
How Half of America Lost Its F***ing Mind - vinnyglennon
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
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scarface74
I hope HN readers are open minded enough to actually read this article in an
unbiased manner and really think through it.

I'm an African American software engineer who grew up in a medium size factory
city (100K people). I went to a private predominately white school and church
growing up, of course now I work with people of all ethnicities in a major
metropolitan area,so I thought I thought I was the farthest thing from being
prejudiced.

After reading articles like this one during this election cycle, I had to take
a step back and realize that I was also guilty of looking down on the people
he described as the Trump supporter and that I had my own prejudices. I've
never had any reason to interact with poor people from any other race and
didn't think about their perspective. Everyone I interacted with that wasn't
Black were either people I went to private school with (meaning by definition
they weren't poor), worked with (meaning other IT people), or lived and worked
around (the top 20% of income earners).

And the article is correct. At least politicians and the media pay lip service
to inner city poverty, no one does even that much for poor people in small
towns. If I were part of that demographic I would be going for a politician
too that wanted to blow the whole thing up.

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LoSboccacc
pretty much. dismissing trump and insulting his base without understanding how
they got where they are is going to do more harm than good.

already the media constant trump bashing is entrenching camps on each side
instead of promoting understanding of and the outcome is going to be bad for
democracy either way, whether he wins or lose.

the result of which will be an anti-political movement of which you've never
seen the likes hitting in the next three cycles, with extremely unpredictable
results in the fight between the entrenched establishment and the newcomer
reactionaries

Look no further than Italy as a case study. America is circa at where Italy
where in the early nineties.

~~~
loukrazy
Yeah, even if (especially if) Trump loses, this is just going to get more
intense and not go away.

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bryanlarsen
"Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine ... as
long as they acted exactly like us"

This applies to so many areas of life. Look around you at your workplace. Most
of your coworkers that you'd consider part of your "group" are probably very
much like you, but most people have some one thing that makes them unique.

For example stereotypical Silicon Valley:

\- young \- white \- male \- plays video games \- likes to drink beer with
colleagues \- religiousness isn't part of their core definition of themselves
\- socially liberal \- etc.

Most people don't check all those boxes. They miss one. They don't drink, do
sports instead of videogames, are evangelical Christian, et cetera.

Yet they're still part of the team. But notice that those attributes aren't
all that similar? A white guy whose hobby is urban dance instead of video
games still fits in. A black guy who plays video games fits in, but a black
guy who is into urban dance is a gangster.

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bdavisx
I think the next "Donald Trump" (the next political one that is) is going to
be a major problem for the Republicans. I'm sure that there will be many in
the primaries 4 years from now, assuming that Clinton wins the election.

Someone who has his charisma but not his baggage may end up winning the
nomination - and that person may be even worse from a Republican standpoint.

~~~
kyrre
it's easy to make baggage when you control MSM :^)

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bryanlarsen
WTH is going on with internet? The comments on this article are excellent, at
least the first 10/1600 are. But it doesn't appear that they've used voting to
sort the top 10.

I really expected commenting on a highly political article like this on a site
liked cracked.com to degenerate quickly.

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scarface74
I know HN is adverse to political topics and I keep seeing this one flagged
and unflagged, but the comments on the article and here have been reasonable
and thoughtful.

The article doesn't deem either side as evil.

