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

@AriFleischer
Trump is wrong when he says military will do whatever he tells them. They'll resign before carrying out what they think is an illegal order.

‏@ggreenwald
Reassurances from America's Moral Conscience

unfortunately I have too much electronic gear to feel safe renting my place

will probably end up dressing as Uncle Sam and winging it

xposts

lol @ Greenwald zinger

yea my sister & her husband were thinking of renting their place but don't want weirdo trump fans staying there

daaaaaamn greenwald

They'll resign before carrying out what they think is an illegal order.

and that's just the military -- imagine how unacceptable trump would be to america's police

more Greenwald for my Zionist boyfriend, and whoever gave Obama & Bibi the "advocacy makes a difference" fig leaf the other day...

Then there’s the feigned horror over Trump’s proposal to kill the family members of terrorists. Though they claim they don’t do it deliberately, the fact is that this is something that both the U.S. and Israel, among others, has routinely done for years: they repeatedly bomb people’s homes or work places, killing innocent people including family members, and then justify it on the ground that a terrorist was among them. While they claim they don’t target terrorists’ family members, they certainly target their homes and other places family members are certain to be found....

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/04/trumps-policies-are-not-anathema-to-the-u-s-mainstream-but-an-uncomfortably-vivid-reflection-of-it/

and that's just the military -- imagine how unacceptable trump would be to america's police

"Shoot an unarmed black guy? Well, if you say so I guess..."

yeah i think the killing-family-members thing is instance #345235324 of trump's One Weird Trick: pry open the gulf between 21c american policy and 21c american rhetoric, in order to excite the many many people whose sympathies are with the policy. see also the difference between "torture is wrong, but waterboarding is a vital interrogation technique" and trump's "yay torture".

sudden freedom from cognitive dissonance is almost orgasmic.

He also does it when he's asked about position changes that have doomed everyone from John Kerry to Marco Rubio: "I changed my mind, I'm a businessman, ya gotta be flexible."

http://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/690704f/2147483647/thumbnail/652x437%3E/quality/85/?url=%2Fcmsmedia%2F28%2Ff7%2F54313a724d1b978402557c338d9b%2F160304-yogapants-editorial

before I click you should know that the URL has the word "yogapants"

@AriFleischer
Trump is wrong when he says military will do whatever he tells them. They'll resign before carrying out what they think is an illegal order.

its depressing but this county is not above a military coup.

i need to monetize the upcoming circus in Clevo somehow

― mod (brownie), Friday, March 4, 2016 11:51 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Let's you and me become Uber drivers, we'll clean up. Even more if we add in dead prostitute disposal.

oh i read the greenwald thing now and yeah it covers torture. doesn't quite go far enough tho:

He may be more gauche for saying it aloud and gleefully justifying it rather than feigning sorrow over it

gauche is french for "attractive", right

xps this country is not above anything! Trump has been clarifying on this point

whoa he dropped outta cpac

he=trump

he doesn't need them

when the mob is braying for blood making a case that actually their demagogue is just like everyone else only more honest seems very irresponsible, but greenwald has always been something of an accelerationist, right?

Strange.

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/04/brother-slain-civil-rights-leader-medgar-evers-endorses-trump/81311762/

iirc the joke goes if you watch msnbc you're a liberal and if you watch fox you're a conservative and if you watch cnn you're in an airport

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Thursday, March 3, 2016 10:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i tried to fave this like a tweet, fp'd u instead i guess

when the mob is braying for blood making a case that actually their demagogue is just like everyone else only more honest seems very irresponsible, but greenwald has always been something of an accelerationist, right?

think what's irresponsible is continuing to talk as if trump's demagoguery is self-evidently outrageous and disgusting and tapping into forces heretofore nobly spurned and limited to a small rabid fringe and does not at all have a straight-talking appeal in contrast to the incoherent politeness of his opponents

even were president obama's administration destroying this country (which it clearly isn't) i wish that in 1932 ppl were explaining the importance of the weimar republic and the threat of unleashing germany's darkest id. someone who stood up and said that hitler's popularity is v understandable and we just need to destroy the current govt so that the communists can really take care of the ppl might think that they were being anti-fascist but tearing down the democratic establishment doesn't pave the way for communism - it paves the way for fascism. (nb Bernie support may seem counter-establishment but Bernie is ultimately running a Democratic campaign that pledges to radically alter the system but not deconstruct it - he is still working within the margins of our organized society even if his supporters think he's ultimately more radical than he is.)

TRUMP: because he spouts the same bullshit as the others, only he's ruder and uses smaller words!

look, i don't know what trump will or won't do if he's elected but his grassroots support from white supremacists (and ppl sympathetic to their narratives) is not just business as usual, even for a republican party that knowingly stoked those fires when it benefited them.

many people in our media elite still think communism and democracy are a binary

Would paint w/ gwb

― Treeship, Friday, March 4, 2016 11:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

About that.

we just need to destroy the current govt

i haven't been keeping up with the intercept so maybe this is their mission statement but all that partic greenwald piece argues is that people are not seeing trump clearly. seeing him clearly will help us oppose him via the good ol Existing System. it'll help hillary.

i read the greenwald + hedges pieces in short succession so i may be conflating the two but it seemed to me like the implicit argument was that hillary is no better and maybe even emblematic of the things that are driving ppl to support trump

his grassroots support from white supremacists (and ppl sympathetic to their narratives) is not just business as usual, even for a republican party that knowingly stoked those fires when it benefited them.

yeah --- maybe i'm just being alarmist (as tends to be the case in elections) but something does feel really different about the racism around his campaign. esp since i'm half-convinced that trump himself doesn't really have strong feelings about race or racism

TRUMP: because he spouts the same bullshit as the others, only he's ruder and uses smaller words!

I think the reason Trump got so pissed off about being called "short-fingered" but not a "vulgarian" is that "vulgarian" has four syllables.

the argument that the democratic party in general and hillary specifically is indistinguishable from either the republican party or their new grassroots supported strongman seems less convincing to me this election cycle than at any other time. hillary is not the "lesser of two evils." i don't know if she'll be able to accomplish many of the things she's campaigning on (i imagine it'll depend a lot on how the congress shakes out) but i think our country is in better shape today than it was 8 years so another term of obama does not sound bad to me. it's arguably not enough, but it's not just slower decline like morbz has described it many times over the last 8 years. it's slow progress.

she is most definitely an evil goddamn warmonger, that's why you fucking love her

the slow progress of 2 degrees Celsius, which will march on

and i think ppl making the opposite case are ultimately just fueling the reactionarism that characterizes the trump campaign. remember, these trump voters were galvanized by eight years of xenophobia and bigotry targeting the president of the united states - they are imo not trustworthy observers/analysts of the state of the union.

"evil goddamn warmonger" two of these three words are theologically charged language meant to exclusively appeal to reactionary impulses and the third is a hyperbolic mischaracterization that acts as a sop to flatter the speaker's belief that they aren't a disgusting human being.

i know that i definitely want to be on the side of ppl who call their political opponents evil and damned by god. can't wait until we run society this way! it's gonna be great, guys. yuge.

lol

the argument that the democratic party in general and hillary specifically is indistinguishable from either the republican party or their new grassroots supported strongman

mordy the entire greenwald piece is about gop hypocrisy except for the "killing family members of terrorists" part, which references obama-era drone policy. do you think that part is wrong? do we not have a bipartisan consensus on the acceptability of killing family members of terrorists? do you not think that trump's "fuck yeah let's kill terrorist families" has a serious unwishywashy appeal that the democrats would be unwise to think stands in some kind of monstrous contrast to their own polices? my perspective here is that of someone who wants hillary clinton to win this election.

as for the hedges piece, saying neoliberal policies (which can be changed without destroying the government) created over bipartisan decades a huge economic and emotional opening for fascism is not saying they are the same as fascism, or even that they're not preferable to it. it's saying that if we're gonna be fighting fascists we'd prefer better armor.

Like I said, at least we have a President who has a rapport with black leadership and who isn't ignorant about civil rights. Electing Trump would be like sending an abused kid back to his abusers after being spared that situation for eight years. I'm terrified for my community, at the same time, I'm hopeful Clinton can win.

lol well thanks morbs

xps - Iraq and Afghanistan certainly soured the small part of the US population that voluntarily enlists in the military or national guard on the idea of small imperialist wars that slog on forever without visible progress or obvious military goals. But there is a much larger population of jingoists and chicken-hawks who think that if we'd only get a lot more violent, we'd go back to crushing all our enemies and winning all our wars in quick step time, because we've outspent the rest of the world 10 to 1 on our military for decades now, so it stands to reason that if we just "unleash" our power we can't lose. Trump appeals strongly to those assholes.

and damned by god

very cutely literal of you, please back away from the Wall.

i don't subscribe to the view that the two parties are indistinguishable but tbh hillary is a warmonger, the term suits her better than any democratic candidate we've had since the '60s

genuinely think she's personally more of a warmonger, or to be nicer, an interventionist, than either jfk (martial rhetoric, but cautious when it counted) or lbj (totally thoughtless in this area, easily filled with the Complex's thoughts)

but of course those guys monged a whole bunch of war anyway

cautious at some of the times that it counted rather

jfk (martial rhetoric, but cautious when it counted

"cool and unflappable" re our beloved Schlesinger

i don't see how she can be considered more of a warmonger than the vietnam war dems

She plays Call of Duty iirc