An open thread for anyone who wants to talk Trump — to complain about his bullshit, make fun of his hair, strategize about ways to oppose him, whatever. No trolls or Trump fans.
Categories
Trumpocalypse, Week Two Open Thread
Hello.
> Ohlmann
Hmm, ever try to put your hand in a fire, even if someone had told you not to do so ? Never think, when you were three, that you can jump three stairs and perfectly land on your feet (i have tried, landed head first and finished to the hospital) ? I think there are many experiences involving pain (physical and/or mental), and as experience, you learn something (can be a good or a bad something). Of course, some persons will never learn, even with pain (or risk of), but i think that if there was no risk of pain, society will go straight in a chaos. I sadly do not see reason suddenly overcome everyone for a perfect civilized life where risk of suffering is no more needed.
Have a nice day.
Wow.
Beer ads don’t usually make me cry.
Super Bowl LI Ads Trolled Donald Trump All Night
Trump was probably not a fan of this year’s Super Bowl.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/super-bowl-li-ads-trolled-donald-trump-all-night_us_5897c3f0e4b04061313775d5
Between Melissa McCarthy’s spoof of a raging Sean Spicer and several corporations rebuking Trump via commercials, I’d say that this weekend’s TV has delivered a one-two punch to the president.
@Alan
That’s a shocking story about Johnson Beharry.
Good for you for doing something about it.
I hope lots of your fellow Brits write to the powers-that-be.
@Alan Robertshaw
I have no ‘net access over the weekend so I missed the story about Johnson Beharry – thanks for putting it up here.
I will certainly write to my MP about that – if I get a response I’ll let you know.
I looked the story up on the Independent website, and the comments there made for some very depressing reading. But not as bad as the Mail’s: one was along the lines of ‘seems the standards for a VC are slipping these days, PC’. Written by some armchair warrior who probably watches every war movie on TV on a bank holiday but wouldn’t dream of going into conflict themself, about a man who, as the pictures clearly show, was heavily wounded doing just that.
Another commentator called Beharry, a working-class immigrant in one of the most un-PC professions there is, a ‘member of the Liberal Elite’. Genuinely.
My mind is utterly boggled by this level of wilful ignorance.
@ danholme
Yup, classic spoilt millennial. He even took time off after the first incident just because he’d been shot in the head. Skiver.
I disagree: relying on your enemies to rescue you is inherently demoralising.
Rhuu, kupo,
Try reading my comment again. I did not blame underprivileged people for not voting. I simply noted the fact that a large proportion of them did not choose to do so. If you want to deny that this is a fact, you need to provide evidence that voter suppression was so overwhelming that most of those in underprivileged groups who did not vote, could not practically have done so. If we want such people to vote (and it’s by no means a new problem – in practically all democracies, even when there are no significant difficulties in the way, a smaller proportion of poorer people vote), certainly fighting voter suppression of all kinds and gerrymandering are necessary, but above all, there is a need to convince people that voting – and political engagement more generally – is worthwhile. I’m talking from personal experience here. In the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, I spent a lot of time out canvassing with the Radical Independence Campaign. We lost the vote – although we made up a lot of ground during the campaign – but the turnout was nearly 85%, the highest recorded for any election or referendum in the UK since universal suffrage, and huge numbers of people – particularly poorer people – voted who had never done so before.
@Nick G
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/08/voter-suppression-in-u-s-elections/amp/?client=safari
To add to my last comment, of course kupo is right that those to blame for Trump’s win are those who voted for him – plus those in the media who failed to hold him to account, and scumbags such as Comey and Putin. But once we turn from moral judgement (which is entirely justified) to the causal factors that led to his win, we find that Trump got a lower percentage of the vote that Romney did when losing in 2012, and scarcely higher than McCain got in the more directly comparable election (because there was no incumbent) in 2008 – when there was also a significantly higher turnout. For whatever reason, Clinton failed to get enough people to come out and vote for her – and specifically, that was so in the midwest states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all of which Obama won in both 2008 and 2012, whose defection to Trump sealed the result, and in all of which the Democratic vote was sharply down in 2016. That is why I say the key to limiting Trump’s power in 2018, and turning him or his successor out in 2020, is mobilising those who did not vote.
Ooglyboggles,
Since I specifically mentioned voter suppression in my original comment, and since your link makes no attempt to quantify the effect in 2016 (it couldn’t, as it was written before the votes were counted), I’m not sure what your point is. Since voter suppression will only be intensified in 2018 and 2020, it becomes even more vital to convince as many people as possible to make the maximum effort to vote – and to launch programmes to help them get the necessary documentation, get to the polls, etc. I can’t see why this would be controversial among people who actually want to clip Trump’s wings in 2018.
@Nick
I give you literal laws that prevent minorities from voting and make their votes less valued.
http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&context=law_urbanlaw
But sure keep going with that “the asians/blacks/latinos/middleeastern peoples are just too apathetic” narrative.
@ Nick G; Oogly
For the right-wing, voter suppression has much less to do with people voting who shouldn’t be able to and much more to do with KEEPING people FROM voting who should be able to, specifically the underprivileged; and that word is to be taken literally. People of color and non-christians particularly, cannot be counted on to vote for a right-wing agenda, and therefore must be kept from voting. Claims by trumpling about “millions of illegal voters” are designed to allow the mostly-republican state legislatures to institute ever more restrictive voter registration laws to disenfranchise those people.
@ Kat
I was very heartened by some of the commercials aired during the superbowl. I saw a palpable current of resistance, though I wonder if that’s some projection on my part….
Still, the Airbnb(? still not sure if it was theirs) “#weaccept” ad, and the 84lumber(!!!!!) ad were, like, touche’ trump! Another which again, I did not catch the advertiser’s name, the ad wasn’t particularly political, but the opening scene, as the camera pans down the row of houses, one house has a rainbow flag!!
@ Nick; Oogly
I call bullshit on any indication that anyone was to blame other than my demographic, white middle-class/working class (mostly) men. 25% of my demographic saw trump’s bigotry and ignored it… “he doesn’t reeeeely mean that, he isn’t reeeely gonna do that”; another 25% did not see his bigotry or refused to believe it… ” Fox Nooz says he didn’t really say that, Fox Nooz says that never happened”; and the other 50% of my demographic just fucking LIKED his bigotry… “yeah, finally someone is going to make it socially acceptable again to publicly abuse people who aren’t like ME”.
A lot of things could have happened to prevent the Yellow-Crested Howler from taking power; more voters could have come out, more Bernies could have voted Clinton, hell, the Justice Department could have put his fucking ass in jail for a dozen reasons… but if white middle-class/working class voters, those who made a DECISION to put a fascist in the white house, would’a pulled their heads outa their asses, this would not have happened.
@ ooglyboggles
Thanks for that link; I do love me a legal journal article. It was a very enlightening and interesting piece; especially if you’re a bit of legal geek. Ironically the one thing it didn’t cover was the Electoral College system. You can extrapolate the points made, but it would have been nice to see them especially address that. I can only assume it’s because there aren’t any cases directly on that issue.
@Alan
Most journals I find seem to take take the “balanced not objective” route when it comes to the EC. Funnily enough a common trend you’ll find is them predicting a crisis of the constitution to occur of we gor a repeat of 1996 in the US, which happened again with Trump. Since the EC elected a demagogue because we live in a kleptocracy, any arguments for elitism falls apart when they allowed a fascist dumbass in office despite 3 million people saying “no we wanted Hillary”. Thanks alot land & slave owning racist founders.
Just saw this petition:
I’m going to look more into the consequences of this before signing, but it seems like something that is probably a good idea for people who are going to have to leave the States being recognised as refugees up here.
(If that’s what this would do, that’s why I want to look into it more)
Ah, here’s more information, from rabble.
@Weird Eddie
Indeed. This right here is why Trump is in power: Striking union workers voted for Trump, despite his being personal friends with the guy they’re striking against, and putting him on White House advisory councils. That’s how strongly white people (esp. men) are clinging to white supremacy. That’s also why American unions have always been so shit.
@LindsayIrene,
I should have realized something like that already existed. I’ve read that some of those tunnels had electric lights, so the trains shouldn’t be a surprise there. Where there’s a will….
Though am I the only one whose thoughts went to full-sized locomotives instead of the more likely miner trains? Even though the former would be much more awesome to think about?