Comment by bcrosby95
5 years ago
It's nothing new. Politics is a team based sport. My brother calls Obama "King Obama" but is still a huge fan of Trump. I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't.
> Politics is a team based sport.
That's optional though. The modern media, in the interest of money, has done a good job of causing the population of the US to miscategorize themselves into D/R. If it instead focused on human welfare, then we wouldn't be in this mess.
This so much, I think as people strength in their own opinions has weakened they have replaced it with this us/vs them mentality where you must agree with them in all issues. At root, a narcissistic culture where lack of personality and individuation is overcompensated by external signalling of virtue. "Oh look at those soyboys, we are so much masculine than them." "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education."
First case, Why so insecure that you constantly need the other to reaffirm yourself? Second, Why do you need to reaffirm your college education was actually worth something? (Many cases, sad to say but they should sue to get your money back)
I recently read "The Organized Mind". I didn't expect it to be a book on ethics, but it certainly did impact me that way, and caused me to alter an enormous number of faulty mental behaviors, and allowed me to see abuse in language.
> "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education."
This right here is an example of why it's so easy. Part of what I'm reading there is fundamental attribution error. A person, anywhere right now, that can't get a college education in the US is dealing with a lot of headwind. Our education system is punitive, starting with an A and stripping you of points all the way through, causing undue stress, knowing that if you fail, you probably won't have the money to move forward, and will have great difficulty. Rich people get a free pass on this. Put a system like this together and the reason that people can't get educations is situational, not dispositional. We as a society must do better.
I mentioned miscategorization already, which is something that our brains naturally do when seeing people different from us, and requires intentional mental unbundling to see all humans as the same category. This is why racism is so common as well; without intentional work, humans will find categories by which to judge outsiders.
Our social media breaks human relationships because far too many interactions are decided publicly, through shame, rather than through communication. An enormous emotional abuse crisis in the US has now reached the highest levels of society, both private and public, and I certainly put enormous amounts of blame not on the companies that make social media sites, but because our brains are simply not well-tasked to deal with it. Further, the end of comprehensive mental health, particularly CBT and emotional withholding and the damages that they cause so many people and relationships.
I have a strong feeling that in the coming decade, there will be studies in cognitive psychology demonstrating the connection between stock markets and wealth and the base level fear/reward circuitry of the brain, delaying and reducing ethical and social cognition. Causing a focus on economic power rather than social conformity, and thus damaging society.
Regardless, I apologize for blathering, I think about this stuff a lot.
> Politics is a team based sport.
I wonder if there is a relationship between the level of competitiveness that a people have for sports with the level of competitiveness that they have in politics and other aspects said people’s lives.
Competitive behavior seems to desire to highlight differences amongst the in-group versus the outgroups. Competitive behavior also excels at drumming up visceral desire to act regardless of whether the desire is rational or whether the act truly and completely satisfies the desire.
Why is it difficult to immediately associate with the largest in-group i.e. all of humanity / all of life itself / the objective truth?
Why not fight a group that has no members i.e. poverty (that which makes and keeps people poor as opposed to the poor), hunger, homelessness, poor health and disease, intolerable / harmful discomfort (difficulty breathing, too much heat, too much cold, too dry, too wet, etc.), pollution, and death (untimely or all death period)?
> I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't.
This is a terrible line of thinking. I'm no Trump fan, but there's a ton of things neither Trump nor Obama should have done as president, and excusing one with the actions of another doesn't make a bad act good.
I can understand how people can rationalize some of his failures, but, the second time around, how can someone vote for a guy who has failed on delivering on a very simple and basic campaign promise, one that he can do that unilaterally?
“The country wasn’t based on executive orders,” Trump said at a South Carolina campaign stop in February 2016. “Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can’t even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It’s a basic disaster. You can’t do it.”
I know I'm probably pissing in the wind here, but I was looking forward to a president ceding some of his power back to congress, so this one really sticks in my craw. Oh well.
Because, while this is not true of individual republicans, republican party media strategy has been based on positional ethics for a long time. Free speech is good when it is our free speech. Executive orders are bad when they are your executive orders.
Both parties do this. For instance, Republicans are generally the party of "states' rights", but Democrats are jumping up and down about how the federal government shouldn't overrule the rights of liberal states now. Things like the fighting the FCC trying to prohibit states from making their own net neutrality rules, or legalizing marijuana, which is still technically illegal nationwide according to the federal government.
Generally, if you run the federal government, you don't want states objecting to your agenda. And if the opposition is running the federal government, you insist on your right to do things at the state level.
Watching Democrats and Republicans make the exact same arguments depending on whose in power is absolutely hilarious, and it leads to great soundbites, like those of Trump and McConnell talking about what the President should and shouldn't do... depending who the President is.
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> but I was looking forward to a president ceding some of his power back to congress
And you were expecting that from someone who draws a significant amount of fame from "You're fired!", and "I'm the boss", "I have total authority"??
It was less "expecting", and more like "looking for a silver lining".
If Trump presidency ends badly, I could see the President becoming more like the Doge in Venice, every time the Doge failed they tended to lose power.
Probably for Mr Trumps relatives the best way out is hope he dies or have him sectioned - in return for a presidential pardon.
I voted for both but for different reasons.