US Politics, February 2018: Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots

definitely feels like some version of "Inside the White House's historically disastrous week" gets re-run every Sunday

A Face in the Crowd, maybe.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Elvis-Costellos-A-FACE-IN-THE-CROWD-Musical-Set-for-Third-Workshop-20171207

Yeah, Trump has been Unraveling on a weekly basis since the very beginning, it seems.

He descent has been like Zeno's Paradox in action.

I liked this:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-fundamental-uncertainty-of-muellers-russia-indictments

BREAKING: #Durham District Attorney dismisses all charges against the remaining five defendants who were accused of tearing down a Confederate statue in August. #WRAL @WRAL pic.twitter.com/224YDCOCFk

— Sarah Krueger (@WRALSarah) February 20, 2018

Gessen has been killing it pretty consistently xp

Jeet Heer also preaches some caution:

https://newrepublic.com/article/147122/stop-inflating-russia-threat

Reaching way back to hoos' "culture of destabilization" remark, I'd note that filling social media with messages that elicit our worst instincts, fanning the flames of suspicion and hatred toward political opponents, accelerates the acceptance of ideas such as 'we will soon be waging a civil war against the traitors who oppose us'.

Russian efforts to encourage the belief that both the alt-right and antifa are much larger and more important than they are help to create a bandwagon effect for the political extremes, which is important to the rapid growth of political movements. The appearance of widespread allegiance to the extremes can capture people at their boundaries and move mere perceptions nearer to reality. If you think your fearsome enemy is growing fast, you're more inclined to join those who want to crush them.

I like Jeet Heer but he's focused on the Russian social media campaign primarily. didn't Russia also breach some of our states' voter data, even if there is no evidence that rolls were purged or votes were changed?

Aimless otm.

Aimless OTM. Stoke that fear, divide and conquer.

love how casually the discourse equates one "extreme" that wants Medicare for All and the other that wants a white ethnostate

(not really aimed at anyone itt)

lmao simon h progressives all suddenly about lesser evils

A thing I don’t see get emphasized enough is that Facebook/Twitter are _strongly_ incentivized to endlessly promote the idea that a social media campaign was a key factor in deciding an election. You wanna hype that your platform is soooo very widespread and consequential that it was the site of very important world-shattering events.

lmao simon h progressives all suddenly about lesser evils

iirc berniebros turned out for clinton in fine numbers

iirc berniebros turned out for clinton in fine numbers

Yup, but not until Bernie lost the nomination and endorsed Clinton. what's your point?

My point is progressives are perfectly capable of holding their noses and always have been. (They've had to be.)

gotcha

hmm. not in the bad sense. I see your point better.

(Which is not to say we're not going to bitch about it without end while we're at it, lol)

A thing I don’t see get emphasized enough is that Facebook/Twitter are _strongly_ incentivized to endlessly promote the idea that a social media campaign was a key factor in deciding an election. You wanna hype that your platform is soooo very widespread and consequential that it was the site of very important world-shattering events.

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Tuesday, February 20, 2018 9:10 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually, they're strongly incentivized by potential regulatory attention if not legal liability to promote the opposite notion

bingo

btw we should totally be regulating FB and google. trust bust these fuckers.

If you submit an article about Romney to the major papers and omit the phrase "fundamentally decent man," it will be returned for edits.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) February 20, 2018

Fun and mentally dece Ent-man

trump recommending banning bump stocks. a bit shocked. will the NRA freak out?

he should of course go all the way and recommend banning the AR 15 as well but won't

btw we should totally be regulating FB and google. trust bust these fuckers.

― NBA YoungBoy named Rocky Raccoon (m bison)

yes to this, boost the signal

New Quinnipiac poll:

Dems lead by 15 points in the generic House ballot matchup, 53-38.

Ds lead among independents by 11 points, 47-36.

The trend shows the Dem lead has *expanded* in the last month.

Kinda goes against the conventional wisdom, doesn't it? pic.twitter.com/JfGJyVbjWi

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) February 20, 2018

trump recommending banning bump stocks. a bit shocked. will the NRA freak out?

Another example of doing the absolute minimum - countdown to loud claims of total victory. (See also eliminating the individual mandate and immediately shouting "Obamacare is vanquished!")

this will probably be the same as the Trump retaliatory missile strike, he will do one thing that makes it look like he's addressing the problem and as unperson states, will think that is enough.

"I asked Sessions to look into it, Democrats weren't willing to bargain on common-sense legislation!"

Yeah, I have zero hope that Trump will do anything worthwhile on this or any other issue. Continue to ignore the meaningless shit that burbles out of his useless mouth, particularly if his words seem to indicate that he'll do something mature that might improve the world in some way. It's all nihilistic bloviation, even (perhaps especially) when it flatters your worldview.

Democrat Linda Belcher has won the Kentucky House District 49 seat by a massive margin in a district Trump won by 50 percent. It's the 37th legislative flip since Trump's inauguration. https://t.co/0foXOhxa8M

— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) February 21, 2018

Wow!

I figure he had a vagrant thought that saying that about bump stocks would sound presidential and play well among a really big group of people, maybe even get him more than a 50% approval. The temptation was too much. As soon as he realizes that a lot of his biggest fans will hate him saying it he'll deny he ever said it.

Holy moly xp that is good news

This was likely the biggest contributing factor, coupled with the fact Belcher had served before.

The seat, located in Bullitt County, just south of Louisville, was vacated in December after former Rep. Dan Johnson, committed suicide just two days after being accused of molesting a 17-year-old girl. His widow, Rebecca, who has denied the allegations about her former husband, decided within a day to run for the seat.

yeah, that whole article was fucked up

ah—the ol' "hanging Chad" victory

https://media.giphy.com/media/3og0IGQGmdZN41qC7S/giphy.gif

A Florida woman who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls https://t.co/DmgDRFRwyn pic.twitter.com/OAz5julCyA

— CNN (@CNN) February 21, 2018

Heh, “Linda Belcher”

https://media.giphy.com/media/3og0IGQGmdZN41qC7S/source.gif

xp that woman now believes she has first hand experience of fake news and will tell all her friends about it

yeah, i was thinking the same. also the unfortunate connections to mccarthyism. she is a doofus but it doesn't seem like she actually meant to "help the russians", from her perspective, there's a reporter on her lawn asking a modern day version of "are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"

ty c. grisso :)

Being a GOP activist should be considered twice as bad as being a communist ever was, though, so how can anyone be surprised at that?

So many GOPers are going to claim that they just didn't know and it's going to be like stalinists claiming that nobody knew about the gulags.

Just watching the news with dinner and spat chunks to see Jared Kushner sitting at the UN table as the appointed negotiator for Middle East resolution. With respect to my US colleagues, the country is becoming a farce and a laughing stock.