The Most Active Threads Over the Past Two Days

I didn't write a blog post yesterday because I was devoting myself to helping with Thanksgiving preparations. Moreover, Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the slowest days of the year on DCUM. Today I will discuss the most active threads of the past two days, the most active of which was titled, "Trump will rollback student loan forgiveness" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to a story on politico.com discussing plans by the incoming administration of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump to roll back initiatives by President Joe Biden to forgive student loans. Republicans have consistently opposed student loan forgiveness, and the Biden administration was marked by a pattern of forgiveness efforts being implemented by Biden which were then rejected or stalled by the courts. The result is a number of efforts at various stages, many in limbo. Unrolling the various initiatives will be a complicated process, but one that Trump appears to be prioritizing. Student loan forgiveness is, in many ways, the perfect topic to illustrate the reality of today's politics. People have incredibly strong feelings about it, but most lack the most basic understanding of the details. The issue lends itself to demagoguery, which means that it is practically tailor-made for Republicans. To hear Republicans tell it, student loan forgiveness is a handout to privileged individuals who unnecessarily took out loans in order to pursue worthless liberal arts degrees that left them unemployable, and who now want the poor working people of America to pay for them. Reality is more complicated. As college degrees became increasingly essential, the cost of college increased. Easily obtainable loans were practically shoved into students' pockets, often with promises that repayment would be a breeze. What ended up happening, however, is that millions of graduates were chained to never-ending college debt. Most of those whose loans Biden wanted to forgive had already paid more than they originally borrowed and still have more to pay. Significant college debt has led to putting off purchasing homes, getting married, or starting a family. There is a strong argument that loan forgiveness has important economic and social benefits that reach far beyond those whose loans are forgiven. Nevertheless, MAGAs thrive on resentment, and the idea that the working class was being forced to pay the loans of freeloading college students was a powerful motivator of resentment. Making things worse was a generational divide. Older Americans have generally not understood the massive increases in college costs. Those who decades ago paid for their college tuition with a summer job don't understand why today's students can't do the same. A summer job wouldn't even pay for the meal plan at many universities these days. The bottom line is that student loan forgiveness makes sense when the details are understood. But in the lack of such understanding, it is easy to caricature. In the current climate in which Republicans are eager for revenge, the opportunity to stick it to liberals is too appealing to miss.

The next most active thread over the past two days was also posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Why does everyone think Kamala was such a bad candidate?", the original poster — who says that she voted for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump — points out that Vice President Kamala Harris "always comes across as intelligent, articulate, and very well-informed on the issues" and that Harris put "Trump to shame" in their debate. Therefore, she wonders why so many believe that she was a bad candidate. The first thing that I am compelled to do is point out how unusual and welcome it is to see a Republican on DCUM demonstrating such magnanimity to a political rival. Kudos to the original poster. Much more common are attitudes such as that demonstrated by the poster who called Harris the "worst vice president in history" and claimed that she could not speak a complete sentence without the assistance of a teleprompter. In my opinion, Harris was a perfectly fine candidate. As the original poster says, Harris generally had a grasp of the facts and — contrary to the criticism voiced above — was a good speaker. She completely cleaned Trump's clock in the debate. In this case, I don't think the problem was the candidate, but rather the strategy. Centrist Democrats are completely wedded to the idea that the left should be ignored while they reach across the aisle to moderate Republicans. During the Bill Clinton era, this idea was called "triangulation", and it was quite successful for him. However, it hasn't worked since and it seems to be particularly unsuccessful for women candidates. The geniuses behind this strategy are now on media tours busily blaming everyone but themselves, and Harris is catching some crossfire from those efforts. They are casting most of the blame, however, on the left of the party. This is akin to a football coach blaming the marching band for his team's loss. This was a campaign that sent Bill Clinton to Michigan — the state with the largest Arab and Muslim population in the U.S. — to call the West Bank "Judea and Samaria". They sent Richie Torres to the same state to brag about the campaign's refusal to make even minimal compromises to the Arabs and Muslims. Obviously, the campaign had written off Arab-American and Muslim-American voters and was hoping that by kicking them even harder, a greater number of pro-Israel votes could be attracted. The strategy failed, and Harris lost Michigan. Perhaps another strategy would have also failed, and maybe it would have failed by even a larger margin. We will never know. What we do know is that the chosen strategy failed and, therefore, responsibility lies with the architects of the strategy. To the extent that Harris was responsible for that strategy — and it appears she has significant responsibility for it — she is also to blame. Therefore, the issue is not that Harris was a bad candidate, but that she was a bad campaign strategist. Harris may have been given bad advice, but she is the one who chose the advisors. The story being spread these days by those failed advisors is that Harris never had a chance. Obviously, my opinion is worthless, but I strongly disagree. She had a chance, but the campaign simply failed to seize it.

Next was a thread titled, "Any ex-MAGAs willing to share that mindset?" and, like the previous two threads, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster views MAGA as a cult, a notion with which I agree. She describes a friend who was once in a cult and says that former members of that cult were instrumental in getting the friend out. They knew all the things that needed to be said or done. However, the original poster doesn't know any former members of the MAGA cult. She asks if there are any who can post to disclose what changed their mind and for suggestions to help free friends and family members. This thread immediately went down the drain with a self-described voter for Vice President Kamala Harris accusing the original poster of being in a cult. As I have repeatedly written, the most common discussion tactic used by Republicans is "whatabout". If someone points out that Trump cheated on all of his wives, undoubtedly a Republican will respond by saying, "what about Bill Clinton". The responder accusing the original poster of herself being in a cult was not exactly "whatabouting", but she was pretty close. Others, however, were more direct. Posters pointed out that it is MAGAs, not Democrats, who have tattoos of their presidential candidate or who drive up and down highways in convoys displaying their flags. MAGA posters immediately "whatabouted", pointing out that some Democrats have worn keffiyehs to show support for Gazans. It takes a real genius to compare a tattoo to a keffiyeh in the first place. But keffiyehs don't demonstrate support for a candidate or a party, but rather a cause. A cause, for that matter, that the Democratic Party doesn't really support. Another poster claimed that Democrats have engaged in "wholesale destruction of college libraries". Not only has that not happened, even if it did it would have nothing to do with the behavior of MAGA cult members. In fact, it is one indication of the cultish nature of MAGAs that one would rather invent rampant destruction of libraries rather than questioning their movement. I couldn't bring myself to read every post in this thread, but based on what I did read, nobody really understood the assignment. I don't think a single former MAGA cultist responded. The closest response I saw to doing so was a post that contained YouTube videos of individuals who had left the MAGA cult describing their experiences. Instead, most of the discussion was debating about whether or not MAGA is really a cult. The most frequent argument against the idea was that almost half the country would belong to it. The MAGA cult is fairly large, no doubt. But it doesn't come close to comprising half the country. Probably the best argument I saw against MAGA being a cult was by a poster who said the behavior of Trump supporters is not cultish, but rather like that of fans of a sports team. It is true that lots of sports fans get their team's logos tattooed on them. They also drive around with flags. But I am not sure that the suggestion that MAGAs are treating politics like a sport is actually better than their being in a cult.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum, though I am not completely convinced that was the best forum for it. Titled, "In-laws coming for ten days", the original poster is upset about a planned visit by her husband's parents. The original poster explains that the couple is very needy and likely to complain about perceived slights. The original poster's children will be home from college and, if they don't spend enough time with their grandparents, the grandparents will be upset. Moreover, there is some additional background that is affecting the original poster. Her father has passed away and her mother is in a facility and has not been able to visit in years. While the original poster visits her mother, her husband never does, something about which the original poster feels some resentment. Moreover, two years ago the original poster's husband had an affair over the holidays. As such, this time of the year brings up bad memories for the original poster which she tries to overcome by creating good times as a family and couple. That will be harder to do with her in-laws visiting. She wants advice about how to overcome the resentment she is feeling. Posters respond with a variety of ideas concerning how to make the in-laws visit more bearable. Most concentrate on spending as little time with them as possible. One suggestion is to put the responsibility for hosting them on the original poster's husband and letting him entertain and care for them during their stay. Others suggest that the original poster take her kids to visit her mother. Another idea was to claim to be sick with COVID and, therefore, unable to interact with them. Even more extreme was the suggestion to call her in-laws and tell them about their son's affair and the original poster's mother's illness and tell them that they can't be hosted at this time. At least one poster understood the original poster's resentment, but argued that she should try to be pleasant rather than coming off as a "sourpuss" during the visit. This response infuriated some posters who asked why it is always left to the woman to bear the burden in such circumstances. As one poster said sarcastically, "Women should always be gracious and smile when they're being walked over". Many posters argued that regardless of anything else, 10 days was simply too long for the visit. They urged the original poster to get it cut back to only 5 days. Others suggested having the in-laws stay in a hotel. For some posters, this planned visit was a sign that the original poster's husband still did not respect her. His affair had been one indication of a lack of respect and, while he may have made amends for that, his going along with a 10-day visit despite the original poster's opposition was another sign of a lack of respect. Of course, this thread being posted in the relationship forum guaranteed that the original poster would be advised to get a divorce. She did not have to wait long because such a post arrived before the first page of responses was complete.