Trumpocalypse, Week Two Open Thread

Ohlmann

My first problem is that I am pretty sure that suffering don’t make anyone learn.

I agree with you. Just as most of us lack the necessary anatomical and medical knowledge to accurately identify many of our physical ailments, even more of us are ill-equipped or un-educated in the necessary political-economic-historic background to accurately point to the basis for our other problems.

Young people for instance. In the prosperous west, there are millions of young people who are unemployed, underemployed, uneducated or inappropriately trained-educated to succeed in the current economy. Their parents and grandparents and politicians might try to tell them they’re lazy or never-had-it-so-good or some other rubbish. Those older people lived through, they watched, the economic and social train-wrecks that Reagan-Thatcher-neocon policies have wrought on their societies and the depleting of taxation revenues of countries everywhere. Even they can’t recognise the consequences in industry and the workforce and in government paralysis induced by lack of funds for infrastructure and other general government activities that had previously kept their economies ticking over.

There are similar considerations in poor countries. Economic, military, climate change, land mismanagement, failure to educate or train young people means that there are many millions of otherwise strong and healthy people in the prime of their youth who can find no useful occupation – on the land producing food, getting educated for trade or other jobs, working in a busy thriving economy. So they migrate to cities to face unemployment and underemployment.

All these young people, poor, rich, educated and illiterate alike, are ripe for the picking by political and religious fanatics who can convince them that “those people” are the reason why the world is so fucked up. Never their own governments or bankers or employers or armies, no sirree, not them. All those leaders are strong, wise and rich because they’re such good people, nothing they’ve ever done has anything to do with your miserable circumstances now. Waddya mean, Delaware, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands? Nothing to see here, move along.

we don’t actually know how to make them snap out of it, even if there is plenty of example of people snapping out of it.

Snapping out of it is very unusual. It might seem like that when the last scales finally fall from the eyes. Apparently the general rule is that it takes two years for people to abandon non-factual beliefs. Bill Nye talks about it here. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/bill-nye-trumps-fear-of-cognitive-dissonance-is-why-he-is-shutting-down-government-scientists/

Redsilkphoenix: Bush built a highly controversial border fence on a fairly large part of the border. Some farmers lost a bunch of land that they can’t access anymore. But there’s still parts unfenced.

Trump wants it to be a wall.

Re: the wall (not the one in Westeros)

This is so relevant that it has probably been posted many times before, but yeah:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wk6rswxQro

Turns out that the idea of a physically impenetrable wall only belongs in the world of fiction, where conflicts are much simpler and/or the consequences remain fictional as well.

@joekster

Also, Damn /pol/ Turd.

most Trump voters were older, if I recall properly – Scildfreja Unnýðnes

Yes.Trump got more votes than Clinton among those over 40, less than Clinton among those under 40. Similar divides on race (Trump won more whites, Clinton more PoCs), wealth (Trump won more with annual income – household income I think – over $50,000, Clinton more among those with less), gender (Trump won more men, Clinton more women). Of course there are complex intersections between these groups, but overall, Trump won among the more privileged, lost among the less. So despite the media noise, this was not a revolt of those “left behind”, but a scream of outraged entitlement. Trump won overall partly because of the electoral college (which weights rural votes over urban ones hence white votes over others), partly because of voter suppression, partly because of journalistic failure, partly because of Comey and Putin, but above all because so many of the under-privileged did not choose to vote. Mobilising them is key to overturning the Republican congressional majorities in 2018, and defeating Trump or his successor in 2020 – if we survive that long.

As for impeachment or removal as unfit – stop fantasising about it. It will only happen if the political costs of standing by Trump exceed those of removing him for enough Republicans. That might happen because of Trump’s blunders, but only he and his cronies can bring that about. Or it might happen because the political resistance to him reaches such a pitch that enough Republican congresspersons fear for their seats, or are put under enough pressure by their oligarch funders. So bringing about that pitch of resistance is the only way forward. We non-Americans can help by fighting fascism 2.0 in our own countries, and exerting maximum pressure on our own politicians to reject any cooperation with the Trump regime.

@Nick G: pretty sure blaming underpriviledged people for not voting is a bad idea… what with all the steps taken to make it difficult for them to actually vote.

I’d say the key is letting people vote, by not gerrymandering, having advance voting in universities/colleges again, and maybe not putting the worst voting machines in the poor districts.

Also, you said it yourself, it was the electoral college that made this happen, by valuing rural votes more than urban.

@Nick G
We got into this situation because of the people who chose to vote for Trump. You said yourself voter suppression was a factor yet you still choose to blame the people who are being oppressed over blaming the people who fucking voted for oppression.

I’m currently fuming but I’m going to try to channel that into something positive. First the background.

As a result of the travel ban a guy called Johnson Beharry was pulled aside whilst going through US customs the other day. He’s from Grenada originally and a bit ‘dusky’ so maybe that had something to do with it, who knows?

He pointed out he was British and had the passport to prove it. However the officials then hooked onto the fact his passport showed he’d been to Iraq and grilled him over that.

Now Johnson has in fact been to Iraq. He went there as a British soldier during which time he won the Victoria Cross. That was for rescuing a number of casualties during a firefight and, notwithstanding that he’d taken an RPG round next to his head and had bits of shrapnel stuck in his brain, went back in again to rescue the rest of the party.

I’ve calmed down a bit and I’m now composing a letter to both the PM and perhaps more usefully my local MP. He’s ex forces himself so I’m hoping he might raise a suitable question in the house. My fellow Brits might perhaps like to do something similar?

If trump is so rich, why can’t he get paid protests as big as Soros can? Loser.

Maybe Trump has a huge following amongst polar bears so we just can’t see them?

@ Alan

Nah. polar bears hate Trump. Everyone knows that.

@ Redsilkphoenix

Drug smugglers already have tunnels with trains under the border. Donnie’s wall is useless already and it hasn’t even been built.

Hmm. I don’t know why the first video of Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer was removed.

Trying again:

https://youtu.be/UWuc18xISwI