And then there were two. Now that the Democrats have a Presumptive Nominee of their own, I’m thinking we could use an open thread to talk about Hillary’s big win, Bernie’s future, and how to derail the Trump Train (figuratively speaking).
Also, Little Green Footballs has a nice little Trump poster generator. Check it out.
Here are a couple of mine, all of them making use of Trump’s actual words. Post your own! Let’s have a little meme contest or something!
Hillary? Bernie? The Orange Novelty-Item Presidential Candidate? Forget them.
Bristol is married!
Bristol Palin weds dad of her 2nd child; husband is a marine
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20160608/c71daa0d-7afd-419f-a201-ca9a54cf9ea5
@Policy of Madness
Thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking more eloquently than I have.
I will happily vote for whoever wins the Democratic party ticket, but part of me is relieved to see it’s Hillary Clinton. I don’t think Bernie Sanders could have won a national election, and I have too much at stake (for myself and for a lot of people I love) to see the current Republican circus take power.
@SFHC
I thought we were letting em get it outta their system
It’s vague enough that I don’t see anything particularly nefarious about it. Annoying as fuck, but not nefarious
Besides, I’m curious who’s the sandwich and who’s the douche in their metaphor
I think it’s just a South Park reference.
I find that people who get their politics from South Park are really well informed on all sides of the topic at hand and have well-thought, reasonable opinions. /s
Careful, that’s sharp. 😉
A friend mentioned to me that it is such a privileged thing to say that you refuse to vote blue because you didn’t get exactly what you wanted. I have to agree, seeing as regardless of how Hillary voted in the Iraq war, she’s not going to appoint an anti-abortionist to the Supreme Court and she hasn’t threatened to get rid of Muslims. I get the feeling like nothing you say matters in this system we have but I truly believe you need to have compassion for others and care just as much about how things will turn out for them as for yourself. But idk y’all have pretty much covered all the bases.
@PoM I second Loquora, you put that very well 🙂
Also, I may be taking the bait here, but would “burning it down and restarting” be a terrible thing too? Anarchy is all fun and games until the lack of societal structure starts getting people killed.
What I would like to know is; what exactly is it that conservatives/neo-Nazis/MRAs/neoreactionaries/alt-righters/radtrads/etc. think Trump is going to do? The way they gush over him, you’d he’d promised to eject all non-whites from America, replace all women with robots from The Stepford Wives, nuke Mecca, declare America an absolute monarchy, and ban all movies that aren’t American Sniper. Whether Trump loses, or whether Trump wins, I think that the far-right is in for a big disappointment…
Ichthyic:
Yes, you are equating them. You’re saying that Hillary would take things in the same direction as Trump, just not as far, because “typical politician.” As evinced by the fact that, unlike Trump (or Bernie), she has an actual plan, I am kind of inclined to look askance.
And while I don’t agree with you about the country [INSERT GENERIC RADICAL POLITICAL CATCHPHRASE HERE], I certainly can point you to people who are:
They’re in Trump’s rallies.
The people who are saying “burn it down and start all over!”? Yeah, they’re not the heroes of this tale. They’re the morons breaking democracy in this country, because the democracy has turned against them. Yes, the rich have taken too much. No, a civil war, especially when we know exactly how to fix the problem nonviolently (increase taxes, create social net, and to do either actually bother with local politics) is not the answer.
But then again, the fact that people actually do this thing called dying in revolutions and the aftermath, no matter how well it goes, doesn’t matter to you. After all, you are not in the country.
I’m tired of a lot of shit. As I said above, income inequality is not the only problem in the US, and it’s not the most important problem to the majority of Americans. Your problems are not everyone’s problems.
By elevating income inequality (of primary concern to otherwise-privileged people who lack this one privilege) above everything else, and saying you’d like to burn down America if some other problem – more important to someone who isn’t you – is addressed first, simply broadcasts your privilege in a very ugly way.
It’s not a good look, for anyone, so you may want to think twice before you throw another tantrum.
@Lagoon
‘Hillary’s a harpy shill. The system is rigged by the millionaires and billionaires! I’ll never vote for her!’
‘But what about the Supreme Court?’
‘Doesn’t matter’
http://memesvault.com/wp-content/uploads/Wait-What-Meme-11.jpg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
http://img.memecdn.com/gettin-tired-of-your-shit-human_o_1593711.jpg
Really? Income inequality is all about white men? It’s not about constraining the opportunities of those at the poverty end of the income spectrum?
That’s not what studies are showing. They’re showing that inequality is a major cause of residential segregation by income. Living in a concentrated area of poverty creates lasting disadvantages for those who grow up there, especially in larger cities. Children who move from areas of high poverty to low poverty experience better academic and economic outcomes, including making 25-35% more income on average. Plus these concentrated areas of poverty are often overwhelmingly minority.
Second, inequality affects access to education. Poor to middle class families in 2013 owed 58 cents per dollar in college debt while rich families owed only 8 cents per dollar.
Third, inequality affects the poor’s economic mobility. The poor have less income and ability to invest in enrichment for their children. The poor don’t have the social networks of the rich. Poor children are more likely to live in extreme stress (not having enough to eat, living in an unsafe neighborhood, etc.) that can hamper brain development. That hampered brain development in turn affects academic success and future economic outcomes.
Income equality is not about a bunch of white guys who think they should be making a buck or two more. It’s a piece of our current economic model that rewards the rich while keeping the poor, including many minority families, from easily climbing the ladder out of poverty.
No, it can’t be remedied solely by taxing the rich, like Bernie touted, but also by having good social safety nets, finding ways to encourage mixed income housing areas that studies show encourages academic success in low-income children, making college educations affordable and encouraging kids to attend trade schools instead of steering children away from good-paying jobs because they are blue-collar and therefore not “prestigious,” and improving job market outcomes for those Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck.
As an outsider looking in but who has been directly and indirectly impacted by Americas foreign policy, all I can say is it does get tiring hearing Americans talk about their centre left candidates and how great they’ll be for people living in their country. Hilary is better than Trump, especially on a national level but when you’re an outsider that’s still shit. Yay she doesn’t say shitty things about people but when more drones get dropped and thousands die, it doesn’t matter if it’s the orange one or Clinton because hating the US president is a privilege only the west gets. So sorry if I’m not all delighted about Clinton getting it; when she inevitably beats Trump and we’ve all forgotten his shtick there will still be people dying and terrified because of shitty, imperialist, privileged America.
I know that’s a rant but all I’ve seen anywhere is people go on about how great this is and how America will be better off with Clinton; Obama was good for America too but fuck me of thousands didn’t die elsewhere ?
I don’t know if those who criticize Hillary over her Iraq vote were too young to know/remember the feel and mood of the country at that time or just short sighted, but the most of the country was for it due to the fake proof the Bush/Cheney administration conjured up. It was right on the heels of 9/11 and everyone was on edge. I never had the impression at all that Congress was just blindly voting for it.
Hindsight is 20/20. It’s easy to look back with what we know now and second guess those who tried to do the right thing in such an uncertain time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-marburggoodman/five-myths-about-hillary-iraq-war-vote_b_9177420.html
Antisocialite — I agree. At the time, I supported the war. Colin Powell, whom I respected greatly, said that Iraq had nukes and that we should invade. I also honestly thought that it would liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam’s tyranny. I’m also old enough to remember Bush Sr’s action in Kuwait, which led me to believe that it would be a short and decisive engagement.
In retrospect, obviously all of that was completely, horribly wrong. That’s not to say that the war wasn’t controversial from the start. It was. And a good number of people never believed that Iraq had any nuclear capability. But I know from my own experience that a lot of people saw it differently at the time. I would never have guessed that this is where we would be in 2016.
I also remember Nader’s role in the 2000 election. People who voted for him said they voted their conscience, but those votes had no effect beyond putting GWB in the White House. They certainly didn’t pull GWB or any other candidate since in Nader’s direction. I agree with what others here have said. A vote for a third party candidate could end up effectively being a vote for the short fingered vulgarian, depending on how close the election is. Effecting Sanders’s agenda needs to be approached differently.
I would vote for a swarm of bees this election if that swarm had the best chance of beating Trump. He scares me. But I’m trying to remember that I’ve been wrong before.
@Antisocialite I am leery of defenses of the Iraq vote. Lots of people should have known. Clinton has since acknowledged the mistake.
Sanders has voted against incremental improvements deemed not pure enough. Take the 2007 immigration reform bill, has he apologized for that vote? We’re still stuck in a shitty status quo and he didn’t help when he could have. He certainly wasn’t the deciding factor, but then neither was Clinton on the Iraq war.
Oh, forgot to add — the Iraq was also going to end terrorism. Yep.
Sorry, I’m getting too up in arms here. There are reasons to be excited about Clinton. I dislike the disempowering cynicism of assuming all (most) politicians are corrupt.
Once the sting has passed, there will be plenty of think pieces around with more heartening messages than #nevertrump.
Re: the gulf war
There’s been plenty written about the intelligence failures that lead up to that so I’ll only add something from a personal perspective.
I’m a member of ‘The Society of English and American Lawyers’. A number of the US lawyers in that group were involved in certain aspects leading up to the invasion of Iraq. We spoke a lot both before the invasion and since.
The general consensus before was that it was highly likely Saddam had at least some chemical weapons capability. I was a bit sceptical about this, but they had access to material that I didn’t so I deferred to them. However when Colin Powell tried to do his Adelai Steveson impersonation at the UN I was less than reassured. I even remarked at the time that “you’re going to look really embarrassed when all that turns up is a couple of rusty artillery shells”.
The fact was though that the intelligence services were briefing the politicians that there was a real threat; and that’s where the problem lay.
CIA had been caught napping when they failed to warn of the previous invasion of Kuwait. The blame for that probably lies with April Glaspie. But that just illustrated another issue, politicians doing their own analyses rather than passing on the raw material to professional intelligence analysts. But it was CIA who got the blame. Coming on the back of their failure to foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, they were facing a lot of criticism.
A culture developed where they decided to play it safe and a confirmation bias arose where every bit of intel was seen as suggesting Saddam had both the capability and intent of using chemical weapons. A lot of lower ranking CIA analysts did have doubts about that, but those doubts were never passed on by the higher ups who gave the briefings to the decision makers. Of course it’s easy to use 20/20 hindsight but it’s understandable perhaps why the politicians believed there was a real threat.
That’s my friends’ take on it anyway.
We’ve maybe got a false impression of the capabilities of the intelligence services from the media, both in news reporting and fictional portrayals. But they’re just the same as any other government agency. They’re comprised of fallible human beings so there’s no reason why they should be any more competent than say the DMV.
*rubs hands over face*
I’ve noticed that most of the “Hillary = Trump” “Bernie or Bust” and “let’s burn this country/system to the ground and start over” people are the ones who would be least impacted by a Trump presidency.
But surely that’s sheer coincidence.
As someone who is old enough to remember both Gulf Wars, I want to say that there were plenty of people who said the evidence was flimsy or downright fake. That the general populace only got the idea that Saddam had WMD and/or was tied to 9-11 because the establishment (government AND the media) deliberately pushed them in that direction. And that there was a concerted effort to silence people in the media who actually tried to talk about what was happening. HRC was firmly part of the establishment and if she didn’t know better, it was only because political expedience kept her head turned in the other direction. That said, she is still better for the US and the world than Trump and I will vote for her just as I have voted for every Democratic candidate for that office since ’88 when I turned 18.
Income inequality is the one thing that white men reliably care about. Because it affects them, and other things don’t. They don’t see the other things first-hand, and don’t reliably care about them.
Wall Street is neither the proximal nor the most important cause of poverty … except for a small number of mostly-white people who fell victim to the housing crisis. For most people in poverty, their position is mainly created by racism, both personal and structural, both current and legacy (eta: even white people are impacted by racism, if they share demographic characteristics with the black people who are racism’s targets, like social status and place of residence. Poor whites are collateral damage of racism in many places and in many ways). So telling a non-white person that Wall Street is eating their lunch and that’s all that matters in this world is not going to get you very far.
All of your stats about poverty are meaningful to your point only if Wall Street is responsible for poverty. You haven’t made that connection, and you’ll have a hard time demonstrating that Wall Street is the biggest and most important contributing factor.
I think you need to ask yourself, seriously, why Sanders’ support was almost entirely white, while people of color voted for Clinton in overwhelming majorities. Are all those people of color stupid, or is Sanders’ message maybe just not meaningful to them at all?
I’m thrilled by HRC winning. Thrilled. I’ve been waiting to vote for her for president for more than half my life now. I will never forgive Obama for his sexist dog whistles (99 Problems?… surely not even dog whistle category) though I’ve calmed down about it now and think he’s not so bad. Also, I think, like perhaps a lot of men with only daughters, he may have had a bit of a rethink.
I met her when I was 21 and I kinda fell a little bit in love. I wanted her to be president, but at that time I never thought I get the chance to vote for her. I voted for her husband instead. Now I’ll get to vote for her.
It’s perfectly ok to be sad your candidate lost, but to embrace a ‘fuck ’em all’ policy especially when it’s Trump on the other ticket. I mean – even if you do subscribe to the notion that he simply has to follow the platform (I don’t) – the GOP platform is vile and has been getting more vile with each passing year. But also, it’s Trump, FFS.
As for Iraq stuff… I admit to being pretty hoodwinked at the time. I wasn’t so much in favour of the Iraq war as I was just ‘not against it’. I felt it was reasonably certain that he’d have those weapons – we knew that did have them at one time. I simply wasn’t in favour of war to get rid of those weapons, because it seemed they were probably beyond easy use and while he was absolutely an awful person, we don’t always go to war against awful people with arsenals – in fact it’s usually not the right thing to do.
But anyway I believed Colin Powell. I believed Tony Blair. And as it turns out, I believed Saddam Hussein that he still had them. Although Iraq had gotten rid of the weapons, Hussein didn’t want everyone – (e.g. the Iranians) to believe that he’d really gotten rid of them. He was playing a risky game, which he lost. He didn’t care about the consequences to his country, which have been awful and will remain awful for some time to come. I also didn’t count on the Bush administration being so completely and utterly inept in post-invasion country management – although I should have, I guess.
Very on topic article by Polly Toynbee:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/09/demonise-hillary-clinton-careful-us-president
I became politically aware around the Iraq war (to a degree – I mean, I was eight when the towers fell so I don’t really have much experience of a pre-9/11 world) and obviously my experience was coloured by my nationality (British) and by being the Quaker child of lefties, but I experienced the buildup and response to the Iraq war being heavily criticised and battled against by grassroots organisations on both sides of the pond. The first march I ever went on was a Stop The War march in London in probably 2003? All that being said (and again, this is from the perspective of a child, and while I was quite precocious and I don’t believe my parents indoctrinated me (they were very clear on freedom of belief) I definitely experienced it very differently to how an adult would), my memory of the anti – war movement was that everyone was fairly resigned to fighting a losing battle against the tide of popular opinion, and I understand that a great number of sensible and intelligent people legitimately believed that war was the moral option. I can absolutely understand politicians having voted for it based on the misinformation given, and I have much more respect for anyone who can own having supported the war then and accept in hindsight that it was not the right path. I have a lot more trust in a politician who can own up to past mistakes and change direction in response to new evidence than I do in someone who will never admit wrongdoing and sticks rigidly to something they know is wrong rather than be seen to u-turn. Sometimes a u-turn is the right option and I think a lot of the problem with politics is an unwillingness to be flexible out of the fear of seeming weak.