The smug style in American liberalism

Trump's supporters realize that your sort only has contempt for them and therefore will never be able to represent them properly, fairly, and with respect for their real needs. They realize you do not see them as real people with potential and awareness perhaps equivalent to your own, but with differing fortunes and goals in life.

Trump's supporters realize the above could be true of Trump as well, but see a convergence of their need for decent domestic employment for all ability and educational levels with Trump's desire for a return to more self sufficiency and internal capital growth for the US; and they also like his belief in a more level playing field not mined with legal twists favoring the already-monied.

Those of us raised among relatives that were working class due to early disadvantages from immigration, losses during the Depression, or family health issues also see some of these issues more clearly than those members of the upper middle class and their hangers-on that have never seen the other side of the political stances taken by some on here. There are reasons for their stances that have nothing to do with stupidity, and claims to that effect are simply revealing how very out of touch the more advantaged members of the upper middle class and their hangers-on in the US are. This is particularly bothersome considering the precarious fiscal edge the upper middle class is now itself perched upon, thanks to the advancements in computer science, which may soon make much of that social class itself irrelevant.

Those of enlightened self interest would be better off coming to the support of those who have already been disadvantaged, because you could be next. You would be more empowered by doing this now rather than later, when it might be too late historically to achieve the shift. The most wealthy do not appear to take seriously into consideration the interests of those they consider to be potential future competition, but only those they can count on as the peons of their domain...and populations made nonproductive and dependent on governmental largesse will, in times of predictable scarcity, become seen as redundant, superfluous, and dispensable.

 

Here,, fixed it for you.

 

that was just an amazing article, kudos to finding and posting it... after reading the replies in this thread, I'm not sure a single person read that entire article, its very very long but what an amazing read and recount of the history and actions and why people are so divisive today, its just spelled out for everyone who actually reads it...

in another thread I quoted two sections from the vox article that I thought summed it all up...

but once again, what an absolutely stunningly well written article...

 

Liberals want to run your life through collectivism, everyone is a boring robot.

Conservatives just want the Government to (*)(*)(*)(*) off so they can live free

 

Liberals are always proposing crap like Obamacare, telling us which doctors and hospitals we can use. For every one proposed "conservative" law, there are dozens of pernicious liberal laws forced on us.

Liberals want to expand government's control over us. Conservatives want small government. This difference explains all of our political chaos.

 

You're looking at a pretty big picture there oliver but if you take a few more steps back you'll see who's really running things, the international banks.
This whole liberal/conservative thing is just a tool used to divide, separate and herd the masses, make em easier to control and stuff.
I'm scratching my head over this whole Trump thing thou, if a hillbilly from Ar has this figured out, a billionaire from NY must have fer sure.

The media is sure playin right into it thou but they are for the most part made up of clueless egotistical airheads with handsome or pretty faces who are owned by one of the international banks.

If the banks can't stop Trump with the handsome/pretty faces of the media they'll have to bump him off, surely he knows this.The only thing I can come up with right now is they're using Trump for some other reason, like maybe a diversion or something like a magician or a shell game.

 

1. I'm neither a Republican, nor socially conservative. 2. The Republicans control the House, Senate, statehouses in many states, several of which are leading the country in various economic indicia, those aren't "losers," so who is it again who is "describing their opponents in unrealistic terms?" Irony. 3. I stand by my estimation of what is mistakenly called "liberalism" today as you didn't contradict or deny it in any meaningful way. 4. Anyone evaluating your claim that the left is based in the "intellectual" as opposed to the "resentful" can spend a mere hour or so reading this forum and perusing the garbage press of the LW sewer pipe to know that's absurd. Anyone who takes things like Salon, Huffington Post, et al seriously enough to constantly found threads on such garbage here is -far- from being any kind of "intellectual."

 

Thanks to Darkbane for reading and understanding the entire article! In the meantime, however, the elites strike back:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/28...up-against-ignorant-masses-trump-2016-brexit/

VOICE
It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses
The Brexit has laid bare the political schism of our time. It’s not about the left vs. the right; it’s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.
BY JAMES TRAUBJUNE 28, 2016facebooktwittergoogle-plusredditLinkedIn email
It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses
I was born in 1954, and until now I would have said that the late 1960s was the greatest period of political convulsion I have lived through. Yet for all that the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggle changed American culture and reshaped political parties, in retrospect those wild storms look like the normal oscillations of a relatively stable political system. The present moment is different. Today’s citizen revolt — in the United States, Britain, and Europe — may upend politics as nothing else has in my lifetime.

In the late 1960s, elites were in disarray, as they are now — but back then they were fleeing from kids rebelling against their parents’ world; now the elites are fleeing from the parents.In the late 1960s, elites were in disarray, as they are now — but back then they were fleeing from kids rebelling against their parents’ world; now the elites are fleeing from the parents. Extremism has gone mainstream. One of the most brazen features of the Brexit vote was the utter repudiation of the bankers and economists and Western heads of state who warned voters against the dangers of a split with the European Union. British Prime Minister David Cameron thought that voters would defer to the near-universal opinion of experts; that only shows how utterly he misjudged his own people.


Both the Conservative and the Labour parties in Britain are now in crisis. The British have had their day of reckoning; the American one looms. If Donald Trump loses, and loses badly (forgive me my reckless optimism, but I believe he will) the Republican Party may endure a historic split between its know-nothing base and its K Street/Chamber of Commerce leadership class. The Socialist government of France may face a similar fiasco in national elections next spring: Polls indicate that President François Hollande would not even make it to the final round of voting. Right-wing parties all over Europe are clamoring for an exit vote of their own.

Yes, it’s possible that all the political pieces will fly up into the air and settle down more or less where they were before, but the Brexit vote shows that shocking change isn’t very shocking anymore. Where, then, could those pieces end up? Europe is already pointing in one direction. In much of Europe, far-right nativist parties lead in the polls. So far, none has mustered a majority, though last month Norbert Hofer, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, which traffics in Nazi symbolism, came within a hair of winning election as president. Mainstream parties of the left and right may increasingly combine forces to keep out the nationalists. This has already happened in Sweden, where a right-of-center party serves as the minority partner to the left-of-center government. If the Socialists in France do in fact lose the first round, they will almost certainly support the conservative Republicans against the far-right National Front.

Perhaps these informal coalitions can survive until the fever breaks. But the imperative of cohabitation could also lead to genuine realignment. That is, chunks of parties from the left and right of center could break away to form a different kind of center, defending pragmatism, meliorism, technical knowledge, and effective governance against the ideological forces gathering on both sides. It’s not hard to imagine the Republican Party in the United States — and perhaps the British Conservatives should Brexit go terribly wrong — losing control of the angry, nationalist rank and file and reconstituting themselves as the kind of Main Street, pro-business parties they were a generation ago, before their ideological zeal led them into a blind alley. That may be their only alternative to irrelevance.

The issue, at bottom, is globalization. Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces and thus the demand that someone, somehow, restore the status quo ante. It may seem strange that the reaction has come today rather than immediately after the economic crisis of 2008, but the ebbing of the crisis has led to a new sense of stagnation. With prospects of flat growth in Europe and minimal income growth in the United States, voters are rebelling against their dismal long-term prospects. And globalization means culture as well as economics: Older people whose familiar world is vanishing beneath a welter of foreign tongues and multicultural celebrations are waving their fists at cosmopolitan elites. I was recently in Poland, where a far-right party appealing to nationalism and tradition has gained power despite years of undeniable prosperity under a centrist regime. Supporters use the same words again and again to explain their vote: “values and tradition.” They voted for Polishness against the modernity of Western Europe.

Perhaps politics will realign itself around the axis of globalization, with the fist-shakers on one side and the pragmatists on the other. The nationalists would win the loyalty of working-class and middle-class whites who see themselves as the defenders of sovereignty. The reformed center would include the beneficiaries of globalization and the poor and non-white and marginal citizens who recognize that the celebration of national identity excludes them.

Of course, mainstream parties of both the left and the right are trying to reach the angry nationalists. Sometimes this takes the form of gross truckling, as when Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking to regain France’s presidency, denounces the “tyranny of minorities” and invokes the “forever France” of an all-white past. From the left, Hillary Clinton has jettisoned her free-trade past to appeal to union members and others who want to protect national borders against the global market. But left and right disagree so deeply about how best to cushion the effects of globalization, and how to deal with the vast influx of refugees and migrants, that even the threat of extremism may not be enough to bring them to make common cause.

The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality.The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality. The Brexit forces won because cynical leaders were prepared to cater to voters’ paranoia, lying to them about the dangers of immigration and the costs of membership in the EU. Some of those leaders have already begun to admit that they were lying. Donald Trump has, of course, set a new standard for disingenuousness and catering to voters’ fears, whether over immigration or foreign trade or anything else he can think of. The Republican Party, already rife with science-deniers and economic reality-deniers, has thrown itself into the embrace of a man who fabricates realities that ignorant people like to inhabit.

Did I say “ignorant”? Yes, I did. It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”? Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history. If so, the party of accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality, and its enablers among those who know better. If that is the coming realignment, we should embrace it.

Photo credit: SCOTT OLSON/Getty Images

Correction, June 28, 2016: The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Norbert Hofer, narrowly lost the country’s presidential election. A previous version misstated that he was running for the position of prime minister.

 

More from the elites:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...trump-and-the-kkk_us_577573b5e4b00a3ae4cd6dc6

THE BLOG
No Tea Party: Brexit, Trump, and the KKK
06/30/2016 04:35 pm ET | Updated 1 hour ago

Samuel C. Spitale
Los Angeles-based journalist, storyteller, and humorist

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY VIA GETTY IMAGES
Brexit represents a growing trend in worldwide populist movements that threaten to undermine democracy, both in Europe and in the U.S.

In the U.K., a small, wealthy, white, rightwing upperclass has deliberately stoked its country’s xenophobia into a belligerent nationalism that now threatens its very existence.

The usual conditions of growing inequality, rising poverty, and poor economic opportunity allow such demagogues to manipulate the masses to further their own financial and political agenda.

What’s dangerous is that this race-baited anger has been fueled here at home by Donald Trump, whom my German friends refer to as America’s Hitler. The exploited anti-immigration paranoia in the U.K. parallels directly to the flames Trump has been fanning since he began his presidential bid.

Ian Haney Lopez, constitutional law scholar specializing in the evolution of racism, has penned an eye-opening account in his book Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. He reveals that since the civil rights movement, racism didn’t vanish; it simply went underground, and surfaced through coded language and political policy. These racial appeals carefully manipulate hostility toward nonwhites by repeated blasts about criminals and welfare cheats, illegal aliens and sharia law.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s exactly what the GOP and right-wing media have been doing the entire Obama administration right here in America.

Donald Trump has just removed the mask of the Tea Party.

Writes Lopez, “Inextricably combining conservatism and racism, the [modern day] Tea Party was almost wholly a creature of right-wing dog whistle politics...the movement reflected the confluence of four forces:
-First, the anger and fear of everyday white folks – persons whose political conservatism was directly molded by racially infected fears of a liberal government run by a black president.

- Second, opportunistic Republicans seeking a new label for a damaged brand.

- Third, right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers, with their well-funded propaganda machines.

- Finally, Fox News and the right-wing media machine which promoted the movement and also helped racially agitate and misinform its soldiers.”

How do we know the Tea Party is coded with racial hostility?

Because their rationalizations are only Obama-related. Consider:

- Tea Partiers despise Obamacare, but when it was called Romneycare and enacted by Massachusetts in 2006, it garnered no such animosity.

- Tea Partiers blame Obama for the $80 billion automobile bailout, even though George W. Bush started the bailout before he left office with $17.4 billion. It was also President Bush who signed a $700 billion bailout to the financial industry during the 2008 financial crisis, but the uproar wasn’t manufactured until Obama took office in 2009, even though he reduced the bailout amount to $475 billion. Furthermore, there was no uproar when Reagan bailed out Wall Street in the 1980s.

- Under the Obama administration, Tea Partiers suddenly decided it was time to protest America’s growing debt crisis, particularly Obama’s $6.494 trillion (a 70% increase) in national debt. They had no such problem with George W. Bush’s increase of $5.849 trillion (a 101% increase), or the Iraq War bill of $1.7 trillion (fought on credit), or Ronald Reagan’s $1.9 trillion (a staggering 190% increase). By comparison, Clinton increased the debt by only $1.396 trillion (a 32% increase), and George H.W. Bush increased by $1.55 trillion (a 54% increase).

 

So much slanted misinformation.

Unlike Democrats, Conservatives and the Tea Party are race-neutral. They are not obsessed with a person's race. That's a liberal thing. Most conservatives are in the private sector; they only care about one color ... green. They want to make money.

Conservatives in Texas weren't upset at Romneycare because it didn't affect them. We never even heard of Romneycare until Romney ran for president.

Obama took the blame for the auto bailout because he expanded it way beyond what it was supposed to be. And he screwed investors (Republicans) in favor of labor in the government takeover of GM.

Conservatives went after Obama on the debt because he's increased it more than the prior 43 presidents combined. And while Bush spent money on our defense, Obama's spending simply lined the pockets of his friends. Obamacare was never about health; it's always just been a tool to redistribute income.

 

I just wanted to add that anyone seeking a laugh should read some of this Lopez' "scholarship." He is a professional race-baiter, that's all he is, and I am more of a lion tamer than that person is a "Constitutional scholar" or any type of scholar whatsoever. Berkeley Law School is really all you need to know there. I have read some of it when LW here inevitably end up googling up his garbage and mindlessly cut-pasting it here. For just one example of many, he sets up George Wallace as the progenitor of the fabricated "Southern Strategy" to attract racists into the GOP, yet Wallace was a RADICAL POPULIST DEMOCRAT and never ever ran as a Republican. Nixon openly REBUKED Wallace at every opportunity in national press article after article, yet somehow mysteriously decided to mimic Wallace's segregationist politics... while desegregating the schools and doing more for blacks than any prior US president.

 

Recently I went through the process of researching and then selecting a new doctor - primary care provider is the term the insurance company used. I was able to pick exactly which doctor, which program, and which hospital system I wanted. If you can't get the doctor you want perhaps the fault lays somewhere other than with Obama Care.

 

For many decades, the list of wealthiest congressmen was dominated by Democrats. Think Hanoi John Kerry. Billionaire George Soros is of course not a congressman, but he has been pulling BozoBama's strings for many years. Soros is a former Nazi sympathizer and now is a socialist.
Then there is billionaire leftist and former husband of Hanoi Jane Fonda, Ted Turner.

I don't begrudge anybody their wealth. Only liberals do that, and the only wealthy ones they begrudge are of course conservatives.
Class warfare and race warfare are part and parcel of the smug style of liberals, who use word games, not truth.

 

Liberals are social anarchists, economic tyrants and military isolationists. Conservatives are social tyrants, economic anarchists and military hawks.

Obviously im exaggerating to make a point, which is to say there isnt much common ground as world perspectives are polar opposites.

 

Soros? that's some crazy stuff. I like Dems rich people who want to help the country, not themselves. Let's hear some Dems lies- always a good laugh...

 

Liberal smugness is epitomized by Barack Obama, the Clintons, Al Gore, *feminists* (sic), homosexuals, blacks, college kiddies, public educators, scientists on the public dole for research billions, most recently global warming - pardon me, "climate change".

Having just heard about another fatal attack by a grizzly bear, I recalled the infamous case of Timothy Treadwell, born Timothy Dexter. I was sure that this smug winner of a Darwin Award was a liberal. There was not the least doubt about it. Wikipedia reports that smugboy:
- was born in New York, a thoroughly liberal state, which of course elected Hillary Clinton as a senator
- was an alcoholic, like Ted Kennedy, a heroin addict, and a pathological liar, like the Clintons, the Obamas, and most all liberals
- claimed he was a British orphan born in Australia
- ultimately killed not only himself but also one of his girlfriends, Amie Huegenard, by his smug, know-it-all conduct among dozens of grizzly bears in the Katmai Peninsula of Alaska.

I saw smugboy on the Letterman show, as he replied to Letterman's question, "What if we read about you becoming bear crap?"
Smugboy: "I'd be proud to end up as bear crap."

The saddest note of this story is that he took Amie with him, in an extremely grisly and horrible manner.

 

What a huge pile a steaming garbage that post was.

 

Democrats may find their own lies amusing, but I do not.

Dem Lie: Republicans are racist
Dem Lie: Republicans are greedy and rich
Dem Lie: Republicans are misogynistic and homophobic
Dem Lie: Republicans are anti-science, and want to poison the air and the water
Dem Lie: Republicans are coming after our children and our seniors (Former speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill)
Dem Lie: "Compassionate conservatives", ha ha ha ha ha ha
Dem Lie: We CARE about the poor, and people of color, and minorities, and the environment, and science, and women's "health care", and......

- - - Updated - - -

Democrats may find their own lies amusing, but I do not.

Dem Lie: Republicans are racist
Dem Lie: Republicans are greedy and rich
Dem Lie: Republicans are misogynistic and homophobic
Dem Lie: Republicans are anti-science, and want to poison the air and the water
Dem Lie: Republicans are coming after our children and our seniors (Former speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill)
Dem Lie: "Compassionate conservatives", ha ha ha ha ha ha
Dem Lie: We CARE about the poor, and people of color, and minorities, and the environment, and science, and women's "health care", and......

 

They can't argue their position logically, so they resort to smugness, which is just a variant on the age old ad hominem. Not explicit, but certainly implied.

Their problem is that they can't formulate actual arguments, which is why they prefer to attack the opposing ideology, rather than define and defend their own.

The best way to shut these idiots up is to take them to task for what they say. So much of it is sarcasm, so all you have to do is take it as their actual argument. When they start saying racist stuff and pretending that it's somebody else saying it, don't fall for that.

They said it, so let them own it.

That's when they abandon the battleground altogether. They are incapable of arguments, and this is shown time and time and time and time again. Smugness, sarcasm, and a refusal to lay their own arguments down on the table like any normal man is willing to do.

and they can't do that.

 

A great example of what I just wrote. No argumentation, because that's just not a possibility. Just an attack on somebody else's idea, rather than attempting to be of some use by providing an alternate theory.

The problem is, their arguments have all been tried, and have failed. So now, it's just attack, attack, attack.

They're best ignored, unless providing some usefulness as an example of what to expect from our friends on the left.

 

Highly educated people who think for a living? That is the definition of intellectuals. Liberalism grew out the natural philosophies that became known as the Enlightenment. It was an intellectual movement.

Not sure who it is that is so resentful. I suspect it is just one of those things that one lies to themself about in an attempt to make oneself feel as if one has an advantage over one's opponent.

Ever take a look at demographics? Over the past 40 years or so there has been a steady pattern among the wealthiest Americans. The numbers of those supporting Republicans has been diminishing while those supporting Democrats has been increasing. All the new Billionaires tend to lean heavily liberal while the old right wingers are dying off. Universal healthcare is seen as a benefit to the new captians of industry.

 

I used to think like you about the banks. That is why I set my business up to be self financing - so I don' t have to borrow from a bank.

However I think that there is a significant difference between predominantly Republican controlled areas and predominantly Democratic controlled areas. I often wonder if when conservative types complain about the over reach of the government that their perspective comes from their local Republican controlled governments.

I live in an upper middle class neighborhood where no Republican has a chance of winning any election. I'm very happy with my local Democratic dominated government. SometimesbI feel as if I live in paradise. I could never live in one of those hell holes that are so characteristic of Republican rule.

 

Irony. You are confusing classical liberalism with what is mistakenly called liberalism today, but is actually collectivist/central statism. Yeah, by Enlightenment standards, the Tea Party is "liberal" and the Democratic Party, entrenching quasi socialist programs for years and seeking more of the same, is "conservative." Maybe an overview of Empirical philosophy is in order, because you are -badly- misapplying terms. You won't find -any- of what is called "liberal" today in Locke for example.

Resentment politics (Nietzsche actually described it as "ressentiment," somewhat different, but similar as well) identity politics, victimology, all terms originating in Marxist cultural destabilization techniques adopted by today's crony capitalist graft-based machine (community organizers). 1. Identify desired voting bloc. 2. Convince them they are "oppressed" or were in the past (even the far distant past), and that this oppression, not their own responsibility or life choices, is responsible for the "bad things" in their lives. 3. Promise and justify otherwise illicit political action to assuage the "oppression" and punish the "oppressors." This is the force behind all the "wealth inequality," race carding, SJW canards of the LW. It is a potent force for rabble rousing and capturing a low awareness vote, the source of endless insecurity in the LW, which constantly references its (faux) intellectual and ethical high horse.

Yeah, we live in a celebrity cult culture, no argument there. Jay Z (Rachel Ray, Ellen Degeneris, sports celebrities, etc.) knows that Donald Trump will buy 0 tracks, but take $100,000 from Trump and redistribute it and suddenly 10,000 tracks are bought. It really is that simple. Moreover, once people get rich, many tend to pander to that same celebrity mass culture, dependent on mass sales to the masses. Inherited wealth, those who didn't work for it, tend overwhelmingly LW IME also.

 

It's not just American liberalism. It's everywhere. It's here in Australia and the reason why we will probably have three more Prime Ministers before Christmas. It's beautifully summed up by the BBC announcer who asked "Why do these people want it so badly?" after the BREXIT referendum: "these people" were the majority of Britons.

As for why people keep voting against their own interests: thirty years of (Neo)liberal marketing; a highjacked Left; a dearth of progressive alternatives; system justification.

 

See you wasted a whole lot of energy to to tell me how I and my ideas are yet you must be talking to someone else.

You see my liberalism and that of my liberal friends is very much along the lines of the egalitarianism of Thomas Jefferson , even moreso. Your problem lay in that you have confused the Republican demonization of liberals with real liberals. Tea party types want nothing to do with an eqalitarian society - that is why they side with Republicans and buy into the right wing rhetoric.