Yeah, this is why people are mad now, and dare I say it exactly explains why Trump won.
The fact that the US is run for the elites isn't something that happened in the last year, its been that way for decades. Which is why when presented with the option of re-electing a dynastic choice for President and a (on the surface) political outsider who captured their rage, people voted for rage.
Trump won in 2016 because a large portion of america was angry and not doing well, largely, the rust belt. Maybe you should go to them and tell them how well off they've been.
Trump won because people are sick of SJWs. He won because people are sick of being called racists when they're not. He won because his opponent was objectively worse. Any other democrat running against him would have probably led to different results, but the bickering between the children turned out in Trump's favor.
It's ridiculous that either one ran. All we can do now is hope Trump does well. It really wouldn't be that hard to do "well"; we haven't had a good president for quite many years.
Again, I think a single-cause model is unhelpful for this. It's an approach used to push an argument, not to understand.
This strikes me as particularly dubious. Trump won because of some decisions made before his grandfather came here? Sure, I guess, if you want. But it's not the only way to analyze it.
"I'm starting to get a feeling that some people on anti-Trump side are just sore losers, and can't accept that he won democratic elections; no, it must be some conspiracy."
Note the key word "some" here. I didn't call the majority of voters (or even of those not voting for Trump) "sore losers". Most people who didn't want Trump to win are sad about the outcome - that's normal. But there's a huge difference between being sad your side lost, and going around talking all the time about how the other side could not possibly have won (and it must be some kind of evil conspiracy).
The "wrong" side won, but the real question isn't how, it's why. As for answering it, 'idlewords says it's a "bug in the operating system of our democracy, one of the many ways that slavery still casts its shadow over American politics". Personally, I disagree. I think this is democracy working as designed, and the whole situation should be a sad lesson about a) what you get when lots of people feel they are treated unfairly, and b) that general population is kind of dumb in aggregate, and nationalism is unfortunately the default state (in-group/out-group).
That, and c) what you get when you let media spin the "Muslim == terrorism" narrative ad nauseam for close to two decades now.
Trump won in 2016 because the "mob" was already revved up and angry at a lot of the unfortunate legislation and narratives that already existed. He just capitalized and preyed on the existing outrage.
Yes, he and Fox and many other grifters added fuel to the fire, no question. But it's a mistake to just write off the millions upon millions of honest and good people who have been shafted by the system and are rightfully pissed while neoliberals and neocons crap all over them.
I can't believe I have to say this given everything I've written on the subject (here is the first thing: http://blog.samaltman.com/trump) , but I don't support Trump in any way.
My point in the parent-linked article is just that Trump beat us using our own playbook, and shame on us if we don't notice that and adjust for next time.
This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.
You say to grow up but in the following sentence you lob a totally unnecessary insult, shifting blame as if there is none to fall on those who supported the Clinton campaign.
You say Trump won the election but lost the popular vote; ok I'll give you that (ignoring for a moment the culture of criminality of the Clinton campaign and the possibility for election fraud ) but the margin of that popular vote is only by a 0.2 to 0.7% lead [0]. Hardly more than 50% if even.
Regardless, if I'm not mistaken, the popular vote doesn't determine who becomes President so this argument is flawed because if popular vote did determine who became President then the Trump campaign could very well have optimized their campaign to win said popular vote; requiring a different strategy but one that could very well have been successful just as they were at winning the battleground states as they did, and as so few predicted.
You say that half the country finds him personally repulsive. Why is that? I just laid out some facts about the media collusion and attempts to smear and disrupt his character and campaign. Why is your angst not directed at the sell-out mainstream media for helping to coordinate the propaganda which is now so deeply rooted in people's opinions towards the now President to be?
Finally, maybe it would be better to give the new President a chance to implement his promises before judging him on that regard. Maybe he is not like any other politician, after all he's the only President to ever take office who has no prior position in politics or military.
Obviously, you are completely unwilling to accept the fact that Trump won the election, and somehow you're creating utterly insane logic to continue the fantasy in your head.
My point was the election was very close. Personally I didn't find it surprising Trump won. I know a lot of older people that were all in. It was shocking to see the change in rhetoric this year. Instead of debating traditional topics of economics etc, I dealt with a bombardment of videos/memes/etc that were either obviously fake or obviously strawman arguments. I know some conservative kids my age, most of them wanted nothing to do with Donald Trump. The ones that did, started calling themselves "nationalist" and talking as if they were apart of some great "race war". It was insane.
It saddens me to see the older generation sell my future because their fear of brown people and their inability to determine whats BS spam links.
I think the reasons Trump won and the message he's sending in office are, in fact, different things. There were a whole lot of unhappy Trump voters (people voting for him despite lots of reservations about his policies and demeanor) and a lot them were due to the left not addressing their grievances.
That doesn't change the fact that his rhetoric has emboldened hard-right fascists and bullies. It's inarguable at this point.
It doesn't sound smug, it just sounds massively over simplified and assumed.
The reasons for Trump's win probably varies wildly from region to region and person to person. Anecdotally, I know several who voted only because he was _not_ Hilary, not due to any message resonance. Hell, I mean, personally, despite being politically closest to Hilary on paper, I had no intention of voting for her, and none of those reasons had anything to do with Trump.
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