With Trump’s position in the polls continuing its downward slide, The Donald winkingly suggested to his “second amendment people” at a rally today that they could, you know, assassinate her if (when?) he loses the race.
This is probably not news to anyone reading this, but if you haven’t watched the video itself yet, it’s even creepier than a mere transcript. He and his apologists have tried to spin this one away but there is no credible way to “explain” this as anything other than a call for the literal assassination of a political rival.
We need to do everything possible to keep this man from being elected. Do we also need to prepare for what might happen if (when?) he loses? How exactly, I’m not sure. Obviously the solution to Trump supporters with guns is not Hillary supporters with guns.
Discuss. No MRAs/Trump apologists/calls for revolution, etc.
@Axecalibur
In addition the Cuban-American community (mostly) in Florida tends to skew conservative, but Trump’s doing a great job of turning them off.
To a foreign ear Trump sounds very child-like in the way he forms sentences. I’m used to expecting a coherent string of thought but I feel like Trump just meanders in a valley of unfinished thoughts an uses words that sound out of context, the little context there is.
@varalys
Curt Schilling: libertarian asshole, Red Sox player (Yankee fan, what can I say), creationist, islamophobe, homophobe, IP killing hypocrite (Really about ethics this time), and a Trump supporter to boot…
He also says he plans to run for President, as if we needed another boisterous, retrograde, with a tweet problem and terrible business acumen
@JoeB
Obama opening up Cuba might be the single most important political move a President has taken in a long ass time. Gives Cubans a positive reason to jump ship in addition to the negative reason of not voting for the end of the world as we know it. Also, sweet delicious irony, Trump might cause Rubio his seat. Mwahaha! Make it so
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PvD_2gLYVME/VJ-NIpcrGqI/AAAAAAAAI5k/dvgjOAl6baA/s400/tumblr_ng1gtwFo8i1qlsrn9o1_500.gif
Husband and I will return to the land of my birth, should Trump win.
We might even do it if Clinton wins, just that we’ll take time to pack, first, in that case.
Unfortunately, the land of my birth is rather less appealing following the Brexit vote. However, the husband is finding a lot of juicy vacancies in Scotland, so that might sort itself out in the long run…
@Axecalibur: Ugh, I knew he’d contributed a lot to the mismanagement of the game but didn’t know he was that bad. I don’t even think the writer got paid for the amazing amount of work he did on the lore and script of the game. Sigh.
Thanks Ohlmann, Axe.
Non-political: So it looks like Ghostbusters might just break even at the box office at best. I’m sure MRAs and other useless sorts will crow about this, but I wonder how much of it was due to China deciding not to run the film in their country? Discussions elsewhere gave me the impression that China’s box-office take was a much bigger factor in a film’s success than it used to be– and certainly more than the US itself.
You’re right that if (when?) TX turns blue it’ll be the Hispanic* vote. It’ll take some time thanks to voting laws that are meant to disenfranchise and due to gerrymandering.
There’s no way the GOP would or could remove Trump at this time. The due dates for getting candidates on the ballot will have passed in a lot of places. Or will pass very soon. Besides, although the GOP used to do well with the Hispanic vote, they don’t anymore. Since the recession hit and then Obama got into the White House, racism and xenophobia increased and the Republican party stepped up their anti-immigration rhetoric so much that they can’t really do well with any people of color. They never did well with black voters post Civil Rights Act but now they’ve burned bridges will all people of color.
If Democrats do well in the 2020 election and get to control the redistricting, that’s going to be when we might see TX become a swing state. For now, I think Clinton can only take it if Trump melts down to a ridiculous even worse than we’re seeing now degree. That is possible! It’s been hard to predict this cycle compared to previous ones because Trump is such a wild card but I would not be surprised if the electoral map on 538 right now is similar to the one on election day. Fingers crossed that Dems down ticket do well because of this.
Going into the primaries, a few Republicans, centrists, and some of the more ideologically consistent right libertarians were saying Trump has disturbing fascist tendencies. Much of his political views does come out of the variety of European conservatism that’s closer to fascism. Especially the racism, sexism, and xenophobia and supporting a type of welfare state for the middle class but not for vulnerable people.
Nazi Germany had a welfare state system. But if you were poor and unemployed you could either work in a factory for long hours and very low wages or get sent to a forced labor camp.
I’d guess that a significant portion of the US population has agreed with this sort of fascist ideology for at least 70 or so years. We have data on membership in racist and Neo-Nazi groups and those numbers are low, but people tend to lie about controversial political beliefs.
I’d guess there are at least a few million people in the US who are bona fide Nazis. There’s also some fascist-like thinking floating around in the part of the environmental movement that emphasizes population control as the main solution to ecological problems.
A number of people left Earth First! in the 1990’s because they thought it was too leftist and they were into stuff like eugenics, strict immigration limits, and cutting off humanitarian aid to poor countries to reduce world population. Of course, not everyone who supports reducing the world population is a right wing racist or fascist (Earth First! itself supports population reduction to around 100 million). But I’d guess many people think that way and are not willing to admit it.
I don’t want to think about what would have to happen for this to occur.
Back to Trump, I continue to be shocked and horrified by how many people support him. Even if he loses, he is encouraging more people to think open bigotry and violence are acceptable. I am frightened for the future of my country.
Population reduction isn’t that popular now in the environmental movement. It was more of a thing in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Now it’s mostly racists and the very “old school” people in the environmental and animal rights movements.
There are people who think that’s going to happen anyway sooner or later, and would like to make sure that it will happen relatively humanely.
Then again some of them are racist as hell and would prefer to make certain that most of the reduction is non-white, so…
For the people who think this way, I imagine “making sure it happens relatively humanely” includes “making sure it happens to somebody else.”
Forced sterilization is what immediately comes to mind. Which goes right back to eugenics too.
Which we had happening in the United States as late as the early 20th century.
The non-racist ones tend to support uniform reduction in the birth rate through voluntary birth control and promoting stuff like single-child families. But the racist as hell ones seem to be more numerous on the Internet. Also a few Sierra Club board members have supported strong immigration restrictions.
But the Sierra Club membership continually voted overwhelmingly against proposals to officially take an anti-immigration stance, so the organization has no official position but most members are probably anti-racist. The anti-immigration people are mostly trolling everyone right now.
I’m a (relatively young) tree hugger who considers overpopulation to be a major environmental hazard. I’ve flirted with VHEMT as a movement, though I’m not entirely sure about them. (VHEMT stands for the Voluntary Human Exinction Movement and its view is that it would be best for humanity to voluntarily stop breeding and bow out of the “being a species” thing entirely. Being as its keyword is voluntary, most members aren’t under the impression this is actually a goal that can be accomplished. It’s more of a making a statement thing.) It’s one of the many, many reasons why I’m never reproducing. So I’m probably considered on the extreme end of things.
IMO, if any environmentalists are really serious about overpopulation being a serious issue, they should be most worried about the population of wealthy people, because a rich kid from a first world country consumes the same amount of resources as, like, thirty impoverished kids from developing countries. And a disproportionate number of wealthy people are white, so yelling about how POC are breeding too much but not saying anything about white people is, yeah, that’s entirely racially motivated, not environmentally motivated.
Thanks, WWTH.
I’ve been checking the shifts in 538’s polls-plus number religiously.
The thing which worries me right now is less “will Trump win the election” and more “what will happen afterwards.” Will the Latin@ vote remain strong or will voter participation decrease once more? Will Trump retain his demagoguic position or will his followers abandon him? Will there be violence? What of Ted Cruz? These are terrifying questions.
@Catalpa : you’re right on when you say it’s the consumption of the rich the problem.
In all honesty, the human population is still very sustainable. It’s the lifestyle the problem, and the inefficient way the lifestyle is sustained with.
@ catalpa
P J O’Rourke wrote an essay exactly on that point years ago with the brilliant title “Way too many of you; just the right amount of me”
If the world Trump supporters live in is in any way being compared to Cloud Cuckoo Land, then my reaction is roughly that of Batman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81QMiGhIymU&t=0m49s
Note: I haven’t seen the entire Lego Movie, but the introduction to Cloud Cuckoo Land is one of the scenes I’ve caught.
@Nikki
You must fix this at your earliest convenience
I agree.
Disclaimer : over 80% of the insured value of my stuff is made of lego.
What Axecalibur said.