Do you know any poor white people?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is one of the most embarrassing threads I've seen on Atlas for a while, which is saying something. I will post more later. Feel free to buy some popcorn in the interim.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This forum is hilarious. How many different groups of people are constantly bashed here? Yet like clockwork, the second anyone takes aim at the hicks, droves of people start hyperventilating about how mean, insensitive, and cruel you are. lol

This is a really curious complaint given that we have had longterm posters banned for racist and homophobic remarks.

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You appear to have something of a superiority complex, which is curious as you don't exactly come across as intelligent.

But I'm reminded now of 'Red' Ted Grant of Lambeth who while out canvassing encountered a senior local government officer who said that he intended to vote Labour and responded to this by shouting 'I don't want someone of your class voting for me!' - except that at least that was laughable ideological inflexibility rather than pure unadulterated snobbery.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To be perfectly honest, I do not know any poor people of any race.  All my friends are in the top 1% in terms of income.  All my relatives and co-workers are all in the top 5% in terms of income.  Only exception would be vendors of all sorts (cleaning lady, gardeners, handyman, heating guy, nannies etc etc) which I would not even say I know them well beyond the transnational nature of our relationships.

I just want to highlight this post FOR ALL TIME because wow.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Maybe if you had even the slightest idea of what growing up with a jobless single-parent is like, you'd understand why I have nothing but contempt for inbred Appalachian hicks who literally sh**t away their votes at politicians who have no interests but "muh guns", "muh abortion", "muh cultural values", and "it's dat dang ol' ns fault!" on their mind.

Kind of hard to follow the logic there, actually. It may be one of those things that exists in your mind but which is not immediately visible to everyone else. Though, fwiw, most poor people (by the usual definitions, whichever you prefer) in Appalachia don't vote.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not helping people because of their political misinformation is absolutely disgusting. Not to mention, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of who the poor are. Even in Appalachia, the real poors don't vote.

This is an excellent post though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, poor Appalachians/Southern whites are never going to vote for us.

Never is a strong word given that, for instance, rather a lot voted for Al Gore even.

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lmao

[Filuwaúrdjan]

My point was that hicks are the only "protected group" among Atlas lefties.

Utterly bizarre statement.

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Posters have been banned for all of those reasons in the past and attempts to have others banned on those grounds are not infrequent. Not aware of anyone being banned for being anti-hick, whatever that would mean.

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Translation: special snowflake IceSpear doesn't like being called out on his moronic behavior and so screams about how its all SO UNFAIR.

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Literally seeing a self-identifying Progressive pull that silly old AMERICA canard of an antisocialist argument. Fycking amazing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To paraphrase a great political philosopher of our time. "Rural voters know exactly what they are doing".

Its interesting that 'rural' is being used as a shorthand here...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

and my psyche isn't fragile glass like some here

True enough. You seem to be a bit too stupid to have properly developed feelings.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think the unintelligent person is the one who has no concept of political coalitions. A political party cannot be all things to all people. There's no reason to try to appeal to people who believe the polar opposite of what your party stands for.

The history of the Democratic Party would tend to suggest that it is absolutely possible for a political party to be all things to all people, but that isn't the issue here and you're only raising it to distract attention away from your appalling arguments... if posting ugly stereotypes and going QED actually counts as an argument at all, and I'm not really convinced on that point.

But let us pretend that you have constructed an actual argument rather than engaged in a display of pure unpalatable snobbery. Your argument would appear to be that all poor white people (however defined) are loyal Republicans and firm ideological conservatives, yes? This is laughable. Most poor white people do not vote (abstention rates amongst this loosely defined group have increased markedly in recent decades) and even in the part of the USA that you have decided is the only relevant one as regards this discussion (which is dubious) it is really, really questionable to make claims about partisan loyalty or ideological uniformity.

And then there's the question of 'what your party stands for' - well, what do you think it stands for? Historically the Democratic Party in all of its many and variegated incarnations has always claimed to stand against privilege and on the side of ordinary people against vested interests. Loose as anything and at times a dark joke, but a consistent claim. Is this entirely consistent with the arguments that you have made in this thread I wonder?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Who said anything about being banned for being "anti hick?" It's about forum lynch mobs, not official responses.

Pretty much the only 'forum lynch mob' that I have ever seen (and I've been posting here for far too long) have been directed against posters with a habit of making homophobic (especially), racist and misogynistic remarks. You are basically creating an alternative reality in order to justify your persecution complex.

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Had it ever occurred to you that you getting 'called out' after making obnoxious remarks is a reflection of the fact that you have made obnoxious remarks rather than that other people have weird hang-ups and are taking it out on you unreasonably? Like, if you don't like being called a dick have you maybe tried not being a dick?

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I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but repeating a lie enough times does not magically transform said lie into the truth.

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Good old circular logic!

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No, I just happen to live in the real world. For most people life is a struggle and it isn't their fault. If you can't accept this, what kind of 'progressive' are you, exactly?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's plausible. Empathy probably has a lot to do with it as well. It's a lot easier for white guys to empathize with other white guys than it is to do so with women, minorities, etc.

I notice that your charming little gallery includes a picture of a woman. Fail.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You keep going back to "historically" as a crutch.

Not in the least. I use it to provide context. I apologise if this concept is new to you.

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This is another very bad argument. Firstly, how many people do you think follow politics on the internet or watch 24hr news? And what do you think the demographic profile of the people who do those things tends to be? Secondly, are you aware that American elections have been totally dominated by the television since 1960? And are you aware of what the implications of this for a 'national message' are? I realise that you're just repeating stupid and ignorant arguments made by other people, but I don't think that's a great excuse. And lastly it is kind of irrelevant to the point I made, which was that the Democratic Party has always claimed to stand up for the interests of ordinary people against privilege and vested interests and that this claim has been basically its only consistent feature over the centuries. Your arguments in this thread, I am suggesting, don't really fit in very well with this. You seem to relish in the idea that you are socially superior to a particular group of people (representatives of whom you have presumably never actually met), and appear to ascribe to this some kind of political principle.

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You have very clearly implied as much. If you did not mean to then you should maybe read your posts over before submitting them.

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Created in its current form in 1992 from the old 5th district (which covered the south/central parts of the state; historically an area of subsistence agriculture and Republican since it stopped voting Whig) and most of the old 7th district (which covered the mining districts in the east of the state and was a Democratic Party bastion, held for decades by cunning old left-winger Carl D. Perkins who delighted in hoodwinking people who assumed that he was stupid because of his accent and manner). Held very safely by the an old fashioned shameless pork barrel politician (who happens to be a Republican) ever since, though had he randomly decided to retire (hah!) in say 2006 the district would have been vulnerable. Voting patterns in the west of the district very stable (very R), voting patterns in the east of it... less so. If there's hostility towards the national Democratic Party throughout the district (possible) then that would be a very recent development.

I.e. you haven't a clue as to what you're talking about.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Maybe you need new glasses. Very rarely does a lynch mob approach the scale of 7 pages. Keep trying though.

This isn't a lynch mob (should I go all SJW at this point and berate you for the inappropriate nature of the comparison?), not at all. This is people telling you that you are wrong. Totally different thing.

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And here he goes again just making sh!t up, presumably hoping that Tinkerbell will make it real.

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And so the Great Progressive decides to head down the route of making sneering remarks about mental health. Doing well kiddo.

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lol

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Uh, what exactly is your point here?

My point is that you are an ignorant idiot. I am demonstrating that you are an ignorant idiot with no understanding of the society in which you live in. I am demonstrating that for you all your pretense to the contrary that you are not on the Left, that you barely even belong within the political tradition (which has not always been left-wing at all) of the party that you support. That is my point.

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Yeah... newsflash: most people don't even loosely follow politics except when there's a big election on. This is the plain and simple truth of the matter. I mean only about half of American adults even vote.

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To an extent this is true, but when wasn't it? I would argue (and I would be right to) that this was actually truer before the triumph of mass media; first the radio and then the television. The idea that the current period is unique in this respect is embarrassing ahistorical nonsense.

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Only the seriously politically committed do any of these things. You should check out the viewing figures for 24hr news channels sometime; even the mighty Fox's figures are paltry.

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You really suck at arguing your case you know. In the 1960s the whole nation sat down at the same time of day (well, roughly) and watched the same news (well, roughly) as broadcast by a small handful of channels. Do I need to spell out the implications of this with regards to election campaigns and voting patterns? Because I don't think I should have to.

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You were the one who responded to this thread with a photo essay of unpleasant stereotypes and stated that you did not want the people depicted voting the same way as you. Feel free to try to wriggle out of that.

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And what does the party stand for? I asked earlier and there was no response.

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Ah, a hierarchy of oppression now is it? Most amusing. But you don't seem to be very interested in looking out for the downtrodden if this thread is any indication. And you even seem a mite bigoted. I realise that you hate having the light shone on you and will respond to this with another whinge about lynch mobs, etc. Pathetic.

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And if this is the case why is it the case do you think?

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Not really; similar districts fell in 2008 even if they didn't vote for Obama upticket.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

LMAO. And honestly yes, you probably should. Giving me a stern lecture about the term lynch mob would certainly be more justified than clutching your pearls about how I "denigrated mental health" by making a safe space joke.

Scratch a rich liberal, find a conservative in denial. Kind of amusing how often this turns out to be true.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This idea that poor Appalachian whites are not only racist--which many or most are--but so racist that the only way to win their votes is to be seen to be screwing over minorities is, uh, it sure is something.

The thing you need to understand is that a lot of posters here are completely ignorant about the society in which they live and assume that the crudest stereotypes are the plainest truths. Sometimes the results are bizarre; in this thread we have a curious conflation of 'poor white' with both 'rural' and (implicitly) with 'fundamentalist'. The latter in particular is hilariously dubious.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, because a socialist from the UK is an expert on American society. LOL.

If in doubt shout 'HE'S NOT EVEN FROM ROUND HERE. I know that one of old. Generally I regard it as an admission of defeat. Indeed a quick scan of your latest reply reveals that you are continuing to not actually engage with any of the criticism I've leveled at you (I would be particularly interested as to why you chose to include a picture of a woman - who clearly you find to be amusingly disgusting physically - in your little photographic essay, and then went on about how all the criticism directed at you came about because 'well white men would defend white men wouldn't they', hmm...?), which would appear to confirm that further.

As to further points, I would never claim to be an expert (just a reasonably well-informed and eternally curious outside observer), and my political leanings aren't at all relevant.

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If you've ever wondered why it is that people don't seem to like you very much then perhaps you should re-read that nasty little passage above. Profoundly unpleasant. It also reads as really clunky, btw.

Though I regret to inform you that you have not hurt my feelings and that I have commented on your obvious superiority complex based on a) distaste and b) bemusement.

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Really?

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Possibly, but that doesn't make them political (particularly as Trump is literally a Reality TV Star and, frankly, Clinton might as well be).

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No, the point is that a) before the interwar years (i.e. when American elections came to be mostly fought on the radio) the voter was far more hermetically sealed than today (to an extent that is actually quite hard to grasp, I'd argue), that b) the 'nationalisation' of the American electoral landscape was a product of the radio and of the television and so is really not a recent phenomenon, and that c) you can't seriously argue that on the one hand voters are far more locked into their own truths than ever before and also that the parties are increasingly seen as the same by all voters anywhere. That is simply not possible.

None of this is all that relevant to the issue at hand, but it doesn't demonstrate that you're no so sharp, so that's fine.

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You're arguing that some forms of disadvantage are more worthy of attention than others (and implicitly that some are not worth bothering with at all), which...

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Do you have any evidence that a wish to harm or discriminate against black people is a major issue for poor white people in Appalachia? There are basically no black people there. Is racist sentiment there common? Sure, but then this is America (and the American South to boot). Is there any evidence that poor people in the region are more racist than the majority who are not poor, at least as far as that word would be understood locally? None whatsoever.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't per se disagree with the thrust of what you've been saying, but you're being too extreme in the opposite direction from IceSpear. It's not a "crude stereotype" to say that the average rural, poor white guy (notice I'm not conflating poor white and rural in this comment -- I'm using rural as an important modifier) is usually a bit racist and a bit sexist.

Whereas the average suburban, rich white guy is totally free of racist and sexist sentiment? Nonsense. Trash. Rubbish.

Of course its possible that he would be a little less crude in expressing it (at least while sober), but that's a different matter entirely.

And this is the knub of the matter, I think.

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Its true that I have never lived in the United States, but a) this does not actually invalidate any observations made (it just means they are those of an outside observer; I have never claimed else, incidentally), and b) I think you'll find that most Western societies have a surprising amount in common, at least in certain respects...

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I'd argue that the role of a political party is to win elections and implement policy not to wave a moralising finger at the public, but then that's American Liberalism for you, I guess.

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What an utterly bizarre tangent. In that instance I was responding to the belittling of economic hardship and was not commenting on social attitudes (I'm not the sort of sub-Marxist idiot who pins the blame for any that he dislikes on material factors because I'm not living in the 1970s) and nothing else.

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Well I'm not, so all is good

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Death first.