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"Vote Hillary Clinton 2016" is dead. Long live "Vote Hillary Clinton 2016"! (pg. 21)
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Like a lot of capital T "Theory", you can apply them to just about any aspect of modern Western culture. It will sound clever and deep and you can spin out a whole academic career out of variations on the theme, but once you've heard it a few times it ceases to be stimulating analysis. |
Of course it's just detached academics but critical theory especially has never denied that and I don't think it makes it any less useful. Yes, there are people that just re-iterate the same theme a million times but still, the good thing about theory is that it's infinitely flexible and you can take parts that you like and morph ideas. Meanwhile, the liberal-democratic conseus, once they've found a narrative they will stay with that until they are proven so wrong that they are forced to change it (or even then, they'll stay with it). I mean, your explanation is plausible and it's probably the one they'll take but they'll then stay with that for the next how many years and refuse to connect it with any other themes or overarching implications.
And I would agree that the Adam Curtis doc tries to paint too much of a complete narrative, I just thought it raised some interesting observations, not even necessarily worked-out theories. I don't think the idea with hypernormalisation just boils down to "more internet" but even if, "more internet" has been liberal sociology's explanation for ing everything that has happened in the past 20 years, so that's not just on the theorists :p
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
German is such a beautiful language when it comes to sorting people. A few days ago I learnt that "Wutbürger" means "Person angry as hell who's bound to vote for the maddest person in an election".
Fascinating! |
It refers to this unexplainable anger coming out of the most banal people which don't really have any real specific reason for being angry. In the US I'd translate it to something like "suburban angst" or "suburban rage", the kind of people that have a stable job, are providing for their kids and a nice car and house but are still watching Fox News every day and incredibly pissed off at the world.
The great thing with all these german stereotypes is that we never think they apply to us, like come on i'm totally lazy and not organized... but when start hanging out with people from other countries you start getting this subconscious discomfort when certain things aren't done a certain way and you start thinking stuff like "oh god, why aren't they just writing this down and making a list?" :p |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
Meanwhile, the liberal-democratic conseus, once they've found a narrative they will stay with that until they are proven so wrong that they are forced to change it (or even then, they'll stay with it). I mean, your explanation is plausible and it's probably the one they'll take but they'll then stay with that for the next how many years and refuse to connect it with any other themes or overarching implications. |
There's undeniably other angles you can put on it. I'm surprised you didn't say more about this being a product of rampant neo-liberalism. Generally, I just think a bit too much is made of this idea of the "post-truth" era as something new. In any aspect of human endeavour, the general public have always been remarkably ignorant and uninterested. Understanding of politics, economics, any branch of the sciences, fact-checking, myth-spreading... It goes on and on. And people have always capitalised on this ruthlessly, from snake oil salesmen to religious cultists to demagogues and dictators. We've simply had a couple of very prominent examples in 2016 where prominent figures have exploited this aspect of society to help facilitate seismic political upsets.
What's changed is more the conditions that have made people ripe for this exploitation. There's the proximity of the financial crisis and the last Iraq war, which together completely eroded public confidence in authority, institutions and experts. And there's the socio-economic landscape as it stands, which has left people vulnerable and angry, ready to jump on board populist, emotional bandwagons. These volatile periods arise throughout history.
There's a lot of stuff to sink your analytical teeth into, and the whole thing is complex and multi-faceted. But choosing to start with critical theory is the least insightful method, in my opinion. At the risk of being patronising, when I was also in my early 20s and this stuff had been taught to me relatively recently, I thought it was much more important and widely recognised, even if I didn't necessarily agree with all of it. Once I got a bit older and knew more people involved in the other side of academia, I came to realise how much of this ostensibly weighty theory is simply an incredibly ornate and elaborate apparatus of what I call the "academic industrial complex". The main purpose of Theory is to perpetuate itself and give academics a malleable tool with which to analyse any cultural output, and so churn out a lifetime of papers, books and seminar examples. |
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| BTG |
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| Woony |
But most of the people pushing that kind of stuff are outside of the traditional "academic industrial complex" these days. Critical theory is ing dead in institutional academic circles. And poststructuralism is mostly culture theoretic bull without any punch these days. Modern philosophy is pretty lacking in radical theoretic rhetoric.
My background is a bit different, I was exposed to this stuff from a young age and I'm pretty desensitized to all of it, really. My dad spent half of his life in far left projects and has thousands of books on critical theory, obscure philosphy and what not despite never getting an academic degree. He's always sending me articles with delightful titles like "the everday madness of capitalism is the continuation of Auschwitz". A lot of that kind of stuff I don't even necessarily disagree with, I just can't get bothered to get into it since I know that it's a road that just leads to biterness and isolation. But the "other side" I've experienced in traditional academia still hasn't exactly convinced me, I've met some smart people but a looot of liberal-democratic bull artists just churning out stuff, like you've said. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
But most of the people pushing that kind of stuff are outside of the traditional "academic industrial complex" these days. Critical theory is ing dead in institutional academic circles. And poststructuralism is mostly culture theoretic bull without any punch these days. Modern philosophy is pretty lacking in radical theoretic rhetoric. |
There may be no prominent modern day successors to Baudrillard, Derrida and the like, but these ideas are pretty much institutionalised in universities, and so they form the backdrop of much of the educated left's world view.
Anyway, we're getting increasingly tangential. I suppose I was surprised you declared your post "crazed Marxist ramblings" but then didn't really discuss automation, economics or the changing work force at all, so I brought that stuff up myself. |
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| Woony |
Sure, but there's the educated progressive-liberal left and then there's the educated radical-marxist left. Big difference between the two groups and the former is the one that mostly sits in all the academic institutions.
Like I said before, I wasn't trying to present a complete theory on Trump, it was just two observations that came to my mind at the time. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
And I would agree that the Adam Curtis doc tries to paint too much of a complete narrative, I just thought it raised some interesting observations, not even necessarily worked-out theories. I don't think the idea with hypernormalisation just boils down to "more internet" but even if, "more internet" has been liberal sociology's explanation for ing everything that has happened in the past 20 years, so that's not just on the theorists :p
It refers to this unexplainable anger coming out of the most banal people which don't really have any real specific reason for being angry. In the US I'd translate it to something like "suburban angst" or "suburban rage", the kind of people that have a stable job, are providing for their kids and a nice car and house but are still watching Fox News every day and incredibly pissed off at the world.
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This in my opinion is one of the the most pervasive, and building factors in this cycle; there's a "rage" as you put it which really is a product of little more than malaise. last year you had all these university protest which were at best storms in teacups, moreso needing a cause of over actually having one, many of which were shut down by a few stern and insightful words from a campus professor or principle, which highlighted exaggeration of their overblown causes. Then you have swathes of middle class voters with good household incomes and job security but "angry at the status quo" which seems to have treated them OK by all quantifiable measures, Some of it can be put down put to good old complacency and taking a standard of life for granted, maybe some of it comes from greed of wanting more, especially in this celebrity and welath emphasis social structure and of course some has more nefarious facets such as not wanting to see brown or people with funny accents in their towns, but some if it is really inexplicable. As much as some of these people vilify the evil left wing liberal media, most of it is fuelled by a fear mongering right wing media and the generational gap is startling.
Completely anecdotal but I was at dinner with an a couple and their parents - they are weed smoking, fairly hippy, happy go lucky in the creative field, and her parents, are fox news watching, right wing, borderline racist and evangelical, republicans who work in the chemical industry.
The bizarre thing was the "rage" against Obama and the Dems, which despite my best efforts, I couldn't tease a qualitative reason for; The parents have by all accounts financially thrived over the last decade, moving to a larger house, with all the upgraded trappings but no amount of reasoning from his kids can make him change his mind that Obama and the dems have, and are literally "destroying this country" and massive change is needed immediately. They're not affected by the ACA, and are close to a very cushy retirement but no manner of logic or statistics will enter their heads about their current state and what they might owe it to. If anything they struggled heavily under bush and were forced to move from a wealthy area to a lower middle class one until they quite literally were bailed out by Obama.
The incredible thing is that they are Polish immigrants having come to US in the swinging 60's. His kids believe right wing media conditioned and nurtured this rage and now he's basically beyond help.
I will say the most ing hilarious thing about the evening was hearing him go off about abortion and how it needs to be banned outright and women thrown in jail for "killing babies". I was dying laughing inside knowing his his daughter has had three so far.
I can't help but feel that this suburban rage is somewhat a product of building complacency with a measure of anti-semitism and/or evolutionary change of demographics, fuelled in some ways by not having a larger common enemy that usually unites in time of true crisis. In the same way you often see poor or working class easily conditioned in to being ultra nationalist - a simple play on their economic situation and it's not difficult to convince them to hug that flag when they have little else to hold on to. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by BTG
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I know this is a joke but people suggesting that Bernie will run in 2020 are being ridiculous. He'll be 80 by then or better said two years older than the the average US life expectancy and meant to head in to the one of the most gruelling jobs there are. the man would be 88 by the end of the second term. Or another may of putting it would be that Bernie would be 11 years older than Reagan (69), the previous oldest president (soon to be Trump at 70), and we all know has the last years of his presidency went.
Much as it would be great, it's never going to happen. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Swamper
I think once he realizes how much work is involved he is going to regret having won. As for Melania, she looks miserable. |
I think this is going to be incredibly true and I have a feeling he's going to regret to actually having won.
He's in a terrible catch 22 position right now - If he follows through on his pledges to tear up DACA, DAPA, the Climate Accord(s), De Grande Parades, (etc) he's going to have a major revolt on his hands, not to mention complete political blockade, meaning all of it would have to be done with executive order (which unfortunately and ironically the rubicon has been crossed with vito of Obama's last EO).
On the other hand, if trump backs down on these radical pledges, the people that elected him are going to revolt and we're already seeing with his shift on ACA/Obamacare (that he know wants to keep the "strong pillars" of it).
he's ed if he does, and he's ed if he doesn't. The middle line is going to be difficult to walk for two sides with such polar and radical opposition.
The a huge social media push for the electoral college to vote for Clinton on Dec 19th.
it's highly unlikely that it will happen but then again, so was Trump. |
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| Jon_Snow |
| I thought the whole purpose of the cor is to get mad or make someone else mad. And calling someone stupid well that's just a birth right. |
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
I couldn't give a if that guy was was your sugar daddy. You said the stats "do bear it out" and then proceeded to post commentary from some professor I couldn't be bothered to read. |
One of the many irritating traits you have is your tendency to slowly drift an argument. Do you even remember what the original point was? We were discussing why certain voters may have changed from Blue to Red and you stated there was no statistical evidence to support the theory that certain people may have been feeling anxious about the economy. I replied that, on the contrary, there is some. I didn't say it proves it conclusively beyond a doubt, I simply said there was some evidence and if you were at all intellectually curious and not insufferably arrogant you might have looked into it. But no, you're always so damn certain of yourself. Lets remember, for a fun example, how long you've been writing on this forum that the Press was making the race look close because they wanted to sell ads, no matter how often we pointed out that was stupid and illogical.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Any why? Because you're jack's little proxy. I have no problem having a discussion with jack becuase he has original thoughts, but every single time one of these discussion come up, you start chiming in only once Jack has made his points. You're his little lap dog and honestly, posting commentary instead of stats,whilst trying to state "the stats do bear them out" is just farting in the wind becuase you think jack might like the smell. |
I posted a link to the stats you ing cretin, I wasn't about to copy and paste a bunch of correlated and covariated numbers in here, especially since you seem to have some serious issues with numbers.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
But you have no qualitative metrics at all to back it up. You just keep saying "future anxiety" and I'm mean to go "oh ok that that proves it the!", but whether we look at the consumer confidence index, the unemployment rate in the union sector in the area, auto and manufacturing sales, they all were on a steady incline both before and after, so again, that stat relating to 800k union workers switching to the other side, isn't about economic uncertainty, becuase there wasn't ing any, and I can back it up. |
What the do you read in life that you think there is no qualitative metrics showing that the white working classes are highly concerned about the future? Here's one big one, with links to other sources if you want to actually learn something for once: https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-man...s-working-class
I assume you actually meant quantitative, not qualitative, metrics, but it's hard to tell, since you clearly have no understanding of statistics or quantitative or qualitative methodology.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
The semantics is a just bit of fun between jack and I, but to use your metaphor, it's not just making a hit, it's like a first time starter making a home run and hitting the liberty bell. |
That is a terrible metaphor and shows how terribly you comprehend probabilities.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
But the fatc is, and the whole ing basis for this discussion was that no one saw him walking away with ALL the battleground states, and some of her/tradionally blue states...CASE IN POINT: Michigan, that has not just been saved, but has done better than expected since 2008 under a Dem administration. She basically promised 4 more years of the same, Trump promised to tear up union agreements and in his own words would have let these people go bankrupt. Trying to say there's "anxiety" and that's why they jumped ship is absolute hokum as they've experienced nothing but growth stability and had growth projected under a Dem government. |
Again, go read about why they are feeling anxious. In addition to the links in the above HBR article, there are great New Yorker articles linked to in this article: http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-...election-result
In fact, people like you, on the coast, sitting around talking about why the white working classes have no reason to feel anxious, is probably a big contributing factor to them voting for Trump over Clinton.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
So what I've been saying all along is that this one example (and that's all it is) is perfectly indicative of people voting against their interests. |
Maybe, maybe not. You don't know what their interests are. |
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