Our Felonious Ex-President

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Touché!

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Evidence cited elsewhere in this thread suggests that Trump supporters are not so much hampered in life and at the ballot box by a lack of intelligence, but are instead powerfully motivated by bigotry. They may be college-educated white suburbanites earning better than $70K/year bigots, but they are bigots nonetheless.

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I am aware of that. The problem, though, is statistical. Not enough working class voters did not vote Trump. This means that some of them voted against their own interests. And, in the long term, so did many of the educated white bigots.
We have enough British politicians who seem determined to prove that an expensive education is not proof against stupidity, to be aware that you can have a high IQ and still be deeply stupid.

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I’m hoping Canada’s Parliament will vote in favour of building a wall along our southern border with Hillary Clinton’s emails because a huge swath of Americans can’t get over them.

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Poor Stupidity! But why lay so much blame at her clumsy feet?! Especially when there is so much statistical evidence, which Discourse tells me is already linked in this very thread, showing that the guilty parties are Bigotry and White Supremacy.

FIFY :wink:

You say that some of them [working class voters, presumably] voted against their own interests. I say when a person claims that a voter has voted against their own interests, that person has demonstrated a failure to grasp what the voter’s own interests are.

It hurt them - deeply and daily - knowing a black family was in the White House. Knowing that our president was black. And for eight long years, they were angry and butthurt over it, every day. And for eight years, they did not hesitate to let the rest of us know about their butthurt.

Just as every day since the Election, they do not hesitate to crow about Trump. As one of them said to me, “Now you know how I felt for the last eight years.”

And when I bite my tongue, take a breath, and very calmly and with as much empathy as I can muster, said, “You know, he’s trying to hurt you, too. Not just me and mine, he’s trying to take health care from you, too.” How do you think they respond? Do you actually imagine they express something that you believe ought to be in their interests?

Good Lord in Heaven, no! They instead say something that to you may seem stupid, but which is actually in their interests. Often something like, “Yeah, but at least it’s not Hillary.”

To them, the abstract chance of dying of a treatable-yet-untreated ailment is not as bad as the horrifying certainty of living with the daily humiliation of a woman as United States President.

Instead of judging them to be stupid, you perhaps might try to listen to what they are telling you is how they see the world. And perhaps, you might avoid, or at least be more prepared, for your next devastating Brexit.

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I feel suitably mansplained at, which is quite funny since you appear to be female. But never mind, I get that from some of the women in my own family.
But I think we are differing over a simple word: “interests”. You are using it to mean “things they perceive as important”. I am using it to mean “things that would benefit them economically and socially”.* If I wanted to be really stereotypical I would say that typifies the difference between the West Coast and Europe. (And would be properly shot down for it).

I know how they see the world. I have talked to them. The fact that they have been deluded, by right wing media, by the crab bucket effect, into giving importance to things that are not important and not noticing things that are important and so voting for things that will keep them and their descendants impoverished and powerless means that they vote against their own interests on my definition.
The primary definition of stupidity of the OED is “behaviour that shows a lack of good sense or judgement.” And that’s how I see it; being fooled into hating black people and not white exploiters is a lack of good sense or judgement.

*Edit - part of the reason, I guess, that the useful word “disinterested” has gone to join the choir immortal.

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I’m just disappointed Beaker’s a Republucan.

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You’ve heard him talk? “Me me me, me me me me…” He fits right in. :wink:

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Dr. Honeydew has also given him plenty of reason to distrust scientists…

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you have won the internet.

also, im pretty sure i saw this wall in world war z.

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Yup, I agree. I’ve had friends right around the world splitting their sides laughing at this one. I tell them that this is the best line I’ve heard in a while… and it is.

And, as one good turn deserves another…

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the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.

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He must miss his mom a lot.

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Sounds like a little positive affirmation makes nap time easier.

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And everyone says MFAs don’t lead to salary jobs…

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That brings new definition to the term “tales of the fantastic”.

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Now I understand his hair.

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