Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

should just start calling Donald a Klansman, after all his dad was a member

as long as we're playing this "sins of the father" game

maybe he meant that the shooter was born a throw blanket, xp

He is an Afghan the way the judge is a Mexican. That is to say, Donald Trump is a racist.

i'm not sure i'm capable of being surprised by the human shitstain that trump is anymore. he could publicly declare that hillary molests little boys and it'd just be the same old, same old.

he's a horrible cartoon caricature come to life, and i say that without intending the slightest bit of hyperbole.

he's ratcheted things up so far already that i'm not sure what he has left except to announce that hillary clinton "maybe, i dunno, i've heard rumors" fucks little boys.

waiting for republicans to drop their support of him any minute. mccain? ryan? anyone? yeah, they can all go to hell.

none of them are going to drop him, they need his supporters' votes

god, i hope he will be the albatross that drags the entire party down, but i guess there are enough shit for brains in this country to keep that from happening.

even if it brings the party down, there's still the problem of all the non-pols who believe/celebrate this garbage

Trump will not bring the party down

he will damage (hopefully cripple) their effectiveness at the federal level for a few years.

it’s the middle of june, and trump has already:

- accused a sitting president of treason and collusion in the mass murder of american citizens*
- said that his opponent should be in jail, and insinuated that she is responsible for someone’s murder

of course, this makes plenty of sense when you remember that he rose to political prominence (as opposed to simply prominence as a walking caricuature of a rich bully) by questioning whether the sititng president was actually an american at all

can we sink any lower? we still have five months.

*NB obama is unquestionably, actually responsible for the deaths of american citizens via drone strikes, but trump isn’t taking that approach

we can always go lower, have some faith

how does clinton even debate a guy like this, who is liable to respond to a question about social security with a claim that her makeup is made up of the ground viscera of christian babies?

i can't believe someone this transparently odious will get upwards of 40% of the popular vote. by rights this should be a world-historical trainwreck, a blowout of never-before-seen proportions.

sorry folks, i'm just trying to get my head around the new reality we live in, and it's hard.

i can't believe someone this transparently odious will get upwards of 40% of the popular vote

Plenty of people saying the same thing about Clinton, of course.

"Almost half the country hates the president" has been normal for a while, and shows no sign of changing.

@realDonaldTrump
Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post.

lmao jesus christ

sorry folks, i'm just trying to get my head around the new reality we live in, and it's hard.

― wizzz! (amateurish), Monday, June 13, 2016 4:27 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We've been living in it since 9/11. Trump is the logical endpoint of 15 years of warmongering, xenophobia, racism, and intense state-induced paranoia. There's nothing Trump could do now that would shock me, short of barfing on stage or following thru on shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. When he said last summer that McCain wasn't a war hero "because he was captured" and his poll numbers went up, I knew he would be the nominee. The one positive aspect of his campaign thru May was that he singlehandedly decimated the GOP. Thankfully I think we're safe with HRC running against him. If Trump were to be elected, that would be a whole new terrifying reality... for now, at least thru my eyes, this the same horrible twisted Philip K. Dickian world we've been living in since 9/11.

i dunno, there's a different b/t the lunatic fringe being the lunatic fringe, and it suddenly (?) occupying center stage.

I think all the stuff Trump throws out in explicit terms have been communicated in dog whistles and lies since GWB said "they attacked us because they hate our freedom." The far right gladly voted for GWB and McCain, maybe Romney less so, but they were throwing them scraps and bones. Trump gives em the red meat. He's trafficking in the same rhetoric that's been used by both parties for decades. Instead of referring to welfare as "people wanting free stuff" like Jeb! did earlier this year, Trump wants to build a wall and deport all Muslims. It's the same shit, it's just way way way more potent.

*has been

@jeneps
Trump's banned news orgs include: Wash Post, Politico, BuzzFeed, Huff Post, Daily Beast, DM Register, Union Leader, Univision, Fusion & more

gawker's time to shine imo

He's trafficking in the same rhetoric that's been used by both parties for decades.

hmmm no

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/9/9/1284054802082/Hitler-Youth-burn-anti-Ge-006.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=6c63b3e9ff1e6b3985cdc02d69dc7646

GWB said "they attacked us because they hate our freedom."

also this is a weird GWB line to single out given all his other egregious malapropisms and distortions, as this was one of the rare instances when he was (kinda/sorta) right? Al Qaeda/ISIS/whoever *do* hate Western liberal democratic values.

xp

yeah it's not the same shit, sorry. did the GOP pave the way for trump? absolutely. is trump just a small matter of degree worse than mccain or romney? absolutely not.

i'm getting really tired of hearing this bleating racist with the cognitive abilities of a six-year-old on the news, can someone just slit his fucking throat already?

can we talk for a second about the unique characteristics necessary to be a Trump VP pick? You have to have someone who is a) a total sycophant, willing in any and every instance to defer to His Orangeness, b) stupid enough not to see it as career suicide, and c) craven/greedy enough to think that being Trump's VP may pay off at some point in the form of either notoriety or further employment from ye Donald. And then on Trump's end he will want someone who won't disagree with him or show him up, but will also maybe lend him some credibility with larger GOP voter base.

I mean, who fits this criteria? Christie does kinda I guess, although I never really thought he was quite that stupid.

where are Scott Walker and Tim Pawlenty

i think scott walker is just a shade smarter than that, unfortunately. only a shade, though.

that GWB line was a gross oversimplification of the manifold reasons that Al Qaeda/ISIS/Taliban hates us. They believe, rightfully so, that we're waging a war on Islam. I'm not suggesting that Trump is a small matter of degree worse than GWB or McCain - he's obviously another breed entirely. But his appeal is the potency of his rhetoric. The demand was always there for this kind of shit, but no politician has ever fed that crowd like Trump.

They believe, rightfully so, that we're waging a war on Islam.

you say some odd things

xp Christie already groveling for VP, clearly: http://www.mediaite.com/print/donald-trump-reportedly-has-chris-christie-picking-up-his-mcdonalds-for-him/

They believe, rightfully so, that we're waging a war on Islam.

you say some odd things

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 13, 2016 5:06 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Put yourself in the shoes of an Iraqi citizen. Everyone thinks they're the good guy. We're not waging a war on Islam any more than "they hate us because we are free."

so we *aren't* waging a war on Islam? you make no sense

Of course not. We've been caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of revenge ever since we invaded Afghanistan. They believe we are waging a war on them because of their way of life and vice versa. Not that hard to understand.

We've been caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of revenge ever since we invaded Afghanistan.

so wait why did they attack us on 9/11 before we even invaded anything? (note: this is a rhetorical question, I know the answer).

You seem to want to lay the blame on all this on rhetoric that oversimplifies historical, economic, religious, etc. factors. But, I hate to break it to you, that tactic has been part of political rhetoric since the dawn of time. It is not unique to the US post-9/11.

You're right. I was born in the early 90s, so I never lived thru the same rhetoric that accompanied the Cold War, Vietnam, etc. The world I know is explicitly pre and post-9/11. I also know that the motives behind 9/11 were much more complicated than "hating our freedom."

There clearly is a "clash of civilizations" aspect to this (clumsily and inexpertly elucidated by Dubya) but it's not Dubya's shitty way with words that is the problem. Radical Islamists genuinely do hate the West and modernism and all that entails. And we hate them right back. But they do not represent all of Islam, and apart from Trump no one in the US federal gov't has ever openly argued that Islam *as a religion* is the problem or the "enemy". Which is not the case with radical Islamists, who explicitly *do* call out the West as the literal enemy. These two sets of rhetoric are not equivalent.

xp

and apart from Trump no one in the US federal gov't

donald trump is not, thank god, in the federal gov't

fwiw for radical islamists everyone is the enemy, 'the west' no more than muslims who don't share their agenda.

^^^that too

and yeah obviously there was more to 9/11 than a bunch of saudis "hating our freedom" but that *was* part of it (along with US propping up dictatorships, stationing troops in the holy land, supporting Israel etc.) Dubya was, in his moronic way, conveying an aspect of the conflict truthfully.

(also my apologies for preemptively associating the federal gov't with Trump)

maybe your unconscious is secretly a trump supporter!

and yeah obviously there was more to 9/11 than a bunch of saudis "hating our freedom" but that *was* part of it (along with US propping up dictatorships, stationing troops in the holy land, supporting Israel etc.) Dubya was, in his moronic way, conveying an aspect of the conflict truthfully.

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 13, 2016 5:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True. To be fair, I always thought his address on the night of September 11th was very moving and remains so. I still feel that the way the public was manipulated by the GWB administration via xenophobia and gross oversimplifications and lies like WMD's set the stage for someone like Trump to succeed. I mean, along with a million other things - more significantly, having a black president for 8 years.

he's ratcheted things up so far already that i'm not sure what he has left except to announce that hillary clinton "maybe, i dunno, i've heard rumors" fucks little boys.

“You know who started the birther movement? You know who started it? Do you know who questioned his birth certificate, one of the first? Hillary Clinton. She’s the one that started it. She brought it up years before it was brought up by me.”

— Donald Trump, interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, May 4, 2016

or this

Donald Trump didn’t mince words about Hillary Clinton’s criminal justice agenda when he addressed the National Rifle Association’s national convention on May 20, 2016.

"President Obama pushed for changes to sentencing laws that released thousands of dangerous drug trafficking felons and gang members who prey on civilians," Trump said. He continued, "This is Hillary Clinton's agenda, too, to release the violent criminals from jail. She wants them all released."

this was, shockingly, a good piece about how trump is in a long and robust line of 'conservative' (that is, right wing) punditry: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/donald-trump-mainstream-conservative/

i'd still note that he is qualitatively different than any presidential candidate before him.

xpost That was HRC's ill-spoken he's an American "as far as I know" gaffe right?

When was the last time we had a major citizen candidate with literally no public service or political record, elected or otherwise?

for [whatever label is appropriate for groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and their sympathizers], "our freedom" is sort of mixed together conceptually with our foreign policy, i.e. it's a sense of "look at those evil Americans -- they bomb our countries, they prop up our dictators, and look at how they disgrace our faith and our morals, they are clearly all-around terrible and must be destroyed." As is not uncommon with ethnic, religious, or national conflicts, there is a co-reinforcement between perceived repugnance of foreign military action and repugnance of foreign "morals" and customs. It's very complicated to separate out the religious and political dimensions of militant radical islam, because the sense of humiliation at military defeat and subjugation is comingled with a sense that American ideas about sexuality, music, culture, freedom, whatever are also humiliating to them.

a key element in islamic fundamentalism is also that they are mostly living in authoritarian or failed states and have few meaningful outlets for political participation.