By David Futrelle
Let’s see: Trump is launching trade wars with our allies while effusively praising a murderous dictator for signing a meaningless document; immigrant children are being forcibly separated from their parents and kept in literal cages; Trump let thousands die in Puerto Rico because they’re brown people who can’t vote in presidential elections; and, oh, I could go on forever. Every day under Trump is a horror and an embarrassment.
So for today’s Mammoth Classic I thought I’d present you with a post I did in August 2016 in which I looked at Men’s Rights Activists who were predicting we would slide into a gynocractic dystopia if Hillary were elected — bringing about such horrors as war with Russia, the destruction of working-class men, “suppression and demonization of males,” and perhaps worst of all, the possible appointment of Michael Kimmel, a feminist academic who writes regularly on masculinity, to head a White House Council on Men and Boys.
Instead of their imaginary dystopia under Clinton, we got the real thing under Trump.
I present to you “Men’s Rights Redditors predict a dystopian gynocracy under President Hillary Clinton.” Enjoy.
Don’t forget the new War on Canada. Hillary wouldn’t have the ballz to declare war on Canada, now would she? MAGA!
/channeling my best MRA impersonation
I always have to laugh whenever I hear about the demonization of men
Maybe they wouldn’t get demonized if they didn’t act so damn much like demons
It’s very telling that MRA’s hate Michael Kimmel, the man who has done the most to create a discussion of masculinity among feminists and bring discussion of injustices against men to the forefront is so widely demonized and despised among MRA’s.
Methinks it has a lot to do because he doesn’t adopt a kind of bizarro-world framework of men being the real oppressed and tends to call out their bullshit talking points which are designed to create a false sense of equal gravity between men and women’s issues, which leads useful idiots who buy MRA logic to believe women’s issues aren’t as bad as they really are.
MRA’s do not care about men’s issues beyond the fact they can use them to attempt to devalue women’s issues.
@Katherine:
She’d have had the brains not to.
Lordy I miss Obama.
Could we please have a thread to chew over the mess in Singapore?
Here’s my theory, for what it’s worth.
I think Trump is trying to get a Nobel prize, because Obama got one. He imagines that it’s easy – of course Kim Jong-un will keep his word! (Trump probably doesn’t even know that Kim’s made the same promise for 25 years and it’s never been more than words). Never mind that the last 4 presidents have tried hard, they dont have Trump’s superior DNA. Trump can just breeze in and it’ll be easy, then he can pick up his Nobel. Then he can work on getting Obama’s Nobel rescinded, then Trump will have won.
I hope I’m wrong on this, but Drumpf really does seem obsessed with Obama.
Trump might be obsessed with Obama, but the Scandinavians aren’t fooled by Trump. He’ll never get that prize.
I only know one person who thought Trump was good (they also supported Brexit). We know each other through a shared hobby and social thing – a storytelling club that I run – so we haven’t really debated, but we each know roughly where the other is coming from.
A few months ago we met in the street and he was perturbed, to say the least, by how Trump is turning out, and prepared to admit it.
But then he gathered his thoughts and said that he KNEW and it had been PROVEN that Hillary would have started an all-out nuclear war by now.
Plus that when people get to be President “no matter how good they are” they are taken into a little room after the oathtaking and introduced to Satan. I hope he was speaking metaphorically, but not entirely sure.
Like Trump wasn’t inside the very arse of Beelzebub already… indeed I think Satan was one of his early appointees as campaign manager.
@Sheila Crosby
I suspect that Jong-un will keep his word in the short-to-medium term, because he gave away token things he didn’t need and in return got pretty much everything he wanted. It is a military and diplomatic victory for him, and it plays wonderfully to the home crowd where for once the propaganda writers don’t actually have to lie about the matter.
Maybe someone should point out to Trump that pandering to corrupt, murderous dictators whilst condemning peaceful and democratically elected allies and trade partners is not a great way to win a peace prize.
(FWIW, I don’t think Obama should have got one. He’s fortunate that his successor is so loathsome that he can’t help but look great in comparison)
To be honest, I’ve often wondered myself if new Presidents get taken to some room and have “certain things explained to them”, though not by anyone supernatural, just by agents of the military-industrial-and-invading-the-middle-east-all-the-damn-time complex.
It was certainly whiplash-inducing when Obama campaigned on ending Bush’s warrantless surveillance regime and, the moment he was in office, actually codified the unconstitutional surveillance programs. OK, perhaps he was simply corrupted by power, thinking what he might be able to use such a thing for … but was it his power to use? Snowden made a point of revealing that the NSA could quietly wiretap the President if they wanted to. Was he in charge, or one of the citizens most under surveillance by whoever really is?
It hasn’t escaped my notice either that while the bankers usually get everything they want, slashing that giant “defense” budget would free up a lot of federal dollars for everything from bank bailouts to slashing corporate taxes, and would please at least 10x as many of the hogs at the trough as there are big defense contractors. But in a tug of war between Wall Street and the defense contractors, the latter always win. The difference between them in capabilities being, the defense contractors can spy on the President (Booz-Allen Hamilton, at the very least, can, they’re the ones the NSA contracted out the Snowden-exposed surveillance programs to, and in fact were Snowden’s direct employers). Oh, and they have a lot of weapons.
Sheila:
I guess since Trump isn’t responsible for any promises he makes to his supporters, he isn’t responsible for any promises he trades from foreign leaders either, as long as it’s not something he personally cares about. He’s outsourcing his political bullshit to East Asia.
Maybe he’d settle on getting the Peace prize twice. Didn’t he already express a clear desire to be ‘Time Person Of The Year’ twice – and on consecutive years, just to beat pretty much anyone else?
Pie:
I think Obama’s predecessor was half the reason he seemed worth a Peace Prize in 2009. The other half was just a blatant attempt to guilt him into doing something that perhaps wasn’t even doable.
If/when the US gets out of this fascism track, I suspect the next president will win a Peace prize just for getting elected.
I always thought that Obama’s peace prize was for a) not being Bush and b) being the first non-white US president. The second part really was a great acheivement and I didn’t expect to see it in my lifetime. The drones and surveillence, not so much.
The edit window just closed when I had a thought: I wonder if the next peace prize will be Robert Mueller?
For anyone who hasn’t heard, ABC news are saying that Cohen has flipped. Oh sweet FSM I hope so.
They predicted a dystopian gynocracy under her; instead, the US of Amnesia got an ultra-dystopian kakistocracy under Donnie Drumpf. Complete with talking penes who claim to “respect career women” while pissing on porn stars…or boffing women not their wives (who, if Prudy Giuliani is anything to go by, are now divorcing them on the grounds of infidelity).
The mind boggleth.
Or perhaps we should call it by a portmanteau word: Kekistocracy!
The late great Bill Hicks speculated that the explaining is done in the presence of “the 12 industrialist capitalist scumfucks” whose asses the President-elect had to kiss to fill his war chest, and one really old guy smoking a cigar to himself who just says “Roll the film.” The film does the explaining, as it shows just how easy it is for an entire President of these United States to become shot through the forehead from behind, as recorded by the camera that was looking over Eddie Blake’s shoulder on the grassy knoll.
@Surplus
I’m 100% certain that happened with Bill Clinton vis-a-vis his “welfare reform” deficit reduction kick.
I gotta admit, I’m kinda enjoying this whole “don’t mess with Canada” thing. Stereotypes being what they are about Canadian politeness, clearly we run the same gamut as Americans and any other country; hell, this blog seems to highlight far too many Canadian reactionaries like Lauren Southern or Stefan Molyneux or Gavin McInnis, so it’s not like we’re bereft of complete assholes.
That said, Trump somehow managed to unite everybody behind Justin Trudeau, including pseudo-Trump Premier-elect Doug Ford. So well played, Orange Hobgoblin, well played.
Thank heavens for Mueller, Stormy, Avenatti, the Parkland Kids and a host of others.
There is hope.
Whenever things get dark, I do what Mr. Rogers would recommend….
“Look for the helpers”.
It is IMPERATIVE to stay positive, hopeful and respond with a “Don’t worry; We got this!” rather than do our best “Chicken Little” impressions.
Manafort just got arrested, it’s a start.
**********
There’s been an ongoing effort to get people to vote and stuff like VoteBlue, SwingLeft, ActBlue and others to reclaim districts. With a few exceptions, a number of Democratic Candidates have been winning Red districts/states.
We shouldn’t rest on our laurels….but a Blue Wave is likely.
Get out the vote.
Oh; A Third Party is NOT an option. Instead of avoiding the Democratic Party, we should reform it. We need to be PRAGMATIC and both parties are not the same!
Trump got in the White House due to….among other things….people voting third party. Jill Stein has been found to be a stooge for Putin. Russia’s interference consisted of mainly a propaganda war….they divided the Progressives.
Look to the Millennials and the changing demographics….The USA’s future is Progressive! It may take effort but it will be. Keep up the fight!