Opinion of educated Republicans?

[jojoju1998]

I actually know a lot of them.

Dentists, Engineers, Lawyers.

They're very um... classist.

[jojoju1998]

@Vosem (deleting wall of text)

Before you start going on too much about everyone's favorite model minorities of Asians, you better understand that that is EXTREMELY depending on which Asian American subset you are talking about. Some groups like Japanese Americans who've been here for in cases over a century and a half, and many of immigrated as engineer or other professional positions, non-shockingly enough do rather well. And yes there are many examples of Vietnamese who have done well, but they had a very strong social safety net within the community that helped finance purchases of small businesses, etc. Not to mention substantial support from the US government helping them to relocate and get established.

But then you have other subsets such as cambodians and Hmong who have every bit as much the problem of ghettoization, poverty, gang affiliation among youth, Etc as African Americans or Native Americans. Hell, even in New York City the long established Chinese community has among the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in the city. And no, just because some of them are paid off under the table in Chinatown doesn't make any different from Hispanics and indeed many white ethnics immigrants like the Russians and the polish who are similarly so paid.

Again, please go right ahead patting yourself on the back for being so smart to figure out that racism's effect on the economy is a combination of negligible and ancient history, and is really just used by progressives to Gin up minority votes. Lord knows blacks and other minorities can't figure out on their own that they're being screwed by the economy over racism.

As a Asian Vietnamese American, I will stay silent on this. I have a lot of opinions on this, but for the sake of this thread....

[jojoju1998]

in the 2020s our understanding of the effects of aerosol emissions has shifted radically

With COVID-19 lockdowns and increased demand for remote working reducing the number of people in physical offices mingling with others, putting on deodorant and perfume got knocked out of many people's morning rituals. What's the point in smelling fancy if nobody else, not even Joe Biden, can smell you?

No, this has to do with emissions from container ships. To quote the relevant bit of the abstract:

Here we show that even when no ship tracks are visible in satellite images, aerosol emissions change cloud properties substantially. We develop a new method to quantify the effect of shipping on all clouds, showing a cloud droplet number increase and a more positive liquid water response when there are no visible tracks. We directly detect shipping-induced cloud property changes in the trade cumulus regions of the Atlantic, which are known to display almost no visible tracks. Our results indicate that previous studies of ship tracks were suffering from selection biases by focusing only on visible tracks from satellite imagery. The strong liquid water path response we find translates to a larger aerosol cooling effect on the climate, potentially masking a higher climate sensitivity than observed temperature trends would otherwise suggest.

Sulfate emissions from shipping are hypothesized here to have a net cooling effect on Earth's climate, not noticed earlier because of problems with measuring how aerosols interact with cloud cover, which combined with the observed warming both suggests greater sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions but also greater 'sensitivity' to any kind of emission generally, and further suggests (...an opinion I've had for a number of years) that shifting the climate in any particular direction would probably be easier for a motivated actor -- here thinking of rogue states or infrastructure decabillionaires -- than we think. For this reason a great deal of climate policy is probably a silly venture, because in a few decades it will be possible for virtually any government, many NGOs, and many private companies to radically alter Earth's climate if they feel like it. (That said, replacing nonrenewables with renewables is definitely good. But people worrying about their personal carbon footprint are demonstrating a poor understanding of the numbers and science involved.)

Small world. My version of capitalism, as an actual small businessman who does very well thank you, is one that has a robust social safety net, Universal Health Care, acknowledgment of institutional racism and classisms impact on society and economic well-being - something you have repeatedly demonstrated to be completely ignorant of - and an understanding that strong middle class supported by such things as rapidly increasing wages for the working class and unionism, will help me and indeed the entire economy at Large in the medium run let alone the long run.

Your version of capitalism seems to be basically harvesting the poor and homeless for organ donations and Soylent green, a rather proudly amoral "I got mine so eff you" outlook, and masturbating over Atlas Shrugged.

I'll take my version any day of the week, and probably call myself a better capitalist than you.

Oh by the way, according to very conservative heritage foundation, the top ten countries they rank as having the most economic freedom, all have free healthcare, free higher education, hmm...

[jojoju1998]

How do these people have different needs? (To quote a cliche/let someone else do my thinking for me, "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?")

.... You are seriously asking how rich and poor people have different needs?

Rich people never worry about being able to afford rent. Rich people never need to worry about what will happen if they lose their job. Rich people never need to worry about an unexpected medical bill. Rich people never need to worry about whether or not their kid will be able to have a future. Rich people never need to worry about their retirement.

(Rich people obviously do still need to worry about their kids having a future; heredity isn't that strong.)

This doesn't answer my question. You're mostly listing priorities that the rich and poor have in common, like housing and healthcare. Why should we be treating them differently, and trying to hurt one to help the other? (Even ignoring that history shows that this doesn't work, or that these are literally the same people at different points in their lives.) You can say that poor people deserve it more than rich people, but at that point it's hard to say you aren't being the 'classist' one -- which you decried.

How is giving someone extra shots a level playing field? Your problem here seems to be that level playing fields do not result in draws. (And indeed, 'race and gender' correlate strongly with/provide advantages: in virtually any sport -- I believe with the curious exception of archery -- men perform much stronger than women. Professional athletes in a variety of US sports are disproportionately African-American, and for richly deserved reasons. And, were we to have a level playing field, the top universities at the US would have overwhelmingly Asian-American student bodies, and most or all prestigious white-collar professions would be staffed by many more Asian-Americans than they are now.)

If you believe in the principles of meritocracy and that the races are inherently equal, then you must recognize that racial achievement gaps can only be explained by systemic discrimination and bias in the hiring/admissions process. Affirmative action seeks to close those gaps.

I don't think it is remotely true that achievement gaps can only be explained by systemic discrimination. (Frankly, I think this explanation is a totally absurd and non-serious one which can safely be laughed out of the room, and which was invented to keep certain ethnicities, like Asian-Americans, down. Suggesting a secret phenomenon that no one can see, but that everybody in society should be fighting, is similar to alleging witchcraft, and broadly it is a quite normal phenomenon that minorities that society discriminates against are wealthier and have more educational success -- consider Jews in Weimar Germany, or Armenians in pre-WW1 Turkey, or Indians in colonial central Africa, or for that matter Asian-Americans today.) College admissions boards and human resources directors are strongly incentivized to promote underrepresented minorities, who (because they get a boost and are held to a lower standard) virtually always have lower test scores in American universities and professional schools. The lower test scores precede contact with admissions/hiring, and need explanation.

I think there is substantial evidence that cultural factors play a large role (as you can sometimes see in individuals converting religions, or otherwise wholly remaking their lives, and even sometimes in entire communities) for many people. Vox notes the existence of a gap in learning capability -- in their conclusion the authors sort of suggest that studying why such a difference exists is inappropriate because it could be used to strengthen prejudices, but in general we can say that the scientific consensus in psychology since the 1990s has been that personality traits are caused by a mixture of heredity and non-shared environment.

In any case, even if achievement gaps were wholly caused by injustice (though this is really, really not the case), wouldn't it still make more sense to let the highest-achieving people become surgeons and lawyers and financiers and whatever, instead of people who would do worse jobs and are qualified only because of suffering? Don't poor people also benefit if society hires the best surgeons (and stock-pickers and office managers and whatever), and suffer if people are less good at their jobs?

What's wrong with judging someone by the content of their character?

Oh, nothing. The issue here is that I suspect there are traits (like a sincere love for capitalism, the only thing keeping us all fed and warm) that I view strongly positively and you view at least somewhat negatively, such that we could see the same person, judge them by the true content of their character, and reach different conclusions. See, I like these characters.

Well no duh, it turns out that people with fundamentally incompatible worldviews tend to view people differently. Who could have thought?

You asked the question!

American standardized tests are very subpar. They're not the same as the Swiss Matura, or the UK GSCE.

[jojoju1998]

Interestingly, college educated evangelicals are no less Republican than non-college educated evangelicals.  Though, there are definitely differences in primary voting habits between the two (I'd actually argue that the college educated group is more ideological).

How many Evangelical Democrats are there, period?

There's actually more than you think.

[jojoju1998]

How many Evangelical Democrats are there, period?

About 28% of Evangelical voters are affiliated with Democrats (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/evangelical-protestant/party-affiliation/).

Many of them are Black voters. However, you do have a few White Evangelical Democrats. Rep. Hillary Scholten identifies as an Evangelical.

Scholten is a member of the Christian Reformed Church of America. It should not be “ conflated “ in the grand scheme of Evangelical world with the Southern Baptists variety which is the most dominant. Although very conservative theologically, it’s not as combative as the latter. And even promoted other social position which could be considered to be left leaning.

[jojoju1998]

@Vosem (deleting wall of text)

Before you start going on too much about everyone's favorite model minorities of Asians, you better understand that that is EXTREMELY depending on which Asian American subset you are talking about. Some groups like Japanese Americans who've been here for in cases over a century and a half, and many of immigrated as engineer or other professional positions, non-shockingly enough do rather well. And yes there are many examples of Vietnamese who have done well, but they had a very strong social safety net within the community that helped finance purchases of small businesses, etc. Not to mention substantial support from the US government helping them to relocate and get established.

But then you have other subsets such as cambodians and Hmong who have every bit as much the problem of ghettoization, poverty, gang affiliation among youth, Etc as African Americans or Native Americans. Hell, even in New York City the long established Chinese community has among the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in the city. And no, just because some of them are paid off under the table in Chinatown doesn't make any different from Hispanics and indeed many white ethnics immigrants like the Russians and the polish who are similarly so paid.

Again, please go right ahead patting yourself on the back for being so smart to figure out that racism's effect on the economy is a combination of negligible and ancient history, and is really just used by progressives to Gin up minority votes. Lord knows blacks and other minorities can't figure out on their own that they're being screwed by the economy over racism.

As a Asian Vietnamese American, I will stay silent on this. I have a lot of opinions on this, but for the sake of this thread....

I'd genuinely like your observations here.  I'll hasten to note there are notable economic differences within the Vietnamese community.

Fine.

Asian American culture as a whole is highly communal. We do everything together. Got to any Vietnamese Church; catholic or Christian, and you will see a huge lay/community involvement. This sprinkles down as you noted to virtually a separate social welfare net. That being said; this communal mindset is also very stressful. Kids are forced to study hard; even to the point of stress, because they represent basically the whole community. ( and the Confucian culture doesn't help with that.).

Many Asian immigrant groups also do not trust outsiders. This would explain the high level of non english speaks you mention. Many Asian groups are far less assimilated than one might think.

[jojoju1998]

Ive said this before and I’ll say it again and this will be all I say.

A lot of people on this sight confuse the political/social definition of evangelical in America with the ecumenical definition of evangelical

Well the Evangelical Family Tree is filled with many denominations.... some of which are very.... politically active.

[jojoju1998]

Evangelism is an inherently liberal branch. It just happens American GOP communists have infiltrated the church, but luckily the churches seem to be fighting back these days.

You're not wrong.