[Animats]

The "Other side" is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s. Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party.

Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective. This is a problem with a long history. There are records of it back as far as Cicero.

It's not their fault that they don't know what to do. Nobody knows what to do. We have all this productivity, and we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Economic policymakers don't know how to deal with that. If you want to look for dumb, look at what comes out of economists. There's a sizable faction that says there can never be a shortage of demand. Tell that to Wal-Mart's CEO, who says their customers are spent out.

(Sometimes they really are dumb, as in that Oregon "militia" group camping out in the bird sanctuary.)

[TeMPOraL]

The "Other side" is many things. Some are scared, as you point out. Others simply don't believe authorities anymore. They had their trust broken enough many times, and so they assume that anything that's being pushed on them is someone's corrupt attempt at making money.

A good example would be anti-vaccination movement. If you talk to them and try to actually listen, it becomes clear that it's not about science at all. It's about the background assumption that (corrupt people in) governments and corporation seek to make money and don't mind hurting ordinary people in the process. Mainstream science is obviously in cahoots with the corporations and/or the government.

Obviously, throwing papers at anti-vaxx crowd doesn't work. Science is already complicated enough that most people can't really grasp the details of things they hadn't spend years on studying. People on both sides - a lot of pro-vaccination people trying to explain science to antivaxxers are actually fooling themselves by thinking they understand what they're talking about. They may be saying the right words, but often for totally wrong reasons.

What's most scary in this is that the "Other side" is totally justified in their lack of trust. I mean - between media exposing corrupt politicians and doctors every day, companies trying to scam you on everything, and several fields of science turning out to be mostly made of bullshit - I sometimes wonder why do I trust the mainstream opinion. I like to tell myself it's because of the general knowledge and broad understanding of scientific principles I acquired over the years that let me sanity-check claims. But honestly, a big part of it may be simply because I grew up to trust authorities, and my trust hasn't been destroyed completely yet.

[lostcolony]

The "other side" applies both ways, though. The left has a lot of humor and satire which innately belittles those right wing views (the Onion, The Daily Show, Tom the Dancing Bug, etc).

While I identify largely as a liberal, I do conservatives a disservice by mocking these views in my actual interaction with them. Their views may indeed be based on fear, but treating them not as scared humans deserving of being engaged with as human beings, but as idiots who deserved to be mocked, does just as much damage to reaching them as the rhetoric coming from Trump and the tea party.

[andrei_says_]

I highly recommend the Moral Politics talk by Linguistics professor George Lakoff: http://youtu.be/5f9R9MtkpqM

In short, the two sides of the debate speak different language representing different world views rooted in upbringing and triggered / exploited by metaphors. This talk changed my view on political speech and narrative dramatically.

[brandonmenc]

Well, at least we know what "side" you're on.

> For the white lower middle class [...] Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party.

There's another white lower middle class - the educated but underemployed left (think literature majors waiting tables), and they're also terrified.

They're terrified that we're just an election away from mandating every rape victim be violated with a penetrative ultrasound, or that they're guaranteed to be shot on sight by some redneck if we allow open carry.

As someone holding both liberal and conservative positions, I'm always dumfounded when the left believes the right has the monopoly on fear.

[TeMPOraL]

Everyone likes to think about their ingroup as victims of oppression, and their outgroup as the oppressors. In extreme cases, this is what drives the social justice movement on the Internet.

[wrong_internet]

There's also the 130+ IQ group of neoreactionaries who like Trump from a perspective informed by history.

[zardo]

I had not heard the term. The current top post in their subreddit is "How to genocide inferior kinds in a properly Christian manner"

Sounds like a great group of folks.

[TeMPOraL]

Here's an article that summarizes the ideas of reactionaries, attempting to present them in most charitable way the author can:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-...

There's also the same author's attempt at rebutting the most common neoreactionary beliefs, although per disclaimer at the beginning, the author doesn't endorse everything he wrote there anymore:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-fa...

A long read, but should clear things up :).

[tamana]

You just made the classic mistake of conflating evil (or differently moraled) with dumb.

[zardo]

I didn't call anyone dumb. Read "great folks" as "good people". (Also with sarcasm)

[EvanPlaice]

They're opportunists at best.

Demagoguery isn't exactly a new art. It has been a driving force to centralize power since the dawn of human civilization.

IMHO, it's sick and pathetic that many who are capable of having the greatest positive impact on society often squander it on vanity and narcissism.

[Albright]

Trump is hardly a Tea Party favorite. If you're thinking Trump supporters and Tea Partiers are one in the same, you misunderstand the goals of one, if not both, groups.

[sandworm101]

Sometimes they aren't scared. Sometimes they are downright confident, down to their core confident. That is when they are most dangerous.

Nobody can argue with a true believer. Such people adopt views so strongly that no rational evidence can counter the irrational mystique they have written. Trying to change their minds directly, through conversation, only ends in violence. The willingness to cling to such beliefs, to take anything onboard as an absolute truth, is akin to an addiction. They have to fix themselves over an extended period of time.

[Dylan16807]

Fear makes you dumb.