Please don't post flamewar-style comments here, even if you're sincerely feeling that way.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12911270 and marked it off-topic.

Many of these rural people aren't looking for you to prop up their economies. They are eager for you to stop outsourcing their jobs, demeaning their existence, lowering their wages so executives can get large bonuses, and in general acting like you are much better/above them. Even more so they are eager to get to work and have a representative government that listens to them and isn't trying to push an elitist globalist agenda onto them.

This. The grandparent is one of the most condescending comments I've read in the last 12 hours, and that's saying something.

The suburban and rural people who grow America's food, get its energy out of the ground, and manufacture what hasn't been outsourced yet don't want anything from people like him. They have too much pride for that—the good kind, not the kind the grandparent has.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I know a lot of people who did, and every single one of them is a decent, hard-working human being. Upon seeing, reading, and hearing the things being said about Trump voters this morning, my brother, a self-employed furniture maker who did for Trump, said, "I didn't know I was a racist. I just thought I wanted affordable health insurance."

The country's political elites dismissed people like him. The outcome of this election is the result. The attitude of the grandparent is how we got here.

The "Stronger Together" campaign's stance on affordable health insurance was 'We have a system that isn't working. We can fix it.'

The "Take America Back" compaign's stance on affordable health insurance was 'We have a system that isn't working. Throw it out. Start over'

I do not see how this could possibly be the real deciding factor. It is a convenient shield to protect your brother's true feelings.

And there the working class disparagers go again, saying they know the true motivations of people like my brother. This, right here, is the willful blindness I'm talking about.

Maybe—just maybe—people like my brother viewed Hillary as Obama's third term? He doesn't particularly trust Trump; he just trusted Hillary less. If Democrats really wanted to fix ObamaCare, he reasons, they had plenty of time to do it.

If you want to lose an entire voting bloc, call them racists and question their motivations instead of listening to their frustrations. It has just been proven to work.

I want to listen to your concerns. So you tell me: Affordable healthcare is the deciding factor. I look to the facts and say "No, that doesn't make sense. That can't be it. What are you not telling me?"

You assume that I assume that his "True feelings" are racist.

We could get in to why he considers a third term of Obama's policies to be bad. A blanket statement of "Everything Obama did is terrible forever" also doesn't help describe your brother's true feelings.

On the issue of trust, the choice between "Career Politician" and "80's Businessman" is kind of a toss up. So again, we would need to go in to detail.

I really don't think there has been 'plenty of time' to fix the Affordable Care Act. It was enacted in 2010, majorly phased in in 2014, and will continue to phase in in 2020. So, the magnitude and reach of this is going to take some serious time come to grips with in order to find and fix the problems.

Obviously he is innocent until proven guilty. But an unfounded rejection of the candidate who's message is based on inclusiveness looks a lot like evidence that he is guilty.

So, how do we get the discussion of whether his objections are unfounded?

Except that they are expecting California and New York and other states to pay for their federal government services, while our own states lose money.

> Dominated by Republican voters who profess their distaste for the federal government and its social programs, these are the very states that rank highest on the dependency index.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/3...

I don't consider this a definitive source, but it's what I found fast enough to continue the dialog.

With all due respect, what specific policy changes do you expect that will address their job outsourcing, demeaning of existence, and lowered wages (?!? seriously?).

I see democrats with specific answers to all of these questions and none from Trump. I mean, OK: we lost, you won. But that also means you need to govern now and not just shitpost. Wat do?

I would like to see a reduction in H1B's and the ability of companies to move their manufacturing operations offshore when the driving factor is just reducing wages.

Your first suggestion is "raise wages for programmers". That's not remotely the demographic being discussed and you know it.

I'd be curious about your suggestions for implementing the second, because it sounds a lot like Bernie Sanders. No way is a republican congress going to regulate manufacturing like that.

I agree that specifics are still needed, but H-1B reform was in fact a conservative issue this cycle[-], and Trump spent a lot of energy promising to broadly regulate manufacturing and trade.

- http://www.computerworld.com/article/3014365/it-careers/sen-...

> Trump spent a lot of energy promising to broadly regulate manufacturing and trade.

Trump said those things, but just because he ran on the Republican ticket doesn't mean that he can't butt heads with a Republican-controlled Congress.

1. I'm unclear how H1B's relate to 'outsourcing' jobs since by definition the people come here. You don't need an H1B to hire a company in India or China to do work.

2. I'm curious how reducing H1B's is supposed to affect blue collar or rural jobs.

"their" jobs .. it was never theirs to begin with, mate

Well, we will see how that will go for them, I guess. But, I'm no longer going to support them, at least.

The fact is that no one wants their unskilled, uneducated labor.

Skilled and educated lbour is going to be being automated too. I'm not immune as it's creeping into my workplace - is your work safe?

The food on your table was made in large part by the "unskilled, uneducated" labor.

I have yet to see a compelling argument as to how a Trump presidency leads that labor to a livable wage.

This attitude of categorizing large amounts of ppl "creepy ppl in small town" and refusing to see / accept that they have legitmate issues and greivanes is exactly why HRC lost. We can not just cut of or forget about a large portion of our nation bc we do not agree with them or we are not better than the Donald.

Of all ppl, HN should see this as an opprotunity. Large pain points of rural america = massive startup opprotunites.

Sorry, that's plain false. I grew up in one of these places. Many of my schoolmates are people who supported this man. I've tried for years to be accepting of them and their ideas. They're friends of mine. I've tried hard to understand what they even want. I've joined their facebook groups; I've gone to their shooting ranges. But, literally 80% or more of what they say is hate and rage and paranoia. I would love to see evidence otherwise.

The time for acceptance is over.

what are you proposing if not acceptance?

I think that city folks were derisive of the rural and older voters but never really considered them as the enemy, while on the other side it was clear for the anti-abortion/protectionist/etc people that cities and their liberalism were the enemy.

This changed today I think. I wouldn't be surprised if the next democratic campaign is composed by an alliance of the standard socially progressive base with a populist base that favors poor people from swing states, while treating dark-red states with actual hostility (instead of indifference for their woes)

We've asked you plenty of times not to post uncivilly like this, so we've banned the account.

I'm sure you think it's hilarious to play at this - but you just wait until it becomes acceptable on national TV to call for people's murder like in ex-Yugoslavia or Pakistan. That's where even your joking is heading if you are just tossing this shit out on HN.

p-e-o-p-l-e

This is the kind of elitist, holier-than-thou, attitude that created a silent majority in the first place. There's probably a middle ground here that you're alienating by using such crude stereotypes.

I'm open to understanding the people in the middle ground. Who are they, what do they want, and what do they stand for?

They do not have a majority, silent or not, she will win the popular vote. Stop this nonsense of pretending they're a majority, they are not. Trump won the electoral college, not the majority of votes.

That's just semantics. Are you refuting that there was a large population of people in swing states that voted contrary to polling and forecasts?

No, it isn't semantics; more people voted for Clinton, therefore there is no silent majority voting for Trump; that is a fact. Yes polling overlooked a big chunk of people who voted for Trump, but that chunk is not a silent majority by any stretch of the imagination.

And what is your argument exactly? Because Clinton won the POPULAR vote by .1 percentage points you can trivialize and insult 50% of the country?

Is that a real question? Because do please show me where I'm insulting 50% of the country. Are you claiming that me saying they aren't a majority constitutes an insult? That's pretty bold, yet that's all I've said so you really can't be referring to anything else.

California and New York help Clinton's numbers quite a bit.

Nationwide, no. In those specific states, yes. It was a majority.

I can't tell if this is satire or trolling, but my faith in humanity hopes you're not serious.