Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JackFr 3501 days ago
I think you miss the point - liberals hate Trump voters.

And if your feeling is that anyone who voted for Trump is worthy only of contempt, then you truly missed the point.

Many are willing to see a failure of empathy in others but not in themselves.

2 comments

Why should anyone have empathy for those that have no empathy for anyone?
Because empathy is explicitly not transactional.
Says who?
I'm very liberal and have a lot of admiration for Obama and Clinton, despite their flaws. I don't hate Donald Trump or Donald Trump voters. I feel sad for them and for the fact that our country has disemployed so many people, and left so many people out in the cold, that they felt like their only living option was... this. I'd pity them, but they want my pity even less than my hate.

I hate the racism and sexism that his movement represents. I hate that people are treating his election as a vindication of the worst elements of our nation's history, rather than an expression of sheer desperation from the burping turtle at the bottom of the stack.

I've worked in tech for 10 years. It's full of people who did not vocally support Trump (and may well have voted for Clinton) but who perpetuate sexism and racism and think that they're doing so for valid business reasons ("culture fit"). I know who the enemy is and I know who to hate. It's not the guy in Milwaukee who lost his job and his dignity and can't afford to insure his family and gets socked with an "individual mandate" penalty for it.

>a lot of admiration for Obama and Clinton, despite their flaws

That is a problem. Because despite you overlooking their flaws, the "portions of the country that have been most ravaged by free trade orgies and globalism — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa — were filled with rage" saw "a protector and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption" and overlooked intolerance and targeted crony capitalist corruption.

Solely focusing on “racism/sexism/xenophobia” while ignoring “economic suffering” is what led to this outcome.

Cenk Uygur put it succinctly during the primaries: “Instead of looking at it as, ‘Hey, one guy hasn’t taken corrupting money and the other one has,’ you frame it as male vs. female,” Uygur said. “And hence, put me in a position where I’m forced to say, no, I don’t think it would be historic because I think it’s the same old establishment.”

In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton got the shit kicked out of her by that same corrupt establishment for (a) trying to fix healthcare, and (b) being a woman and having an IQ over 140. (Sexism and racism both have a U-shaped distribution on the economic spectrum, but the top of our society is even more sexist than the bottom.) I'd rather plant a bomb in the Establishment, by electing a closet liberal who's been playing centrist in order to get in, than throw a brick at it and only do superficial damage by electing a political naif who'll surround himself by right-wing psychopaths.

Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and Peter Thiel are categorically not what this country needs. I wish we had given Hillary a chance. If she had turned out to be an Establishment hack, we could fire her in 2020.

In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton got the shit kicked out of her by that same corrupt establishment for (a) trying to fix healthcare, and (b) being a woman and having an IQ over 140.

Incompetently trying to fix healthcare.

Let's not forget it was her very own party who refused to buy off on her unbelievably complicated scheme, remember those charts?

Look, maybe I buy Hillary once having an IQ of 140, but can you give me any evidence it ever translated into success in her life, except for attracting Bill?

Compare to, for example, the #1 woman of this election, the one you've probably never heard of, Kellyanne Conway, who became Trump's campaign manager as of August 17th. She's the first successful female US presidential campaign manager, BTW.

Anyway, just a thought or three from one of HN's right-wing psychopaths....

What further evidence that she's an establishment hack could have convinced you?

A record as a carpet-bagging New York senator, notable only for her vote to go to war in Iraq. A stint as Secretary of State unblemished by any positive accomplishment. Both of those jobs were from the Democratic establishment, which then went on to literally fix the nomination process for her.

Forget the money from Goldman Sachs, she took money from Donald Trump for goodness sake. She is the epitome of an establishment hack. The Democratic establishment sold out their base.

What further evidence that she's an establishment hack could have convinced you?

I'm in my 30s, which means that I'm 97 in tech years. So I remember the 1990s. People were horrible to that woman. Her complaint about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is spot-on. The Establishment beat the hell out of her.

So she realized that she had to work with the Establishment to get things done. Like I said, I'd rather take a chance of planting a bomb in it than throw a brick at it. And if I'm wrong and Clinton proved a sellout, we could fire her in 2020.

Yes, she accepted her market rate for speeches at Goldman Sachs... after leaving public service. Wouldn't you? I despise Goldman Sachs and I applied to work for them at one point, because if I'd gotten the Core Strats gig, it would have been good for my career. Almost all of us are whores, or were at one time. That's how capitalism works.

The Democratic establishment sold out their base.

I dislike the Democratic establishment (although it is less onerous than the Republican one). I dislike the fact that left-leaning and rational people face a complacent one-party system. Not enough to vote for Trump.

Just saying that people are "dirty" because they have friends in the Establishment is bigoted and Trumpist. We have to accept that people have different strategies for dealing with corruption, corporatism, and national failure and that one only knows the right one in hindsight.

People were horrible to that woman.

Do you suppose that might just have happened because she's a horrible person?

If you remember the 1990s, do you remember Billy Dale? Waco? Gary Aldrich (and if you do, was enforcing a no no-pan rule good or bad ^_^)? The magically moving Rose law Firm billing records and her law partner going to the Federal pen? Her public responses to those who accused her husband of rape, sexual assault, or inappropriate (power and age) sexual relations? The looting of the White House? Filegate, with it's blackmail treasures?

And that's just stuff that happened in the 8 year administration that her fingerprints are clearly on.

Were you really paying that much attention, seeing as how if you are in your late 30s, you'd have been exiting college about the time the administration was over?