Hacker News Reader

Comment by goodSteveramos | Hacker News Reader

I have never heard a republican say something positive about white people. Can you give me an example? For the amount of dog whistling the GOP has done over the years the complete dearth of any explicit pandering to white Americans is actually shocking and deserving of a proper explanation.

Great explanation. Very proper. Much explanation. Thanks for the example /s

Arguments you cant argue against are not a “dishonest script” what does that even mean? Just give an example of what you say Republicans do a good job of.

View on HN

You are being dishonest because examples of the GOP pandering to white voters are well-documented and easily accessible. Either you never looked, in which case arguing at all is dishonest since you don't know what you're talking about, or you looked and ignored the mountain of evidence denying your view. The "script" part is likely about you shifting the goalposts. Why doesn't dog-whistling count as explicit pandering to white Americans? That isn't to say the GOP are always subtle, either. All in all, it seems pretty clear you're sealioning.

For the benefit of other readers though, I'll bite.

For instance, former congressman for Iowa Steve King tweeting about slavery [0] is pretty explicit. How about the slightly more abstruse but still pretty glaring white supremacist dog whistle [1] in response to a random Dutch guy complaining about muslims. He was in congress 2003-2021.

Of course Great Replacement rhetoric is also pushed pretty openly to rally white voters, with Tucker Carlson saying things like "demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions", and congresswoman for New York Elise Stefanik running ads saying "[Democrats'] plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington".

Do you accept these examples or do you need the GOP leadership to issue a letter signed by all party members stating they like white people?

[0] https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/1612505990305308672?s... [1] https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/1614259933469462528?s...

> Why doesn't dog-whistling count as explicit pandering to white Americans?

Because why do they have to dog whistle about it? Why do they have to resort to subtlety at all?

It's forbidden from public discourse to such an extent that can only be found between the lines, hidden in vague allusions, or more likely, asserted as baseless accusations slandering conservative politicians, while the GOP explicitly tries everything it can to promote their non-white figures.

If you read the examples I gave above, they're not vague. Dog-whistles are more for plausible deniability than subtlety, and it's because (shocker) white supremacy is frowned upon. If you think liking white people requires openly advocating white supremacy, and anything else is an implicit statement that you don't like white people, then that really says more about you than anything else.

They try to promote their non-white figures because their agenda and campaigning for the most part is so overwhelmingly targeted toward white voters that they have horrible reach into other demographics.

This is like the Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter debacle. Minorities are brought into the spotlight because there are systems and large groups of people actively working against them. Meanwhile, you don't need to "promote" whiteness, because that's seen as the default in America.

> Dog-whistles are more for plausible deniability

But why? If this is really the majority sentiment, why on earth leave any room for plausible deniability?

> their agenda and campaigning for the most part is so overwhelmingly targeted toward white voters that they have horrible reach into other demographics.

Not really, though. Voting levels are low enough that they could conceivably focus their energies simply on getting more non-voting whites to vote.

> But why? If this is really the majority sentiment, why on earth leave any room for plausible deniability?

If you read the comment you're replying to, it answers that question immediately.

> Not really, though. Voting levels are low enough that they could conceivably focus their energies simply on getting more non-voting whites to vote.

They could, but their agenda fits white people better, for reasons that are evident to anyone with critical thinking skills. Hint: think about the dog-whistling some more.

Culture is not required to take subterfuge in dog whistles. Only counterculture is.

Culture is what's uncontroversially and fearlessly blasted on front pages, and on mainstream TV.

> They could, but their agenda fits white people better, for reasons that are evident to anyone with critical thinking skills.

Evidently the millions of non-white Republicans, and the millions of white Democrats, all lack these critical thinking skills, then.

> Culture is not required to take subterfuge in dog whistles. Only counterculture is.

> Culture is what's uncontroversially and fearlessly blasted on front pages, and on mainstream TV.

My comments on dog-whistling were specifically targeted toward the one commenter talking about how politicians don't seem to care about white people.

If you want to go back to the broader discussion, on culture, then yes I agree. And what is blasted on front pages and mainstream TV is overwhelmingly white, with tiny pockets dedicated to other groups. To say that "whiteness" is a counterculture is absurd.

As an aside:

> the millions of white Democrats

The Democrat agenda also fits white people better than non-white people, though they make more effort than Republicans to acknowledge minorities.

As for why non-white Republicans vote that way, maybe they miss the dog-whistles, or maybe they think the racism of the party isn't directed at them (e.g., since they're "one of the good ones") or that it's outweighed by other factors (i.e., they hate taxes), or maybe they think the Republicans are the better of two evils. Not really relevant, since they aren't in this discussion. Do you have the critical thinking skills?

No, I’m not engaging with the dishonest script you’re trying to run me through, and looking at your short post history it’s obvious what you’re trying to do. Have a nice day.

A much more gracious way of answering this might have been "no, I can't, because I was wrong".

lasftr: those are examples of dog whistles. They dont use the word “white” anywhere. The GOP has dog whistled for decades and the whole point of a dog whistle is that it DOESN’T explicitly pander to white people. Dog whistles are IMPLICIT by definition. I hope that clears up what I was saying. Thanks for trying to provide an answer my question: “Why do you think politicians never explicitly pander to white people?“

Edit: Not needing to do something is not a reason for not doing it. Do you have a hypothesis for why they wouldn't explicitly pander? It seems you adamantly refuse to address this monumental question.

Ok fine, here's my answer then: they don't need to, because their voters know the GOP doesn't work against white people. I suspect it's different from your answer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com