Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

how are we not talking about climate change (the only thing that really matters).

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/08/14/BookWorld/Images/Don

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/163286102X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1453240801

There's about 10 reasons, which one do you want?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KN2WbqHW3fU/VCMCKMsHsdI/AAAAAAAAO-c/c6nQmE7rRIE/s1600/20140924_183348.jpg

http://imgur.com/unn1ANQ

No comment.

bah

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/unn1ANQ.jpg"; />

fuck you

http://i.imgur.com/unn1ANQ.jpg

that redstate thing is lol. Palin endorsing Trump is just game recognizing game

lol what are they smoking over there:

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/how-donald-trump-defeats-hillary-clinton-217868?ref=yfp

"ahh clicks on 'Morning Joe'..." *snort*

who tf else was palin going to endorse?! honestly

If he does all that, holds Mitt Romney’s states, and drives extraordinary levels of working-class white voter turnout in the suburbs and exurbs of Ohio and Virginia, as well as in the Florida panhandle and Jacksonville, he can flip those three Obama states and rack up 266 electoral votes. Winning any one of Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada or New Mexico would put him over the top and make Donald John Trump the 45th president of the United States.

I love this

The whole piece actually reads like the reporter is winking at his DC insider audience while gaming for massive shares from the elated and enraged alike

the little clique mailing list that dude is on is all golf clapping right now

that redstate piece Alfred linked to is PRICELESS.

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, January 19, 2016 1:22 PM (5 hours ago)

it was but i'm sort of surprised it didn't even mention carson, who as far as i know is the only one to have published a book that coincided specifically with the campaign

Carson's a true conservative!!

lol oh

If it's taken them this long to see through Palin...

This Palin endorsement is vintage. "Quiet generosity," "compassion," "not an elitist"--that's Trump, all right. Also jibes at Greek columns and he-built-that. No Bill Ayers, but I haven't heard the whole thing.

with a voice like a shoe stepping on a bat

As a cherry on the top, the redstate piece on how maybe conservatives are being taken for a ride served me up top a banner on "Obama's ammo grab - help the NRA defend us."

http://theweek.com/articles/599577/how-obscure-adviser-pat-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996

The huge infrastructure of the conservative movement in Washington D.C. is aghast at Trump, and calls him an economic illiterate for threatening China with tariffs. They can't understand that this is not primarily an economic measure, but a nationalist one. It's a signal to voters that one man is here to fight for them, not to school-marmishly tell them that capitalism is helping them when in fact it manifestly helps others a lot more. Trump has attracted his coalition of supporters among those who are the most-weakly attached to the Republican Party as an institution.

Plenty of others have noticed the parallels between Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump. Some have seen that Trump is attracting the "radical middle" social base and taking on the Caesarist, almost Latin American-style populism that Francis recommended. Buchanan was recently asked about why Trump was having all the success that he did not enjoy, when he is running on so many of the issues Buchanan did 20 years ago. Buchanan said that it was because the returns are in on the policies he criticized 20 years ago. All of this is true.

Coates piece on weak Sanders response (Fred B will be loving it hah): http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/

If not even an avowed socialist can be bothered to grapple with reparations, if the question really is that far beyond the pale, if Bernie Sanders truly believes that victims of the Tulsa pogrom deserved nothing, that the victims of contract lending deserve nothing, that the victims of debt peonage deserve nothing, that that political plunder of black communities entitle them to nothing, if this is the candidate of the radical left—then expect white supremacy in America to endure well beyond our lifetimes and lifetimes of our children.

I'm like the original TNC stan of ILX but sure dude, a 74 year old man's inability to effectively discuss reparations is a good predictor of the next two or three generations' worth of political activity

Holy fuck at that Sanders response, hadn't seen that.

I think he's insinuating that Sanders should not be thought of as a true candidate of the radical left, though, Tomboto.

bernie's answer to that question was pretty disappointing to be honest. still, i look forward to seeing him slammed for this by the same people who call him unelectable for the rest of his platform

I'm so sick of Coates' reparations bullshit. It's never going to happen, for one very simple reason: You cannot sell it in a way that answers the question, "How does this benefit white people?" Twelve percent of the US population are not going to guilt sixty-three percent of the US population into giving them money. Period. All the Atlantic articles in the world, written in the most pretentious 19th Century preacher cadences he can muster, won't move the debate one inch. You would think someone who's studied as much history as Coates says he has would have realized by now that there's no such thing as justice, only revenge, and if you can't take it, you won't get it. All of human history is one long story of tribalism, conquest, and plunder. He's just a member of a losing team complaining that the game was rigged. And? Maybe in his next life he'll get to be a conquistador.

...

hm

Lol well there's a complete dickhead's response to Coates.

ameritude

Look, I get it. If I was born anything other than a straight white man, I'd probably be consumed by an unquenchable rage too. But that wouldn't entitle me to anything. Nobody's entitled to anything they can't grab and hold. If you happen to live under a system that treats people equitably, awesome; I'm all for that. I hope to move to a place like that someday. In the meantime, I try to be nice to everyone I encounter in my own daily life. But human beings (in large groups) are mostly stupid, violent and callous as hell when it comes to protecting their little patch of ground. Collective altruism is a wish that's never gonna come true.

https://vine.co/v/ieKI9rebnEB

wait a second

just out of curiosity how does this make you feel

http://i.imgur.com/BAQo9we.jpg

just out of curiosity how does this make you feel

Re-read these three sentences and see if you can guess:

If you happen to live under a system that treats people equitably, awesome; I'm all for that. I hope to move to a place like that someday. In the meantime, I try to be nice to everyone I encounter in my own daily life.

where are you c+ping these from?

coates was maybe exaggerating a bit for the sake of making a(n otherwise valid) point when he compared the level of support for a hypothetical socialist presidential candidate (a little less than half of people, and 26% of republicans) to the idea of reparations (which has 6% support among white people). it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison

^given the pose and the set of her mouth and eyebrows, that pic could just as easily be William F. Buckley in drag.

Re-read these three sentences and see if you can guess:

If you happen to live under a system that treats people equitably, awesome; I'm all for that. I hope to move to a place like that someday. In the meantime, I try to be nice to everyone I encounter in my own daily life.

what about the sentence before that (Nobody's entitled to anything they can't grab and hold)? also what does trying to be nice to people you encounter in daily life have to do with thinking there's no such thing as justice?

deal from strength or get crushed every time

anyway TNC's thing is that these points have to be raised and hammered home and that the idea has to be inflicted on white people at every opportunity to force them to deal with it. And Bernie brushing it off is the opposite of dealing with it, and he's running from the left so he should be exactly the white person who ought to come to grips with it and address it seriously, so everything is injustice and life sucks and nothing will change. But the struggle is all there is, so on we row, Sisyphus etc etc

I liked it better when Coates' kids were younger and he would dip into comic books and the Civil War and just be geeky about stuff - in a way the discovery of his life's purpose while doing the research on the epic Case For Reparations piece is also what kind of ruined him. He hates fun now and it makes me sad.

no way, he's still fun, at least judging by his twitter stuff

on twitter TNC basically just posts about comic books and video games like 80 percent of the time

I liked it better when Coates' kids were younger and he would dip into comic books

I've got good news for you, then

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/TheSewer/news/?a=130152

should be noted that hilary gave a non-answer to the same question -- bernie's answer was disappointing, but it was honest i guess

Oh shit I totally forgot he was scripting the black panther! thanks

I don't think it needs to be noted that Hillary is bad too. Hillary is not the proposed leftwing anti-inequality candidate, everyone knows she will speak to the middle. But Sanders running as the radical, and falling down on this, is massively disappointing. Especially since he KNOWS he is vulnerable with minorities in the primaries. What is his plan? His campaign manager has begun talking about that perhaps they don't really need that many black voters after all...

Another issue is that TNC is making the assertion that Bernie believes "the myth that socialism and racism are incompatible" and then he says that Bernie is "not only against reparations" but that he doesn't understand the argument. I think the latter point is a bit strange, like accuse the guy of not understanding the argument or of being opposed to the concept, but generally saying both is borderline ad hominem - "he's wrong because he's ignorant" is a better tack than "he's wrong AND ignorant" unless you really are going for "vote nobody" nihilism. As to the former point, I don't see that Bernie's camp has made any arguments that socialism means the end of racism; that would be brogressive absurd nonsense. TNC is extrapolating from Bernie's lack of political will on this issue that the following things are true:

1. The radical left doesn't actually care about racism
2. Nothing will change about this fact in this generation or the next one

I don't think either of those things are really supportable any longer. TNC's confirmation bias is working overtime, basically, and using Bernie's flatfootedness on the issue amounts to cherry-picking.

This is really a post for another thread. Oh well.

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2014-06-02/reparations7.jpg

'we should legalize heroin' would be a less suicidal position to take for a presidential candidate

meanwhile:

“I can tell you, as somebody who ran the Democratic Governors Association, that candidates in purple states would face serious problems with him on top of the ticket,” said Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, referring to the most politically competitive states.

“Having somebody who is identified more as a socialist in many decades of public service than as a Democrat makes it impossible for Democrats in a state like Missouri,” Ms. McCaskill said of her state, which could have competitive races for governor and senator this fall. “And it makes it very difficult for Democrats in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida,” she added, referring to states where some of the hardest-fought Senate races will take place.

Some Democrats are even talking openly about a kind of cautionary Democratic attack on Mr. Sanders, to show how much the party could be harmed if he were the nominee and Republicans got to sink their teeth into him.

“Some third party will say, ‘This is what the first ad of the general election is going to look like,’” said James Carville, the longtime Clinton adviser, envisioning a commercial savaging Mr. Sanders for supporting tax increases and single-payer health care. “Once you get the nomination, they are not going to play nice.”

Is this not the totally predictable conundrum of every Democratic primary candidate who runs from the left? They catch shit from both sides no matter what.

iirc TNC said that in the past he disagreed w/ the idea of reparations, and that his essay was designed to get ppl thinking about the issue instead of just dismissing it out of hand. i wish bernie had responded less dismissively to the question, maybe something like "this is a complex issue, this is something we all need to think about more." but even hinting that he actually supports reparations would be a suicidal position for any candidate who's actually trying to win a national election. TNC characterizes bernie as a "radical" and while bernie does say that about his campaign i don't think he's a john brown/william lloyd garrison radical. he's a progressive politician who's trying to win an election, and it doesn't make sense for him to take positions that an overwhelming majority of americans don't support.

TNC is extrapolating from Bernie's lack of political will on this issue that the following things are true:

1. The radical left doesn't actually care about racism
2. Nothing will change about this fact in this generation or the next one

I don't think either of those things are really supportable any longer. TNC's confirmation bias is working overtime, basically, and using Bernie's flatfootedness on the issue amounts to cherry-picking.

---

i think this appropriate for this thread since it is a pres candidate's stance on an issue.

i don't think you can quickly dismiss those 2 statements. i guess it succeeds or fails based on how you define "radical left". but the younger generation of white ppl is not getting less racist than their parents, they're just making up a smaller share of their generation than previous generations of whites did/do. the number of white ppl who "care" (performative allyship and colorblind wishful thinking) far outnumber the ones who "care" (actively work to dismantle white supremacy). i think it's worth noting that when progressive politics has played well in america, its done so at the expense of black folks in america (think social security being denied to certain classes of workers who were disproportionately black).

i didn't expect bernie to endorse reparations. he thinks he has a shot at winning, and as iatee pointed out it's a political non-starter. which is kind of the point. if there was a political will among enough white americans to embrace reparations as a necessary step for achieving racial justice -- say like the same number of people supporting single-payer health care, still a minority, but a sizable one -- he'd have reason to embrace it.