Because populism leads very quicky to dark places. Most all systems of government, of vested authority and state monopoly of violence, are to address our instinct towards populism. Egging on the mob never ends well.
You're only labeling it "populism" (which is normally defined as 'support for the concerns of ordinary people') because you don't like the outcome. If you liked the outcome you would call it "democratic."
Somehow the idea of being concerned about the outcome for ordinary people has become vilified by American liberals because red state, blue collar, ordinary people are worthless.
What is going on?! Trump wants to be a job protectionist while Democrats want globalization? Aren't you people aware that not that long ago the Democrats were fighting the Republicans against globalization because they claimed that globalization was only good for corporate interests and bad for ordinary Americans?
PS I think Trump is a nut job in many ways so please don't read the above as an endorsement.
Populism is, in a political culture, the appeal to the popular regardless of other interests. It is about simplistic concepts easily chanted, divorced from complex realities. It is about doing what the people say they want regarless of how idiotic that may be, regardless of the fact they probably dont want the thing in the long run. By way if example, tieing NAFTA negotiations to whichever country wins the Stanly Cup would be popular, but it isnt sound leadership. Eliminating the IRS is popular, but no rational person would do it. (Either of those wouldnt shock me if tweeted.)
The populous isn't always in the best position to think through the long-term implications of their desires.
In this case, Trump rode the anger of voters who want to close the borders to both immigrants and imported manufactured goods, because they perceived that some of their jobs going to illegal imigrants, and other manufacturing jobs had been taken overseas.
How many of those people, do you think, buy everything at Walmart (whether it's all they can afford or not)? How many of those people realize that a 35% border tax and getting rid of our internal slave labor force will lead to commensurately higher prices of goods and services, without necessarily bringing back the jobs that were actually automated away? If they have thought it through, where's the better outcome?
This is why we don't have a direct democracy. These issues are more complicated than one can wrap their head around without making it a full-time job for an industry, and the decisions aren't helped by folks making decisions out of anger and desperation.
It's not exactly a citation, but high school culture ("that which sounds cool should be done") doesn't exactly lead to the best of all possible places.
Looking for symmetric universal moral principals sort of does seem to. Though I admit basically no form of government seems to head in that direction, as founding documents post-revolution are not really a form of government in my model.
As someone who knows a lot of trump supporters and trump haters, this is what people who are afraid of trump need to recognize. I've seen the advice from this article work first hand, and I've seen people who don't understand what the author is talking about make situations worse first hand.
Yes, the author completely misses the core issue: when the populace at large gets tired of getting hammered with elitist & special-interest issues, to the point of being told to actively facilitate what is broadly considered distasteful, they start looking for someone who will restore the mundane norms they are comfortable with.
The following is a list of US populist complaints, which Trump successfully addressed. (Don't up/down-vote based on whether you agree or not with the issues of the list, which I may or may not, just note that the points are important to enough people to vote a Trump into office.) In no particular order...
Facilitation/celebration of LGBQT (most people aren't, and find differing sexualities repulsive). Demands for "safe spaces" while eliminating the only long socially established safe spaces: sexually segregated restrooms. Taking taxpayer earnings and spending them on advocacy of opposing views. Reducing a sense of safety vs crime, while seemingly protecting criminals (this issue dominated by the US "gun culture"). Laying blame/responsibility for environmental issues on those thinking themselves not guilty (say, global warming). Stifling parental preferences in education (Common Core, lack of school vouchers, absolute intolerance of anything hinting of Christianity). Broad/unrelenting accusations of whites & males as invariably & irredeemably sexist/misogynist/xenophobic/racist/etc (say, Hillary's declaration of 1/4 of Americans as "deplorables"). Incredible growth of national debt ($10,000,000,000,000 in last 8 years, doubling all previous debt) with prospect of populace having to pay it. Lack of jobs (need for jobs has far outstripped creation of jobs). Overwhelming regulations, making compliance & cost untenable. Abortion being considered, on the whole, inexcusable murder of children.
Understand that classic US culture is deeply rooted in individual liberty & rights. Basically, taking someone's money to make them pay for something they don't want angers them; they'll put up with a lot, but once "enough!" hits they're prone to taking dramatic steps to end the offense. Also note that the USA is huge, having a broad range of views from coast to coast; what Hillary offered was "coastal" culture, while Trump appealed to "heartland", and with the Electoral College deliberately biasing Presidential elections toward populist views, the large number of central states won the vote.
I think that the point is though that for all of those things listed, even if a majority find it repulsive, there were enough who agreed with Trump to get him elected.
Dismissing someone's beliefs as absurd, racist, ignorant, crazy, will not change their mind. You have to be patient, calm, and curious. Most people don't really know why they believe what they believe. This isn't a comment on trump supporters in particular, just something I find true in general.
It's hard work, but what I've found to work is this:
Instead of getting into an argument, state what you believe and talk with them in terms of cooperatively finding out what claim is correct. Don't let your ego get in the way. Figure out what exact parts of the claim they believe (or disbelieve), and research those specific parts, with them present. For example, say someone doesn't believe in global warming. Maybe they just don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, or they misunderstand some of the evidence. Shouting that they're stupid (which I've done before, it's about as ineffective and childish as it sounds) won't work, because you aren't addressing their actual concerns, which they themselves might not be fully aware of.
This is slow, hard work, but it does pay off. You have to keep an open mind, and be 100% aware of your own behavior. If you are dismissive because of a value difference between you and the other persons cultural background, it's counter productive. Likewise, if you can't admit when you're wrong, then it doesn't work either. Admit when you don't know something, and that you are flawed and imperfect like everyone else. Take this as an opportunity to learn about your own beliefs.
A concrete example:
A close friend believes some conspiracy theories (no AGW, moonlanding faked, etc.) I've successfully gotten him to go from the position of "Global warming is a liberal conspiracy" to "Climate change is a real and serious issue, but I'm not 100% on the evidence for it being man-made". This has been really hard work over a period of about a year, but it's worth it. I'm not done, but this is how it's gone so far. Any time he expresses his opinion about this, I'll express that I disagree. This usually leads to some anger on his part because people tend to get their opinions wrapped up in their identity and take disagreement as a personal attack. I 'll point that out if things get too heated. Instead of just saying "no" or "you're wrong", I'll say something like, "well let's find out. I could be wrong." A lot of times, he won't believe the research I pull up, or pull up a denier website. I go through the denier websites and investigate claims point by point. For example, quotes from people who have since changed their mind, cherry picked lines from studies, things like that. Most of the time, it didn't seem like there was any progress made that session, but the next time it came up, his opinion would be a little more nuanced, or his opinion would move a little away from the conspiracy.
It's slow, gradual work, but we are both more educated on many issues because of this. I feel the important thing is to treat their opinion as valid. Often when you investigate why people believe irrational things, you find that they believe them for rational reasons. People they respect believe that, they have personal experience that runs counter to the research, they distrust the source of the claim.
If you don't understand why someone believes something, you can't change their mind about it.
/rant
Sorry for the wall of text, this is something I deal with all the time. tl;dr: Change people's minds one person, one opinion at a time. Be patient and open minded. Research it with them, and make sure you are cooperating, not verbally fighting for dominance. Changing someone's mind is an incremental process. Emphasize being open minded and doing research instead of advocating "not believing crazy things".
Huge point. Beyond the electoral college, the founders of the US had many mechanisms to prevent this kind of thing, but we've degraded them in favor of the idea that everyone's voice counts equally.
Senators used to be appointed. Party candidates used to be selected by party officials, not the public. This last one in particular would have prevented a Trump presidency.
How about addressing the widespread concerns that cause "populism" even if it means setting back your own ulterior agenda?
Brexit and immigration is a good example of this. Blair decided mass immigration was a good idea for a number of reasons. At some point they surely realised that although it would provide an economic boost, some people would lose out financially and most did not want significant cultural change in their community. Over the years larger dissatisfaction with this policy grew and grew, only to be labelled racist by the ruling parties. This led to UKIP which led to splits in the Conservative party which led to Brexit.
Ignore a valid issue long enough and resentment will spread across the country. If these peoples concerns and wishes were not sacrificed for ulterior motives a EU ref would likely never occur.
Parallels to US/Trump seem reasonable. Large groups of people whose concerns have not necessarily been address because the contrary policies benefit an already privileged and distant few.
tldr: Offer real solutions to the large number of poor and struggling people in your country. Even if it slows down your grander plan. If you don't, resentment will build and there are more of them than you.
edit: The absolute biggest danger to the embedded powers is that Trump succeeds and does a good job. Hard to overstate this.
I agree completely with your premise but I don't think you've identified the real issue with immigration and brexit - the real underlying issue is unemployment/underemployment, fallout from the financial crisis, near 0% interest rates etc all combining to leave the poor with next to nothing.
Then they see immigrants arriving around the same time all this is happening and assign the blame to them.
I can't speak to your other points, but extremely low interest rates are not any kind of impairment to 'the poor,' as they generally do not have much in the way of savings, and benefit from 'cheaper' loans for things like cars or housing.
I agree that there are many reasons behind Brexit aside from immigration. On this point however, this Labour policy to dramatically increase immigration started in 1997.
Perhaps it has something to do with the institutionalized abuse of the immigration system in order to import workers who are paid less and are far less likely to leave or demand higher wages.
The idea that there is a STEM shortage is a bonafide myth. Remember that we're talking about the same industry that perpetuated the largest wage fixing cartel in human history.
It's amazing how many people around here just can't wrap their heads around the fact that increased labor supply means lower wages. You only have to listen to a handful of earnings calls with giant corporations talking with glee about how elastic the labor markets are, and how that will be a huge boon to their earnings.
Why would people want to immigrate to a country where they can't find work? The answer is that they can find work.
Why can they find work if unemployment is high? I see a few possible answers: 1. Unemployment isn't actually high, 2. Employers are illegally paying immigrants below minimum wage knowing they have no legal recourse, or 3. They are taking jobs that those here are unwilling to take.
How does a crackdown on illegal immigration speak to any of this?
I refer people to my previous comments on the politics of immigration, where people pretty much admit that it's not about immigration status (which you can't see) but ethnicity (which you can). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13470571
There are real economic problems, and the press have been quite effective at blaming them on immigration when really they're more due to inequality.
> Trump succeeds and does a good job
Succeeds for whom? Different people want very different things, that's where politics comes from in the first place. What would "success" look like? How much global warming does it include?
For some Americans, the executive order banning entry for a list of nationalities means that their spouses can never leave the country again and are at greatly increased risk of being deported.
(There's a similar argument happening in the UK where "success" for some people means unemployment for others, or even being obliged to leave the country)
Having joined in that discussion where it became clear that you didn't even know the meaning of the word immigrant, you didn't listen to what we said and now you're projecting your own prejudices on other people.
And falling back on calling everyone a racist again.
Which is precisely what this article says doesn't work.
people pretty much admit that it's not about immigration status ... but ethnicity
That's a nice way of saying "everyone admitted they're racists".
No-one in that thread did.
The most ridiculous thing about all this is that I actually come from a white immigrant community (dutch around a port town), but my generation acculturised with the UK.
It really sticks in your craw when I'm generally a left-leaning liberalist but some tit like pjc50 starts accusing you of being a racist because I've been in supermarkets obviously filled with white immigrants as they're all speaking polish.
It really has helped me realise how devoid of empathy people who start accusing everyone of racism for merely discussing immigration are.
It's incredibly upsetting to be called a racist merely for asking why mass migration to the UK has been allowed. It's a perfectly reasonable question.
The point of that discussion was that everyone had plenty of opportunity to say what exactly the problem was with immigrants, other than that they have a different ethnicity and language. They didn't.
The problem in the US is that there is no clear majority. Let's be clear, there are more than 2 parties, but the ultimate choice is completely binary: REP||DEM. The one who can dance in the media the best, wins.
Gordon Brown (PM after Blair) introduced the Migrant Impact Fund precisely to spread the benefits of migration to those who would normally lose out. The Tory/Lib Dem coalition cancelled the project 4 months after they got into power (in August 2010 to be precise). Then austerity was piled on top, and now we've arrived at where we are today.
But if the primary concern of the electorate are cultural changes this is an irrelevant gesture. Now some might say it is racist or xenophobic to want to maintain the culture of your local community. I don't believe it is.
It is a good example of how the constituents wishes (preserve culture of local community ) is at complete odds with the governments wishes. They can keep on throwing money at them, but it will never address this issue that many people find very important.
That makes no sense. If immigration is responsible for changing culture, how could it not be the national government's job?
There's more than a few countries that have laws stating that it's essentially treason to modify the demographics of the nation. Seems to have worked quite well for Japan at the national level.
Immigration is a great example to pick of technocrat vs populist.
Left technocrats see immigration as a human rights issue. Freedom of movement is a well-recognized fundamental human right; your ability to move from Gloucester to London is enshrined in Britain's unwritten constitution. Left technocrats do not see the movement from Paris to London to be any different than the movement from Gloucester to London.
Right technocrats see immigration as a free market issue. One cannot have a truly free market in goods and services unless service providers can freely travel.
So compromising on immigration means compromising on principles. Sometimes it's expedient to do so, but I vote for my representatives based on their principles and how closely they appear to adhere to them.
It's also a human rights issue from the populist side. Self determination--the right of groups of people to choose the structure of their society--is also a human right. Society is a very intimate thing. It's a group of people consenting to share each others' burdens as well as rewards; it's a group of people giving up individual autonomy and consenting to be governed by the will of the group. Immigration without consent is a deep violation of the group's integrity and autonomy.
The real issue is individualism versus collectivism. Populists think that groups' freedom of association trumps individuals' freedom of movement, while individualists think the opposite.
It's not a judgment on what people deserve, but on what you are willing to give up to help them. School children in Africa don't deserve to go hungry, but tons of people on HN are still going to buy a shiny new MacBook Pro this year instead of using that money to feed dozens of kids in the developing world for a year.[1]
The fact that restricting immigration is a group choice while not donating money is an individual choice changes nothing about the morality. Either way, you're choosing to increase your own standard of living instead of helping someone who is already much worse off than yourself.
The cynic in me thinks the real difference is who pays. Educated people living on the coasts bear the same costs as less educated people in border areas when it comes to food donations, but bear a small fraction of the costs when it comes to increased immigration. That makes it easier for them to support the latter in comparison to committing to the former.
First, thank you for your very reasonable response to my (regrettably) inflammatory post.
But both issues are similarly nuanced.
In the same way I can't just trust that a donation to any random opaque 'help the children' fund is actually effectively helping starving children, we can't just blindly open all borders and take in every tired, poor, huddled mass.
But there is a very, very clear middle ground.
I can research aid organizations to find one that I believe will use my donation effectively.
We can build systems to establish qualified immigrants with the same basic starting point we agree everyone should have (food stamps/healthcare/temporary unemployment assistance/affordable housing) so they can start a life here.
Trump won due to resentment in Rust Belt states, where manufacturing jobs have declined. But immigration isn't the cause of those job losses. Automation has cost far more jobs.
A connection is seen between outsourcing and free trade deals, and that's a much better target. Now, it's arguable that free trade deals are economically beneficial, but they look bad. Trump gets that, and Democrats fell down in that regard.
But the anti-immigration scapegoating? That's not causality, that's scapegoating. Immigration is not the cause of the woes of the Rust Belt, but it gives them something to blame, and a populist leader can exploit that.
The embedded powers will be very happy if Trump succeeds.
Fewer regulations will mean freer movement of capital, which has historically been a great boon for the wealthy and powerful.
If he manages to double down on coal production, the ensuing government subsidies will benefit those with the resources to capitalize on the undermining of the market (after all, any time you introduce predictability into the market, you are handing money to people who have the influence and resources to exploit it).
If he succeeds in building the wall, then he will have successfully shifted blame for existing economic woes onto Mexican migrants, without evidence, which will mean increased popular mandate for governmental power grabs.
If he succeeds in undermining climate change, he will have two benefits: first, he will have vanquished scientific and evidence-based opposition in general, and second, he will have undermined barriers between business and exploitation of known public health undermining scenarios.
If he succeeds in cowing the media, he will have removed one of the few non-governmental checks and balances on transparency of government.
Finally, if he succeeds in general, it will be at the expense of the already tenuous necessity for politicians to tie their agendas to evidence/science-based approaches to policy creation.
I say all of this not as an inveterate liberal, but as someone who is continually bewildered by the fact that Trump can make things up, without evidence, and have sufficient support to transform them into public policy. Actually I should cop to the fact that I'm not that bewildered--history is of course littered with leaders who have done the same, and whether or not they actually benefit the people who brought them to power is really an analyst's roulette game.
The embedded powers will be happy if Trump succeeds? The same "embedded powers" who tried to block him from even running on the GOP ticket? Whom he then had to threaten to run independent to let him into the primaries? The same embedded powers who've been attacking him from both sides of the media (left and right) since he announced he would run?
I have no idea how you people come to these conclusions. I mean, if I watched more mainstream media and believed everything I was told, I suppose I can see how you would come to these sorts of conclusions. I can assure you they are wrong. I mean the CIA is against Trump and is trying to de-legitimize his election after the fact. Are those the "embedded powers" who will be happy if he succeeds? Who are you even talking about? The only ones on Trumps side are probably half the GOP, and the people, that's it, everybody else is against him.
I'm not sure I would fit in your definition of "you people" if you got to know me, but who knows :). The key is to not believe anyone in particular and look to how patterns have unfolded throughout history. There are few examples of people using Trump's tactics who have achieved good for their constituency. As Dear Abby or Ann Landers would remind us, people don't change nearly as much as you want them too, so if someone spends their life working for a particular set of interests and gains power by promising to look after a new set, I will believe their actions more than their words. And as an engineer, when someone posits simple solutions to complex problems, I will look to them to provide rigorous evidence to support their policies.
Your organizing principle is simple: don’t feed polarization, disarm it.
This is so important.
Samantha Bee can't stop making piss jokes about Trump. That's not going to win anyone over.
Nina Donovan's poem, recited by Ashley Judd at the Women's March, is brave and powerful. It is also polarizing. There is a line: "I’m not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust." That's not going to win anyone over.
Again and again, people are attacking Trump for the wrong reasons. Focus on the truly bad. Don't get hung up on his hair. It makes you look petty.
It's not her job to win everybody over. But if she wants to contribute to what she'd consider progress, she can stop injecting so much noise into the signal. People only have so much exposure to "the message", and are likely to dismiss it quickly given too many scatalogical & other insults.
There's a difference between "winning everybody over" vs "do your part to contribute to polite discourse" vs "make your side sound dominated by insult-spewing jerks". Parent wasn't asking for total perfect solution, only to stop contributing to needless antagonism.
I want to quote another part of the article that I think is important. Even if you use the right reasons, it's still not effective:
> Don’t waste your time trying to prove that this ism is better than that ism. Ditch all the big words. Why? Because, again, the problem is not the message but the messenger. It’s not that Trump supporters are too stupid to see right from wrong, it’s that you’re much more valuable to them as an enemy than as a compatriot.
> The problem is tribal. Your challenge is to prove that you belong in the same tribe as them: that you are American in exactly the same way they are.
> Again and again, people are attacking Trump for the wrong reasons. Focus on the truly bad.
I disagree. Attacking him at all is a huge mistake, at least until you/the opposition can offer a credible alternative (which Hillary isn't/wasn't). People will put up with all the bad that Trump is, as long as all the alternatives are worse (and yes, economic reasons will trump moral/social reasons for most people except the most well-off).
Unfortunately, there are also a large number of people who actively cheer acceptably childish behavior in a grown man, that they would have grounded their children for.
I absolutely agree. Your point about Samantha Bee reminds me of a podcast that Malcolm Gladwell did recently about satire. In it he criticized SNL's portrayal of Sarah Palin back in 2008. Tina Fay's impression of her was funny as hell, but it mostly made fun of the way Palin talks and her attitude. If you already dislike Palin (as I do/did) it seems like cutting criticism.
But the problem is that her mannerisms aren't really whats bad about her. And Trump's alleged kinks aren't whats bad about him. Its easy for his supporters to defend him and say that either it is not true, because there isn't any public evidence that it is, or that there is nothing wrong with a piss fetish. And they are right. There is nothing wrong with it.
In Spain the word populism has turned into an insult that traditional political parties use freely against new political parties even if the statements are perfectly legit (e.g. universal basic income). Is this happening in other countries too?
Yes. Everywhere "populism" is used as an insult for political parties that actually listen to people and intent to do as the population wants, as opposed to established parties that mainly keep their power because of intertia and are getting more and more disconnected from their voters.
Serious question, does this guy actually know how to deal with populism? Chavez died of cancer, he wasn't defeated politically. Current day Venezuela is led by Chavez's former Vice President.
Great article but it fails to address a key point of this type of revolutions (I've lived through a couple). Upset people don't like listening to reason. They want relief ( even the promise of it.)
While it's true that you can reach out and have a meal, share a laugh, with a Trump supporter, I don't think that will do anything lasting or good. Trump supporters are, in my personal experience, willfully ignorant. They make general statements (particularly about the poor state of the US and Obama's failure) and cannot back them up with supporting facts. They get indignant and threatened when asked for facts. They ignore evidence of his lack of personal values.
Yet the doom that faces America is very real, and this is really the cause of their emotions. Intuitively they know we can't consume so much without producing it. If we offshore production, we must eventually offshore consumption. Chinese workers earning $5 a day, Chinese factories paying no attention to the environment or workers rights, this is really the ONLY problem we need to address. And the liberal elites don't care, because they don't make money making things, and never did.
Are you a liberal elite wanting to heal the divide? Build a factory in the USA. A real, physical factory that builds real, physical things. And if you do the math and realize you can't do that and compete with China, then fight like hell to punish Chinese producers for playing the game by unfair rules (e.g. impose tariffs to at least bring the price up to what it would be if they paid their people a living wage, benefits, and protected the environment).
There is the matter that, even if these Trump supporters provided facts you wouldn't believe those facts anyway. You would attribute the facts they provided to different causes and interpret them in your own way to suit your world view. It's really a waste of time talking to each other. I've spent plenty of time arguing with people on the left. Facts and figures and citations stored on my phone (TO SHOW PEOPLE IRL) and all for nothing. Complete waste of time. The only thing that made a difference was arguing with a liberal friend about diversity. I was able to point out that he lives in the whitest building in the whitest part of the city. So harping on about diversity is hypocritical because when he had time to put his money where his mouth is he did the opposite (he is white). That was the only thing that even made him pause to think for a second. In my experience, no amount of facts, no amount of well meaning discussion has any point. Nobody on the left will agree with you, they won't see your point, they willfully choose to misunderstand your points, they misrepresent your arguments when they repeat them back to you. It is a futile waste of time to talk to each other. The issue will eventually be decided the way all such fundamental irreconcilable disagreements are decided, might will make right in the end.
It's disappointing to me how many comments still refer to concerns by Trump or Brexit supports as essentially optics. "They blame immigrants", "they see immigrants coming in at the same time as things being bad and make assumptions", "they're just being racist", etc. Maybe some of them believe their country's culture is suffering and that part of the problem is an influx of immigrants. Maybe they're not wrong. Acting like this is all a matter of misinformation needing to be corrected seems stupefyingly arrogant to me.
Don't like this pejorative use of the word populism. Populism is getting people to vote for you for what they want, telling them they need to do what you want is the polar opposite of what needs to be done to fight the far right.
It's convenient that this article and another on the nature (or lacking) of modern humility are both on the front page at the same time.
I think this entire argument reduces to a recommendation: "Humble yourself". It's so damn easy to get caught up in egocentrism. There's an intrinsic human bias towards believing that what you believe is the right thing to believe. I've never met someone who is genuinely innocent of this fault (if it can be called a fault), especially when it comes to dogmatic issues of genuine belief. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to exist as a creature that does not put its own beliefs first, of course, so I think the logic instead has to be, "yes, we may believe our own beliefs foremost, at the expense of the beliefs of others. But we must commit time to hypothetical sympathy".
To participate in an argument, we must engage in hypothetical sympathy with our counterparts. The first assumption on hearing what is perceived to be a wrong idea cannot be, "this idea is wrong, and therefore the carrier of this idea must be stupid and inferior to me, the right and correct". That turns an issue that might be argued productively into an issue of dogmatism. Most people are rational, to a functional extent. The difference lies more in the set of axioms we possess, rather than the logic used to build from them. And so we must humble ourselves; our axioms are unproveable by the definition of the word. The first step to engaging someone else is to try and imagine what set of axioms, assuming similar logic, would allow them to reach the positions they hold.
---
I will note as a postscript that of course, there is a strong counterargument to this position: that there's no time for this bullshit. In an austere ivory tower, perhaps we could be humble all day, but as it stands in the real world, the lives of humans are finite, and the beliefs of some inflict real suffering. And so, most of the time it's impossible to justify this kind of gentle work towards mutual understanding. This is the perspective of arguing for the Human instead of Humanity. I don't have a good response to this other than, "damn, that's a hard one". And so, sometimes, wars are fought. I will never support their necessity, but I am sympathetic to their causes.
My take from this is that Trump is a symptom of a problem. The problem is never going to go away by attacking Trump or his policies. He is promising a solution to a problem that people are experiencing in the US. Like it or not, people are buying his solution.
If you don't like his solution, then you find a better one and sell it the people who are buying Trump's.
But most importantly, before we build another product to sell, we have to understand the problem. Get out of our ivory tower and understand the plight some people are experiencing.
the populism craze is just the latest effort of liberal people to de-legitimize trump. its retarded. how is hillary clinton appealing to all the needs and demands of her voters not populism then?
Feels like shallow reasoning to me to be honest. What can the author say about problem with 2nd/3rd generation of young immigrants' kids/large ghettos in Paris? Is it fictional problem? Probably not as my Parisian friends are saying and you can see burning cars from time to time. Police no-go zone seems to me like reasonable issue to be worried about. The problem imho is that the issue is not so close in time, but a bit further, 2+ generations (40y) from now. Similar to Rio de Janeiro favelas who is there to blame for all of the massive mess? Children don't choose where they want to be born. First immigrants are seniors/not here anymore. Politicians rotated dozen times.
In general I think that mass relocations of any kind for any reason are bad and should be throttled to sustainable throughput. This way churches, schools, hospitals and what not can keep up.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadSomehow the idea of being concerned about the outcome for ordinary people has become vilified by American liberals because red state, blue collar, ordinary people are worthless.
What is going on?! Trump wants to be a job protectionist while Democrats want globalization? Aren't you people aware that not that long ago the Democrats were fighting the Republicans against globalization because they claimed that globalization was only good for corporate interests and bad for ordinary Americans?
PS I think Trump is a nut job in many ways so please don't read the above as an endorsement.
In this case, Trump rode the anger of voters who want to close the borders to both immigrants and imported manufactured goods, because they perceived that some of their jobs going to illegal imigrants, and other manufacturing jobs had been taken overseas.
How many of those people, do you think, buy everything at Walmart (whether it's all they can afford or not)? How many of those people realize that a 35% border tax and getting rid of our internal slave labor force will lead to commensurately higher prices of goods and services, without necessarily bringing back the jobs that were actually automated away? If they have thought it through, where's the better outcome?
This is why we don't have a direct democracy. These issues are more complicated than one can wrap their head around without making it a full-time job for an industry, and the decisions aren't helped by folks making decisions out of anger and desperation.
Populism by definition is closer to being synonymous with a functioning democracy that it is to mob rule.
Looking for symmetric universal moral principals sort of does seem to. Though I admit basically no form of government seems to head in that direction, as founding documents post-revolution are not really a form of government in my model.
The following is a list of US populist complaints, which Trump successfully addressed. (Don't up/down-vote based on whether you agree or not with the issues of the list, which I may or may not, just note that the points are important to enough people to vote a Trump into office.) In no particular order...
Facilitation/celebration of LGBQT (most people aren't, and find differing sexualities repulsive). Demands for "safe spaces" while eliminating the only long socially established safe spaces: sexually segregated restrooms. Taking taxpayer earnings and spending them on advocacy of opposing views. Reducing a sense of safety vs crime, while seemingly protecting criminals (this issue dominated by the US "gun culture"). Laying blame/responsibility for environmental issues on those thinking themselves not guilty (say, global warming). Stifling parental preferences in education (Common Core, lack of school vouchers, absolute intolerance of anything hinting of Christianity). Broad/unrelenting accusations of whites & males as invariably & irredeemably sexist/misogynist/xenophobic/racist/etc (say, Hillary's declaration of 1/4 of Americans as "deplorables"). Incredible growth of national debt ($10,000,000,000,000 in last 8 years, doubling all previous debt) with prospect of populace having to pay it. Lack of jobs (need for jobs has far outstripped creation of jobs). Overwhelming regulations, making compliance & cost untenable. Abortion being considered, on the whole, inexcusable murder of children.
Understand that classic US culture is deeply rooted in individual liberty & rights. Basically, taking someone's money to make them pay for something they don't want angers them; they'll put up with a lot, but once "enough!" hits they're prone to taking dramatic steps to end the offense. Also note that the USA is huge, having a broad range of views from coast to coast; what Hillary offered was "coastal" culture, while Trump appealed to "heartland", and with the Electoral College deliberately biasing Presidential elections toward populist views, the large number of central states won the vote.
I believe most people in the US are accepting of homosexuality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_attitudes_toward_homo...
> 46 percent of respondents said transgender people should be required to “use the public restrooms of the gender they were born into.”
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/half-of...
It's hard work, but what I've found to work is this: Instead of getting into an argument, state what you believe and talk with them in terms of cooperatively finding out what claim is correct. Don't let your ego get in the way. Figure out what exact parts of the claim they believe (or disbelieve), and research those specific parts, with them present. For example, say someone doesn't believe in global warming. Maybe they just don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, or they misunderstand some of the evidence. Shouting that they're stupid (which I've done before, it's about as ineffective and childish as it sounds) won't work, because you aren't addressing their actual concerns, which they themselves might not be fully aware of.
This is slow, hard work, but it does pay off. You have to keep an open mind, and be 100% aware of your own behavior. If you are dismissive because of a value difference between you and the other persons cultural background, it's counter productive. Likewise, if you can't admit when you're wrong, then it doesn't work either. Admit when you don't know something, and that you are flawed and imperfect like everyone else. Take this as an opportunity to learn about your own beliefs.
A concrete example: A close friend believes some conspiracy theories (no AGW, moonlanding faked, etc.) I've successfully gotten him to go from the position of "Global warming is a liberal conspiracy" to "Climate change is a real and serious issue, but I'm not 100% on the evidence for it being man-made". This has been really hard work over a period of about a year, but it's worth it. I'm not done, but this is how it's gone so far. Any time he expresses his opinion about this, I'll express that I disagree. This usually leads to some anger on his part because people tend to get their opinions wrapped up in their identity and take disagreement as a personal attack. I 'll point that out if things get too heated. Instead of just saying "no" or "you're wrong", I'll say something like, "well let's find out. I could be wrong." A lot of times, he won't believe the research I pull up, or pull up a denier website. I go through the denier websites and investigate claims point by point. For example, quotes from people who have since changed their mind, cherry picked lines from studies, things like that. Most of the time, it didn't seem like there was any progress made that session, but the next time it came up, his opinion would be a little more nuanced, or his opinion would move a little away from the conspiracy.
It's slow, gradual work, but we are both more educated on many issues because of this. I feel the important thing is to treat their opinion as valid. Often when you investigate why people believe irrational things, you find that they believe them for rational reasons. People they respect believe that, they have personal experience that runs counter to the research, they distrust the source of the claim.
If you don't understand why someone believes something, you can't change their mind about it.
/rant
Sorry for the wall of text, this is something I deal with all the time. tl;dr: Change people's minds one person, one opinion at a time. Be patient and open minded. Research it with them, and make sure you are cooperating, not verbally fighting for dominance. Changing someone's mind is an incremental process. Emphasize being open minded and doing research instead of advocating "not believing crazy things".
Senators used to be appointed. Party candidates used to be selected by party officials, not the public. This last one in particular would have prevented a Trump presidency.
Andrew Sullivan explains all this very well here: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny...
The summary is that too much democracy leads to tyranny.
Electoral college rules in fact subtly break democracy even now. Wanted to vote, say, Bernie Sanders? Tough luck.
Brexit and immigration is a good example of this. Blair decided mass immigration was a good idea for a number of reasons. At some point they surely realised that although it would provide an economic boost, some people would lose out financially and most did not want significant cultural change in their community. Over the years larger dissatisfaction with this policy grew and grew, only to be labelled racist by the ruling parties. This led to UKIP which led to splits in the Conservative party which led to Brexit.
Ignore a valid issue long enough and resentment will spread across the country. If these peoples concerns and wishes were not sacrificed for ulterior motives a EU ref would likely never occur.
Parallels to US/Trump seem reasonable. Large groups of people whose concerns have not necessarily been address because the contrary policies benefit an already privileged and distant few.
tldr: Offer real solutions to the large number of poor and struggling people in your country. Even if it slows down your grander plan. If you don't, resentment will build and there are more of them than you.
edit: The absolute biggest danger to the embedded powers is that Trump succeeds and does a good job. Hard to overstate this.
Like children who grew up being sheltered, then came to college and saw protesting (blaming others) is the answer.
Why feed the polarization like that? What do you gain from it?
Then they see immigrants arriving around the same time all this is happening and assign the blame to them.
Why is a country that as high unemployment allowing high levels of immigration? Being mad about that seems highly rational to me
Hiring immigrants isn't necessarily cheaper or easier. It's something employers do because they can't fill those jobs otherwise.
What if they did something crazy, like offer higher wages to attract employees?
That last part is rarely, if ever, mentioned when the "locals won't do these jobs" nonsense gets trotted out.
Is the reason there are so many immigrants in IT because the job doesn't pay well enough?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
The idea that there is a STEM shortage is a bonafide myth. Remember that we're talking about the same industry that perpetuated the largest wage fixing cartel in human history.
It's amazing how many people around here just can't wrap their heads around the fact that increased labor supply means lower wages. You only have to listen to a handful of earnings calls with giant corporations talking with glee about how elastic the labor markets are, and how that will be a huge boon to their earnings.
Why can they find work if unemployment is high? I see a few possible answers: 1. Unemployment isn't actually high, 2. Employers are illegally paying immigrants below minimum wage knowing they have no legal recourse, or 3. They are taking jobs that those here are unwilling to take.
How does a crackdown on illegal immigration speak to any of this?
UKIP know that a lot of people are racist and only too happy to have a finger to point at whatever scapegoat sounds believable to them.
Businesses do provide jobs of course, buying some of the locals.
There are real economic problems, and the press have been quite effective at blaming them on immigration when really they're more due to inequality.
> Trump succeeds and does a good job
Succeeds for whom? Different people want very different things, that's where politics comes from in the first place. What would "success" look like? How much global warming does it include?
For some Americans, the executive order banning entry for a list of nationalities means that their spouses can never leave the country again and are at greatly increased risk of being deported.
(There's a similar argument happening in the UK where "success" for some people means unemployment for others, or even being obliged to leave the country)
And falling back on calling everyone a racist again.
Which is precisely what this article says doesn't work.
That's a nice way of saying "everyone admitted they're racists".
No-one in that thread did.
The most ridiculous thing about all this is that I actually come from a white immigrant community (dutch around a port town), but my generation acculturised with the UK.
It really sticks in your craw when I'm generally a left-leaning liberalist but some tit like pjc50 starts accusing you of being a racist because I've been in supermarkets obviously filled with white immigrants as they're all speaking polish.
It really has helped me realise how devoid of empathy people who start accusing everyone of racism for merely discussing immigration are.
It's incredibly upsetting to be called a racist merely for asking why mass migration to the UK has been allowed. It's a perfectly reasonable question.
Also he really doesn't understand the meaning of the word immigrant, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471112
It is all a load of bullshit.
It is a good example of how the constituents wishes (preserve culture of local community ) is at complete odds with the governments wishes. They can keep on throwing money at them, but it will never address this issue that many people find very important.
My question: is it a National Government's job to maintain the culture of local communities? I would hope not.
There's more than a few countries that have laws stating that it's essentially treason to modify the demographics of the nation. Seems to have worked quite well for Japan at the national level.
Left technocrats see immigration as a human rights issue. Freedom of movement is a well-recognized fundamental human right; your ability to move from Gloucester to London is enshrined in Britain's unwritten constitution. Left technocrats do not see the movement from Paris to London to be any different than the movement from Gloucester to London.
Right technocrats see immigration as a free market issue. One cannot have a truly free market in goods and services unless service providers can freely travel.
So compromising on immigration means compromising on principles. Sometimes it's expedient to do so, but I vote for my representatives based on their principles and how closely they appear to adhere to them.
The real issue is individualism versus collectivism. Populists think that groups' freedom of association trumps individuals' freedom of movement, while individualists think the opposite.
The fact that restricting immigration is a group choice while not donating money is an individual choice changes nothing about the morality. Either way, you're choosing to increase your own standard of living instead of helping someone who is already much worse off than yourself.
The cynic in me thinks the real difference is who pays. Educated people living on the coasts bear the same costs as less educated people in border areas when it comes to food donations, but bear a small fraction of the costs when it comes to increased immigration. That makes it easier for them to support the latter in comparison to committing to the former.
[1] http://www.uniteforsight.org/hunger/module3.
But both issues are similarly nuanced.
In the same way I can't just trust that a donation to any random opaque 'help the children' fund is actually effectively helping starving children, we can't just blindly open all borders and take in every tired, poor, huddled mass.
But there is a very, very clear middle ground.
I can research aid organizations to find one that I believe will use my donation effectively.
We can build systems to establish qualified immigrants with the same basic starting point we agree everyone should have (food stamps/healthcare/temporary unemployment assistance/affordable housing) so they can start a life here.
A connection is seen between outsourcing and free trade deals, and that's a much better target. Now, it's arguable that free trade deals are economically beneficial, but they look bad. Trump gets that, and Democrats fell down in that regard.
But the anti-immigration scapegoating? That's not causality, that's scapegoating. Immigration is not the cause of the woes of the Rust Belt, but it gives them something to blame, and a populist leader can exploit that.
Fewer regulations will mean freer movement of capital, which has historically been a great boon for the wealthy and powerful.
If he manages to double down on coal production, the ensuing government subsidies will benefit those with the resources to capitalize on the undermining of the market (after all, any time you introduce predictability into the market, you are handing money to people who have the influence and resources to exploit it).
If he succeeds in building the wall, then he will have successfully shifted blame for existing economic woes onto Mexican migrants, without evidence, which will mean increased popular mandate for governmental power grabs.
If he succeeds in undermining climate change, he will have two benefits: first, he will have vanquished scientific and evidence-based opposition in general, and second, he will have undermined barriers between business and exploitation of known public health undermining scenarios.
If he succeeds in cowing the media, he will have removed one of the few non-governmental checks and balances on transparency of government.
Finally, if he succeeds in general, it will be at the expense of the already tenuous necessity for politicians to tie their agendas to evidence/science-based approaches to policy creation.
I say all of this not as an inveterate liberal, but as someone who is continually bewildered by the fact that Trump can make things up, without evidence, and have sufficient support to transform them into public policy. Actually I should cop to the fact that I'm not that bewildered--history is of course littered with leaders who have done the same, and whether or not they actually benefit the people who brought them to power is really an analyst's roulette game.
I have no idea how you people come to these conclusions. I mean, if I watched more mainstream media and believed everything I was told, I suppose I can see how you would come to these sorts of conclusions. I can assure you they are wrong. I mean the CIA is against Trump and is trying to de-legitimize his election after the fact. Are those the "embedded powers" who will be happy if he succeeds? Who are you even talking about? The only ones on Trumps side are probably half the GOP, and the people, that's it, everybody else is against him.
This is so important.
Samantha Bee can't stop making piss jokes about Trump. That's not going to win anyone over.
Nina Donovan's poem, recited by Ashley Judd at the Women's March, is brave and powerful. It is also polarizing. There is a line: "I’m not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust." That's not going to win anyone over.
Again and again, people are attacking Trump for the wrong reasons. Focus on the truly bad. Don't get hung up on his hair. It makes you look petty.
Edit: Frank Bruni beat me to this in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/opinion/the-wrong-way-to-...
Exactly. It's Samantha Bee's job to feed the polarization cycle. If she doesn't, who will?
But that audience is free to ask for less focus on the insubstantial.
There's a difference between "winning everybody over" vs "do your part to contribute to polite discourse" vs "make your side sound dominated by insult-spewing jerks". Parent wasn't asking for total perfect solution, only to stop contributing to needless antagonism.
> Don’t waste your time trying to prove that this ism is better than that ism. Ditch all the big words. Why? Because, again, the problem is not the message but the messenger. It’s not that Trump supporters are too stupid to see right from wrong, it’s that you’re much more valuable to them as an enemy than as a compatriot.
> The problem is tribal. Your challenge is to prove that you belong in the same tribe as them: that you are American in exactly the same way they are.
I disagree. Attacking him at all is a huge mistake, at least until you/the opposition can offer a credible alternative (which Hillary isn't/wasn't). People will put up with all the bad that Trump is, as long as all the alternatives are worse (and yes, economic reasons will trump moral/social reasons for most people except the most well-off).
But the problem is that her mannerisms aren't really whats bad about her. And Trump's alleged kinks aren't whats bad about him. Its easy for his supporters to defend him and say that either it is not true, because there isn't any public evidence that it is, or that there is nothing wrong with a piss fetish. And they are right. There is nothing wrong with it.
Heres the podcast in case anyone is interested: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/10-the-satire-paradox
Populism is how democracy is supposed to work.
That is called propaganda though.
Yet the doom that faces America is very real, and this is really the cause of their emotions. Intuitively they know we can't consume so much without producing it. If we offshore production, we must eventually offshore consumption. Chinese workers earning $5 a day, Chinese factories paying no attention to the environment or workers rights, this is really the ONLY problem we need to address. And the liberal elites don't care, because they don't make money making things, and never did.
Are you a liberal elite wanting to heal the divide? Build a factory in the USA. A real, physical factory that builds real, physical things. And if you do the math and realize you can't do that and compete with China, then fight like hell to punish Chinese producers for playing the game by unfair rules (e.g. impose tariffs to at least bring the price up to what it would be if they paid their people a living wage, benefits, and protected the environment).
Your prescription for solving the problem is more or less identical to what Trump has stated he plans to do with respect to trade with China.
I think this entire argument reduces to a recommendation: "Humble yourself". It's so damn easy to get caught up in egocentrism. There's an intrinsic human bias towards believing that what you believe is the right thing to believe. I've never met someone who is genuinely innocent of this fault (if it can be called a fault), especially when it comes to dogmatic issues of genuine belief. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to exist as a creature that does not put its own beliefs first, of course, so I think the logic instead has to be, "yes, we may believe our own beliefs foremost, at the expense of the beliefs of others. But we must commit time to hypothetical sympathy".
To participate in an argument, we must engage in hypothetical sympathy with our counterparts. The first assumption on hearing what is perceived to be a wrong idea cannot be, "this idea is wrong, and therefore the carrier of this idea must be stupid and inferior to me, the right and correct". That turns an issue that might be argued productively into an issue of dogmatism. Most people are rational, to a functional extent. The difference lies more in the set of axioms we possess, rather than the logic used to build from them. And so we must humble ourselves; our axioms are unproveable by the definition of the word. The first step to engaging someone else is to try and imagine what set of axioms, assuming similar logic, would allow them to reach the positions they hold.
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I will note as a postscript that of course, there is a strong counterargument to this position: that there's no time for this bullshit. In an austere ivory tower, perhaps we could be humble all day, but as it stands in the real world, the lives of humans are finite, and the beliefs of some inflict real suffering. And so, most of the time it's impossible to justify this kind of gentle work towards mutual understanding. This is the perspective of arguing for the Human instead of Humanity. I don't have a good response to this other than, "damn, that's a hard one". And so, sometimes, wars are fought. I will never support their necessity, but I am sympathetic to their causes.
If you don't like his solution, then you find a better one and sell it the people who are buying Trump's.
But most importantly, before we build another product to sell, we have to understand the problem. Get out of our ivory tower and understand the plight some people are experiencing.
In general I think that mass relocations of any kind for any reason are bad and should be throttled to sustainable throughput. This way churches, schools, hospitals and what not can keep up.
He's about as partisan as you can get.
"Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship."
Politics needs to be added. What a fucking joke. Someone regex the submissions.