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We're getting gaslit by these people and, for me anyway, it's not going to work.

Let's face it, unless it's blatant and in your face (such as some of the incidents we've seen this past week), some people will deny that racism or sexism exist so as to not compromise their worldview.

I'm a first generation Canadian, most of my extended family, with some exceptions, moved here from Italy after the Second World War. But I was born here and blend in with the majority. However, I can't tell you how many times, upon hearing my name, people have made jokes asking if I'm "mobbed up".

Some might say 'oh, it's nothing, get over it'. But like it or not, comments like that hurt and by minimizing it what you're really telling me that you just don't care about my feelings. And it's going to get a whole lot worse for all of us before it gets better. If at all.
 
Yes i can, and yes there were some who said that.


no, there weren't. anecdotes aren't evidence, especially not the kind you make up in order to equivocate between two things that are utterly different from one another (like someone else saying that Breitbart and the HuffPo were the same thing -- garbage.)

some of us worried that he'd start an unnecessary war in the middle east, but not a nuclear war. Bush was an establishment candidate. much was made about his incuriosity, simple-mindedness, and laziness. in response, he and the establishment surround him with highly experienced advisors in order to project the appearance of seriousness and accountability. these people may have been deeply conservative, but they were deeply experienced and understood the gravity of their jobs.

Trump doesn't understand policy at all, and thinks he knows more than the generals, probably because he has "the best brain."

as for race, Bush was positively moderate on immigration. he called out Trent Lott's racism.

and, you know, he didn't APPOINT WHITE SUPREMACISTS AND ANTI-SEMITES to top white house positions.

also, Bush didn't sexually assault women.
 
also, Trump voters want an assault on the environment. say goodbye to keeping warming below 2 degrees C.

Here are 11 top environmental priorities for Trump and a GOP Congress
1) Kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan

The GOP is nearly united in its hatred of Obama’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan. There’s only one Republican senator left, Susan Collins of Maine, who has ever defended it. Killing or degrading the CPP will be a top priority.

In 2007’s Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases could, if judged dangerous to human health or welfare, be considered pollutants subject to the Clean Air Act. Shortly thereafter, EPA’s scientists judged them dangerous to both.

That means EPA must, by law, act to reduce greenhouse gases. The Obama administration followed through on this by enacting fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks (see below). It also set up the Clean Power Plan, which would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

The simplest way for the GOP to destroy the CPP would be to take away the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases at all. It’s a simple bill: “The Clean Air Act shall not apply to greenhouse gases.” The CPP would be nuked, and no president could ever again try to do what Obama did. (The House passed just such a bill in 2011.)

If Senate Democrats can filibuster this measure — and this is likely to be a central fight — then the Trump administration would have to resort to other executive branch strategies to weaken the rule. It could refuse to defend it in court. It could deny EPA the funds necessary to enforce it. It could start another round of rulemaking to substantially weaken it. Those moves would inevitably prompt lawsuits, but those lawsuits would drag on for years and years.

One way or another, the CPP is in the crosshairs.

2) Withdraw from the Paris climate agreement

Back in 2015, the world’s countries got together in Paris and agreed to a landmark climate deal. Every country would voluntarily pledge to restrain its greenhouse gas emissions and meet regularly at the United Nations to ratchet up ambitions over time — all in the hopes of keeping global warming below the “dangerous” level of 2°C.

Now Trump plans to pull the United States out of the deal. His advisers are debating precisely how to do this, but there’s little stopping them. Trump can refuse to follow through on Obama’s pledge of cutting emissions 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. He can refuse to attend UN meetings, or refuse to chip in promised funds to help poor countries decarbonize.

The real question is how other countries will react. For now, the Chinese government is warning Trump not to blow up the deal and insisting that China will lead global efforts to curtail emissions in America’s absence. Still, there’s a real risk that other countries could lose interest in climate policy if the world’s wealthiest superpower bows out. David Victor, an expert on global climate policy at University of California, San Diego, explains how here.

Even under Paris, the world was struggling to stay below the 2°C global warming mark and had little margin for error. Now, with Trump’s recalcitrance, that goal has likely drifted out of reach.

3) Dismantle US environmental rules around coal power

Coal has always been the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive of fuels. Over the past eight years, Obama’s EPA has slowly ratcheted up environmental restrictions on air and water pollution from coal plants and mining activities.

Trump plans to ratchet them back down. Here’s his website: “We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium ... and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration.”

Trump’s vow to “end the war on coal” will start by killing the Clean Power Plan. But his administration has also vowed to scale back an EPA rule to limit ground-level ozone pollution, as well as an Interior Department rule to protect streams from coal-mining waste. As Freeman explains, it will be hard for Trump to rescind regulations that are already finalized without Congress, but he can certainly bog down implementation.

As for coal mining: About 40 percent of US coal supply comes from public land. For years, the federal government has leased that land to coal companies for below market value, with almost no competitive bidding. It amounts to a huge subsidy to coal companies. In January, the Obama administration implemented an immediate moratorium on new coal leases, as the program was examined to make sure it was fair to taxpayers and ecologically sensitive. Trump would end that moratorium.

The consultancy group Wood Mackenzie has a long list of other ideas Trump might pursue to aid the coal industry. Note that many of these steps would have limited impact: Coal plants have already made costly investments to curb mercury pollution, so scaling back that Obama rule wouldn’t do much. And Trump won’t save the coal industry from its biggest threat: the flood of cheap shale gas from fracking. There’s also little chance that mining jobs will make a major comeback, since automation has been the biggest driver of job losses there.

Coal production, consumption, and employment are all headed down, and likely to keep heading down regardless of what Trump does.

Still, Trump’s moves will, at the margins, make the coal industry more profitable. Note that Peabody Coal, the world’s largest coal company, saw its share price soar after Trump’s election.

4) Weaken fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks

The Clean Power Plan isn’t Obama’s only big climate policy. Ever since 2010, the Obama administration has been ratcheting up fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks in an effort to cut carbon emissions and reduce US oil dependence. These CAFE standards are set to rise from their current 35 miles per gallon to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

But those numbers aren’t set in stone. The CAFE rules come up for a scheduled review in 2018. Automakers are now lobbying for Trump to relax the standards, purportedly because sales of fuel-efficient vehicles have been sluggish due to low gasoline prices. While Trump hasn’t commented on this, he has plenty of leeway to weaken these rules.

The one twist here is that due to a longstanding quirk of the Clean Air Act, California can threaten to create its own stricter vehicle standards if it's not happy with what the federal government is doing (and other states can join in). Automakers loathe the idea of multiple sets of vehicle standards around the country, which may prevent Trump from weakening the rules too much.

Meanwhile, some Republicans in Congress have been talking about getting rid of fuel economy standards altogether — through legislation. “You can make a good intellectual case to repeal CAFE and let the market handle it,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) at a House Energy Committee hearing in September. “If Mr. Trump is president … we’ll be back.”

5) Open up new public lands to oil and gas drilling

America has about 279 million acres of public land and waters with potential oil and gas. The government allows companies to drill on a little under half that acreage. But both Congress and the Obama administration have put the rest off limits over the years, often to protect fragile ecosystems or endangered species.

Trump has promised to open it all up. He often touts a study looking at the impact of allowing drilling on all federal lands currently off limits. Some of that Trump could do through executive actions, like lifting the Obama-era restrictions around oil drilling in Alaska or the Arctic Ocean or even parts of the Atlantic Coast. Opening up other regions, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, would require Congress.

Even if Trump does this, it’s still unclear how much drilling would actually occur. Oil prices are fairly low right now, which could make it risky for companies to drill in the most challenging areas, like Alaska’s Arctic seas (where Shell tried and failed to find oil). And a few states, like Florida, might put up a fight along their coasts.

It also doesn’t sound like Trump is going to be particularly finicky about oil spill protections, given that he’s pledged to “streamline the permitting process for all energy projects.” In case you’re curious, this is a good look at what an ecological nightmare an oil spill in the frozen Arctic would be.

6) Scale back federal support for wind and solar power

Greens like to tell themselves that renewable energy is already cheap enough to stand on its own, without policy supports, but for a variety of reasons, that isn’t really true. Wind and solar in the US have long relied on federal tax credits — the investment tax credit (ITC) for solar and the production tax credit (PTC) for wind.

The PTC has lapsed and been extended many times. This is what that inconsistency does to growth in wind power:

Both credits were widely expected to lapse last year, but in a somewhat miraculous last-minute deal in December, they were extended for five years, over which time they will slowly phase out.

This would have served as a kind of bridge for renewables, carrying them to the point when the Clean Power Plan kicks in. Now the CPP is likely toast. And the big question is whether Republicans in Congress might scale back the solar and wind credits.

There’s some reason to think they are safe for now. In Politico, an unnamed “major Trump financial contributor who said he is a member of the transition team” assures us that the ITC and PTC “will remain in place.” Then again, oil baron Harold Hamm, a key Trump energy adviser and rumored contender for energy secretary, recently said of solar and wind, “None of it should be subsidized, none of it. If it makes it in the market, fine.” So who knows?

Meanwhile, Trump has also talked about zeroing out all federal research and development for clean energy, which would include work the Department of Energy is doing on solar, wind, nuclear power, efficiency, electric cars, batteries, and more, including the cutting-edge research being done at ARPA-E.

In the past, House Republicans have shown an eagerness to scale back this research (though not, oddly enough, R&D for fossil fuels). A move like this could throttle the next generation of low-carbon technology.

7) Dramatically limit the EPA’s ability to regulate in the future

Most of the environmental policy progress in the US over the last 40 years has come through “green drift,” i.e., through agencies like the EPA adapting and expanding America’s foundational green laws — the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act — to address new problems.

This occurs because those laws were written to be incredibly open-ended. They were designed to be flexible, to apply to whatever new threats agency scientists uncovered. The Clean Air Act tells the EPA to update its rules over time to reflect the best available science about the health impacts of pollution; the EPA does just that.

This process has always driven conservatives crazy. In part, they think the flexibility encourages executive overreach; in part, they just hate environmental regulations.

They have a way to put a stop to green drift. It’s called the REINS Act (Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny). It would mandate that every “economically significant” federal regulation — any rule that has an annual impact of $100 million or more — be affirmatively approved by the House and Senate and be signed by the president. If a regulation is not voted on within 70 legislative working days of being sent to Congress, it is “tabled.” That is, it dies.

This law would radically constrain EPA’s ability to issue new environmental regulations as situations and science evolved (to say nothing of what it would do to other federal agencies). It would be a fundamental change in the administrative state and a radical increase in Congress’s power relative to the president.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, trying to sign every rule into law before Ebell shows up. (EPA)
It would slow progress on all fronts, but on environmental policy, where there is such unified Republican antipathy, it would almost certainly result in a total freeze — no new substantial regulations as long as Republicans control any of the three branches of government.

The GOP House passed REINS several times during the Obama years, only to see it stripped out or blocked in the Senate. With a GOP Senate and Trump as president, there’s a very real chance it could become law.

8) Reverse the White House’s climate guidance to federal agencies

In August, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued a somewhat obscure but extremely important guidance to other federal agencies. All agencies, when considering any new project, have to do a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review to assess the project’s environmental impacts. CEQ’s guidance instructs agencies to consider direct and indirect climate impacts as part of those NEPA reviews.

And it clarifies that agencies should not ignore climate impacts merely because a single project might be a small fraction of global emissions — a position many agencies had been taking. The guidance says, effectively, that climate should matter in every federal decision. (More on the details of the guidance here.)

It has its inconsistencies, and did not carry the force of law, but the guidance was an important signal, the kind of background nudge that shifts the direction of the ship of state.

Trump has not specifically said he will rescind the guidance, but if he puts a clever industry lobbyist in charge of CEQ, it’s tough to see how it will survive. If it is rescinded, federal agencies are likely to go back to ignoring climate impacts.

9) Make the Supreme Court more hostile to environmental regulation

Conservatives, states, and businesses have sued against virtually every environmental regulation in the past 40 years. Very often, those suits have failed. Since the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision in 1984, the Court has given executive branch agencies wide latitude in how they write and implement rules to carry out congressional intent.

But that’s changing. The conservatives on the Court have been seeking to rein in executive agencies lately, especially after Obama, who built a progressive policy legacy almost entirely out of executive actions.

John Roberts contemplates the squishing sound Obama’s legacy will make when he stomps it.
Trump will get to select at least one, and possibly up to four, Supreme Court justices, who are likely to be to Scalia’s right. For every justice he picks, the Court as a whole is likely to become more hostile to executive action, meaning that lawsuits against environmental regulations are likely to find a much more amenable venue in coming years.

10) Pack the executive branch with industry-friendly appointments

One thing that’s become very clear over the past few decades: When it comes to the federal government, personnel is policy. The people who staff and head executive branch agencies make a stream of daily decisions, the vast majority of which never rise to the level of public attention. Those agency decisions pile up over time. They can lead to steady, effective government or to incompetence and corruption.

George W. Bush legendarily stocked his government with industry executives, lobbyists, and cronies. Under his Interior Department, officials used to trade favors to the oil and gas industry for hookers and blow. (No, seriously.) Reports on the agency submitted to Congress “portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.”

Under Bush’s EPA, meanwhile, administrator Stephen Johnson “suppress[ed] staff recommendations on pesticides, mercury, lead paint, smog, and global warming.” In Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality, James Connaughton denied global warming and defended the air quality in Lower Manhattan just after 9/11. Philip Cooney, also at CEQ, was busted doctoring scientific reports on climate change and left the administration to lobby for Exxon. FEMA had Michael Brown. The list could go on.

The kind of crude collusion between industry and government that characterized the Bush administration looks, from all indications, to be Trump’s model.

His pick to lead his EPA transition is Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, mostly famous for his sheer persistence in denying climate change (he’s been at it since 2000). He recently said that “Congress should prohibit any funding for the Paris Climate Treaty, the Green Climate Fund, and the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

11) A flurry of anti-EPA budget bills that will emerge every year, without end

The above list is by no means exhaustive. Trump has also indicated that he would like to repeal the EPA’s Waters of the United States rule, which would limit the number of rivers, streams, and lakes that fall under the Clean Water Act. The oil and gas industry is already eager to kill Obama-era rules to plug leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from pipelines and wells.

Meanwhile, in the House, Republicans have a whole flurry of anti-EPA bills they’re eager to push forward, and they will try to attach these “riders” to must-pass budget and spending bills at every turn.

In 2015, there were riders to prevent the federal government from updating its flood-map plans to incorporate climate change forecasts. Riders to block the EPA from even researching the environmental impacts of fracking. Riders to halt upgrades to wastewater management systems. Riders to block the Department of Energy’s efforts to improve climate change modeling and forecasts. Riders to hinder citizens from suing the federal government if it falls down on the job of enforcing the Clean Water Act. You can check out the full smorgasbord here.
 
also, behold Trump's upcoming assault on free speech:

Kellyanne Conway said Sunday Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's attacks on Donald Trump last week were "beyond the pale" -- and seemed, at least briefly, to hint at a lawsuit.

Reid on Friday had said that "the election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America" and that "white nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump's victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear."

"I find Harry Reid's public comments and insults about Donald Trump and other Republicans to be beyond the pale. They're incredibly disappointing. Talk about not wanting my children to listen to somebody," Conway, Trump's campaign manager, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Then, she added: "He should be very careful about characterizing somebody in a legal sense. He thinks -- he thinks he's just being some kind of political pundit there, but I would say be very careful about the way you characterize it."

Conway's reference to "a legal sense" led host Chris Wallace to follow up, pressing Conway on whether she was suggesting Trump might sue Reid.

"No, I'm not suggesting that at all," Conway said. "I'm calling for responsibility and maturity and decency for somebody who has held one of the highest positions in our government, in a country of more than 300 million people."

Conway, Trump's campaign manager, noted that Reid is retiring and said she is "really pleased as are many Americans that he won't be the Senate minority leader much longer."

Reid's office swung back in a statement issued by an aide Sunday, pointing to Conway's comments as a "threat of legal action."

"It took only five days for President-elect Trump to try to silence his critics with the threat of legal action. This should shock and concern all Americans," said Adam Jentleson, Reid's deputy chief of staff in the statement.

"Trump has always used threats and intimidation to silence his critics. Now he wants to silence a discussion of the acts of hate and threat of violence being committed in his name across the country," he said.

Kellyanne Conway, Harry Reid trade barbs over Donald Trump - CNNPolitics.com
 
As a journalist, I am scared of his upcoming attacks on freedom of the press, and being litigious towards anyone who questions him. The Oval Office hasn't been the greatest with the press since the 90s, and even Obama wasn't really transparent. It is going to get worse with this guy in.

Also, the creative director at my church knows a few people who have EPA-related jobs, and they're nervous about losing their jobs.
 
brutal stuff. just one part:

I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart. And while Sanders supporters might delude themselves into believing that they could have defended him against all of this, there is a name for politicians who play defense all the time: losers.

Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is A-OK. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it—a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.

Then there’s the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words “environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.

Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 crime bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system. His pitch for universal health care would have been used against him too, since it was tried in his home state of Vermont and collapsed due to excessive costs. Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, “Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,’’ while President Daniel Ortega condemned “state terrorism” by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was “patriotic.”

The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.

The Myths Democrats Swallowed That Cost Them the Presidential Election
 
brutal stuff. just one part:


I get it, some people keep riding the "Sanders would've won" thing.

But I mean, you're equally reviving the topic rather than just moving on. What's done is done. She lost. We never know what would've happened with him. Who knows, who cares?
 
I get it, some people keep riding the "Sanders would've won" thing.

But I mean, you're equally reviving the topic rather than just moving on. What's done is done. She lost. We never know what would've happened with him. Who knows, who cares?



there was a lot in that article that was new to me. i think there was a lot in there that was quite worthwhile.

to me, the biggest mistake was the assumption that 2016 was for Hillary and no one else should try, so no rising Democrat set their sights on the presidency. talent was stunted.
 
For sure. From the get-go it was just her. O'Malley was a tiny blip on the "let me establish myself for the future." Biden pretty much bowed out to let her run. Sanders was all that was left. I imagine were she met with a Biden or a Dean or what have you, even if she won this would've worked out a lot better.
 
brutal stuff. just one part:

With all that mind, Dems and everyone else can forget about Sanders running and even winning at least the nomination in 2020. There's too much against him and too much that will upset most Americans (unemployed until mid-30s? Sandinistas?)

BTW, Shaun King who writes for the NY Daily News, just launched a resistance movement against Trump: https://www.thedjtr.com/
As for now, it's just a boycott against the companies that supported Trump, like PayPal, New Balance, Home Depot and others. I wonder how long it will last and how big it will get.
 
With all that mind, Dems and everyone else can forget about Sanders running and even winning at least the nomination in 2020.


I think everyone can forget about...

Bernie Sanders (79)
Joe Biden (78)
Hillary Clinton (who lost)

Running in 2020. Though Clinton isn't out of the realm of possibilities at 73 in 2020, traditionally in recent history, nobody tries twice. The public doesn't have sympathy for the loser these days. But one thing's for sure... the window for Sanders and Biden to take on an 8 year job (should be assumed at 8) has just passed. It would be a serious hamper on their campaign, given how it was treated in this election for younger candidates.
 
I am trying to wrap my tiny little brain around the 60 Minutes interview. Trump said the gay marriage issue was settled by the supreme therefore.....it should not be changed because he agrees with it? How is the abortion issue any different? Wasn't that decided by the court as well?

Does anyone have any sense as to exactly what he stands for? I feel like it could change with the flip of a coin at this point!
 
I am trying to wrap my tiny little brain around the 60 Minutes interview. Trump said the gay marriage issue was settled by the supreme therefore.....it should not be changed because he agrees with it? How is the abortion issue any different? Wasn't that decided by the court as well?

Does anyone have any sense as to exactly what he stands for? I feel like it could change with the flip of a coin at this point!

It was indeed hypocritical of him to say that.

As for what he stands for, I'd say his own narcissistic ego. :shrug:
 
I get it, some people keep riding the "Sanders would've won" thing.

But I mean, you're equally reviving the topic rather than just moving on. What's done is done. She lost. We never know what would've happened with him. Who knows, who cares?

Seriously. What do people want at this point? Some blanket acknowledgment that Bernie was a shit candidate?
 
Seriously. What do people want at this point? Some blanket acknowledgment that Bernie was a shit candidate?


cuts both ways, though, no?

perhaps by agreeing that both candidates had serious flaws and that Trump was more likely than not to win (in hindsight) no matter who was running given the post-Brexit mood he seems to have tapped into, now we can learn from what happened and move on.

there was also a lot more to the article than just the Bernie oppo research. but that's what i found most striking -- i had heard of none of that before.
 
cuts both ways, though, no?

perhaps by agreeing that both candidates had serious flaws and that Trump was more likely than not to win (in hindsight) no matter who was running given the post-Brexit mood he seems to have tapped into, now we can learn from what happened and move on.

there was also a lot more to the article than just the Bernie oppo research. but that's what i found most striking -- i had heard of none of that before.

I wouldn't be so fatalistic about it. Hillary was probably doomed because of the rampant sexism of the campaign, but Bernie did seem to catalyze people in a way she had trouble doing. Or maybe his supporters were just louder, who knows. It does raise the question of who is on the docket for the Democrats in 2020.
 
to your point about fatalism -- i agree, we should always remember that she did win the popular vote by a not inconsiderable margin. he literally threaded some crazy electoral needle, winning four states by about 1% to pull off a victory in the EC. this wasn't some walloping.
 
Laura Ingraham being eyed for press secretary. Cool. Great. Bigly. Another winner. This is fine.

My burning question today is for Mrs. Garrison: why do you type Trump all in caps?
 
With all that mind, Dems and everyone else can forget about Sanders running and even winning at least the nomination in 2020. There's too much against him and too much that will upset most Americans (unemployed until mid-30s? Sandinistas?)

BTW, Shaun King who writes for the NY Daily News, just launched a resistance movement against Trump: https://www.thedjtr.com/
As for now, it's just a boycott against the companies that supported Trump, like PayPal, New Balance, Home Depot and others. I wonder how long it will last and how big it will get.

PayPal? wtf?

well at least i can do something about that and boycott them!
 
"racist" and "racism" get thrown around a lot -- and we often don't really understand what is meant by them. it's not just what is embodied by someone like Bannon -- someone who's clearly racist. it's about understanding what it means to be in a system that is often unconsciously racist, as in predicated upon an unspoken assumption of white supremacy. it isn't just Klansmen in hoods.

i found this quite thought-provoking:

I’m saying that what it means to see yourself as white has fundamentally changed, from unmarked default to racially marked, a change now widely visible: from of course being president and of course being beauty queen and of course being the cute young people selling things in ads to having to make space for other, nonwhite people to fill those roles.

We have been seeing this change in popular culture and in higher education over the course of the last decades. Black and brown and Asian people sell you financial instruments and clothing. The president and first lady are black. Your college literature course includes Toni Morrison and Junot Díaz. But if you haven’t gone to college, where multiculturalism has been making its way for a generation, and if your version of America was formed in school in the 20th century, and that 20th-century image remains in your consciousness, you may have a lot to lose.

In our racially oriented American society, this change marks a demotion for white people. From assumed domination, they now take their place among the multiracial American millions. For Trump supporters embracing the social dimension of “Make America Great Again,” their vote enacted a visceral “No!” to multicultural America. As if to say, “Take us back to the time of unmarked whiteness and racially unmarked power” assumed to be white.

In the Trump administration, white men will be in charge (virtually his entire transition team, and practically every name offered for a potential cabinet post, is a white man). You could say that’s nothing new, that white men have been in charge forever. This is true, but now with a gigantic difference. This time the white men in charge will not simply happen to be white; they will be governing as white, as taking America back, back to before multiculturalism.

Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign’s leadership and support complicate making America great again, on account of the campaign’s tilt toward white nationalism. Here lies a snare that has entrapped white identity for decades. White nationalism scares many ordinary white people away from embracing whiteness, which white nationalism makes appear bigoted and terroristic. Given the people who emphasize their white racial identity — white nationalists, Nazis, Klansmen and so on — the white race is a spoiled identity. Embracing whiteness would seem to enmesh one in a history of slave-owning and all the discrimination flowing from it. What righteous person would want to embrace that? Up to now, there’s hardly been a pressing need to do so, for a fundamental dimension of white American identity has been individuality.

Conveniently, for most white Americans, being white has meant not having a racial identity. It means being and living and experiencing the world as an individual and not having to think about your race. It has meant being free of race. Some people are proud white nationalists, but probably not many of the millions who voted for Donald Trump. Thinking in terms of community would seem to be the job of black people. The Trump campaign has disrupted that easy freedom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/opinion/what-whiteness-means-in-the-trump-era.html


for all the talk of the coming Democratic majority and multicultural America, if whites vote as whites which means GOP with the solidarity that we often associate with other groups, it could be much more difficult for the Democrats to gain power.
 
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to your point about fatalism -- i agree, we should always remember that she did win the popular vote by a not inconsiderable margin. he literally threaded some crazy electoral needle, winning four states by about 1% to pull off a victory in the EC. this wasn't some walloping.

Not to mention that half of eligible voters actually voted, and Trump received less than half of that, so he will be president thanks to 25% of the electorate. That's hardly a mandate for huge change, but that's what we're going to get.
 
Also, Oregoropa, you don't think an article entitled "The Confederate Flag: Proclaiming a Glorious Heritage" might have some white supremacist content?

I had a chance to read the article. Here are my interpretations.

In the wake of the Charleston shooting there was strong pressure being exerted by the left and media to eradicate the Confederate Flag as a state symbol. Some were even calling to remove monuments to fallen Confederate soldiers that have stood for 130 years.

The Stars and Bars flag (initially the battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia) has been co-opted as a symbol of division after the war, but in its context is an important piece of American History. Unlike the red Nazi Banner which draped the public square of every reach of the Reich, the NVA flag was initially used during engagements by Southern Forces under the command of Robert E. Lee. This is not a flag that popped up in 1859 and flew over every cotton field in the south while slaves were beaten and killed in the name of that banner. I believe this an important distinction. The Nazi banner has been outlawed in Germany as its initial intent was never in doubt.

My dad is a Civil War history buff and passed that onto me. We dragged my sister to go see the 4 hour movie Gettysburg (Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen) when she was 9 years old. A movie so long it had an intermission. Based upon the book the Killer Angels. The movie and the book accurately portrays an America in its youth when there were sinners and saints on both sides of the lines. Many of these men fought along side each other in the Mexican-American War. When secession happened each man was forced to make a choice over which side to fight for. At the this time the United States was more analogous to the current European Union where national (state) loyalties took precedence, even if the southern commanders disagreed with slavery.

Robert E. Lee was offered command of the entire Northern Army, but could not turn his back on Virginia. Imagine if the EU split down the middle, he wasn't going to abandoned Austria to take up command of the Parisian based Army. The commanders of the Confederacy were some of the greatest military minds the world has ever seen. It's not a racist thing to acknowledge this historical truth. War is never pretty, but it can be argued that this was the last war of Civility. The movie, book shows the opposing campfires where they contemplated morality, friendship before the battles ensued. There was a reverence given to their commanders and their glorious banners.

The Breitbart article is a pushback against the overreach of those on the left who want to relegate certain aspects of history to the dumpster. The use of the term Glorious can be argued as a cross between rhetorical device and clickbait meant to draw the reader into the article that ends up being more nuanced than a white supremacist hit piece.

The Battle Flag of the Army of NV has been used as a symbol of hate, but we must find its proper context before we bulldoze Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Small towns throughout the south have monuments to honor the dead in the bloodiest war in American history. In the end the right side of history prevailed. Robert E Lee knew when it was time to quit and prevent future bloodshed. He is a figure in American History with greater importance than many Presidents. The south was full a despicable figures as well. Gen. Sherman in the north was a vicious commander as well.

I believe there can be a compromise in removing instances of the stars and bars in the public square where the visual may cause discomfort, but we would be remiss to eradicate this period of history as a whole.
 
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