So it’s ten days until the election now, and I cannot wait until this nightmare is over. Talk about it, or whatever else you want to talk about. No trolls, MRAs, Trumpkins, etc.
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Ten Days Now: Election, etc Open Thread
Oh, so that happened. Um, well, that felt long overdue ever since I read this blog.
Gert could have make its point in one short sentence: “I’m cocksure that I’m smarter than youse guys.”
@joekster
It does if you use it in a religious context. Brethren (and sistren) only have a religious connotation because the King James bible was popular for a long ass time and didn’t change to brothers and sisters when the rest of the language did.
@joekster
“Kin” is an inclusive synonym for “brethren.”
And I appreciate the Lakota American Indian way of expressing oneness and harmony with all forms of life — humans, animals, rocks, valleys, and so on — by referring to it all as “all my relations” or “all my relatives.”
Aaaaw, I missed Gert blowing up? And he called me out specifically? And he called me your Highness?
(Am I royalty here? Was this a coronation?)
http://cdn.squares.im/pony/pic/photo/2013/06/937642bf165973a8da825905c40954f2_500.jpg
Loyal Subjects, we art most pleased at this jovial celebration of troll-joustings upon the great greens of the Mammoth Court
Srsly tho, you guys are the best <3
As for you, Gert! I will happily reply. Feel free to send you reply by carrier-pigeon or perhaps signal drum?
The US spends millions upon millions in foreign aid work throughout the globe. Sure, they sink piles more into the military and into Israel (which I was not counting), but despite this they still provide an incredible amount of foreign aide. Double that of the UK in total, as it turns out. They do good work in Africa and SE Asia, and whatever you think of them, you should respect their generosity in this regard. I do.
(Also, as a note – people who complain about zionists tend to turn out to be fascists. Not saying you are one, but language is an indicator of cognitive semantic structure. Be careful of the seas you swim in.)
Second, emails. Yes, I am concerned about those emails! Not because Hillary Clinton is especially corrupt, mind you – she isn’t. She’s a politician, they’re all like that. It’s gross and awful, yes, and I dislike corruption in general. Politicians have to balance between enacting the will of the people and appeasing the corruptors, and it’s disgusting.
Trump is one of the corruptors. Only an idiot would think that the best way to end corruption is to put the corruptor in charge. I’m sure that you aren’t that sort of idiot, are you Gert? No, of course not. That’d be silly!
As for Bernie and the whole “keeping her honest” thing, I think that isn’t the way to put it. Hillary – and most politicians – hate the fundraising and the groveling. They want to actually do the politics and work on laws. (Not sure what the R’s are up to, but every political figure I’ve talked to or seen interviewed when speaking honestly after they resigned has agreed with this). Bernie’s movement at this point is about giving Hillary the lever that she needs, and the Congress needs, to pry the hands of corporate money off of the government.
It ain’t about Bernie at all anymore – it’s about progressives staying active and proving to the politicians that they can fight the corruption and win. That’s an excellent goal, and I have high hopes for Hillary and Bernie both.
You seem to care about ending corruption, Gert, but here’s the thing – it seems like you’re willing to bulldoze whoever and whatever is needed to fight that corruption. That’s why Bernie lost. All he could talk about was money in politics. That’s a huge problem, but it’s not all of the problems that the Americans face today. He was tone deaf to the problems he needed to have compassion for.
Hillary, on the other hand, has that compassion. She’s also capable of reading when a movement is ready to go forward. She’s seen that America is ready to fight money in politics – now we get to see if she’s ready to pick up that torch. I’m hopeful and eager – I’m still following Wolf-PAC and Democracy Now, don’t get me wrong – and with effort, America will have its democracy back.
As for the republican haybale, he’ll complain bitterly about how it was rigged to his youtube Trump TV audience, like every other macho crybaby that’s been kicked to the curb by reality.
(h-how was that? Do I keep the crown?)
Well, Gert finally got his wish! We’ll see if he comes back.
I find it interesting that he’s so judgmental of Americans, criticizing us from the left but he claims to come from England? Like England doesn’t have a long history of racism, classism, and imperialism? As well as current issues like Brexit, the corresponding increase in the harassment of non-white Brits and the murer of Jo Cox.
I mean, the US deserves to be judged for all for all those things too. I’m just saying. Pot meet kettle.
Although Gert’s run as a troll was cruelly cut short (Thanks, Obama!), this individual might be a Troll of Yore.
Stamina: 4 points
Amusement value: 4 points
Total: 8 points out of 10
In addition, this person brazenly entered a posted No Trolls zone. Gert gets an extra-credit point for chutzpah, bringing the total to 9 out of 10 points.
These results, however, are preliminary.
What we don’t know is how long Gert can maintain this trollishness. A Troll of Yore, as I understand it, can perform trollery 24/7 for days in a row with no slacking of amusement value.
@Scildfreja
Brilliant. As always.
Although it is frowned upon to miss one’s own coronation, sometimes dinner, chores, selfies with one’s cat, and so on, interfere.
So yes, you get to keep all the crown.
…huh? Oh, fine.
*returns crown jewel*
Wasn’t stealing it, I just wanted to see if it was real fire opal. >_>
@Ray of Rays
Snort.
When I made my comment on the second comment page I was having a bad mood and was annoyed and I apologise for being too harsh.
Hmm. Gert was certainly unnecessarily rude, and used a couple of sexist insults – and of course David is fully entitled to ban anyone he wants – but a lot of the responses to him were unjustified. There is noithing racist in saying Obama has been a great disappointment, and nothing intrinsically* antisemitic either in strongly criticising Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians – which has been abominable, and has been strongly criticised by many Jews, including Israeli Jews – or in referring to Zionists as Zionists (“Zionist bonobos” was admittedly dubious, and indeed plain bizarre – after all, bonobos are by reputation peaceable and laid-back). There is, indeed, a well-known body called The World Zionist Organization which is, believe it or not, a world organization of Zionists. And (whatever his confusions about who released what) Gert’s criticisms of Clinton as an establishment politician, warhawk, and suck-up to Wall Street bankers are entirely justified. Yes, she is infinitely better than the Trumplegroper, but that’s a bar so low it would be challenging to a champion limbo dancer.
*Yes, criticism of Israel and Zionists can be antisemitic, but accusations of antisemitism can also be used to deflect such criticism.
There was also a distinct hint of “how-dare-this-Brit-criticise-AMURRICA” about one or two responses to Gert. Either the criticisms are justified, or they are not – where the critic comes from is irrelevant.
I agree, Nick G. I don’t think Gert’s name-calling was very nice at all and it shouldn’t be allowed but a lot of the hate went straight over my head. Not being a massive Clinton supporter or being critical of Obama is sexist and racist?! And whoah there with the assumptions and insinuations. (“Oh, you think Hillary is dishonest because she’s a woman?! How sexist” etc) But oh well. I shouldn’t say too much either, I’m new here anyway. I’m sorry for my first somewhat rude commentaar in this thread though, I shouldn’t have said it like that.
(1) I think people who feel that Obama was a major disappointment had grossly inflated expectations of what he would be able to accomplish. He got Obamacare through against total Republican obstruction, and it was a less than ideal program in large part because he had to have the vote of several conservative Democratic Senators (particularly Joe Lieberman, who is from Connecticut where the insurance industry is very big). Obamacare was then demonized by dishonest Republicans, which resulted in Democratic losses in Congress that prevented him from doing much through legislation for the rest of his terms. The main problem is that the US people did not elect a Congress that would work with him. Most non-US people here live in parliamentary systems and are not familiar with the sort of gridlock that you can get in a US-type system.
(2) As to HRC, I believe that there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of a woman President but don’t want to say so, so they latch on to the baseless scandals as an excuse. And please don’t expect a lot from her. I think she will be as progressive as Congress will allow her to be, but for the moment that’s probably not much. The probability is that Congress will put most of their effort into investigations of the HRC “scandals”, and possibly even impeach her, which only requires a majority vote in the House (she will not be convicted, as the Republicans can’t get to the required 2/3 in the Senate). The best hope is that people will get sick of the Republicans and vote more of them out in 2018 (which according to recent patterns should be a great year for Republicans).
It seems possible that the Republican Party will blow itself up over the increasingly divergent opinions between the Corporatists and the Trumpians — it’s certainly a volatile situation, but the spark that would cause the explosion is not yet predictable.
Calling Obama the biggest disappointment ever in the white house doesn’t come from anything to do with facts. Calling Hillary dishonest is sexist because we’re talking about a politician with a pretty good record on politifact, compared with other politicians. Calling women ‘females’ is sexist. And he has a trollish history and this is a non-troll thread.
Calling Obama a disappointment might be true, but is not so much a statement about him so much as a statement about how unreasonably high our hopes were.
In the end he was a good President in some ways, a worryingly orthodox President in others, and showed the patience of a saint when it came to facing down the opposition he did. He wasn’t a bad President by any means. If we expected him to don a cape and fly, that’s not on him.
@Schildfreja: all hail her Highness 🙂
@GOSJM: From everything I’ve seen, you’re right about how Obama was forced to compromise on the ACA to get it through Congress. Personally, I think it was a major mistake to run medicare/medicaid expansion through the private insurance sector*, but it is quite possible that the bill would not have passed without that.
@Margot, Nick G: As Kupo said, I’m pretty sure Gert has a history here. Other commentators can elaborate on that as needed. Also, he mocked schildfreja, who is probably the single person on this thread most qualified (by patience and knowledge base) to engage the various trolls that come here. Finally, ‘twat’ is not cool. Someone without any history would be called out for calling someone that on this site.
@Kat: Kindred. That’s the term I was fishing for. Thanks!
*That simply confirms the status quo: the foxes are running the henhouse. Believe me, I know. The government rarely tells me I can’t do things for my patients. Their private insurance companies? All the fracking time.
@EJ
How is he the biggest disappointment ever in the entire history of the white house, though? This country has a huge history of putting disappointing douchenozzels in power. There is nothing factual about calling Obama the biggest disappointment of a president. It’s right up there with calling Clinton dishonest and hawkish. It’s language used by bigots every damn day in this country and I’m really sick of it and sick of having to explain that there actually is a lot of misogyny against Clinton and racism against Obama.
@kupo:
To be sure, if anyone calls Obama the “biggest disappointment ever” then they either had some worryingly high expectations, or else are using grotesque hyperbole. Either way they don’t come out of it looking like a person with good judgment.
Also, agreed that a lot of the hyperbole about Clinton and Obama comes from the way people focus on the imperfections of minorities and disregard their achievements. When one is looking for a stick to beat someone with, no twig is too small.
GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina,
Both your points have considerable validity, but neither shows that people who think Obama the greatest disappointment ever in the White House (and I think you have to allow some latitude for hyperbole) are racist, or that people who criticise Clinton are sexist. And Congress (even though a non-American, I’m quite familiar with the US political system btw) did not force Obama to launch drone strikes killing civilians in countries with which the USA is not at war, nor to persecute whistleblowers and ramp up the security state, nor to refuse to recognise coups in Egypt and Honduras as coups, nor to join in the disastrous overthrow of Gaddafi. Nor did it force Clinton to go along with these things, nor to refer to both Henry Kissinger and Hosni Mubarak as personal friends, nor to take huge payments for buttering up Wall Street bankers.
kupo, jokester,
See my response above. I noted that Gert used a couple of sexist insults. Gert’s history is not relevant to the accusations of racism and antisemitism against him, since no racist or antisemitic comments from previous threads were raised – all the accusations were about what he said on this thread.
Zionist bonobo is okay with you, then? And no, I don’t need to give latitude for hyperbole because women and POC are always held to higher standards.
@Nick
Incorrect. When I brought up Zionism and dogwhistles, I did so in relation to a meltdown from months ago. Gert doesn’t think that complaining about Zionists furthers antisemitism. He thinks words are just words and taking implications from those words is inherently a silencing tactic. That’s where that comes from
“Zionist bonobo”? Oh my Katie.
@EJ
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/10/28/ten-days-now-election-etc-open-thread/comment-page-3/#comment-1023767
He also mentioned “modern day Neanderthals” but I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. I think he used that term last time he melted down though. I’m sure it’s a dogwhistle for something but I don’t want to read the type of sites I’d have to read to find out what.