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27 minutes ago, Hal 9000 said:

Regular people know that affirmative action or NAFTA hurt them, and they know that they can't afford a healthcare system being forced on them etc.etc.  

No. They only think they know this because of relentless corporate propaganda. In fact, it's the corporations and their paid politicians who have hurt them.

27 minutes ago, Hal 9000 said:

Whether it is blamed on The Clintons, Obama or Bush makes little difference to the Trump revolution, all they know is things have gotten progressively worse since the Reagan years.

Yes, but Trump is part of the problem not the solution.

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Dude, I couldn't give a sheet about corporations or what you think is the actual reasons for the decline of America, I'm telling you what the perception is.

And, you don't think Trump is the solution - fair enough, but to think a Clinton presidency is going to take that country anywhere but down even lower is sheer naivety. 

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1 minute ago, eyeball said:

You wouldn't say that if you were interested in historical accuracy but  you're no so...

No, for the purpose of the thread and the questions posed.  This isn't about dissecting the decline of western civilization, it's about understanding what people are feeling - and why.   

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12 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

Read the articles in the OP.  Enlightening, explains a lot, thanks for posting Cyber!

 

Did you know the median income of Trump supporters is $72,000? The median income for Clinton supporters is $61,000

The Myth of Trump's 'working class' Support

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7 minutes ago, Argus said:

Did you know the median income of Trump supporters is $72,000? The median income for Clinton supporters is $61,000

The Myth of Trump's 'working class' Support

The articles were not strictly about poverty. The median is also misleading in this case, as Trump support is very likely multi-modal.

Edited by cybercoma
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5 hours ago, Argus said:

 

Did you know the median income of Trump supporters is $72,000? The median income for Clinton supporters is $61,000

The Myth of Trump's 'working class' Support

Working class white people would make a lot more than working class black people and hispanics etc (more likely to vote Hillary).

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I came across an interview with Bruce Spingsteen this morning in the Globe. Much of it is unrelated to politics, but I thought a part was very in-line with this topic and sounded very true to life.

He is America’s great contemporary chronicler of the betrayed working class, from Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978 to the anti-establishment fury of Wrecking Ball in 2012. I tell him that one of his songs, Downbound Train, has haunted me for years since I heard it on his 1984 album Born in the USA. This is how it begins:

I had a job, I had a girl

I had something going mister in this world

I got laid off down at the lumberyard

Our love went bad, times got hard

Now I work down at the car wash

Where all it ever does is rain

Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train

“Huh,” he says when I tell him this. Clearly he doesn’t get asked much about Downbound Train. But its themes are familiar, and the narrator is an archetype found in many of Springsteen’s songs, a man who wonders why he’s on a downbound train while the fat cats in New York and Washington are riding their elevators to the penthouse. These are the men and women who live in small-town New Jersey and Ohio and Pennsylvania, the same towns a teenaged Springsteen toured with his band in a clapped-out car he didn’t even have a licence to drive.

He says: “What we see in the States at the moment are the results of 30 or 40 years of neglecting the effects of deindustrialization and globalization on a large part of the population. … The world changed and a lot of people didn’t have the ability or the circumstance or the preparation to change with it. That’s a very difficult thing. If someone told me tomorrow that I couldn’t play music any more, I don’t know what I’d do. I’d be at a complete loss. If your steel mill shuts down, if your factory shuts down, and the job you’ve done for 20 or 30 years goes away, you’re abandoned. You’re orphaned.”

An orphan might be susceptible to a demagogue with a grifter’s confidence and a powerful line in empty promises. Springsteen, as you might imagine, has many thoughts about Donald Trump, and not one of them is happy. “I hope Donald Trump goes down hard, and Hillary Clinton is elected president. I like her; I think she’d be a very good president.

“Donald Trump is simply a very dangerous man who has ruined the political discourse of the nation, and is a real danger to democracy. He’s taken his followers to a place that is beyond democracy when he talks about rigged elections. There’s a lot of very, very dangerous talk out there that subverts democratic processes.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/once-upon-a-time-in-bruce-springsteens-america/article32469925/

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5 minutes ago, Argus said:

I came across an interview with Bruce Spingsteen this morning in the Globe. Much of it is unrelated to politics, but I thought a part was very in-line with this topic and sounded very true to life.

[snip]

An orphan might be susceptible to a demagogue with a grifter’s confidence and a powerful line in empty promises. Springsteen, as you might imagine, has many thoughts about Donald Trump, and not one of them is happy. “I hope Donald Trump goes down hard, and Hillary Clinton is elected president. I like her; I think she’d be a very good president.

[snip]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/once-upon-a-time-in-bruce-springsteens-america/article32469925/

Thanks for sharing this. I'm reminded of an interview a friend shared with me this week. Disregard that this is from Rachel Maddow because that's not the important part. This is retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter four years ago talking about "civic ignorance" in America and to say the least, it is prophetic.
 

 

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4 minutes ago, eyeball said:

You can certainly form a plan around the fact people are pissed. Even if the reasons are badly misplaced or misunderstood. The plan doesn't have to be based in any more reality than the anger - even more so when fear's thrown into the mix.

 

Agreed.....worked quite well back in 1775.   

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