By David Futrelle
Never doubt the ability of Reddit’s The_Donald — the site’s biggest hangout for meme-loving, conspiracy pushing Trump stans — to turn the worst debacles into wins (in their minds at least) for our illegitimate president.
But today was something special, even by their standards. On a day that even some GOP Senators came close to calling Trump’s shameless behavior in Helsinki treasonous, The_Donald’s regulars praised Putin even more effusively than their boy Trump for what they saw as the rousing success of the faux summit.
And then they turned around and accused Hillary Clinton of collusion with Russia.
Here’s the top post in the subreddit at the moment, inspired by an evidence-free accusation from Putin during the joint press conference today.
The_Donald’s regulars expressed their faux outrage:
Meanwhile, some suggested literally colluding with Russia to get Hillary sent to Russia for a show trial:
Others, in the same thread, praised the great collusion cooperation between Trump and Putin.
![jomamasophatCA 66 points 9 hours ago These are Men. They are done fucking around with the Clinton cancer on the globe. They are well aware of communism's ills, and not playing that game either. Fuck globalism, fuck the deep state, fuck the media trying to start fires around the globe faster than Trump can put them out. I love seeing these two bad-ass motherfuckers getting along. Real recognizes real. permalinkembedunsavereportgive goldreply [–]River_26 7 points 8 hours ago Agreed. Been waiting for a comment like this. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]Automatiic 2 points an hour ago " I love seeing these two bad-ass motherfuckers getting along. Real recognizes real. "](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/yut8iyguoih.png?resize=572%2C828&ssl=1)
Nice racist kicker there, dude.
Someone called Drooperdoo added:
Elsewhere in the subreddit, The_Donald’s regulars mocked those who’ve accused Trump of treason today:
Irony isn’t just dead; it’s been run over by a steamroller.
I personally doubt whether the Russians have any hold over Trump; I don’t think they need any. I think it’s much simpler than that.
Trump’s narcissism won’t allow him to think anything other than that he won the election entirely on his own. The thought that he might have needed assistance is anathema to him.
And all Putin had to do was massage Trump’s ego “Why would we need to rig the election big fella? A great guy like you had it in the bag anyway.”
The thing that bothers me about people who say “America’s always been evil,” and then bring up Native American genocide, slavery, Hawaii, etc., which are all definitely very evil things America did, but it seems like when people say, “America’s always been evil,” it’s used as an excuse to throw up their hands and not even try to make America any better. If we’ve been just totally evil during our entire history, then why would we expect that to change?
I hear “America’s always been evil” most from people who either don’t vote, or do protest votes for third parties, because the system has always been rigged, both major parties are equally bad, so voting really doesn’t matter anyway.
It actually reminds me of this Trump interview I saw where (I think it was Bill O’Riley) said “but Putin’s a killer,” and Trump said, “well, we’re killers too.” That’s a sentiment that I’ve also seen on the far left, that America is just as bad as Russia or China, and if we think we’re any better, we’re fooling ourselves.
I can see how believing that takes a certain weight off one’s shoulders.
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@katamount;
For the right wing, especially the “Hillary eats babies” igno-right, it’s NOT “what I believe”, it’s THE TRUTH. And “what I believe” is what the truth is.
Analysis, research and evidence are irrelevant, because those are left-wing tools to create fake news. They get their truth from the dumpster, from Faux Nooz, and from their preachers, and they are fundamentally opposed to checking ANYTHING out.
Honestly, if there was one thing I could convince conservatives to change, it would be to stop their virulent hatred of LEARNING.
@Juniper:
I can see why it feels this way to you, and I am sure plenty of people who point out our failings are coming from a position of fatalism and both-sides-are-equally-bad-ism. But not everyone.
Here’s the thing. White supremacy got Trump elected. White supremacy is the foundation of the United States. White supremacy rooted in violence and plunder of black and brown bodies. It is a dynamic that is alive and well today, and has always been there. Just that some of us are actually noticing it for the first time. We need to acknowledge the cost of our “freedoms.” We need to reckon with our ugly history and ugly present. Until we incorporate that reality into our understanding, our national mythbuilding and ideals are pretty fucking hollow (and always have been). Sure, we have done some good and great things. Not to dismiss that. But we can’t sweep the rest back into the shadows and focus only on the feel-good moments.
So when some people exclaim about how did it come to this? How did we lose our way? We’re not like this. Actually, we are. We always have been. Us white folks have had the privilege of blinders and benefiting from the violence without having to see it enacted. We can’t do better until we acknowledge the wrong we are doing and have done, even if only by being passive and ignorant beneficiaries of that violence and plunder. Otherwise, we’re just harking back to a fantasy past era much like yon conservatives with the halcyon 1950s.
@Juniper
Nailed it. It’s apathy more than anything else. Weird Eddie has it right when it comes to the MAGA-hued fever swamps of Fox and Breitbart, but I’m worried that there’s a lot more Dans out there who are knowledgeable and tech-savvy, but are so jaded to the political system and so removed from the broader humanity that they will entertain ideas that leave them unchallenged and comfortable.
That’s part of why Jordan Peterson is so popular with that set: his “Antidote to Chaos” doesn’t require any long-term investment of time and doesn’t require fundamental change. On the contrary: opposing change without leaving the house is his ideal solution. We don’t offer comfortable solutions. We offer hard and often bitter truths that require fundamental and structural change of society, change that will take decades to accomplish.
Dan just wants to keep on gaming and say the “R” word without me pushing back. Sadly, that leaves him vulnerable to the allure of the fever swamps, which pander to his comfort.
@ Alan Robertshaw:
Additionally, there’s the trump hotel Moscow project on the table, and I believe the dumpster is coddling Putin to try to make that deal happen. For the bigot-in-chief, it’s always
Number 1: Me
Number two: My money
and there is no number three
http://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5b4cc89aaf2e4169008b4aab-750-375.jpg
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/wysiwyg_images/chamberlain-hitler.jpg
http://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5b4cc89aaf2e4169008b4aab-750-375.jpg
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I just saw yesterday on twitter that the QAnon twitter is now pushing a new narrative that Bill Browder (the man behind the Magninsky Act) stole money from Russia (which Russia framed him for) and then he used this money to finance Hillary’s presidential run.
Which, timeline wise makes literally no sense at all.
But this it the kind of shit these people believe.
Off topic, but the Mandalay Bay casino is suing 1000 victims of last October’s Las Vegas shooting:
Addicting Info: Las Vegas Casino Stoops To New Low
The problem is not that there was always evil thinks that America has done. I would have problems suscriping the sentence “America is evil” even now.
I can say from a German PoV the USA was a trusted friend, that was helpful that we trusted perhaps to much. This is gone or nearly gone now. America is a problem or even an enemy.
And it was always bad is not an excuse. We don’t live in a perfect world, the question should always be can some thinks chance for the better. And the answer should be yes.
Now in the USA we are going backwards. (Trump is trying to make the country a shitier place he is trying to make the whole world a worse place)
But even if it is hard to hear it now, there is a world after Trump and this is worth having hope for. Even if I will take a generation to repair everythink that gets broken now.
Hmm…it seems like there’s something missing from that assessment.
Some country with a military that has almost twice as many soldiers than ours.
A country that’s the second-largest economy in the world.
A country with more than twice the population of the US and Russia combined.
…what was that country’s name again?
Oh well, I’m sure someone who freely chose to name themselves bingbong surely couldn’t have overlooked a screamingly obvious blindspot in their vision of a global hegemony of fuckheaded evil….
Well, ok… *POOF*
and my fotos appear!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
we have the dumpster shaking hands with Putin, and below, Neville Chamberlain shaking hands with Hitler….
@Katamount
Its all a bit 4chan, isn’t it? Just being a bigotted authoritarian-supporting fuckhead ironically. No actual strongly held beliefs or principles beyond childish ‘fuck everyone else and the things they like’ nihilism.
Guy probably couldn’t argue in good faith if you paid him.
@Gaebolga
You wouldn’t mean a country with plans to modernize the ancient Silk Road and develop major new sea lanes would you?
@Weird Eddie
And us fresh out of Churchills and Roosevelt’s and a population ready to unite and do its bit.
@solecism
Regarding our sins in the Americas, my son recently spent a year living in Bogata teaching English. He told me that the slang for us is El Norte, said with as much contempt as it sounds. He also said that we should ideally be united allies, same landmass, broad culture and history in common. I’m personally not sure they’d have us but still interesting.
For those who spoke of hope even in these dark times a huge thank you and right on. We need a coherent platform and effective and efficient resistance. I know other people in our historical position have struggled with the same thing but we have to try.
The fact that the actual planet is groaning beneath our demands doesn’t bode well for this war cycle and I fear that it will be more than a generation in repairs if we fuck up as badly as I fear we might.
That aside? Where should we start? I’d say the November elections but we need plans a and b for after the possible outcomes too. Because clearly we can’t just depend on our democracy any longer.
Oh and if anyone is up to inventing an entirely new economic system and a transition to it, that would be good too. Joking and serious here.
And I’ll leave you all with two more cliche (but good) quotations. Because of my grandfather, I know them all.
The only thing to fear is fear itself.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Those here who spoke of hope and determination are right. Thank you.
Auntie Mame Redux
See Richard Wolff on worker cooperatives
@AuntieMameRedux:
Right there with you on this. We are hampered by our collective lack of imagination. I’m all for hope and hard work toward a better future. But people need to be inspired by a vision of transformation, a model of how things can be fundamentally different. It feels like a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
Makes me think of Octavia Butler’s Earthseed religion in her Parable books. And in terms of alternative economics, I was really impressed with Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.
@solecism
I love Octavia Butler! I started rereading the Parable books and laid them down but I’m picking them back up again.
I agree with you on the lack of imagination but I think that we’ve done/this has been done to us as a society. I talk to my son about this a lot. We’ve implicitly and explicitly told people that late capitalism is the pinnacle and that we can’t do any better. Even hoping for better is seen as the mark of an immature idealist who can’t or won’t accept reality. This among other things has robbed people of imagination and hope.
Absolutely tying research and development and science to capitalist goals has also limited people. And putting financial incentives and paying patents into the universities is forcing the direction of research in all fields. This didn’t used to be the case or at least not wholly the case.
But could we use some of the lessons of capitalism to efficiently and ethically manage and distribute resources? Could we give people security and other things to do other than work for survival or the next consumer desire? Could some of those manufacturing efficiencies and robots we keep hearing about help us in terms of a labor pool while we let our population stabilize in a natural way? Can we make choices about what and how much we manufacture while we try and heal the planet? It’s been frustrating me for years that these and so many other pressing questions aren’t even on the table. And anyone asking them is dismissed as an idiot who doesn’t understand the corrupt way the world really works. This. We’ve been forced to accept corruption as the only possibility. Humanity is far from perfect, I understand. I know desperation can bring the worst in people, but it also brings the best. For every historical conflagration there were and are always people who tried for better both famous and unsung.
I’ve also toyed with the ideas that we need things to replace war and religion as a controlling and corrupting force on a psychological and emotional level but how and what?
I have the Mars books on the shelves and read them decades ago. I will have another look. Thank you.
Trump’s behaviour is phenomenally disloyal and definitely grounds for impeachment and potential criminal charges, but according to you guys’ constitution to be guilty of treason he has to wage war against the United States. I’m unsure how broadly the courts construe that language, though. Would collusion with an unfriendly but not belligerent foreign state qualify?
Lock Trump up first, go through due process second. And if he objects, counter with “sauce for the gander”.
@solecism
Yes, white supremacy has always been a big terrible thing in America. I totally agree with that.
But I guess, from my POV, it looked like for a bit there we were getting better. I remember a time when Republicans tried to pander to Latino voters. The Bushes would show up somewhere and speak a few lines in Spanish and talk about how much they like guacamole.
And when Obama won, racism wasn’t over, but a guy named Barack Hussein Obama became president! Wow! I had hoped we’d have a black president in my lifetime, but I didn’t think it would happen that soon! I remember the sci-fi movie trope of black president = this is set in The Future! Where’s my flying car?
And I remember that after Obama was elected (and re-elected) the GOP did some soul searching and some of them said they need to do more to win over minority voters. They said they wouldn’t survive much longer being the Whites Only party, and maybe Marco Rubio was the future of the Republican party.
But somewhere along the way they decided that instead of being less racist and trying to bring POC over to their side, they would double down on the white supremacy. Instead of trying to win over black and Latino voters, now their strategy is to suppress their vote. (This kinda ties into the comment I made on the other thread about the Republican party getting increasingly anti-democratic and willing to cheat instead of getting votes fair and square.)
I just hope that all the work that people did during the last century to make this country *less* evil and more democratic isn’t going to be undone.
@AuntieMameRedux:
I feel ya on this. There’s that Winston Churchill quote: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” When I try to recall it on my own, I always get confused about whether the quote is referring to democracy or capitalism. And I think that’s at least partly because we’ve done a helluva a job conflating these 2 things.
My libertarian-identified ex likes to use that quote when arguing against alternatives to capitalism. That might also be a contributing factor too. Regardless, it’s annoying as fuck to talk about how exploitative our current societal structures are and have someone whip out a fatuous platitude like that quote to shut down even the beginning possibility of an exploration of alternatives.
Last time he used that quote, I pointed out that he himself had not actually researched the configurations of all known societies both current and historical to demonstrate that, indeed, what we have is the best of the worst. That he was talking out of his ass, and I was pretty sure that if we bothered to look, we could find at least one example of a more egalitarian, more just society that had existed for at least a little while. And thus, it is within our human capacity to achieve again. He actually conceded the point, and more importantly, probably won’t spout that particular quote at me any more.
Sing it. I agree 100%. How we frame our questions shapes our available options.
This. When I’m feeling lousy I try to remind myself that everything we do, whether great or small, to push the Overton window in the direction of equal rights and away from fascism, is a tiny part of helping to keep the good stuff thinkable, conceivable, potentially realisable, and to keep the evil shit unthinkable or at least unacceptable.
First of, there was a German newspaperarticle, which talked about treason. They agred that it wasn’t tecnical treason because the USA and Rusia are not at war with each other. Not tecnically (so not for the law) is the most important fact. Betrayel of the USA, yes.
The hardcorecapitalismen of the USA is not the only form of democracy. Look at some of the European countrys. A socialist is a democrat in most cases.