August 4, 2016

Another turning of Trump's peak-and-slump cycle

Well you all are freaking out again over Trump slumping in the polls, like it hasn't happened before, and like he didn't recover each time.

I pointed out the rhythm of the cycle of Trump support back in mid-June, when he was coming out of the last slump:

At the rate things are going, it seems like there's a month-up and month-down rhythm to the campaign. Peaks occur in the early part of an odd-numbered month, and slumps early in even-numbered months. Fortunately, the election will be held in the early part of an odd-numbered month, favoring the apparent rhythm, although it also predicts a slump during the Republican National Convention in late July. We'll see.

That was based on relative slumps in early February ("Two Corinthians," Iowa caucus), early April (war on women, Wisconsin primary), and early June (La Raza judge, no harm in primaries since he'd already won the nom). Relative peaks were in early March (Super Tuesday I and II) and early May (Indiana primary, locked up the nom). We just saw rising support in the first part of July.

And right on schedule, starting in late July (7/28) and now into early August, he's going through another slump. The two best polls are the USC Dornsife tracking poll (descendant of the RAND poll, a top performer from 2012), and the People's Pundit Daily tracking poll. Regardless of where you think Trump and Clinton are individually, it's clear that their relative standing has narrowed since last week.

Because this fits the earlier prediction about when there would be peaks and slumps, we don't have to attribute this slump to a post-convention bump for Hillary. After her convention, she basically recovered to where she was before, since her convention was so contentious (DNC Wikileaks, DNC Chairwoman resigning, Bernie boo'd by his own delegates for telling them to elect Crooked Hillary, boring speakers, etc.).

We also don't have to attribute it to the Khans -- the narrowing began on 7/28, whereas Khan didn't put on his act until that evening. Trump has more or less not addressed the issue at all, has not "taken the bait," and has been focusing strictly on his main themes since then. And he hasn't made any other gaffes in the past week.

So, while the last time we could have explained the slump by him pushing the La Raza judge case, and the one before that to various "war on women" topics (Michelle Fields, abortion controversy, tweeting ugly pic of Lyin' Ted's psycho wife), this time there is no clear culprit.

"Media firestorm" won't do either, since the media has been constantly railing against him. After the Orlando shooting, they railed on him for renewing talk about the Muslim ban, about gun control, about using the phrase "the gays," Anderson Cooper ambushing FL Attorney General and Trump surrogate Pam Bondi for not supporting gay marriage, and so on and so forth. And yet that didn't stop Trump from climbing out of his slump and heading toward his peak during the Dem convention.

If anything, it looks like the media are reacting to changes in the popular mood. If they sense support wavering, they smell a vulnerable target and pounce. If they sense rising support for a long time, they retreat and stay halfway neutral for awhile -- like Morning Joe covering the GOP convention fairly for a change.

The media, rather than driving public opinion, are more like opportunists chasing after ratings. When Trump is rising, they dial down their attacks. When he's slumping, they unload. They have no spine and no honor, so they aren't about to lead a sustained charge when they're facing increasing resistance from the public. Media treatment is a passive, lagging indicator of what's going on in his popular support levels.

That isn't to say that they treat him fairly at any time -- only that they treat him relatively less biased when his support is rising, and more biased when his support is falling.

So what is driving this cycle? I think it's just a nervous group of voters who are eventually going to vote Trump, but since it is such a risky novelty, get cold feet, then warm back up to him, feel they've gotten over-excited, then cool off again, etc. The USC poll shows women and people aged 65+ as the most variable -- other demographic groups are either more or less constant, or vary by small magnitudes. Women are more risk-averse than men, and old people are more reluctant to embrace radical change.

(Trump consistently leads with ages 65+, but this support rises and falls by large magnitudes, and since the electorate is skewed toward the old, this strongly affects his overall rise and fall.)

I trust that, like the other times, this slump will be followed by another rise. If the rhythm holds, I predict that the VP debate and the 1st and 2nd Pres debates will unfortunately fall in relative slumps (late odd month, early even month) -- again, regardless of how he and Pence actually perform. The nervous parts of the electorate will be going through a jittery phase, no matter what is happening.

Luckily, though, the final debate is toward the end of an even month, and the election itself is in an early odd month -- both of them ending on favorable conditions.

Buckle up -- it is going to be, as always, a bumpy ride toward victory!

25 comments:

  1. I think Trump is vulnerable to the social dictates/mores; the "I can't even, wow just wow" stuff that labels him "unacceptable" by the mean girls of the Media. I think Trump has been solid with White males, his polls going up and down are a function of him "forgetting his place" as a Straight White male and saying and doing things as if he were a free Non-White male, like Khizr Khan.

    Women love the social ostracism and the "I can't even" stuff, the toxic stew of female self-esteem and inward navel gazing towards social status uber-alles particularly among Upper Class White women is tearing apart the West. See Angela Merkel's support continuing as Germany endures rape/stabbing/blowing up/machete jihad. Because women "cant even" etc.

    For about 50 years or so White men have been made into the lowest social caste. Trump's slump has been nothing more and less than White women disapproving of him not groveling and bowing to a non-White man and woman.

    Trump's "Luck" is that Muslims keep stabbing and killing people. His rise was likely the result of the beheading of an elderly French Priest, Fr. Hamel, in Normandy by two Muslims shouting in Arabic for Jihad during Mass. That reminded people they don't like Muslims, even White women who despise their male peers for the unforgivable sin of unsexiness.

    Then Trump "forgot his place" and refused to grovel like a Black man in Mississippi in 1925. The Media painted him essentially as a White man forgetting his place and acting "uppity."

    Inevitably there is another Muslim jihad, this time an American woman stabbed to death in Central London, Russell Square which is a very nice and tony tourist place, my Brother stayed there years ago and loved it. Jihadi being a non-White, Somali "teen" admitted into Norway and moved into London. And Khizr Khan though not in the Media, has been exposed by Breitbart and others as:

    *Pushing the replacement of the Constitution by Sharia -- he is the founder of an Islamic Law Publication that pushes for that change.

    *Is a long-time member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the front for ISIS.

    *Has extensive ties to both the Saudi Government and Pakistan's ISI (itself allied with ISIS/Al Qaeda and the Taliban).

    TL:DR; White men don't like another tiresome lecture by a Pakistani with a thick accent and a hijab wearing wife about how they must grovel and beg before their new masters. White women LOVE LOVE LOVE that stuff like a big heaping helping of Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, and other dominant male sex-fantasies. But they also don't like getting their throats cut either by the reality; and eventually even White women will have to choose between that and the remote fantasy and thrill of seeing their male peers who they despise being ritually humiliated once again.

    Addendum: until recently White women were not primary targets of Muslim jihadis, which allowed Hillary! and other Muslim friendly politicians like Iran Hostage paying Muslim Obama to cruise ahead -- White women particularly Upper Class ones are very hostile to White men -- just read anything they write, particularly the Waspish ones like the FT's Gillian Tett and Lucy Kellaway. However Muslims are stupid, and are picking deliberately White women as a message of domination. This is fairly new and promises to move White Women more into the Trump camp for sheer personal safety and protection.

    I don't want to belabor this but the election is really about social norms as much as anything else -- Trump hasn't said anything worse than Hillary! or Obama but as a White Male is subject to massive social restrictions against his "betters" defined as any non-Straight White Male. And Scott Adams "Dilbert" and his "Diversity Ceiling" (he is still bitter he was not able to be promoted to anything at the companies he worked for) shows, that can't hold forever.

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  2. Despite non-stop support from the media, there is still little enthusiasm for Hillary. Small crowds and cancelled events show that.

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  3. "White women LOVE LOVE LOVE that stuff like a big heaping helping of Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, and other dominant male sex-fantasies."

    Tap the brakes there, bucko. This is completely wrong. A tiny number of blue-haired headcases excepted, white women do not fantasize about swarthy Muslims penetrating their national borders (note that both books you mention are about being seduced by upper-class white men). The media works hard to push the lie that white women are hot for minorities, but stats show that actual interracial relationships remain quite rare and are usually confined to the trashiest white women (which other women definitely notice).

    (((Freudian))) nonsense aside, the real reason women waver on Trump is simply that they're more sensitive to social consensus and more susceptible to scare tactics. When the media colludes to push a unanimous anti-Trump message, and when they try to paint him as a lunatic loose cannon, they're appealing directly to female herd instincts.

    The two forces opposing this tendency are 1) married women vote with their husbands, because they can take emotional shelter in their husbands' convictions even if it goes against the media narrative, and 2) a lot of women really hate Hillary, perhaps even worse than men do. Women love to gossip, and Hillary poisonous, shameless personal history is rich fodder for picking apart.

    Great OP as always. Campaigns are long and we all have our low-energy phases, so reminders to cowboy up and keep trolling are helpful.

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  4. As you can tell by the depressive paranoid tone, Whiskey is a hardcore cuckold fetishist. That's the source of his erotica about white women getting off on seeing brown men dominate them and humiliate their menfolk.

    Any future cuck-fic will be deleted in its entirety.

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  5. Ag,
    Personally, I'm not freaking out. I'm just as annoyed as you are at the freak-outs; I have loved ones who do that and come to me to feel better.

    I still like my theory. Back in early June, on the very same night, simultaneous news was breaking that many of Trump's supporters were violently attacked leaving his rally and something about that Judge (I can't even remember it was so trivial to me). You remember the media coverage that night; the coverage of the Judge was much less, but bubbling was going on...

    Because of his honor, I expected Trump to have a ton to say the next day about his supporters being attacked leaving his rally. Rewards offered. Pressure on the authorities. Vows for justice. Vows that this better not ever happen again to his supporters.

    The next day came and none of those things happened. Trump focused on the judge in a personal case of his. He abdicated.

    This is why in every trough you have people seriously, if wrongly, wondering if he wants to lose, get out, whatever.

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  6. Whiskey is a hardcore cuckold fetishist

    Glad you said that. I was about to post "did you masturbate during or after writing your comment?" but reconsidered in deference to your prerogative to police things here.

    PA

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  7. BioCultBeamDelta8/4/16, 8:58 PM

    David Duke for Senate. Thumbs up or thumbs down?

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  8. Trump could get anywhere from a 10-15% point boost easily. All he'd need to do would be to show screencaps of tumblr feminists or #BLM people. He doesn't even need to find especially psychotic or deranged examples, since normies would be outraged.

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  9. Abdication rather than selfishness gets at what I'm trying to describe better: feeling of abandonment.

    Anyway, I've only shared these negative thoughts here, to Steve, privately, and to my husband. I'm fully on board the Trump Train and am hopeful!

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  10. Random Dude on the Internet8/4/16, 11:16 PM

    Admittedly I am getting panicky. Mostly because of my own expectations. I want the left to lose by a huge margin. They need to be thoroughly defeated and humiliated to the point where Trump supporters no longer feel like their job or safety is on the line. That may not be possible if Trump gets 280 electoral votes but if he gets over 350, then for sure it will happen. I want 2016 to be a thorough repudiation of everything the left has been trying to build since 2005 or so, especially social justice.

    One thing to note: after looking around on social media, it is amazing how women who support Trump look versus women who support Clinton. The Trump women look far more attractive and look far more fertile than the Clinton women. The Trump women are the type of women who look like they want to settle down and have 2-3 kids in a quiet suburb; the Clinton women are the terminally dry women who spend their late 30s desperately trying to pretend they are still 24.

    An example (one of many): http://imgur.com/a/rhqpN

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  11. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html

    Our main problem isn't the 1%, it's the many people with the ability to snag a salaried position who have no regard for how the wage class is able to get by. This lower class is seen as rubes who are of so little value that their dignity is irrelevant. How else is the striver set gonna make gains if greater resources are given to the wage class?

    "It so happens that you can determine a huge amount about the economic and social prospects of people in America today by asking one remarkably simple question: how do they get most of their income? Broadly speaking—there are exceptions, which I’ll get to in a moment—it’s from one of four sources: returns on investment, a monthly salary, an hourly wage, or a government welfare check. People who get most of their income from one of those four things have a great many interests in common, so much so that it’s meaningful to speak of the American people as divided into an investment class, a salary class, a wage class, and a welfare class. "

    In the more equitable climate of the 30's-60's, it was the greedy striver who got opprobrium. By the 70's, the Me Gen began lashing out at the moocher set while they aimed for opulence. But in the 70's/80's, there still was at least respect for those who made their living in a sweat.

    Then, the 90's. The Boomers fully bought into the gospel of prosperity. Credit bubbles got inflated and debt soared as the Boomers rushed into buying big houses and new cars as if these trappings were as vital as their precious Millennial kids. The esteem of "honest" work plummeted, with Gen X-ers being blocked from good wage jobs. In fact, it's Gen X-ers and Millennials who've been hopelessly rushed into college and the stock market, with no hope of getting an unpretentious and secure wage job.

    The Boomers are still clueless about the higher-ed bubble (as well as shamefully being the credit card generation), but in other regards they might be our best bet. They're the last generation to experience a climate that afforded dignity to the majority of reliable people. As such, they're more likely to believe in restoring that climate than younger generations accustomed to a era that grinds people to a pulp.

    " In 1966 an American family with one breadwinner working full time at an hourly wage could count on having a home, a car, three square meals a day, and the other ordinary necessities of life, with some left over for the occasional luxury. In 2016, an American family with one breadwinner working full time at an hourly wage is as likely as not to end up living on the street, and a vast number of people who would happily work full time even under those conditions can find only part-time or temporary work when they can find any jobs at all. The catastrophic impoverishment and immiseration of the American wage class is one of the most massive political facts of our time—and it’s also one of the most unmentionable.

    The destruction of the wage class was largely accomplished by way of two major shifts in American economic life. The first was the dismantling of the American industrial economy and its replacement by Third World sweatshops; the second was mass immigration from Third World countries. Both of these measures are ways of driving down wages—not, please note, salaries, returns on investment, or welfare payments—by slashing the number of wage-paying jobs, on the one hand, while boosting the number of people competing for them on the other."

    The salary class, has for decades avoided noblesse oblige under the guise of "progress". "Who am I to tell Mohammed that he can't set his sights on the American dream?" As Sailer points out, the liberal sophisticate set has concocted this right for every person on the planet to move to America.

    The 1% class may wield the biggest hammer, but it's the cooperation of the salaried class that made the hammer in the first place.

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  12. A lot of the beserker Trump haters, I feel, are on some primal level very insecure and guilty over the fact that a Big Man has intruded into the picture and is not so gently reminding them of their duty of noblesse oblige.

    The strivers made a lot of hay over the culture wars. But that never disrupted their quest for status. Hell, for Gen X-ers in particular it's what their status was founded on. Shame on Gen X-ers who don't look in the mirror. The depressing reality is that X-ers are just as prone to status seeking and angst as the Boomers. It's just that X-ers derive status more from lifestyle and ethos, whereas with Boomers it's more about owning a ridiculously big-ass house for 1 or 2 kids.

    Trump is saying fuck that to all of it. Whether were talking about Boomer or Gen X style striving. We've got to start thinking about other people besides ourselves. We can't expect alienated and entitled blacks to sit their ass down right now. But we ought to be getting more enthusiasm from whites if they can get their spines back.

    For what it's worth, the Trump beserkers are always dwelling on Trump. They never say anything good about Hillary. Well, you do get that from some true believer partisans and media hacks, but the majority of ordinary/non-black Americans scorn Hillary right now. I don't expect too many snobby liberals to pull the lever for Trump, at best they stay home or waste their vote on a 3rd party.

    It's not just snobs or Millennials right now who are doubting both Hillary and Trump. We're also seeing some "conservative" cowards/paranoids urging people to vote Johnson. Yeah right. Anyone in their right mind, anyone with courage, should be able to discern Trump's role as a crusader for populism. Encouraging people to blow their vote on the nerdy and autistic libertarian circus is a joke. Stopping Hillary and the striving climate is essential and the best way to do that is to vote Trump.

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  13. BioCultBeamDelta8/5/16, 3:26 AM

    So when are Americans going to put a stop to this insanity?

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/04/exclusive-5-year-old-victims-father-saw-video-of-twin-falls-refugee-rape/

    How many more five year olds need to be pissed in their mouths by a member of the religion of peace before Americans stop fearing the word "racist?"

    Reason #153873 why they ALL have to go back.

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  14. "They need to be thoroughly defeated and humiliated to the point where Trump supporters no longer feel like their job or safety is on the line. That may not be possible if Trump gets 280 electoral votes but if he gets over 350, then for sure it will happen."

    That won't be a function of national popular vote -- rather, how broadly distributed his votes are.

    In 1980, Reagan got 50.7% of the popular vote -- but it was distributed across 44 states, for 489 electoral votes.

    Trump's message resonates anywhere that isn't packed with Establishment parasites or other self-centered airheads. This rules out VA, DC, MD, and CO. NM is ruled out because of the non-white vote.

    Ultra-liberal nice-guy states also ruled out: MN, probably WI, VT, and MA.

    IL ruled out for corruption in Chicago fixing the election, plus non-white vote.

    Other than those, the states are his for the taking, if he devotes the time energy and money.

    Although it would be costly, he could saturate every media market in CA, plus hold rallies and send surrogates around, along with registering the 45% of Californians who can vote but do not. That's 55 electoral votes, and the election is over -- not just numerically, but symbolically.

    Don't worry so much about the popular vote, but how uniformly spread it is over the 50 states, rather than concentrated only in the sparsely populated "red states".

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  15. Fascinating news from California: Crooked Hillary already spending millions on TV ads!

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/08/04/clinton-media-polling-cnn-now-shes-so-far-ahead-theres-no-need-for-an-election/comment-page-3/#comment-2794224

    Reports are from SoCal, but could include other areas too. Multiple networks, from morning through primetime.

    Between the open rebellion from the CA delegation at the Dem Convention, and Trump's soaring popularity in the Far West (Reuters), it's no surprise that the Establishment has already been reduced to massive propaganda in the bluest of states!

    Anyone from CA, or who knows anyone from CA, are there Hillary ads in your area? Watch mainstream TV and report back.

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  16. Just searched Twitter and found people mentioning her CA ads back through July (when Trump was taking off nationally). She wasted no time after winning the primary there, as Trump's support began soaring on the West Coast.

    Found one from late July mentioning "several weeks" of Hillary ads in the Bay Area specifically, not just GOP-friendly Orange County.

    Oregon ads mentioned a few days ago.

    Washington state ads mentioned today.

    New York ads mentioned back through July 5.

    Michigan ads, late July.

    Christ, even Minnesota ads mentioned mid-July.

    When Trump's number recover, the media and Establishment are going to freak out at how well he'll be doing in these supposedly safe states.

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  17. Bay Area here. Can confirm Clinton ad blitz on seemingly all channels. Been going on at least a month. I was shocked at first because why the hell would she advertise here. I even thought it was a Trump PAC at first because even when Hillary tries to be appealing she makes people's skin crawl.

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  18. Feryl,
    What you say about salaried class might be true for doctors and lawyers, but not engineers and programmers.

    We are being slowly proletarianized by cheap H1B scab labor and off-shoring. No one I know stays at a job longer than 2-3 years, often with long periods in between of saying their a 'consultant' (i.e. un-or underemployed).

    And I'm in DC, a relatively easy market with all the govt-contrator scams around (that's another post).

    Most of the jobs on offer are from Indian scams that interview you just to check the 'considered US citizens first' box, with no intentnion of hiring anyone but H1b scabs. MOst jobs have also been convereted to hourly 'contractor' roles rather than salaried employee ones, often with no benefits.

    Most IT people I know don't vote.

    I had this friend who's a teacher going on and on about dumb racist pro-trump morons. I asked him to consider how long it will be till they fit classrooms with video screens , and some slave in Banaglore 'teaches' the class instead..let's see how superior and NON-RACIST you feel then..


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  19. Tell that teacher that universities have no cap on H1B visas -- all those foreigners flooding in make academic jobs scarce for Americans, lower their incomes, and worsen their working conditions.

    That ripples down to grad students as well -- if some rich Chinese wants to study here, he's got family money to pay w/o getting any kind of grant. That means American applicants have to be willing to not pay -- i.e., take on massive debt if their families aren't rich.

    Fortunately, the fields most affected by this are the least shitlib -- STEM. Shitlibs face little foreign competition in English lit departments because of the language barrier. So it wouldn't be too hard to stage a revolt in academia against immigration.

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  20. STEM Grad students are funded bro.

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  21. Didn't say they weren't -- and they too are harmed by immigrants taking up spots. If Asian cram school types didn't come here, the American grad student would get a higher wage for their grunt work, better conditions, wider selection of places to go, and more / better opportunities once they graduated.

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  22. "Feryl,
    What you say about salaried class might be true for doctors and lawyers, but not engineers and programmers.

    We are being slowly proletarianized by cheap H1B scab labor and off-shoring. No one I know stays at a job longer than 2-3 years, often with long periods in between of saying their a 'consultant' (i.e. un-or underemployed)."

    As a matter of fact, I almost brought up this kind of thing in my original post. The current decadent Dickensian environment is indeed terrible for many groups of people, not just manual laborers. Still, whose got the unions who are still worth a fuck? Cops, Teachers, athletes, etc. are not lunch pail by the hour professions. Libs jerk off over teachers, conservatives glorify cops, etc. But concern for lunch pail dudes has completely evaporated since the late 80's/early 90's.

    The labor movement's death over the last 30-40 years is flippantly treated like some sort of non-event/natural progression
    on our way to a neo-liberal paradise. We've seen so much ink and air time given to the labor issues of a small handful of symbolically/politically important jobs (like teachers and cops) or high status jobs (actors and athletes). But the low-middle class workforce in other professions might as well be serfs fit for exploitation by managers and CEOs seeking greater fortunes.

    Cops and firefighters bankrupted California cities while lower class whites found themselves being priced out of much of the state. Some areas remained cheaper, but nobody in their right mind wants to live in them due to the presence of toxic brown immigrants.

    Per Sailer:
    " Diversity makes public affairs ripe for exploitation by highly unified groups, such as the prison guards' union and local firemen. Lewis reported on how Vallejo’s fire department is an island of cohesion in a sea of anomie.

    Moreover, because the vibrant residents of Vallejo tend to set their houses on fire more frequently than the duller residents of less diverse Northern Californian communities, the Vallejo FD attracted some of the most gung-ho firefighters from all over the region.

    Not surprisingly, the Vallejo fire department—a rare institution in Vallejo with a high degree of what Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam calls “social capital,” or espirit de corps among its employees—managed to outmaneuver the divided and listless citizenry in grabbing a slice of the pie bigger than could be afforded by the populace’s mediocre ability to generate wealth."

    It's a disturbingly telling case of what happens when diversity, rootlessness, feckless mega elites (like politicians, lawyers, agribusiness CEOs) and arrogant 2nd/3rd tier elites (civil unrest managers like cops/firefighters/prison guards) intersect. The mega elites swamp California with a brown locust plague, refuse to do anything to discipline or assimilate them (or just deport them if they don't cooperate), all hell breaks loose, and a brave/gifted (and relatively white) set of people demands to be paid well for dealing with the onslaught.

    While we pay attention to education and public safety, there's little to no regard for the dignity, security, stability, and pride that is possible when we start to actually build stuff again. And we pay and protect people reasonably well for doing these things. We've got to start focusing more on this. Trump should constantly be shaming America for how our priorities got mangled. Or rather, he does do a lot of this but he needs to do it well. The language matters; talk a lot about building and making stuff. This is positive, inspiring. The PC ninnies act like building a wall sounds monstrous. Not really, when you think about how little America has built in the last 30-40 years.

    If Trump really was batshit crazy, he'd be talking about a Canadian wall. But he doesn't, because Canada isn't a parasite. We don't need Mexican mediocrity.

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  23. Feryl:The Boomers are still clueless about the higher-ed bubble

    The real major expansion of higher education pretty much timed exactly with the Baby Boom generation, which probably gave Boomers a lot more their faith in it.

    Their education is a big part of what gave them a passport into control, being a large generation, with higher educational qualifications than the Silents or GIs.

    It's also a major part of what made them a very distinct generation from what came before (along with the cycle of violence and crime that agnostic's discussed here), much more oriented towards a post college worldview, and much more salient mass student movements and their waffling, theoretical, overeducated student politics (which matured into The Culture War as they became the dominant generation).

    % of degree holders (bachelor's / graduate) and high school grads isn't really different among later generations, so it's not a passport the same way for them to use to skip past their elders, the cost is higher and so they're a bit more disenchanted by the whole thing. Plus there is apparently more of a tendency to college drop out - same debt, no qualification.

    The Silents didn't have much college, but tended to have a much higher high school graduation rate than those who came before them, so the Baby Boomers were rolling in on a continuous expansion of schooling since at least the GIs. For recent generations (X and Millennial), in the larger scheme, education increases have pretty much stalled out, at the same time as education costs have risen, and housing costs of living have sharply risen because of the policies the Silents and Boomers have put in place (including falling numbers of male skilled manual builders, meaning Mexicans in the US and in Europe East Europeans falling into the breach, and actually often being able to charge surprisingly high fees).

    This is all connected as well with the deliberate media policies to indoctrinate X and Millennials much more into education as a signal of moral worth, and shaming natives for being less education focused and more school skeptical than Asian migrants, to conceal falling returns in real terms and continue to market higher education on, in the absence of strong material benefits.

    agnostic: little foreign competition in English lit departments because of the language barrier

    At the same time I could see English depts face more competition, from 2nd gen migrants (children of migrants), because migrants have an advantage in using PC to shift away from the classical canon, and away from language skills towards diversity concerns (muh Toni Morrison), while IQ has less weight in English lit. compared to soft skills which are more evenly distributed across nations.

    I don't know about whether tech workers would benefit from restrictions of international migration. It seems like you'd just get more offshoring, given how mobile the product is. It's also not like with most jobs, where the US workers often have lower productivity:cost ratio, because the work is so rudimentary and the technological helpers are so well developed.

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  24. ...and what a shock, the momentum has turned again, and now Reuters has the candidates back in the margin of error, with the trend strongly in Trump's favor:

    http://polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM651Y15_DS_13/filters/LIKELY:1/type/smallest/dates/20160710-20160804/collapsed/true/spotlight/1

    I'm sure there'll be fluctuations going forward as well, but the media really threw the kitchen sink at Trump in the last week or so and all the managed was a very small and very temporary dip. I'm betting these media freakouts have sharply diminishing returns, too.

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  25. I hope the news channels are getting killed in the ratings after running 24/7 Khan and other propaganda.

    Viewers can tell when there's actual news to report, analyze, and comment on -- and when there's just a bunch of gossip, rumor, lies, and shilling.

    I've kept the news channels off for the past week, probably the next week too. Trump rallies stream on RSBN anyway.

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