The world is officially upside down.

[colker]

Yes but this President-elect specifically talked about how much he "loves war" and discussed "bombing the shit out of them" (granted, in a discussion of countering IS) as well as his recklessly tossing around the notion of actually using nuclear weapons. Hyperbole it most likely was, but remember Reagan's quip about "the bombing begins in 10 minutes" (I think that was it?) when he wasn't aware the microphone was keyed? That alone caused real consternation in Moscow. Trump's done a lot to create his own monster.

There is a lot of theater from MOscow. There was and there is. They relied their tactics and strategy on excellent spying/ intelligence/ counter intelligence and measure any US president's rompants against their intel.
Fact is there wasn't a nuclear war under Reagan and there is a a lot of threat from Isis.. not as conventional attack on US w/ missiles but threats anyway.
The big question is how the US under Trump AND a republican congress will deal w/ localized conflict; Obama and democrats bring their "we can't allow the world not to live under a democracy according to our notion of democracy". It was the excuse to impose global capitalism everywhere which maybe is a better thing than secluded tirannies.. maybe not. What will Trump decide about African war lords, the eternal Middle East conflict, China -Japan disputes, Russian tastes for eastern Europe, Venezuela, Drug cartels in Mexico? Will he say "deal w/ your own f#$%^& problem" or take responsability over Pax Americana?
Those issues all have financial market links.. Those are not common sense for the common people issues.
Problem w/ politics and democracy is telling simple tales to the common guy and dealing w/ very complex strategies that become big crisis every week.

[vertical_doug]

Attachment 97904

sounds about right

[Rich Beaudoin]

Problem w/ politics and democracy is telling simple tales to the common guy and dealing w/ very complex strategies that become big crisis every week.

Understanding the nuances of issues takes time and effort.
The majority of voters (from both parties, humans in general) respond to simple sound bites and our process is all about simple messaging. We are primates - if you understand that, you can win followers.

[72gmc]

Hillary & Obama both are acting civil on this, wouldn’t it makes sense to their followers to act the same?

With due respect--they seem to be doing just that. Discussion is civil. Protest without violence is civil. Anxiety is civil. Taking the winning candidate at his or her word is smart until proven otherwise.

The use of "followers" goes both ways btw. And it's a good point--none of us should be followers. These people work for us, provided we remember that.

[j44ke]

I am very interested in how and what he will do to change this ...

So would we all. I think the solutions to an impoverished rural population in a stagnated post-industrial economy are somewhere between few and none, especially when that population is highly resistant to anything that can be described as socialism. I think we are between a rock and a hard place, and I think that's the same rock and hard place a lot of western governments are in right now. What do we do with those among us who are not suited for earning a living and sustaining themselves economically, because the traditional forms of employment for them no longer exist. There are a lot of scapegoats for this problem, but very few actual solutions that don't just paint the barn doors before they are closed behind the long departed cows.

China kicked people out of the country and made them live in cities and then encouraged companies to build lots of factories to employ everyone in concentrated centralized locations at low labor prices to produce products for the big western markets.

Not going to happen in the US I don't think.

Arguing about whether someone is smart or stupid is a waste of time when they've already won the prize.

[colker]

So would we all. I think the solutions to an impoverished rural population in a stagnated post-industrial economy are somewhere between few and none, especially when that population is highly resistant to anything that can be described as socialism. I think we are between a rock and a hard place, and I think that's the same rock and hard place a lot of western governments are in right now. What do we do with those among us who are not suited for earning a living and sustaining themselves economically, because the traditional forms of employment for them no longer exist. There are a lot of scapegoats for this problem, but very few actual solutions that don't just paint the barn doors before they are closed behind the long departed cows.

China kicked people out of the country and made them live in cities and then encouraged companies to build lots of factories to employ everyone in concentrated centralized locations at low labor prices to produce products for the big western markets.

Not going to happen in the US I don't think.

Arguing about whether someone is smart or stupid is a waste of time when they've already won the prize.

There is a solution for those people but it's not wall st that's going to offer.. Factories were a solution in China but in America factories are the problem.
Back to solutions: it's in education! There is a huge crisis out there called the "environment". Rural, countryside people know the environment and city thinkers don't... Agriculture. Trees. Milk. Water.. We still need those things and if an industry of software happened in the west coast, developing hubs of lifestyle research could spread in mid america. This is just one possibility..
There is too much ideology these days. Ideologies w/ their polarizing and guilt srving.. are useless. Just throw all the polarizing distilled in academic research and see if there is any real, new ideas to revolutionize lifestyle.. ideas based on rural tradition.
America has been selling lifestyle forever. NOw it's focused more and more on finances and litigations. Those are sterile.
There is no bigger capital than human life, feelings and experiences. Apple understood that and sells it along w/ computers.
People are fucked up in mid america because of incompetence... not their incompetence but the leaders of the country, the academic elite which can't come up w/ ideas and instead just complains about injustice.

[vertical_doug]

There is a solution for those people but it's not wall st that's going to offer.. Factories were a solution in China but in America factories are the problem.
Back to solutions: it's in education! There is a huge crisis out there called the "environment". Rural, countryside people know the environment and city thinkers don't... Agriculture. Trees. Milk. Water.. We still need those things and if an industry of software happened in the west coast, developing hubs of lifestyle research could spread in mid america. This is just one possibility..
There is too much ideology these days. Ideologies w/ their polarizing and guilt srving.. are useless. Just throw all the polarizing distilled in academic research and see if there is any real, new ideas to revolutionize lifestyle.. ideas based on rural tradition.
America has been selling lifestyle forever. NOw it's focused more and more on finances and litigations. Those are sterile.
There is no bigger capital than human life, feelings and experiences. Apple understood that and sells it along w/ computers.
People are fucked up in mid america because of incompetence... not their incompetence but the leaders of the country, the academic elite which can't come up w/ ideas and instead just complains about injustice.

I think you have eaten 'Member berries'

The Definitive Message of Member Berries : southpark

That's how we got here.

[TheNerdyCyclist]

There is a solution for those people but it's not wall st that's going to offer.. Factories were a solution in China but in America factories are the problem.
Back to solutions: it's in education! There is a huge crisis out there called the "environment". Rural, countryside people know the environment and city thinkers don't... Agriculture. Trees. Milk. Water.. We still need those things and if an industry of software happened in the west coast, developing hubs of lifestyle research could spread in mid america. This is just one possibility..
There is too much ideology these days. Ideologies w/ their polarizing and guilt srving.. are useless. Just throw all the polarizing distilled in academic research and see if there is any real, new ideas to revolutionize lifestyle.. ideas based on rural tradition.
America has been selling lifestyle forever. NOw it's focused more and more on finances and litigations. Those are sterile.
There is no bigger capital than human life, feelings and experiences. Apple understood that and sells it along w/ computers.
People are fucked up in mid america because of incompetence... not their incompetence but the leaders of the country, the academic elite which can't come up w/ ideas and instead just complains about injustice.

Agree completely re: education. Working in Silicon Valley in EdTech, I have come firmly to the belief that we (the elites, and especially the liberal elites) have failed middle America. Being from Ohio, I'm not that surprised with how things have gone. We no longer listen, and the liberals like me have become lazy progressives - branding anyone who dares question the overriding virtues of slacktavist millenial social justice as a racist, a bigot, or hateful fearmonger.

I think both sides have become polarized because we have become myopic. The only thing that forces us to look beyond what's immediately around us, and only a few feet down the road is giving people opportunities to grow skills, knowledge, and points of view. In the next few years, those of us with privilege and wealth will have to give generously to local school districts, especially ones in low income areas (both black and white) as I don't have faith that the next administration will fund education properly. Hopefully in 2018 and 2020 we can put real people, skills, and thinking centric education that combines STEM along with rigorous and challenging social studies front and center on the platform.

Also we should get more people riding bikes on group rides. Houston and I don't share a political affiliation, but we've both opened up each other's thinking through conversations we've had on rides. Something about mild hypoxia and the sounds of chains on cogs just makes people more willing to entertain differing viewpoints.

[j44ke]

Yes 100% education. Like a Marshall Plan of education. One year of US Military funding for education.

But that will happen when cows fly.

[colker]

I think you have eaten 'Member berries'

The Definitive Message of Member Berries : southpark

That's how we got here.

You can't tell people their lives are worthless or there is no solution. Telling lies like i will bring back that factory and make it competitive w/ your high salaries is not a good solution.
You need to sell something that's needed. Reinventing lifestyle is what's needed now and americans are good at it.

[Matthew J]

Back to solutions: it's in education! There is a huge crisis out there called the "environment". Rural, countryside people know the environment and city thinkers don't... Agriculture. Trees. Milk. Water.. We still need those things and if an industry of software happened in the west coast, developing hubs of lifestyle research could spread in mid america. This is just one possibility..

Dude ...

One of Hillary's core positions was to make public education affordable for all - with grants meaning an end to people graduating with more debt than many MacMansion mortgages.

Presumably this thought process was rejected by voting in someone who said repeatedly every position* Hillary had is wrong.

*save maybe infrastructure and even there Trump said he supports the Republican infrastructure platform which was money for roads and not public and alternative transit, both of which Hillary supported.

[colker]

Dude ...

One of Hillary's core positions was to make public education affordable for all - with grants meaning an end to people graduating with more debt than many MacMansion mortgages.

Presumably this thought process was rejected by voting in someone who said repeatedly every position* Hillary had is wrong.

*save maybe infrastructure and even there Trump said he supports the Republican infrastructure platform which was money for roads and not public and alternative transit, both of which Hillary supported.

It needs a different kind of school where traditional academic science merges w/ rural america knowledge. It sounds crazy, far out but the Bauhaus in 20s Germany, a very important school which reinvented industrail design teaching, was exactly this: traditional science merging w/ crafts, focused on the future needs of the industrial society.
TRaditional college is a snobbery machine.

[j44ke]

Dude ...

One of Hillary's core positions was to make public education affordable for all - with grants meaning an end to people graduating with more debt than many MacMansion mortgages.

Presumably this thought process was rejected by voting in someone who said repeatedly every position* Hillary had is wrong.

*save maybe infrastructure and even there Trump said he supports the Republican infrastructure platform which was money for roads and not public and alternative transit, both of which Hillary supported.

I think when you tell people who can't imagine ever going to college themselves that you are going to give everyone debt-free college educations, that just sounds like more rich people getting stuff from the government.

At the same time, I think a debt free college education based on need is one step in the funding debacle that is higher education. But I think these massive schools with tuitions more than most people will ever pay for a house in their lifetime is criminal. NYU isn't a school any longer as much as it is a giant real estate corporation. The school is just a minor project. I'm exaggerating, but sort of not also.

Several states had referendum on raising the minimum wage. The minimum wage in this country has effectively become a wage subsidy system for businesses like Walmart who pay whatever the minimum or slightly higher is per hour for their workers and then the government makes up the difference with welfare and food stamps.

If we are going to subsidize anything, let's not make it Walmart. Require a livable wage (though good luck figuring that out without politics) and pump money into school at every level. Make school the best place every kid in this country goes every day. Provide after school education for their parents - free. Employ lots of teachers. Have the schools open from 8AM to 10PM. Do it from 4 years old until college, and plenty of kids will reach college with the acumen that will make unnecessary to get a loan. And for the ones that don't, then need-based loans and work study.

But you know, they teach global warming, socialism and evolution at public schools and blah blah blah blah.......

I am going to stop writing now.

[Matthew J]

It needs a different kind of school where traditional academic science merges w/ rural america knowledge. It sounds crazy, far out but the Bauhaus in 20s Germany, a very important school which reinvented industrail design teaching, was exactly this: traditional science merging w/ crafts, focused on the future needs of the industrial society.
TRaditional college is a snobbery machine.

You would have to go back to rural america of the 20s for any sort of unique rural america knowledge. Rural US now is a mass of giant corporate farms supported by travelling labor. Most people who live in the rural US work in retail, logistics or drug labs.

[TheNerdyCyclist]

It needs a different kind of school where traditional academic science merges w/ rural america knowledge. It sounds crazy, far out but the Bauhaus in 20s Germany, a very important school which reinvented industrail design teaching, was exactly this: traditional science merging w/ crafts, focused on the future needs of the industrial society.
TRaditional college is a snobbery machine.

One of the problems with education that we have set up today is that we reward memorizing concepts and knowledge with increasingly less emphasis on social issues. It's compounded by the fact that good jobs require skills (the complex synthesis of knowledge and concepts into something greater, more abstract, and more complex) and not just memorizing a bunch of facts which our schools - both K12 and college - DON'T teach effectively.

So you end up with a society where the privileged and wealthy send their kids to college, they learn all kinds of facts and fancy quotes and passages that sound great when they dispense them in conversation but have little basis in real world application. Then, those kids end up getting management jobs, or writing policy in DC, or working in finance making lots of money and continuing the cycle of walling themselves off from the rest of the country. I think what Colker is saying is that knowledge only really works when it is placed in broader social and economic context which is something that can only be learned through experience. It's why internships and apprenticeships are so vital to learning.

There's an enormous amount of what we, the coastal city dwellers, somewhat dismissively call folk-knowledge locked up in middle America. We've cloistered and conditioned ourselves to think that software, finance, on-demand services and products are the only future worth thinking about while forgetting that the real engine of the American economy is when these cutting edge tools, hardware, and software are used to help farmers, small town shopkeepers, artisans, artists. 99.9% of the people that voted for Trump didn't vote because they're racist or bigots, they did so precisely because he isn't embraced by the coastal big city software developers.

[spopepro]

I never thought I'd read about an art school being held up as an example of practicality while being told traditional higher ed was just about snobbery. Just one of many things that seem to be word salad thrown around as people try and grapple with making meaning out of the unthinkable.

[colker]

I never thought I'd read about an art school being held up as an example of practicality while being told traditional higher ed was just about snobbery. Just one of many things that seem to be word salad thrown around as people try and grapple with making meaning out of the unthinkable.

Bauhaus was not an art school.. it was an industrial design school.

[spopepro]

Bauhaus was not an art school.. it was an industrial design school.

Sure. Anything can be anything if you want it bad enough, I guess.

[j44ke]

Whatever the case none of this is any excuse to express your dissatisfaction with your lot in the world, fair or not, with racist ideology. Beyond being entirely unethical and immoral, it is the basest form of whining.

[doomridesout]

What he said^^^
The difficulty is finding a way to communicate that such racism to the Trump voter without becoming a condescending, language policing asshole. Plus, the impulse to bridge that gap is hard to reconcile with the behavior of emboldened outright racists I've been hearing about, which make me want to learn jiu jitsu and buy a gun.

I've heard the impulse embodied in a Trump vote described as an abdication of responsibility. In existential terms, it does seem to be a revolt against the concept of consequences.