There Are More White Voters Than People Think. That’s Good News for Trump.

[Dan '82]

Quote:One of the biggest reasons Donald Trump is considered to be a long shot to win the presidency is the diversity of the country.
As Joe Scarborough of MSNBC [/url][url=http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mark-halperin-morning-joe-trump-california?version=meter+at+6&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F06%2F10%2Fupshot%2Fthere-are-more-white-voters-than-people-think-thats-good-news-for-trump.html&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click]put it, “There are not enough white voters in America for Donald Trump to win while getting routed among minorities.”
But a growing body of evidence suggests that there is still a path, albeit a narrow one, for Mr. Trump to win without gains among nonwhite voters.
New analysis by The Upshot shows that millions more white, older working-class voters went to the polls in 2012 than was found by exit polls on Election Day. This raises the prospect that Mr. Trump has a larger pool of potential voters than generally believed.



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/upshot...pe=article

[pbrower2a]

(06-09-2016, 10:10 PM)Dan Wrote:

Quote:One of the biggest reasons Donald Trump is considered to be a long shot to win the presidency is the diversity of the country.
As Joe Scarborough of MSNBC [/url][url=http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mark-halperin-morning-joe-trump-california?version=meter+at+6&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F06%2F10%2Fupshot%2Fthere-are-more-white-voters-than-people-think-thats-good-news-for-trump.html&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click]put it, “There are not enough white voters in America for Donald Trump to win while getting routed among minorities.”
But a growing body of evidence suggests that there is still a path, albeit a narrow one, for Mr. Trump to win without gains among nonwhite voters.
New analysis by The Upshot shows that millions more white, older working-class voters went to the polls in 2012 than was found by exit polls on Election Day. This raises the prospect that Mr. Trump has a larger pool of potential voters than generally believed.



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/upshot...pe=article

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016...-election/

Non-college-educated white voters had about 57% participation in the 2012 election and went 62% for Romney. In contrast, college-educated whites had 77% participation and went 56% for Romney. Asians and Latinos have about 50% participation rates, which may reflect large numbers of non-citizens who do not vote.

I jiggled the vote, and figured that if non-college white voters reached the 77% participation rate of educated white people (highly unlikely, as voting tends to increase with the level of formal education), Donald Trump would still lose. The electoral map would look like 2012 less Florida for Clinton. That is still a winning map. Getting the undereducated white vote to vote 69%R would fully flip the map... probably as Iowa, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin go R at roughly the same time.

Is there anything that Donald Trump brings to the GOP that widespread contempt for Barack Obama for being you-know-what did not bring?

The nature of the electorate must change if Donald Trump is to become President.

[Eric the Green]

Trump may get more less-educated white voters than Romney did, but he'll likely also lose more non-whites than Romney did; and non-whites are a slightly-larger portion of those eligible to vote now. Participation may also increase among hispanics.

[Anthony '58]

But what if Trump does better - even much better - among black voters than any other GOP Presidential candidate in living memory, courtesy of his promise to slam the door on immigration, which has greatly benefited African-Americans every single time it has been done?

[pbrower2a]

(06-10-2016, 06:18 AM)Anthony Wrote: But what if Trump does better - even much better - among black voters than any other GOP Presidential candidate in living memory, courtesy of his promise to slam the door on immigration, which has greatly benefited African-Americans every single time it has been done?

He will not. Educated blacks will not sell out Asians, Latinos, or Muslims just to make friends with Donald Trump. Educated blacks are very astute on politics; they know how to play the game. Donald Trump has practically nothing to offer educated blacks. Blacks have good cause to not trust white people who harm others. They are less vulnerable to salami tactics than are white people.

Donald Trump seems capable of selling out anyone once he has gotten what he wants. Who needs that in politics?

[playwrite]

Nate Silver nips this latest Great White Hope in the butt -


Trump Isn’t Winning Enough White Voters

Quote:...One big reason Trump is trailing — by an average of 4 to 6 percentage points, depending on which aggregator you use — is because, despite all the bluster, he isn’t doing any better than Romney did among white voters. According to Cohn’s estimate, based on pre-election surveys, Romney beat President Obama by 17 percentage points among white voters. To win, Trump would need to improve on Romney’s margin by a minimum of 5 percentage points if the electorate looked exactly the same as it did in 2012 and every other racial group voted in the same manner as it did in 2012. 

...Trump is winning white voters by an average of 17 percentage points, matching exactly Romney’s margin from four years ago. That’s not good enough, especially considering that the 2016 electorate will probably be more diverse than 2012’s. Trump probably needs to do even better than a 22-point lead among white voters, or he will have to pull in more minority voters than Romney did in order to win.

...And Trump is already doing far better than Romney among white voters without a college degree, as Cohn noted. But in politics, as in physics, every action has a reaction. As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report has pointed out, Trump is also doing considerably worse than Romney among white voters with a college degree. That makes sense, given Trump’s direct appeals to whites who do not have a high level of education, and his penchant for shunning intellectuals.

Basically, it's the Great White Uneducated Hope.

Or, Trump's success really depends on how clueless the country has become.

Choose your side.

[pbrower2a]

(06-10-2016, 11:22 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(06-10-2016, 11:01 AM)playwrite Wrote: Nate Silver nips this latest Great White Hope in the butt -


Trump Isn’t Winning Enough White Voters

Quote:...One big reason Trump is trailing — by an average of 4 to 6 percentage points, depending on which aggregator you use — is because, despite all the bluster, he isn’t doing any better than Romney did among white voters. According to Cohn’s estimate, based on pre-election surveys, Romney beat President Obama by 17 percentage points among white voters. To win, Trump would need to improve on Romney’s margin by a minimum of 5 percentage points if the electorate looked exactly the same as it did in 2012 and every other racial group voted in the same manner as it did in 2012. 

...Trump is winning white voters by an average of 17 percentage points, matching exactly Romney’s margin from four years ago. That’s not good enough, especially considering that the 2016 electorate will probably be more diverse than 2012’s. Trump probably needs to do even better than a 22-point lead among white voters, or he will have to pull in more minority voters than Romney did in order to win.

...And Trump is already doing far better than Romney among white voters without a college degree, as Cohn noted. But in politics, as in physics, every action has a reaction. As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report has pointed out, Trump is also doing considerably worse than Romney among white voters with a college degree. That makes sense, given Trump’s direct appeals to whites who do not have a high level of education, and his penchant for shunning intellectuals.

Basically, it's the Great White Uneducated Hope.

Or, Trump's success really depends on how clueless the country has become.

Choose your side.

Granted I live in "Bubble-land," but none of the whites in my own social circle have expressed any affinity for Trump. In rough order, here are the actual affinities - Clinton, Sanders, Johnson.

... which also suggests that he would do unusually badly outside the Mountain South, the area with the most white voters with low education. Thus he would win West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma quickly and with amazing numbers. On the other side, where white people are generally well educated, Donald Trump could be losing much ground. He has been tied with Hillary Clinton in Utah, which has high-quality education even if the state has typically been one of the strongest Republican states since 1952. The one poll that I have seen of Kansas, a state that has gone for only one Democratic nominee (LBJ in the 1964 blowout) has Donald Trump behind.

Those two states could be on-time, specific anomalies. Of course, Donald Trump might be a poor match for Mormon sensibilities, and the Kansas GOP could be facing some short-term rifts. Besides, the poll in Kansas is one pollster with a suspect reputation for accuracy.

The more educated that people are, the less vulnerable they are to demagoguery. The more likely they are to abhor political violence even supposedly on their side. They are more capable of critical thought that allows them to recognize contradictory statements that can have only absurd conclusions. Knowing that contradictory policies ensure that some people who get promises made to them will get the shaft. Maybe if one is an Insider and knows who (typically more helpless people with fewer connections) will get the shaft and that as an Insider one will get the boon, one might tolerate the dishonesty because one will get the boon at others' expense.

[pbrower2a]

(06-17-2016, 02:08 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(06-17-2016, 07:26 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-10-2016, 11:22 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(06-10-2016, 11:01 AM)playwrite Wrote: Nate Silver nips this latest Great White Hope in the butt -


Trump Isn’t Winning Enough White Voters

Quote:...One big reason Trump is trailing — by an average of 4 to 6 percentage points, depending on which aggregator you use — is because, despite all the bluster, he isn’t doing any better than Romney did among white voters. According to Cohn’s estimate, based on pre-election surveys, Romney beat President Obama by 17 percentage points among white voters. To win, Trump would need to improve on Romney’s margin by a minimum of 5 percentage points if the electorate looked exactly the same as it did in 2012 and every other racial group voted in the same manner as it did in 2012. 

...Trump is winning white voters by an average of 17 percentage points, matching exactly Romney’s margin from four years ago. That’s not good enough, especially considering that the 2016 electorate will probably be more diverse than 2012’s. Trump probably needs to do even better than a 22-point lead among white voters, or he will have to pull in more minority voters than Romney did in order to win.

...And Trump is already doing far better than Romney among white voters without a college degree, as Cohn noted. But in politics, as in physics, every action has a reaction. As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report has pointed out, Trump is also doing considerably worse than Romney among white voters with a college degree. That makes sense, given Trump’s direct appeals to whites who do not have a high level of education, and his penchant for shunning intellectuals.

Basically, it's the Great White Uneducated Hope.

Or, Trump's success really depends on how clueless the country has become.

Choose your side.

Granted I live in "Bubble-land," but none of the whites in my own social circle have expressed any affinity for Trump. In rough order, here are the actual affinities - Clinton, Sanders, Johnson.

... which also suggests that he would do unusually badly outside the Mountain South, the area with the most white voters with low education. Thus he would win West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma quickly and with amazing numbers. On the other side, where white people are generally well educated, Donald Trump could be losing much ground. He has been tied with Hillary Clinton in Utah, which has high-quality education even if the state has typically been one of the strongest Republican states since 1952. The one poll that I have seen of Kansas, a state that has gone for only one Democratic nominee (LBJ in the 1964 blowout)  has Donald Trump behind.

Those two states could be on-time, specific anomalies. Of course, Donald Trump might be a poor match for Mormon sensibilities, and the Kansas GOP could be facing some short-term rifts. Besides, the poll in Kansas is one pollster with a suspect reputation for accuracy.

The more educated that people are, the less vulnerable they are to demagoguery. The more likely they are to abhor political violence even supposedly on their side. They are more capable of critical thought that allows them to recognize contradictory statements that can have only absurd conclusions. Knowing that contradictory policies ensure that some people who get promises made to them will get the shaft. Maybe if one is an Insider and knows who (typically more helpless people with fewer connections) will get the shaft and that as an Insider one will get the boon, one might tolerate the dishonesty because one will get the boon at others' expense.

To be fair, there are some intellectuals who seem to now be tolerant of fascism. It is mainly the Duginist strain they are interested in. Their intense hatred of globalism, neocons and the late 20th century version of Western liberalism brought them to such a juncture. We even seem to have a few folks who think like this on this forum. Mainly they come from a Left Anarchist pedigree and in some cases are younger folks who in a past age might have associated with the New Left. But these are few. The typical mainstream Blue County person would have nothing to do with fascism in any form.

Brilliant people can be just as depraved as dullards. For intellectuals, ideas are playthings. Fools might play with nakes, poisons, explosives, or incendiaries, often to the personal ruin of the fool (a travesty) or even take some innocent people down with them (a tragedy, but hardly one that shatters the fabric of the universe). Intellectually-sophisticated people wrote the guide (Malleus maleficarum) to persecuting witches, founded the Inquisition, organized the slave trade and formulated the slave codes, and created the framework for such destructive philosophies as Jacobinism, Bolshevism, fascism, Ku Kluxism, Nazism, apartheid, and Islamism. Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Goebbels, Quisling, Qutb, and Khomeini were all pretentious megalomaniacs with great mental power. They simply had no test of truth, or rejected any such test, of their proposals. But we know those people for their horrible consequences. There's much venom in Nietzsche and Rand, and by all accounts David Duke is a brilliant man. It need not be political; a dullard can easily take cash from the till in the store at which he works for a near-minimum wage or decide to take the contents of a courier packet and run. The crooks behind the fall of Enron Corporation mastered the art of gutting the assets of a company and appropriating the revenues from customers that Enron bled while making the company that they eventually ruined look like the greatest new model of business ever. Need I discuss Ross Ulbricht's "Silk Road" scheme to put dope peddlers and child pornographers beyond scrutiny?

All horrible ideas have their seductive qualities, including the offer of quick and decisive solutions to all that is manifestly wrong with the world in which we live. Globalism is at most a mixed blessing capable of getting us greater productivity and lower cost of consumer goods... but whether cheap stuff that implies falling wages and greater inequality is such a good idea is suspect. Neocon ideology has itself proved a disaster -- like many other intellectual formulations that establish a design for pervasive change. The mass low culture can be as destructive of the soul and spirit as tobacco smoke is to lungs and hearts.

People must pick and choose, with some of the choices that they make denying them some of the potential gain and delight. Modern technology leaves us with more temptations, even in the intellectual sphere. Of course, fascism remains a dehumanizing, destructive ideology, no matter what cultural garb it takes. Idolatry of Imperial Rome, Wagnerian bombast, and samurai shtick are no worse than the idolatry of militaristic tsars. If anyone thinks we Americans are exempt because of our country, then think again: some people admire the plantation South and would bring it back.

[Eric the Green]

(06-17-2016, 02:08 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: To be fair, there are some intellectuals who seem to now be tolerant of fascism. It is mainly the Duginist strain they are interested in. Their intense hatred of globalism, neocons and the late 20th century version of Western liberalism brought them to such a juncture. We even seem to have a few folks who think like this on this forum. Mainly they come from a Left Anarchist pedigree and in some cases are younger folks who in a past age might have associated with the New Left. But these are few. The typical mainstream Blue County person would have nothing to do with fascism in any form.

Duginism is a new notion to me. Seems a conflation of some left and right authoritarian nonsense. Those on the forum who "think like this" seem to include Cynic Hero for sure, and maybe Anthony 58 (formerly Flat 58) and Tussilago might flirt with some of its aspects, but none of those three could ever have associated with New Left anarchism.

[pbrower2a]

Some basics on Alexander Dugin:


Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ге́льевич Ду́гин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political scientist whose views have been described as fascist[4][5][6] and who calls to hasten the "end of times" with all out war.[7][8][9][10][11] He has close ties with the Kremlin and the Russian military,[12][13] having served as an advisor to State Duma speaker and key member of the ruling United Russia party Sergei Naryshkin.[14] Dugin was the leading organizer of the National Bolshevik Party, National Bolshevik Front, and Eurasia Party. He is the author of more than 30 books, among them Foundations of Geopolitics and The Fourth Political Theory.

He focuses on the restoration of the Russian Empire, through bringing back control over former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine, and unification with Russian-speaking territories, especially eastern Ukraine and Crimea.[15][16] In the Kremlin, Dugin represents the "war party", a division in the heart of the leadership concerning Ukraine,[17] and is seen as the driving conceptual force behind Vladimir Putin's initiative for the annexation of Crimea by Russia.[18] In 2014 he expressed the view that the war between Russia and Ukraine "is inevitable" and appealed for Putin to start military intervention in eastern Ukraine.[18]

Believing that the so-called fifth column has been working for two decades to destroy Russia's sovereignty from the inside, he proposed in 2014 to strip all dissidents, including musician Andrei Makarevich, of their Russian citizenship and deport them from the country.[19]

Dugin in the 1980s was a dissident[21] and an anti-communist.[22] Dugin worked as a journalist before becoming involved in politics just before the fall of communism. In 1988 he and his friend Geydar Dzhemal joined the nationalist group Pamyat. He helped to write the political program for the newly refounded Communist Party of the Russian Federation under the leadership of Gennady Zyuganov.[12]

In his 1997 article "Fascism – Borderless and Red", Dugin proclaimed the arrival of a "genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism" in Russia. He believes that it was "by no means the racist and chauvinist aspects of National Socialism that determined the nature of its ideology. The excesses of this ideology in Germany are a matter exclusively of the Germans, ... while Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism with a passionate desire for true changes."[6] "Waffen-SS and especially the scientific sector of this organization, Ahnenerbe," was "an intellectual oasis in the framework of the National Socialist regime", according to him."[6]
Dugin soon began publishing his own journal entitled Elementy which initially began by praising Franco-Belgian Jean-François Thiriart, supporter of a Europe "from Dublin to Vladivostok". Consistently glorifying both Tsarist and Stalinist Russia, Elementy also revealed Dugin's admiration for Julius Evola. Dugin also collaborated with the weekly journal Den (The Day), a bastion of Russian anti-Cosmopolitanism[clarification needed] previously directed by Alexander Prokhanov.[12]

Dugin was amongst the earliest members of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and convinced Eduard Limonov to enter the political arena in 1994. A part of hard-line nationalist NBP members, supported by Dugin, split off to form the more right-wing, anti-liberal, anti-left, anti-Kasparov[clarification needed] aggressive nationalist organization, National Bolshevik Front. After breaking with Limonov, he became close to Yevgeny Primakov and later to Vladimir Putin's circle.[23]

Dugin claims to be disapproving of liberalism and the West, particularly American hegemony.[24] His assertions show that he likes Stalin and the Soviet Union: "We are on the side of Stalin and the Soviet Union".[25] He calls himself a conservative and says, "We, conservatives, want a strong, solid State, want order and healthy family, positive values, the reinforcing of the importance of religion and the Church in society". He adds, "We want patriotic radio, TV, patriotic experts, patriotic clubs. We want the media that expresses national interests".[26]


The Eurasia Party, later Eurasia Movement, was officially recognized by the Ministry of Justice on 31 May 2001.[12] The Eurasia Party claims support by some military circles and by leaders of the Orthodox Christian faith in Russia, and the party hopes to play a key role in attempts to resolve the Chechen problem, with the objective of setting the stage for Dugin's dream of a Russian strategic alliance with European and Middle Eastern states, primarily Iran. Dugin's ideas, particularly those on "a Turkic-Slavic alliance in the Eurasian sphere" have recently become popular among certain nationalistic circles in Turkey, most notably among alleged members of the Ergenekon network, which is the subject of a high-profile trial (on charges of conspiracy).[citation needed] Dugin's Eurasianist ideology has also been linked to his adherence to the doctrines of the Traditionalist School. (Dugin's Traditionalist beliefs are the subject of a book length study by J. Heiser, The American Empire Should Be Destroyed—Aleksandr Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology.[27]) Dugin also advocates for a Russo-Arab alliance.[28]
“
In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution. ... The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union.
”
— The Basics of Geopolitics (1997)

The reborn Russia, according to Dugin's concept, is said by Charles Clover of Financial Times to be a slightly remade version of the Soviet Union with echoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, where Eurasia was one of three continent-sized super states including Eastasia and Oceania as the other two and was participating in endless war between them.[21]

He has criticized the "Euro-Atlantic" involvement in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election as a scheme to create a "cordon sanitaire" around Russia, much like the French and British attempt post-World War I.
Dugin has criticized Putin for the "loss" of Ukraine, and accused his Eurasianism of being "empty."[citation needed] In 2005, Dugin founded the Eurasia Youth Union of Russia as the youth wing of the International Eurasia Movement.[29]

Ukraine gave Dugin a five-year entry ban, starting in June 2006,[30] and Kiev declared him a persona non grata in 2007.[31] His Eurasian Youth Union was banned in Ukraine.[30] In 2007, the Security Service of Ukraine identified persons of the Eurasian Youth Union who committed vandalism on Hoverla in 2007: they climbed up the mountain of Hoverla, imitated sawing down the details of the construction in the form of the small coat of arms of Ukraine by tools brought with them and painted the emblem of the Eurasian Youth Union on the memorial symbol of the Constitution of Ukraine.[30] He was deported back to Russia when he arrived at Simferopol International Airport in June 2007.[32]
Before war broke out between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Dugin visited South Ossetia and predicted, "Our troops will occupy the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the entire country, and perhaps even Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, which is historically part of Russia, anyway."[33] Afterwards he said Russia should "not stop at liberating South Ossetia but should move further," and "we have to do something similar in Ukraine."[16] In 2008, Dugin stated that Russia should repeat the Georgian scenario in Ukraine, namely attack it.[34] In September 2008, after the Russian-Georgian war, he did not hide his anger to Putin, who "dared not drop the other shoe" and "restore the Empire."[35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin

[pbrower2a]

National Bolshevism -- ugly politics indeed.



Another ugly symbol:



beloved by white nationalists. There's another flag with a white circle on a red field, and it is illegal in some places and offensive universally.

[Eric the Green]

(06-19-2016, 09:02 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: National Bolshevism -- ugly politics indeed.



Another ugly symbol:



beloved by white nationalists. There's another flag with a white circle on a red field, and it is illegal in some places and offensive universally.

Originally the swastika was a metaphysical and spiritual symbol, found in many places; reversed and misused by the Nazis. I imagine the same is true of this white circle. Certainly the cross inside the circle is a very significant universal spiritual symbol which I use myself, as the philosophers wheel, but without the red and white colors.

[Eric the Green]

(06-20-2016, 12:33 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(06-18-2016, 05:17 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-17-2016, 02:08 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: To be fair, there are some intellectuals who seem to now be tolerant of fascism. It is mainly the Duginist strain they are interested in. Their intense hatred of globalism, neocons and the late 20th century version of Western liberalism brought them to such a juncture. We even seem to have a few folks who think like this on this forum. Mainly they come from a Left Anarchist pedigree and in some cases are younger folks who in a past age might have associated with the New Left. But these are few. The typical mainstream Blue County person would have nothing to do with fascism in any form.

Duginism is a new notion to me. Seems a conflation of some left and right authoritarian nonsense. Those on the forum who "think like this" seem to include Cynic Hero for sure, and maybe Anthony 58 (formerly Flat 58) and Tussilago might flirt with some of its aspects, but none of those three could ever have associated with New Left anarchism.

Not all Duginists came from New Left pedigree. However, any former Leftist who is now a Duginist is highly likely to be of New Left pedigree. Make sense?

I don't know; I don't see any connection between those two mindsets. I imagine most Duginists are Russians, though, which have no relationship to the New Left. Any kind of violent nationalism in The West also has no relationship to the New Left.

The New Left was akin to the yippies and represented the sixties movements of anti-war, civil rights, ecology, etc., although many of them also embraced their interpretation of Marxism, which was not necessarily pro-Soviet; and some (but not most) were violent. But Marxism is itself anti-nationalist, and Duginists are primarily nationalists who admire the Soviet Union for its national power and not so much for its leftist ideology, such as it was.

[TnT]

It strikes me that if one creates a graphical frequency distribution of intelligence, based on any criteria that you might come up with, pretty close to 50% of our population is going to be below average.

That suggests to me that this group is vulnerable to well-designed simplistic argument that appeals to them.

But you don't have to be smart to be very, very destructive. And you don't have to be smart to vote.

Doesn't it seem obvious then, that some kind of societal provision needs to be made so that a potentially massive movement does not arise that wants to make things better for itself, but instead simply blows everything up?

[pbrower2a]

(06-20-2016, 02:15 PM)Tn Wrote:

T Wrote:It strikes me that if one creates a graphical frequency distribution of intelligence, based on any criteria that you might come up with, pretty close to 50% of our population is going to be below average.

It's safe to assume that the electorate skews slightly above average in intelligence. The feeble-minded are likely to find getting to the polls, let alone voting, a difficult activity.

Quote:That suggests to me that this group is vulnerable to well-designed simplistic argument that appeals to them.

On the other side, there are people who see or hear the same argument and are aghast.

Quote:But you don't have to be smart to be very, very destructive.  And you don't have to be smart to vote.

On the other side -- while Trump is gaining the white ignoramus vote, he is losing even more of the  more-educated part of the white vote.

Quote:Doesn't it seem obvious then, that some kind of societal provision needs to be made so that a potentially massive movement does not arise that wants to make things better for itself, but instead simply blows everything up?

It's called the Bill of Rights.

[TnT]

(06-20-2016, 02:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 02:15 PM)Tn Wrote:

T Wrote:It strikes me that if one creates a graphical frequency distribution of intelligence, based on any criteria that you might come up with, pretty close to 50% of our population is going to be below average.

It's safe to assume that the electorate skews slightly above average in intelligence. The feeble-minded are likely to find getting to the polls, let alone voting, a difficult activity.

Quote:That suggests to me that this group is vulnerable to well-designed simplistic argument that appeals to them.

On the other side, there are people who see or hear the same argument and are aghast.

Quote:But you don't have to be smart to be very, very destructive.  And you don't have to be smart to vote.

On the other side -- while Trump is gaining the white ignoramus vote, he is losing even more of the  more-educated part of the white vote.

Quote:Doesn't it seem obvious then, that some kind of societal provision needs to be made so that a potentially massive movement does not arise that wants to make things better for itself, but instead simply blows everything up?

It's called the Bill of Rights.

If the Bill of Rights was sufficient, we wouldn't have the mess that we are in with rampant inequality, a system that favors mostly the white, well-to-do, crumbling infrastructure in the face of un- and under-employment, more people in prison than any other modern nation ...

These things DIRECTLY impact the folks that are below average.  Note also, that I DID NOT imply that they are "feeble minded." Just mathematically below average.  Look, if the frequency distribution is anywhere near Gaussian, the below average population is about 50%.

[pbrower2a]

(06-20-2016, 03:17 PM)TnT Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 02:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 02:15 PM)Tn Wrote:

T Wrote:It strikes me that if one creates a graphical frequency distribution of intelligence, based on any criteria that you might come up with, pretty close to 50% of our population is going to be below average.

It's safe to assume that the electorate skews slightly above average in intelligence. The feeble-minded are likely to find getting to the polls, let alone voting, a difficult activity.

Quote:That suggests to me that this group is vulnerable to well-designed simplistic argument that appeals to them.

On the other side, there are people who see or hear the same argument and are aghast.

Quote:But you don't have to be smart to be very, very destructive.  And you don't have to be smart to vote.

On the other side -- while Trump is gaining the white ignoramus vote, he is losing even more of the  more-educated part of the white vote.

Quote:Doesn't it seem obvious then, that some kind of societal provision needs to be made so that a potentially massive movement does not arise that wants to make things better for itself, but instead simply blows everything up?

It's called the Bill of Rights.

If the Bill of Rights was sufficient, we wouldn't have the mess that we are in with rampant inequality, a system that favors mostly the white, well-to-do, crumbling infrastructure in the face of un- and under-employment, more people in prison than any other modern nation ...

The Bill of Rights gives no economic rights except the right to not have property seized without due compensation.

Without doubt, right-wing policies practically ensure that people will get the shaft if they are not in the economic elite. More people in prison? Just look at educational inequality and gross underinvestment in the lives of the poor. Without any question our economic order now operates largely to enrich and pamper the economic elites at the expense of everyone else.

If you want to see what a plutocracy is and you are in the USA, then just look about you.

Quote:These things DIRECTLY impact the folks that are below average.  Note also, that I DID NOT imply that they are "feeble minded." Just mathematically below average.  Look, if the frequency distribution is anywhere near Gaussian, the below average population is about 50%.

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The feeble-minded (IQs under 80, 75, or 70, depending on the cut-off) are entirely in the below-average groups in intelligence and form a significant part of those below average in intelligence. People above the cut-off  but under 100 (the average) in IQ are still below average in intelligence. Whether they vote or do not vote at a significantly-lesser rate than people just above the average is not so obvious.