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A Confederacy of Toddlers

(www.theatlantic.com)
23 points rbanffy | 3 comments | 04 Nov 25 08:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mrkeen ◴[04 Nov 25 10:03 UTC] No.45809223[source]▶
Remember in 2015 when there was no chance of Trump winning, then he did, and everyone collectively realised no-one had actually talked (listened) to any of the voters that put him in power?

Well, after win #2 (this time with the popular vote) here we are again:

> Friedrich Nietzsche created a concept that can help us understand this political moment. He imported a word from French to describe a kind of deep-seated anger that goes beyond transitory gripes: ressentiment, a feeling that comes from a combination of insecurity, an amorphous envy, and a generalized sense of resentment.

The majority is such a bizarre outlier that you need 19th century German philosophy to really understand what's going on.

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1. bryanlarsen ◴[04 Nov 25 13:42 UTC] No.45810927[source]▶
> no-one had actually talked (listened) to any of the voters that put him in power?

That's BS. Clinton spent time in West Virginia despite it being a no hope state. Clinton spent lots of time talking to union reps who the rank and file voted to represent them. She developed a realistic plan to provide them education, retraining and money to develop other industries in their dying community.

OTOH, Trump just straight up lied to them. He said he'd protect their jobs, but coal jobs in his first term continued to decline at the same rate they did during Obama's. He did nothing for them.

Nobody tells you "I want you to lie to me and tell me what I want to hear" when you talk to them. Nobody says "I want you to give me an enemy to hate".

Clinton listened to what people actually said, and she lost.

Trump didn't listen to people's words, he listened to their actions. If something got a reaction, he doubled down on it.

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2. jmye ◴[04 Nov 25 14:49 UTC] No.45811629[source]▶
> OTOH, Trump just straight up lied to them. He said he'd protect their jobs, but coal jobs in his first term continued to decline at the same rate they did during Obama's. He did nothing for them.

Populism in a nutshell. Those coal miners didn't want to hear about how they could learn something new and do something new, even if it was better. All of that takes effort and work.

One person tried realism, the other told them what they wanted to hear and gave them someone else to blame for why they weren't as rich as they thought they should be. And then the rest of us get harangued with "why won't you listen to all of these people" when we have, extensively, and what they're literally saying is antithetical to everything this country stands for (to say nothing of what their 'heartfelt' religious/moral beliefs supposedly stand for).

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3. bryanlarsen ◴[04 Nov 25 16:15 UTC] No.45812635[source]▶
Trump term 1 was just straight up lying. It was natgas killing coal in his first term, and natgas was part of his constituency so he did nothing.

Trump term 2 is more like populism. This term, it's solar that's killing coal. And solar is woke, so Trump is actually doing something for coal this term. It's the diffuse vote effect. Trump might save a couple thousand coal jobs, which is a really big deal for those couple thousand people and swings their vote. Meanwhile, it increases the cost of energy for 350 million Americans but that's a very marginal effect. And it increases climate change for 8.2 billion people, but those 7.9 billion of those don't vote in American elections.