Trump General Discussion

[BoMac]

[Tweet]799110069501775872[/tweet]

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[deep]

College students are being raised to be emotionally and socially retarded

Elite Campuses Offer Students Coloring Books, Puppies to Get Over Trump - The Daily Beast

 

[deep]

[Tweet]799110069501775872[/tweet]

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he will only have to remember it long enough to abolish it

 

[deep]

Reason number 3 why Hillary lost

To the Editor:

Frankly, Bernie Sanders’ told-you-so message is graceless. It adopts his lone-wolf moralistic tone to suggest that he would have beaten Donald Trump. Mr. Sanders did not attract broad working-class support in the primaries: His base was overwhelmingly restricted to white liberals, especially in the cities and college towns.

Mr. Sanders’ refusal to concede in a timely way as Hillary Clinton won many millions more votes and his constant harping that she was “corrupt” furthered Mr. Trump’s message and contributed to the con man’s catastrophic victory. Mr. Sanders has much to apologize for and nothing to justify dumping on others.
He would make a terrible new major-domo for the Democratic Party.

THEDA SKOCPOL
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer is a professor of government and sociology at Harvard.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Why is Ted swearing him in...?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

[Tweet]799110069501775872[/tweet]

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Ok I'm not kidding anymore. Trump is using these as qualifications.

 

[mama cass]

This is the thing. Trump has crossed basically all of my lines by either espousing or enabling white nationalism, sexual assault, authoritarianism, and fascism (yes fascism).

This is not like Bush '00/'04, or Cameron '10/'15, or Abbott '13, or Key '08/'11/'14, or any other result I found disappointing, undesirable, or embarrassing. All of those remained within a system of functional liberal democracy. That has changed. Sitting back and saying "it can't happen here" (wherever here may be, given the resurgence of the authoritarian right is occurring across continents) or "we need more understanding" is not helpful in stopping these movements.

i've just ordered Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals", written back in the 1970s on how to tackle the rise of fascism, looks really interesting (since i'm an international relations, French post-war foreign policy geek lol), but an excerpt i read from it which piqued my interest was about getting active, engaging with these groups to try to "reclaim" people and get them out of their clutches by discussing alternatives, which is hard to do if we write them all off and don't engage somehow... it's a new perspective for me... will hopefully be an interesting read anyway...

 

[LemonMelon]

College students are being raised to be emotionally and socially retarded



Elite Campuses Offer Students Coloring Books, Puppies to Get Over Trump - The Daily Beast

I have no idea why I read so much of this.

Just to repeat my mantra: not all Trump supporters are racist, xenophobic hicks. Not all ivy league students are emotionally stunted crybabies. Plenty among both sides have legitimate reasons for their opinions and choices and authors of articles like these that broadly demonize either side are using their platform irresponsibly.

That being said, I can tell you, as a graduate student in the humanities, that I have met a couple of students that appear to be on the precipice of a nervous breakdown over the election results. One of them is Muslim. I have never known these people to be emotionally weak or imbalanced and they have very legitimate concerns that they haven't been able to cope with. Thankfully, according to the author, they just need to get out more and meet some Republicans. That's simple enough.

The one thing the article did get right is what I've been saying all along: we need to attack ideas, not individuals, and otherwise knowledgeable young people that refuse to do so are letting their cause down.

 

[cobl04]

Axver and I had a wonderfully good laugh at this today. She calls it "ranked choice voting". Here in the real world it's preferential voting and we've used it for hundreds of years and yes it is infinitely better than your system.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...election-outcome-not-third-parties-jill-stein

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Our world isn't real.

 

[mama cass]

Our world isn't real.

i swear i keep pinching myself repeatedly these past few months hoping to wake up - i'm just hoping i will find myself running down the street naked very soon and that way i will know for sure this is all just one horrible nightmare!

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Glenn Beck's belated transformation to a hipster is perhaps the most unexpected turn of this election cycle.

@thejoshpatten: Every member of U2 at once http://twitter.com/thejoshpatten/status/799112897024692224/photo/1

 

[cobl04]

That's brilliant.


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[Hewson]

@thejoshpatten: Every member of U2 at once http://twitter.com/thejoshpatten/status/799112897024692224/photo/1

Even got the round sunglasses

 

[gump]

@thejoshpatten: Every member of U2 at once http://twitter.com/thejoshpatten/status/799112897024692224/photo/1

Holy shit.

 

[Oregoropa]

her?

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[bono_212]

@thejoshpatten: Every member of U2 at once http://twitter.com/thejoshpatten/status/799112897024692224/photo/1

Welp... There is still good in the world, I see.

 

[anitram]

Obviously a lighthearted read, yet so many truths.

Listen, what proof do you have that this dead lizard wrapped in the Confederate flag will not make an excellent chief strategist and senior counselor to the president of the United States?

I, for one, believe that everyone deserves a chance.

You’re not wrong that this appears to be a pig’s head slowly rotting on a stake, grotesque insinuations pouring from its mouth as flies buzz around it in the island heat, but I would need to learn more about it, honestly. I’m no expert.

You say that this man just painted a swastika on a church but — couldn’t it be a plus sign? We don’t know. Some people are better at drawing plus signs than others. I wouldn’t read anything into it. Maybe he just loves churches.

Yes, okay, this rabid opossum bit me on the ankle, then handed me an Islamophobic pamphlet, but we have no proof it wrote the pamphlet. This is America, where we give the benefit of the doubt.

You say, “potato enthusiastically supported by the Ku Klux Klan’s David Duke”; I say, “controversial potato.”

Just because something attracts anti-Semites and racists doesn’t mean that it, itself, is either of those things. It doesn’t mean that it supports their views. Who knows why anyone is attracted to anything? Weird coincidences happen all the time.

Listen, when we need to denounce an actual racist, anti-Semite, white supremacist, Islamophobe, you name it, I will be there. I promise. I will not hesitate to do that, when the time comes, clearly and appropriately labeled. I have yet to see one, but when I do, boy, I will light into him! It will be something to see.

This is not that.

I have no doubt that a real racist sexist chauvinist white supremacist will be easy to spot. “I am coming for minorities now,” he will say. “I am an actual racist. I am, literally, Hitler, or at the very least Goebbels.”

Rest of it here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...rally-joseph-goebbels/?utm_term=.2e8ec034aca1

 

[BoMac]

[tweet]799270889804222464[/tweet]

 

[BoMac]

A press conference had to be called because of a mass unfriending on Facebook. I want off this planet immediately.

[TWEET]799261276987858945[/TWEET]

 

[anitram]

A press conference had to be called because of a mass unfriending on Facebook. I want off this planet immediately.

[TWEET]799261276987858945[/TWEET]

It's clear that humanity has overstayed its welcome.

 

[BoMac]

It's clear that humanity has overstayed its welcome.

Definitely.

[TWEET]799246106806906880[/TWEET]

 

[anitram]

This will come in handy the next time the Republicans start whining about Starbucks cups.

Suck it up buttercup!

One Iowa lawmaker has a message for any state university that spends taxpayer dollars on grief counseling for students upset at the outcome of last week’s presidential election: “Suck it up, buttercup.”

“I’ve seen four or five schools in other states that are establishing ‘cry zones’ where they’re staffed by state grief counselors and kids can come cry out their sensitivity to the election results,” said Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton. “I find this whole hysteria to be incredibly annoying. People have the right to be hysterical … on their own time.”

Kaufmann plans to introduce a piece of legislation he’s calling the “suck it up, buttercup bill” when the Legislature resumes in January.

...

Spokesmen for the state’s public universities said it's important for students to have a chance to talk about the election and what it means for them. They say that although they have held a number of events to help students discuss and process the election results, they are not spending additional state resources to do so.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...-up-buttercup-bill-targets-protests/93797142/

 

[Irvine511]

Definitely.

[TWEET]799246106806906880[/TWEET]

if you need me, i'll be laying down in traffic.

 

[gump]

Since I'm clearly moving on from my outrage, I'm now reading Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, a book on the man who became the US Ambassador to Berlin in the 1930s, and his daughter.

Obviously, comparisons to Nazi Germany are bound to fail. However, what interests me is how a facist regime was quickly accomodated by society once it took power, including by those that would not label themselves as facists. There were also so many dismissals that Hitler did not really mean the awful things he had been saying for years. This included the infamous NY Times article, which stated:

But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: "You can't expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them."

Yup.

This takes me back to this article that I posted a few days ago, Autocracy: Rules for Survival

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable.

 

[gump]

This is happening a few blocks from where I live, and I couldn't be happier.

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161116/upper-west-side/trump-name-removed-riverside-boulevard

 

[BVS]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ld-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/

 

[BVS]

I think once again, Jon nailed it:

 

[corianderstem]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ld-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/

I don't think that's funny at all.

This, however, is hilarious:

@thejoshpatten: Every member of U2 at once http://twitter.com/thejoshpatten/status/799112897024692224/photo/1

A press conference had to be called because of a mass unfriending on Facebook.

[TWEET]799261276987858945[/TWEET]

I'm sure Melania will get right on it.

 

[coolian2]

Didn't realise journalistic ability was related to attractiveness.

Didn't realise any ability was related to attractiveness, actually.