Make Fun of This

Tucker Carlson is making a valid point...

Trump won in 2016. He ran against the "liberal elites" because White working class voters felt that the system was stacked against them by what Tucker is calling the "ruling class".

I disagree with the rest of the points that Tucker is making. But in his main thesis... I have to say he is making a valid point.

Thanks for the honesty.

I don't believe that Trump loves those people. He loves that they love him. Carlson paints a simplistic picture of two sides who hate each other and, with his hand on the scale, gives one side a pass. The opiate crisis, as with the pandemic, merely demonstrates how weak, divided, and dysfunctional our society has become. Playing the two-sided blame game does nothing to improve the situation.

Small towns used to have the ability to assess their problems and address them. Somewhere along the way, this civic sense evaporated. For instance, how was the opioid crisis allowed to fester for so long before it was even noticed? Was everyone too busy to say anything? Where were the churches? The Lions? The Rotarians?

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, the people in power were so devoted to laissez faire economics that they wouldn't do a thing to disturb the endless flood of money going to the pharmaceutical giants, because, after all, profits are good. So yeah, there are shreds of truth in Carlson's message but he leaves out a lot of the complicated stuff, and just tells one side what they wish to hear — a classic propaganda technique.

I think there are two separate issues here.

1) How this group of voters feels they have been treated by the Democrat party, and how they perceive the people they call "liberal" elites". I think Tucker describes this very well.

2) Whether Trump actually serves these people.

Obviously Trump is reaching out to these voters... and they are responding to him. If the Democrats figure this out, they will be much more likely to win elections.

The Democrats have a bad habit of talking down to working class White voters that many of them find insulting.

mark

The Democrats? Or elements of the professional class? Politicians don't usually talk down to the constituencies that vote for them. I'm sure Democrats who represent rural districts know how to talk to the voters there. I'll also point out that Republicans often say disparaging things about cities and the people who live in them. Witness Trump's comments about Baltimore.

The urban/rural divide didn't start in the last election cycle. In fact, I believe that the first staged play in the USA in the 18th century was about city slickers vs country bumpkins.


He may describe it effectively but is it really true? Just because urban professionals don't want to live in a decrepit mill town doesn't mean they hate the people who live there. I think Carlson is purposely baiting his audience with red meat and I don't find that an admirable characteristic. At all.

Discounting the advice of experts because you've been told that they despise you can have very negative consequences, as this pandemic has shown. Demagogues like Trump exacerbate social division instead of using their populist appeal constructively. Imagine if he'd embraced mask-wearing at the beginning and told people to listen to the advice of the epidemiologists — tens of thousands of USAmericans might still be alive.

The question is "why do millions of American's support Trump"?

I don't know what you are talking about. The important point is what do these voters feel and understand from their point of view. It sounds like you are talking about what these voters should think. That is what the phrase "talking down" means.

Trump is very good at making these voters feel that he understands them, and that he is speaking for them. Whether you think this is true or not isn't the point.... it is what these voters feel.

If Democrats want to win elections (and bring the country together) they need to start reaching out to these voters... rather than telling them how they should think and feel.

Because they think he's on their side.

Not at all. But I don't subscribe to the portrayal of Trump supporters as poor misunderstood victims of the sneering liberal elite. Carlson's the one telling them how to think — "Liberals hate you. Trump loves you." He's talking down to them.

Except that I'm talking to you, not millions of Trump supporters.

I am a liberal on most of the issues. I believe in civil rights. I support immigrant rights, and refugees and DACA, and equal pay, and abortion rights...etc. etc. I vote for Democrats almost always (I can't remember not voting a straight Democratic ticket... except maybe for Governor Baker one year).

I hate the attitude of liberals. I hate the inability of liberals to see other points of view. I hate the quibbling over language and songs. I hate the insulting way they talk about Americans they consider "homophobic" or "racist".

Speaking only for myself. I would never vote for Trump... but I certainly understand why people would. Trump is the alternative to those angry yelling women in pink hats who think everyone is a racist.

Consider this from another point of view...

You have a guy who has spent his life in a job (let's say it is a coal job). He has worked hard, earned a decent living in a demanding career. But now coal is going away and he and everyone he knows is having trouble finding work, paying their bills and barely getting buy.

Now along comes people who don't seem to care who are telling him he has "White Privilege".

You may understand systemic racism and care about social change (as you should)... but to this guy who has worked hard and is seeing his career disappear, the message that he is "privileged" is a slap in the face. It is completely devaluing his personal experience, and it's telling him that he doesn't matter.

That is just one thing... but try to understand how this feels from the other side of the chasm.

You raise good points and I somewhat agree about liberal p.c. and that sort of thing. Here's an example I found this morning:
Classical Music Isn’t Elitist
Grrr.....

I wonder how many people like that have actually been told this in real life by an angry yelling woman in a pink hat as opposed to seeing it portrayed on Foxnews or reading about it in one of coldjoint's regular sources.

I hate the attitude of some Trumpians and some liberals. But these are stereotypes, easy to find fault with.

But it's not the fault of liberals that his job disappeared. It's not that simple. The corporations who were so happy to move their steel mills to China weren't run by liberals. It's not the fault of liberals that the domestic textile industry has disappeared. It wasn't liberals who moved the mills from New England to the Right-to-Work states in the South, nor was it the liberals who then made contracts with Bangladesh and a host of other foreign suppliers in order to stock Walmart's shelves with cheap clothing. Sam Walton is no liberal. It's not the fault of liberals that the effects of carbon pollution represent such a danger to the health of the planet either.

Now, it's true, liberals never invested in the retraining programs to move workers in dying industries into the new economy. But our society hasn't had that sort of mindset since FDR. Just the mention of an "industrial policy" and the Kochs will fan the flames of resentment and the fear of socialism. We couldn't even think about raising taxes for job retraining — we won't even raise taxes to fund our military operations overseas. That's not really the fault of liberals either. I believe the conflict arises out of contradictions between our country as it was conceived and the world as it has developed.

So how do you reframe your narrative perspective of White working class voters.

They like Fox news. If you ask them... they will say that they like Fox News because it tells their side of the story. You seem to be saying that they watch Fox News because they are too stupid to know better. Fox News is popular, lots of people watch it because lots of people like it.

These voters have real things that they experience as slights. This has nothing to do with the Koch brothers.

I don't know where you came up with that, as I did not say anything like that in my reply. I know it tells their side of the story. It can also have an effect on their world picture. So they see angry women in pink hats on the news, along with weird-looking militant transgendered people, and angry radical black people demanding reparations and a deed to the state of Texas even though they never see them in real life. Foxnews not only tells their side of the story — it embellishes and enhances it. This has nothing to do with the audience being stupid, it's the way our media outlets have developed since Reagan ditched the Fairness Doctrine.

They have also seen good paying jobs vanish, union representation decline, OSHA protections reduced to basically lip service, loss of pensions, and government partiality to corporate interests at the expense of the working poor. All of which have a lot to do with the Kochs and corporate-sponsored think tanks.

We also dislike having our civil liberties violated.

We really really dislike it when there isn't even a good reason for violating our civil liberties and progressives are doing it just for fun.

I would have liked this post if you could have just resisted the impulse to put that last phrase.

You are doing the mind reading thing again. For you to say why "progressives are doing it" is ridiculous especially given the fact that progressive are quite articulate on the matter.

Let me make the obvious point that this goes both ways.

A great number of Americans absolutely hate Trump. And Republicans are going to have to come to grips with this.

Trump is definitely going to lose the popular vote (not important for the result... but it means that more people prefer Biden to Trump). And Trump is likely to lose the election once all of the votes are counted.

Republicans have the same problem that Democrats have... except maybe more so.

I've been thinking about this since you opened this thread. Your liberal values show by the fact that you even care what white working-class Trump supporters think. I rather doubt that people on conservative message boards (I assume such things exist) are having discussions about trying to understand the narrative from the other side's point of view.

There was a Doonesbury comic many years ago (during the latter part of the W administration I believe) that fits with your post perfectly.

I'll go see if I can find it. But I don't know how much Doonesbury keeps online archives from past years (or how easily searched any archives are). It may prove impossible to find.

If I manage to find it though, it'll be perfect.

Because he supports them. Period.{/color]