It's more of a case that us upper-middle class liberal elites think we are shaming this segment of the population when we are calling them bigots and racists and stupid and uninformed and homophobic and hicks and white trash, because those are horrible things that we don't want to be called.
But a large part of the population don't share that sentiment, they're not shamed, they don't care that you're screaming "RACIST!" at the top of your lungs.
And when you address their actual concerns that globalization and automation are killing their jobs, killing their communities, and killing their people with a shrug, with an "I'm so sorry, move to the cities, get an education!", they'll get angry. And political. And here we are.
I don't think you really have your finger on the pulse of most voters.
I can tell you as someone in silicon valley who sort of vaguely supports trump, that I have been essentially not permitted to talk about it. What's the benefit to it? Why would I speak up and engage in a conversation? Any talk of Trump here isn't actually a real debate. It's everyone around you saying "Trump supporters are racists and bigots. They are disgusting."
Nobody _actually_ wants to hear any arguments from the other side. So I sit with my mouth closed. It's better than losing my friends and having my coworkers ostracize me for my political views. Which maybe they would have the chance to change if they were willing to listen, but aren't.
I know so many people like myself. I was surprised with the result of the election, but not surprised at the fact that there was a surprise like this. Places like SV don't know how many Trump supporters there are or even _why_ they really support him, because they've essentially put their hands over their eyes and their ears and spun in circles shouting "Trump is racist! You are racist!"
Would you like to know how a normal person gets to vote for Trump?
I'm a male French, in France, and I intend to vote FN (extreme right). I have higer education, 10 years of experience in programming, including 5 in 3 different countries. I have social values, like companies should take care of the humans behind the employee, and we should give our maximum to include everyone who wants to be included. I turned my back on leftist movements because no matter how generous I was (e.g. thousands donated to charities, >1200hrs of volunteering, engaged in social causes, etc), leftists always find a way to depict me as a spoiled child with rich parents, and they dismiss any good work I've made as a result of luck.
Oh and my 8-year old cousin was raped by an Arab teenager – I still don't know whether that's due to probability or whether he identifies to the Arabs-against-whites cause. It did change a lot for me.
So now that I'm freed from liberal shamers, I've decided to vote depending on only one criteria. In my whole professional experience, promotions were given to women, to the point that it was unfair to me; In my whole life women have been bitter to me. I'm pretty satisfied that there are currently hundreds of laws in favour of women which offset any inequality they can claim; The only party which proposes to keep those existing laws and not adding new ones is FN, the extreme-right French party.
All in all, what you need to gain back someone like me is love. Give me luck with finding a girlfriend, give me a fair treatment at work, recognize my social engagement and the positive parts of my values, stop assuming all my rationale is just raw racism or raw machism, stop assuming I've just been lucky with work, and you'll get me back among the centrist voters.
But as long as it's not possible to expose my problems without hearing generalizations and shaming, I'll keep voting FN.
> 2. You blame an entire race for your cousin being raped
You are putting words into his mouth. His description of the event was entirely about a fact.
Quote for reference.
> Oh and my 8-year old cousin was raped by an Arab teenager – I still don't know whether that's due to probability or whether he identifies to the Arabs-against-whites cause. It did change a lot for me.
I'm GP: The race of the person is a data point, because it is entirely probable that the rapist identifies to Daesh. Remember the 8 terrorist attacks we've had in France between 2014 and 2015 and the Cologne rapes: It's entierly plausible that Daesh had a strong support among the Arab community in France, and no-one can neither deny nor confirm this hypothesis. Also, why does a random rape have to be an Arab person, just 3 weeks away from the Cologne events? Last point, I considered him as a friend of mine because I valued inclusion, I invited him to my birthday party and trusted him like I would trust any friend. Turns out I was wrong, and the result is a rape. A rape! The height of the risk is so high, so Earth-shaking, I feel guilty of overlooking our differences. I will keep trying to include people, but not as far as this time.
I'm entierly entitled to evaluate several hypothesis from this event (4 exactly: Teenage, earning power, education, and cultural community differences where race is one data point), and take resolutions to avoid getting in this situation again.
Anyway, if you're not happy with that, don't rape people.
You're right, that's why I rally to FN. Your comment says you're incapable of compassion because you conflate my case with your sweeping generalizations, and your comment shows you only see bad things in your opponents, to whom you'll never give any kind of love.
Your strategy has a name: "lutte des classes" (class warfare), and you daily complain that all you get is Brexit, Trump and FN. A little understanding for your opponent's problems would go a long way in having solidarity in a country, but good luck talking about cross-class solidarity to a socialist.
I love how most the comments to your comment is so condescending and disrespectful. I am from Sweden and intend to vote for the Swedish Democrats and I can understand how you feel.
I completely agree with you as well, so tired of feminism, leftish idiocracy, hate on white males etc etc.
Funny thing is that I am also an environmentalist, I deeply care about climate issues. That is the part that scares me about Trump. I don't understand the need to deny that shit.
Next up is Le Pen winning in France and then Sweden Democrats in Sweden.
I'm also Swedish, and the parallells are striking. During the last two general elections in Sweden, my Facebook was an endless litany of "But, but, but, they're racist!!!", same as the mainstream media, and all of it completely useless, because the argument clearly doesn't work.
I'm sorry, but what the fuck does that have to do with politics? What political party is going to promise you a girlfriend?
For what it's worth, you're proving the populist-narrative that explains why Trump was elected: Trump rose to power by assuring those who felt that they once had 'power', who've lost it (to minorities or women or whoever), and deserve to have it back again.
> What political party is going to promise you a girlfriend?
You've unframed and changed my speech so much that it looks stupid. Obviously, you conclude that this is stupid: You're right!
I'm saying: If you don't want me to vote for Trump/FN, then instead of shaming me all the time "because he's from a rich familiy, therefore he doesn't deserve consideration, even if he works hard and donates a lot", try to intervene at the private/social level by having solidarity with people's situation. If you give those people some love, and fix their lives, they'll start voting differently.
I'm actually with you as far as the missing empathy and a lack of will to even listen is concerned, but I must say I too find the bit about the girl friend odd and I think it distracts from the (IMHO) good points you made. Look at it this way: This is an "outlier" statement among everything you said, so a reader's brain is going to pay more attention to it then to the rest.
Here is what you could have said (the very short version):
You could have made a good point that part of the problem of getting a girl friend is the freakin' amount of uncertainty in our lives. You can't be sure where you live and where you get an income from. That is a big problem for stable relationships.
After reading more of your comments I'm not sure if you actually meant it literally though, meaning your own personal issues instead of the wider political picture, which I would not want to comment on.
The girlfriend is an example, it's a proxy for "fixing my life".
All my life I've been shamed by leftists, mostly because I'm a white male from a good Christian family and succeeded at schools. It has had impact on my career for example, since companies decided to promote junior women instead. Leftists couldn't get over that and see the guy who needed help to be socially included. Leftists are pretty happy to see a rich person be socially rejected or committing suicide, actually. I bet many people voting Trump feel just the same: Leftists are prompt at shaming people for being privileged while not caring for their problems. We need a return of solidarity, and if not that, then we'll just vote for ourselves.
Hence, I have stopped caring for what leftists say. But if people could get enough solidarity to help me get my life fixed (the girlfriend is just an example), then I'd go back to voting normally.
Yes, I've seen a psychologist. Psychologists can fix the person, not society. If society keeps sending crap because you're a white male, nothing will repair your self-esteem.
Or maybe people shunned you because you are an inconsiderate, spoiled, full of himself narcissist? You seem to think that those women who have been promoted shouldn't have simply because they were women. Maybe they were better than you. Ever thought of that?
> We need a return of solidarity
So you are voting for a party who's main concept is spewing hatred against minorities?
> But if people could get enough solidarity to help me get my life fixed
Why the fuck should leftists, right-wingers, socialists, or nazis sort your life out? You are a grown man. Sort it yourself.
Leftist parties are spewing hatred just as much as FN does. It's just that you don't notice it, because you identify to the minorities' cause. For example it's now forbidden to show a nativity scene in a public space in France (That was decided this week), while it's ok to wear the niqab. It's just that leftists can't wrap their mind about the hypothesis that – maybe – it's now Catholics who are the victims.
Other example: A leftist (Yesterday at lunch! It's not like it never happens!) made a joke about "all priests are rapists anyway" and no-one said anything. But if anyone made a joke about "All Arabs are thieves", they'd sure face immediate forced resignation. Both are stupidly gross generalizations that no-one should ever say.
Other example: Leftists want to close the Catholic schools in France, "because they're inequal". Truth is, Catholic schools are better schools with better results and fewer violence, and that would kill the place where I was educated. The Khmers Rouges have tried eliminating the elites, that didn't bode well for them.
Hatred from leftists and from Muslim partisans is everyday. But the world has changed. We can either match your hatred with FN, or leftists can decide to stop oppressing the historical part of the population.
You are not talking about the average person here. It depends on what circles you frequent but I am sure that most people in France are neither hardcore leftists nor FN supporters. Extremism is wrong from all sides.
> Both are stupidly gross generalizations that no-one should ever say.
Except that FN says that about Arabs and other minorities, that and much more.
> Leftists want to close the Catholic schools in France
What they want and what they can achieve is very far. I want a lot of things, doesn't mean most people agree with me and that they will give those things to me.
> We can either match your hatred with FN
Or you know, take the approach a normal person should and side with neither of the crazies. As I said, extremism and hatred from either side will not solve anything. Hatred brews hatred, the only way to defeat bigotry, closed-mindedness and ignorance from one side is not by joining the opposing side. It's by taking the middle road and trying to find meaning and think with your brain.
Did you ever consider that ever person has their own burden to bear? That maybe the white male dominant hierarchy placed oppressive burdens on the groups you have now come to resent? You don't at all see the irony in your reaction to feeling similar pain?
I've considered it, then researched stats about women and inequality because they didn't match my experience.
All I've seen was a gross exaggeration of women's case: For example it's always the gross average of wage gap (32%) that is shown in the article's titles, and I've checked around me that no woman is aware that the average wage gap is only 8% for the same level of education and experience in the job, and the average goes the other way depending on the criteria we use (e.g. women get paid 22% more than men in Atlanta and 15% more in NY).
Also, in France, all other statistics conclude to men needing more help, while women still complain that they don't get enough: There are 18x more men who face violence on the street than women, 0.77x who get high-education degree, 2x (TWICE!) more men who are homeless, 3x who commit suicide and 20x more men in prison, so I'm a little flummoxed when I hear "Women are inequal". Examples on the same trend go on and on, see for example positive images that are associated to females ("They can do 2 things at the same time!"), negative/violent images associated to men; better education results in women than men; mark bias in mathematics in favor of women; solidarity statistics that are all favorable to women; and women keep dating richer men while high-pay jobs are more difficult for us to have, so it's a real struggle.
Men deserve dedicated help too. I'm not asking we stop helping women. I'm just asking we help men just as much, because men actually have more problems in life than women. You know, like, ...equality?
So, "white male dominant hierarchy placed oppressive burdens on the groups" doesn't trigger my solidarity anymore. Look at helping everyone who need help, instead of blaming a group for being white.
Maybe I'm having a hard time understanding this or maybe you haven't admitted it. What is this "voting normally" all about? It's clear that you don't give a damn for social pressures causing you to vote and think a certain way (normally?), because that's bit you bad. It appears that you've moved elsewhere to your own new normal (FN). If they changed and you went back, would it really be back to the same?
Are you asking "If those groups changed, would you come back to centrist voting?". Yes, my voting is only based on the womens' right criteria: I would vote for any party which doesn't propose to add up more rights to women than they currently have.
I've decided to forego any other criteria, because the groups are hypocritical with their values anyway. For example they pretended not to be racists (i.e. leftists / the President Hollande in France), but they saw nothing wrong in house-arresting 3,200 Muslims the day after the terrorist attacks, without warrant and without further proof than being filed under the "very Muslim" folder in the police notes. It wasn't necessary, it didn't yield any terrorist being arrested, and I qualify this act as a very racist action from a leftist president. I could go on and on about how leftist people fight for jobs but have never created any and have made it a burden to run a company. There is no hope in any political party of France driving France towards any kind of success, all of them will keep engaging in a sort of class warfare where anyone who's rich is considered evil, so I'll vote on the only issue that I can factually compare and on which I became expert: Their programs about women-and-men equality.
As it stands, both left and right parties propose to add up many more rights for women. See this post to quickly understand why I don't think it's fair: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12923138
Lack of confidence is highly linked with being constantly told off for being "a privileged". I regularly have to apologize for getting a degree, and if politics could stop blaming the rich, that would actually address the issue.
Plus I don't vote for a party in the hope of finding a girlfriend (lol). I vote for the party who's not proposing to add up more rights to women, because I have seen enough women be promoted to be sure the problem is the other way around.
It reminds me of Houellebecq's 'Submission', where one of the main features of islamic France is locking women in home in marriage. Women also serve as "awards" to the backers of the new regime.
I think it is true that some people put gender/sexual tensions into their politics, especially if it is radical. Grandparent might assume that in a more traditional society his chances would be better. I can't judge if it's true.
FN is not going to help you with any of the issues you're mentioning. Seriously, I don't even see what FN has to do with your issue with women or lack of recognition. Their program is mainly about France leaving the euro-zone and tougher immigration policies. And arguably, Marine Le Pen's FN is more on the left side than the current socialist party. In any case, you don't have to apologize if you think they represent your ideas.
All the other parties' programs say they will add up to laws in favour of women. FN doesn't say anything: It's more than I wanted to hear. Women don't currently have the same positions as men, but they currently have equal chances, which will lead to the same positions in less than one generation, so more laws would be unfair. Other than that, I've decided I decided to dismiss any argument about economics and immigration, because no party proposes to un-debt France, so women is my only criteria. Sounds logical since women have been the primary factor of unhappiness, both in my private and professional life.
Hey, I fully and violently disagree with you. I think you're making dangerously broad generalizations.
However, I can see how emotionally it makes sense to you, and I really appreciate how you're openly sharing this stuff on such a lefty and rationalist forum like HN. This is indeed similar to how many people feel, and if we keep excluding this thought we'll never get a good dialog going.
So kudos for openly sharing what's obviously some very unpopular ideas on HN.
Thank you, I wouldn't go as far as deserving a kudos, but it's just better if leftists can get the whole picture too. Because, all in all, I agree with leftists that the poor and disadvantaged need help. So thank you for your inclusive emotion.
Agreed. The right reaction to tajen's comment is "this sucks". Because sometimes it just does. Sure you can disagree with rationalisations and conclusions, but you should still try to empathise. It shows respect.
I can't do that. Partly because confidence is not me; But partly also because I'm afraid of discovering, after 15 years struggling to interest women, that the answer was that simple. Given how butthurt I am with the topic, I admit that this discovery would hurt me a lot. Do unconfident men, no matter how generous they are and how well they work, get no girl, which gives a major handicap in life?
If there is anything that women universally like about men it'd be 'confidence' (not overconfidence and arrogance).
At least that's my experience.
>> Given how butthurt I am with the topic, I admit that this discovery would hurt me a lot. <<
Why hurt - you'd get to have a better/happier life. You should not be dwelling on the past, "could/should/might have been" - no important, concentrate on the task at hand and what matters for you. No one has all the answers and clues, regardless how smart they are. The point is: if you don't try, you won't succeed for certain.
Lol that comment could come across as insulting ;) Is it? I'll assume it's not. First, you're trying to present it as a problem with me, instead of a problem with society. Although well-intentionned, it is often a liberal bias: "Some people are stupid/bogans/racists/elderly, that's why they vote X". It goes as far as dismissing those people's votes as invalid, and suggesting they shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Unfortunately, democracy means everyone belongs. We need to take care of needs of all people, even people like me, even though I'm depressed, even though I've had an unpleasant bringing-up with bad girlfriends and hateful leftist highschool friends. Bullying someone because has later consequences in terms of democracy, and it's your responsibility.
Second, Devoxx keeps giving talks about how women are opressed, while my employer keeps promoting women who don't know what an HTTP Header is. Said promoted women keep complaining that they're paid less than their male counterparts who knew what HTTP Headers were because they had to wait 7 more years to be promoted. Is it alright that I feel a dishonest discrepancy? Is it ok that I don't have any hope for my future?
All help goes towards minorities who barely work enough to deserve their spot. Today, I'm the one who needs help. I've worked hard, but now I need a bit of love. Can anyone see that my career has been unfair when I was an employee, bcause promotions were given to women? I've created my company and it succeeded better than competitors, is that a sign that I was competent? What I need today is people who appreciate what I'm giving to the world, both in donations and hard work, and for people to stop depicting me as a white male. Hence my sentence: All I need is a bit of love, especially from liberals, to stop voting against minorities. I'm all for inclusion, and as long as "inclusion" includes shy nerds I'm ready to support everyone else.
> I'm all for inclusion, and as long as "inclusion" includes shy nerds I'm ready to support everyone else.
How is a far-right party going to change that though? Society never liked nerds. It is in our genes to reject people that score low on the crude measure of fitness that evolution has imprinted in our brains.
Your suffering can perhaps be more generally be captured by the fact that the number of locally high-status positions in society is plummeting. Automatization destroys these position. While the push of minorities might have slightly impaired the selection of talent and diligence, the core issue is that there are too few jobs for the the traditional schema of diligence to make any sense. There are many people who have it far worse than you and they are being terribly confused by the contradiction that they are being told (work hard to gain status).
The big difference is that you can pay for the help you need (e.g. talking with a psychology to handle your depression) but the minorities can't do anything but complain to change their situation.
In my opinion, you are projecting the bad results of your love life towards the feminist movement, something like "If I cannot be happy, they don't deserve it too" (maybe you think the same in an indirect way like "why should they be happy if I'm not?"). In other words, if you were having a fulfilling loving life, you wouldn't mind the promoted women in your company or you will see it as a particular case in a country scope (realizing that there are a lot of women that really deserve that promotion but aren't getting it just for being women). But, since you are sad and depressed, you need to blame someone because of it which is either you or the women. In general, people rather blame others than themselves because if you are the problem it means that you have to work on changing yourself in order of solving it and that's a lot of work.
Take into account that nothing of all this means that you are a bad person or that you deserve to be alone. It's just that you are victimizing yourself as a way of protecting you from the apparently enormous effort of changing yourself.
To be honest, you had a blank slate and could have told whatever story you wanted to about yourself. You chose to tell this one, which basically makes the case that you are entitled and bitter.
What proves you that I don't deserve a better consideration? It is certainly possible from what I said to depict me as a bad guy through generalizations, but that would only be generalizations. What if I did give a lot and kept being told off, wouldn't that be unfair?
I am not contending that you deserve consideration. You do. I read your story and I can see parts in it which are frustrating, because you believe you are trying your best, but are stuck nonetheless.
On the other hand, because of the way you've chosen to present yourself and the issues you want to plant your flag on, I also can't help but wonder how much time you have spent looking at yourself to see how much of this is your responsibility.
I say the following with human empathy and don't want it to come across as flippant or insensitive (due to the nature of the method of communication): from what you've written it sounds like you could benefit from talking to a counselor or other mental health professional rather than voting for any particular candidate in an election
unfortunately mental health is all too often a taboo subject but it shouldn't and needn't be.
Comments like this will get your account banned, so please don't post them, regardless of how right you are or how wrong the other person is.
You've been posting many comments that break HN's rules. A user emailed us to complain about this, and having taken a look, I think he was right. When commenting on HN, please take extra care to make your comments civil and substantive, the more so as the topic becomes more inflammatory. Otherwise we have no hope of keeping the discourse here from erupting in flames.
I've never understood this absurd n-word argument.
I have a brother. Due to circumstances, I can call him a "stupid idiot" and he will know that I'm not serious and I respect him. However if a stranger calls him the same thing, he will take offense. Is that an unfair double standard?
Similarly, the n-word is a derogatory racial slur. Black people are quite justified in taking offense when being called that by an non-black person. However, if called that by a black person, the listener can be reasonably sure that the speaker is not being racist, and also that no 3rd party listener would mistake it for that.
It's just an obvious fact of language that context matters, and the speaker matters.
>I have a brother. Due to circumstances, I can call him a "stupid idiot" and he will know that I'm not serious and I respect him. However if a stranger calls him the same thing, he will take offense. Is that an unfair double standard?
I wouldn't call my brother 'stupid idiot' in public (neither would I in private by the way). I don't care what you do in private. Though, that's another topic.
When black people call other black people nigga, they don't mean it ironically or as an exaggeration. It is just a word which means black person and which is used only by black people. That's like calling someone 'bro', that's not like calling someone 'stupid idiot'.
"Nigger" was coined by whites to denigrate blacks--just like "Boy" and a dozen other terms. Its use by blacks is ironic, its use by whites communicates hate. Willfully refusing to accept that a word intended to communicate white hate would strike blacks differently than it strikes white, well, yeah that is racist.
Yeah, you see. I am white. I didn't coin that word. I am not even American. There is basically nothing that connects me to black slavery except the color of my skin. My family roots go back to slaves too (like roots of >99% of people). I used to use this word ironically to demean pervasive hip hop pop culture. Thankfully, I am no longer in high school and don't have to talk to people who listen to songs about gangsters and fucking bitches.
So basically, you are saying that you, and you alone, can judge people from different cultures and backgrounds on their practices because... hey, you are superior or something. Yeah, that sounds pretty racist.
I can damn well judge on FGM and other "primitive" practices as backward. Nothing is immune to criticism if the argument is valid. Granted there are many different types of cultural relativeism, but you decided by yourself to judge him as racist, I guess that means you are superior to him or something. Sounds like you're pretty racist.
No, I don't. I have no idea what part of my comment made you think so and what kind of mental jumps you've performed to come to this strange conclusion.
If you can't understand why words might mean something completely different to anyone who's got a completely different context built around it, you are either ignorant or too arrogant to care either way.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. I've seen a few comments in the last couple days that support your statement. My biggest fear about this election is the intolerant people in the country would get the wrong idea that being intolerant and bigoted is acceptable. Turns out, I might been right :/
But a large part of the population don't share that sentiment, they're not shamed, they don't care that you're screaming "RACIST!" at the top of your lungs.
And when you address their actual concerns that globalization and automation are killing their jobs, killing their communities, and killing their people with a shrug, with an "I'm so sorry, move to the cities, get an education!", they'll get angry. And political. And here we are.