Those people in the upper midwest

[radind]

(11-16-2016, 04:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: From the Harvard Business Review:

   One little-known element of [the class culture] gap is that the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters… and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareau found tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.

   Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “ can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-peo...king-class

Suggest that everyone read the entire article.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-peo...king-class

Quote:… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

[Odin]

(11-16-2016, 04:47 PM)radind Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 04:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: From the Harvard Business Review:

   One little-known element of [the class culture] gap is that the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters… and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareau found tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.

   Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “ can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-peo...king-class

Suggest that everyone read the entire article.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-peo...king-class

Quote:… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

This article gets it, 100%.

[Skabungus]

(11-16-2016, 04:47 PM)radind Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 04:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: From the Harvard Business Review:

   One little-known element of [the class culture] gap is that the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters… and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareau found tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.

   Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “ can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-peo...king-class

Suggest that everyone read the entire article.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-peo...king-class

Quote:… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

Exactly Radind, and that only serves to better support the point I was making, and that Pbrower2a elaborates on.  The problem is not simply red or blue, Trump or Clinton.  The problem is ignorance and cognitive dissonance among the under educated, traditionally white working class, and particularly rural population.  They don't trust their children, who went to college and became professionals, but they admire the uberrich and wish to identify with them, and even recite the rags to riches gospel............not recognizing that getting a freaking education and a professional job is generally the best first step to said ends.

I hear a lot of the "small business is the backbone of the American economy" speech whenever politics comes up at the breakfast spot or barber shop.  Really?  Come on people.  This economy is not built on chimney sweeps (got one coming out tomorrow) or landscapers and carpenters who also install furnaces.  Really we all know that mid-sized corporations are the heart of the American economy.  Get real.  A human resources person once told me, For chrissake, fully half of the so called self-employed are self-employed because they don't have the skills to get good jobs, or the personality to keep them!"  

When you crack open the minds of the employees, managers and owners of mid-sized corporations, you will find a nearly 50/50 split Red and Blue.



Things going to flip yet again.  I cant say it will go back to the good old fashion Democrat blue of days gone by (and personally I hope it doesn't) but it will flip away from the Christian Taliban, and it will flip away from the "we need to make things" rant that comes from the 50's something unemployed mill worker who cant seem to understand how Windows 10 works and why computers are so important.  With any luck we will see an eruption of the center.

[Eric the Green]

Quote:Quote:
… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

Quite ludicrous, on the whole. It's too bad heartland voters judge candidates on mere appearances, like pantsuits. It's smug to wear pantsuits? Or dorky? This is evidence that Trump voters decided on the basis of style, not substance. Americans often do. But this takes the cake; they chose a reality-TV con man.

The "arrogance?" the email server? So, judge someone arrogant because you fall for a whole bunch of dumb propaganda about a minor issue, when the arrogance displayed by Trump and Republicans is off the charts. No, Seth Myers got it right. Duh.

Telling the truth that a billionaire is unfit for the presidency because of behavior exhibited by him personally, is treating working-class men with disrespect? No, if this is "arrogance," then it's you heartland folks that are treating America and all people with total "disrespect."

Basket of deplorables? She was right of course; half of them probably are. But OK, so she made a gaffe. How many gaffes did Trump utter? And if his supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, is that Hillary's fault? They are the ones who voted for a racist, sexist xenophobe.

Pardon me for introducing just a little logic into this hogwash.

[radind]

(11-16-2016, 05:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:Quote:
… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

Quite ludicrous, on the whole. It's too bad heartland voters judge candidates on mere appearances, like pantsuits. It's smug to wear pantsuits? Or dorky? This is evidence that Trump voters decided on the basis of style, not substance. Americans often do. But this takes the cake; they chose a reality-TV con man.

The "arrogance?" the email server? So, judge someone arrogant because you fall for a whole bunch of dumb propaganda about a minor issue, when the arrogance displayed by Trump and Republicans is off the charts. No, Seth Myers got it right. Duh.

Telling the truth that a billionaire is unfit for the presidency because of behavior exhibited by him personally, is treating working-class men with disrespect? No, if this is "arrogance," then it's you heartland folks that are treating America and all people with total "disrespect."

Basket of deplorables? She was right of course; half of them probably are. But OK, so she made a gaffe. How many gaffes did Trump utter? And if his supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, is that Hillary's fault? They are the ones who voted for a racist, sexist xenophobe.

Pardon me for introducing just a little logic into this hogwash.

We do have totally different worldviews. I thought that the HBR article was very logical and  captured the situation fairly well.

[Eric the Green]

(11-16-2016, 05:41 PM)radind Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 05:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:Quote:
… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

Quite ludicrous, on the whole. It's too bad heartland voters judge candidates on mere appearances, like pantsuits. It's smug to wear pantsuits? Or dorky? This is evidence that Trump voters decided on the basis of style, not substance. Americans often do. But this takes the cake; they chose a reality-TV con man.

The "arrogance?" the email server? So, judge someone arrogant because you fall for a whole bunch of dumb propaganda about a minor issue, when the arrogance displayed by Trump and Republicans is off the charts. No, Seth Myers got it right. Duh.

Telling the truth that a billionaire is unfit for the presidency because of behavior exhibited by him personally, is treating working-class men with disrespect? No, if this is "arrogance," then it's you heartland folks that are treating America and all people with total "disrespect."

Basket of deplorables? She was right of course; half of them probably are. But OK, so she made a gaffe. How many gaffes did Trump utter? And if his supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, is that Hillary's fault? They are the ones who voted for a racist, sexist xenophobe.

Pardon me for introducing just a little logic into this hogwash.

We do have totally different worldviews. I thought that the HBR article was very logical and  captured the situation fairly well.

Logic never does have much effect on worldviews, that is true.

[Skabungus]

(11-16-2016, 05:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:Quote:
… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

Quite ludicrous, on the whole. It's too bad heartland voters judge candidates on mere appearances, like pantsuits. It's smug to wear pantsuits? Or dorky? This is evidence that Trump voters decided on the basis of style, not substance. Americans often do. But this takes the cake; they chose a reality-TV con man.

The "arrogance?" the email server? So, judge someone arrogant because you fall for a whole bunch of dumb propaganda about a minor issue, when the arrogance displayed by Trump and Republicans is off the charts. No, Seth Myers got it right. Duh.

Telling the truth that a billionaire is unfit for the presidency because of behavior exhibited by him personally, is treating working-class men with disrespect? No, if this is "arrogance," then it's you heartland folks that are treating America and all people with total "disrespect."

Basket of deplorables? She was right of course; half of them probably are. But OK, so she made a gaffe. How many gaffes did Trump utter? And if his supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, is that Hillary's fault? They are the ones who voted for a racist, sexist xenophobe.

Pardon me for introducing just a little logic into this hogwash.

While I may agree with you hogwashy nature of the charges against Hillary, it still stands as fact that most of my neighborhood comprises a demographic that sees her as the "professional elite".  Yup, these are the people who fall for dumb propaganda be it for one side or against the other.  Many of them are simply deplorable at many levels, but more of them are likely to excuse deplorable which is, in my mind, just as bad.  

I hear all day long how Trump won and it signals a sea change in the direction for America.  I call bullshit on that.  It was a very close vote, and it was thrown in Trump's favor by the angry hopes of those that have been left behind.........never mind there are good reasons they were left behind.

Here is a funny thing, though not directly related to the above referenced article.  So, I know a lot of people that worked for manufacturers in my area.  Those places left some time ago.  Some left more than a decade ago.  The people are still here ranting they want the jobs back, they want manufacturing jobs (that you only need a GED to get particularly) to come back.  They want to live that true American lifestyle, to be able to support their families, and for their children to have a future.  They want America back the way it used to be.

THEN MOVE!!!!!  That is the way America used to be for christsake!  When the jobs move, you move!  My family covered this continent looking for work, moving when the jobs moved, coal miners, meat packers, farmers and machinists and soldiers they were and they never once sat on their poor little asses waiting for someone to bring a job to them!  Wherever did this sense of employment entitlement come from that says, "I don't want to move cuzin my family is all here and it would break my heart to leave"  WTF!  The workers with the get up and go, got up and went, and followed the work the way strong-willed Americans do.  Sometimes one went, and brought the next, and the next and so on. In many ways these rust belt cities and rural areas are populated by the ones without the gumption to go.  They somehow believe American business owes them a living and needs to bring them a job.  Not just any job.  A simple job, where you don't need no skewlin and pay day is Friday.  

So, some might call these people deplorable.

[Skabungus]

(11-16-2016, 06:55 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 06:02 PM)Skabungus Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 05:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:Quote:
… "Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.”…

Quite ludicrous, on the whole. It's too bad heartland voters judge candidates on mere appearances, like pantsuits. It's smug to wear pantsuits? Or dorky? This is evidence that Trump voters decided on the basis of style, not substance. Americans often do. But this takes the cake; they chose a reality-TV con man.

The "arrogance?" the email server? So, judge someone arrogant because you fall for a whole bunch of dumb propaganda about a minor issue, when the arrogance displayed by Trump and Republicans is off the charts. No, Seth Myers got it right. Duh.

Telling the truth that a billionaire is unfit for the presidency because of behavior exhibited by him personally, is treating working-class men with disrespect? No, if this is "arrogance," then it's you heartland folks that are treating America and all people with total "disrespect."

Basket of deplorables? She was right of course; half of them probably are. But OK, so she made a gaffe. How many gaffes did Trump utter? And if his supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, is that Hillary's fault? They are the ones who voted for a racist, sexist xenophobe.

Pardon me for introducing just a little logic into this hogwash.

While I may agree with you hogwashy nature of the charges against Hillary, it still stands as fact that most of my neighborhood comprises a demographic that sees her as the "professional elite".  Yup, these are the people who fall for dumb propaganda be it for one side or against the other.  Many of them are simply deplorable at many levels, but more of them are likely to excuse deplorable which is, in my mind, just as bad.  

I hear all day long how Trump won and it signals a sea change in the direction for America.  I call bullshit on that.  It was a very close vote, and it was thrown in Trump's favor by the angry hopes of those that have been left behind.........never mind there are good reasons they were left behind.

Here is a funny thing, though not directly related to the above referenced article.  So, I know a lot of people that worked for manufacturers in my area.  Those places left some time ago.  Some left more than a decade ago.  The people are still here ranting they want the jobs back, they want manufacturing jobs (that you only need a GED to get particularly) to come back.  They want to live that true American lifestyle, to be able to support their families, and for their children to have a future.  They want America back the way it used to be.

THEN MOVE!!!!!  That is the way America used to be for christsake!  When the jobs move, you move!  My family covered this continent looking for work, moving when the jobs moved, coal miners, meat packers, farmers and machinists and soldiers they were and they never once sat on their poor little asses waiting for someone to bring a job to them!  Wherever did this sense of employment entitlement come from that says, "I don't want to move cuzin my family is all here and it would break my heart to leave"  WTF!  The workers with the get up and go, got up and went, and followed the work the way strong-willed Americans do.  Sometimes one went, and brought the next, and the next and so on. In many ways these rust belt cities and rural areas are populated by the ones without the gumption to go.  They somehow believe American business owes them a living and needs to bring them a job.  Not just any job.  A simple job, where you don't need no skewlin and pay day is Friday.  

So, some might call these people deplorable.

I have to point out, though, that the main stream American mentality promotes the people you've described to expect the good life (which in this case is watching lots of sports, drinkin' pee beer, trailerin' the speed boat / bass boat depending on what floats one's boat, goin' huntin,' paying for junior to participate in lots of sports, etc). And if one can't afford it based on normal cash flow, then whip out the plastic and use the house as an ATM. So while we can say they dug their own holes and were of course screwed when the jobs went away or pay was cut, "the system" certainly promoted the high risk decisions. Now cap it off with "then move to work at the great intermodal hub in IL" or some such, and that just pisses them off even more.

Yep!  Pisses them right off!  You are right on all counts and in particular that "the system" set them up to fail.  It has all along!  Snake oil!  Get rich quick schemes!  There has never been a shortage of pie in the sky to tempt people into accepting that the jobs will always be there and that plastic is a help to your family budget.  It has been that way since people were lured to the New World where gems popped out of the ground!  Nevertheless, in the true American tradition you tough it out, or you pack it up and move to where the work is.  Those that elected to stay in place long after the blast furnaces were torn down ( I sat on the railroad tracks in Youngstown, Ohio drinking beer with my college buddies in the mid 1980's and watched them blow down steel mills) have chosen their lot.  Trump cant help them, but it is easier to believe that he will bring the mills and the jobs back than look inside and see that they have themselves to blame for much of their folly.

Next time around, lot of the old ones will be watching John Wayne reruns in the sky.  Their Mille grand kids will be a much larger voting block.  This was America's purple election.

[Odin]

One problem is that a lot of places are not going to hire the 55yo "retrained" guy who sounds like a country yokel anyway when there is a 23yo computer literate college graduate available.

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2016, 08:14 AM)Odin Wrote: One problem is that a lot of places are not going to hire the 55yo "retrained" guy who sounds like a country yokel anyway when there is a 23yo computer literate college graduate available.

But the 23-year-old college graduate is almost never a truly skilled worker and may have thrown away the opportunity to be a skilled worker by attending college instead of participating in an apprenticeship in skilled trades. The 55-year-old "retrained" guy might be.

There are jobs that people cannot do after certain ages. Professional athletes exemplify the pattern: reflexes slow, body strength diminishes, and eyesight weakens after about age 30. If one gets diabetes, one's career crashes. Nagging injuries sap abilities one once had. People who learn the fine points of the game might get new careers  in coaching or managing -- but that is not playing the game. Some jobs have typically been nearly-pure athleticism, and those as a rule have not been skilled work. Military service is one such example. Look for someone approaching civilian retirement in the military, and you can often call that person "General" or "Admiral".

People will need to make their adjustment, and so will business. Really-good "people skills" develop over time. They require maturity and learning that people generally lack at age 25 or so even if they have much formal education. Caring about the customer and the bosses while neglecting oneself ? That's a rare combination of traits, which explains why (along with abysmal wages and few opportunities to advance within the firm) retailing has such a high turnover. Transforming a warehouse worker into a retail clerk may be a wiser course for job development, with unskilled workers eventually becoming 'service' workers.

I expect Donald Trump to have no clue about this. For him, it is all about getting maximal rents and paying as little as he can to those who work for his sort of business. He may know one business, but I doubt that he can learn anything about medicine, energy production, metalworking, food-production, transportation, mining, or textile industry except what fellow "winners" tell him that they want. Few Americans get to be "winners"; they at most can struggle for adequate pay  for what they do, which includes paying off costs of preparation for the work that they do.

Almost all of us are "losers". The economic order of course depends upon "losers" to do the real work But those "losers" do what makes life possible. They run the trains, change the oil, drive the tractors, drive cattle through feed lots, milk cows, clean everything commercial, teach school, do hair, do military service, manage the library collection, keep the ledgers updated, drive vehicles... When they have a stake in the system, things go well. When they have no stake in the system they want blood of those who earn much yet do little to earn what they get.

America is becoming more rigidly a class society, increasingly fitting a Marxist stereotype. If the choice is between watching one's children starve while knowing that some elites whose sole virtue is luck in being born into the Right Family enjoy sybaritic excess and on the other side, overthrowing those elites and having a Socialist commonwealth -- people will do what is best for their survival.

[Eric the Green]

(11-17-2016, 09:36 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2016, 08:14 AM)Odin Wrote: One problem is that a lot of places are not going to hire the 55yo "retrained" guy who sounds like a country yokel anyway when there is a 23yo computer literate college graduate available.

But the 23-year-old college graduate is almost never a truly skilled worker and may have thrown away the opportunity to be a skilled worker by attending college instead of participating in an apprenticeship in skilled trades. The 55-year-old "retrained" guy might be.

There are jobs that people cannot do after certain ages. Professional athletes exemplify the pattern: reflexes slow, body strength diminishes, and eyesight weakens after about age 30. If one gets diabetes, one's career crashes. Nagging injuries sap abilities one once had. People who learn the fine points of the game might get new careers  in coaching or managing -- but that is not playing the game. Some jobs have typically been nearly-pure athleticism, and those as a rule have not been skilled work. Military service is one such example. Look for someone approaching civilian retirement in the military, and you can often call that person "General" or "Admiral".

People will need to make their adjustment, and so will business. Really-good "people skills" develop over time. They require maturity and learning that people generally lack at age 25 or so even if they have much formal education. Caring about the customer and the bosses while neglecting oneself ? That's a rare combination of traits, which explains why (along with abysmal wages and few opportunities to advance within the firm) retailing has such a high turnover. Transforming a warehouse worker into a retail clerk may be a wiser course for job development, with unskilled workers eventually becoming 'service' workers.

I expect Donald Trump to have no clue about this. For him, it is all about getting maximal rents and paying as little as he can to those who work for his sort of business. He may know one business, but I doubt that he can learn anything about medicine, energy production, metalworking, food-production, transportation, mining, or textile industry except what fellow "winners" tell him that they want. Few Americans get to be "winners"; they at most can struggle for adequate pay  for what they do, which includes paying off costs of preparation for the work that they do.

Almost all of us are "losers". The economic order of course depends upon "losers" to do the real work But those "losers" do what makes life possible. They run the trains, change the oil, drive the tractors, drive cattle through feed lots, milk cows, clean everything commercial, teach school, do hair, do military service, manage the library collection, keep the ledgers updated, drive vehicles... When they have a stake in the system, things go well. When they have no stake in the system they want blood of those who earn much yet do little to earn what they get.

America is becoming more rigidly a class society, increasingly fitting a Marxist stereotype. If the choice is between watching one's children starve while knowing that some elites whose sole virtue is luck in being born into the Right Family enjoy sybaritic excess and on the other side, overthrowing those elites and having a Socialist commonwealth -- people will do what is best for their survival.

All very good points. I wonder if all the trickle-down, free-market adherents realize, that the near-total triumph of their ideology in America may be setting us up for a Marxist-type revolution? Or at least something that will end up being the opposite of what they want? If we don't just slink into total banana republic status, as they want, such could be a possible outcome to making America a very ripe target for "class struggle" and "socialist workers uprisings."

[Warren Dew]

Trickle down and free market are pretty much opposites, and I don't think Obama's massive government trickle down stimulus spending strategy has triumphed quite yet.

Marxist type revolution is a workers' revolution, so one could possibly see Trump's victory as a mild form of that.

Violent revolution might be more likely to come from the welfare dependent class that was created with LBJ's "Great Society", if their benefits are taken away, and if they prefer revolution to finding work. That class did not exist in Marx's day, of course.

[Ragnarök_62]

(11-16-2016, 06:02 PM)Skabungus Wrote: THEN MOVE!!!!!  That is the way America used to be for christsake!  When the jobs move, you move!  My family covered this continent looking for work, moving when the jobs moved, coal miners, meat packers, farmers and machinists and soldiers they were and they never once sat on their poor little asses waiting for someone to bring a job to them!  Wherever did this sense of employment entitlement come from that says, "I don't want to move cuzin my family is all here and it would break my heart to leave"  WTF!  The workers with the get up and go, got up and went, and followed the work the way strong-willed Americans do.  Sometimes one went, and brought the next, and the next and so on. In many ways these rust belt cities and rural areas are populated by the ones without the gumption to go.  They somehow believe American business owes them a living and needs to bring them a job.  Not just any job.  A simple job, where you don't need no skewlin and pay day is Friday.  

So, some might call these people deplorable.

I suppose what's good for the goose is good for the gander.  So... I reckon the denizens of the inner city hoods should do likewise, right? So no foodie stamps , welfare cheques , etc. for them as well, also?   Of course, the option I see is that politics should be based on class warfare where the elites are winning vs. assorted race baitings on assorted sides.

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2016, 03:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-17-2016, 09:36 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2016, 08:14 AM)Odin Wrote: One problem is that a lot of places are not going to hire the 55yo "retrained" guy who sounds like a country yokel anyway when there is a 23yo computer literate college graduate available.

But the 23-year-old college graduate is almost never a truly skilled worker and may have thrown away the opportunity to be a skilled worker by attending college instead of participating in an apprenticeship in skilled trades. The 55-year-old "retrained" guy might be.

There are jobs that people cannot do after certain ages. Professional athletes exemplify the pattern: reflexes slow, body strength diminishes, and eyesight weakens after about age 30. If one gets diabetes, one's career crashes. Nagging injuries sap abilities one once had. People who learn the fine points of the game might get new careers  in coaching or managing -- but that is not playing the game. Some jobs have typically been nearly-pure athleticism, and those as a rule have not been skilled work. Military service is one such example. Look for someone approaching civilian retirement in the military, and you can often call that person "General" or "Admiral".

People will need to make their adjustment, and so will business. Really-good "people skills" develop over time. They require maturity and learning that people generally lack at age 25 or so even if they have much formal education. Caring about the customer and the bosses while neglecting oneself ? That's a rare combination of traits, which explains why (along with abysmal wages and few opportunities to advance within the firm) retailing has such a high turnover. Transforming a warehouse worker into a retail clerk may be a wiser course for job development, with unskilled workers eventually becoming 'service' workers.

I expect Donald Trump to have no clue about this. For him, it is all about getting maximal rents and paying as little as he can to those who work for his sort of business. He may know one business, but I doubt that he can learn anything about medicine, energy production, metalworking, food-production, transportation, mining, or textile industry except what fellow "winners" tell him that they want. Few Americans get to be "winners"; they at most can struggle for adequate pay  for what they do, which includes paying off costs of preparation for the work that they do.

Almost all of us are "losers". The economic order of course depends upon "losers" to do the real work But those "losers" do what makes life possible. They run the trains, change the oil, drive the tractors, drive cattle through feed lots, milk cows, clean everything commercial, teach school, do hair, do military service, manage the library collection, keep the ledgers updated, drive vehicles... When they have a stake in the system, things go well. When they have no stake in the system they want blood of those who earn much yet do little to earn what they get.

America is becoming more rigidly a class society, increasingly fitting a Marxist stereotype. If the choice is between watching one's children starve while knowing that some elites whose sole virtue is luck in being born into the Right Family enjoy sybaritic excess and on the other side, overthrowing those elites and having a Socialist commonwealth -- people will do what is best for their survival.

All very good points. I wonder if all the trickle-down, free-market adherents realize, that the near-total triumph of their ideology in America may be setting us up for a Marxist-type revolution? Or at least something that will end up being the opposite of what they want? If we don't just slink into total banana republic status, as they want, such could be a possible outcome to making America a very ripe target for "class struggle" and "socialist workers uprisings."

It could be. As I have said before, it is the consumer society that has saved capitalism from Marxist revolutions in the countries that Marx said they would first occur (advanced capitalist states). It also gave people motivation to work, offering reward  (like refrigerators, radios, cars, and good furniture) instead of punishment (watching one's children die of starvation).

[Odin]

Relevant chart:

[Skabungus]

(11-17-2016, 04:34 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 06:02 PM)Skabungus Wrote: THEN MOVE!!!!!  That is the way America used to be for christsake!  When the jobs move, you move!  My family covered this continent looking for work, moving when the jobs moved, coal miners, meat packers, farmers and machinists and soldiers they were and they never once sat on their poor little asses waiting for someone to bring a job to them!  Wherever did this sense of employment entitlement come from that says, "I don't want to move cuzin my family is all here and it would break my heart to leave"  WTF!  The workers with the get up and go, got up and went, and followed the work the way strong-willed Americans do.  Sometimes one went, and brought the next, and the next and so on. In many ways these rust belt cities and rural areas are populated by the ones without the gumption to go.  They somehow believe American business owes them a living and needs to bring them a job.  Not just any job.  A simple job, where you don't need no skewlin and pay day is Friday.  

So, some might call these people deplorable.

I suppose what's good for the goose is good for the gander.  So... I reckon the denizens of the inner city hoods should do likewise, right? So no foodie stamps , welfare cheques , etc. for them as well, also?   Of course, the option I see is that politics should be based on class warfare where the elites are winning vs. assorted race baitings on assorted sides.

Not at all what I am getting at.  Did you purposely bait me?  There are options besides staying in place.  When you are a steel worker making $65k in 1989 year dollars, and you sit on your ass and slowly decline into poverty rather than move, you are an idiot.  When you are a street kid, in the same city, you really don't have the option to pick up and go.  Very different circumstances with very different options.  Where I live I am surrounded by the former example.  People with good networks, some education, some job skills, and the opportunity to change their fortunes, sometimes just by moving a state away.  They don't do it.  Rather they demand that their towns spring back to the good old days.  Dipshits.

We do have endemic poverty here as well and in those instances (be they rural or urban) social programs, food assistance, welfare, free medical are essential to getting them in a situation where they actually have choices.  Libertarians and repuglicans just laugh at that.

[Ragnarök_62]

(11-17-2016, 07:57 PM)Skabungus Wrote: <snip>
Not at all what I am getting at.  Did you purposely bait me?


No, I was not baiting.

Skabungus Wrote:There are options besides staying in place.  When you are a steel worker making $65k in 1989 year dollars, and you sit on your ass and slowly decline into poverty rather than move, you are an idiot.  

There are some nettlesome details I can come up with. In theory, a former steel worker may well own a house. That makes it hard to move. Most likely, in say Bethlehem, nobody can sell any owned property since nobody is moving into that city. My fair home town is just like that place except it's in Oklahoma. The oil bust created selfsame dive into regional decline here. There are vacant houses galore and the only jobs to be had are minimum wage sort. As for ass sitting, I'm not sure of that either. You either work or starve. So yeah, you go one way into poverty even working at the local Wally World. As for myself, I knew minimum wage would never, ever work in Houston due to sky high property taxes. In depressed Oklahoma, hey, I did pay my yearly property tax rent of $218.00 today, man. It's all good, even in minimum wage hell. So I'm just like the hypothetical steel worker, going from a six fig salary due to H1B taking my job.  Now THAT is what has  me pissed off!  I'll do anything to fuck up globalization I can!  I fucking, fucking hate it.  I want folks here to feel my rage.  I hope to hell all of those fucking elites just go off and die.  Rats and roaches are far more worthy of their biomass. I hope some hurricane, tornado blows away their companies in Mexico/India/China, because I just don't give a fuck anymore. Now, H1B importers get special treatment.  I hope they get a dose of chlorine gas or something. I hope some hurricane washes them out to sea and a lucky shark eats them. Now that would make me feel real good. I bet those recently layed off Ford workers feel like I do. I bet they want the Ford CEO drawn and quartered. That would make them feel good.

Quote:When you are a street kid, in the same city, you really don't have the option to pick up and go.  Very different circumstances with very different options.

Nope, we're all street kids now.  The same future and same drugs.

Quote:Where I live I am surrounded by the former example.  People with good networks, some education, some job skills, and the opportunity to change their fortunes, sometimes just by moving a state away.  They don't do it.  Rather they demand that their towns spring back to the good old days.  Dipshits.

Not here, after 50 you're toast in IT. High tech hires only 20 somethings. If you're over 50, it's over, period. If used to do hard labor, likewise in most cases, again too old. You're fucked and thrown away  into the industrial scrap heap. Some fucking CEO does that to make a few extra G's on the next bonus. Again, it's the elites who do this shit. If.... only some virus would happen that kills only CEO's , earth would be a much better place.

Quote:We do have endemic poverty here as well and in those instances (be they rural or urban) social programs, food assistance, welfare, free medical are essential to getting them in a situation where they actually have choices.  Libertarians and repuglicans just laugh at that.

Now, that I agree with.

[Eric the Green]

"A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view" goes one of my favorite songs from 1967, the famous "Incense and Peppermints."

Well, here's just one point of view. I'm just quoting someone's opinion here.

From Forsetti's Justice

http://forsetti.tumblr.com/post/15318175...he-problem
Defending the Social Contract

14 Nov

On Rural America: Understanding Isn’t The Problem

As the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides-”Democrats failed to understand white, working class, fly-over America.” Trump supports are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete bullshit. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to throw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t east coast elites don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.

I grew up in rural, Christian, white America. You’d be hard-pressed to find an area in the country that has a higher percentage of Christians or whites. I spent most of the first twenty-four years of my life deeply embedded in this culture. I religiously (*pun intended) (attended) their Christian services. I worked off and on, on their rural farms. I dated their calico skirted daughters. I camped, hunted, and fished with their sons. I listened to their political rants at the local diner and truck stop. I winced at their racist/bigoted jokes and epitaphs that were said more out of ignorance than animosity. I have also watched the town I grew up in go from a robust economy with well-kept homes and infrastructure turn into a struggling economy with shuttered businesses, dilapidated homes, and a broken down infrastructure over the past thirty years. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand these people. The problem is they don’t understand themselves, the reasons for their anger/frustrations, and don’t seem to care to know why.

In deep red, white America, the white Christian God is king, figuratively and literally. Religious fundamentalism is what has shaped most of their belief systems. Systems built on a fundamentalist framework are not conducive for introspection, questioning, learning, change. When you have a belief system that is built on fundamentalism, it isn’t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and in a position of power. The problem isn’t “coastal elites don’t understand rural Americans.” The problem is rural America doesn’t understand itself and will NEVER listen to anyone outside their bubble. It doesn’t matter how “understanding” you are, how well you listen, what language you use…if you are viewed as an outsider, your views are automatically discounted. I’ve had hundreds of discussions with rural white Americans and whenever I present them any information that contradicts their entrenched beliefs, no matter how sound, how unquestionable, how obvious, they WILL NOT even entertain the possibility it might be true.

Their refusal is a result of the nature of their fundamentalist belief system and the fact I’m the enemy because I’m an educated liberal. At some point during the discussion, “That’s your education talking,” will be said, derogatorily, as a general dismissal of everything I said. They truly believe this is a legitimate response because to them education is not to be trusted. Education is the enemy of fundamentalism because fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not built on facts.

The fundamentalists I grew up around aren’t anti-education. They want their kids to know how to read and write. They are anti-quality, in-depth, broad, specialized education. Learning is only valued up to the certain point. Once it reaches the level where what you learn contradicts doctrine and fundamentalist arguments, it becomes dangerous. I watched a lot of my fellow students who were smart, stop their education the day they graduated high school. For most of the young ladies, getting married and having kids was more important than continuing their learning. For many of the young men, getting a college education was seen as unnecessary and a waste of time. For the few who did go to college, what they learned was still filtered through their fundamentalist belief system. If something they were taught didn’t support a preconception, it would be ignored and forgotten the second it was no longer needed to pass an exam.

Knowing this about their belief system and their view of outside information that doesn’t support it, telling me that the problem is coastal elites not understanding them completely misses the point.

Another problem with rural, Christian, white Americans is they are racists. I’m not talking about white hood wearing, cross burning, lynching racists (though some are.) I’m talking about people who deep down in their heart of hearts truly believe they are superior because they are white. Their white God made them in his image and everyone else is a less-than-perfect version, flawed, cursed. The religion in which I was raised taught this. Even though they’ve backtracked some of their more racist declarations, many still believe the original claims. Non-whites are the color they are because of their sins, or at least the sins of their ancestors. Blacks don’t have dark skin because of where they lived and evolution. They have dark skin because they are cursed and cursed people don’t deserve the things God’s blessed whites do. God cursed them for a reason and it isn’t proper to question them. If God cursed them, then treating them as equals would be going against God’s Will. It is really easy to justify treating people differently, poorly, if they are cursed by God, will never be as good as you no matter what they do because of some predetermined status given to them by an almighty God. Once you have this view, it is easy to lower the outside group’s standing and acceptable level of treatment. Again, there are varying levels of racism at play in rural, Christian, white America. I know people who are ardent racists. I know a lot more whose racism is much more subtle but nonetheless racist. It wouldn’t take sodium pentothal to get most of these people to admit they believe they are fundamentally better and superior to minorities. They are white supremacists who dress up in white dress shirts, ties, and gingham dresses. They carry a Bible and tell you, “everyone’s a child of God” but forget to mention that some of God’s children are more favored than others and skin tone is the criterion by which we know who is and who isn’t at the top of God’s list of most favored children.

For us “coastal elites” who understand evolution, genetics, science…nothing we say to those in fly-over country is going to be listened to because not only are we fighting against an anti-education belief system, we are arguing against God. You aren’t winning a battle of beliefs with these people if you are on one side of the argument and God is on the other. No degree of understanding this is going to suddenly make them less racist, more open to reason and facts. Telling “urban elites” they need to understand rural Americans isn’t going to lead to a damn thing because it misses the causes of the problem.

Because rural, Christian, white Americans will not listen to educated arguments, supported by facts that go against their fundamentalist belief systems from “outsiders,” any change must come from within. Internal change in these systems does happen, but it happens infrequently and it always lags far behind reality. This is why they fear change so much. They aren’t used to it. Of course, it really doesn’t matter whether they like it or not, it, like the evolution and climate change even though they don’t believe it, it is going to happen whether they believe in it or not.

Another major problem with closed-off, fundamentalist belief systems is they are very susceptible to propaganda. All belief systems are to some extent, but fundamentalist systems even more so because there are no checks and balances. If bad information gets in, it doesn’t get out and because there are no internal mechanisms to guard against it, it usually ends up very damaging to the whole. A closed-off belief system is like you spinal fluid-it is great as long as nothing infectious gets into it. If bacteria gets into your spinal fluid, it causes unbelievable damage because there are no white blood cells in it whose job is to fend off invaders and protect the system. This is why things like meningitis is so horrible. Without the protective services of white blood cells in the spinal column, meningitis spreads like wildfire once it’s in and does significant damage in a very short period of time. Once inside the closed-off spinal system, bacteria is free to destroy whatever it wants and does. The very same is true with closed-off belief systems. Without built-in protective functions like critical analysis, self-reflection, openness to counter-evidence, willingness to re-evaluate any and all beliefs, etc., bad information in a closed-off system ends up doing massive damage in short period of time. What has happened to too many fundamentalist belief systems is damaging information has been allowed in from people who have been granted “expert status.” If someone is allowed into a closed-off system and their information is deemed acceptable, anything they say will readily be accepted and become gospel. Rural, Christian, white Americans have let in anti-intellectual, anti-science, bigoted, racists into their system as experts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, any of the blonde Stepford Wives on FOX, every evangelical preacher on television because they tell them what they want to hear and because they sell themselves as being “one of them. The truth is none of these people give a rat’s ass about rural, Christian, white Americans except how can they exploit them for attention and money. None of them have anything in common with the people who have let them into their belief systems with the exception they are white and they “speak the same language” of white superiority, God’s Will must be obeyed, and how, even though they are the Chosen Ones, they are the ones being screwed by all the people and groups they believe they are superior to.

Gays being allowed to marry are a threat. Blacks protesting the killing of their unarmed friends and family are a threat. Hispanics doing the cheap labor on their farms are somehow viewed a threat. The black President is a threat. Two billion Muslims are a threat. The Chinese are a threat. Women wanting to be autonomous are a threat. The college educated are a threat. Godless scientists are a threat. Everyone who isn’t just like them has been sold to them as a threat and they’ve bought it hook, line, and grifting sinker. Since there are no self-regulating mechanisms in their belief systems, these threats only grow over time. Since facts and reality don’t matter, nothing you say to them will alter their beliefs. President Obama was born in Kenya, is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood who hates white Americans and is going to take away their guns. I feel ridiculous even writing this it is so absurd but it is gospel across large swaths of rural America. Are rural, Christian, white Americans scared? You’re damn right they are. Are their fears rational and justified? Fuck no! The problem isn’t understanding their fears. The problem is how to assuage fears based on lies in closed-off fundamentalist belief systems that don’t have the necessary tools for properly evaluating the fears.

I don’t have a good answer to this question. When a child has an irrational fear, you can deal with it because they trust you and are open to possibilities. When someone doesn’t trust you and isn’t open to anything not already accepted as true in their belief system, there really isn’t much, if anything you can do. This is why I think the whole, “Democrats have to understand and find common ground with rural America,” is misguided and a complete waste of time. When a three-thousand-year-old book that was written by uneducated, pre-scientific people, subject to translation innumerable times, edited with political and economic pressures from Popes and kings, is given higher intellectual authority than facts arrived at from a rigorous, self-critical, constantly re-evaluating system that can and does correct mistakes, no amount of understanding, no amount of respect, no amount of evidence is going to change their minds, assuage their fears.

Do you know what does change the beliefs of fundamentalists, sometimes? When something becomes personal. Many a fundamentalist have changed their minds about the LGBT community once their loved ones started coming out of the closet. Many have not. But, those that have did so because their personal experience came in direct conflict with what they believe. My own father is a good example of this. For years I had long, sometimes heated discussions with him about gay rights. Being the good religious fundamentalist he is, he could not even entertain the possibility he was wrong. The Church said it was wrong so therefore it was wrong. No questions ask. No analysis needed. This changed when one of his step children who he adores came out of the closet. He didn’t do a complete 180. He has a view that that tries to accept gay rights while at the same time viewing it as a mortal sin because his need to have his belief system be right outweighs everything else. This isn’t uncommon. Deeply held beliefs are usually only altered, replaced under catastrophic circumstances that are personal. This belief system alteration works both ways. I know die hard, open-minded progressives who became ardent fundamentalists due to a traumatic event in their lives. A really good example of this is the comedian Dennis Miller. I’ve seen Miller in concert four different times during the 1990s. His humor was complex, riddled with references, and leaned pretty left on almost all issues. Then 9/11 happened. For whatever reasons, the trauma of 9/11 caused a seismic shift in Miller’s belief system. Now he is a mainstay on conservative talk radio. His humor was replaced with anger and frustration. 9/11 changed his belief system because it was a catastrophic event that was personal to him.

The catastrophe of the Great Depression along with the progressive remedies by FDR helped create a generation of Democrats from previously die-hard Republicans. People who had, up until that point, deeply believed government couldn’t help the economy only the free market could changed their minds when the brutal reality of the Great Depression affected them directly, personally. I thought the financial crisis in 2008 would have a similar, though lesser, impact on many Republicans. It didn’t. The systems that were put in place after the Great Depression to deal with economic crises, the quick, smart response by Congress and the administration helped make what could have been a catastrophic event into merely a really bad one. People suffered, but they didn’t suffer enough to where they were open to questioning their deeply held beliefs. Because this questioning didn’t take place, the Great Recession didn’t lead to any meaningful political shift away from poorly regulated markets, supply side economics, or how to respond to a financial crisis. This is why, even though rural, Christian, white America was hit hard by the Great Recession, they not only didn’t blame the political party they’ve aligned themselves with for years, they rewarded them two years later by voting them into a record number of state legislatures and taking over the U.S. House. Of course, it didn’t help matters there were scapegoats available they could direct their fears, anger, and white supremacy towards. A significant number of rural America believes President Obama was in charge when the financial crisis started. An even higher number believe the mortgage crisis was the result of the government forcing banks to give loans to unqualified minorities. It doesn’t matter how untrue both of these are, they are gospel in rural America. Why reevaluate your beliefs and voting patterns when scapegoats are available?

How do you make climate change personal to someone who believes only God can alter the weather? How do you make racial equality personal to someone who believes whites are naturally superior to non-whites? How do you make gender equality personal to someone who believes women are supposed to be subservient to men by God’s command? How do you get someone to view minorities as not threatening personal to people who don’t live around and never interact with them? How do you make personal the fact massive tax cuts and cutting back government hurts their economic situation when they’ve voted for these for decades? I don’t think you can without some catastrophic events. And maybe not even then. The Civil War was pretty damn catastrophic yet a large swath of the South believed and still believes they were right, had the moral high ground. They were/are also mostly Christian fundamentalists who believe they are superior because of the color of their skin and the religion they profess to follow. There is a pattern here for anyone willing to connect the dots. “Rural, white America needs to be better understood,” is not one of the dots. “Rural, white America needs to be better understood,” is a dodge, meant to avoid the real problems because talking about the real problems is viewed as “too upsetting,” “too mean,” “too arrogant,” “too elite,” “too snobbish.” Pointing out Aunt Bee’s views of Mexicans, blacks, gays…is bigoted isn’t the thing one does in polite society. Too bad more people don’t think the same about the views Aunt Bee has. It’s the classic, “You’re a racist for calling me a racist,” ploy. Or, as it is more commonly known, “I know you are but what am I?”

I do think rational arguments are needed, even if they go mostly ignored and ridiculed. I believe in treating people with the respect they’ve earned but the key point here is “earned.” I’ll gladly sit down with Aunt Bee and have a nice, polite conversation about her beliefs about “the gays,” “the blacks,” “illegals,”…and do so without calling her a bigot or a racist. But, this doesn’t mean she isn’t a bigot and a racist and if I’m asked to describe her beliefs these are the only words that honestly fit. No one with cancer wants to be told they have cancer, but just because no one uses the word, “cancer,” it doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Just because the media, pundits on all sides, some Democratic leaders don’t want to call the actions of many rural, Christian, white Americans, “racist/bigoted” doesn’t make them not so. Avoiding the obvious only prolongs getting the necessary treatment. America has always had a race problem. It was built on racism and bigotry. This didn’t miraculously go away in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It didn’t go away with the election of Barack Obama. If anything, these events pulled back the curtain exposing the dark, racist underbelly of America that white America likes to pretend doesn’t exist because we are the reason it exists. From the white nationalists to the white, suburban soccer moms who voted for Donald Trump, to the far left progressives who didn’t vote at all, racism exists and has once again been legitimized and normalized by white America.

The honest truths that rural, Christian, white Americans don’t want to accept and until they do nothing is going to change, are:

-Their economic situation is largely the result of voting for supply-side economic policies that have been the largest redistribution of wealth from the bottom/middle to the top in U.S. history.

-Immigrants haven’t taken their jobs. If all immigrants, legal or otherwise, were removed from the U.S., our economy would come to a screeching halt and prices on food would soar.

-Immigrants are not responsible for companies moving their plants overseas. Almost exclusively white business owners are the ones responsible because they care more about their share holders who are also mostly white, than they do American workers.

-No one is coming for their guns. All that has been proposed during the entire Obama administration is having better background checks.

-Gay people getting married is not a threat to their freedom to believe in whatever white God you want to. No one is going to make their church marry gays, make gays your pastor, accept gays for membership.

-Women having access to birth control doesn’t affect their life either, especially women who they complain about being teenage, single mothers.

-Blacks are not “lazy moochers living off their hard earned tax dollars” anymore than many of your fellow rural neighbors. People in need are people in need. People who can’t find jobs because of their circumstances, a changing economy, outsourcing overseas, etc. belong to all races.

-They get a tremendous amount of help from the government they complain does nothing for them. From the roads and utility grids they use to the farm subsidies, crop insurance, commodities protections…they benefit greatly from government assistance. The Farm Bill is one of the largest financial expenditures by the U.S. government. Without government assistance, their lives would be considerably worse.

-They get the largest share of Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

-They complain about globalization but line up like everyone else to get the latest Apple product. They have no problem buying foreign-made guns, scopes, and hunting equipment. They don’t think twice about driving trucks whose engine was made in Canada, tires made in Japan, radio made in Korea, computer parts made in Malaysia…

-They use illicit drugs as much as any other group. But, when other people do it is a “moral failing” and they should be severely punished, legally. When they do it, it is a “health crisis” that needs sympathy and attention.

-When jobs dry up for whatever reasons, they refuse to relocate but lecture the poor in places like Flint for staying in towns that are failing.

-They are quick to judge minorities for being “welfare moochers” but don’t think twice about cashing their welfare check every month.

-They complain about coastal liberals, but the taxes from California and New York are what covers their farm subsidies, helps maintain their highways, and keeps their hospitals in their sparsely populated areas open for business.

-They complain about “the little man being run out of business” then turn around and shop at big box stores.

-They make sure outsiders are not welcome, deny businesses permits to build, then complain about businesses, plants opening up in less rural areas.

-Government has not done enough to help them in many cases but their local and state governments are almost completely Republican and so too are their Representatives and Senators. Instead of holding them accountable, they vote them in over and over and over again.

-All the economic policies and ideas that could help rural America belong to the Democratic Party: raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, infrastructure spending, reusable energy growth, slowing down the damage done by climate change, healthcare reform…all of these and more would really help a lot of rural Americans.

What I understand is rural, Christian, white America is entrenched in fundamentalist belief systems, don’t trust people outside their tribe, have been force fed a diet of misinformation and lies for decades, are unwilling to understand their own situations, truly believe whites are superior to all races. No amount of understanding is going to change these things or what they believe. No amount of niceties is going to get them to be introspective. No economic policy put forth by someone outside their tribe is going to be listened to no matter how beneficial it would be for them. I understand rural, Christian, white America all too well. I understand their fears are based on myths and lies. I understand they feel left behind by a world they don’t understand and don’t really care to. I understand they are willing to vote against their own interest if they can be convinced it will make sure minorities are harmed more. I understand their Christian beliefs and morals are truly only extended to fellow white Christians. I understand them. I understand they are the problem with progress and will always be because their belief systems are constructed against it. The problem isn’t a lack of understanding by “coastal elites” of rural, Christian, white America. The problem is a lack of understanding why rural, Christian, white America believes, votes, behaves the ways it does by rural, Christian, white America.

[Eric the Green]

You know, 40+ years ago I would never have believed that we would be in this situation in this country. It seemed like the Awakening was spreading everywhere. I thought most young people were getting an education. I thought fundamentalism was a fringe cult. My parents came from red America; my forebears had lived there for generations. Politically, one state was just about like another, except perhaps in the deep South. California was a swing state that leaned Republican and was the home base of Ronald Reagan. Until recently my district had had a Republican congressman who had served for decades.

Now California is the most Democratic state in the continental United States, and the most diverse. My county voted 73% for Hillary Clinton. The USA is divided between urban and rural, coastal and fly-over, seemingly forever. Proudly-under-educated and un-informed rural white folks have given us a proudly-ignorant and bigoted white president bent on destroying our country.

What a situation we are in. I don't think the country as it is can now survive this 4T. One way or another, it cannot continue as it is.

[Eric the Green]

Another brief different view of some fly-over Trump voters, from a facebook comment (equal time here; if he's right some of these folks will swing back against Trump after he fails in 2020; we'll see):

Barry Sussman

Trump tapped into the frustration of those who are working longer and harder for less, if they're working at all. They're angry that the crooked bankers that caused the problem were rewarded with bonuses at the taxpayers' expense under the threat of world wide depression. In a word extortion. Criminality pays.

That the Obama administration never prosecuted the corrupt bankers angered the disaffected working class to the point that they voted for any change as opposed to the business as usual Hillary Clinton represented.

When you're hungry and see a bleak future the guy who says he'll bring back former living standards and restore your dignity sounds appealing. Hell, it worked for a crazy tyrant in Germany after WW I. The New American Century could mirror the Thousand Year Reich of "you know who."