With Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement like the huge idiot he is, today seems like a good time for another Trump open thread.
Have at it! No trolls or Trump fans.
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Trump Open Thread: June 2017 End of the World Edition
Aww@mrex
BTW I’m addressing this situation in general, I’m not necessarily targeting you. Two cents incoming.
Im pretty sure the “Democrats/liberals are elitists that’s why they’re losing ground” argument is about 20% rooted in truth 80% a made up argument invented by right wing “man of the people” charlatans trying to silence opposing voices. It worked very fucking well here in the UK with the “liberal elite” rhetoric used as an excuse not to listen to warnings from experts about anything the government/press wants to do. While I’m sure that there IS a splinter of truth in that the tone of liberals can sometimes be condescending, it is just that: a splinter. Sticking it in the spotlight as “a reason” that we are losing ground is playing right into the hands of Republicans and other right wingers by taking the focus away from the giant log in their eye. WWTH is spot on. Whatever people think progressives are doing wrong, the other side is doing it x1000.
People have got to stop tone policing the good guys in this picture. Gently call out obvious abuse but on the whole this current public obsession is god damn red herring that’s letting the enemy slide under the radar and do untold damage.
@ mrex:
I think a lot of people, here and elsewhere, agree with this. I surely do.
I’d be happier if the Democratic party stood more clearly for its views, and was more open to discussion about what those views mean, and entail, and how we haven’t achieved them, and what we want.
I think most progressives want more regulation, in general. I surely do. I don’t believe for a fucking second that it kills jobs; quite the opposite. And, hey, it also saves lives, and protects civil liberties. Don’t those matter? Should we always just talk about jobs? By framing the discussion that way, we’re ignoring the other values involved. And, again, I think that a long-term plan is essential here. By protecting the environment, by ensuring access to clean water and safe food and breathable air, we’re taking the longer view, and achieving greater profits. And, also, you know, saving the planet and our children. If those count. I don’t care much about what’ll change our success in the next year or five years, which is what politicians are all about (in pursuit of reelection); I care deeply about what’ll change our success in the next ten or twenty or fifty years. Republicans always, ALWAYS sacrifice the future for short-term partisan gains. We need to stand up for the other view and explain why.
I think most progressives want a stronger social safety net. I surely do. If we truly believe that people have a self-evident right to life, then surely people also have a right to sustain that life, through food and shelter and medical care. And I’m not trying to put down liberty or the pursuit of happiness, but without life, what good are those?
***
I think race is VERY important here. I think a lot of the other ways people differentiate in America are also very very important. I don’t feel comfortable making sweeping statements about which bigotry is more harmful or which privilege matters more. All I try to do is point out how there are different kinds of overlapping privileges and bigotries.
I have all or most of these privileges, and effectively suffer from none of these bigotries, which (as I’ve learned more) has just made me hyper-aware of how easy it is not to account for all the layers of privilege and bigotry in place, and so I point out to others what has been most difficult for me to recognize.
I’m just trying to learn to be a better ally, and put that into practice.
“Awww@mrex”?
Damn phone. And I didn’t notice it til after the edit window closed.
@mrex
No. Stop. Fuck you
I have a beef with elected Democrats, who sometimes talk a good talk but fail to walk the walk, and sometimes don’t even bother with the talk. But to focus exclusively on Democrats is bullshit. Democrats could be doing more when they are in power, but gerrymandering has ensured that they are not in power very often. Why are we not focusing on the failings of the party that actually has the ability to do stuff right now?
It’s a pattern that the actual perpetrators get a complete pass, that their actions and agency are completely erased from the discussion, in favor of talking about those who are in opposition to the perpetrators, asking why they aren’t more effective in their opposition. We see this in rape culture and we see this in political culture and we see this in economic culture. What the fuck is this about?
I don’t know why we need more factory jobs, or more coal jobs. We need more jobs in those areas of the country, but why do they automatically need to be the exact same kinds of jobs? Why does mrex need a factory job, precisely?
I have a story: Kentucky was once heavily dependent on tobacco revenue. But tobacco is going away! Whatever shall we do? One option would be to say that we need to encourage people to smoke so that more tobacco farm jobs are available. That’s the morally abhorrent solution. Kentucky has instead decided to bow to the inevitable and support tobacco farmers in growing something else. There is a push to turn Kentucky into a wine state, for instance, to replace those tobacco jobs with different jobs. Growing and harvesting wine grapes requires different skills than growing and harvesting tobacco, so this has required farmers to learn something new to switch to the new industry. Some of them have whined about how we need those tobacco jobs back, but most have conceded that this isn’t going to happen and have moved on to other things.
Coal jobs are morally abhorrent. Factory jobs not necessarily (although sometimes they are), but factually we are not getting those back. It’s time to bow to the inevitable and move away from the coal/factory model to something else. As long as coal miners are promised that their coal jobs will come back, they won’t bother learning a new industry and efforts to jump-start new industries in those areas will fail. This is a tough-love moment: coal miners and factory workers aren’t getting their jobs back and they need to move to other industries.
@mrex
Yes. WWTH (among others) have told you repeatedly what:
@Policy of Madness It sounds like common sense for people to acknowledge that some kinds of work are declining while others are growing, and decide on/retrain for a career accordingly, but, as is often the case, misogyny is getting in the way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/upshot/why-men-dont-want-the-jobs-done-mostly-by-women.html?_r=0
Even ‘manly’ construction work in the renewables sector isn’t ‘manly’ enough for former miners and factory workers.
Hi, I think a route to contrast this denialist closure on climate from Trump would be to boycott the industries which don’t respect the agreement and pollute the most and actually promote the most diligent in respecting it despite the lack of formal obligation which renders their competition unfair, all coming in the form single Us states policies, Eu, Cina, Russia etc (Putin also criticized the decision). And of course individual initiatives from people and informed consumers across the world. Letting them know their coal is useless and not buy it. Maybe boycod Mcdonald’s, dunno :), but that’s old. Afterall Trump has been the first to engage commercial wars with the rest of the world and calling germans “evil” for “flooding” the market exporting their cars, talk about free market, lol. Actually the presumed deal with Russia was the least of the problems, which at first at least seemed to prevent Trump from doing further damage in matter of foreign policies, but it’s still shady that Putin pushed so much for his election and for Le Pen in France.
I mean boycotting is one of the reasonable routes, being that the agreement didn’t work, I know it’s hard, but if people still want to consume the result of such irresponsible pollution conducts, maintain the privilege of the oil industry to maintain full demand until it exhausts, the Europe will risk being hypocritical (I mean IF, plus I’m also european). I also know it’s hard if the polluters have their means of production guaranteed, as of course that limits the supply of non polluters, etc, talking in very general macro economic terms, of which I still have much to learn about, so, glad to be corrected if it’s the case :).
About the jobs and democrats not caring about them, or the privilege talk and the idea of whites accused as a whole class for being white, I agree it’s the usual strawman, but we have to make sure it does not come across this way, without it coming across as tone policing though. Afterall isn’t tone policing about the “concern trolls” that want to get the message blunted and actually less effective.
If I remind well it was the left accused of wanting the factories to not close or fire workers because the innovation abated the costs, including the necessity of workers or made an industry obsolete, etc. So it’s true, many people are scared of the very word socialist but actually despise the effect of capitalism, just the reps manage to convert in right wing thematics, like competition flooding (a marxist concept) and blaming the foreigners (the victims of the mechanism) for it, instead of the very system, then believing in “trickle down”, that abating taxes of the rich, like Trumps wants to do benefits somhow the workers, because if the enterpreuner thirst for gain is “sated” he/she is somehow keener to hire more people, stay/return in the country, etc, lol.
But the point is, to recap, that if you want more employment, redistribution of job force, I think can only result from redistribution of purchasing power, otherwise we have artificial scarcity. A critical control of money value is needed at an individual level.
To conclude, I agree with intersectionality, but maybe it just seems too cut and dry to some people, we have to focus more on the fact that the various axis of privilege add up, sure, but not linearly.
Sorry for being lengthy, I wish you all a great time. 🙂
Ok POM, you have some good points.
First off, to get it out of the way…
“But to focus exclusively on Democrats is bullshit.”
Not suggesting that we should. Not even suggesting that we should focus mostly on Democrats. The Republicans are the problem.
“Coal jobs are morally abhorrent. Factory jobs not necessarily (although sometimes they are), but factually we are not getting those back. It’s time to bow to the inevitable and move away from the coal/factory model to something else”
No, factory jobs often are pretty morally abhorrent. And they’re not coming back. Thing is there still are factories and industry jobs still, they’re just overseas, where the manufacturers can pollute and commit to human rights violations to their heart’s content. The problem that I have with people that are glad to see American manufacturing/other polluters go away, is that they still want their phones, and their computers, and electricity. Environmentalism is all well and good, but too often American environmentalism amounts to nothing more than a gigantic case of NIMBYism.
I mean, I’m the same way. I’m writing this on a device that gets it’s capacitors from a plant in Korea that has been sued for poisoning it’s workers. The heavy metals were mined by hand in Africa, at an extraordinary human cost. But give me my phone, dammit!
Why don’t displaced workers just get jobs in new industries? Well let’s talk about that. Many former factory workers are going into retail, which besides being part time work that doesn’t offer much in terms of benefits, have been shedding jobs like CRAZY. I get this all the time from Republican baby boomers. “Well, they could always get a job flipping burgers if they weren’t so lazy!”. Well gee, they would if they could.
So what about training for a new industry? This is what ultimately has to happen. How lever, NGL, I find the idea that everyone can afford to just drop everything to train in a new feild a little bit classist.
Argh! So much has happened. Just a few things:
@Dalillama –
Yup. And when I first started to realize this (yeah, it has taken me a while) I thought, “WTF? There are hardly any POC here“. I mean, the genocide against the Native Americans pretty much saw to that, and, let’s face it, there aren’t many reasons to come here unless you’re getting free land through the Homestead Act, and while I haven’t looked it up I’m fairly confident POC weren’t offered the full advantages of that program.
But racism runs so incredibly deep in the US, and a lot of the time I don’t even know how to combat it myself – I mean I’m only coming out of my own Liberal White cocoon over the past 5 years or so myself and I haven’t developed very useful tools for shutting it down. I don’t even mean the entrenched systemic racism, but even the blatant, obvious racism – its so shocking to hear it out loud sometimes that I’m left a little stunned. (Yes, yes, I know, poor sensitive white liberal lady getting the vapors!).
Anyway, not jockeying for my Liberal Ally ™ cookie or anything, just trying to say that sometimes it feels so insurmountable to fight against – and that’s for a privileged white woman who doesn’t even have to deal with it if she really doesn’t want to. I just try to keep listening and learning, and hopefully getting better about speaking up and pointing things out. I vote and I hope I’m getting better at seeing racist and oppressive policies.
I do wish we were more diverse in our area (again, though, who would come here? 90-degree blistering hot humid summers with biting flies and mosquitos, -40 degree 7-month long winters, no trees, no open water, no nuthin’). I see kids my son’s age coming up with little to no personal experience with POC and just absorbing their familes’ polite yet definite prejudices. I grew up in a racist home myself but at least I knew lots of African American and hispanic kids that I went to school and college with.
@kupo – I’m surprised your co-worker doesn’t see rewarding the cat as being of benefit to you instead of the cat. I mean, reducing the hassle of giving the cat meds is certainly of benefit to you as well? Anyway, it seems like an odd attitude to take toward a pet. Pets don’t do what they’re “supposed to do” without being trained, genius co-worker.
Everyone else has addressed mrex very eloquently, and given me a lot to think about as well. I have my own issues with the Democratic party, too. There seems to be a lot of infighting but maybe that’s a good thing, since it shows a certain willingness to not just go along with the party line. It’s just that with things so dire, I would like to see more unity – but, I guess like many people, I think that that unity should be unity with my personal ideals.
So it looks like there’s room for some compromises on my part, however, the thing that has most bothered me is the current push from some Democratic channels to accept, or at least to “politely overlook” pro-forced-birth agendas for the sake of party unity, and that is just something I cannot do. I don’t want to be a single-issue voter, particularly not that issue, but the calls to support so-called progressive Democratic candidates that “just so happen” to be anti-abortion is hideous to me.
Hope some are able to make it out to protest today!
Why don’t tobacco farmers just grow wine grapes? Well, it’s a different skill set, and grape vines take several years to develop into production, during which you are getting jack all from them to support your farm. Therefore the state has had to support these farmers and help them learn the new skills and put in the up-front investment needed, which the farmers alone would not be able to do.
Are you seeing my analogy yet?
Retail is not your only other option, but all service-industry jobs have the same problem of being low paid, with poor or no benefits, and poor job security. The solution is not to tilt at windmills and pine for those sweet factory jobs; it’s to make service industry jobs more secure, offering better benefits and better wages. Service industry jobs are usually not unionized, and workers are treated as interchangeable because the labor is unskilled and the labor pool therefore very large. Maybe that ought to be changed?
If you want to accuse me of classism, come out and say it at me. Don’t hide it in the passive voice.
@POM
“Are you seeing my analogy yet?”
Yes.
The training programs for displaced workers are limited. Yes, I’m sure many would like to fix that. It’s not fixed yet, however.
“Service industry jobs are usually not unionized…”
Yes, that ought to be changed.
Retail jobs still are primarily part-time (low benefit) with or without a union. And they’re still facing major job losses, with or without a union.
“If you want to accuse me of classism, come out and say it at me. Don’t hide it in the passive voice.”
Why would I want to accuse you, as a person, of anything? I’m discussing ideas, not people.
You’re as bad a liar as you are a person.
Speaking as someone who is *somewhat* involved in party politics (albeit I’m about as far down the food chain of party activism as you can get and still be on it) everything from the ease of unionization to job training to other things are things that the Dem party has worked for, when it gets blocked we get blamed.
Though regarding factory/manufacturing work: while many developed countries has had very small declines 20% of their population remains working in factories (the us is 8) and that 20% essentially pays for the welfare state because the lesson of the modern economy is that service jobs can’t support a country (to the point that China is literally laughing at us). There’s a reason that Canada and Germany where able to keep most of their manufacturing work (they have roughly 3x the % of workers in those industries)
So I guess I’m saying I disagree with mrex in general but I disagree with those dismissing manufacturing as that’s the damn ball game for the country (and Trump’s one political genius was to understand that and then lie his ass off about what he actually stood for).
@SFHC
“You’re as bad a liar as you are a person.”
AWWWW, are you trying to bait me into something? It’s cute.
You should try seperating people’s statements from their worth as human beings. Then you would be able to understand how “I find this idea a little classist” is not the same thing as “You are a horrible, classist, POS”.
Try it.
@Handle
“So I guess I’m saying I disagree with mrex in general”
Ok. How so?
Let me just restate that I’m not blaming Dems as a whole for the results of Republican’s actions, and I’m not questioning the intentions of Dems as a whole.
Originally this started off as getting something off my chest against someone I know and because my personal life is shit. I know exactly how many cracks there are in the safety net to catch displaced workers, and intentions to have things better don’t actually pay any bills.
I’m starting to wonder at the defensive reactions I’m getting. Obviously I’m swinging too close to home.
Oh yes, obviously that is the only possible explanation.
Not caring about manufacturing jobs, because “safety net”, does not do shit when your safety net looks like swiss chesse. And when the rubber hits the road, it does not matter who fault it is that those holes are there, just that they’re there .
Jobs matter, because America loves workers, even the Democrats. And a job is the only way that you’ll know that you’ll be taken care of at the end of the day.
Oh yes, obviously that is the only possible explanation.”
Give me another. I’d be happier to believe anything else. Literally anything.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, you’re getting this reaction because you’re being disingenuous.
The democrats could be doing better. But democratic failings are inconsequential in terms of harm, in terms of demonstrated incompetence, and in terms of magnitude next to the bullshit the right wing pulls or tries to pull in every single western country.
Every single time the country pays the price for a Republican failure, the democrats are blamed for it. I think it’s about time we we assign blame where it belongs. The recession was due to Republican attempts to de-regulate financial institutions which obviously require regulation. And so forth.
Things Every Troll Ever Has Said
Then perhaps you should’ve mentioned that in your original post instead of just ranting about Democrats. We can’t actually read your mind.
This. A thousand times this.
<Hagrid> Yer a dumbfuck, Mrex. </Hagrid>
And every single time the country is helped by a Democratic success pushed through despite Republican obstructionism, sabotage and disinformation campaigns, the Republicans are credited for it.