Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

Cant sell what you dont have!

He's actually done his share of trump-lite demagoguing and hate-spewing over the years too.

maybe what's surprised folks is that while they mostly understand that he's a swollen asshole, he's not exactly in the same realm as a Palin or LePage or even a Jan Brewer? like you would be surprised if those nitwits DIDN'T support Trump

xposts- Mordy thanks for that article, it ties so much together.

i think the key factor is that Christie got his best press for making a full-throated defense of Muslims' religious freedom a couple years ago.

Clinton's deathless thesis statement is even more trying by the way she says "AMERICA NEEDS TO BE MADE HO-ELLL"

sorry if this has been linked already, thought it ws interesting:
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism

that was fantastic, thank you.

amazing that they predicted that people would be drawn to one of America's most famous celebrities. what will this niche group of political scientists unearth next?

"alternative energy"

the gist of the article is that there are more Trumps coming, presumably with better "people skills"

I've been thinking back to a discussion we had in the wake of Ferguson, in which we talked about the rise of "gear culture" (see Bass Pro Shops) and with it a certain re-scripting of American masculinity, a movement away from self-discipline, inner strength, courage, and coolness-under-pressure, and toward sheer ability to project power, and on the equipment with which one repels or destroys external threats. This culture also devalues rational thought and, in a certain sense, a realist epistemology. If you have enough gear, and you're scared (or pissed off) enough, rational inquiry is a hindrance. (The expansion of the Stand your Ground laws seem to me of a piece with all this. Fuck the duty to retreat. It's not just my home that's my castle: if I'm scared enough of you, and you so much as raise your hands, I have a right to shoot you).

In this way, Trump is the ultimate piece of gear, he's the monster truck of candidates: self-propelled, turbocharged, loud, shiny, and willing to wreak havoc left and right. The prospect of his Presidency, from this point of view, must feel irresistible.

(you really didn't read it, did you? none of the academic work save one late-2015 study has to do with DT specifically) xp

xp (and I do realize lots and lots of caveats have to be placed next to my characterization of the "older" values of American masculinity, but still I think there's more than a grain of truth here)

similar tweet to Perrin's (by someone you guys seem to hate less)

@jeremyscahill
Trump is the candidate of bigotry and fascism. Hillary is the candidate of Empire.

I'll take the imperialist, thank you very much

is he saying Hillary is rubbing elbows with Terence Howard

i'll take whoever is responsible for less deaths

You would vote for trump over hillary?

it is odd that Trump is an authoritarian yet Hillary is the one who voted with W on Iraq

i wouldn't vote for Trump tho fuck that guy he is the worst thing to ever happen to politics just by saying the shit he says

amazing that they predicted that people would be drawn to one of America's most famous celebrities. what will this niche group of political scientists unearth next?
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 10:23 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i’ll be charitable and assume you didn’t actually read the article, because if you read the article and that is what you got out of it, you’re an idiot.

and yes i keep thinking that even if trump loses there are going to be more and more trumps (big or small) to contend with in ensuing decades. people are going to take lessons from his success.

it is odd that Trump is an authoritarian yet Hillary is the one who voted with W on Iraq

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 11:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

precisely, she voted /with/ W.

Yes, very odd. I can't even begin to think of any possible explanation why Trump didn't vote in favor of war with Iraq.

what am i supposed to get from that. they took heavily biased polls and a narrowly defined version of "authoritarian" and slapped them together. wow.

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/12/Donald-Trump-in-Home-Alone-2-20th-Century-Fox-640x480.jpg

this has more to do with people voting for Trump

i know this sounds weird, but i feel like a substantial part of trump's mystique would vanish if someone just ripped that fucking toupée off of his head and left him scrambling for it.

xpost

so you just think that trump is some kind of once-in-a-lifetime leprechaun and his success says nothing about what many americans believe?

I'M AN INCREDIBLE LEPRECHAUN

Not cool

the gist of the article is that there are more Trumps coming, presumably with better "people skills"

It would be interesting to see whether isolationist, protectionist authoritarians could run successfully in the future without the race-baiting element.

In a weak field, idk whether Trump could still have won on a platform of middle-class rage / fear against the 'elite' and general disenchantment with the state of Republican politics by playing up the 'caudillo who's looking out for the average guy' element without aggressively targeting minorities.

Alpenkinderen für Trump!

Basically, Trump has to fail, and be seen to fail.

This is like last time, where the media got very excited about how close the contest was being, then Obama won by miles.

i know this sounds weird, but i feel like a substantial part of trump's mystique would vanish if someone just ripped that fucking toupée off of his head and left him scrambling for it.

that's his real hair! (or at least it's hair which is surgically affixed to his scalp)

booming post from collardio

@jeremyscahill
Trump is the candidate of bigotry and fascism. Hillary is the candidate of Empire.

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like this is too pat; trump is bigotry, facism, and empire, too. i don't read trump's iraq war criticism as principled anti-interventionism. it reads more like "we didnt WIN, if I had been president we woulda won by now". this is the man who advocates killing the family members of terrorists.

Basically, Trump has to fail, and be seen to fail.

Like... Barry Goldwater? The GOP won 5 of the next 6 prez elections.

Trump couldn't manage an Empire.

Obama actually kills the family members of terrorists.

whew! that'll show'em!

'Advocates' makes a difference, albeit not to the families.

We got a long, long email from our building management yesterday concerning the upcoming impact on the city during the RNC, which closed with this little tidbit:

• The rumor that there are “Designated Protest Sites” is not true
o Protestors may set up on “any area outside of the secured perimeter”
o [Secret Service] Agent Rowe indicated that they are not expecting any civil disobedience during the event.

Yeah, good luck with that. There are likely to be a lot of white supremacist Trump supporters coming to the city where police shot Tamir Rice in cold blood. I expect everything will be just peachy.

Question: If Trump is such a horrifying nominee that a significant number of Republican voters go for Hillary, will the term "Clinton Republicans" become a thing the way "Reagan Democrats" is still a thing 35 years later?

Heard a fascinating piece on the radio about the evangelical vote and how actual evangelical leaders are perplexed/frustrated that their flocks are breaking for Trump (who I could have sworn one of them actually called a degenerate). Anyway, he curses, he's rude and crass, he's been married three times and he doesn't know shit about the Bible, to they were confused. I guess according to research it turns out that, surprise, lots of people who identify as evangelical really aren't that religious, and certainly don't go to church. But they do gravitate toward authoritarianism and bigotry. The former obviously doesn't bother evangelical leaders that much, but the latter really seemed to get under their skin as un-Christian.

Well, duh, evangelicals. This seems like another case of Frankenstein's monster coming home. Also, another case where a seemingly solid voting block turns out to be a another repository convenience for racists and inchoate far-right radicals. If anything, this election cycle really underscores the inadequacy (or at least lack of clarity) of our two-part system, more than any in recent memory. Not unlike many countries in Europe, there seems to be four parties in the US: the far left, the moderate left, moderate conservatives and far-right neo-fascists.

Mitt just doesn't seem like the evisceratin' type.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/mitt-romney-eviscerate-donald-trump-phony-fraud-n530877

I've been thinking back to a discussion we had in the wake of Ferguson, in which we talked about the rise of "gear culture" (see Bass Pro Shops) and with it a certain re-scripting of American masculinity, a movement away from self-discipline, inner strength, courage, and coolness-under-pressure, and toward sheer ability to project power, and on the equipment with which one repels or destroys external threats. This culture also devalues rational thought and, in a certain sense, a realist epistemology. If you have enough gear, and you're scared (or pissed off) enough, rational inquiry is a hindrance. (The expansion of the Stand your Ground laws seem to me of a piece with all this. Fuck the duty to retreat. It's not just my home that's my castle: if I'm scared enough of you, and you so much as raise your hands, I have a right to shoot you).

In this way, Trump is the ultimate piece of gear, he's the monster truck of candidates: self-propelled, turbocharged, loud, shiny, and willing to wreak havoc left and right. The prospect of his Presidency, from this point of view, must feel irresistible.

― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Wednesday, March 2, 2016 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you for all of that. Great analysis. I'd argue that one of the central things informing this trend is a hard cultural shift from courage to cowardice and the attendant need to dress that cowardice up in masculine finery.

I don't think Ferguson is ground zero for those tendencies. It goes back further to the election of a black president, which forced sociopolitical tendencies that had waxed and waned for years to coalesce. The VOX article Mordy mentioned makes it clear.

Yeah, I think it goes back at least as long as the survivalist movement became popularized. Constructing your life around constant fear of ?????.

McCarthyism is at the very least an antecedent.

The "real American" has always needed an Other.

booming post from collardio

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, March 3, 2016 10:30 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosign

http://i64.tinypic.com/16jh2c3.jpg