Most voting decisions are just expressions of short term rational economic self interest within the person's perceptive capacity (which is often not accurate), not questions of morality.

Big terrorist attack in my city about 45 minutes north of me. 62 year old recently divorced guy was dissatisfied with how assets were split; drove a car (truck? idk) into a sport center killing 35 (possibly more, casualties are often understated in PRC) and injuring 43.

Unusual to have such a geriatric involved in domestic terrorism! usually that's a young man's game. And every 60+ year old man I know who divorced was usually gleeful after the fact at the opportunity to transactionally bang young women with impunity. but hey, different strokes.

There is tremendous amounts of cultural bifurcation along socioeconomic lines in anglospheric society that you don't see even in other white countries like "france" where Soulman is from, Germany, Netherlands, etc.

Somebody like Soulman has likely never interacted with a lower class non-college educated American in person for an extended period of time. He has no idea of how much worse their circumstances are compared to their Norwegian (Sorry, French) counterpart. Deindustrialization prompted by globalization has been a disaster for the American lower class. "Just go to college bro, then you won't be lower class" is a naive solution for two main reasons. 1. There is finite demand for the good and service produced by "university skilled" labour and it is very possible to engage in elite overproduction where the value of a college degree depreciates as more people attend while simultaneously the cost increases, especially when people are given ample private and public sector loans at below equilibrium level interest rates. 2. IQ is real and some people genetically aren't meant for college. Making college easier, which has already been happening the past 30 years, does not magically change this.

When you then add in weaponized illegal immigration and low skilled illegal immigrants willing to work for much lower wages than low skilled Americans, you have a very unpleasant situation for these folks. Redistribution can only go so far in mitigating income inequality, which is arguably one of the most serious problems facing the anglosphere today and directly leading to the aforementioned cultural bifurcation. At some point, people without university degrees need more viable ways to make a living and not be so economically behind the university educated class.

But if you've probably never spoken face to face with a lower class American with a 101 IQ and no university education coming from a statistically most likely divorced family with annual income of 31,000 USD, this might not even occur to you and you might just be like "Yeah bro, racists thats why they hate immigrants bro. They just need to go to college bro". As far as I'm aware, Norway doesn't quite have the same problem with lower class people being that far behind the university educated class. China certainly does not.

A country like Germany is probably a very good model for Trump's proposed plans to reshore American manufacturing jobs and engage in re-industrialization. They are developed, yet have a very robust system of vocational training and implicitly acknowledge the existence of IQ and genetic limitations to cognitive ability within their K-12 education system. They don't just try to increase university attendance and fall victim to elite overproduction, but rather acknowledge that people in that middle IQ range probably shouldn't go to college and their national economy should create goods and services matched to the skillsets these can actually attain which lots of other countries are very pleased to import. Given that China has not exactly set a high standard for most of the consumer electronics, appliances, or vehicles they export, why not have the American economy try to produce some of these goods even if it's done at a higher cost? It's not unreasonable to speculate the American worker could do a better job, especially if we had an education system which similarly emphasized vocational training.

And none of this is to speak of how monetary policy has systematically disadvantaged lower class non-asset holders while enriching upper class asset holders and enormously amplified income inequality. But you can watch sum Robert Breedlove 3 hour long videos if you aren't already aware of this.

ughh... sorry for making a HC politics post here. I'm sure this would probably get me called a racist xenophobe if I posted it in the politics subforum to people who don't know my racial heritage or where i've lived the last 9.5 years but whatever...

Just wrote a long post but not gonna post it. I think Trump is very objectively unfit/unqualified/etc for president. Not just morally - he's mentally and emotionally unfit too. That doesn't mean his economic policies/ideas are bad - they are honestly irrelevant. Other people exist who support free ideas and economic reform similar to what people hope we're getting from him, and almost all of them would likely have a better grasp of it. Republican party should just run a half-decent human being who can do that stuff.

Democratic party has gotten much worse as a reaction to him - basically only engaging in identity politics when Trump has already demonstrated for 8 years that roughly half of the US doesn't care about that or is turned off by it.

Unfortuntely, the whole thing is a mess.

Oh the Dem party has failed utterly, no doubt about it. They're still about a million times better than MAGA, but that's mostly just because of the comparison.

Then again, actually trying to have a rational discussion with true Trump-pilled people like Muny is literally 100% a waste of time. If this isn't obvious I don't know what to tell you.

This is literally not true, as demonstrated by droves of MAGA voters quoting GIRLS IN BOYS' BATHROOM as one of the reasons they voted for Trump. Denying that sexism and hate for others isn't a driving factor (but not the only one) behind MAGA is also pretty fruitless imo.

The Dems have ignored the huddled masses and failed to present solutions for them long while placating their donors enough to deservedly fail, so they're obviously not without fault.


This is most certainly true.

I haven't really interacted live with many Americans at all, only online. I agree entirely with your second paragraph and I'm a bit disappointed that you think so badly of me. Maybe it's deserved, I dunno. It's not like it takes personal interaction to acknowledge the plight of the average American citizen in most rural areas.

Weirdly I also agree with your not so hot take that not everyone should go to college, and that the gubmint should develop incentives and structure for people to take vocational training and non-college educations like plumbers, electricians etc. Luckily useless IT guys like me aren't laughably overpaid here compared to the US, so blue collar workers' lifetime earnings won't be far behind.

Becoming a plumber is an incredible career choice. At least here it’s the highest paid of the everyday trades, there’s a constant shortage of them and it isn’t something that AI is gonna rip the heart out of.

Imo, plumber, carpenter, builder, electrician etc is a way better way to go right now. Maybe if you’re top 10% of your class academically and can get a good degree at a top college, but taking 4 years to get into huge debt and get a meh degree at a second or third tier college is a very bad investment

These are viable individual solutions, but these industries don't quite have enough openings to absorb the glut of less skilled labour without depreciating both their wages and their already low social status. An American public education is not exactly doing a great job encouraging kids to get into these fields.

Anyway Soulman, I'm sorry I insulted you by calling you norwegian. I know you take great pride in your francophone heritage.

I don't think arguing with Rich Muny would be a fruitless waste of time.

I don't think that wanting to keep trans people in their birth gendered sporting events or bathrooms is an example of hatred.

However, some of the immigration/race stuff is definitely motivated more by hatred than economic interests. But the black pilled reality is that since racism is so strongly genetically encoded and involves a belief set rather than actively comitting a crime, it'll be really hard to simply educate it away. I mean, rape is gentically encoded by it involves something very active and detectable. Racism much less so, and our efforts to alleviate it thusfar have mostly hurt the people its designed to help (defund the police, affirmative action quotas). Strict immigration standards such that the proles and upper class liberal white women who are most likely to actually do racist things only ever interact with nothing but the best and brightest of foreigners and form positive impressions accordingly is probably a better strategy than HR DEI seminars.

I see very little wrong with Chinese immigration laws, but if anyone proposed these in a white country they'd be denounced as a Nazi racist who wants to exterminate all non-whites in the cruelest way possible. Police visit the houses of foreigners unannounced at random and ask to see your passport and make sure your visa is current. They're polite about it and it takes about 45 seconds. You apply for a visa to work, do business, or stay here b/c you are married to a Chinese. If you come illegally and are found out, you get ****ing deported. They could do a bit better with people who have been here a long ass time and are on multi-year employment contracts; its a bit silly to need to renew the visa every 12 months in this case. But there have been changes to that and its getting better. There is nothing racial about it... you obey the laws required to get into the country and stay in the country or you leave. I'm amazed its become politicized beyond that, given how utterly simple this is.

You are correct mon ami, if you insult our fromage, vin or baguettes you go in the Book of Grudges!

Fair enough, go ahead. From reading his tweets (yes, they were linked and mocked in another forum) he seems utterly Trump-pilled. I have no interest in arguing with someone like that. I have no problems arguing with you, even though we have some fundamental differences in world views - which is of course fine in and of itself.

At a surface level, no. It's the same as requiring ID to vote - at the surface, it seems totally fine - and is indeed fine in other countries (we have it here!). I think most people stop there and give it little further thought.

However, for many people I think fear of trans people is an example of barely concealed othering of an extremely marginalized group who face enough struggles as it is. And let's face it - trans issues and giant man-women raping girls in their bathrooms is such a tiiiiiiiiiny issue, it's hysterically and tragically funny that it was such a big deal in this election.

The immigration system in the US seems totally FUBAR and a complex issue to "fix" (whatever that means). I feel confident that Trump will try to in the most heinous ways possible, like when his previous administration separated kids from their parents seemingly at random through a combination of pure evil and willful ignorance.

PS: I hesitate to call this HC, but the LC thread is for all intents and purposes dead anyway, so who cares?

No, I mean the Democrat's attempt at concentrating on identity politics - they assume (rightly, imo) they have the highground and only idiots would side with MAGA. It doesn't matter whether this thinking is right or wrong, everyone who would side with the Democrats b/c of identity politics already will vote that way - hitting everyone over the head with it infinite times is not a useful strategy for winning over anyone on the fence (they likely find the whole thing annoying or would already have sided with dems or maga) and just causes Trump supporters to be even more certain they are on the side they want to be on.

Immigration is a really tough issue and I don't even know what I would think is best. It seems reasonable to me there should be some kind of thing to keep the path to citizenship incentivized and staying in the US as an "illegal immigrant" decentivized. OTOH, it would be nice to have relatively humane rules and procedures. I believe not too long ago (Clinton and Bush administrations) both parties were pretty "harsh" on this issue but I also believe (hopefully correctly) that it was handled in a much "nicer" way than how Trump has and seems to want to handle it. What was the problem with how we did it? I never noticed why it shifted so much.

Identity stuff has progressed waaaaay too quickly for too many people here in the US. It wasn't very long ago that we had segregation or that women got any sort of actual rights. I think it's simply too much too soon. As "mean" as it may be, I think backing off a lot of that rhetoric (even though at the same time I'm super triggered when I see such marginalized groups suffer) is important. Similarly with gun violence, the way to likely make progress is incremental without constantly setting off a massive portion of the country by telling them how wrong and immoral they are (again, even if it's true lol).

Like, there is an actual solution to gun violence, it's not even complex, and the US can't make almost any headway. If anything, the more there is a fight against them, the more widespread and the more issues there are. Can't there just be some fairly low key massive gun buyback program that lasts 20 years and we see where we're at then? We waste a ton of money on things that we know basically aren't doing anything, not sure how much this would move the needle without more restrictions as well, but it's something.

i didn't think trump could effectively drain the swamp the first time, even if he was sincere(i didnt think he was). this time he is seasoned. now he knows who is who in dc. he knows who will get **** done. i still wasn't convinced till rfk jr joined, with a fire inside him like few others.

i hope they do drain the waste and corruption. i think getting that right opens the door for us to do a far better job in every way. if people feel secure and hopeful for the future then we can evolve socially, which is necessary to overcome gender issues and gun violence.

gender issues are a mystery to me, no comment.

i think teaching peaceful, psychological based conflict resolution far and wide is the sort of step in the right direction we need to counteract gun violence. also getting mental help is pretty ****ing scary in itself. losing family, friends, jobs, love, etc, are all very real possibilities when you make that step to get help. then if you actually get committed its no picnic in mental hospitals. all the legislation one can muster will never change all that. social issues need social evolution.

my 2 cents.

I realize my posts are garbage so to make up for them, I noticed today on my DNA results (got them many years ago b/c someone gave me a kit), the results for "physical strength":



Wish someone told me that before I even started posting on H&F lol.

Yes, although there isn't a lot of good evidence this has any chance to truly move the needle. There is a lot of evidence that fewer guns = massive reduction in gun violence. Is there any way to have way fewer guns (and still have hunting!) without a ton of people in the country completely losing their minds? It doesn't seem that way.

What % of people who seek mental health help lose their friends, jobs, and partner?

Also, that kind of intervention likely can only help in certain situations and, as you mention, people have to decide to do it for themselves. Even if it's possible to determine who is most at-risk of "bad" violence when purchasing a gun (guess what, 100% are at-risk of violence since guns are inherently violent lol), and even if there is effective policy to have mental health intervention for them, it's extremely hard to imagine this being particularly effective.

i don't believe any such statistics exist.
if you asked what % of people that experience severe mental illness also experience the negative mental health stigma first hand face to face regularly? i would guess near 100%.

most people don't just suddenly lose everything, but im sure some do. the point is that those are the reasons lots of people dont get help.

it would take a long time and much learning to see real social evolution, perhaps more than a generation. shame and punishment are not working as crime deterrence. we need new methods of conflict resolution. what would conflict resolution look like in 50 years? 150 years? beyond? lets try to go there.
of course there is, but many Americans love their right to bear arms. thats the crux.

Drama in the family bros, we will see what happens at Thanksgiving.

My mom and husband voted for Trump a 3rd time. My sister and I both help to support them financially.

Trump just nominated Gaetz to be my sister's big boss. Fun times at the LocoFamily.

I don't think he gets the votes. But then DeSantis will give him Rubio's senate spot. Then Gaetz will get Thune replaced by Rick Scott as senate majority leader. Trump happy and not his fault senate didn't approve Gaetz. Probably Stephen Miller all behind this because Trump sure ain't that smart.

Just like the last administration, this is better than any wild unbelievable comedy film. I got popcorn ready for the next 4 years.

Didn't know you were married, congrats!

I'll take the average MAGA Qanon obese 89 IQ 63 year old facebook mom with type 2 diabetes over this any day. But it's your right to disagree.

(I mean whoever wrote this scene, not the fictional characters in case this wasn't clear)

I gotta pick an e-fight with Rich just to see:

Abortion should be legal with very few limitations because it is one of the few eugenic forces we have in modern anglospheric society which is rapidly experiencing a reverse flynn effect. It's a violation of a woman's bodily autonomy to force her to give birth to a child she doesn't want to raise. The kids who would have been born but were instead aborted likely would have experienced very unhappy lives and also spread misery, crime, drugs, and violence to those around them.

(actually that is probably far more offensive to leftists for acknowledging uncomfortable semi-deterministic realities. It's only okay to be pro-choice because women are oppressed by men lol. but that isn't my point)

Freakonomics wrote a very convincing article about how Giuliani's much lauded crackdown on crime in New York was most likely a result of the implications of legalised abortion rather than any policing strategy or action

Correct. I remember showing this to a pro-choice friend from the UK who also taught Econ and the look of horror and disgust on his face was something I can never forget. He had relgiious devotion to blank slatism and seeing all these hate-facts and hate-data was just too much for him.

Don't be a dick bro, my mom is on ozempic and she gonna be super slim and beautiful for my wedding. She is not even obese anymore.

Probably greatest accomplishment of my life. Hey mom, why don't you get on Ozempic for the wedding?

Probably gonna get another 5 years of mother by using the "lose weight for a wedding" strategy. Unfortunately more MAGA than ever.

Why? It's not the Politics forum.