I agree that Dan is probably genuine (although I honestly don't know what to think about ticks like the "Democrat" Party).

I think you guys are taking his desire to obstruct every conversation with chatter about neoliberals as being malicious, when in fact it's because he has nothing interesting to say. I don't intend that to be cruel, but we have threads where any genuine leftist is in the majority and free to make constructive comments about how to organize politically, how to view the world, etc. Dan participates but really has no contribution beyond "Dems are bad."

Good god Deevault, that's some good ****. Genuinely insightful take on a topic that has long puzzled me.

I have read that post a few times and i dont understand what is insightful about it. Don't get me wrong, it is very well written and Dvaut has a way with language that i will never have but i think the conclusions reached are fairly incorrect.

The truth is everybody wants flattery and only prefers sincerity and truth when it does not apply to themselves.

Then how is it incorrect?

That isn't his conclusion in any event, it's that the efforts to empathize with and relate to these voters will not breed any electoral success.

You're bad at reads. He went straight into peoples post history and was trolling shortly after he appeared.

Which one could also argue is due to "my-side-ism" as much as flattery. An article was posted a while back about how humans can be led to go against their own survival instinct for the good of the group as a whole. A lot of lightbulbs went off for me reading that - stuff I had been slowly realizing - but wasn't really crystallized.

Sure seems like this biological tick has been hijacked many times throughout history.

All that matters to Trump voters is that Trump says he's on their side. The whole battle, which is now over for 95+% of the country, is clearly drawing up the sides. Do you *claim to* identify with (flatter) the cultural markers of my side? (Guns, trucks, God, etc.) Or the cultural markers of the other side? (Hollywood celebrities, NY latte-drinkers, elitist professors, etc.). There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

Whether or not a cultural thought leader actually lives up to those cultural markers might be cause for minor fretting, but otherwise irrelevant. So yeah through one lens you can look at it as flattery. But on a more basic level it just comes down to picking teams. The heavy lifting of driving everyday Americans to one team or another has already been done.

Which is why Hillary's Deplorables comment (which I supported at the time) is looking worse and worse in hindsight. Trying to drive a wedge between Trumpites and moderate suburban (R) voters to get them to switch teams - was just too big of a gamble. A wedge never leaves anything in the middle - it drives to one side or the other. Ohmmmm

Empathy and relating to voters does not mean living the life that your voters live. If the choice is between person A who lives a very different life from your own who ignores you and person B who also lives a very different life from your own but flatters you, person B will get picked every time.

In any case, there is zero opportunity cost to empathize and relate to these voters. It is a freeroll.

This is the type of analysis that makes you part of team liberal. As soon as you ask" "why is it that they believe X, and do I have something to learn from it?," poof, the gig is up and you're on a one-way ticket to Libertyville. That's how the goddam colleges get ya. They need to teach that "the other" is nothing but heathens hell bent on destroying our goo-given way of life. It takes confidence based on axioms from religion or pseudo-economics or social suspicion/stereotypes to be a real conservative.

.

Popehat on Tapp‏ @Popehat 11h11 hours ago
Protip: if a dude is obsessed with calling himself "judge" 22 years after he was a local judge, maybe don't base foreign policy on him.

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/842716322832117760

~75% sure HD is concern trolling as neutral observer.

I don't think the Russians said that, but to answer your question this possibly the Russian art of subversion. Trump finds one distraction or another to talk about.



My read on Trump is that he's a petulant child (or a YS) who thinks the world ought to be more like New York.

Rapes the wealth of his country for personal gain.
Only evar spouts logical fallacies.
Hugely popular in Russia.

Not persuasive tho.....

Hey guys. Just dropped in to say that after listening to republicans and democrats talk over the last month or so, and watching the news and all that........I'm pretty sure we're all just ****ed.

We're not ****ed because Donald Trump is president. Necessarily. We're ****ed because we're not even capable of compromise between parties anymore. Not in Washington between politicians, and not at the grocery store between neighbors. Not only are republicans and democrats playing for different teams now, I think they're playing different ****ing sports. If one is for it, the other is against it by definition. Even if that thing we're against was the party line 20 years ago. And this isn't recent. Obama dealt with this **** for 8 years. Pretty sure Bush did too. (although the parties seemed to come together pretty well for the Iraq war and the Patriot Act.)

(Thanks for that)

It's stunning how similar republicans and democrats sound. Sure, the talking points are different, and even the facts are negotiable (admittedly more so on one side than the other), but the ****ing mule-headed stubborn stances are exactly......exactly the same. The other side is completely wrong, and the other side will never ever change. There is no use trying to bargain or reason with that other side, so **** 'em. We'll just have to steam roll them in <insert upcoming election here>, and make sure our party gets their way. Completely. It's the only thing that can save this country.

I know there's a lot of "LOL listen to this ****in' guy" coming up. I don't really care. I once ate an entire blueberry pie, and it made me sick. That's kinda how I feel about politics at this point. I think I'm vomiting up politics pie in this post. I probably won't ever eat any more.

Tom Hanks had a quote shortly after Trump won the presidency:

Then he followed it with this:

This really stuck with me. Do you know how rare this train of thought is? To be devastated because of an upset by a party that you don't support, but still hope they succeed because it's good for the country? Who even thinks like that anymore? It's actually moving to me.


I feel like there are two options at this point.

Option 1: People move JUST A LITTLE BIT in this general direction.

Option 2: Deep Mind gets really ****ing smart and takes over the government.

https://twitter.com/derekwillis/stat...63541938016256

Let's give this Aderholdt ****er hell tomorrow, whaddya say fellas? Make his phone lines bleed blood.
Robert Aderholdt: (202) 225-4876

Make a list of things you feel one party is doing wrong, and for each item name something the other party is doing that is equally wrong. Be specific and detailed.

Well, that sure didn't last long.

Did you read the part about the pie?

I didn't think asking a question to someone that had just made the following posts:

would be considered inflammatory?

He is literally calling for a torturous agonizing death that he can celebrate!

Those posts are pretty extreme views, so I was curious how someone that was comfortable making those statements squares the circle when it comes to the civilian deaths that result from those on "his team". Because I mean, that is kind of important?

Cool callout though?

Well, one way to invite a lot of "LOL listen to this ****in' guy" is to drop a bunch of hot takes and not defend any of them.

This is mostly not about Democrats vs. Republicans. Sure, for the idiot Republicans who decided their only priority was to try to make Obama a 1 term POTUS it was just about that, but for people who hate Trump it's about how everything he's done or said before and after the election has been horrible. If Jeb or Rubio or Kasich were POTUS the Presidency of Marco Rubio or w/e thread would have 1/100th the posts.

You can't elect Donald Trump and then go: let's just all work together.

Can you at least come up with something similar to this from democrats?

You're either trolling or completely oblivious to how dropping these faux-confused emoticons into posts comes off to people; it is clear that you're not really "asking a question to someone" in the Honduras post but are instead outright calling Clovis a hypocrite. Whichever it is, I hope pointing this out to you offers some insight as to why everyone thinks you're a terrible poster.

I did. If you ate two slices of metaphorical pie, one being anchovies and fudge, the other being broken glass and arsenic, I can imagine you deciding all pie is terrible. But there are still a few important differences between the two.