Our current little civil war is an opportunity for self-education for how we are perceived by others, particularly those white working stiffs who vote for Republicans and Trump.
If you are a Hillary supporter think on how many of the Bernie posts made you feel better about Bernie and his supporters, how many seemed fair and cogent, vs. how many just got your ire up. How persuasive were those diaries that expressed mystification of how you could possibly support such a corporate shill sell-out war monger?
if you are a Bernie supporter think on how persuasive were the diaries from the Hillary camp and made you feel better about her? How did you like the diaries about how fantastical his ideas were, how impossible his goals, how could you detract from the effort to unite together behind the inevitable nominee when it was obvious that attacking Hillary was just paving the road for the Republicans to win.
How could anybody but an idiot think that Hillary was the stronger candidate, given the polls? How could anybody but an idiot think the polls meant anything when Sanders has not been subjected to any real negative advertising and the Rethugs are just holding their fire hoping he will the nominee.
Sanders supporters, do you enjoy being compared to the Naderites in 2000?
And this is in our communications among presumed right-thinking friends and political allies.
We have had an opportunity to perceive how those who don’t share our cultural context perceive us.
As the Republican civil war plays out there are two scenarios that offer us the opportunity to expand our base. If Trump is selected, we have the opportunity to further expand our hold on the well-educated, the suburban Republican college-educated woman, the Hispanic and Asian vote. If Cruz is selected, we have a (lesser) opening to those groups, but also one to white working class voters similar to the opportunity in 1992, but only if we don’t antagonize them with smug superiority while trying to reach them.
Today there is a Vox article: The smug style in American liberalism
Without endorsing all that is in the article, several matters resonated with me and I encourage the community to read it with a disposition to consider our own short-comings.
The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.
As anybody who has gone through a particularly nasty breakup knows, disdain cultivated in the aftermath of a divide quickly exceeds the original grievance. You lose somebody. You blame them. Soon, the blame is reason enough to keep them at a distance, the excuse to drive them even further away.
Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The rubes noticed and replied in kind. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When is the last time you remember grassroot efforts to promote economic justice through boycotts as has recently been done so effectively with LGBT rights. Rainbow Coalition? Cesar Chavez?
If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence, it's, Why are they voting against their own self-interest? But no party these past decades has effectively represented the interests of these dispossessed. Only one has made a point of openly disdaining them too.
Abandoned and without any party willing to champion their interests, people cling to candidates who, at the very least, are willing to represent their moral convictions. The smug style resents them for it, and they resent the smug in turn.
The rubes noticed that liberal Democrats, distressed by the notion that Indiana would allow bakeries to practice open discrimination against LGBTQ couples, threatened boycotts against the state, mobilizing the considerable economic power that comes with an alliance of New York and Hollywood and Silicon Valley to punish retrograde Gov. Mike Pence, but had no such passion when the same governor of the same state joined 21 others in refusing the Medicaid expansion. No doubt good liberals objected to that move too. But I've yet to see a boycott threat about it.
Early in the marriage equality fight, activists advanced the theory that when people discovered a friend or relative was gay, they became far more likely to support gay rights. They were correct. These days it is difficult for anybody in a position of liberal power — whether in business, or government, or media — to avoid having openly gay colleagues, colleagues whom they like and whom they'd like to help.
But extend the point to the poor. Few opinion makers fraternize with the impoverished — or even with anyone from the downscale, uncool, Trump-loving white working class. Few editors and legislators and Silicon Valley heroes have dinner with the lovely couple on food stamps down the road, much less those scraping by in Indiana.
Another point brought up was the Kim Davis case. Yes, her position could not be condoned and needed prompt legal correction. But what purpose did all of the ad hominem attacks on her serve? Making fun of her appearance, claiming inconsistency between her past life and her claims of religious motivation. Kynect was enormously popular in Kentucky and yet the voters voted by a substantial margin for a candidate dedicated to tearing it up. And a significant number probably lied to pollsters about it. How much did the attacks on Davis contribute to the feeling that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
The popular resonance of Trump’s attack on political correctness is undoubtedly fueled in large part by rascism, misogyny, homophobia and the desire to be able to express these feelings. The Trump supporters also seem delighted with other crudities expressed by Trump — Lyin’ Ted and Little Marco. These things also resonate with the ill-educated who don’t know how to express themselves and are always saying things which get them into trouble.
I don’t have a good ending to this post, and most folk probably don’t want to hear things that don’t support their preconceptions, but for those in search of self-awareness and greater political messaging effectiveness to those not yet on our side, I commend the article.s