[lurchpop]

Ok, so people living outside major cities in UK voting against centralization of unaccountable power in the EU and unemployed, politically abandoned industrial workers in the US Rust Belt were just a bunch of idiot rubes tricked by click bait headlines. Does it occur o anyone they may have actually had real grievances against globalization? Maybe they were tired of being belittled by metropolitan and coastal elites ignoring those grievances and dismissing them as racists to be ignored.

[badsock]

I agree 100% that the working class people in America have been screwed over. But just because they've been wronged doesn't mean that their solutions are right.

Dumb ideas deserve to be attacked. Ideas that are an affront to practically every positive development that dragged us out from under the rule of the oligarchs of the 19th century and the fear-mongering ideologues of the 20th, deserve to be attacked.

If that hurts the feelings of those who are promoting them, that's unfortunate, but it's the price of admission if you're trying to exert influence in the public sphere.

[flukus]

> I agree 100% that the working class people in America have been screwed over. But just because they've been wronged doesn't mean that their solutions are right.

The problem is that no one is putting forward better solutions. "The left" is now run by educated elites, not the working class, "the right" might not represent the working class, but at least they don't ignore them.

[badsock]

They deserve better than to be just "not ignored". The whole game has to be changed so that everything isn't rigged toward the people who are already rich. That means rule of law, that means not fighting against your equally poor immigrant neighbour, that means getting your fair share of the benefits of globalization, not just trying to make it go away.

Trump and Co. is exactly opposite of that.

If the working class is holding out for great ideas so long as educated people don't propose them, I think that's an unwinnable game. The ideas that work against the concentration of wealth and power are the ones championed by academia, but they have been dismissed as "commies" not matter how unrelated their ideas are to Marxism, or as "elites" despite the fact that they have very little influence or money compared to the corporate class that just got installed in the White House.

[xapata]

Yeah, it's funny how so many people think all college professors are wealthy elites, when many are barely scraping by and have trouble affording health insurance.

[Retra]

Plenty of better solutions are being put forward. Nobody listens to them because they come from "educated elites" AKA those people with unique experiences and depth of knowledge necessary to come up with new ideas.

If you don't see better solutions, it's because you're actively avoiding them.

[pdkl95]

> Nobody listens

How much time, money, and effort was spent actually educating people so they can make a properly informed decision? Suggesting a new idea is only the first step. Having "unique experiences and depth of knowledge" doesn't mean anything if you can't explain the new idea to everyone else.

Why should anyone listen to your new idea if you aren't explaining it in a language[1] they understand?

[1] http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-resi...

[flukus]

> If you don't see better solutions, it's because you're actively avoiding them.

Not sure exactly what you're talking about but I've long been a proponent of UBI for instance. But new ideas like this aren't being adopting by the mainstream left and probably won't for some time. You never get any progress without a firebrand to sell the message. The mainstream left seems more interested in playing identity politics as a wedge than coming out with a positive action plan.

[Retra]

That has nothing to do with the "mainstream left", and everything to do with the volatile nature of holding political office in a sound-byte culture. Stop listening to professional campaigners and start listening to professional thinkers.

The fact that you even invoked the term "mainstream left" here makes it perfectly clear that you're more than happy playing identity politics. You speak in terms of political labels, not in terms of mechanisms for solving problems.

[flukus]

> That has nothing to do with the "mainstream left", and everything to do with the volatile nature of holding political office in a sound-byte culture. Stop listening to professional campaigners and start listening to professional thinkers.

Why? The greatest mind in the world might solve poverty tomorrow but unless they can convince the public they may as well keep it to themselves. Let's also not forget that professional thinkers are often incorrect and disconnected from reality. Support for communism was quite high amongst professional thinkers. Not to mention that professional thinkers these days includes the like of feminist studies professors that are about as regressive as they come.

[bhawks]

> AKA those people with unique experiences and depth of knowledge necessary to come up with new ideas.

Statements like this make it sound like you believe that the middle American working class is not capable of coming up with there own solutions, or that there solutions are totally without merit. An even more uncharitable reading would imply that they cannot even enumerate the problems they face.

I don't assume you mean this, but so much of the division we face is due to the otherization that happens on all sides.

Middle America assumes that the coastal elite stopped caring about their problems and proposes actions that have negative consequences for them. This is definitely not intentional on a large scale. However if you look at the state of middle America's economy you can't argue that the is a huge room for improvement and the divide between them and the coast has become a chasm.

[Retra]

I'm not really talking about the middle American working class. They are certainly capable of coming up with solutions. But when someone says "nobody is providing solutions" I can only imagine that they live under a rock with a community of people who are incapable of coming up with solutions.

[zo1]

Those same individuals have warped, sheltered, and idealistic views/ideas. Just a thought, and as coming from someone that outright rejects a multitude of "ideas" from such "educated elites", have you considered that we actually "don't want" or "don't like" the ideas that they put forward? Some of them have natural consequences that we don't like, and some are based on premises we find incorrect.

Edit. Grammar.

[crdoconnor]

That isn't the problem. In the US Sanders put forwards better solutions and in the UK Corbyn does.

>"The left" is now run by educated elites

The left is under constant and savage attack by the elite ruling classes from all sides, which is why when voters seek out an alternative they are left with the elite's 2nd choice - the far right.

The same dynamics occurred in Weimar Germany, who were, much like the UK/US establishment, both relatively socially liberal and incredibly economically repressive, and vicious towards the 'alternative' left wing (KPD).

[M_Grey]

A lack of better solutions of on offer (which isn't true by the way, but lets ignore that for a moment) doesn't excuse making terrible choices. The truth is that there are other solutions, but they're seen as troublesome for a number of reasons. Compounding that is the fact that people so dim they'd see value in the "solutions" offered by someone like Trump often aren't aware of the possible solutions that have been considered.

It's possible to be the victim of your own desperation, which is just what such people perpetually have been throughout history. Everyone sees that kind of person as a rube, Left, Right, and Center... it's always just a fight for their hearts and minds.

By the way the Right doesn't ignore the working class, but they actively hurt them. I somehow doubt that the working class wants that kind of attention.

[flukus]

If your attitude is to keep talking down Trump voters as being idiots don't expect any sympathy from me when Trump gets re-elected. In fact, the more you marginalise them the more radical and United they will get, before you criticize others for acting against their own self interest realise that you're doing the same.

> It's possible to be the victim of your own desperation, which is just what such people perpetually have been throughout history. Everyone sees that kind of person as a rube, Left, Right, and Center... it's always just a fight for their hearts and minds.

Yes, and the guy offering a bad solution looks better than the guy offering no solution.

[M_Grey]

>Yes, and the guy offering a bad solution looks better than the guy offering no solution.

People for whom a self-serving lie (what you call a bad solution) is better than no solution deserve what they get. It's just a pity that the rest of us are along for the ride.

[flukus]

Sorry about the edit, but I added this part: In fact, the more you marginalize them the more radical and United they will get, before you criticize others for acting against their own self interest realize that you're doing the same.

Your actions are just as self defeating as theirs.

[mateodelnorte]

Heard of a guy named Bernie Sanders?

[leereeves]

Dumb ideas like requiring candidates given H-1B visas to be payed well?

[aeleos]

no, that is a perfectly reasonable idea. However, an example of a dumb idea is trying to bring back the coal industry to give people back the jobs that they lost, when things like renewable energies are more cost efficient in the long run and better for the environment.

[leereeves]

I mention H1Bs because it's a direct parallel to the broader immigration issue, yet many people have different opinions on the two.

People sponsored for H1Bs by sweat shops are to educated American tech workers as "illegal immigrants" are to American manual laborers: competitors for the same jobs willing to work under worse conditions for much lower wages.

[gydfi]

That's your opinion of a dumb idea. Can you accept that other intelligent, informed, well intentioned people might disagree with you?

[yorwba]

I can, but that means I'm either not intelligent enough, lacking information or not well-intentioned, because why would there be disagreement otherwise? Only one of these can be fixed, and that is by exchanging information.

Or in other words: Yes, but you need good arguments to make me change my mind.

[gydfi]

Not at all. Most political disagreements come from perfectly reasonable fundamental disagreements about the way the world ought to be.

[namlem]

No, dumb ideas like building a wall thinking it will keep out immigrants.

[echion]

> just because [the working class has] been wronged doesn't mean that their solutions are right.

Reminds me of:

"...the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid." -- Chesterton

[lazaroclapp]

The grievances are real, no doubt. Are they voting for the best person to solve those issues based on an understanding of possible policies? Or because they just got advertised "Vote Trump, ban immigrants, build $20 billion walls, and then you'll have a job!"

Keep in mind people voted in part based on a campaign promise to repeal "Obamacare" even when they depended on the ACA for their lives, without realizing they were one and the same. Anecdote does not data make, but there also have been a few prominent examples of families that were broken up when the U.S. citizen portion voted Trump and their relatives were then affected by the travel ban.

There are real economic grievances, no one is saying there aren't. Those grievances were there the election before this one, and the one before that (2008, remember? right now the economy and employment are objectively at their best since at least that time). But there is also an ideological, cultural component, which is ripe for being modulated by propaganda. See e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/its-put... .

[AbrahamParangi]

If the options are:

1. Public (online) discourse is vulnerable to manipulation by bad-faith actors (and this manipulation is impactful on a geopolitical scale).

2. The events of the US election and Brexit were symptomatic of unrecognized problems and unheard voices.

These ideas can both be true. Frankly, I find the notion that (1) isn't true too far-fetched to believe. It sounds like far too good of a business opportunity.

Running ads is a valuable activity not because every person who sees the ad becomes a customer, but because in aggregate x% of viewers will consider a purchase and y% will become good customers. Cambridge Analytica sounds to me like they're just applying the standard techniques of digital content marketing to a relatively unsophisticated realm (political advertisement).

[leereeves]

> Public (online) discourse is vulnerable to manipulation by bad-faith actors (and this manipulation is impactful on a geopolitical scale).

This is true, but it's not limited to the right.

Just one example, the Washington Post and other liberal papers reported that a Muslim-American Olympian was detained by customs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/02/09...

The fake part? They never mentioned that it happened in December.

[flukus]

1 has been true for a very long time, long before the internet existed, it's commonly known as astro turfing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing), the wikipedia articles cites Shakespeare is the first known (albeit fictional) example. The approach was instrumental in preventing action on climate change.

[bsder]

> Does it occur o anyone they may have actually had real grievances against globalization?

Your assessment might hold water except that they also sent back the congressmen responsible for the situation in record numbers.

So, even if I give them that they believed Trump was their champion, what are we to make of the fact that they sent everybody else responsible for the situation back?

> Maybe they were tired of being belittled by metropolitan and coastal elites ignoring those grievances and dismissing them as racists to be ignored.

Yet they bitch, complain and fight when said coastal elites attempt to help things: see Obamacare. Even a SINGLE moderate Republican senator driven by moderate constituents would have made the ACA a lauded national accomplishment and enabled compromise instead of a partisan war.

There wasn't a SINGLE moderate Republican senator in the entire batch. Not ... one ...

You can't fight people when they attempt to help and then complain when they give up and tell you to get stuffed and go die in a fire. And, from what I can tell, the ACA was the breaking point where the left finally threw in the towel that there was any working with the right and that they should simply be left to rot.

> Ok, so people living outside major cities in UK voting against centralization of unaccountable power in the EU and unemployed, politically abandoned industrial workers in the US Rust Belt were just a bunch of idiot rubes tricked by click bait headlines.

Pretty much. Whenever I sit down an talk to people to explain the ACA stuff, I invariably get "Well, nobody ever told me that." Of course they didn't. Most things in the ACA are driven by the fundamental choices that most people agree with. If you agree with no exclusions for preexisting conditions, then you need to amortize the sick over the well. That implies sign up periods and getting the healthy to sign on when they really don't want to. etc.

Unfortunately, that's too subtle an argument to get through a wall of interference of "Obama's a muslim and wants to oppress Christians! They wanna take arrr gunzzzz! Mexicans took all arrr jerbs!"

[stillsut]

First off, this comment should be flagged for its last paragraph

Second of all, Massachusetts, yes Massachusetts, elected a Republican senator a month before the ACA went to vote, in effect cutting out the filibuster-proof 60-senate seats held by the D's at the time. If a state the last elected an R in the 1940s decided to sabotage this bill, maybe its opposition was more widespread than simply those who "cling to their guns and religion".

[bsder]

> First off, this comment should be flagged for its last paragraph

Perhaps, but that is a fairly accurate description of the wall of noise that drowns out substantive discussion.

Huxley has been more accurate than Orwell in predicting the future of control so far.

I wish I could send everyone to the Heritage Discovery Center in Johnstown, PA before they were allowed to discuss politics: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g52908-d585662...

They have radio programs, letters, etc. from roughly 100 years ago that are EXACTLY THE SAME RHETORIC as today.

The only difference is that the ethnic slurs have changed. And a Mexican Wall replaces closing Ellis Island.

> If a state the last elected an R in the 1940s decided to sabotage this bill, maybe its opposition was more widespread than simply those who "cling to their guns and religion".

As for Massachusetts sending an R being a rebuttal of Obamacare, I note that Massachusetts didn't repeal Romneycare. And I note that Brown didn't last more than one term even after fighting the single most expensive senatorial election race in history.

[AnimalMuppet]

Maybe there were no, absolutely none, moderate Republican Senators. That's possible. It seems more likely, however, that you are defining "moderate" to mean "voted for ACA". That might not be a valid definition.

I get that you think that the ACA was a good answer, but it is in fact possible to view it as a horrible mess without being deliberately stupid.

A 2000-page bill. "You have to pass it to find out what's in it." People voting on a bill that they never read. Does any of that sound like it might be a bad idea (or at least a bad implementation)?

[bsder]

Thank you for proving the point of the original post.

You fell for a propaganda talking point:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/the-context-behind-nancy-pelosis-...

People knew quite well what was in the bill and it was on record. The issue was whether there might be unintended consequences and what they would be after the bill was enacted.

Now, will you admit you are wrong and change your stance? Or will you double down to a different talking point?

If someone on HN can fall for this kind of disinformation campaign, what chance does someone with far less access have?

[AnimalMuppet]

And thank you for completely ignoring my point, and continuing to trumpet your own. Now, will you admit that you are a propagandist who's here just to argue? Or will you actually start to have a real conversation with us?

That is: Do you see how your style closes off conversation? Do you see how it results in closed-minded people just yelling at each other? And, seeing that, will you drop that style and have a reasonable conversation with us? Or will you continue to dismiss what others say as "talking points" whenever we disagree with you?

As to your actual criticism of my post: I was in fact unaware of the larger context of Pelosi's quote. That fact does not make ACA any better.

[nerdponx]

That is why they voted for who they voted for. But if you look at the track records of the people they voted for (in the US: the Christian Right in 2000, the Tea Party in 2012, and Trump in 2016), it's no better woth regard to privacy. And apart from some regional excepions it's not better in any other category either.

If you think a vote for Paul Ryan is a vote against unaccountable power you are badly deluded.

[iak8god]

> If you think a vote for Paul Ryan is a vote against unaccountable power you are badly deluded.

Forget Paul Ryan. Does the billionaire President of the United States, brought to power (to almost everyone's surprise) by this populist wave, seem especially accountable to anyone? FFS, the man broke the long-standing traditions of releasing tax returns as a candidate, and has utterly failed to even give the appearance of separating himself from his business interests, and his broke working class base doesn't bat an eyelash. They're not looking for accountability. They're looking for someone to blame ("elites", "illegals", "muslims") and for someone to tell them it'll all be OK.

[Mtinie]

> Maybe they were tired of being belittled by metropolitan and coastal elites ignoring those grievances and dismissing them as racists to be ignored.

They could be. Or they could have been manipulated into believing that there was a cadre of elitist puppet masters out to get them.

It's obvious that there are issues all across the socioeconomic spectrums, all over the planet. I'm more apt to believe that for the most part that people all over are quite similar, but propaganda triggers and psychometric targeting make it seem like we are light years apart.

[skybrian]

We should distinguish between techniques used and how they're applied. It's possible to use advertising to:

1) Sell soap. 2) Let people know about a new movie. 3) Scam people out of their life savings (find people who fall for a Nigerian prince scam). 4) Own devices (phishing). 5) Swing undecided, low-information voters in an election.

The techniques may be quite similar. The consequences, very different.

Ad tech is powerful technology that doesn't discriminate. Large advertising networks do have content policies preventing outright scammers, phishing, and often just things they don't want on their network, but there are always new techniques.

So this is just another example of why we can't have a nice libertarian-inspired Internet like we all dreamed of when the Internet was new. There are always bad guys and gray areas. Any popular service that attracts a large enough audience gets abused and the service providers inevitably end up policing it, so then they start making tough policy decisions about what's okay. (Or if they don't, customers and various interest groups will complain.)

[mirimir]

The concern here isn't about who won, in the UK or the US. The concern is about personalized propaganda. There's nothing new about propaganda. There's nothing new about astroturfing. There's nothing new about targeted advertising. What's new is how effectively Cambridge Analytics combined and leveraged them.

[gydfi]

Then why is all the discussion in terms of who did win? People who don't like the result are "blaming" this phenomenon, without regard for the fact that this is something that everyone is presumably doing.

When Obama won, I seem to remember a lot of people around here praising the success of his social media strategy.

[mirimir]

Yes, after Obama won, there was talk of using his social network to help drive his agenda. That didn't work out so well, I think. But the Brexit and Trump teams did a far better job of it.

So yes, we have an arms race, and those with the best AI will become the power brokers. I like the analogy to high-frequency trading. Neither market valuation nor democratic process are very meaningful when driven by machine learning.

[DiNovi]

Perhaps those grievances get obscured when people parrot the same nonsense about "elites" that the AI propaganda spouts.

[namlem]

People sure have been saying that a lot, and at first I believed it. However I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this isn't the case. These people do have grievances, sure, but I doubt they could actually even articulate most of these grievances, much less carefully consider solutions. The uneducated are famously easy to manipulate, and Trump just figured out how to manipulate them better than the GOP could. Same goes for the Brexiters vs the Tories. These people vote against their own interests because they don't know any better, not because they're making rational political decisions.

[rdtsc]

> politically abandoned industrial workers in the US Rust Belt were just a bunch of idiot rubes tricked by click bait headlines.

They had to be. Fake news, those sneaky Russians, a white-supremacist deep state conspiracy. It is what happens when people live in a bubble. They can pretend nothing else exists. Facebook posts all come from the same group of friends, those who don't agree are unfriended, and so on. News channel all pump the same reassuring message about an almost certain win and even show a map with all states filled in blue. Until of course the bubble pops then it just becomes too much.

There was certainly a surprise element but I am surprised how surprised some people were and how they overnight went from stoic intellectuals lecturing those Trump rednecks about integrity of our electoral system, and how they better not riot and get angry and agree with the results of the election, to irrational and angry conspiracy theorists.

> most clearly with pro-Trump campaigners and programmers who carefully adjusted the timing of content production during the debates, strategically colonized pro-Clinton hashtags, and then disabled activities after Election Day,”

That was interesting. The most visible example is probably "Fake News" it was a term appropriated and used to label mainstream media like CNN, NBC, NYT and WaPo. It had gotten to a point where Washington Post sent out an explicit request for everyone to please stop using that term because it has been taken over so to speak.

> According to Bloomberg, the Trump campaign sent ads reminding certain selected black voters of Hillary Clinton’s infamous ‘super predator’ line. It targeted Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with messages about the Clinton Foundation’s troubles in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.’”

One thing I noticed Hillary organized a Jay-Z concert. I guess she heard that Black people like rap and paid Jay-Z to throw the n-word at them a few times. What an awkward way to connect. A while back I managed to find a speech Trump gave to a mostly Black community and he didn't do half bad. It was a very small gathering. It was probably never going to be a community that would vote for him as a block like they did for Obama. But at least he tried to talk about inner cities, inequality, crime, safety, jobs, education.

> Political analysts in the Clinton campaign, who were basing their tactics on traditional polling methods, laughed when Trump scheduled campaign events in the so-called blue wall -- a group of states that includes Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and has traditionally fallen to Democrats.

I think there is a bit of the oscillation happening. Trump went from an arrogant stupid idiot to this super cunning and smart villain who used those evil AI bots to win. Why didn't Hillary try that same software and those same bots? Guessing by implication is because her campaign was honest and they played by the rules.

[Paradigma11]

As long as we do not discount the possibility that they were just a bunch of idiot rubes tricked by click bait headlines.

[jawarner]

Why not both? Media marginalizes the working class, and also ML-curated social media campaigns decided the election.

[bobdole1234]

I always find it funny when people say they're tired of being called racists.

They'll bitch till they're blue in the face about how it's unfair that just because they want people like them to succeed they're called racists.

I wonder what they think racism is if not that?

[rdtsc]

> I always find it funny when people say they're tired of being called racists.

You mean the people from the Middle America? Well it helps to live there for a while. I did for a about 10 years. You know what most people there don't think when they first wake up? That's right, racist thoughts. They think about getting groceries, hopefully kids did their homework, when the bills are due, why Steven is being a jerk at work and so on. They don't yawn and stretch thinking "I hope all the people with certain skin pigment different than mine fail!".

> they want people like them to succeed they're called racists.

I have never heard anyone say "I want people like me to succeed" based on race. Maybe I wasn't hanging out with a bad crowd. But I've heard them say "I want to succeed" or "I want my children to be successful" is that racist? I am an immigrant, is it wrong to say "I want immigrants to succeed". Am I racist now? Oh oh.

> always find it funny when people say they're tired of being called racists.

I am wondering. How do you expect people to respond when they are called racists. Let's imagine you walk down the street. Someone turns a corner wearing that stupid Trump hat, you yell out "You racist!". What would be a realistic positive outcome from that?

[bobdole1234]

You honestly think that people who get called racist enough to have a recurring rant about it are talking about wanting immigrants to succeed?

Or that I wander the streets calling people racist?

[rdtsc]

I believe calling large groups of people "racists" is counter-productive and doesn't help or do anything positive. Chances are unless we picked KKK some Eugenics Institute of America (I made that name up, btw) that characterization will probably be wrong.

Besides what does the term "people like them" even mean"? Are we referring to immigrants vs citizens, nationality, religion, political party? People from different groups big and small will unsurprisingly want other people from the same group to succeed. Are you sure it is all about the skin color and them all thinking one is superior than other? I gave an example about immigrants. It could be programmers. Or some religious organization. Same with people from a country and so on. Are all those instances of racism?

Wouldn't you say that the accusation of racism is rather serious and racism is a serious topic and not just something to be used when we disagree with things? I think it is. And because of that it is important to be very precise and sure when using it. Otherwise we are just mocking it and reducing its value.

> Or that I wander the streets calling people racist?

But the equivalent is to wonder around the internet and throw that term around. And I am sorry, I didn't mean to single you out specifically, I wanted to talk more to wider audience (since it is a public forum as well) because I have seen this happen too many times. Some here, the media, Reddit, relatives, friends, at work and so on.

[bobdole1234]

Oh, I don't call large groups of people racist.

I call specific people racist, when they do racist things.

Entertainingly, they're always horrified and offended, even if 5 seconds before they've been telling a story about how Indian woman have loose vaginas since they're all whores.

Your response leads me to believe you've been called racist, but couldn't internalize what exactly it was that you'd done wrong.

[flukus]

I wonder what you think racism is because the people you're describing don't seem interested in discrimination based on race.