Were social justice warriors responsible for the election outcome?

[Gemini]

There are going to be a few crazy extremists in any group, but if you think the democrats were trying to do more than just defend the right of transgender people to be recognized as people, you weren't really listening.

Who doesn't recognize transgender people as people? All Trump voters, or a few crazy extremists?

Ooh, is this the part where you try to convince the persecuted minorities that we haven't just listened to Trump run the most bigoted, racist, hateful campaign so far this century, and that his policy outline doesn't offer protection for people who discriminate against the LGBT community, and nullify executive orders that protect transgender people? Because I never get tired of that!

[KUSA]

Who doesn't recognize transgender people as people? All Trump voters, or a few crazy extremists?

Ooh, is this the part where you try to convince the persecuted minorities that we haven't just listened to Trump run the most bigoted, racist, hateful campaign so far this century, and that his policy outline doesn't offer protection for people who discriminate against the LGBT community, and nullify executive orders that protect transgender people? Because I never get tired of that!

He said a lot of things but I was not aware that he said anything negative about the LGBTQ community.

[John V]

Who doesn't recognize transgender people as people? All Trump voters, or a few crazy extremists?

Ooh, is this the part where you try to convince the persecuted minorities that we haven't just listened to Trump run the most bigoted, racist, hateful campaign so far this century, and that his policy outline doesn't offer protection for people who discriminate against the LGBT community, and nullify executive orders that protect transgender people? Because I never get tired of that!

Convince? No, you can think what you want. IMO your charge is hyperbole and is counterproductive to your goals, but if you want to hold yourself back in order to hold onto your hate, that's your business.

[Faith No More]

I'm still not even sure what "SJW" actually means.  I get what they intend it to mean, but it's thrown around so willy-nilly these days that it's just become another way to shut don the conversation.  I mean, I've been accused on this very forum of being an SJW and not PC enough.  It's almost as if these words are becoming meaningless...

But don't kid yourself, the right secretly loves the so-called "regressive left." It's given them a shield to hide from legitmate claims of racism and prejudice.  Did you point out that Trump uses lots of racist dog-whistle terminology?  You're an SJW.  Did you point out that the birther movement is racist?  You're an SJW.  Did you point out that Trump's call for a national registry of Muslims is pure bigotry in motion and unconstitutional?  You're just a whiny, pussy SJW, and I don't have to listen to you.  Since people out there cry prejudice at the drop of a hat, I'm just going to insulate myself and insist that all cries of prejudice are illegitimate.

Just look at how pissy the Trump supporters here get when you point out that they just threw their hat in the ring with neo-Nazis and the KKK.  Anything to deny the truth, and we can't allow them to hide from the obvious just because some youtubers go overboard.  

So we can go ahead and blame the people that abuse cries of racism and bigotry, but that's just playing right into the bigot's hands.

[8BitAtheist]

I'll never be able to take anyone who uses the SJW term ironically seriously...

[Ben Davis]

A few things have really stood out for me in this thread:

Firstly, political misclassification. In the political scales, Liberalism stands firmly in the centre. There is no such thing as 'leftist liberalism'. The political left starts with Socialism then fades through to Communism whereas the political right starts with Conservatism then fades through to Fascism. The authoritarian scale is something different. Here Democracy occupies the centre space, fading through Libertarianism to Anarchism at the top and fading through Nationalism to Totalitarianism at the bottom. The combination of the 2 scales give us the Political Spectrum. If we can start being more precise about our labels, we can start identifying the misinformation in messages, for example anyone calling anyone else a 'liberal leftie!'.

Secondly, crass generalisation. Do people think that all people on the left try to shut down communications? Is that really the claim or are we seeing a strawman of those on the left by a small proportion of their opponents in order to score cheap political points and sway public perception of socialist policies? Just like the small group on the left who are trying to shut their opponents out from public discourse? Neither group truly represent the norm yet they're getting all the press. The most effective way of managing this is by outing the bad practices and then redirecting conversation to the issues. It takes time but it means that eventually the majority across all points of the scale are talking to each other and marginalisation is minimised. It's something that seems to be lacking because of my next point.

Thirdly, voter apathy. Trump won with fewer votes than his counterparts who lost the previous 2 elections. Brexit won with fewer votes than Labour received when they lost the previous General Election. Voter turn-outs have been really poor and the key (not the only) reasons for this seems to be:

1. a distinct lack of normative politics; a lot of ordinary people do not see their political interests being catered for by any candidates hence they don't get behind anyone in particular and apathy abounds. As we've seen, when the centre 'norm' of a distribution are taken out of the data, all you're left with are the outliers. With no-one having 'normal' conversations, all we hear are the edge views and politics seems polarised thus exacerbating the problem. The solution for this is similar to my previous point, raise the importance of the normative arguments within issues. For example, stop Schrodinger's Immigrant (drawing all the benefits whilst simultaneously stealing all the jobs) being the conversation but remember that immigration generates certain welfare costs and impacts to employment within certain demographics.

2. a distinct lack of change; no matter who you've voted for in the past 20 years, the richest have got richer and the rest have got poorer. Consequently everyday people have lost interest as the electorate seems to have no power when the available candidates represent continuation of the same problems. Once again this leaves space for political extremists to host all the conversations while the rest of us are excluded as a result of sharing few/no values with them. Once again the answer is to have normal conversations, make other voices heard and make those contributions the most voluminous and frequent. Remember that people construe silence as tacit acceptance.


But all these solutions require a catalyst, a trigger, a call to action that fires regular folks to start remembering or acting on their political responsibilities. Hopefully Brexit and Trump can be such catalysts, driving political activity in the centre/norm. There's already a rise in the number of political demonstrations on both sides of the Atlantic. Since extremists are also rising in power in other currently liberalised/socialised nations (e.g. France, Germany, Holland, Greece), maybe their opposition will be triggered before similar results come to pass there. Maybe things will get worse before they get better.

[Faith No More]

Firstly, political misclassification. In the political scales, Liberalism stands firmly in the centre. There is no such thing as 'leftist liberalism'. The political left starts with Socialism then fades through to Communism whereas the political right starts with Conservatism then fades through to Fascism. The authoritarian scale is something different. Here Democracy occupies the centre space, fading through Libertarianism to Anarchism at the top and fading through Nationalism to Totalitarianism at the bottom. The combination of the 2 scales give us the Political Spectrum. If we can start being more precise about our labels, we can start identifying the misinformation in messages, for example anyone calling anyone else a 'liberal leftie!'.

That's just the nature of American politics. The conservative right has been carefully spinning the narrative that anyone to the left of Margaret Thatcher is a radical leftist bent on destroying liberty. It has worked astonishingly well.

[TaraJo]

Ooh, is this the part where you try to convince the persecuted minorities that we haven't just listened to Trump run the most bigoted, racist, hateful campaign so far this century, and that his policy outline doesn't offer protection for people who discriminate against the LGBT community, and nullify executive orders that protect transgender people? Because I never get tired of that!

He said a lot of things but I was not aware that he said anything negative about the LGBTQ community.

Trump?  No hasn't been as directly hostile towards GLBT people quite as much as he has been towards hispanic or muslim people.  I can see how easy it would be to not notice his more subtle hatred of gays, but he's been pretty consistantly against gay marriage.  He's stated this stance multiple times throughout multiple sources and interviews; here's a few of examples:

http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2011/0...l-oreilly/

http://www.msnbc.com/thomas-roberts/thom...-interview
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-tr...d=31799741
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/stat...1861512193
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/0...eat-again/
http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/0...hing-back/

Not to mention Pence, who is a real piece of work.  Besides his obvious stance against gay marriage, Pence has also been an advocate of conversion therapy for GLBT people (despite the fact that zero credible sources have found any benefit to said therapy).

[Neo-Scholastic]

To Ben Davis, some fascists called themselves "National Socialists

[Divinity]

Not to mention Pence, who is a real piece of work.  Besides his obvious stance against gay marriage, Pence has also been an advocate of conversion therapy for GLBT people (despite the fact that zero credible sources have found any benefit to said therapy).

Mike Pence ignoring evidence?  

No strike that.  A conservative ignoring evidence?  COLOR ME SHOCKED!

Mike Pence isn't just the fucker who supports LGBT conversion therapy, he also denies that cigarettes are harmful to your health.

And of course they're going to pass FADA.  As soon as they do I'm going to open up a shop, and refuse to service Christians.