agree with a lot of his far right stances, but they voted for him anyway.
Blue Collar Workers Feel Discarded By Both Parties
This is just another aspect of the last section, with profound implications. It's why Trump won. Michael Moore, as it turns out, was right. The Rust Belt gave Trump the presidency, and they did it because he was the only candidate that was willing to do something about their plight. They felt as if he was the only one that cared. It doesn't mean they were right, and I predict they're still fucked. But Trump spoke for them when nobody else would. This is a huge lesson that we need to learn. People are hurting in our changing economy, and nobody in the status quo wants to do anything about it. I think this video sums up an aspect of the election that people like me overlooked. And the voting results prove the sentiment is legit-- that this is how people really feel.
Moralism Is Mostly a Facade
Nuff said. Clearly most people don't care anymore, if they ever did. Seems to me it was just a convenient cover to vote a certain way for different, more unsavory reasons.
Nobody read this. You're all dumbasses. Read it now. I don't think it's useful to bring up a "filter bubble" when there were gobstopping amounts of polls that indicated a Clinton landslide. I also don't think it's useful in terms of selective information gathering when most of us live in cities, most cities went blue, and short of driving out to Redneckistan and saying "hey stranger why do you want Trump?" (and hoping to get an answer) there is no way to penetrate that veil. Make no mistake - I spent last November hanging out with fuckin' Navy SEALs. For them, it was Bush, Fiorina or Christie and everything else was unthinkable. Those trump voters? That basket of deplorables? They have a subreddit. Go engage them. I dare you. I've said it before and I'll say it again: with no Fairness Doctrine, with the collapse of the public education system, with skyrocketing college tuition, with an all-volunteer army and with public broadcasting being gutted, we've created an electorate that sees what it wants to see, hears what it wants to hear and can easily believe that any rich bloviator can run the country better than the people they've elected so far because there is no possible way to connect with them in a way that isn't the Kick Me In The Balls channel. My wife was crying last night because she felt she could have done more. I pointed out that she had a Democrating governor, senator, representative, mayor, treasurer and supreme court justice and she lived in a state with legal marijuana, the highest minimum wage in the United States (and we just voted it higher), a repudiation of Citizens United and gun protections while living in a county that approved mass transit and voted to limit gerrymandering. Short of hopping a plane to Oklahoma who, exactly, could she have reached out to? And why would they have listened to a liberal woman from FUCKING SEATTLE? Piketty basically argued that the center cannot hold. Who would have thought that Bernie Fucking Sanders could have been such a threat to a Clinton? The populism vs establishment divide has long been a key issue; I think our collective miscalculation was in presuming that the populists would need someone coherent to rally behind in order to threaten the establishment. Well then. I think Occupy Wall Street crumbled because it was a movement of intelligent, college-educated liberals that were willing to evaluate solutions on their merits. I think Trump won because he represents a movement of the exact opposite of that.
Can't it be both? I don't like to say this because it makes me an asshole, but I have a low opinion on the average person's critical thinking skills and intelligence, so I understand when you say there is no way to connect with Trump voters other than the Kick Me In The Balls channel. But I don't think that's all of them. There were just too many in the general election for there not to be a cross-section of normal, decent folks that rode the Trump Train, and I believe we ignore their voice at our peril. The DNC used to represent the working class, the union members, the blue collar folks. Can we honestly say they still do? Neither candidate would probably have done anything for them, but Trump at least said he would. I do not believe that The_Donald is representative of all the Trump voters. Did the SEALs you hung out with all vote for Hillary? Or did some vote for Trump?
We don't actually disagree much. We have a difference of interpretation: Where you see a dearth of critical thinking skills and a low average intelligence, I see a steady corruption of "push" information to "pull" information. I watched it happen in 2001, 2002, 2003 - the Republican Noise Machine ground itself to a nib pushing the Iraq War such that nobody believed newspapers or media anymore. That, combined with the crash of television and the annihilation of newspapers, as well as the preposterously remunerated business structure of web crap, meant that if someone was going to hear about something, it was going to be through a source they sought out. No longer would the New York Times dictate what the world saw. No longer would the Wall Street Journal say business stuff while the Washington Post did investigative journalism. From here on out news would be where you found it, be that HuffPo, Infowars or loosechange911.com. So I don't think "they" are idiots. I think that "they" are finding information we'd disagree with more easily than information we'd agree with because the dumb shit is so much easier to find. And you're right - the DNC is, in many ways, completely up its own ass. I would argue that when one side is for concentration of wealth, and the other side is for distribution of wealth, the other side is gonna be fuckin' extinct in a few electoral cycles unless they start sucking up to rich people. Full stop. I would also argue that if the Republicans hadn't pursued the Southern Strategy they never would have made it to Reagan (I believe i have argued - it's on Reddit somewhere). So the party of "drown it in the bathtub" was forced to become the party of bread'n'circuses because if it were just rich white males, they'd never have the numbers. There's an inherent bait and switch in there; it doesn't work as well with Democrats because (surprise!) social liberals tend to be better educated and see the subtlety in the problem. Simply put - "they" are not stupid. "They" are just easier to lie to. And we are in a lie-rich information landscape. Got this this morning: The tendency to be discouraged and lie injured licking our wounds must be resisted. Now is not the time to let defeat discourage us from facing head-on the tremendous challenges ahead. We must pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and stand strong. We must demonstrate solidarity in an unprecedented way by locking arms as Brothers and Sisters for the betterment of all IATSE members. We must continue to strengthen our bonds with other unions and the AFL-CIO to consolidate our voice and power. And we must identify and align with people and organizations that are likeminded in sharing our values. We have survived as a union since 1893 and we will survive this too. Know that your Union will remain active and vigilant in doing whatever can be done to protect your interests and further the causes that give security and prosperity to our members. As Benjamin Franklin wisely said “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." This statement may never be more true than it is now. In Solidarity, Matthew D. Loeb IATSE International President I don't like to say this because it makes me an asshole, but I have a low opinion on the average person's critical thinking skills and intelligence...
The DNC used to represent the working class, the union members, the blue collar folks.
The election for President of the United States is over. While we did not achieve the result we desired, I am extremely proud of the work of our Political Department, Local Union officers, International Officers and Representatives, and members for the significant efforts made to protect the interests of IATSE members and workers in general. Now we must move on. While I am skeptical for obvious reasons, it is my sincere hope that there can be some healing in our starkly divided nation. And while hope may seem an optimistic wish, it is clear that the country is unsatisfied with status quo in our political system. Unfortunately, that widespread feeling has manifested itself in a result that will likely compound the problem. The middle class and working people are in jeopardy of experiencing severe consequences based on the positions and proposed policies espoused by President-Elect Trump. Moreover, his anti-union statements virtually guarantee a rough road ahead for Unions and the members they represent.
Pluses: We voted to increase minimum wage further. ST3 passed!!! Minuses: Campaign Finance Reform didn't pass.
I actually voted against the campaign finance reform bill. We looked at that, and we hemmed and hawwed, and the argument that it basically provided an avenue for out-of-state money to charge through the back door ended up compelling. Some of us do not remember Prop 8 fondly and it was largely paid for by Utah mormons.
I think the conservatives have created such a convincing narrative of how they are "under threat", that they don't adopt new technology, so they don't show up in polling. My dad is an example. He gets about 50 emails a day from 3-5 completely nutball right-winger friends. Stuff like the concentration camps being built out in West Texas, where the unmarked trains are going to take people into re-education centers. Obama's secret religious ceremonies in the White House, where animals are butchered and the Democratic leaders drink the fresh blood... Seriously. He gets this shit all day, every day. At some point, your baseline sense of reason gets dulled, and you don't actually believe this shit... but you also don't disbelieve it. I think the conservatives live in these endlessly forwarded, completely psychotic email chains. And it dulls their senses of reason. They never see our information bubble, because they aren't on social media. And the few places they do participate with on social media - Twitter, and the Fox News comments section - are full of the truly insane right wing conspiracy nuts. I think our comfortable, liberal, critical-thinking capable, science-understanding, and technology-embracing populace lives in a bubble without realizing it. We THINK we see the broader narrative, in our brief dips into Fox News and accidental clicks to Breitbart, but we are only seeing the surface of a deep and unbalanced river.