Sarah Smarsh gives us the other side that the news media have ignored.
Most struggling whites I know here live a life of quiet desperation, mad at their white bosses, not resentful toward their co-workers or neighbors of color.
It turns out that a great many working class whites are not the bigots and Trump-lovers that the MSM has portayed. There are large groups of people who think differently, but somehow they just didn’t show up when a New York Times or Washington Post reporter parachuted into Clover Corners, Ohio.
The trouble begins with language: Elite pundits regularly misuse “working class” as shorthand for right-wing white guys wearing tool belts. My father, a white man and lifelong construction worker who labors alongside immigrants and people of color on job sites across the Midwest and South working for a Kansas-based general contractor owned by a woman, would never make such an error.
And, whocoodanode –
Like many Midwestern workers I know, my dad has more in common ideologically with New York’s Democratic Socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than with the white Republicans who run our state. Having spent most of his life doing dangerous, underpaid work without health insurance, he supports the ideas of single-payer health care and a universal basic income.
She lists news stories that have gone undercovered in the race to find the Trumpiest heartland voters – like barriers to voting. Seems strange that reporters so devoted to getting both sides of a story never found this one.
Read the whole thing. Good to keep in mind in place of today’s sexytime news dump.
And open thread!
Baud
This is true as far as it goes, but how did this demo break down in the 2016 vote?
zhena gogolia
Thank you for this. When someone in the week after the disaster of 11/6/16 was lecturing me about the “white working class,” I yelled, “I’m from the white working class! Don’t give me that s–t!”
I probably got the date wrong, who cares.
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: She touches on that in the article. Many of these people did not vote, and she argues that the focus on this demographic obscures the middle-class suburban folk who voted for Trump. How many articles have you seen about interviewing Trump voters at Whole Foods?
Corner Stone
Probably not the best choice for turn of phrase in the Trump Era.
Baud
@Cheryl Rofer:
Many of most people don’t vote and that probably won’t change.
I avoid articles about Trump voters.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Lower income folk voted for Hillary, and I believe it crossed racial lines. The “economically anxious” tended to be “small” business owners.
gvg
if so, i wonder if a point of all those stories about working class bigots were intended to make those of us who live in cities, antagonistic toward those hicks in the sticks? not that the bigots don’t exist, but maybe they aren’t everybody?
on the other hand, that kind of jerk are rather loud right now and might be looking for those journalists to sound off and shape the narrative.
zhena gogolia
John Cole’s bon mots are all on Twitter:
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
Unless it was because of obstruction and GOP voter suppression efforts, fuck em.
TenguPhule
Seconded.
ArchTeryx
@TenguPhule: For many of them, that’s exactly what it was. These folks tend to be poor and struggling and all the I.D. laws target them every bit as much as black folks. They don’t want the poor voting – period – unless they’re poor rural folks, who almost universally vote R (and aren’t numerous enough to win elections by themselves in almost any state – it’s the surbuban “economically anxious” that puts them over the top in state after state).
Platonailedit
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
IIRR, a PEW survey said it was the higher income groups that went solidly for the traitorous thug.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
IIRC, the divide in ACTUAL white working-class voters (folks who make $50K or less per year) was very distinctly regional. WWC voters in the North voted for Hillary and WWC voters in the South voted for Trump.
What put Trump over the top in places like WI were middle-class whites, not the WWC.
jl
I think HRC was right when she said about half of Trumps voters were irredeemable bigots, sexists and xenophobes, and half were the economically pissed off.
Fact that around a half of Trump voters are really deplorables and probably most of them hide behind bogus rationales to hide their ignorant all-purpose bigotry, doesn’t change the fact that if you can get a good chunk of the other half, you can win in a majority takes all electoral system.
So, this is somewhat more informative article than most in the Trump voter genre.
TenguPhule
@jl:
I now believe she was overly optimistic about how only half of them were irredeemable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
meh, liberal blindspots didn’t elect Sam Brownback, and reelect him after he’d driven the state into the ground
Hear hear. Reminds me of a long show This American Life did on Scott Walker and the recall in Wisconsin. They gave a lot of time to a public school teacher who darn it was real concerned about spending and thought Walker was talking common sense. Toward the end of the show, they mentioned her husband owned a car dealership. It’s been a while, but I don’t believe they asked her about Obama having saved her husband’s business.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I think Hillary was wrong about her percentage, it’s probably closer to 2/3’s.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I didn’t like the headline either, probably should have noted that in the OP.
Corner Stone
@jl:
I still contend that was one of the bravest, most courageous political speeches (in its entirety) that I have heard in possibly my lifetime. The tagline got her but it was still the right speech to give.
JustRuss
Great editorial, but jesus-tapdancing-christ that title: Liberal Blind Spots Are Hiding the Truth About ‘Trump Country’ .
Yes, it’s liberals that are responsible for the never-ending Cletus safaris. From what I understand opinion writers don’t get to title their pieces, so FTFNYT strikes again.
jl
@TenguPhule: @?BillinGlendaleCA:
The white electorate is split closely enough that if you can get to the non-deplorable fraction and get even a plurality of them, you can win.
That’s all I’m saying. The 2016 election was decided by less than 100,000 votes in 3 states, while HRC won the popular vote by 3 million nationally. We shouldn’t forget that.
The vast majority of devoted bigots are going to always find an excuse to bigot. So obsessing over them can turn into a bitter counsel of despair.
And, if the corporate media is run by GOPers, and corporate hacks who have an interest in keeping a horse race going, they have an interest in reporting stuff that suggests everything is hopeless and they can keep their political reporting to the level of a donkey cartoon and an elephant cartoon kicking each other. So, I am cynical enough to distrust to motives of most of the Trump voter genre pieces.
You go to some small town anywhere in the US, and you can find enough white ignorant bigots to fill up a short piece, easily.
zhena gogolia
@Corner Stone:
She gave a number of excellent speeches during the campaign. Crickets.
NotMax
The
silentinvisible majority.(So far as the MSM is concerned.)
Barbara
I actually blame media and people like Thomas Edsall for writing about “working class people” as if indeed, working class is equal to white men. In most cases, people who talk about the working class are simply parroting back the media’s highly distorted implicit definition. Whenever I read an article like that, if I can comment, the first thing I say is that the majority of working class people are not white males and it is incredibly dishonest and unfair to write as if they are. I define working class as people engaged in occupations that do not require a college degree and for which they are mostly paid by the hour or in a field for which they would qualify for over time. Talking about the working class as if they were all white men leads to the following traps:
It implicitly portrays low income minority voters as not being employed, as in, not part of the working class, when most of them are.
It suggests that the working class are holding “old line” industrial or construction jobs, when women engaged in service occupations make up the majority of the working class.
And of course, it suggests very strongly that working class white men have a completely different set of interests and needs than their female and non-white counterparts.
schrodingers_cat
Only white male people matter, their precious feelings and their problems, everyone else is window dressing.
ETA: Or what Barbara said.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: No, what put Trump over the top in WI was voter suppression.
jl
@Corner Stone: She shouldn’t have backed down as much as she did when the GOP and corporate media made a bogus fuss about it. Ii wished she had repeated some of Trump’s vile and ignorant and false statements, and ask who would vote for a person who talks like that. Bigots, or people who are so pissed off they feel hopeless and are not thinking straight.
Would have gotten her more free media.
If it didn’t make HRC more ‘likeable’ who cares? I don’t think that was her problem. Convince some of the other half she would fight for them, I think would have been a net win for her.
Corner Stone
@zhena gogolia: IMO she got much better as the campaign wore on. Her delivery and mannerisms were more engaging and forceful, imbued with a kind of passion. Sadly, we got to hear how she wasn’t a “natural” like Bill or Obama, so this was all fakery to some degree.
That speech in particular was a barn burner. Really low key at first but getting to some really brave points she wanted to make. I was proud of her then for making it and I remain so today.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: invoke the sarcasm tags.
geg6
Read this article this morning. It sure describes myself (myself and my five siblings were all first generation college students from a family whose major breadwinner was a member of USW 2012). And there are a lot of my old friends who are also from this exact background, with parents just like this. We’re all liberals. And mostly white, simply because my county is only made up of 7-8% minorities. No one comes to interview us. They go to the central part of the commonwealth and talk to the idiots living in Bumfuck, Forest County or Cambria County (home of the notorious assholes in the article of racist Trumpers in Johnstown from a few months ago) or something and we all get painted that way.
Gelfling 545
Language is a problem and the writer has as much of a problem as anyone. She seems to conflate having a college degree with being at an income level that would benefit from GOP policies to an extent that voting Republican would not be voting against their own interests. This is just not a generslization that holds up.
Baud
@jl:
Her own “side” ripped into her for that. Maybe of they stood with her, she could have done that.
Baud
@Baud:
Of = if
TenguPhule
@jl: Yep. She got her biggest boost when she endured that grueling grilling by the GOP hearing. It was never about likability, it was about respect. Hillary Clinton earned a lot of respect for toughing it out. Sticking to her guns was the way forward. I blame her poor choice of media consultants for much of the unforced errors of the campaign. Democrats need to do an audit and purge of the consultants.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Herding cats is easier then getting Democratic leaders on the same page at the same time and keeping them there.
Ian G.
@Barbara:
Yes. It’s helpful to live/work in/around New York City as I do, where every single day, you’re visually reminded that many, many working class men in field like construction are black or Latino, and many, many working-class women in fields like medical assistance are also black/Latina.
But I have to imagine this is true in the urban areas of the Midwest where the vote shifted from Obama to Trump, so why aren’t black construction workers in Cincinnati or Milwaukee getting interviewed? I feel like it happened briefly in Birmingham after Doug Jones won, but now we’re back to “working class” = white guy with pickup truck who voted for Trump.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I believe that’s Mnemo’s hobby horse.
Brachiator
@Cheryl Rofer:
If these people chose not to vote, then their political opinions don’t matter as much as that of the more vocal Trump supporters who actually voted.
I would be curious as to why these people did not vote, but that would be a different article.
@Barbara:
What you write is absolutely correct. One of the big lies about Democrats engaging in identity politics is that it assumes that white males are the economic or political norm.
That said, one consistent breakdown of the 2016 exit polls revealed that white men and white women without college degrees were big Trump supporters (and white men more than white women), without regard to whether they were poor or well-off.
schrodingers_cat
That article totally rubbed me the wrong way it was all about her precious fee fees being hurt about being equated with T voters. And then she blamed
college educated liberals.
# Not all white people are racist.
The unspoken and unwritten assumption is that both the college educated liberals and working class are white.
According to Treason Times and their precious op-ed writers, if you are not white you don’t even exist.
geg6
@geg6:
Typo! That’s Local 1211.
jl
@Baud: My personal belief, which I do not often express here because it may seem uncivil and judgmental, is that a lot of Democratic leaders are contemptible compromised chickenshits. So, SOP if they squak up, should be to tell them to go to hell. But, probably that is one reason I would be a horrible in a political campaign.
But surely HRC wanted to tell them to go to hell. She had too much discipline.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: My town is 95% white and went for HRC, she got about 70% of the vote, T got 20% and rest got about 10%.
TenguPhule
@jl:
Probably not compromised. Russians didn’t seem to find anything in the DNC emails worth keeping and exploiting.
But definitely risk adverse.
Villago Delenda Est
My nym, again and again.
A HUGE problem is the idiocy of the VIllagers, and their own unexamined biases and lack of self awareness.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jamelle Bouie had a good piece on movable voters in the midwest and the WWC in general
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus: Admission by the WI Sec State to that effect, for those playing from home. You’re already aware of this, of course.
trollhattan
We all know “Papa” John Schnatter is a douchenozzle who until recently sold cardboard masquerading as pizza. Some of us did not know just how much of a douchenozzle and Forbes[really?] is here to clarify. An amuse bouche.
Ladies, gentlemen, jackals, I give to you the Republican 2020 presidential nominee!
Litlebritdifrnt
Like I said on a previous thread, DH ad I were supposedly solid middle class, I was a paralegal and DH was a teacher. We earned 75K+ a year and we could’t make it. Everything kept going up, the mortgage, electric, cable, cell service, you name it. On top of that was the medical bills that even though DH had excellent health insurance killed us. His prescriptions were $300 a month even again with good health insurance. I didn’t have health insurance so my medical bills put us 40K + into debt. We just kept digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole.
We are now living in the UK on an income of $2400 a month and are living our best life. We have taken five short vacations so far. One vacation was a week. We go out for lunch three times a week, we meet my sis for dinner and drinks once or twice a month,. We get in the car and drive to where we want to go to visit without a single worry about whether or not we can afford it. I really cannot believe what great a life we are living here on such a megre income which would not have even paid our mortgage in the US.
Soprano2
Since it’s an open thread, I thought I’d post about the tragedy in my neck of the woods – I live near Branson, MO. I just got an update on my phone that now there are 17 confirmed dead from the duck boat accident last night. Nine members of one family all died. My co-worker told me the boat wasn’t even required to have life jackets on it. I suspect that might change now. https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2018/07/20/branson-duck-boat-tragedy-13-now-confirmed-dead-others-injured/805818002/ There was a good article in WaPo about how it never should have happened, because the storm was forecast at least 30 minutes ahead of time. It blew through here, and I can attest that the winds were strong! It knocked out the power in some parts of town, and even made some tornado sirens go off.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan:
Sounds like a real dick, he’ll be perfect!
jl
@TenguPhule: There are different ways you can be compromised A lot of Democratic ‘leaders’, Manchin, comes to mind, depend too much on big corporate money. In that sense I think they are compromised.
Remember when the Democratic billionaires got jealous because they saw the GOP billionaires publicly ordering their GOPer flunkies around? A couple of them went TV and had deranged tantrums about how the Democratic billionaires had just enough of this billionaire bashing and they were taking their money back and going home. Imagine what was going on the quiet back rooms.
Smart Democrats who have enough core values in common with regular people, like Gillibrand and Harris, and even Booker (who I don’t like all that much) have told the big corporate money that they are not needed anymore. That kind of move makes me worry about unilateral disarmament in the campaign money wars, but they are smart politicians, and I don;t they would do that if they had not done due diligence that they can make it work. I think it is a good development.
But quite a few Democratic leaders, like Manchin (probably unable since who believes a word he says other than those with enough money to buy hiim?) and DiFi (too wedded to the old ways) are unable or unwilling to, or it is inconceivable to them.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I had it first.
TenguPhule
We are so fucked.
geg6
@Gelfling 545:
I didn’t get that from the article at all. She’s talking about me and my family and people who are my friends. We aren’t from Kansas, but we are those people. She says she’s one of those people herself. We’re all liberals but no one thinks we exist or cares if we do. And apparently you are one of those people who think we don’t exist and don’t deserve to be heard and recognized. Jesus. My own side is sometimes as horrid as the NYT.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Heh, you and Mnemo can fight it out; I have popcorn.
TenguPhule
@jl:
I’m going to dispute the allegation of smart right there,
Miss Bianca
@Gelfling 545: Truth.
jl
@TenguPhule: We go to political war with the leaders we have not the ones we wish for. Lemons and lemonade, etc. etc.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
You can’t have read the article if that’s what you got from it. The first part of it discusses how the way the msm frame the working class as only male and white and her point was that it definitely is not and, in fact, the working class is most made up of women and people of color. Then she goes into a realistic picture of what the real white working class is, which is what I and my family and many of my friends are or what we came from. And the reality is that we’re all liberals. Jesus. I finally find someone writing an op-ed that frames it all exactly right and I have to see my counterparts here telling me that these people are unworthy cretins. You live in LA. You don’t live here. Don’t tell me what people here are like because you don’t have a fucking clue.
RAM
The media really isn’t interested in getting both sides.
jl
@geg6: I spent quite a bit of time doing hurricane relief work in MS and AL. There are a lot of progressive people, white progressive people, down there. We need to remember that they are there, and can help the country, and not fall into despair based on broad brush demographic stereotypes.
Baud
@geg6:
I didn’t read the article, but I don’t understand this. I know no group is monolithic, but I don’t see how you can separate the white working class into “real” ones who are liberal and other ones who are not.
NY Robbin
@TenguPhule:
Now you’re talking! That’s a purge I can get behind.
jl
@RAM: Not surprising at all. But thanks for the link. I’ll follow up the link and data later, when I am ready for my cynicism quotient to get ramped up higher.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
Horrible, and utterly avoidable. Those poor folks.
I’ve seen sports delays of several hours due to lightning strikes in the region, even stadiums being emptied as a precaution. Everybody who needs it has access to forecasts, radar and lightning monitors. They should have not set sail. Period. The lack of PFDs would be criminal in many jurisdictions.
geg6
@TenguPhule:
Um, yeah. Gotta agree. I can say quite firmly that Gillibrand doesn’t have my values. I was never a Republican or a blue dog, no matter how much advantage that might have given me where I live. I don’t know enough about Harris to make any judgments.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: I do not live in LA. I am not telling you what people you live next to are like.
Repeating from my previous comment.
Her feelings are more important than those toddlers being separated from their parents at the border.
germy
Don Jr.’s new girlfriend separated from Fox
raven
I’ve had to put 7 different meds in Lil Bit’s eyes twice a day for 10 years. We just upped it to three times a dat and I’m having a hell of a time with the mid-day one!
tobie
I really think the flame wars of 2016 have started over again and it’s not going to be pretty. With Ocasio-Cortez’s victory Bernistas see an opportunity to overtake the Democratic party and they may well succeed. Liberal Dems, moderate Dems, heck even Progressive Dems who have not received Bernie’s blessing will be fighting on two fronts: against Republicans and against those loyal to the Vermont Senator. That worked out pretty badly for all in 2016 and won’t work out well in 2018.
Baud
@raven: Oh man. I thought I would have to do that with my dog. That would have been a nightmare.
Baud
@tobie: That was always going to happen. It’s baked in.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: BS hordes are stronger online than IRL.
Baud
What’s the deal with Al Sharpton and Michael Cohen?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Sure. But the media supports them.
Baud
Ta-Nehisi Coates is leaving The Atlantic.
Yarrow
From the article:
Yep. The whole “corporations are people” thing is appalling. Corporations are not people. Nor are robots. Somehow we need to get back to putting people’s needs first.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
is that the new safe word?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I saw a clip of Sharpton on MSNBC, and Cohen was giving him the same line about how he’s a patriot and his loyalty is to the country. Seems like he’s desperate for a either a pardon or a deal. IANAL, but seems to me I’ve read he’s facing significant state charges and his only option is to flip. Maybe Lanny Davis can’t quite convince him of that, or they want Mueller to agree to– pure speculation on my part– Mrs Cohen’s assets being off the table.
JPL
@Soprano2: What a tragedy that did not need to happen. It’s heartbreaking.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So he’s using Sharpton to get his message out?
Every day is weirder than the last.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Baud:
Unless Bernie croaks soon. Or is caught up further in the Mueller investigation
Ruviana
@Gelfling 545: This was something (along with the title) that annoyed me about the column. I felt some level of “liberal elite” blaming that somehow erased all the differences in how those categories operate. I’m going to read her memoir though since it sounds interesting on its own.
FDRLincoln
I live in Kansas. I’m middle income. Most of my friends are middle income, some are lower income. All are either liberals or apolitical, although the liberals are doing the best we can to get the apoliticals interested.
My very few Republican friends are mostly upper income.
The main exception is a middle-income construction worker, ex-Army, who has gone from apolitical to ultra-right wing all-in on Trumpism. Frustrating…he was a Cold War vet but is now just fine with cozying up to Russia and Putin. Needless to say, we don’t talk much any more.
Gravenstone
@geg6: Actually, she lives in MA. But yes, some bubbles are more insidious than others.
tobie
@Baud: @schrodingers_cat: I think you’re both right. But my experience in my own county is that the local Bernie club is smaller but much more active than the local Democratic club. DFA is asking for phone bankers for Bernie-endorsed candidates on DailyKos. I have no doubt that the DNC and DCCC will endorse whomever wins the Democratic primaries in the remaining states. I have serious doubts that Bernie or his movement will do the same. That’s what worries me.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Baud:
Fuck the media. Perhaps it’s time to going after the refs.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I think by “real” she means “not monolithically RWNJ.” Even if white.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: that was my take on that call, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe his lawyers have convinced him going on TV is bad, but he can’t let go of the idea that talking to people who will then report those conversations on TV will do… something.
He’s one of the very many very weird people involved in this. I sometimes wonder if, and how, the crackpot factor– Cohen, Stone, Nurnberg, Randy Credico? That weirdo who goes on Ari Melber’s show and speaks in Rich Little-esque impersonations of Nixon and Reagan– among witness will have an effect on public perception.
Baud
@tobie:
I don’t think it makes sense to equate the DNC/DCCC with the Bernie faction of the party. They are focusing on different things.
Yarrow
@tobie:
Agreed. I don’t have confidence about that either. My take is that Bernie is paid to divide Democrats and other people on the left. He’s done a fairly good job of it.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
You’re a saint.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@tobie:
From Bernie’s wikipedia article in the post-2016 activity section:
Mel
@TenguPhule: It’s a more complicated situation if you look below the surface and below the shrieking idiots that the media chooses to spotlight as “the rural voter”.
Short polling hours, hard to access polling places, misinformation about what constitutes acceptable identification, lack of any affordable childcare so that parents and custodial guardians can safely and easily vote, lack of internet access to obtain information about voting rights and voting law, and active, aggressive misinformation and even social pressure and intimidation coming from right wing neighbors, employers, friends – all these factors and more affect turnout in rural areas. For legal immigrants, some of whom support their families with agricultural work, there is an understandable terror of engaging with any government representatives.
Just as an example, imagine being a 70 year old custodial grandparent caring for three elementary school age kids with health or behavioral health issues, and also for an infant recovering from in utero heroin exposure, and trying to figure out a way to get yourself and the littles to a polling place 10 miles away in an unsafe vehicle. Then, imagine waiting up to an hour in line with the baby screaming, your Tourette’s syndrome kiddo yelling random obscenities while the ladies from the local churches shoot you scathing looks, and your grandkid with autism and PTSD practically going to pieces in the cramped, hot, noisy line. It’s a type of scenario that is all too common. This is the kind of experience lots of voters related when I was doing doorknocking in the rural area where I grew up.
A lot of rural people who have been displaced from farm work, mechanical work, mining work, etc., now have to take “on call” jobs at large warehouse facilities, often located up to an hour’s drive away from their homes. They basically have to be on call, 24/7 with no set schedule, knowing that if they refuse a shift, they will likely be bumped to the bottom of the call list or let go from the job. If that call comes in for a 10 hour shift the morning of election day, it’s often literally cast the vote and lose your job, or be able to buy food that week, but miss your chance at the polls.
A lot of left leaning rural voters want to vote, but often face circumstances that are or are perceived to be insurmountable, on top of the quiet nightmares they deal with everyday.
Similar types of obstacles exist for many of my neighbors now in my urban neighborhood. One big difference is that in our urban district, we get a hell of a lot less unspoken or implied intimidation or obstruction from right wing family members, employers, neighbors. People are a lot more able to voice their opinions without fear of shunning or worse. It makes it easier for neighbors to come together and organize childcare, carpools, or rides, sharing tech so that people can check or update their voter status without a two hour, multiple transfer bus ride all over the city just to get to the courthouse 5 miles away…
Yarrow
@raven: How is Lil Bit? Who’s going to do her drops when you are on the road?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
How do you get your message out otherwise…bullhorn, sandwich boards?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know. Trump’s election got rid of my belief that I could surmise how vitere think.
TenguPhule
@Mel: Hence my qualifiers. I can accept honest actual problems that interfere with being able to vote. My beef is the ones who were able to but decided not to.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I understand the traditional method was two cans tied to a string.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Phone tree.
Baud
@Baud:
Vitere = voters.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: is he going somewhere else?
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
No. Not immediately anyway.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m talking about harassing the producers of news programs and editors at newspapers, launching campaigns to get advertisers to stop giving revenue to news outfits that do the both sides, same thing slant to news.
tobie
@Baud: Bernie’s the head of Democratic Outreach. That’s why I made the equivalence.
@Yarrow: I don’t know why it’s become so hard to see that there’s more that unites than divides us. I actually agree with the idea of a universal basic income; I’m glad the idea of debt-free college has become mainstream; I believe in universal health care, even if I have questions about whether it’s best to do this through a single-payer model or the Bismarck system. But I cannot tolerate the constant pot-shots taken at “the establishment” or Nancy Pelosi and I think the term neoliberalism has become an empty phrase indicating nothing but intellectual laziness of the person who invokes it.
Elizabelle
@Soprano2: i saw that. Nine members of 11 from one family. Vics ranged from one to 70.
Duck boats are required to have life jackets for everyone (I think the stories have said they were aboard). However, it does not appear that the passengers wear them. The folks in the Duck that did make it back to shore shot video from their boat. You could see that no one in their boat had jackets on, even though boat was being tossed by waves.
Some have suggested that lifejackets can trap you inside a submerged boat, or make it hard to exit, but I would rather wear the jacket, any day.
I think this company will get sued out of existence, so maybe it’s a moot issue. But what a tragedy.
In a previous Missouri duck boat sinking, the Coast Guard was faulted for lax inspections.
Mel
@TenguPhule: I agree. That’s one of the big issues that we run into when we’re doorknocking and talking to people. How do convince someone that the uncomfortable but non-damaging attitude they will get from their spouse or neighbor or pastor whrn, as a known “librul”, they show upnto cast their vote?
It can be infuriating difficult, often impossible.
Baud
@tobie: I forgot about that. Who knew the best way to do outreach is to trash the party?
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
How exactly? Sternly written letters?
Elizabelle
@Baud: Their loss.
It’s even more Villagery. Looked in on The Atlantic today, and it was almost a parody. Beef jerky can set off manic episodes! With a lot of sponsor-provided content.
Dan B
@jl: Her here and seconded! My political communication friends say she was over advised by too many consultants, who may have been upper middle class white men (need more research..), and her message got wobbly until late in the csmpaign. I think the advise was that women get called shrill. WTF? Lots of great women were called shrill and took it as a badge of honor. If that’s the worst they’ve got you’re already at Ghandi’s final stage. Then they attack you. And then you win!
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
I eat that and I’m just fine fine fine.
Baud
@Elizabelle: Yeah. I’m wondering if the decline in The Atlantic is the real reason he left.
Mel
@TenguPhule: @Mel:
Oops! Sorry for the errors in the above comment. I have a very piratical eyepatch on today (long story), and it makes for some interesting typing results.
TenguPhule
@tobie:
And this is why we have more divisions then unions with the purity caucus.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule: LOL.
@Baud: I hope we hear. What I really hope we hear: he’s headed to a regular column at the FTF NY Times. Because they really need the help. Or the WaPost!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@tobie:
That’s it. That’s why I despise Wilmer’s more overzealous acolytes. “Good enough” often isn’t good enough for them. They don’t live in reality and just think if they chant earnestly enough the GOP will disappear in a puff of smoke.
Dan B
@Dan B: Her here.. should be Hear hear.
But it sorta almost works.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@zhena gogolia:
Mark Burnett, Andy Cohen, and the entire executive teams from E Network, TLC and Bravo should be subject to trial and and execution by a revolutionary tribunal.
Video the thing pour encouragement les autres.
Jager
@TenguPhule:
My ag commodities BIL and I are thinking about publishing a cook book for mid western farmers focused on pork, corn and soy recipes, we’re going to call it “If you Can’t Sell It, Eat It.”
“Pork Chops, they’re what’s for dessert” “How to make your own Cornflakes” ‘Bacon, morning, noon and night”, ‘Drink Soy Milk and eat your Dairy Cattle”
Miss Bianca
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I’m betting – mind you, I don’t have anything to go on here but my gut – that Senator Sanders may well end up getting a little more critical scrutiny, as a result of the Mueller investigation, than he’s receiving currently. Not that I think he was anything more than a useful idiot, at worst, but still – some of the muck that’s going to get dredged up during Manafort’s trial is probably going to end up sticking to him.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
They neglected to mention the target voting group is zombies. Literal flesh eating zombies.
Dan B
@TenguPhule: My political communication friends keep praying for an audit. Everyone send thoughts and prayers.. sigh.
jl
@tobie: That kind of infighting has always been in politics. We need to support candidates and political leaders who have the ability to overcome problems caused by, for example, self-righteous old coots like BS, and two-faced coporate wheeler-dealers like Manchin.
If those two were sent off to start a Mars colony (which would make a nice sitcom) and we never heard from them again, two more like them would pop up just in time for the next election. The political talent needed to bridge divides is much rarer than that needed to get attention, make a splash, or (in Manchin’s case) find a nice niche as a ‘liberal’ corporate and media lapdog to cause problems.
So, it’s discouraging, but no cause for despair. It’s always been like this and always will be. The human condition.
geg6
@Baud:
The real white working class are not old, retired union men. They aren’t small or large businesss owners. That is who the media always interviews for this stuff. It’s never the people who make up the actual working class, people who make less than $50k (that would be me, even with an MEd) and are largely female and people of color. They don’t work in manufacturing, but in service jobs or personal care or education. Even in my largely homogenous county, that is who makes up the vast majority of the working class. But we never hear from them in the pages of the NYT.
Kathleen
@Ian G.: Hillary won handily in Cincinnati/Hamilton County. Trump cleaned up in the execrable exurbs and suburbs.
TenguPhule
@Jager:
Heh indeedie.
Perhaps with a companion volume to explain to them how to cook over an open fire using a box of scraps?
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Protesting in front of their homes and workplaces, on public property of course nearly non-stop. Find whatever dirt you can on them and get them fired. Make it clear that the days of Both Sides are over and that there will be consequences if media outlets won’t obey.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: The reason that worked for the Republicans is that they had their own media, we don’t.
Baud
@TenguPhule:
@Dan B:
I don’t know. Her messaging appealed to me at least. I grew to admire her more as the campaign went on. I just think the amount of evil working against her was too strong.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I think it’s more correct to say that “good” isn’t good enough for them. They demand perfection or nothing. So they, and we, get nothing. And then Republicans who seem to understand the power of incremental steps take another incremental step and we end up going backwards.
I understand the power of aspirations but we also need to be able to say “yes’ when we’re offered something that is better than what we have. Maybe everyone needs to take improv classes and learn to say, “Yes, and…”
Baud
@geg6:
I agree with you about the media’s bias. I just don’t think it is useful to try to identify the “real” members of a demo group. I guess I have an aversion to that term.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: Hmmm, I should probably get rid of that beef jerky.
Kathleen
@?BillinGlendaleCA: But does Vlad approve?
Steve in the ATL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I like that plan! In fact, you could make it a reality show…
satby
@geg6: the old, retired union men I know all vote reliably Democratic. The assumption that they all vote Republican is one I’ve been fighting for several election cycles.
Every demographic has both liberals and conservatives, we need to get away from the lazy stereotypes. The article quoted in the OP points out how it results in mistaken analysis of how to do voter outreach and how much impact voter suppression has. I agree with those points.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Her campaign messaging and advertising were all over the place. Buckshot instead of solid points. Her consultants committed professional malpractice.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: True.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh Jesus. Sorry. We can’t all live in Boston either. I’m just sick of all the condescension. What does her pointing out that the NYT and the rest of the media have a bias toward sympathy toward white males in or retired from manufacturing or who own businesses have to do with her compassion for those poor children? Can a person try to show that the portrait painted by the Cletus expeditions so popular among the msm are a false portrait without having to condemn every other thing they fuck up?
Regardless, I thought it was a good piece that painted a world as I know it. Apparently, that is a sin and a lie according to my betters who know so much more than I. Fuck it.
Baud
@TenguPhule: I had a different impression.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: @Steve in the ATL: If it’s true you can assess a society by what they value, then it seems we value celebrity because that’s where a lot of our focus is. And we elected a celebrity as president so that checks out.
Maybe we need to value different things.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kathleen: Vlad seems to like real dicks.
Steve in the ATL
@Yarrow: a society based on single malt scotch?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I guess I’d be antisocial in that society.
TenguPhule
@Baud: Her greatest moments were when the focus was on her personally: the Debates, the House Hearings. The on-air advertising by her campaign (and keep in mind I only got the fringes of it) was forgettable. The Machine was not supporting her the way it was supposed to.
geg6
@satby:
Around here, those old retired union guys are the ones with the Trump signs and flags flying proudly. There aren’t any union jobs any more around here. They are the very definition of IGMFU.
TenguPhule
@Steve in the ATL:
I prefer rum. Or mead.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: You liked the op-ed, I didn’t. I stated my problems with the article which you ignored, instead you attacked me based on where you think I live.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: a society based on Milky Way photos?
Kathleen
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I get a sense that they could forge a beautiful friendship.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Schism!
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
Right back atcha.
Your comments and problems with the piece seem to me to be based on ignorance about the subject matter. How many small towns in flyover country are you familiar with? And how did you miss the entire first part of the article, which addresses at least one of your “concerns?”
Elizabelle
So do we know what’s going on with Manafort? He going to trial next week?
It’s Friday afternoon news dump time. Are our national security VIPs still yawking it up in Aspen?
lollipopguild
@TenguPhule: Bourbon
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: I have no idea about that bee in your bonnet, my comment was about the op-ed not about you.
Baud
@Elizabelle: No news on Manafort. They could be hammering out a deal over the weekend. We’ll find out Monday if the trial moves forward.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: huh. I thought the Atlantic was rising because of global warming.
Mel
@TenguPhule:
I hadn’t seen that latest horror yet. Former small farm kid here.
You said it- we are well and truly screwed. I’m barely over my shock at the first round of trade war idiocy from several weeks ago.
Navigating tariff setting requires such in-depth understanding of the delicate compromises that keep the global economy and the lifeblood regional and local economies afloat and reasonably equitable.
This chest pounding idiocy is destructive beyond belief, and I fear the speed with which it will crush not just farm communities, but all the related industries and social structures. Further ag collapse will ramp up food insecurity, exacerbate rural opioid issues and environmental problems (desperate farmers are more likely to resort to toxic chemicals and shitty animal and environmental husbandry to try and increase yields or squeeze some income out of other components of their farm, or sell to developers) and slam farm and food industry employment numbers.
What a mess we are in.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL: Chinese hoax.
EBT
https://twitter.com/FioraAeterna/status/1019250188953665536
A phenotypically normal woman with XY chromosomes and a normal SRY gene gives birth to a daughter and they only find out from karyotyping her at age 52.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I prefer malt liquor
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
That article could have been written by me. It describes my life, my family and many of my friends. I finally see a major media entity take a sympathetic look at people as I know them and you make it all about you and your personal beefs. I am open and empathetic to immigrants and people of color, just as my family and friends are. I just wish people who know nothing at all about us could do the same. Apparently that’s too much to ask.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
With time you will hopefully grow out of it. //
A Ghost To Most
Jen Rubin is back from vacation.
Yarrow
@EBT: This is very cool. In case someone doesn’t understand it from the tweet, here’s the layman’s description:
As someone said in a comment in the thread, what even is gender.
TenguPhule
@Mel: I may have mentioned that the only major trading partner we’re currently not in a trade war with is Australia.
Once the car tariffs hit home, I’m not looking forward to LARPing Mad Max Fury Road.
Ruckus
@Gelfling 545:
Compare a college education from 40 yrs ago and a college education today. The main difference is the cost. 40 yrs ago a person could get a college education for a not unreasonable sum. Today it’s tens of thousands to even a couple of hundred thousand for one. It’s debt that is not releasable in bankruptcy and what other debts are? It’s colleges based upon that rather than on education. Even state colleges, such as here in CA are vastly more expensive compared to the cost of living than they were 4 decades ago. And to top it off, ask everyone you know with a college education what it’s like looking for jobs to use that education. One has to have a college education for a lot of jobs that pay anything more than a basic minimum living wage. It often doesn’t have to be an education related to the job but you have to have it anyway. College is the civilian version of military boot camp, everyone has to go through it, in the end it is a right of passage more than anything. Any job you do, in any branch, has schools after boot camp to teach you a specific task. (Yes, given the task of the military a school for how to understand the concepts of and life in the military is necessary, and that’s boot camp. There really isn’t a comparable need outside the military.) But the comparison for most people still stands.
Yarrow
@A Ghost To Most:
YES!
And YES AGAIN!
How is she still a Republican?
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: I think the thing that maddens me most is the paradox: the “perfection or nothing” philosophy in people who actually *do* believe in government – or at least are not violently opposed to the idea of government – vs. the willingness to vote for the candidates they are given, and the understanding and acceptance of incrementalism, as you put it, in the nihilists who are actually voting for the Republican candidates who want to destroy governance. It’s enough sometimes to make me want to guzzle Woolite.
A Ghost To Most
@Yarrow: Gender is a continuum, not binary. My son teaches me that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I could be more social in that society. Then again I’d probably be critical(constructively) of other photos.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6:
Because I criticized the op-ed you concluded that I am not empathetic to you, because you identify with the writer?
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
She had issues with black Democrats in positions of power. And she still thinks Hillary is too shrill.
Dan B
@Jager: “Drink soy milk and eat your dairy cattle.” Sounds like a jingle!
Also could be a GIF: Bossie’s farmer with a steak knife.. maybe something a little less graphic..
Elizabelle
A reader comment on the NY Times article. By “city bumpkin”:
The NY Times is insidious on this. Good they got called out. 86 likes on that comment.
rikyrah
They STILL don’t understand Black Professional Sensibilities ??
The Obamas are NOT going to have you all up in their business.
https://twitter.com/POTUSPressPool/status/1020399811395301377
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
Its easy to plan for the long term when the goal is oblivion.
germy
A Ghost To Most
@Yarrow: She says she isn’t anymore. She now claims to be simply a cancervative.
TenguPhule
@Jager:
Liquid Soy protein beverage.
Truth in labeling is going into effect again.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mel:
Yeah, that’s what rational and knowledgeable person would think, but we have Trump who only thinks you can win if the other party loses.
zhena gogolia
@A Ghost To Most:
It’s a great piece.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
Just like Obama’s statement about bitter whites clinging to their guns. A brilliant observation, but he was never able to get past it in the eyes of his opponents either.
Jager
@Mel:
MY BIL, the ag guy told me about a small group of corn growers in Nebraska who did a cooperative venture and cut a deal with a Mexican flour company. The Mexican company cancelled the deal and the little coop is taking a 10 mil kick in the ass, close to a half a million apiece for the farmers. The Mexican company told them they can find enough local and international sources for corn. Soy Bean prices are at their lowest point in over 10 years, so low Brazil (the #2 producer) can buy beans in the US and sell them to China for a profit.
TenguPhule
@Jager: Who’d they vote for?
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: The ugly truth about “populism” is that so often, historically, it *has* had connections to white supremacist views. Your “prairie populist” white farmer of the past wasn’t always a friend to the immigrant, to women’s rights, to POC – quite the opposite, in fact. I’m not sure the term can, or should, be redeemed – except I’m also not sure what to replace it with.
gwangung
@schrodingers_cat: Hm. Well, I wonder what article you read, because your description did not match what I read.
A Ghost To Most
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, I can’t believe I am hooked on her columns now.
For a conservative, she has an appalling excess of true loyalty to America.
jl
@Yarrow: This yet another liberal stealth feminist attack on alpha males? Another front in the gorilla wars?
A Ghost To Most
@Jager: They probably all voted for this. Cue tiny violin.
Mel
@TenguPhule: I hear you. I’m about ready to break out my Tank Girl gear and a dowsing rod.
Jager
@TenguPhule:
trump of course, they hated the black guy
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
That used to be what primary and secondary education was for.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Hey, this is OT, but wanted to say I saw your comments on the V pics article and I even read it and thought it was so weird that I couldn’t figure out what even to say about it. So I didn’t comment. Mostly I think sending unsolicited pictures of junk is gross. And the article seemed to have so many issues in it (husband cheating on writer?) that it was just…ugh. Like I said, no idea what to say.
A Ghost To Most
A double TBOGG must be a Cole Unit.
::ducks::
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow:
I just saw it as a sign that the NYT has completely lost its way, not just in the area of politics.
TenguPhule
@Jager: Thoughts and prayers!
A Ghost To Most
@A Ghost To Most: wrong thread. Apologies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@A Ghost To Most: she’s also talked a bit about climate change, and IIRC is not hostile to Roe, both of which surprised me. Of all the never-trumpers she’s the one I could see going full-metal Cole
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: I’m in.
EthylEster
@Elizabelle: Duck boat accident happened here in seattle a couple of years ago. but it took place on a bridge. several people died. that’s when i learned that duck boats were not just a seattle thing. they are still operating here.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
This is what drives me crazy. I’ve heard so many people (from every part of the political spectrum) complain about being stereotype, and then almost immediately start stereotyping other people.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She’d need to apologize for Banghazi malpractice first.
TenguPhule
@debbie:
That sounds stereotypical. //
Dan B
@Miss Bianca: Drives me nuts too. Purity! The enemy of the good. It’s like Libertarians. They typically don’t feel the existential fear that minorities experience. Friends who supported Wilmer were straight, white, and middle class. They didn’t fear Trump or the GOP. They still feel that corporations are the worst threat to the country. I afree that corporate power is malevolent but it’s not directly life threatening to me, not in the way the GOP is.
Then again we may soon hear how Tad Devine used talking points developed by the Russian FSB. And how friends of mine fell for them.
Talking to them is like talking to the wall of sound bites that Trumpistas erect.
Omnes Omnibus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Delete your account.
A Ghost To Most
Max Boot, in WaPo. Fuck head.
jl
@Miss Bianca: Rotting from the top, editorial policy at places like the NYT and WsPo is relentlessly focused on promoting big corporate interests. So a vile swindler and bigot like Trump is exciting and new, and just might be successful by tapping into populist sentiments, based on nothing but a thin facade of populist rhetoric that is contradicted by the actual policies he promoted (which favored the rich and corporations).
Meanwhile, Democrats, from HRC to BS, when they promote actual policies for middle and working class, and poor, are sad liberals mouthing liberal pieties, in a bubble, are ‘real Americans’ even interested? They’re probably sad losers. Weak. Low energy. (Trump is just the extreme end of a corrupt continuum in our political culture)
So, interested parties have an incentive to misuse and confuse the word in a fraudulent racket. I think we need to fight that, and worry about whether the word itself can be rehabilitated later.
In European history, bad crowds appropriated so many words and concepts from one time to another, we can’t give up on all of them.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: Hah! Finally something we can agree on. Malt Liquor is beer with an inflated ego.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Yes, definitely. Maybe the staff reductions and fewer editors mean stuff like that get through more. And yes, another example of how the NYT has lots its way.
Jager
My home county in North Dakota has a non-farm population of 69 thousand. Median income 51k There are about 700 farms in the county, median income 171k. (higher then Greenwich CT) I haven’t researched it, but my BIL says it the same story all over the Heartland. Upper income trump voters. My farmer cousin has a shed full of toys. His wife drives an Escalade, he drives a 70,000 pickup. Lots of vacations and weekends at the lake.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TenguPhule: ah, wasn’t reading her then
@A Ghost To Most: I read that bit and don’t know what made me roll my eyes, that Obama was “arrogant” or he was “too touch on Israel”. I appreciate some of Boot’s rethinking white privilege and racism, but how the hell do you work for Willard White Horse Romney and then call Obama arrogant.
debbie
I haven’t had time to check every post in todays’ threads, but did anyone mention Roseann Barr’s latest excuse for her racist tweet? She’s now saying she didn’t know Valerie Jarrett wasn’t white.
TenguPhule
@Jager:
Man, they’re really not going to like finding out how hard that’s going to make getting EBT assistance.
A Ghost To Most
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It hasn’t happened yet. Still, Jen 2.0 is a serious upgrade.
TenguPhule
@debbie:
it may have come up briefly and then was laughed out of the thread a couple threads back.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I have always been nervous about calls for more populism because of exactly that.
Teddys Person
@A Ghost To Most: He could have said something very similar comparing Obama to his predecessor.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Omnes Omnibus:
There’s nothing wrong with stuff like Mike’s Hard Lemonade or Zima.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She was a proud GOP foot soldier during the Obama years. So regard her conversion to sanity with a huge grain of salt.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
i don’t know you anymore.
Platonailedit
@A Ghost To Most:
Who da fuck is max boot?
jl
@Platonailedit: I think he is one of those ‘reasonable’ neo-con lite foreign policy pundits, who is currently in the process of trying to reform himself.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
It’s good. I can’t stand the bitter, wheat beers.
Mel
@Jager: It really is a no win situation for farmers and consumers. Did any of the farmers involved get slammed by the corn-for-ethanol push and then the corn market slump? I know a lot of farmers that almost lost it all, and were banking on the switch to soy crops to atabilize them. Now, the soy tariffs are going to have a further and dreadful impact on these same farms, I fear.
It would be an immense struggle for a smaller, independent farm could come back from a half million dollar hit from one harvest season, but if they previously got hit in 2015 or so with the corn market slump, it might be the nail in the coffin. It’s truly awful.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: No…..
Mel
@Mel: “stabilize”, not “atablize”
A Ghost To Most
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
All alcoholic beverages have essentially the same effect. Every weedstrain has a different effect. Now that’s true variety (and no liver damage).
Omnes Omnibus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Dear god.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: People have gone crazy with hops. What about a lager or a pilsner.
Ruckus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
The term should not be “good enough” because it’s really “perfect enough.”
Good enough signifies that you stopped working, caring, doing when you got there, with there usually being when it was good enough for you.
Perfect enough comes from the opposite direction and that is you aimed for the very best but life, circumstances, reality would’t allow you to get there and you had to settle for the best results you could. It also signifies that your aim is perfection and that you may not actually be done with the project. It’s an opening to further the discussion/work necessary to move farther in a direction.
But mainly it’s a signifier to those who can’t understand reality, that absolutely nothing is perfect, especially anything devised by humans, even if that’s what you are working towards.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: He is a child. Forgive him.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: When I finally figured out what the “V-selfie” referred to, I was all like, “Naw, mang – I’m not gettin’ out of the boat. Not for this one.”
A Ghost To Most
@Platonailedit: I am old enough to remember when Max Boot was a faithful W fellator and Iraq war cheerleader.
Mel
@Mel: Just to clarify, by consumers, I mean everyone getting crushed by rising supermarket food prices.
Corporate purchasers are thrilled to be able to force farmers and co-ops into the race to the bottom, price wise.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: I am retiring to my fainting couch.
WaterGirl
@raven: 3 times a day is apparently a bridge too far!
Yarrow
@Miss Bianca:
Why would they even write an article on that? And then they miss that it’s some kind of revenge piece on her husband’s mistress. Or something. I mean, wtf?
Mel
@Litlebritdifrnt: If you don’t mind my asking, how did you guys make the transition? Was it pre- or post-retirement?
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, since you saw me write that it could have been written by me (the writer’s and my background are similar), yes. Criticizing our lived reality is a rather personal attack. You get very exercised about how immigrants are treated and I totally empathize with that even though I am a white, native born citizen. Even though I am, actually, only a second generation American on my dad’s side. Even though my immigrant paternal grandparents were white working class Brits. I’m just asking for a little empathy in return. I can’t figure out what there is in the piece with which to disagree. She’s describing something she knows through living it, not just studying it from afar. How can you disagree with her experience? Or mine?
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: Is he? I have my doubts.
Jager
I get sick and tired of hearing about family fucking farmers, here’s the deal. My home county in North Dakota has 70, 000 people, the vast majority live in towns and have no farm income. The median non-farm income is 51k There are 700 farms in the county, the median farm income, 171k, higher than Greenwich CT for chrissakes. The “farmers” in my family live really nice, upper, upper middle class lives. Lake homes, nice vacations, boats, snowmobiles, classic cars, etc, etc. My baby Aunt lives in the “old farm house” the damn thing has been gutted and remodeled at least three times, the fucking kitchen looks like something out of a glossy magazine. I
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not really the same thing.
Primary and secondary education is needed for the military as well and boot camp is absolutely not necessary for civilian life, no matter that some parents think it is. Even on the basis that every educational point in your life is necessary, even then boot camp isn’t, unless you are in the military. The concepts that it teaches may be necessary to someone who didn’t get adequate parenting and/or a decent primary/secondary education but my experience with those that didn’t was that they really were unable to learn it in boot camp either. What those who either didn’t get or blocked adequate parenting and/or primary/secondary education was how to stay out of the worst trouble. And the real lesson they seemed to get was that one more thing in their life sucked. Of course there are always stories that go against the norm that I’ve seen, I’ve no doubt that boot camp has turned around some people, sometimes it’s just the timing that gets learning through. But I’d bet it’s rarer than we might like to think.
ETA Brings to mind the guy in my boot camp that decided that taking a shower with 79 other guys was beneath him. He found out the difficult way that it wasn’t, that those 79 people just didn’t want to associate with someone who held that personal hygiene wasn’t for him and yet were forced to by circumstances.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: I don’t know. I was too busy having flashbacks to “Our Bodies, Ourselves” – a must-read for the rising young feminist in the 70s! – and the “self-examination” chapter. Which only involved mirrors, not your i-phone. At which point, I just thought, “there’s a time and a place for everything. Wait, no there isn’t – *some* things, like photos of your junk, there’s just *no* time and place for.”
Ruckus
@A Ghost To Most:
Didn’t have a name for it but was just thinking the same concept. A double TBorgg? Has it ever happened before? I can’t remember and I’ve been here for I think over a decade.
Jay C
Late to the thread, but I DID read Sarah Smarsh’s whole Op-Ed piece: and AFAICT, though she brought out a couple of useful and salient facts (like that the “Heartland” working-class is not composed entirely of Trump-head yokel bigots), she missed (IMO) the main point: that Republicans in general – and Trump in particular: do win elections in these areas despite the economic damage their polices may (and usually do) cause. It’s nice and all that Sarah and Dad Smarsh are, seemingly, sane, level-headed, and bigotry-free about their political opinions, but they are, purely on the facts, a minority in (I think) Kansas. But why they’re the voting minority is a question she seems to deliberately avoid: in favor of the tried-and-true fallback of criticism of “media framing”. Which as I read the Op-Ed, comes perilously close to the hackneyed trope you see parodied on the ‘Net:
“I hate Trump, the GOP and their bad policies, but I’ll keep voting for them ‘cuz libruls are elitist meanie poopyheads“
MoxieM
@Litlebritdifrnt: Oh Ja. Ditto for my daughter, who lives in Germany. Info sites about moving to the EU say to double the US salary in the EU to estimate what you need to get by. With 5 paid weeks of vaca, plus innumerable State holidays, unlimited sick days, et cetera. In the US, Kid’s modest salary would get her a bedroom, or maybe a share in one in Somerville or Allston these days, with all the shitty American benefits to match. In Germany she can rent her own flat, 80msq or so. Decent! However–she remains a US citizen and voter, and votes the Democratic ticket.
German politics is way more complex (party-wise), and starting to get scary. For example the man who was making life miserable for Merkel over Immigration policy, is the head of the Bavarian (more religious, generally speaking more conservative) branch of her own party. But the real wackos, the scary ones, are mostly from the former East, Saxony e.g.. And then there are the guys with knives on busses, who, so far, are mostly not neo-nazis.
ETA: certainly in MA, many Red/right wing districts are both rural and have a class working-class SES. (But not exclusively– white middle class is strongly Rebub, and some of the super wealthy but not–what–highly intellectual??–zipcodes are also Repub.) One wonders if all our favorite journalists look about that far–well also to PA–and made up their minds.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
they still make fucking ZIma?
MagdaInBlack
@geg6:
Late to the party, but: your background and mine are similar: white working class. Difference being I was rural…small farming town of 700. My parents farmed 80 acres back when you could make a living on 80 acres with crops and livestock. I am still “working class” in a blue collar industry (I sometimes wonder what the alternative is? Non- working class white collar?)
I guess where I’m going with this is that us “working class” folks are not a mono-crop…and I do get tired of the rhetoric I see and the articles about one particular brand of “working class.” She did indeed describe her lived reality, and yours, and mine.
Obviously we are not all “dumb redneck ignorant hicks.”
After all, we’re here, aren’t we?
MomSense
@A Ghost To Most:
I have two different strains on my deck right now. Maybe I’ll actially be careful and process them separately to see what they each do.
MomSense
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Nothing wrong but nothing good either.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, but my idiot cousin in Waukesha didn’t help.
Chris Johnson
@Miss Bianca: He absolutely got suckered by Tad Devine. He wasn’t the first, either. Spies gotta spy.
I wouldn’t have believed being an ideologue totally obsessed with one’s pet issue could be a bad thing, but this is a rude awakening. In retrospect it’s obvious that Bernie’s singlemindedness let him be steered like the Titanic into any old iceberg. Bernie would have lost… if Russia wanted him to lose. And I think they would want that, because they had Trump and Trump is a whole other stage of compromised.
How many Dem presidents could we have had if not for Devine’s ‘help’. Gore for one. Maybe Kerry. Dukakis?? That Devine guy got up early to do his ‘advising’.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, and that’s one of the things I am curious about.
gwangung
@Jay C:
Actually, no, I think she pointed out that the poor are being outvoted by Trump voters in the middle class because of voter suppression efforts that affect the poor, white and non-white alike, which is a point a lot of folks around here seem desperate to avoid. GOTV efforts aimed at the poor, which seemed to vote more for Clinton than Trump, would seem to be a solution for that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: True.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: I am going by what he has told us. On the intertubes who really knows.
brettvk
@Soprano2: Are you in Greene County? I was at work at Large Retailer when the sirens sounded. Getting customers to go to the safe area is a nightmare, they’d much rather buy bottled water.
J R in WV
@Goku :
Yes, there is! It is terrible tasting industrial waste!!! Better to just get pure ethanol and pour it in the orange juice.
We pay good money for beverages that taste good and contain alcohol… Pale Ale, Apple brandy, Gin and tonic with good gin AND good tonic and fresh lime juice. Good tequila, orange liquor, lime juice aka margaritas. Bourbon, neat.
Fizzy water and grain alcohol is not a quality beverage.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: Not really the point. But ok.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Decline? Even in his blogging heyday, I remember thinking the place was worthless aside from Coates and Fallows.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: “Populism” to me has always conjured up images of Huey Long. Who was, oddly, not a racist (or at least relatively non-racist for the place and time), but was definitely an illiberal authoritarian.
Buzz Windrip in “It Can’t Happen Here” was inspired by Long, but I think Lewis added in extra racism.