Verasev, on 16 October 2016 - 10:37 AM, said:
Man, jeez lancer, who are the social justice types supposed to vote for that won't compromise their principles? Mrs. Anti-Vaxxer Jill Stein? There are no good choices!
vaccination isn't a social justice issue, it's a health issue (and sometimes an individual liberties issue, although not a popular one. thanks to the issue of herd immunity it's easy to claim that my rights to not get sick overwhelm your rights to avoid a jab in the arm). and besides,
she's not really anti-vax, it's just shitty media people saying she is because she tends to snipe at Hillary a lot. same people that make up completely bogus stuff about Trump, it's because the truth is viewed as an acceptable casualty if that's what it takes to get Hillary into the White House.
anyway, I'm actually not saying 'don't vote for Hillary'. i know how american voting works and the gist of it is that a vote for Jill Stein is a vote thrown away. i'm more referring to the softball treatment Hillary's been getting from people who are normally all about how pure your track record is.
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IF there are really an appreciable number of white nationalists and racists backing Trump (I have my doubts that it's anything to the extent that the media and Hillary's campaign claims)
i think this kind of estimation error exists because there are certain people who do exist, but because it's hard for the human brain to instinctively grasp social groups larger than about 100 people, when you have a sample of a bunch of people on a message board saying white nationalist things and supporting Trump you tend to feel that you're looking at the tip of a much larger iceberg. it's like flat earthers, they absolutely exist, but there probably aren't millions of them, even though there are entire online communities built up around these people. plus, of course, there's /pol/. i think that, on some level, people understand that there is a mindset that wants to say racist things precisely because it offends people and because offending people is very funny. it's not like these people are racist in their day to day interactions with the world - i mean, it's generally not socially acceptable to be racist now, but i would compare to, say, someone who won't decorate a gay wedding cake. that person is actually homophobic, like actual, homophobic in Real Life homophobic. a /pol/itician working in a patisserie would decorate the gay cake, then during his lunch break say that america needs to be cleansed of degenerates. (okay, maybe he's just gutless when he's not in front of a computer screen - but i think it's also because refusing service in this case wouldn't be all that funny. it would be funny to, say, draw a swastika on the cake or something. i don't know. not that he'd do that either, because that puts his job at risk and that means no more tendies)
also, this error is useful to hillary's campaign because it suggests that trump's supporters are racists, sexists and misogynists, and these are negative words that are good to attach to your opponent. remember the hilarious slapfight over the kkk previously, with david duke endorsing trump, the california kkk donating $20k to clinton, the robert byrd thing etc.? nobody was making a claim that either side was promoting policies that the kkk found pleasing, it was just an exercise in trying to tie reviled people to a political opponent.