Miami Herald: I’m done trying to understand Trump supporters. Why don’t they try to understand me?

[The Evil Genius]

 

[nonniey]

12 hours ago, Popeman38 said:

Seriously dude?  You posted a hack tweet that is trying to capitalize on news by showing how a GOP member celebrated a GOP supporter refusing service to a customer. Except that isn't what was done.  In Colorado, a business refused to serve an individual consumer a wedding cake.  In North Carolina, a business refused to provide a service to an individual customer.  Here, in the tweet you posted, a business owner declined to have his business featured in a photo op for a politician he happens to disagree with.

 

If you can't see a stark difference, that's on you.

 

 

The GOP is going to GOP.  But using flawed logic to illustrate the evil of the GOP is no different than just making stuff up.  They already have enough rope to hang themselves, let them hang.  Don't give them an out.

They won't listen to you and will give Trump an out.  I've been saying it for well over a year but the "resistance" is going to get Trump reelected.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

America in the last few posts...

 

Right wing: Gun down journalists, cage children, Nazis

Left wing: Compares refusing to let someone have their photo taken at their business to refusing to serve someone at their business

 

BOTH SIDES!!!!

Edited June 27, 2018 by Sacks 'n' Stuff

[tshile]

i can’t think of one thing I don’t dislike immensely about sanders. 

 

Even her decision to cling to her last name for fame irritates the hell out of me. 

Edited June 27, 2018 by tshile

[No Excuses]

6 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

 

The American public is treated like a bunch of morons by the media, and quite honestly the media might have a point. 

[Llevron]

I find it funny that yall want 100% accuracy and fairness when criticizing Trump who literally has lied every day since his election. 

 

And anything less is the reason he will be elected again. 

 

That's some stupid **** right there. 

[Going Commando]

20 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

 

The American public is treated like a bunch of morons by the media, and quite honestly the media might have a point. 

 

We're a profoundly ignorant people.  I honestly don't know why we can't get our **** together compared to the other rich democracies.  Too socially fragmented I guess.  There is zero feeling of authentic patriotism or willingness to sacrifice for the good of society in the average American.  This is where we've regressed as a people.

[tshile]

1 hour ago, No Excuses said:

 

The American public is treated like a bunch of morons by the media, and quite honestly the media might have a point. 

 

The American public is being treated exactly how it deserves and has earned to be treated.

 

If you're going to be stupid, you should expect to be treated like you're stupid.

 

The current state of our public, in terms of being informed, is a complete and utter embarrassment considering this supposed Information Age we live in.

[No Excuses]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

We're a profoundly ignorant people.  I honestly don't know why we can't get our **** together compared to the other rich democracies.  Too socially fragmented I guess.  There is zero feeling of authentic patriotism or willingness to sacrifice for the good of society in the average American.  This is where we've regressed as a people.

 

Entire generations of Americans was taught a load of horse**** about the virtues of individualism and constantly needing to best everyone around them in their personal and professional lives. 

 

It’s almost better to be ignorant but pompous and loud than to project a willingness to improve and learn more, which is often seen as a sign of weakness. Trump is the epitome of this toxic attitude. 

 

As a result we as a country are happily dumb yet totally isolated and lonely. I envy the sense of community and how cities are structured when I travel around Europe and Asia.

[Fresh8686]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

We're a profoundly ignorant people.  I honestly don't know why we can't get our **** together compared to the other rich democracies.  Too socially fragmented I guess.  There is zero feeling of authentic patriotism or willingness to sacrifice for the good of society in the average American.  This is where we've regressed as a people.

 

As a culture we've devalued the feeling of shared responsibility and community. Part of it I think, is that with technology we don't need to depend on each other as much, which limits the bonding that naturally occurs when working for things together as a team. But also, it's about what we've chosen to value instead, which is being the "best" or "on top" by any means necessary which is a needlessly extreme concept, that creates all sorts of weird pressures in people. 

When everyone is at a distance from each other, there is less chance for intimacy, vulnerability, and authenticity. Pillars that create a level of rapport with people that is vital to hold together a connection when having tough conversations. Without that strength of rapport people and connections fragment from each other and conflict is no longer dealt with via communication, but instead more base level actions.
 

29 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

The American public is being treated exactly how it deserves and has earned to be treated.

 

If you're going to be stupid, you should expect to be treated like you're stupid.

 

The current state of our public, in terms of being informed, is a complete and utter embarrassment considering this supposed Information Age we live in.

I understand where you're coming from with this, but we can only wallow in this sentiment for so long. Eventually, we as a society are going to have to realize we need to be better and to help those around us to be better. I'd love to see more educational segments on the news, even if it means locking a whole bunch of ignorant ass people from both sides in a room together Big Brother style and educating the **** out of them about our countries history and how and why certain values are necessary to up-hold and protect.

We as a society need to realize that the low hanging fruit of excitation via anger and fear and click-bait type ****, while effective in the short term, harms us greatly as a country in the long-term.

Really, we all as a society need to sit down together and hammer out a dedication to long-term sustainable growth/progress versus these short-term parasitical arrangements. But, that goes back to changing our values as a culture, from this extreme "be on top" by any means necessary bull****. That doesn't mean swinging to a sacrifice anything and everything for community kind of society, but instead a shift upwards and out of a binary mindset.

If you expand the concept from binary to tripartite, you have what I call a trinity worlds mindset. A society whose people values and practices a sense of awareness for their own individual world, the individual world of others, and the shared world, while holding them all in a balance together at the same time. In my experience that is the healthiest approach to community and relationships. 



 

[tshile]

2 minutes ago, Fresh8686 said:

We as a society need to realize that the low hanging fruit of excitation via anger and fear and click-bait type ****, while effective in the short term, harms us greatly as a country in the long-term.

 

I'm with you. I was speaking to that in the thread about the GOP members being harassed. While I personally do not like them, and I think it's the least of what they deserve, the long term ramifications of it being socially acceptable to harass politicians whose policies you do not like while they are having dinner are not good in my book.

 

And what does such commentary bring? A bunch of botherism squawking, people complaining that the left is held to a different standard (which they should hope they are, i mean ffs the GOP's standard is trash. you want to be held to a standard of trash?), and justification. 

 

It's hard to have hope in things getting better long term when all we're seeing are people justifying/enjoying/furthering going worse and worse on every level. 

 

I don't know how you reach people on any of these issues. How do you convince people who use anger to justify their actions that they need to be better than that? How do you convince people who aren't smart enough to realize they're being duped, to stop being duped?

 

Especially now that we've ingrained in our society that you have some right to your own opinion and that said opinion is deserving of respect regardless of the merits of the opinion? We've allowed everyone to define what facts are for themselves.  You can't educate people - because anything that runs contrary to their viewpoint is deemed non-factual. 

 

We have no common view on what objective opinion is anymore, and any effort to establish one is met with the same nonsense all the time.

 

I think It was PeterMP, but it may have been PF Chang, who has spent quite a few posts, over different threads, talking about how the only way to get through to these people is to first establish a personal relationship and then leverage that into the conversation. I'll that's correct. I also think that while it's great for talking to your parents, it's impossible to scale that up to society as a whole.

 

Intellectualism is dead. Our people don't want it, our leaders don't need to have it. The masses are ignorant and dumb. And they enjoy being so.

[Busch1724]

16 hours ago, NoCalMike said:

I see Milo is back in the news in the most Milo way possible.

 

http://observer.com/2018/06/milo-yiannopoulos-encourages-vigilantes-start-gunning-journalists-down/

 

 

 

Why the press asks him for his opinion and/or comments on stories is the problem. If they ignore him and don't give him a platform, he'll slowly go away. The dude is disturbed. 

 

12 minutes ago, tshile said:

Intellectualism is dead. Our people don't want it, our leaders don't need to have it. The masses are ignorant and dumb. And they enjoy being so.

 

Hence why the lack of investment in education is so glaring. The lack of investment in our public education system, in my opinion, is the root cause as to why we are having many of the issues that we are experiencing as a society. Obviously, it's a much more nuanced and more in depth issue than just education, but the fact is the level at which we all communicate with each other is linked to a dumbing down of our society. 

[Zguy28]

4 minutes ago, Busch1724 said:

 

Hence why the lack of investment in education is so glaring. The lack of investment in our public education system, in my opinion, is the root cause as to why we are having many of the issues that we are experiencing as a society. Obviously, it's a much more nuanced and more in depth issue than just education, but the fact is the level at which we all communicate with each other is linked to a dumbing down of our society. 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you (I don't have a full college degree HA! ) but are you saying that not enough people are getting higher ed? What about the stuff I hear about too many college grads, burdened with overwhelming debt, not being able to find a job relevant to it? Or the fact that you have a GOP governor in MD setting aside $15 million a year for tuition help to incentivize lower income (<$120K single parent/$150K two parent combined) families to stay in state and use community college? Or are you talking about K-12?

[Busch1724]

27 minutes ago, Zguy28 said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you (I don't have a full college degree HA! ) but are you saying that not enough people are getting higher ed? What about the stuff I hear about too many college grads, burdened with overwhelming debt, not being able to find a job relevant to it? Or the fact that you have a GOP governor in MD setting aside $15 million a year for tuition help to incentivize lower income (<$120K single parent/$150K two parent combined) families to stay in state and use community college? Or are you talking about K-12?

 

No just talking in general about investment in our public education system k-12. Teachers need paid more to bring in the best and brightest, funding inequalities within states from district to district, educational supports, increasing critical thinking skills, increasing problem solving skills, preparing students better for careers (investment in more Career and Technical Education), and way too many other things to mention. Getting off topic here, but society in general needs an intellectual movement to improve what is ailing us. 

[tshile]

34 minutes ago, Zguy28 said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you (I don't have a full college degree HA! ) but are you saying that not enough people are getting higher ed?

 

I agree with him - I cannot speak for him, but I will explain my interpretation that I agree with, he may have intended it differently.

 

When I talk about being stupid/dumb/lacking education, in the sense of our society and how we engage (or don't...) with our politics and the people around us, I'm not talking about having a college degree. Or really any sort of academic achievement.

 

I'm speaking more about thinking critically. Striving to be objective, or at least to recognize there is such a thing as objective and how you do and don't meet it. Understanding how you fit into your neighborhood, your country, this world. Not being afraid to admit there are people who are smarter than you, that you don't know all there is to know about what is relevant to a topic.  Being honest about yourself - recognizing when something is your fault, when it's not, and how you can do better next time, instead of constantly framing yourself as the victim in every circumstance.

 

Being able to recognize when the information you're reading is bogus, and when it comes from a person/thing that you should at least give the benefit of the doubt to and continue exploring the topic to verify. 

 

All of these things should be part of growing up, they should be fundamental parts of grade school education and what parents pass down to their children (along with balancing a checkbook and understanding wants vs needs and how to responsibly borrow money)

 

If Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor doesn't make you do this:

 

you've got an intellect issue, in my book.

 

 

I know highly educated people who have falling into the pizzagate realm of stupidity. 

 

Critical thinking is gone. Introspection seems gone. At this point, I find it hard to believe honest with one's self even exists for many.

Edited June 27, 2018 by tshile

[Fresh8686]

4 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

I'm with you. I was speaking to that in the thread about the GOP members being harassed. While I personally do not like them, and I think it's the least of what they deserve, the long term ramifications of it being socially acceptable to harass politicians whose policies you do not like while they are having dinner are not good in my book.

 

And what does such commentary bring? A bunch of botherism squawking, people complaining that the left is held to a different standard (which they should hope they are, i mean ffs the GOP's standard is trash. you want to be held to a standard of trash?), and justification. 

 

It's hard to have hope in things getting better long term when all we're seeing are people justifying/enjoying/furthering going worse and worse on every level. 

 

I don't know how you reach people on any of these issues. How do you convince people who use anger to justify their actions that they need to be better than that? How do you convince people who aren't smart enough to realize they're being duped, to stop being duped?

 

Especially now that we've ingrained in our society that you have some right to your own opinion and that said opinion is deserving of respect regardless of the merits of the opinion? We've allowed everyone to define what facts are for themselves.  You can't educate people - because anything that runs contrary to their viewpoint is deemed non-factual. 

 

We have no common view on what objective opinion is anymore, and any effort to establish one is met with the same nonsense all the time.

 

I think It was PeterMP, but it may have been PF Chang, who has spent quite a few posts, over different threads, talking about how the only way to get through to these people is to first establish a personal relationship and then leverage that into the conversation. I'll that's correct. I also think that while it's great for talking to your parents, it's impossible to scale that up to society as a whole.

 

Intellectualism is dead. Our people don't want it, our leaders don't need to have it. The masses are ignorant and dumb. And they enjoy being so.

I feel you and I'm glad you brought up those videos I think PeterMP posted a couple times. One common complaint I heard from conservatives about why Hillary lost, that I agree with is that she didn't invest in the ground game or go out and talk to people in certain states. You have to get personal with people in order to prime them for accepting new information that runs counter to previously held beliefs. They have to feel you and in some degree trust you or at least view you as having some intellectual honesty. A couple of posts and memes shot back and forth through facebook or a forum is not going to cut it.

I guess we can call it leadership or teaching, but the practice takes time. It takes actually sitting with a person and asking why do you think this way, and being a trustworthy mirror to those people when their internalized information falters. However, it also means challenging and instilling proper methods of communication and intellectual rigor, because many people do not communicate or take in information in good faith.

Intellectualism is like eating your vegetables. It's something that certain people only come to appreciate in time, once they can handle the mental stress of higher levels of complexity and acquire the self-restraint to enlarge and enrich the process of how they come to conclusions about things. And I think we have to approach it in that way when it comes to how deeply people may or may not think or research. We let too much shallow, sugar-high modes of information take up the majority of discourse.
 

[tshile]

1 minute ago, Fresh8686 said:

It takes actually sitting with a person and asking why do you think this way, and being a trustworthy mirror to those people when their internalized information falters.

 

You're right. Though I feel like it's a maddening task right now.

 

 

[Going Commando]

1 hour ago, No Excuses said:

As a result we as a country are happily dumb yet totally isolated and lonely. I envy the sense of community and how cities are structured when I travel around Europe and Asia.

 

I just want to parse this a little by specifying that we're ignorant, not dumb.  Not stupid.  We're no more stupid than anyone else.

 

But I've thought about how isolated we are as a people too.  It's the immigrant mindset. You know how Freud talked about the "oceanic feeling?"  For the American, it's the continental frontier feeling.  We believe we're on our own and caveat emptor in every part of your life and, beyond that, we believe that this is virtuous and natural.  We love this about ourselves.  And it's led us to creating a society that is disgustingly stratified and exploitative.  And has been since the beginning.

 

And on top of this, part of our Anglo cultural heritage is that we are a particularly ethnocentric people.  It's so hard for us to change and come together at the societal level.

[Llevron]

22 minutes ago, tshile said:

I'm speaking more about thinking critically. Striving to be objective, or at least to recognize there is such a thing as objective and how you do and don't meet it. Understanding how you fit into your neighborhood, your country, this world. Not being afraid to admit there are people who are smarter than you, that you don't know all there is to know about what is relevant to a topic.  Being honest about yourself - recognizing when something is your fault, when it's not, and how you can do better next time, instead of constantly framing yourself as the victim in every circumstance.

 

Being able to recognize when the information you're reading is bogus, and when it comes from a person/thing that you should at least give the benefit of the doubt to and continue exploring the topic to verify. 

 

I cant agree with this more. I dont know why this isnt happening though. I know being honest to yourself is one of the hardest things to do, but there has to be something other than 'its just hard' going on. I dont understand it myself. 

[tshile]

8 minutes ago, Llevron said:

 

I cant agree with this more. I dont know why this isnt happening though. I know being honest to yourself is one of the hardest things to do, but there has to be something other than 'its just hard' going on. I dont understand it myself. 

 

Every "group" has multiple megaphones pointed at them, one is telling them it's all their fault and another is telling them none of it is their fault.  There are others, but those two seem to dominate the landscape. So many people pick one of the two, and one makes you feel like **** about yourself and the other seems to at least be "on your side" to some degree but results in seeing everything as a victim.

 

Immigrants. Every race. Gender. Education level. Part of the country. Culture or religious values.

 

You name it, for the most part each group has those two things pointing at them. 

 

Hell, we see a similar thing in sports. We shrug it off because it's sports.

 

Harder to shrug off when your skin color, gender, culture, etc makes you the target.

 

 

 

Edited June 27, 2018 by tshile

[The Evil Genius]

Maybe part of it is because we have a major news network discussing whether pandas are oversexed and evil rather than say..the latest Trump catastrophes? When people sole source their news, they become unintentionally dumb.

Edited June 27, 2018 by The Evil Genius

[tshile]

4 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

Maybe part of it is because we have a major news network discussing whether pandas are oversexed and evil rather than say..the latest Trump catastrophes?

 

we need our dose of dogs performing CPR, but it needs to be appropriately weighted

 

 

[Busch1724]

tShile hit my point square on the head. The fact that when President Obama's birth certificate was an issue points to part of this problem. He also mentioned Pizza Gate. The fact that guys like  Trump and other birthers can go on Fox News and spread such a claim after it was denounced while having several million people still believe it to be true is an education issue. Sure one could claim it's an echo chamber issue, but it's an intelligence issue. Ignorance is an intelligence issue. Not knowing what is and what isn't a quality source of information is an intelligence issue. The fact people are not smart enough to parse those issues accordingly is concerning. 

 

In government and history classes, there is often a focus on facts that are able to be looked up on Google instead of studying the major impacts of policy, wars, triggering factors in society, and so on. That is where learning critical thinking skills and problem solving is key. Dismissing something that challenges your sensibilities as nonsense instead of understanding verifiable information is something that can be taught and practiced. However, as a society, we consume trash and as a result get trash in return. 

[Llevron]

Messaging is a huge part of it and I have always understood that. I never applied it like you just did though @tshile. You are right, you really cannot expect someone to meet you halfway when your calling them monsters (racist) to start the conversation. Conversely, I think just ignoring horrible inhumane behavior does just as much damage so you have to call it out at some point. 

 

This **** isnt easy. Even when you know you are right you have to be extra careful. I dont know what the solution is at all. I feel like identifying the problem and having everyone understand it HAS to be the first step for us as a community before we can get to fixing it. 

5 minutes ago, Busch1724 said:

tShile hit my point square on the head. The fact that when President Obama's birth certificate was an issue points to part of this problem. He also mentioned Pizza Gate. The fact that guys like  Trump and other birthers can go on Fox News and spread such a claim after it was denounced while having several million people still believe it to be true is an education issue. Sure one could claim it's an echo chamber issue, but it's an intelligence issue. Ignorance is an intelligence issue. Not knowing what is and what isn't a quality source of information is an intelligence issue. The fact people are not smart enough to parse those issues accordingly is concerning. 

 

Question is how do you fix it? Stop Fox? There are laws for that stuff. Implore education and people will call you elitist. No right answer here. 

[Busch1724]

15 minutes ago, Llevron said:

Question is how do you fix it? Stop Fox? There are laws for that stuff. Implore education and people will call you elitist. No right answer here. 

 

You have to change people's perception of education. The fact that a word like elitist has a negative connotation is concerning. In general, 99.9% of everybody wants to do better. In education, teaching tolerance would be helpful. If the news industry would reflect on their role on how society is playing out and espouse characteristics that are tolerant, open-minded, and not sound-bite driven; people will follow. I often use this analogy when it comes to leadership and society: look at a sports team. If a coach is a yelling at officials and generally acting out of control, the players generally act the same way. A stoic presence that doesn't get too high or too low, the players typically act in the same manner. 

 

If the news engine in our country wasn't run by fear and outrage, people would calm the hell down and actually listen. These news channels can have meaningful, deep conversations without talking over each other and occasional yelling. 

 

Last, we also have a real problem with people separating opinion pieces and fact based articles (pertaining to earlier posts of mine). People will take what people like Hannity, Carlson, Maddow, Tood, etc. and consider it fact instead of opinion. 

Edited June 27, 2018 by Busch1724
To add last point...