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"Choice Blindness" Can Transform Conservatives Into Liberals - and Vice Versa
ananyo writes "When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate, and that he would focus on the 5–10% thought to be floating voters, he was articulating a commonly held opinion: that most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty. But Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, knew better. When Hall and his colleagues tested the rigidity of people's political attitudes and voting intentions during Sweden's 2010 general election, they discovered that loyalty was malleable: nearly half of all voters were open to changing their minds. Hall's group polled 162 voters during the final weeks of the election campaign, asking them which of two opposing political coalitions — conservative or social democrat/green — they intended to vote for. The researchers also asked voters to rate where they stood on 12 key political issues, including tax rates and nuclear power. The person conducting the experiment secretly filled in an identical survey with the reverse of the voter's answers, and used sleight-of-hand to exchange the answer sheets, placing the voter in the opposite political camp. The researcher invited the voter to give reasons for their manipulated opinions, then summarized their score to give a probable political affiliation and asked again who they intended to vote for. On the basis of the manipulated score, 10% of the subjects switched their voting intentions, from right to left wing or vice versa. Another 19% changed from firm support of their preferred coalition to undecided. A further 18% had been undecided before the survey, indicating that as many as 47% of the electorate were open to changing their minds, in sharp contrast to the 10% of voters identified as undecided in Swedish polls at the time (research paper). Hall has used a similar sleight of hand before to show that our moral compass can often be easily reversed."
Sure - as long as you don't care about wealth inquality, womens' rights, gay rights, gun control and the privatization of everything from social security to our roads to our parks and police protection... you can change your mind.
Vote for Jesus so that he can come down and stop the bullets.
The mentality between countries are enormous. For example Canada seems like the US but it isn't. Canada thinks the US are evil and sue-happy. They are very liberal because they don't want to become what the US is. I'm not joking, this is pretty much the general consensus on why people vote liberal in Canada from the people I've talked to. Being raised there, I know this mentality well too. But in the US, there's a huge barrier between left and right. The left want their set of ideologies to be met, and the right want their own. The differences are too vast, but the ones that aren't democrat or republican will stick around even as for an independent party. But let's face it, at the end of the day an individual vote does not matter. The united states is a republic, not a democracy.
> When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate, and that he would focus on the 5–10% thought to be floating voters, he was articulating a commonly held opinion: that most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty.
What a load of shit. He was "articulating" no such thing. He was telling rich people that he would not let the plight of the poor affect his decisions in the slightest bit.
So it seems the study basically is demonstrating that some people are more amenable to a symbol of authority telling them what they actually think/believe. Although the extent to which it is important that the authority is perceived to be 'neutral' isn't clear from the study.
Like the magnetic poles themselves. Nothing is absolute, except change...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And I immediately thought yeah, that pretty much describes how racist the conservative faction is. Then I realized it said "Choice Blindness", and was about Sweden and not the US, and went "meh" and moved on.
This study is pretty obviously not statistically relevant and most likely a bias piece geared at proving a belief and not a hypothesis. And yes, there is a big different between the two.
Because of the slight of hand and then confrontation, I would think it is more like people just rationalize the circumstances and then seek to defend the supposed position they took (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(making_excuses)) I also wonder if the researcher had any white lab coat, etc. that made them seem more authoritative?
What I do not see is an actual change of opinion.
no comment
One thing I've noticed (read: pure anecdote) is that most people who are enthusiastic about their party don't behave much differently from sports fans of opposing teams. It doesn't really matter what their side does, what matters is which letter wins the game. Even on Slashdot I've confronted a few people who say "well my side never does x abhorrent behavior" when all of ten seconds worth of Google found the opposite.
Personally I simply avoid registering to vote because all that happens is I get calls from people telling me to vote for their guy and they can't really explain why. For example I got a call from somebody on Matt Salmon's team telling me that they would repeal Obama Care, and lower medical costs through deregulation. Being a libertarian, that is music to my ears because I know from experience that red tape does raise costs in the medical field significantly. However when I asked what he would deregulate and how that would help, he didn't even know. But he expects me to vote for his guy anyways.
No thanks. I'd only register to vote if there was actually a significant movement to balance the budget and prevent what I see as an otherwise inevitable catastrophic economic collapse. I don't think that will ever happen though. Once you add social entitlements, no matter how unsustainable or unaffordable, they're basically impossible to get rid of. The best you can do is hedge your assets (gold is a horrible idea BTW) and grab your ankles.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Yeah, that sounds about right.
People are exposed to both sides quite often, yet it doesn't change them, so catching them off guard and asking them to defend it really doesn't prove much of anything. Even he himself admits it probably won't stick.
It's nothing more than a party trick a magician or hypnotist would use.
If your eyes have been open, it is pretty clear very many people are no longer using any kind of logic. Most political attitudes today are tribally based. Very rarely do people honestly consider what the other person is saying.
Dogmatists simply can't conceive that anyone else would behave or perceive differently than them. They are the mold from which everyone else must de rigeur be cast.
is that a large portion of Swedes lie about when they will change their minds.
Did you use an example of the united states against a study done in another country?? Sorry but us Americans are stubborn assholes who dont care about the issues all we care about is what the party says on the issue. Just my observation as an American.
He failed to recognize that 53% of the country doesn't want things to be free - they want things to be fair.
How, then, did we end up with Obama?
99.9999% of the country doesn't give a fuck about fairness. They want theirs, and those other people are just evil and stupid.
Most people don't know any of the science behind nuclear power, global warming, environmental protection, or race relations. Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, their beliefs about these subjects are based purely on what their favorite political personality tells them. So if you try to justify their position, they start spouting nonsense, and they probably don't remember what their position is if they are on their own to make a choice.
As for the presidential candidates, in practice, they were interchangeable: both Obama and Romney were bent on violating the Constitution, civil liberties, and handing large amounts of money to their buddies and constituents, at the cost of everybody else. We happened to get Obama, and he has delivered on that program "beautifully". Obama's pride and overconfidence makes it even easier for special interest groups to pull his strings than Bush's simplicity.
"When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate"
Got to wonder about an article that starts out this way. Grant you, I haven't gone back and reviewed the video in a while. Still, I'm pretty sure what he said was that about 47% of the population wouldn't be interested in him and a platform for a smaller government. I certainly don't recall anything even approaching the notion that he was going to ignore half the population. That is a LOT different than focusing your message on those you think would be most interested in your message.
Every campaign focuses their attention on those votes they're most likely to get. You didn't see Obama spending a lot of his campaign in states that weren't likely to go his way no matter what. Certainly he had his strategy sessions that had they been publicly released wouldn't be especially flattering either.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
How, then, did we end up with Obama?
Mitt Romney convinced more people to vote for Obama.
And for House Democrats for that matter.
The same applied to Mitt's Repulican primary opponents. They were scarier than him.
Still looking for a moderate Republican.
all around you - same scent!
I have a pool with 162 balls in it. I pull out 162 and find out what the most common colour is.
Are you telling me that that's statistically and probabilistically equivalent to pulling 162 balls out of a pool of 9.5 million and guessing what the most common colour is based on that sample?
Please go back to first year uni ('college') maths.
The biggest problem with politics is that the very vocal participants are always the extremists, one way or another. Most people really don't care all that much about either party aside from one or two specific positions, like gun control or taxes or abortion rights. It's kind of like how you can't find many libertarians that are actually libertarian across a wide range of topics outside of "small government." Or like how someone will be a hardcore republican simply because they want to own firearms.
Our political choices have way more to do with fighting *against* something than *for* something, which is sad considering this is supposed to be the land of liberty and justice for all.
In the US there are no left wing parties. As an example, "socialist" can be used as an insult there. From the outside, all US politicians are right wing (meaning that they are not for wealth redistribution or any other left wing concept). It's not that hard to change from strongly conservative to not that strongly conservative.
I treat political parties like phone providers. If they don't connect with me I switch.
I'll register as whatever the dominant party is in a district so that my vote in the primary counts, because sometimes your vote is worthless in the general election. This happens most frequently with the Democratic Party in cities.
That doesn't mean "I'm a Democrat". It means that I'm using the provider that works best, and strategically using the system just like they do.
Party loyalty? For most people it makes no sense. With few exceptions, you are an idiot to claim loyalty to a party, or to think of it as virtuous. The exceptions? Influence peddlers and politicians. Lawyers also tend to be creatures of party, even if they don't get very far in the hierarchy. It's ugly though. I know a very intelligent Republican who fits into the lawyer category, and hearing him argue that Palin was a good choice was just hilarious. Now the party to which he is so loyal is disagreeing with him over immigration so they can get teh votez. Loyalty? Principal? Parties have no such thing. Loyalty to a party? Maybe it's silly for everybody, not just the common man.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Mass. voter here. What set Romney apart from other politicians was the gall in which he could forcefully articulate a whole set of positions 180 degrees different from the ones he ran on (at a different level) a few years ago. He seemed to have no shame, no embarrassment at being called on it. So when he ran for two offices in Massachusetts (unsuccessfully for the Senate, successfully for Governor) he was moderate-to-liberal across the board on social issues, conservative on fiscal matters. About halfway through his four year term as governor (he didn't seek re-election) he seemed to get Potomac fever and remade himself as a social conservative, had an "epiphany" on abortion (his word), became far right on illegal immigration (despite having been caught by local newspapers with crews of undocumented workers clearing leaves from his suburban yard), gay marriage, etc. The truth is he really didn't get a hang about any of that social stuff, he didn't consider that his "special sauce" as a leader. As for the "47 percent", I think Mitt really is personally opposed to most welfare and to the minimum wage, but again, I think he was just being histrionic to bond with a partisan local crowd - similar to what Obama was caught doing with his infamous "clinging to guns and religion" remark four years earlier. They both exaggerated for effect and they both got caught on tape.
It's easy to transform my political views and get me to support Ried, Pelosi and Obama. All I need is a lobotomy and an Obama Phone!
And maybe some food stamps.
Fox gets you to support a candidate by telling you his views are, x,y,z..... usually low taxes, more freedom, ...
Once you're a team supporter, the definition of x,y,z is twisted to whatever the sponsors want x,y,z defined as, usually low taxes for super rich, more freedom for evil corp,...
People tend to stick with their 'team', even as the definition of their team is changed by others right in front of them. Forming ever more cognitive dissonance rather than reject their earlier choice.
It is absolutely like sports fans.
So I'm guessing the other 81% said "Hey! You changed my answers!" No, I did not RTFA. The 19% are too stupid to realize answers they JUST GAVE have been switched. If RTFA shows otherwise, then the summary is pretty s#!++y.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Something tells me the political parties in Sweden are not as divisive as in the US (I have no knowledge of Swedish politics, but I could imagine both parties being reasonably sane, and not extreme, and probably both to the left of Obama).
The entire political system today is based entirely on an illusion of choice. With the help of mainstream media the entire country is spoon fed two political ideologies based on ancient structures that neither party follow. 99% of all US media is political opinion talking heads and death stories. Every presidential election the country is somehow mysteriously divided 49/51 with the "popular" candidate winning. The same 2-3 family networks have been in power for ages and there is no chance of any 3rd party getting into the big family. There is very little difference in how each party votes on legislation and neither party sticks with their parties ideologies. If people voted based on what their candidates actually did in office instead of what their favorite parties wikipedia description says they are supposed to do we might have a different country. The only thing politicians are concerned about are pushing through legislation that favors their donators/lobbyists and staying in power so they are set for retirement. People need to stop watching all news channels and pay attention to what politicians are doing all year every year instead of 3 months every 4 years.
All this shows is that people are willing to lie to avoid looking like they made a mistake. Not one single person left there with a different opinion than they started with.
Whether you vote Demican or Republicrat, you're basically voting the same thing. Increased government control and eroding personal liberties. You can argue on the what and how, but the why is already pretty much a fait accompli.
People flip between parties because the parties offer similar platforms. It's just a question of which gives the most bread and offers the most entertaining circuses.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The article gets it wrong. It says:
...most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty. But Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, knew better.
1) Voters are not locked into their *ideological* party. They are locked into their *political* party. This is a very important difference!
Most people follow the color, the banner, or the party name -- not the philosophy. Philosophy is something people think about, study, and decide upon using rational thought. But political parties (at least in the US) rarely actually follow a philoshy. The usually use the looser term "platform" which consists of a series of malleable ideas that can actually mean the exact opposite of what the original underlying philisophy might have once been.
Ex: Republicans are "fiscally conservative" thus they are against welfare spending. Not quite! They are against welfare for the poor and minorities. But they are in favor of welfare for the elderly and veterans. The true "conservative" is fiscally conservative equally to all people. Republicans tend to believe in states rights: except for marijuana, gay marriage, and gambling. George HW Bush campaigned on the conservative principle of getting out of the affairs of other nations. Then he invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. One can play the same game for democrats too. Party != Philosophy.
2) "Political magic" and "Voter manipulation" as it is called in the article does not mean the voter changed their actual vote. People often act and sound more open minded then they actually are once they walk into the polling booth.
reading just the summary, of course, something here is stoopid. Either the summary gets it totally wrong, or the research sounds bad. It sounds to me like people trust the decisions they just made and don't try to re-think them. This makes much more sense to me, as the mind is very efficient and takes a lot of shortcuts. If you just decided what your answer is, you're not going to go through the effort of figuring out what it was, all over again.
That can't be said enough. wish i had points.
I LIVE in the USA and it's so much worse having to live with their ignorance as it tears up the once great nation (or that is what I was taught, maybe it never was all that great.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I identify with Libertarian views, and you can support gay marriage. It's really not conflicting with the view at all -- Individuals can choose who they want to marry and are conveyed the same legal rights as other recognized couples. There's no negative impact to society at large by allowing this, so therefore it should be allowed.
Perfect example of a face painter. "Tea Partier". All you know about the tea party is what you heard from asshole liberals who were threatened by their message, which is don't spend shit you don't have, leave us and our money the fuck alone.
THAT makes a Democrat's blood run cold because people that don't need them, won't vote for them. And in the end, Democrats need people to need them.
"nearly half of all voters were open to changing their minds", they say.
Which means that *more* than half are not.
Those are the ones to be really worried about... because close-mindedness only breeds prejudice and bigotry,
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He does have a bit of a point. Who would want to vote for the party who filibustered the civil rights act?
From 1967 to 2009 they had a KKK leader as a primary leader of their party. (Byrd's first elected office was when he was elected to a KKK leadership position.)
Regarding women, they voted 170-85 against women's right to vote.
So he's got a point, who would want to vote for that party, the Democrats? I'd sure go with the party that voted FOR women's rights (Republicans 81-34 for women's right to vote , 1915), the party who pushed the Civil Rights Act through against the democrat filibuster, etc.
So the original poster is trying to tell us that the "Lie" is a proven technique for swaying a political outcome?
I think we may already have known that one, but thanks.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It does seem that, in the USA, the "two party" system has pretty much locked things up.
You have different positions on "seemingly" opposite sides... but the "sides" are artificial. There are lots of folks like you. The problem is the current setup has polarized everyone into one camp or the other, when, in reality, they are BOTH chiseling away our rights. Neither side ever UNDOES what the other side does, just adds their own rules, as they take turns in power.
The way things are going, we will soon be back to a two tier society - the ruling class and the serfs. America had a pretty good run at letting the free go, for a while, but now it is going back to traditional ways...
Well, if the Republicans of 1915 were running in current races, that would be a different matter. Heck, even the Republican party that supported Reagan-era top marginal tax rates (higher top tax rates than now) would provide a nice alternative slightly to the left of Obama. But the Republicans (and Democrats) of 2012 have little to do with groups of the same name from decades ago. With the exception of Byrd, most of the notorious anti-civil-rights Democrats (like the long-lived Strom Thurmond) eventually switched party affiliations, and ended their careers as Republican candidates. The "Southern Strategy" era, where the Republican party intentionally courted the racist vote to turn the once-solidly-blue South into the solid "red" area today was remarkably successful, and cemented the modern Republican party as undisputed champions of neo-Confederate racists and the Religious "women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" Right.
So, if you're blind to the last several decades of history, you might accidentally vote for the Republican party assuming that they were progressives in civil and gender rights. However, assuming you haven't Rip-Van-Winkled the last couple decades away in slumber, it's pretty obvious where the party currently stands.
"When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate"
Got to wonder about an article that starts out this way. Grant you, I haven't gone back and reviewed the video in a while. Still, I'm pretty sure what he said was that about 47% of the population wouldn't be interested in him and a platform for a smaller government.
Well, after five seconds of googling I found:
Romney: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those peoplewe do all these polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4
I did enjoy, however, how you removed the inflammatory notion that "there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it" and replaced it with "a platform for a smaller government."
It's amusing to call out one summary as being inaccurate and replace it with your own inaccuracies. I found the line you quoted from the summary more accurate about Romney's "giving up on them" attitude than your "they refuse a small government."
Every campaign focuses their attention on those votes they're most likely to get. You didn't see Obama spending a lot of his campaign in states that weren't likely to go his way no matter what. Certainly he had his strategy sessions that had they been publicly released wouldn't be especially flattering either.
So quote them. Go ahead, you don't think he's mindful of what he says to a large group of people? Your accusations that Obama was just as bad as Romney are backed up with absolutely zero citations.
My work here is dung.
Ah yes, the party from 1915. Let's vote for them.
Wait, how many of them are still in office?
But actually, it wasn't a Democrat filibuster. It was a Southern Conservative filibuster. That promptly joined the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act was passed, or did you never learn who Strom Thurmond was, or hear that he put an -R by his name when on the ballot?
I guess you expected us to ignore that, while focusing on your representation of Byrd. Huh.
Word? Naivete.
Too bad for you I watched Jon Stewart tonight. Seriously, I don't get why Republicans think they can bamboozle everybody with history to the point where we stupidly ignore what's happening today. It's like they think if they pour enough bullshit, we'll actually believe the crap they spew.
And outlawing seatbelts would reduce seatbelt injuries. Both total crime and violent crime increased with the gun ban, as they always do, anywhere it's tried. In the UK, violent crime DOUBLED when the potential victims were disarmed.
I just took a poll. Based on that poll, 100% of Americans think you are wrong. The sample size of my poll: one.
Obviously a sample size of 1 is useless, 2 slightly less useless, and 10 nearly useless. A sample size of ALL would perfectly represent the population. Therefore we can see the general rule - the larger the sample size, the more accurate it is.
The vice-versa part, that wasn't in the study at all.
Too bad for you I watched Jon Stewart tonight. Seriously, I don't get why Republicans think they can bamboozle everybody with history
You didn't need to specifically tell us that you get your news and information from a comedian, that's obvious.
Sorry to be throwing all those historical facts at you. I know Maher-Stewart drones prefer wishes over facts.
Facts are stubborn things.
" In the UK, violent crime DOUBLED when the potential victims were disarmed."
Britain has had a gun ban since BEFORE they kept violent crime statistics. You obviously want to make claims that sound plausible and defend your pro gun views, but really you'll need to cite stuff. UK is a good start because squeezing a womans ass when she doesn't like it, counts as a violent crime there. Breaking and entering is classed as a violent crime, chewing with your mouth open counts as a violent crime... UK classes anything that might upset anyone as violent.
So you'll have a better chance if you use the violent crime statistics of UK against US, but then you'll have the problematic stats of those involving guns and homicide, e.g.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
USA has 80 times the number of homicides. 80 times. That's homicide too, not self defense, it's bad guys killing armed or unarmed good guys. The only way to stop a bad guy is to take away his gun. If only bad guys carry guns, it makes them far easier to pick out and arrest.
Disregard my post, I didn't read GP carefully. I believe you are correct, assuming several things are true. That assumes that the sample is small compared to the population. Sampling 10 people of 30 will be more accurate than 10 people of 3 million.
Further, it assumes the sample size is "large", I believe. A small sample can more accurately represent a small population than it can a large population. (Ask four kernel developers their opinion of ext4 and you'll likely get respresentatoie opinions. Ask four Americans about abortion and you've learned nothing.) A large sample, however, can represent any size population ROUGHLY equally.
I think comparing current day party loyalty in the U.S. with recent political attitudes and voting intentions in Sweden is just silly. Would the study by Lars Hall have been accurate to claim that supporters and enemies of the French Revolution didn't really hold their beliefs all that strongly?
To make it easy, suppose a sample size of one and a population of four. You can say with certainty that "at least 25% of the Morris family thinks Bush sucked and Obama sucks twice as bad". So for a small population, even a sample size of ONE tells you something.
Compare to a sample size of one and a population of four million - you can draw no conclusion for the large population.
If the population is very large, and the sample is large, it doesn't much matter just how "very large" the population is.
I think there might be a significant difference here. If I'm not mistaken, Sweden has the common European system - many parties. Voters often change here, this is a well-known fact. In the united states, on the other hand, there are only two choices. Perhaps more importantly: each party would sooner take a bullet than agree with something the other said. Agreement is much more common in European politics, at least seemingly so. This may not make Swedish results transferable to the U.S., as the summary suggests.
That's as relevant as the individuals who mention that Lincoln was a Republican, suggesting that his party should earn your loyalty more than a century later. The world of politics doesn't quite work like that, friend.
Any type of income or wealth tax is theft of property but the graduated tax (the so called 'progressive' tax) is just pure discrimination.
It's all immoral and unconstitutional, it's all theft of property and treatment of people differently under law based on their specific circumstances, so it's discrimination.
You can't handle the truth.
No more than 22% of the manipulated answers were detected, and 92% of the study participants accepted the manipulated summary score as their own.
Which appears to indicate that a least 14% accepted the manipulated answers as their own after detecting that they were manipulated. I'd also suggest that this study has a pretty significant bias because if you find someone with no short term memory who is somehow really fooled into believing that the opposite answers are their own, they may go along so as not to appear foolish i.e. they have not changed their mind but rather than admit to completely misreading the survey they just agree to save face.
Hall has used a similar sleight of hand before to show that our moral compass can often be easily reversed.
Wait, what? Wasn't this article all about politics? What in the universe does that have to do with morality?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
What is this really saying? That people fed false information believe it! To use an Americanism, colour me surprised. This is not the first survey or experiment to reveal deference or gullibility to an authority figure either. It's also not the first survey or experiment to reveal that people don't remember their own reasoning. We expect 'rule of thumb' decision-making to be consistent. But, the evidence is, people don't remember their own morality. A similar survey was conducted changing the subject's sexual preference (not sexual orientation, for those countries that use the word 'preference' to mean both).
An Australian song contains a very insightful statement, "I don't mind taking charity from those I despise". To me, it means people will change the rules, to get a result they like. Which is what the questioner in this survey is doing. And by flip-flopping, the subject is doing the same.
Wait, we are supposed to vote for our best interests? Here I am voting for people that claim to believe that all people should be treated equally under the law. I should be voting for the guy that promises jobs and special rights for middle aged white guys at the expense of everyone else. Also since I don't use drugs I guess my pro drug legalization position is wrong as well. Wow, it's all so clear now! I don't have to look at secondary and tertiary effects of policies to see how they will work in the real world and only vote for the person that promises me stuff. This is great. I'm off to watch cable news.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In the Luis Buñuel film That Obscure Object of Desire two actress play the same role. They don't look very much alike, and there is no logic behind which actress appears in which scene. Many people see the film, and if no one points this out they don't notice anything is strange. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Obscure_Object_of_Desire
The phenomena is interesting in and of itself, but this is clearly not research, but a stunt to get publicity.
Why is Snark Required?
The summary is of course adapted for American audiences with different definitions of many political terms than other parts of the world, but I would still like to offer my corrections of the political situation. The "Conservatives" mentioned are not conservatives, they are mostly liberals, ranging from a self-professed "liberal-conservative" party to a liberal party, a "social values" Christian party which is however very liberal in terms of economic politics nowadays, and a "Center party" (the name is a misnomer, the party has veered far to the right since its golden days). Personally I think the closest description of their collective politics is some type of neoliberal. The other "block", consisting of the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens is not so homogeneous in terms of their political stances as the right-wing, the Social Democrats and the Greens are nowadays essentially liberals, not much difference from the government except for a few minor details, and the Left Party is the only socialist party and the only party that actually advocates something to the left of the status quo.
And regarding the actual topic, I'm not at all surprised, there is very little difference between the two "blocks" as a whole (the exception being the Left Party on the left and (in terms of issues related to a single issue) Sweden Democrats on the "populist" right) and people (unfortunately) mostly vote for purely superficial reasons like how they "percieve" a certain politician.
We already know that we're screwed up, don't rub it in any more.
If you don't mind me trying to get the first thread back on track, the results quoted here apply to Sweden, not necessarily the U.S.
Sweden has a multi-party parliamentary system. Parliamentary system do create inequality that favors established parties, especially first-past-the-post ones like the U.K. Yet, their process of government formation means electing small parties isn't automatic pork suicide for districts. So at least some small parties get in and influence the direction for future changes.
In other words, Swedes change their mind because they've some choice. American parties more resemble sports teams. Yes, one plays nastier than the other, but fundamentally Americans might not change their minds because neither party represents much meaningful change.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
action? eat shit.
...that it is easier to be lazy, game the system and suck up to bureaucrats (liberal, statist, collectivist) than it is to be ambitious and engage in hard honest labor (conservative, market oriented, individualist). Poverty, post-secondary education and excessive wealth (the kind that insulates an individual from actions of BOTH the market via investment income and the government via the ability to hire attorneys to claim that no laws apply against their client) tent to make people into statists. People who just want to work and receive the fruit of their labor will tend to be individualists.
--
By default, chapatees menstruate when squeezed.
All that matters it the long term effect of this. Who cares if you can confuse someone into supporting a different political opinion if the next day they go back to how they are.
Sweden is a North European country. The EU is compared to the US a liberal, left wind conglomerate of states. And in the EU the northern countries are even more on the liberal and social side of the spectrum. They have a very low Gini coefficient while the US one is as high as the one in China. Or in other words it has the worst Gini coefficient in a developed country. Their median education is one of the best, the potential to feel left alone is at a minimum. In such environment are the chance higher, that people become open minded.
The far right in the US, are not open to normal communication or discussion. They made their mind up. That is similar to those who believe in conspiracy theories, they reject facts and arguments, because they do not fit their believe. For the rest, that study has a valid point, but I wouldn't hope that the potential to convince people to accept reason can be converted in convinced people.
I'd sure go with the party that voted FOR women's rights (Republicans 81-34 for women's right to vote , 1915), the party who pushed the Civil Rights Act through against the democrat filibuster, etc.
The fallacy of: once right, always right.
Just because a certain party has the better idea than the other once, doesn't mean they always have the most rational/moral/correct position.
IMO, at the current time, both parties' actions are horrible, and both of their agendas are not in the best interests of the country.
IMO, it's time to abolish Democrat and Republican parties, and give the spotlight to some new ideas.
Personally, I've always found zealots of either side are far more similar than different. Sure they may have superficial differences in beliefs, etc, but their manner, approach, and fundamental motivations seem very much the same.
-Styopa
If you are sick of the two-party system, and I mean REALLY sick, don't simple say so. Get involved in a 3rd party. If you are not the type to want to go live in the woods with elves or want to remove all government, but rather the type that wants middle ground and common sense, then look to the new Justice Party.
http://www.justicepartyusa.org
They are in sore need of IT/tech people to help them out. They embrace open gov, transparency and will even use GIT to archive their platforms.
cheers
I used to think people were open-minded enough to change their minds, but I don't anymore.
Sports teams!...haha that is totally true, and the news media has really pushed that direction in the last 10 years. The whole "red vs blue" I think is a trite way of getting Joe Sixpack (the average person) to get interested in politics and increase viewership and voter participation, but oversimplifies it to the point of absurdity and really needs to go away.
But one plays nastier? Which one is that? Politics is politics, and the only politicians that are nice are the ones that either don't have to compete, or have no chance of winning. Politicians from swing constituencies tend to be more nasty, cold, and calculating. I live in a suburban Republican monoculture, and the reps have more of an "administrative" vibe..
I agree with the other comments, it would be nice if there were more variety allowed in the system like in, say, Sweden or the UK. I for one am a devout atheist and despise religious fruitbats, but I also despise overly exuberant government spending, and I'm not alone...but there is no option for that here, you have to take one or the other and that's it!
The real path to male liberation
Oh and before anybody gives me crud for the exuberant government spending comment, in the South voting party line actually does work how you would traditionally expect it to, as opposed to the North where the line is quite a bit more muddled.
The real path to male liberation
your wishy-washy political views allow them the split your vote and control the nation. In the end they'll have you voting the corporate party line (and lining their pockets with your hard work) in a desperate effort to hold out on whatever those issues are.
I know the Grandparent is trolling, but he's more or less right. Everything he touches on is economics (even women's rights more or less boil down to money. Rich women had rights and power even in the 1800s). The trouble is, while you're busy being confused about what matters to you and voting on your 'gut instinct' the corps are single issue: money. Your Money. They want it, and with guys like you they're going to get it.
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I'm a democrat, and much as I hate to admit it he's right. My solution is to always vote as far left as I can. Turn the country left.
As for why he's right, half a percent of the population donates almost all the money in politics. If you're going to be in politics, the top 0.5% are going to make that decision.
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Liberal vs Conservative. Even if Americans have no real choice the illusion is there, and the study seems to be more about a universal truth: people can easily be made to change their tune on what looks like a deeply held belief.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You've done a very fine job of refuting the shill's post. Unfortunately, we still have Rand Paul spouting similar nonsense at places like Howard University.
However, assuming you haven't Rip-Van-Winkled the last couple decades away in slumber
You may have not noticed. However, the democrat party has continued its banner of 'separate but equal'. Things like 'the 1%', 'the 47%', 'obamba phone', 'the Hispanic vote'. Those terms are used to segregate our country into squabbling groups who fight for the scraps. While the bankers take off with your money that you are being taxed for at nearly 45% (add up your taxes you pay its higher than you think)!
For example the recent 'tax cliff'. It was merely a going back to clinton era tax levels. Yet neither party really wanted to do that. So the democrats spun it as a we vs they. Even though it was THEIR tax plan it was going back to. It was sold to the democratic party as 'rolling back the Bush era tax cuts'.
So you will excuse me if I didnt notice that the names of the pawns had not changed but the tune is the same.
A sizable portion of the U.S electorate swear allegiance to a party without understanding the underlying platform of that party. They simply do not make the effort to follow the political battles and separate actions from the manipulative rhetoric of political advertising which is as close as they get to the system. A good example was the Republican attacks in 2012 that Obama's Affordable Care Act was taking medicare funding away from the program that they were fighting to preserve when the reverse was true. Was everyone fooled? Probably not, but some were. For democracy to work effectively, the public has to care enough to follow what is happening and have informed opinions rather than maliciously implanted opinions. This is simply not the case in the U.S..
.. in that you take what you can through bribery and manipulation.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
So it's wrong to judge a party for their positions from 1957, because that was OMG 56 years ago and things have changed dramatically, But because of the election strategy used in 1968, we should all assume that everything is exactly the same as it was 45 years ago and nothing at all has changed, and all the same party leaders are in charge?
I think you have fallen into a partisan fallacy that provides excuses for supporting your team rather than taking an objective view of the current environment. Are we supposed to ignore all the damage that liberal Democratic policies have done to minority communities over the last 40 years? All based on a battle between the parties to secure the "racist vote" over 40 years ago? Do you really think that constituency is (in 2013) so prevalent in the electorate that political strategists think they can win elections by catering to them?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jon Haidt covers this phenomenon quite thoroughly. It comes down to this: in spite of what we might like to think, most of our beliefs are built on uncontrollable, gut reactions. Our thinking and explanations of those reactions are post-hoc justifications to convince others that we are correct and that they should be on our side. In this case, the gut reaction has simply been replaced by a vote. If the participants believed that to be their response to the situation, it's not surprising that they would construct post-hoc rationalizations to justify their behavior.
When we make up our minds we don't change them (EVER!!) Persuasion doesn't matter, Facts don't matter. We're not like those mamby pamby Euros.
Derp! I'm roman_mir, and I don't understand anything about the actual impacts of racial or gender discrimination! Everything I hate (taxes, liberals, taxes, the poor, taxes) must be theft-discrimination-Hitler-Stalin! I prove my point by making up new definitions for words!
Nope, my in-laws are Tea Partiers. I call em ducks when I see ducks.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The election strategy used in 1968 continued to shape and inform the party into the present era. Republicans *still* win the Southern vote, based on appeals to racist fear-mongering and appeasing the Religious Right voting block. Have you ever been in the South, and seen the electoral strategies and messages being sent to fire up the "base" of white males with confederate flags on their cars? I agree that the Democratic party hasn't been particularly great for minority communities the last many years --- but they get away with it because the Republicans are proud to advertise that they'd make things even worse for minorities, so the Democrats have a solid lock on the "lesser of two evils" vote. The Democrats aren't "my team," and when not voting strategically to prevent an even worse far-right nutter from gaining office, I vote for candidates with better than the Democrat's "just be glad we're not Republicans!" platform.
In the US, elections are like voting for Dumb or Dumber. Few and far between are there really good candidates.
The right to marry the person (emphasis mine) of their choice just like a heterosexual can
Question:
I am a heterosexual. Does it mean that, in view of recent court rulings, i can marry a corporation?
You claim the Democrat's aren't "your team", but you have swallowed the propaganda hook line and sinker. This revisionist history has you conflating everything with racism, including the Confederate flag, and, I assume, everything they tell you is a "code word" that somehow everyone on the left seems to recognize as "secret club racist language". Go figure.
Republicans don't win the Southern vote, they do, however, appeal to rural constituencies, and the south has more rural areas than the north. Rural folks own guns, go hunting, grow their own food, tend their own land, and are fiercely independent. Urban dwellers have much different priorities (you can't haul bails of straw on a bicycle).
Not sure why I'm even trying to explain it to you. You seem far too entrenched with the vast right-wing racist conspiracy propaganda for anything to penetrate the circular logic that justifies that viewpoint.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
But on radio, Nixon was thought to have had more substance and intellect in the debate.
That's proven to be a myth.
And there's an easy way to test it. Put the debate on and listen to it.
Nixon sounds unprepared, uncertain, makes awkward pauses as if awaiting some confirmation from someone - which never comes as there is no studio audience, he fumbles with words, makes comments which are shot down by Kennedy...
Kennedy DOES look better, there is no denying that, and Nixon's attempts at charm are closer to creepy than charming.
But Nixon lost that debate both on the radio and on TV.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They used to post our grades in college publicly outside the classroom. You picked a "code" to represent yourself.
There were two sections of a Biology lecture with grades posted. They would curve each section up the number of points needed to get the highest score to 100.
In one section the highest score was 76, so they got curved up 24 points which was enough to bring low scores in the 50 range up to passing. In the other section they got curved two points, from my 98 to 100.
There was a whole group of people around the scores talking about how they wanted to kill me. They asked me where I was on the list. I pointed to some grade in the 70 range and walked away calmly.
Posting this as "Anonymous Coward" as I think they are still after me. ;)
Republicans don't win the Southern vote, they do, however, appeal to rural constituencies, and the south has more rural areas than the north.
Here are some statistics, from a University of South Carolina webpage, on the rural/urban breakdown in a bunch of Southern states. Hint: none of the Southern states shown ( SC, NC, GA, TN) are more that 40% rural population (and less than 60% urban). The only overwhelmingly "rural" state is Vermont --- the place that elects self-identified Independent/Socialist candidates. While the "Red South" has a bigger rural proportion than some "strong blue" areas, the simplistic narrative that "Republicans win the vote by supporting Rural folks over Urban" is itself a propaganda piece.
The Republican narrative involves constructing an image of a "real" America, folksy and rural and hard-working and self-sufficient [insert picture of white family holding hunting rifles here], versus the "urban welfare moochers" [insert picture of black people, despite the vast majority of welfare recipients being white]. White city folk, with confederate flags on the pickup truck they drive two blocks to the grocery store, are convinced to identify with the "real America," and vote Republican (so those lazy dark-skinned "urban" people don't take all their hard-earned wages). Ignore the fact that rural America receives much more Federal money per capita (few farms would be self-supporting without big Federal ag. subsidies, infrastructure subsidies, etc.), and "Red" states as a whole receive a net influx of benefits paid for by "Blue" state taxes. Appealing to long-standing racial resentment keeps the white South --- including its majority urban population --- voting Republican, to make sure the "urban" people don't get "handouts".
Not sure why I'm even trying to explain it to you. You seem far too entrenched with the vast right-wing racist conspiracy propaganda for anything to penetrate the circular logic that justifies that viewpoint.
You've managed to validate that quite handily. Here's some statistics for you, but your own preconceived notions will overwhelm any cognitive dissonance is causes anyway: Election results by county.
Your description of the "Republican narrative" is, frankly, stunningly ... Hollywood. It's no wonder the left views black conservatives as traitors or "uncle toms". You should get away from the TV, out of your high-rise apartment, and try exploring fly-over country a bit if you have any desire to understand the world outside of your echo chambers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I like you. You're a straight shooter. You believe Friday what you believed on Monday.
Entirely in spite of what happened Wednesday.
For anyone else following this discussion thread: do check the parent poster's "Here's some statistics for you" link. It's absolutely hilarious! I didn't see any actual statistics in it (math is hard! scary innuendo is so much better!), but it's got everything else:
- Relying on FOX News and far-right talk radio for sources? Check!
- Claiming Obama "stole" the election thanks to things like "black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio"? Check!
- George Soros conspiracy? Check!
- Gratuitous picture of Sarah Palin, that has *absolutely nothing to do* with the rest of the article text? Check!
Hard-hitting investigative journalism at its best! Clearly not the product of a conspiracy-believing propaganda-soaked "echo chamber"!
Ah yes, the party from 1915. Let's vote for them.
From 1915 (and before) through 2009 and beyond. In 2009 the Dems had a KKK leader as their leader in the Senate and he'd still be the #2 democrat today if he hadn't died. In 2001, while he was President pro tempore, he was talking about "niggers". That's not a random guy off the street, that's the guy democrats keep electing as a top leader, using the N word to refer to the people who keep voting for him.
Watch any two politicians, one democrat and one republican. Count how many times each says racial words like "black people", "minorities", etc. I'll bet you $100 the Democrat will use racist language at least four times as much as the republican. It's insulting that they think my wife, because she's black, is too stupid to get into school on her own merits, or get a job on based on her hard work. It disgusts me that they imply that because she's female, that means she's helpless.
So it's wrong to judge a party for their positions from 1957, because that was OMG 56 years ago and things have changed dramatically,...
Yes, because that's when they began to change. That's when the Dixiecrats started becoming Republicans only to later call themselves the Tea Party and attempt to take over their new party.
Useless ad-hominems. The results are the results. If you don't like the source, find one yourself the same way I did.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
So it's wrong to judge a party for their positions from 1957, because that was OMG 56 years ago and things have changed dramatically,...
Yes, because that's when they began to change. That's when the Dixiecrats started becoming Republicans only to later call themselves the Tea Party and attempt to take over their new party.
So the Tea Party is made up of former Dixiecrats? Makes perfect sense to me. I'm just trying to figure out why people keep calling the Republicans racists if the Tea Party are the Dixiecrats that decided the Republican party isn't racist enough anymore...
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
No matter where you are politically, there will always be a fraction that wants to go further away from the middle - IOW, you can be mildly racist and have a more strongly racist fringe. :)
Any type of income or wealth tax is theft of property but the graduated tax (the so called 'progressive' tax) is just pure discrimination.
It's all immoral and unconstitutional, it's all theft of property and treatment of people differently under law based on their specific circumstances, so it's discrimination.
Yeah, all those poor rich folks and all the discrimination against them. Why, they might actually be able to get ahead in life if it weren't for all the discrimination! I'm surprised they don't all give up their wealth so they can reap the benefits of lower taxation. Can you believe that almost half the country doesn't pay income taxes at all? Boy, do they have it good!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I'm not your friend, pal.
there you go, you believe that it is OK to discriminate against people, to discriminate in the application of laws against people based on their circumstances, and you believe that it is even necessary in order to achieve your technocratic goals of 'social justice' and basically trying to even out outcomes.
Your sarcastic remark is simply the proof positive of the idea in my comments that it is what the mob is about, not about laws, not about individual freedoms, it's about theft because there are more people within that mob that has a common theme, which is to 'fix the injustice' (which is where the idea of 'social justice' comes from), they see it as injustice that they do not have something that somebody else has, they want force of government to take it and give it to them.
Actually based on some comments on /. I have proof positive that some in the mob don't even care if they get the proceeds of the theft, they just want to use the threat of government violence to steal from those who have more, they don't even particularly care if they themselves are going to benefit from that theft (most likely not).
It's pure jealousy, greed, stupidity, mobocracy and total lawlessness, discrimination, theft and at some point it turns to murder.
You can't handle the truth.
Sweden has a multi-party parliamentary system.(...) In other words, Swedes change their mind because they've some choice
Ifi I had mod points today you would got one +1 instightful
One thing I've noticed is that there are two kinds of people with strong opinions. Type I is of below-average intelligence, and they hold strong opinions because they're closed-minded. Type II is highly intelligent and very openminded, and, after thinking deeply about issues, they reject ideas that are illogical or unworkable. Opinions that survive that rigorous test deserve to be strongly held.
And then there are people who think everyone with strong opinions is closed-minded -- essentially, they don't recognize the existence of Type II. They accuse people with strong opinions of having a "black-and-white" view of the world. Ironically, they themselves have a black-and-white view of their fellow humans: people with strong opinions = bad, people like themselves = good.
I simply avoid registering to vote because all that happens is I get calls from people telling me to vote for their guy and they can't really explain why. For example I got a call from somebody on Matt Salmon's team telling me that they would repeal Obama Care, and lower medical costs through deregulation. Being a libertarian, that is music to my ears because I know from experience that red tape does raise costs in the medical field significantly. However when I asked what he would deregulate and how that would help, he didn't even know. But he expects me to vote for his guy anyways.
You can't expect a low-level campaign worker -- probably an unpaid volunteer -- to be able to articulate the specific nuances of his candidate's platform. At least this campaign worker knew enough to embrace the correct guiding principle. A worse aspect of political campaigns are bumper stickers or roadside signs that display only the candidate's name, and give you no clue about their positions. If some voters can actually be swayed by these information-less signs, that's pretty sad. If voters can't be swayed by them, I wish the candidates would learn to redirect their resources into media that actually conveys information.
The best you can do is hedge your assets (gold is a horrible idea
What is a good way to hedge, then?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Throughout history, up and including today, the Republican party has been the party fighting for EQUAL rights for all. The Democrat party has been the party fighting for special privileges for what it deems to be it's "core" voters. What has changed recently is that the battleground for women and minorities has moved from the area of equal rights to the area of special privileges. For the most part, equal opportunity has been won. These groups say they want "equal" rights, but they are truly asking for "special" rights (ex: affirmative action, quota systems, lower qualification marks for minorities, diversity mandates, etc.). Therefore, the people who want these special rights now identify more with the Democrats than the Republicans who originally fought for their equality.
they're pretty evenly divided between wanting slow upward wealth redistribution, or very rapid upward wealth redistribution
An even more accurate way to say this -- which is backed up by their actions and proposals -- is that some want wealth redistribution programs to continue to grow faster than GDP (with no regard to the unsustainability of this), and the rest want wealth redistribution programs to grow at a sustainable rate.
There are (in theory) actual budget cuts, and then there are Washington-style "cuts," which are actually budget increases that don't quite live up to the expectation of faster-than-GDP growth. I know of only one politician who proposed actual cuts -- and that politician was voted out in November.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Got a link? I've not heard of any politician, of any party, proposing to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money trying to force the creation of Creationist-friendly textbooks. (There's no need to... such textbooks already exist, and are used by a small minority of home-schooling parents.)
But even if some politician had proposed this, it and similar follies wouldn't account for the enormous size of government. Try looking at a pie chart: the hugest slice of federal spending is entitlements. Try looking at an animated pie chart that shows how fast that slice is growing. It's terrifying.
In 2010, one of my friends thought defense cuts could bring about a balanced budget. Then I showed him a pie chart of the 2009 federal budget. The deficit was $1413 billion, and if the $600 billion defense budget had been cut by 100%, we still would have been left with a deficit of $813 billion! (By comparison, Dubya's largest deficit was $459 billion.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
A party willing to prosecute those who intimidate voters, regardless of race, is truly more progressive in civil rights than a party that selectively prosecutes members of certain races, and drops charges against members of other races.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
With a sample size that small... you can only suggest what that group of 162 voters might think.
In the science and statistics world... this study is about as useful as a Cosmopolitan mag pole on breast size.
Seriously... is this what science is today?
"When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate, and that he would focus on the 5–10% thought to be floating voters, he was articulating a commonly held opinion: that most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty.
Anybody who has ever been around a bunch of individuals who consider themselves to be "of the right", "well-to-do", and "powerful" knows better: Mitt was trying to represent himself as "one of them" by slamming as many of the American people as possible.
lolll...that's what those people holding those beliefs do, especially if they're consuming alcohol. You should hear 'em talk about "unions" (one drink), "labor" (two drinks), and a bizarre mixture of "entitlement spending" and "Perhaps there is something to eugenics..." (three drinks).
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The wealthy are not discriminated against, and a progressive tax system is not discriminatory. Every dollar in each bracket is taxed the same, regardless of one's "circumstance". Your first $8925 is taxed at 10%, just like mine, just like everyone.
It's not about jealousy. It's about the fact that the wealthy have benefited from this society much more than others have. And as much as they would like to think it's because they're just that awesome, that's not really the case. Isn't it reasonable that they should pay more back into the system that made them so fabulously wealthy? If not, then let them "go Galt" and form their own society so they stop leeching off the work of everyone else.
It's also about the fact that wealth brings power in this country. If you have enough money you can have an out-sized influence on government and society. In a representative democracy that is not healthy, as it allows individuals to use the power of corporations and the state to enact their own narrow agenda. Don't believe me? Ask Intuit why the tax code is still so complicated, or why Wall Street got bailed out while Main Street was left to rot. When a white billionaire can't get a loan, or a cab, or a table at a restaurant or an audience with his representative, or is harassed by police while walking down the street, you can talk to me about discrimination. Until then, the wealthy seem to be overcoming their adversity just fine.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Since those whom we label conservatives are actually liberals, albeit more classically liberal than the progressive liberals we call liberals, it shouldn't be surprising that opinions could change . That is, both are extremes of the liberal point of view which values individual freedom, and the policies surrounding that freedom are more often in dispute than the value of freedom. Or one would hope.
-- Jimtown Kelly