GOP pundit: "GOP working class communities deserve to die"

[BoberFett]

pretty sure people in those communities aren't commuting to LA to be my maid.

No. Those people lost their jobs because they are globalized out of the country. They were too stupid not to vote for it. They were too stupid to not be single issue voters. They deserve it basically. No worries though. I try to buy American made as much as possible.

Wait... What???

Democrats like the Clintons support free trade agreements. NAFTA, TPP, are you saying that those people are to blame for not voting the party that would have sold them out anyway?

 

[interchange]

Wow. Rat Park made it into this thread somehow. I'm impressed.

I think the argument being made about it, though, is slightly off point. It's not the poverty that matters. It's the sense of community and purpose within a community. It's the sense of being valuable and being valued.

 

[interchange]

Please refrain from being deliberately obtuse. None of that mattered when Mitt & pals offshored Delphi or when Simmons & a lot of other companies got looted & dumped.

It's all abstraction, numbers on the balance sheet.

I don't doubt that there are many business decisions made without due consideration of the human impact of them.

I merely challenge the cumulative relevance of it.

If you would like to defend your position, I would like to understand better in what ways you or people you know have been directly affected by actual large scale unethical business practice.

I can tell you a whole hell of a lot of ways in which myself and people I know have been affected by misperceptions of power, narcissism, money, and lack of caring in their employment relationships.

 

[disappoint]

Fascinating studies - thanks for posting those.



But how? That's the million dollar question. Breaking these cycles seems incredibly hard.

How about if Washington would stop spending ridiculous amounts of resources overseas and spend those resources building infrastructure here instead? Also deincentivize businesses circumventing U.S. laws to protect worker's rights by sending jobs to nations with lax labor laws?

 

[lopri]

So, do GOP'ers agree with Kevin Williamson or not? Will anyone take a principled stand?

I thought so.

 

[disappoint]

I can tell you a whole hell of a lot of ways in which myself and people I know have been affected by misperceptions of power, narcissism, money, and lack of caring in their employment relationships.

Please do tell.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Not at all, the voices tell me I'm just fine.

Never trust the voices. They lie.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The question presented to this forum's GOP'ers by the column is: Do you agree with Kevin Williamson, that these working class voters are losers and their communities need to die off?

If you agree, then you are against your party's front-runner in presidential primary.
If you disagree, then your rant against liberals rings hollow.

It appears the GOP'ers on this forum do not seem conflicted at all by whatever position they take (no surprise there), but that is the dilemma that some GOP thinkers are trying to solve. Mindless attacking liberals, sadly, does not get you anywhere when the fight is happening inside the party.

But I'd say that the fight within the party is simply a manifestation of a logical bankruptcy in what GOP'ers regard as (a) a problem set and their rank-ordering and (b) a policy set deficient in addressing the other side's perception of a problem set.

Listening to the debates, I hear a constant -- no less variegated mantra:

"Obama's administration has damaged this country."
"The terr-rists are at the Gates."
"We're over-regulated." [And Rick Perry's drivel of 2012 for eliminating Commerce, Education and EPA is the simplistic solution.]
"They're bringing rapists. They're bringing drugs."
"You can trust as Muslim to be an Islamic Fundamentalist. You can't trust a Muslim who says he isn't."

All the statistics piling up show a blue-collar white working-class component supporting Trump. To them, their opinion is as good as anyone else's, and if someone became proficient or knowledgeable about -- say, several fields, especially in a "liberal" university (all universities are "liberal" by that yardstick) -- it's just more gibberish.

This shows itself in Climate Change denial, scapegoating the Federal level, scapegoating undocumented people, looney-toons notions about "getting rid of the Federal Reserve," abolishing Social Security and other clap-trap.

And there is an abject failure in accounting for the "real" history of the last 70 years. The "real" history of the last 70 years seems to evidence the sources of the "betrayal" these folks feel by the Establishment GOP cabal.

What do you get, when you strike the trout-fly of vote-getting issues, and ignore the industrial influences which have steered the course of this country over a much longer period? You betrayed yourself.

Politics is dirty business. To cobble together a voting block, one needs to make compromises. But the excesses of Abramoff, Randy Cunningham, Dennis Kozlowski, Ken Lay and the Halliburton kingpins (including Hunt Oil) who boosted the Dubya presidency -- those are only more recent examples.

So I see this as a problem -- especially: this "white blue-collar working class" GOP supporter of Trump is ignoring key factors in wise leadership choices. Particularly -- Character and psychological fitness for office.

The notion that Trump is a narcissist simply bounces off his voter base, who assume that this is just another political smear such as those their leaders (variously, Palin, Trump, Cruz and members of Congress) have thrown at Hillary -- Benghazi, the e-mail and server frenzy and so forth.

Trump eventually got on stage recently to say (I paraphrase -- hoping for accuracy): "What is it they don't like about me? Oh! OK! I've got a lousy personality. Soooo whaaa-at!?"

Narcissism is one thing. Narcissistic Personality Disorder -- occurring in maybe 10% of the general population and a somewhat larger percentage in certain fields like Hollywood -- is another.

Your typical Trump supporter would probably say "That's all a bunch of Liberal psychobabble." But it's not psychobabble, and it's not particularly Liberal.

You have the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and lemmings going off a cliff as another metaphor. We'd just hope that the lemmings don't pull the rest of us down with their abject worship of someone with privilege they don't have, square-peg-round-hole logic, and fear-mongering.

Flint, Michigan should be a wake-up call to people who've denied their own self-interest in their followship of a GOP dominated by industrialists (not too different than Trump, but different in that they don't like the spotlight.)

Let's pull one from Abe Lincoln: You can be Right about all things some of the time, and you can be Right about some things all of the time, but you can't be Right about Everything all of the time.

The latter prospect usually derives from adherence to a simplistic ideology or belief system -- some of the basic principles of which this Trump component lacks a full understanding -- or even any understanding.

In 2003, in a trip through Oregon at 2AM, I met a gas-station attendant caked in grease and black crud, who could expound at length about LBJ and the history of the Vietnam War. I knew a truck-driver who was an avid oil-painter, reader, and "fine-music" aficionado.

But -- I'm sorry. Joe the Plumber, Amy Kramer, and a pile of others I've heard in the Trump focus groups -- if not missing a few screws upstairs -- are factually and historically challenged.

That's my elitist pronouncement.

 

[lopri]

But I'd say that the fight within the party is simply a manifestation of a logical bankruptcy in what GOP'ers regard as (a) a problem set and their rank-ordering and (b) a policy set deficient in addressing the other side's perception of a problem set.

I would add (c) False propaganda that demonize the other side by any means necessary. National review is one of the outlets that engaged in that maneuver until very recently.

 

[Jhhnn]

I would add (c) False propaganda that demonize the other side by any means necessary. National review is one of the outlets that engaged in that maneuver until very recently.

I doubt that they've quit. It's who they are, who they've always been.

 

[lopri]

National Review now posted online the full magazine article Williamson wrote.

Chaos in the Family, Chaos in the State: The White Working Class’s Dysfunction

 

[BoberFett]

Never trust the voices. They lie.

They've never steered me wrong before. They told me the perfect hiding place for the body.

 

[interchange]

I pay attention to both conservative and liberal media. Both sides are biased. Conservative media tends to pander to people's fear, anger, and mistrust of government. There is a common tactic of taking knowingly biased or flat out paid for data and construing it as objective truth. And the emphasis is on how liberals are bad with very little content of what conservatives are doing that is good. Liberal media tends to present stories with the appearance of very little direct political involvement that very clearly tie to social/cultural/economic beliefs which have clear relation to politics. Within these stories there is injection of doubt through questions or discussion. However, the story itself has a clear alignment to liberal agendas, and the doubt injected does not invalidate the principle being represented, so it presents an appearance of objectivity.

 

[interchange]

Please do tell.

Only got a few minutes, so I'll start off with this one:
Growing up, my mom was a homemaker and dad a shoe salesman. My mom became a caretaker when my grandparents passed away. Her experience with the lack of good care for them led her to use the inheritance to get a loan to open an assisted living home. My mom was a pretty terrible businessperson, but mostly she did not have the heart to kick out a resident in need because family abandoned them and stopped paying. During the ~5 years we were open, she had 8 days where she did not physically go to work. She never paid herself 1 penny for those 5 years, and the only reason the business survived that long was because of debt to family members.

But of course she was the rich white business owner who didn't care about her residents or her staff, who only wanted to make money. Who couldn't raise their wages because she didn't care. Who had to interrogate staff about things like stealing when they would never do anything like that. Yet, food that wasn't being cooked for residents disappeared regularly from the pantry. Nearly every time she was able to find the thief and fire them, another one took their place. We were sued because a resident died and the family blamed us. That family who sued us? They were one of the ones that hadn't payed us in about a year. In that year, they had visited their mother about 3 times total. She regularly had to defend herself from inspectors because she refused to bribe them.

Yeah, my mom sure was a white devil who didn't care about her residents or her employees. Just like everyone else out there who has power over you.

I know these people exist. But let me tell you, the reason why I am in my job is because every day I interact with people who have a vast array experiences from CEO to homeless, illiterate and, yes, hearing voices. What I have learned? Everyone is the damn same. There are bad people out there, but I haven't met very many. Yet, everyone else I have met has been at some level pissed off that no one cared about the problems that they faced. You can tell me all you want about how bad someone is screwing you over, but if you can't say that you have talked with them and tried to understand their life and actions on a human level, you are part of the problem.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I 100% agree with the excerpt provided in the op. The GOP can't be truly fiscally conservative and give handouts to white trash.

 

[BurnItDwn]

90+% of GOP voters vote against their interests.

The other <10% are rich enough that voting republican time after time saves them money.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I doubt that they've quit. It's who they are, who they've always been.

Answering Lopri no less than Jhhnn here . . .

Perhaps my omission of a "(c)" as you aptly described comes from being so immersed in both the sea of propaganda and the long-standing history.

Ultimately, the basis for any sound decision-making process is information -- facts -- and logic that attempts to follow symbolic or predicate rules and axioms.

If the only goal is to win at any cost, they'll assassinate the Truth in a campaign to confuse or misdirect a more naïve public and following.

If one can count actual instances or events in which this occurs, it is quantifiable for comparisons. Not having done it that way, I still have a sense of where the worst offenders are coming from -- party-wise.

 

[Sonikku]

90+% of GOP voters vote against their interests.

The other <10% are rich enough that voting republican time after time saves them money.

I would dispute that. The top .1% might save money, but the 9.9% below them? lol no. You could be paying half your income in taxes at the 10%. Might be paying a percent in the single digits in the sub percentile however. When you make 6 figs you're too rich for Dems while still being too poor for Repubs.

 

[Jhhnn]

Only got a few minutes, so I'll start off with this one:
Growing up, my mom was a homemaker and dad a shoe salesman. My mom became a caretaker when my grandparents passed away. Her experience with the lack of good care for them led her to use the inheritance to get a loan to open an assisted living home. My mom was a pretty terrible businessperson, but mostly she did not have the heart to kick out a resident in need because family abandoned them and stopped paying. During the ~5 years we were open, she had 8 days where she did not physically go to work. She never paid herself 1 penny for those 5 years, and the only reason the business survived that long was because of debt to family members.

But of course she was the rich white business owner who didn't care about her residents or her staff, who only wanted to make money. Who couldn't raise their wages because she didn't care. Who had to interrogate staff about things like stealing when they would never do anything like that. Yet, food that wasn't being cooked for residents disappeared regularly from the pantry. Nearly every time she was able to find the thief and fire them, another one took their place. We were sued because a resident died and the family blamed us. That family who sued us? They were one of the ones that hadn't payed us in about a year. In that year, they had visited their mother about 3 times total. She regularly had to defend herself from inspectors because she refused to bribe them.

Yeah, my mom sure was a white devil who didn't care about her residents or her employees. Just like everyone else out there who has power over you.

I know these people exist. But let me tell you, the reason why I am in my job is because every day I interact with people who have a vast array experiences from CEO to homeless, illiterate and, yes, hearing voices. What I have learned? Everyone is the damn same. There are bad people out there, but I haven't met very many. Yet, everyone else I have met has been at some level pissed off that no one cared about the problems that they faced. You can tell me all you want about how bad someone is screwing you over, but if you can't say that you have talked with them and tried to understand their life and actions on a human level, you are part of the problem.

You can't hand wave away the depersonalization inherent in the authoritarian model of remote Capitalist ownership epitomized by hedge funds. Your personal experience has nothing to do with that.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I would dispute that. The top .1% might save money, but the 9.9% below them? lol no. You could be paying half your income in taxes at the 10%. Might be paying a percent in the single digits in the sub percentile however. When you make 6 figs you're too rich for Dems while still being too poor for Repubs.

I gave extra wide berth. If ratio is 10:1 or 100:1 or 1000:1, it is not the point.
My whole point was that its a significant majority who vote against their interests.

 

[disappoint]

Only got a few minutes, so I'll start off with this one:
Growing up, my mom was a homemaker and dad a shoe salesman. My mom became a caretaker when my grandparents passed away. Her experience with the lack of good care for them led her to use the inheritance to get a loan to open an assisted living home. My mom was a pretty terrible businessperson, but mostly she did not have the heart to kick out a resident in need because family abandoned them and stopped paying. During the ~5 years we were open, she had 8 days where she did not physically go to work. She never paid herself 1 penny for those 5 years, and the only reason the business survived that long was because of debt to family members.

But of course she was the rich white business owner who didn't care about her residents or her staff, who only wanted to make money. Who couldn't raise their wages because she didn't care. Who had to interrogate staff about things like stealing when they would never do anything like that. Yet, food that wasn't being cooked for residents disappeared regularly from the pantry. Nearly every time she was able to find the thief and fire them, another one took their place. We were sued because a resident died and the family blamed us. That family who sued us? They were one of the ones that hadn't payed us in about a year. In that year, they had visited their mother about 3 times total. She regularly had to defend herself from inspectors because she refused to bribe them.

Yeah, my mom sure was a white devil who didn't care about her residents or her employees. Just like everyone else out there who has power over you.

I know these people exist. But let me tell you, the reason why I am in my job is because every day I interact with people who have a vast array experiences from CEO to homeless, illiterate and, yes, hearing voices. What I have learned? Everyone is the damn same. There are bad people out there, but I haven't met very many. Yet, everyone else I have met has been at some level pissed off that no one cared about the problems that they faced. You can tell me all you want about how bad someone is screwing you over, but if you can't say that you have talked with them and tried to understand their life and actions on a human level, you are part of the problem.

You should write a book. I, and I think many others would seriously like to read it.

 

[glenn1]

I would dispute that. The top .1% might save money, but the 9.9% below them? lol no. You could be paying half your income in taxes at the 10%. Might be paying a percent in the single digits in the sub percentile however. When you make 6 figs you're too rich for Dems while still being too poor for Repubs.

I disagree, the very core of the Democratic party nowadays are the urban professionals and $250k and below who were previously loyal Republicans and Democrats are attempting to make headways with suburban "swing voters" in that same income bracket. There's a reason why most Democratic tax proposals set the threshold for being "rich" at that level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/opinion/campaign-stops/250000-a-year-is-not-middle-class.html

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dr...heres-why-white-working-class-hates-democrats

 

[interchange]

You can't hand wave away the depersonalization inherent in the authoritarian model of remote Capitalist ownership epitomized by hedge funds. Your personal experience has nothing to do with that.

I shared my personal experience because I was asked to do so.

The very fact that my personal experience does not match the model you describe is exactly the point I am making.

I am asserting that remote Capitalist ownership and hedge funds have little to do with the working class communities referenced by the article on which this thread is based. My personal experience does have a lot to do with those communities.

Let's consider your statement: "depersonalization inherent in the authoritarian model of remote Capitalist ownership epitomized by hedge funds"

So your way of asserting the idea that working class communities are eroded by sweeping capitalist models through depersonalization is to do what exactly? Make sweeping statements in order to discount personal experience. First class irony right there, and illustrative of the point I am making.

Toting the perception of this economic model as the standard of business structure as it relates to real working class communities leads to individuals within this system depersonalizing their human role within their working lives, on both sides (employee and employer). This makes it very easy for employees to feel justified in cutting corners, and it makes it very easy for employers to feel justified in making business-oriented decisions in regards to people who clearly demonstrate their lack of investment in their jobs.

My belief is that most interactions in business relevant to the people who are the subject of our discussion topic deal with interactions between generally well-meaning employees and generally well-meaning employers who have no personal stake in an "authoritarian model of remote Capitalist ownership epitomized by hedge funds". In reality, it is not relevant to my argument how many interactions follow your model, so long as a significant quantity do not.

Let's be honest. Humans do not act based on reality. They act based on their perceptions and how they feel, even many times knowing the real truth is otherwise. Unless reality is exceedingly and pervasively bad, our perceptions and feelings matter far more than the truth.

Edit: the Trump phenomenon should be proof enough that people willingly disregard cognitive knowledge of violation of basic human decency in order to support a bigot who isn't afraid to validate how they feel. How many Trump supporters actually want to build a wall on the Mexican border? Not sure it's meaningful, because I very much doubt that any more than a handful of them were in favor of the idea until Trump was willing to demonstrate he was unfazed by logical rebuttal, because he knew full well he wasn't making a logical argument in the first place.

 

[Mursilis]

90+% of GOP voters vote against their interests.

The other <10% are rich enough that voting republican time after time saves them money.

Seems arrogant to assume you know better than someone else what their interests should be.

 

[VRAMdemon]

I shared my personal experience because I was asked to do so.

The very fact that my personal experience does not match the model you describe is exactly the point I am making.

I am asserting that remote Capitalist ownership and hedge funds have little to do with the working class communities referenced by the article on which this thread is based. My personal experience does have a lot to do with those communities.

Let's consider your statement: "depersonalization inherent in the authoritarian model of remote Capitalist ownership epitomized by hedge funds"

So your way of asserting the idea that working class communities are eroded by sweeping capitalist models through depersonalization is to do what exactly? Make sweeping statements in order to discount personal experience. First class irony right there, and illustrative of the point I am making.

Toting the perception of this economic model as the standard of business structure as it relates to real working class communities leads to individuals within this system depersonalizing their human role within their working lives, on both sides (employee and employer). This makes it very easy for employees to feel justified in cutting corners, and it makes it very easy for employers to feel justified in making business-oriented decisions in regards to people who clearly demonstrate their lack of investment in their jobs.

My belief is that most interactions in business relevant to the people who are the subject of our discussion topic deal with interactions between generally well-meaning employees and generally well-meaning employers who have no personal stake in an "authoritarian model of remote Capitalist ownership epitomized by hedge funds". In reality, it is not relevant to my argument how many interactions follow your model, so long as a significant quantity do not.

Let's be honest. Humans do not act based on reality. They act based on their perceptions and how they feel, even many times knowing the real truth is otherwise. Unless reality is exceedingly and pervasively bad, our perceptions and feelings matter far more than the truth.

Edit: the Trump phenomenon should be proof enough that people willingly disregard cognitive knowledge of violation of basic human decency in order to support a bigot who isn't afraid to validate how they feel. How many Trump supporters actually want to build a wall on the Mexican border? Not sure it's meaningful, because I very much doubt that any more than a handful of them were in favor of the idea until Trump was willing to demonstrate he was unfazed by logical rebuttal, because he knew full well he wasn't making a logical argument in the first place.

The bolded is important to realize..although with the demographic we are speaking of, the innovative/supportive/hard working employee and business can be tossed in the trash heap of todays global economy in a stones throw.

I worked with factory workers in the first years of my apprenticeship straight out of college. In these years working with factory workers I came to a understanding. There are average people with average intellects who enjoy doing one thing over and over and doing it competently and well. They aren't bored by it, they aren't desperate to get away from it. They thrive on it. These are the people who are intimidated by mentally challenging jobs that require mental agility and endless variety. They can be amazingly skilled at the one job they do, can be observant and even innovative. Most of our best process improvements didn't come from our engineering staff, they came from our floor workers. Some of these guys would even go home and build prototypes of gears or motors or some such part for which they had an improvement idea. Incredibly useful and valuable stuff.

These are the type of workers who impressed foreign nations with good old American 'can do' during the two World Wars.

I'd venture to say that some of us here on this board aren't constructed that way, but there are plenty of people who are, and who are very unhappy that this type of work that was so ideal for them is going away and they are having a tough time finding a suitable substitute.