I think the paradox can be resolved by realizing that a population can be partitioned into groups such as left, center, and right, but that a given group like "center" may well be quite heterogeneous: I may choose to vote along the center because I strongly believe in the role of experts over the opinions of voters, or I may simply be an idiot who lacks an appreciation for the importance of liberal values, perhaps not even caring or knowing about left or right, causing my voting preferences to average out to center.

I seem to remember reading here that undecided voters were the dumbest group of the voting public (and how insane it is that we let them decide the fate of candidates in early battleground states in the primary elections).

It's easy to say "the US isn't responsible" without citing anything or making an argument for the point. Whatever: is the US a force for good in the world? Not an argument I want to have.

Nonetheless, I think you're underestimating how much the US does think about human rights issues when it engages in foreign policy. For instance, concerns about Egypt's human rights abuses has been a major red flag for the US in its dealings with Egypt in recent years, and US-Egyptian relations have been drastically altered since el-Sisi came to power through a coup against democratically elected Mohamed Morsi. Obama sided against Sisi because he wanted to be on side of the Egyptian people, not their autocratic ruler. And that's despite the fact that Egyptian-US ties have been a cornerstone of US foreign policy in the region since Eisenhower.

On the other hand, Russia has had no problem picking up the slack and supporting Egypt as the US has turned away from it. It's a massive reversal: bringing Egypt out of the Soviet sphere of influence and into the Western sphere of influence in the 70s was one of the great US foreign policy achievements of the 20th century. Nonetheless, Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's senior advisors, now says that not taking an even harsher stance on el-Sisi was a mistake. Certainly seems like an instance where the US put human rights concerns above realpolitik.

Still tho

That Weird Al song is a masterpiece

Russia has decent-to-good bilateral relations with nearly every country in the Middle East: it's becoming increasingly close with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it's had strong ties with Iran for a while, it gets along with Israel, with Syria. Russian-Turkish relations are a little more complex (the Ottomans and Russia were rivals for centuries, Turkey played a key role in containment during the Cold War, etc). Nonetheless, bilateralism seems often to coincide with being unscrupulous: if you're relying on multilateralism, you'll need to establish some kind of consensus amongst a community of countries, which will require creating some kind of harmonious, alignment of interests between them. Community building of that kind will often require some kind of commitment of shared values, or at least to peaceful co-existence. But if you rely on bilateralism, you don't have to do community building among nations at all. You can have one-to-many relations with a group of countries, no matter how each of those countries are disposed to each other.

Ken Bone seemed like he had some things figured out (at least in terms of fashion sense).

The people who self-identify as centrist probably doesn't map on well with some centrism is generally defined as (i.e., pro-establishment, pro-status quo). It's probably true that people in the US who call themselves as centrists are people who've voted for presidents from both parties, or something else like that that doesn't really reflect what their political preferences are, or where they fall on the "non-ordinal" political "spectrum".

Hint: they're conservatives too smart for Fox.

I'm inclined to think that they're people who don't care much about politics but still feel like it's their civic obligation to vote.

It's easy to forget that people like that actually exist if you spend too much time on social media.

That's probably true. Generally apolitical people live easy lives, though, it's a sign you probably haven't experienced much hardship. Which means they're generally more conservative towards the system.

In a classical sense, which is something very different from what the Republican Party is.

I wouldn't assume that most people who are apolitical are apolitical because they're insulated from hardships, and that their apathy comes from them not having "skin in the game". We know, for instance, the poor, generally don't vote, even though one might assume they have the most to gain from, say, for example, medicaid expansion. So certainly suffering hardships doesn't make a person political. Its not clear that the converse should be true: that people who don't experience hardships are apolitical.

It would surprise me if many people with strong political leanings do so because they've experienced personal hardships, and think that the solution is for the government to intervene more in their lives. To take an obvious example, I wouldn't assume that many of the people who are most outraged by Trump's policy of separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents are troubled by it because they could ever imagine themselves feasibly in such a situation. In fact, I would expect that many of them are quite well off.

Many Democrats favor medicare for all even though they have robust healthcare insurance plans from their employers and a great deal of financial security. Many white Democrats have very strong views on racial issues or gender issues that to do not pertain to them at all in any kind of personal way. In fact, quite the opposite: an implication of all this talk about "privilege" is that people who are financially stable often feel responsible for others who are not as lucky. It'd surprise me if really anyone's vote is based on some kind of dispassionate, clear-eyed calculation of what their own personal interests are.

Morals are a luxury of the rich

It's probably the case that a lot of people who call themselves centrists would also call themselves libertarians (or socially libertarian). I think for a lot of people, libertarianism goes with a kind of indifference towards how other people are living their lives (not necessarily a lack of care or empathy), and a view that people should be able to do whatever they want. That probably produces people who not consistently aligned with one party or the other when it comes to a lot of social decisive issues (gun control, marijuana legalization, abortion, etc etc).

I wonder if undecided voters are more likely to live in places with low levels of broadband penetration or if they're generally people who don't own smartphones or something like that.

Electoral pollsters have known for a really long time that individual political opinions don’t affect voting behaviours much. Most people never even think about issues, and when prompted to do so, often come up with answers far removed from the political parties for which they vote.

Functionally, someone who calls themselves a libertarian is most likely just a Republican who likes weed.

Edit: This is really a point I’ve been trying to make for a few hundred posts here. Plotting swing voters on an axis is trying to see patterns in madness. Swing/undecided voters are the populists; nobody weighs policies and says **** like “hmm, this year I think I will be FOR abortion”, or “my export dependent business has had things too good, so I’m gonna vote for this New York carpetbagger who promises to end trade”. They’re just angry people, upset about how things are in a very undirected way, and they want to take it out on the establishment. These are people who would vote “none of the above” if given the chance. It’s not a real political position and trying to plot it anywhere, anyhow, using any choices of axes, is meaningless.

It's rare in general for people to form their own opinions; that takes work and you have to remember your justification, or not if you don't really care.

Most people are just reflections of the people around them. Hell, not even that, most people are just reflections of reflections. And I know that sounds pretentious as hell, idc.



Yup.

Speaking to the above, individual political opinions don't affect voting behaviors, but they can predict them. Which says that political opinions are dependent on independent voting behavior, not the converse.

Whenever you actually talk to people about issues in a way that doesn't infer party membership, you see what appears to be a standard distribution of people around a sensible answer to the question

When there's disagreement, it often appears bimodal. Which might suggest external forces are weighing on people's opinions. In fact, this is apparently been referred to, though I can't find significant material on it:



A polisci PhD awaits anyone who wants to slog through that mess.

In fact, if you're bored enough to scroll through the gallup data, it appears presidential approval ratings have been getting more bimodal since the 90's. Now, I'm not one for wild speculation (joke), but we might try and take a guess why.



I had a kind of revelation about the Clinton campaign. I remember seeing something like "86% of undecided voters prefer a candidate with political experience" or something. I think Clinton's campaign looked at data like this and came up with her ****ty "I'm more qualified" campaign slogan based on this kind of bull****.

This is why allowing blind data to drive your campaign is hopeless. Of ****ing course people prefer someone experienced, but do you think that's actually persuasive in a rhetorical sense? Of course it was not, it just made her sound like an ass.

And before anyone says "both sides!!!!11!" let me pre-emptively say "**** you the business right is responsible for polarization and do it most spectacularly through the Republicans"

Weird how the Koch brothers lobby for globalist policies while simultaneously funding pro-autarky conservative citizen groups, right?

~but George Soros~

I'll take the Kochs over the Mercers, tbh.

It's so depressing that we have to discuss families now like its the feudal age.

“now”

I dunno, maybe I'm an ass myself, but I voted for her twice (the first time after my man Bernie Sanders had already cemented his loss), and it seemed true and relevent to me. What was more off-putting was simply her delivery: when she spoke it sounded super fake and scripted... and it probably was!

gdi



You're right, it's not the fact of her experience itself so much as using it as a selling point. And the delivery was poor.

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/393309-kansas-officials-told-to-keep-enforcing-voter-id-law-that-was-ruled

When your party doesn't give a **** about the rule of law

Top `ek, a city I'd love to move to

This is the world we live in. The United States government has been recommending that Canadians avoid Huawei phones and basically I have no way of knowing if it’s because Huawei phones pose a public safety hazard, or if it’s because they threaten the US intellectual property monopoly. So do I buy one or not?

The problem with being a ****hole country is that people are going to treat you like one.

Neither US political party respects the rule of law. The US has pretty consistently used selective enforcement in order to choose economic winners and losers and punish people who don’t kick back to the politicians. The US has been engaging in a kind of ‘state capitalism lite’ since its founding.

Pretty much any notion you’ve had about the United States being built on the back of hard working entrepreneurship or civic engagement is false. The United States was quite literally founded on uncomfortable insider ties between government and prominent businessmen, dating back to the earliest days of the revolution when one of the richest Americans was paying the continental army out of his own pocket.

The greatest scam the US ever pulled was convincing us to privatize or abolish our crown corporations under the guise of liberal economics, while at the same time bolstering their own so-called “private sector” with government granted monopolies, selective enforcement of antitrust law, and taxpayer largesse that would make the old British Empire blush.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but the result was the same.

It's kind of funny how in 2016 Hillary was very subtly running against 2008 Obama. In some ways, the idea of her campaign was: come on, America. You've already voted for a guy who promised you the moon in 2008 and look how it turned out. Vote for Hillary because Hillary supporters are rooted enough in reality to see the plain truth that Obama's presidency proves the emptiness of his promises in 2008 and Bernie's in 2016, and that the all that's left is to be pragmatic.

Who was the oligarch who paid for the continental army?

Come on guys. We can't fight the tides of the neo-gilded age. Give up and accept fate.

gilded without the growth tho

https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1009716701385101313

Ah.

I appreciate that Jordan Peterson admitted a mistake, but I've noticed this is a common thing among the right. They'll say things which sound like they're against e.g. the civil rights movement of the 60's, or the labor movement of the 30's, but they also recognize how popular these things are so they won't say outright they oppose them. It's always this wishy-washy, quantum superstate of what feels like B.S. to me, like they wanna dogwhistle being against civil rights but won't state it outright.

Robert Morris



I’m willing to take this one at face value tbh.

http://www.businessinsider.com/migrant-children-forcibly-drugged-abused-in-us-government-detention-2018-6?utm_source=reddit.com

Oh good. At least the migrant children get free drugs. /s

Yeah. It's possible he just kneejerked the conservative response before thinking.

So the same people who ****ed up Charlottesville are planning a trip to DC this year. I'll probably go to counter-protest again.

I would love to witness Richard Spencer get tackled and handcuffed a second time.

His big mistake, to my mind, was being completely uninformed about any of the conservative arguments in favor of the baker.