[asksomeoneelse]

I feel that a lot of men voted for Trump, not because they liked him, but because they felt rejected by the Left as a whole.

If you go on left-leaning media, you can find comments that would be considered gross hate speech if it targeted any other group, by the hundreds. And yet, people very rarely call them out on that, if ever. There seems to be an omerta on misandry (and anti-white racism to some extent) amongst the Democrats. More than that, a lot of them seem to even revel in it, proud of it.

Not surprising that some men end up with a mindset "I don't care if the Right wins, I need the Left to lose".

The bottom line being that America really needs a middle/center party, but I fear it might be too late.

[mixmastamyk]

I’ve seen quite a few of those kind of comments here as well. Sexism and racism is just that—even when directed at white men.

I recently came across an “ethical software” movement, concerned about privacy. Right up my alley. Was ready to join up and use their logo, etc. Watched their ted talk for inspiration. I shit you not, he said it was not (just?) for white guys. With a bit of sneer. Found the text on the site as well, not merely an off-hand remark. As if human rights give one shit about that. The whole point, missed.

Closed the tabs and haven’t looked back. Insulting your audience doesn’t garner votes, what a surprise.

[superb_dev]

If “not just for white guys” is the kind of comment that turns you away, then you wouldn’t have been a good fit regardless

[genericone]

Interpreting that to mean that the person said 'it's not for white guys' and parent thinks they meant 'not "just" for white guys'. But the damage had been done regardless of original intent behind the words.

[superb_dev]

Oh, I straight up misread their comment and didn’t catch the parentheses

[mixmastamyk]

Apparently, it’s normal to you to speak in slurs, in public no less. Change the description to anything else and you might get it.

[superb_dev]

Oh boy, is “white guy” a slur to you??

[mixmastamyk]

In an exclusionary phrase, yes. All in the intention. They might as well have hung up a "no coloreds" sign.

You seem to have a habit of slicing out a few words to neutralize them and use that to justify exclusion. I get it, you think we should be "tough" and accept casual racism, sexism, ageism when fashionable.

Nope. I never accepted that shit before—ain't gonna start now.

[lapcat]

> The bottom line being that America really needs a middle/center party

What does that even mean? What would a middle/center party do, exactly?

I'm getting older (maybe ancient in the tech world), and just during my lifetime I've seen the terms "left", "right", "liberal", "conservative" morph multiple times into things that, if not hopelessly vague, are unrecognizable from previous definitions.

Maybe the particular issues need to be specified. Economic issues are very different from social and cultural issues. And then there's also foreign affairs, if anyone cares about that.

The politicans who are considered "centrists" nowadays, for example Joe Manchin, just seem to me to be sellouts with no principles who go to the highest bidder. Am I wrong about that? I honestly respect a consistent ideologue more than that. In any case, what message do the so-called centrists have for young men?

From what I've seen in the exit polls, if they're to be trusted, economics was the most important issue for voters. Those who felt worse off now voted for Trump, and those who felt better off or the same voted for Harris. For the first time I can remember, the Democrat won the upper income voters, while the Republican won the middle class voters, which is a reversal from 2020.

I remember that Harris's opportunity agenda for black men was like... cryptocurrency and legalizing weed? WTF was the campaign thinking (other than taking donations from crypto advocates)?

[poincaredisk]

I can't speak for the OP, but in my country we have several parties, so I can express my political opinions in a more complex way than the left-right linear spectrum. The parties don't position themselves by just being "more left" and "more right", but tend to cater to a specific audience. For example, we have many LGBT issues, and I can vote for a party that spends a significant part of their political power on improving the situation. If I wanted to focus on economy, there's a party who I'm mostly aligned with, but unfortunately I don't like their conservative and even far-right tendencies, so I prefer another, more populist and pro-social but still solid party. There are some parties which are completely not for me, but which cater to, for example, farmers and have a significant following in rural population (they're slightly conservative, but pro-social and have nothing to do with far right, just to give you an idea of the differences). And yes, we have the mandatory populist party.

I don't have a party that I agree with 100%, but I can decide what is most important for me and vote for a party that wants it. And most importantly, if I don't like my choice, I can vote for another party next year without making a 180.

I think that's nice.

[lapcat]

> I think that's nice.

Agreed. I like the idea of political pluralism much more than the idea of a so-called "centrist" party.

We do have other parties in the US, such as the Libertarian and Green parties, but our system makes it very difficult for them. They have to fight like crazy for ballot access, they're locked out of news coverage, they don't receive public funding, and they are reviled as "spoilers" by the two major parties.

[serf]

>What does that even mean? What would a middle/center party do, exactly?

Forget the wording 'centrist', parent is trying to describe the need for a party that seeks allies from all angles rather than trying to produce outrage towards specific groups of people in a lazy effort to foment in-party support and credit.

In recent years, I guess due to success of certain parties, everyone has decided that it is in fashion to have a group to demonize - to hate. This (necessarily) creates a group of disenfranchised people that have an axe to grind.

It used to be that political parties demonized far entities that were as far outside the voting American public as was feasible; now it's fashionable to attack people that constitute American voters. Now we have hordes of people that were demonized by one side or the other, and a lot of them want to vote one way or the other out of pure spite rather than political interest.

[aaplok]

> Forget the wording 'centrist', parent is trying to describe the need for a party that seeks allies from all angles rather than trying to produce outrage towards specific groups of people in a lazy effort to foment in-party support and credit.

Well politics is about making choices where consensus is unattainable. By nature of not being consensual, there will be some angles from which these choices are undesirable. So attracting allies "from all angles" is essentially the same as saying "whoever is not my ally comes from no (reasonable) angle", which is precisely what the democrats are being described as doing in the article. They are the utmost "centrist" party in a way.

The answer to the demonization issue is not to pretend everybody must be your ally, it is to acknowledge that one can reasonably disagree with you, and be willing to engage with your political opponents rather than treat them as enemies, to reach an agreement acceptable to most (though not all).

[lapcat]

> Forget the wording 'centrist', parent is trying to describe the need for a party that seeks allies from all angles rather than trying to produce outrage towards specific groups of people in a lazy effort to foment in-party support and credit.

Fair enough. I'm all for breaking up the duopoly.

However, the strategy of scapegoating and creating enemies is hardly a new phenomenon. It's as old as politics itself. More recently, I'm old enough to remember Reagan railing against "welfare queens". In 1968, George Wallace ran for President, and won 5 states, on a platform of racial segregation. There was also the McCarthy era, of course, where there were supposedly enemies, Communists everywhere in the US. And George W. Bush weaponized patriotism after 9/11, painting anyone opposed to US imperialism as supporting the terrorists. (This same happens today to anyone opposed to US imperialism. They're called antisemites and supporters of Hamas.)

In the end, though, polls usually show that people vote based on their pocketbooks. Economic issues are almost always most important and salient, despite all of the other political commotion.

[fellowniusmonk]

They sell male tears mugs at Walmart.

I ran a social co-working space in 2016 in Austin, TX, it was pretty progressive, tech oriented, and socially liberal generally but we had a mix of political viewpoints and focused on GSD, we hosted Obama's young african leaders when they came to town and did a lot politically but not in a polarizing way, a few fresh college/masters grads came in that tried to blame all men, said men should keep their mouth shut. It was very frustrating, a bunch of those dudes went from voting against Trump in 2016 to voting for him by 2020 and now again in 2024.

2016 was like a giant premature celebration that included some pretty frustrating bigotry toward men, that due to proximity, was disproportionatly experienced by the very men who were the closest allies.

None of this bad behavior changed my views one bit because I hold my position based on data, I was dissapointed and did what I could to mitigate the damage but it was awful, throwing away allies in a fragile big tent party just for purity tests and for personal catharsis.

Each person is responsible for their own beliefs but the majority of people will not stay where they don't feel welcome.

Personally our two party system really cooks us, if we had plurality systems we'd probably have ended up with the equivalent of a Christian Social party that would have caucused with the left.

STAR voting would be nice and would help remove this implicit moral compromise people feel in voting, I think the more we can alter our system to enable people to feel like they aren't choosing between the lesser of two evils, the less we'll see people saying fuck it, I'll vote for my evil guy and excuse his behavior because I am choosing between evil and satan. I think people underestimate the damage that explicit moral compromise has had in voting, developmentally some people will always be black and white thinkers.

[SJetKaran]

+1 on the need to move away from the two party system

[stonethrowaway]

>Each person is responsible for their own beliefs but the majority of people will not stay where they don't feel welcome.

Isn’t there a saying that republicans aren’t born republican but they are forced that way? Your anecdote rings true with my experience.

[fellowniusmonk]

Never heard it. Doesn't ring true in my experience.

[isthatafact]

> "If you go on left-leaning media, you can find comments that would be considered gross hate speech if it targeted any other group"

That seems like just a rephrasing of the old meme that Trump voters are "delicate snowflakes"

Why? -- because when someone defines hate speech so liberally, one finds it everywhere and against everyone.

I thought the Trump vote was meant to be a protest against that sort of irrational thinking.

[frmersdog]

The Trump vote was never about principle, but the perceived (correctly or not) practical. Most would happily allow hate speech as long as it's not directed at them ("It's just a joke, bro."). The moment it is directed at them (or is perceived to have been): burn everything down.

There's a difference between telling a dead baby joke to a couple that just had a miscarriage, and telling it to a group of edgy teenagers (perhaps by the couple themselves). That is to say, the problem is "punching down." What's important to understand here is that well-paid politicians and consultants telling people who are struggling that they're the problem - even if it flips historical dynamics of marginalization like gender and race - might be just that.

That doesn't mean that entitlement isn't a factor. It doesn't mean that it's actually harder to be a straight cis white man, in general. It doesn't mean that the normalization of prejudiced and hurtful speech wasn't basically invented and templated by white dudes. It just means that it's entirely predictable that people who are feeling bad aren't going to vote for someone who isn't spending enough time talking about the things they think are the reason that they're feeling bad. Said candidate doesn't even have to agree with such voters; they just have to engage with the issues honestly.