The American Politics Thread

Oh I think it's very much a winning strategy Mick, it won for Obama and Clinton and in fact I think it's what the Dems NEED. Otherwise, as stated, I think the flyover states will default to Republican. The suburbs of Wisconsin to Pennsylvania will go red. We thought it was getting better, but Trump shattered that. Thinking about it, I think If GWBush was meaner and more willing to get into the cesspool he likely would've won harder than he did. 

rogerthat wrote: ^^^ From the outside looking in, it's far from clear though that they have lost the culture war.  You're looking into the distant future and marking a point in time when you expect the white population will no longer be the most significant demographic block.  Note, it only has to be the single largest demographic block, as long as somebody succeeds in mobilising it.  I.e, just because a state has less than 50% white population doesn't necessarily mean it will go to the Democrats unless they mobilise and monopolise all of the non white vote in the same way as the Repubs do with the white vote.  Of course, Trump's latest remarks would go a long way in helping the Democrats achieve that but at what cost?  There is also the possibility that if Charlottesville sets off a series of such rallies (as the neo Nazis have promised) rather than being a one off, many of the recent immigrants to USA will feel unsafe and future migration with or without Trump embargos may slow down. Which is exactly what the white nationalists want - to turn the clock back and make it a white nation all over again. In that sense, I can see why some like Warren are calling for doubling down on social progressivism because the moment they change to more of an economic issues party, they'd have ceded control on social issues to the Republicans.  But again, how long will they keep this up?  After one more loss, they may start getting desperate.  Their career is politics and preserving one's career may take precedence over values.  Their best bet is Trump's screw ups cost the Republicans badly in the mid term polls but we can't say that for sure unless we know how hardcore Trump voters feel about this issue.  I do find many on the net who say, "No, Trump is right, both sides are at fault".

Trump will never, ever lose his core supporters. If anything, they will grow over time, not diminish. He's smart enough to know this and no amount of dissention from his own party members to his military commanders will alter that. It is the ugly side of America that has always been there, and with Trump's help, they will become more and more prevalent and vocal. They are the alt right that feels marginalized, even with Trump in the White House and the Republicans running both the Senate and the House. If they don't feel that the government represents them now, then when? When a real KKK leader is actually in the White House. Now, how sick is that? 

Edited by rushfan4 - August 18 2017 at 05:35

rushfan4 wrote: The other thing that I was getting at in my post is that there is a side here that aren't necessarily racist but are instead anti-discrimative against their own race.  The common complaint I hear about people's problem with Black Lives Matter is that All Lives Matter and by continuing to only stress that Black Lives Matter is offensive to non-Blacks.  Police Lives Matter too!

This must not go unchallenged. You put "Black" in boldface type. Why would you or anyone do that? To put emphasis on the word as if its purpose were to contrast with non-Blacks. Fine, but that is not the default sentence stress in English. The subject is normally de-stressed and presupposed. "Black" is of course the presupposition in 'Black Lives Matter' because it defines the topic that is under discussion, not unlike any thread in this forum. It is not being contrasted with frog or troglodyte lives. It is talking about Black lives and that's as far as it Is taking it. The part that is the assertion is the verb, 'matter'. In a cogent disagreement one would counter another's assertion with their own counter-assertion. Since the straightforward counter-assertion would be 'Black lives do not matter' and is astonishingly revealing, people prefer to direct their counter-assertion against the presupposition ('White lives matter), but this is not a cogent method of argumentation. This doesn't matter to 'White lives matter' people, because it still rhetorically puts the 'Black lives matter' assertion in the trash can, because most people do not have a PhD in Linguistics as I do, and are not able to call them on it.

The fact that one can do this at all is a quirk of English, which allows one to vary sentence stress to almost anywhere in a sentence while leaving the words in the same place. This cannot be done in many languages, as sentence stress is often fixed. Placing contrast on the actor/subject of a sentence might require another construction altogether, such as the equivalent of an it-cleft ('It is Black lives that matter' or 'It is White lives that matter') or by adding something that indicates that focus should be placed on 'Black lives'. The lack of relevance of 'White lives matter' to 'Black lives matter' would be immediately obvious because there would be an alteration in the wording of the sentence. In English it's a word game. The speakers propounding 'White lives matter' know it's a word game. They may not be linguists, but they are native speakers of English with native speaker intuitions, and they know it's a word game, though I'm sure cognitive dissonance has them in states of denial.

The best one can say in their favor is that perhaps a logician told them they can do what they are doing. I sincerely doubt that they actually have consulted any logician, but logic would identify 'Black lives' as an argument of the verb 'matter'. Logic, however, does not conform well to natural language. It ignores information management. As discussed above, languages have different devices to manage information. In English it's stress. In other languages it's variation in sentence construction and so on.





Edited by HackettFan - August 18 2017 at 10:34

Thing is Scott, those people are simply just wrong. I get you're saying that's what they believe, but I know that, the issue is flat out they are incorrect. 

Edited by JJLehto - August 18 2017 at 12:00

It's still dumb to me though, he didn't need to do all that to keep the white conservative fears going. He could've spoke out hard against it and take credit for saying the right thing, THEN fall back on normal Republican race baiting, like....defending the confederate statue stuff, an issue were people are more open to. 

rushfan4 wrote: I'm not quite sure what HackettFan is trying to get at with his post, but I assume it is because I do not have a PhD in linguistics (congrats on that by the way).  The only reason that I typed the word Black in bold was to stress the word that people to tend to have a problem with in that catchphrase.

Yes, you were adequately describing what their problem with it was by placing 'black' in bold. And I explained that that does not comport with what any and every native speaker understands about the language. They are being disingenuous by forming that interpretation. They are changing its meaning. Let's put it this way. A 'Black lives matter' activist would speak in a fashion as to put the sentence stress on 'matter' (place 'matter' in bold). This is the normal default way to utter sentences in English according to how information is typically packaged. If I say horses have four legs, one is not free to say that I am saying that sheep do not. If I say animals matter, one is not free to say that I am saying that humans do not. If I say that Linguistics is a cool cognitive science, one is not free to say that I am saying that Psychology is not.




Edited by HackettFan - August 18 2017 at 14:55

^ Wurd.

The thing we tend to either forget or deny is that in the US, sometimes black lives don't matter, or don't seem to.   Not suggesting that anyone here thinks that and I'm not judging the public in general, but sometimes even us bedwetting liberals don't always give African Americans the respect that they, that we all, deserve.

It's a long, long process.

JJLehto wrote: Easy Money wrote: Its quite simple; the phrase black lives matter does not imply that other lives do not matter, it just points out that there are those who act as if black lives don't matter. Indeed, and the fact so many people jump to that conclusion, must speak to something. Which is nothing new, we never did deal with our race issue, just keep ignoring it and moving around to avoid it.

Yeah, when a White supremacist, chants white lives matter, they mean "only" white lives matter. The point of black lives matter is to mean black lives matter "as well."

JJLehto wrote: Easy Money wrote: Its quite simple; the phrase black lives matter does not imply that other lives do not matter, it just points out that there are those who act as if black lives don't matter. Indeed, and the fact so many people jump to that conclusion, must speak to something. Which is nothing new, we never did deal with our race issue, just keep ignoring it and moving around to avoid it.

Yes, our race issue is down to laws put on paper. We have done little to alter how people think about race issues. The fact that Trump's Christian supporters failed to object to his "both sides were at fault" stance illustrates that clearly. If the church will not take a stand on race issues, how can it's followers?