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This is simple opinion, not fact. Thus it makes the rest of your post a logical fallacy.
Any post where one attempts to make generalizations and characterizations of 10s of millions of people is going to fall into that category. In fact, it speaks to desperation.
Then you must be desperate because earlier in this thread you opined that Bernie supporters would be voting for Trump.
I get it, this will not be a popular post among Liberals. I hesitate even posting it because I don't like some of what I'm saying, but I believe it's always important to understand the other side and for the life of me I couldn't understand it. Why would people like Donald effing Trump? The guy is a disaster waiting to happen. He's a cancer. He's ignorant. 90% of the stuff he says is just made up on the spot. Yes, yes, yes, I agree with all of that!
But then I saw a Facebook post from a liberal friend of mine today.
Did you know:
"No one said all lives matter before they heard black lives matter
No one championed straight pride before gay pride
No one cared about white history month before black history month
No one mentioned men's rights until there's talk about feminism..."
It goes on to talk about straight white male privilege how lame the second part of those statements are.
And it clicked.
The only reason that I, a straight white guy with a family, agree with those statements is because my life is easy. I have a STEM degree. I have a job with good benefits. And I enough income to live in a modest house in a decent neighborhood while my wife stays home and takes care of the kids. Yeah, being a white dude is easy, because of this I happily support Feminism, BLM, and LGBT equality. I have it good, so those activist groups should too. But... what about the less economically privileged straight white guy?
What about the guy who makes $12 an hour at a warehouse job which he rides the bus to, so his wife can have the car to drop kids off at daycare and then head to her job at the front desk of an office where she makes $10 an hour, and lives with his family of 4 in an 800 square foot 2 bedroom apartment, while being told about white privilege and seeing on the news how oppressed everyone but him is?
Now I understand that this is more due to a macroeconomic shift since the 70's, when white privileges realistically would land any white guy with a HS Diploma a solid factory job and middle class lifestyle. I also understand we can't point to one specific policy change (though maybe some may point at NAFTA), but the perception of a straight white guy with no degree, barely able to make ends meet for his family, who may get laid off every 4ish years, and saw his friends go through foreclosure in 2008, while 40 years ago his father or grandfather had a good life by working 40 hours at the local factory..., that guy's perception may be different than mine. His demographic is still the largest in the country, and due to its size still has a lot of power. It can't just be written off or ignored.
Telling the cis-gendered white guy who lives that life that "black lives matter" or "it's gay pride month" is going to feel slanted at him. It may even sound to him like "Your life isn't as important." or "You're just average, you have nothing to be proud of." He may see affirmative action as something that works against him, but of course nobody will talk about that. It isn't appropriate to. He may rather see "white privilege" as "upper-middle class white privilege" or even just "upper-middle class privilege."
Now I personally don't believe his situation is due to anything caused by any activist groups. As referenced before, I believe it is due to a decades-long stagnant economy which has negatively affected all demographics, other than the college graduate demographic (and even then only with a STEM or graduate degree). But if he's not making 70k+ a year he probably disagrees with me. So instead he may wonder, "Why am I being ignored? Why doesn't anyone care about my plight? What happened to the 'American Dream' that my father and grandfather lived?"
Then some guy in a trucker cap listens to that plea and starts talking about "making America great again..."
The only way to make a middle-class living today is to get a white-collar job such as an attorney, physician, etc. There are only so many of these jobs to go around; within the last five years, someone told me that lawyers in our area were taking jobs as paralegals in order to earn a living.
The blue collar middle class has largely disappeared, because of treaties like NAFTA and others.
Blue collars could earn a middle class living again, if jobs in resource extraction and manufacturing came back to America.
Trump wants bring this type of job back to the U.S. One way to do this is to lower corporate tax rates, which would provide an economic incentive. Another way is to reinstitute a tariff system, which is another way of providing the incentive.
Restoring an economy like we had in the 1950's isn't hard at all. All that needs to be done is to persuade enough people in the working class that it's in their best interest to vote for it.
I have to snicker over all these threads analyzing what makes Trump supporters tick. I haven't read one that applied to myself, or the fellow supporters I know.
The quoted thread is an extremely myopic view, and an incorrect one, to boot. There are MANY tradesmen who have been edged out of business because of illegals underbidding them. Masons, bricklayers, roofers, landscapers, carpenters - there are lots of people who used to make a good living that can no longer compete. To join a construction crew often requires the applicant to speak Spanish. That is if there is even an opening, because most of the time they are filled by the cousins, brothers-in-law, etc. by word of mouth.
Globalism has caused many people to lose their jobs to offshoring and outsourcing. Just because it hasn't happened to YOU doesn't mean lots of people weren't affected by it.
Stop with the "FEAR" comments, already. Nobody's afraid. They are DISGUSTED.
Why not learn Spanish? Being bilingual is a big plus on a resume in many job fields.
The only way to make a middle-class living today is to get a white-collar job such as an attorney, physician, etc. There are only so many of these jobs to go around; within the last five years, someone told me that lawyers in our area were taking jobs as paralegals in order to earn a living.
The blue collar middle class has largely disappeared, because of treaties like NAFTA and others.
Blue collars could earn a middle class living again, if jobs in resource extraction and manufacturing came back to America.
Trump wants bring this type of job back to the U.S. One way to do this is to lower corporate tax rates, which would provide an economic incentive. Another way is to reinstitute a tariff system, which is another way of providing the incentive.
Restoring an economy like we had in the 1950's isn't hard at all. All that needs to be done is to persuade enough people in the working class that it's in their best interest to vote for it.
Unless Americans are willing to do those jobs for a few cents an hour without benefits there will always be places cheaper than the US of A for low tech manufacturing and resource extraction.
I have to snicker over all these threads analyzing what makes Trump supporters tick. I haven't read one that applied to myself, or the fellow supporters I know.
The quoted thread is an extremely myopic view, and an incorrect one, to boot. There are MANY tradesmen who have been edged out of business because of illegals underbidding them. Masons, bricklayers, roofers, landscapers, carpenters - there are lots of people who used to make a good living that can no longer compete. To join a construction crew often requires the applicant to speak Spanish. That is if there is even an opening, because most of the time they are filled by the cousins, brothers-in-law, etc. by word of mouth.
Globalism has caused many people to lose their jobs to offshoring and outsourcing. Just because it hasn't happened to YOU doesn't mean lots of people weren't affected by it.
Stop with the "FEAR" comments, already. Nobody's afraid. They are DISGUSTED.
Disgusted up the ying yang, exactly why we all need change. Any change but what we are use too from both sides.
And the fudging elite establishment from both sides who only care about their pockets.
Unless Americans are willing to do those jobs for a few cents an hour without benefits there will always be places cheaper than the US of A for low tech manufacturing and resource extraction.
This is why I would reinstitute a tariff system. If a corporation had to pay a high-enough tariff on imported goods or resources, then a business would do just as well to produce or extract here, and pay a living wage in so doing.
This is a kind of scam that needs to be addressed. Many of those entry level jobs Should not require a degree since anyone with half a brain can do them. A bachelors degree for a receptionist who gets paid minimum wage, really? Anyone see the problem here?
Working-class white men are tired of hearing how good they've got it for being white in America when they're really not doing so good. They know of a time when they (or their fathers/grandfathers) were doing well (despite the fact it was a glitch in time, post-WW2, when other global competitors were rebuilding their countries), and they want someone who will both give voice to their frustrations and who they think will get their long-gone factory jobs back.
...The blue collar middle class has largely disappeared, because of treaties like NAFTA and others.
Blue collars could earn a middle class living again, if jobs in resource extraction and manufacturing came back to America...
It was an abberation for a short time in history, it won't be coming back. Move on. Learn some real history and you won't have so much trouble understanding this, difficult as it is to accept.
This is why I would reinstitute a tariff system. If a corporation had to pay a high-enough tariff on imported goods or resources, then a business would do just as well to produce or extract here, and pay a living wage in so doing.
We'd have over 1/2 the nation unemployed. It isn't 1950 1 in 7 Americans works for the export market, while the stuff China makes for us, we could do via automation with mainly automation, and few folks hired.
Remember Hostess and the Twinkie strikers (18,000 of them). Buyer who got them out of bankruptcy has them producing far more with barely 1,000 employees.
The progression to needing fewer workers all the time will speed up, not slow down.
Last edited by BobNJ1960; 09-20-2016 at 08:22 PM..
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