Asshole Trump may be, but Maher doesn't quite get to the nugget of why the asshole is so popular.

He starts to scratch the surface a bit by addressing the failures in the education system, but he doesn't quite go far enough.

(Before I go further and people start arguing with me, let me be clear: I. Do. Not. Like. Trump. Okay? Okay. Lets continue.)

In spite of his many flaws, Trump is doing a few things right in his campaign: He is addressing many of the problems that a large number of Americans are being pressured by. His solutions range from dumb to crazy, but the problems he talks about, economic pressures, stagnant wages, vanishing middle class inability to 'get ahead,' etc. are real. This socio-economic group people who have been increasingly left behind since the late 70’s/early 80’s the adoption of trickle-down economics.

For this group of people, in spite of all the other ridiculous stuff Trump says, blaming problems on “those people,” and other crap—-and as flawed as his is, at least he’s addressing some of their troubles.

..

I'm sure Maher is smart enough to recognize that income and wealth inequality has played a roll in Trump's rise in popularity. I guess he didn't have time to talk about that in this short clip...

This scratches all my itches. Simpsons, data, economics, inequality.

@newtboy: Trumps appeal to the LCD is successful mostly because the LCD has been allowed to grow so much in our post-Regan society. With inequality on the rise and decades of trickle-down government-by-the-wealthy-for-the-wealthy, those "left behind" have been growing faster and faster every year.

It Trump fails to win this go around then the pendulum may keep swinging further. My concern is that the next 'protest' candidate will be even worse than he.

@ChaosEngine:

We'll have to agree to disagree about some things. For me, as bad as Trump is, I'm not convinced that he is worse than what Hillary was revealted to be by the DNC Leaks...

...but perhaps instead of arguing about which shit sandwich is worse, it is more productive to work together to find out why there are only shit sandwiches on the menu?

On this:

"But things will never change until you fix your broken political system. You're barely a democracy these days."

I am in complete agreement.

When I first heard of the Brexit vote, I thought it was some nasty xenophobic/racist group that had somehow managed to capture 51% of a nation. But could Britian really be that full of xenophobes? It was in a bit of casual research on the subject when I discovered that J. Pie video I referenced in my earlier comment. I had to revise my first assumption about the group that voted to leave the E.U.. While there may have been an element of xenophobia involved, it was economic factors that was the driving force behind the Brexit vote.

People who have been screwed over by years of government for corporations which has only worsened since Glass–Steagall was repealed by Bill Clinton. The hold the wealthy have on government was tightened after Citizen's United.

Much of the support Trump has been able to marshal is a reaction to years of governance-for-the-wealthy-by-the-wealthy.

Lawrence Lessig's does a better job unpacking this quagmire in his talk: "We The People: the Republic We Must Reclaim" which has far too few views on YT or votes on the sift, IMO. For anyone who's ever been unhappy with the political system in the past number of years, I consider it a must-watch.


Link here:

http://videosift.com/video/lawrence-lessig-2016-will-have-two-elections-TED-talk

I don't know what folks you mean or how squeaky clean you mean, but I think if you search the internet long enough, you'll find someone childish enough to accuse Hilary of corruption for, say, cutting the queue at Burger King. I agree that you can't expect people to be perfect since birth, do people really ask for that?

I look at the world around us: unbelievable wealth inequality, global warming, oil wars, illegal invasions, the hijacking of Greek democracy, the great bankers bailout swindle, austerity politics, the pay gap.... I won't go on. The world has not been well managed for a long time now. A national leader represents a fuck-ton of people and their decisions can literally lead to the slow or immediate death of all of us, either by inaction or incompetence or mistake....etc. Honesty and integrity have got to be important now, even if the old ways seem familiar and comfortable. I would argue it's childish (naive) to say let's ignore those things.

My general point was that it doesn't matter if they are better off. For example, the degree to which they are better off might not be significant to them and their life. Or they might know even know they would be better off because their life doesn't include unbiased news sources. Or they see the leaked emails as proof that whilst she SAYS things that benefit you, once you vote for her she will do what she likes. Or whatever other worries people might have - only they know and no one in the political sphere seems to care.

The less you have, the less you have to lose, the less involved you are with the system, coupled with access to education and all the rest (especially in America). You are convinced they'd be better off, but they are not and therein lies the problem. Things like the email leak make it a lot harder to convince them of your point of view.

If your house has rot and every time you ask to have it fixed, your landlady holds it together with spit and tape, eventually you've got a shit house that isn't any better than living outside and putting a match to the whole thing is the only way it's going to be rebuilt.

It depends on your perspective on whether the house is already fucked or not, doesn't it? You might live in one of the nice rooms, but someone else further down the ladder is basically living outside.

You only have to look at the way inequality has risen over the past few decades to see how desperate some people are. You can see how someone sleeping in their car, going to a foodbank and coping with mental illness might not see much urgency in choosing between Trump or Hillary.

More that willing to discuss.

What is the root causes of race inequality of blacks in America?




Also:
Are you saying the following is not true?
A police officer is 18 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a cop.


Over the last decade, black males made up 40 percent of all cop killers, even though they're six percent of the population.

from
Heather Mac Donald Book: The War on Cops.

Women want it both ways. Feminism isnt about gender equality its about gender inequality in favor of females. Fuck that. You act like a man and hit a guy, expect to get treated like a man and get hit back.

You have a better chance of solving race inequality in the US than convincing BK33 of anything mate, but kudos for trying. ; )

1. I *AM* an LGBTQ person, I don't speak for them, but I am one voice.
I tend to avoid harassing people.

2. No.

3. a) Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I want women to be equal and I want legal protections in place to maintain this. This is not secret information.
b) They do.

4. Question 3b) suggests women should be responsible for their safety. Question 4 seems to criticize the notion of being responsible for your own safety. Glad to see unified thought in this. The answer is I expected random bouts of mockery, judgement, and violence. You know, the other 95% of my life.

5. Because shitting on a group that seeks to change culture to react similarly to loss of black life as it does for white lives, while pointing out where society fails to meet this standard is pretty charactersticly racist.
Also I don't say that "Kill all white people" is not racist.

6. Yes. Did you know that the permanence of objects, the transmission of ideas and culture and systems of law are based on events in the past? That by studying history we can understand how humans work in a unique way, that knowing that say, there was a WWI may help us understand the conditions under which WWII occurred and that this knowledge may help us decide what to do in the aftermath of WWII to avoid a recurrence?
That if a group has historically had problems, many of those problems have probably been inherited along with consequences of the problems (such as poverty, strongly inherited social trait). Yes. Linear time,human affairs, culture. They are all things that exist.

7. Yes, I have many examples of people doing this. Mostly this is due to short lifespan. But there are many manchildren in our culture, who seem to think that other people asserting boundaries is immature.

8. There are programs designed to help boost male education dropout rate. If you 'fight' for 'improvements in the fairness of social order ' to help achieve this, you are a Social Justice Warrior, and so you could just have asked yourself.
Also, American bias? Pretty sure this is not a global stat...

9. Because one focusses on correcting the inequalities between the sexes and was born at a time when women didn't have proper property rights, voting rights etc etc, and so it was primarily focussed on uplifting women and so the name 'feminism'. Egalitarianism on the other hand, is the general pursuit. Many feminists are egalitarian, but not all. Hence different words. English, motherfucker....

10. Nothing, as I am not.

11. No, my grandparents were being enslaved in eastern Europe by the far left and right (but more the right, let's be honest).

Seriously though, I don't remember the liberal protests of "Not all ISIS".

12. Ingroup outgroup hatred and distrust is a universal human trait. Race seems to provoke instinctive group psychology in humans, presumably from evolving in racially separate groups.

13. The phrase is intended to deflate 'Black Lives Matter' whose point is that society seems to disagree, in practice, with this. There's only one realistic motivation to undermining the attempts to equalize how the lives of different races are treated socially.
It's also designed to be perfectly innocuous outside of this context so that white people can totally believe they aren't being dicks by saying it.

14. My social justice fighting is almost always done in secret. I hate the limelight, and I hate endlessly seeking credit for doing the right thing. So I try to keep it to a minimum while also raising consciousness about issues where I can.
Hey wait, did you fall for the bias that the big public figures are representative in all ways of the group? HAHAHAHA! Noob.
Wait, did a man voicing a cartoon kangaroo wearing an Islamic headdress, superimposed on video footage of a woman in a gym grinding her hips tell me to stop trying show off how awesome I am and and to get real?

15. No, they are both not capable of giving consent. Sounds like you have had a bitter experience. Sorry to hear that.

16. I spent two decades trying to change myself. I tortured myself into a deep suicidal insanity. When I stopped that, and when society had changed in response to my and others plights being publicised sympathetically I felt happy and comfortable with myself.
You would prefer millions in silent minorities living through personal hells if the alternative means you have to learn better manners? What a dick.

17. Sure. It's also OK if you say 'nigga' in the context of asking this question. But I'm white and English. You should ask some black Americans if your usage causes unintended messages to be sent. I'd certainly avoid placing joyful emphasis, especially through increased volume, on the word.

18. Ah, you've confused a mixture of ideas and notions within a group as a contradiction of group idealogy. Whoops. I don't understand gender identity. I get gender, but I never felt membership in any group. That's how I feel, and have since the 1990s. The internet has allowed disparate and rare individuals to form groups, and some of these groups are people with different opinions about how they feel about gender and they are very excited to meet people other people with idiosyncratic views as they had previously been alone with their eccentric perspective.

19. If white men are too privileged then the society is not my notion of equal.

20. After rejecting the premise as nonsensical. In as much as I want rules to govern social interactions that take into consideration the diversity of humanity as best as possible, I recognize those same rules will govern my behaviour.

21. Women can choose how to present themselves. Video Game creators choose how to present women in their art. I can suggest that the art routinely portrays women as helpless sex devices, while supporting women who wish to do so for themselves.

22. You DO that? I've never even had the notion. I just sort of listen and digest and try to see if gaps can reasonably be filled with pre-existent knowledge or logical inferrences and then I compare and contrast that with my own differring opinion and I consider why someone might have come to their ideas. Assuming they aren't stupid I try to understand as best I can and present to them my perspective from their perspective. I don't sing, or plug in headphones or have an imaginary rock concert.

23. I have done no such thing. Look, here I am listening to you. You have all been asking questions that have easy answers to if you looked outside your bubble of fighting a handful of twitter and youtube users thinking these people represent the entirety of things and seeking only to destroy them with your arguments rather than understanding the ideas themselves.

24. Reverse Racism is where white guys are systematically (and often deliberately) disadvantaged - such as the complaints against Affirmative Action. I'm sure your buddies can fill you in on the details. The liberal SJWs you hate tend to roll their eyes when they hear it too. Strange you should ask.

25. No. I've never seen the list. I just use whatever pronouns people feel comfortable with. Typically I only need to know three to get by in life, same as most other English speakers.

26. I'm the audience motherfucker, and so are you. That's how it works.

27. I don't do those things, but yes, I have considered the notion of concept saturation in discourse. Have you considered the idea that people vary in their identification of problems, based on a number of factors. Some people are trigger happy and this may be a legitimate problem. Since you are aware of this, you also have a duty to try to overcome the saturation biases.
Similarly, if you keep using the word 'fucking', motherfucker, you'll find it loses its impact quite quickly. See this post motherfucker. Probably why you needed to add the crash zoom for impact. You could have achieved more impact with less sarcasm and and a more surprising fuck.

Your video, Congress Spends Billions to Make Wealth Inequality Worse, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Although I'm in favour of sensible gun regulation, I'm not sure legislation alone will solve your gun problem.

The problem in the USA is, IMO, cultural.

The idea that you would need a gun for "protection" is quite foreign to almost every other country in the developed world.

But, as we've seen in threads here since Orlando, people in the US seem genuinely afraid that they will be "defenseless" if stripped of their arms.

Why is this?
When I've asked people before, I hear responses like "it takes the police 10 minutes to get to your house". Er ok, fund your fucking police?

But that doesn't address the fear of home invasion in the first place. Is it really that common in the US? And if it is, WHY is it?

It's simply not a concern for anyone I know in any other country (excluding war zones, etc). Clearly, if it is such a problem, having a gun isn't deterring people from doing this.

Maybe instead of looking at the short-term symptoms, you should be asking yourselves what is driving people to be so desperate that they are willing to risk their lives breaking into other people's homes knowing that the occupants are potentially armed.

The problem is essentially escalation ( the "Chicago Way").

10: "All the criminals have guns, I better have one too"
20: "Shit, if I'm going to rob that place, they probably have a gun, better go armed"
30: goto 10

Breaking this cycle means addressing inequality, racism, and poverty. People in the US aren't inherently worse than everywhere else, but your system is set up to incentivize criminals to carry a gun.

But FFS, at least stop burying your heads in the sand and let the CDC study this.

I thought he missed the point that it's in the best interests of those at the top for the bottom to be higher. They don't want to be carjacked, robbed, kidnapped, etc by people who have no other option to survive, so it behooves them to pay workers enough that that is not the foreseeable outcome.

Also, he forgot to mention the late 1700's uprising/revolution in France where the working class DID rise up and attack the upper class violently, killing many. THAT is some history that needs to be mentioned time and time again, both as a warning if "fairness" isn't returned to the system at least enough to allow full time workers to survive without resorting to crime or working tirelessly over 100 hours per week, and as a reminder of what has worked to solve that inequality problem in the past.
It wouldn't take too many 1%ers being murdered in front of their families and force fed to them before things changed....hopefully for the better, but certainly change of some kind would happen. I hope it doesn't come to that....unless there's no other option, then a few 1%ers murdered is much better than thousands of poor starving or otherwise being indigent to death.

No one ever suggested it should. I only ever suggested that it's not right for ME, even though I've been supporting it for decades. EDIT: The misplaced angry responses I've received for simply expressing my opinion has done nothing but reinforce the idea that I absolutely don't belong with 'feminists'.

Thanks to Babymech, I have found that school of thought, egalitarianism, equality for ALL, the only kind of equality that's equal.

Clearly 'feminism' is only about gender equality FOR WOMEN....and I think you don't find equality by ignoring unfairness that happens to the other 1/2 of the population (that's the reason I've identified as 'feminist' before now, I care about being fair to others, even if they aren't like me)....that's what you're upset about, inequalities to women being ignored and minimized, why on earth would you do it back to men? That's not gender equality, that's gender based vengeance.
EDIT: If you wish to argue that point, I insist you start with an example of 'feminism' working against women to secure equal rights for men or I'll discount your argument at the outset.
Otherwise, I'm out.

No, if you believe in and work for gender equality FOR WOMEN, you're a feminist.
Those who believe in gender equality for all are called egalitarians.

Why 'feminism' is historically 'feminism' is because it works to secure the rights of women. Period. The feminist movement has never, as far as I know, worked against unequal rights for women when the inequality benefits women...or said another way, worked for equality FOR men.

It was not ONLY women at the start, only mostly women, and you disrespect and dismiss the contributions of all those men who worked against their own self interests to secure equal rights for you. How rude and ungrateful....I bet you would be upset if women's contributions to men's issues were dismissed like that.
No, men have not done the bulk of the work, but they have been invaluable in getting action many, many times. Calling it feminism and acting like it's only by women totally 'disacknowledges' all those self sacrificing men....which is why I have a problem. If we and our votes, money, and efforts don't count and are completely unapreciated, then buh-bye.
Again, no one is even suggesting renaming the entire movement, I suggested that people WHO THINK LIKE ME might start or join another that's more inclusive from the start. If you don't think like me, it's not about you, and even if you do, it's not a command, it's barely a suggestion.

If you focus solely on those with the MOST disadvantages, you only swing the pendulum of unfairness the other direction in a never ending struggle back and forth. Only by focusing on equality for all can you come to the right solutions to inequalities.

(Expletive deleted)! Men and whites ABSOLUTELY need equal rights. Yes, in MOST cases men and whites have advantages, not all by far like you said, still today a crackhead mother is more likely to get full custody than a fully employed stand up father...that is not the ONLY case where women are given advantages men aren't....another off the top of my head, domestic violence, men will ALWAYS be the one thought to be the aggressor without clear evidence to the contrary, but that's simply false, and leaves many abused men victimized twice. Same for sexual abuse/rape. Men get zero support if they've been raped, only ridicule and disbelief. Take each situation individually, or you'll continue to make that insulting, repulsive, self serving mistake that perpetuates inequality and pits men against women.

Equal child custody rights....yes, good example....how has the feminist movement worked to secure that....for men? If the imbalance is in their favor, that's FINE with feminists. I disagree strongly, and I won't be considering myself one anymore.

Without wishing to bang on about it - that happens a LOT on the internet. I think it's less about tone of voice and more about people being so offended by inequality that they are over aggressive in their pursuit of equality. They attack the argument before fully understanding it or allowing it to be fully expressed.

It's a really tight line to walk and I know this because I have in the past offended respectful, honest people in my crusade which was against abuse of power and authority. I hated being mistreated by people in authority so much that I became prejudiced against people in authority. The reason I behaved like that is because of how I was treated by authority figures in my formative years and the defence mechanisms I developed because of it. And in the same way, some women who are very poorly treated by men may develop barriers, prejudices and coping mechanisms in response.

(... and that's why I make a dozen edits to my posts. Sometimes I get carried away and detract entirely from what I was trying to achieve.)

I'm not saying that's the underlying cause of the misunderstanding here, but the point I'm trying to make is that there may be good reasons why someone just said something you thought was sexist. Problems arise, I think, when we deal in absolutes; this person is definitely chauvinist because he's ignorant and rude, this person is definitely a man-hater because she is ignorant and rude - both may be unfair to the other.