Oh no…the Leopards ate my face thread

I was thinking about something similar when people were talking about racism last week. When I think about the US, a couple of things stick out to me compared to even other well off democracies. The US as a society is more individualistic than most, if not all. The US also has been as shielded from collective hardship as about any country on earth since the 19th Century. We are pretty low on empathy in a social policy context. You can kinda measure that by someone’s preference to support things that protect their tertiary needs/wants that come at the expense of another persons secondary or even primary needs/wants.

It’s always been this way everywhere. It’s always been this way everywhere but it’s probably worse here than it is in other relatively secure countries. And the further someone is from another group socially/economically, the less empathetic/more selfish someone is going to be. When we talk about things like race, others are going to underestimate how that manifests in day to day life, so it will appear even more selfish.

What we have seen with Trump is a fear based approach to mobilization. He’s exceptional at it. Fear dysregulates people. It makes them more selfish and less empathetic and it makes them susceptible to easy fixes. Anything to make the fear go away. You can’t scold people out of their dysregulated fear state. You can’t tell them they’re doing it wrong or they’re being racist or they’re stupid. It won’t calm them or convince them that you have solutions. If anything, those things do backfire.

The only solution as I see it is to create common cause. I think Dems have done a terrible job of that. That involves listening to people, not condescending, and addressing core universal needs rather than groups (race, education, location, gender, sexual orientation, age). They can still address subgroup needs, but it those things can be almost entirely covered by things that resonate with 80% of the country. People want to be able to make and save money, retire, and to have certain backstopped guarantees regarding education, healthcare, unemployment, physical safety. And they want the laws and rules to apply to everyone the same way. The closer Dems can stick to that message, the more effective they’ll be in neutralizing the fear. It is obvious that some groups are more affected by our choices than others, but Dems need to stick to core needs driving those fears. And cynically, Dems also need to use fear themselves when the regime takes over to point out how Trumpism is hurting working and middle class people.

 

All he wanted to do was defrost his "truck."

Now he's the proud owner of a CyberBrick...but at least he owned the libs!

https://www.torquenews.com/11826/te...inter-owner-bricks-truck-trying-use-defroster

 

”Note: My Cybertruck does look awesome on that tow truck!”[/]​

Who says the design team didn’t put any thought into what this vehicle looks like.

 

it's France. Remember, Mitterand's mistress and her child fathered by him showed up to his funeral alongside his wife and her children fathered by him and no one batted an eye.

"Menage a trois" is a French term, not an English one. The French are certainly not as Victorian as the English. My uncle and his best friend ended up swapping wives (not just for a night, but permanently), with the wives' consent, of course.

 

I'd forgotten about the salacious part of his crimes. I thought he was just a run of the mill white collar criminal.

 

Reframing it: I think any two consenting adults should be free to enter into the contract of marriage provided they both aren’t already married and have the legal capacity to enter into other contracts. We are the party of freedom. Any party that wants to exclude some groups from the same rights and privileges as others won’t hesitate to take away your rights and privileges too when the time comes. Where does it end? Marry any consenting adult or don’t marry at all. If you choose to marry be supportive of your partner. Just don’t marry children and don’t trust your children with any politician who supports child marriage.

Don’t waste air on something that people will either agree or disagree with but tie it as best you can to everyone’s general interest. You can say it 100 times and it won’t resonate with MAGA LGBTQ+ types and homophobes or people with their own highly selective reading of scripture. Dems need to present plain spoken obvious truths with a bit of fearful slippery slopism thrown in for good measure.

 

Yes. And a media ecosystem will need to be built. But it is very much a framing problem. Dems too often speak in 300 level “liberal artsese”. The reason why the conservative media ecosystem is so robust is that they understand simple messages.

The message should be, “we’re not the ones making different rules for different people. We’d prefer not to tell people what they can and can’t do, but if we must, the rules will be applied the same for everyone. They make different rules for people they don’t like.” Is it overly simple? Yes. But it needs to be.

 

Nice bumper sticker.

 

What do you call people that takes bad decisions on a regular basis?

 

People may read “they” as “you”. And they’ll do that because they’ve been indoctrinated into a cult. And that’s part of my point. You don’t deprogram cult members by shaming them. If you shame them, they actually run toward their cult leaders. You deprogram them by creating broad appeal/inclusion, asking questions and (gently) pointing out inconsistencies when the leader hurts them as well. That’s all you can do to pull people out of a cult. If you don’t think this is possible, then the only alternative path is to watch it all burn and hope we can assemble something from the wreckage.

re:individualism. I initially referred to it in the social science sense (individualism vs collectivism) and collectivism is plenty selfish too where it exists in countries without robust institutions. That’s actually what fascism is pushing for: fragmented group collectivism based on tribe, clan, religion, education to exploit those differences.

but I do get to your point…individualism —>lack of empathy/selfishness.

And that’s kinda the issue. We don’t want the country to devolve further into fragmented collectives and Dems should avoid language that helps that along. We have religious lines, racial lines, education lines, “cosmopolitans” vs “real”, “Main Street” vs “Wall Street” lines drawn.

I completely get that there is a lot of nuance lost when we avoid direct implication of race and instead reduce things to class when discussing economic and access disparities. Or when we reduce LGBTQ+ or women’s issues to “personal freedom”. You won’t get hardened racists, misogynists, etc. But dems need to do a better job of stripping the message down to create common cause: reducing corporate/moneyed control, basic needs, freedom, not playing favorites, accountability. In a country that is autocratizing, those are the best messages IMO.

It’s not going to fit on a bumper sticker, but it can fit in plain spoken 5-10 second sound bites and rebuttals.

 

I watched a YouTube video that touched on this in a certain angle. In it, the host was describing some polls from before Trump became President the first time. Among the most important policy changes they looked forward to was tax reductions. But the Trump tax reform only helped the rich, not most people. But instead of being upset at Trump, people just dropped tax reduction among the things they said they desired from the Trump Presidency.

As was described in the video, this is hardly a trait of only Republicans. Most people would rather change the world than change their worldview. But it does point out that people won't turn on Trump after their faces get eaten. It's going to take a lot more.

 

In the end we're just a failed, shithole country that embraced authoritarianism.

 

Did you hear his comments about the hostages and Hamas yesterday?

 

If Trump carries out his plans to purge the military leadership and replace them with sycophants, it won't matter how much money he spends on defense. Military purges haven't exactly worked out well when they have been attempted.
Maybe the anti-war voters are banking on Trump hollowing the US military the same way Putin did with the Russian one. Which might preserve America's Armed Forces as a threat for Canada and Mexico, but not much else.

 

I guess he will obliterate whatever is left of Haza and give it away to Jared.

Without mentioning Hamas by name, Trump posted online the same day: "Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America."

 

Given he thinks Canada should become the 51st state, we wouldn't have to worry about that border!

(I wonder how many electoral votes the state of Canada would get?)