In the unlikely event that Trump wins, how will you react?

Not sure if you might've skipped a few days in class, 誤訳侮辱, but the parallels that some are seeing with Trump (and the shit he's stirring up that would survive him), are not generally on the other side of the fence from the military?

Not sure if you might've skipped a few days in class, 誤訳侮辱, but the parallels that some are seeing with Trump (and the shit he's stirring up that would survive him), are not generally on the other side of the fence from the military?

This sentence is too glib to make any actual sense to me. Not joking. Could you rephrase in clearer, more declarative language?

yeah what is this "some are seeing" stuff?

blind ppl for Trump

i have the visa he wants to get rid of, so i guess i'll be off

what he's saying is that both Trump people and military people are total Nazis.

or perhaps very racist country folk that dropped out of primary school and think their needs are being neglected (which they are, because their needs are stupid)

Oh, you mean an Executive Action-style coup? Ain't happening. Our GOP friends are too stupid.

I think the occupation of the federal reserve is about the most successful we will see any resistance.

still doesn't make the concept of a Trump-led US less frightening, but....

this is a thread for the hilarious ways we will react to Trump's alternate reality presidency!

Sorry about that. I agree that the idea that Radical Islam is any kind of threat to the US is ridiculous, for the reasons you give. But I don't that the threat that Trump represents is similar, or at least not similar enough to be dismissed the same way.

He's bringing to the surface rank racism and bigotry, focussed through a fascist ideology - he is the great man, the things he does are great, others are inferior, and can be ignored because of that. It looks ridiculous to us because he looks ridiculous to us - we aren't his audience, we aren't looking for a simple solution.

But crucially this is an ideology which isn't incompatible to the military, which needs and frequently gets the military as its core support. I'm not saying it's going to work, but it's not going to fail because of opposing the World's Greatest Military.

The "will survive him" line is because I am honestly undecided (and don't much care) whether Donald Trump is himself a fascist or a world-class opportunist.

I appreciate the dark lols that the Republican party is now being eaten by the people they've been feeding fear and guns to for the last 20 years, and who have no actual taste for sober Conservative Values. But those people are still there, and they know there's a lot of them too. The same way that people say about Bernie "Well, this will mean nothing if we don't build a movement", someone out there is saying the same about Trump.

He's bringing to the surface rank racism and bigotry, focussed through a fascist ideology - he is the great man, the things he does are great, others are inferior, and can be ignored because of that.

The problem here is that you're viewing this entirely through the prism of politics. Trump, I believe, is viewing it more through the prism of showbiz. Remember, he didn't just run The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice for years; he also had a long association with professional wrestling. To him, it's all about twirling on haters. Trump is a fascist the way Beyonce is a revolutionary.

Also, the US military is probably the single most racially integrated sector of American society. If you think of the US Army as some kind of skinhead force that's gonna line up behind a racist dictator, you've never actually seen a photo of the average Army unit. (Stats here; note that they're weird because the military doesn't separate out Latinos as their own group, for some reason.)

it is an ugly thing for sure, but on the other hand, part of me appreciates Trump for exposing what much of the right truly believes without dancing around it (which comes as no surprise to us here, but moreso to the general ignorati "undecided voters").

i'll stick around and do what i can to help the people who get screwed under a trump presidency

build some ladders to get over the wall and whatnot

xxpost

actually I am planning to create this popular video game, a puzzle game called "Wallbreakers", where innocent civilians think all they're doing is playing a game. but secretly this game will be connected to top secret drone robots who will actually mimick the players' activities and punch holes in the wall on their command.

boom, wall down, video game becomes most popular app, I become rich, it's win win

He's a captialist and an opportunist. Trump believes in Trump, full stop. I kinda think he isn't really a fascist any more than he's really a republican or really a Christian. It's all just mealy-mouthed, half-calculated bullshit. But he clearly doesn't have to be a true believer to stir up the people who are and to give them someone to rally around.

I still love that he read a passage from the Bible during a speech, from "Two Corinthians" instead of "2nd Corinthians". then blamed the guy who wrote it down for him

I honestly can't believe a single Christian actually believes a word he says about Christianity. It's all so nakedly disingenuous and, one would think, insulting.

ehh, there's Christians and there's conservative-molded Christianity.

the Fundamentalists I spent time with in high school were conservatives, don't get me wrong, but they would have seen Trump for a phony immediately. they were much more taken with Dubya, who for all of his failings as a politician, at least was a passable man of God.

Trump's supporters are people who remember God from Sunday School, haven't been in years, yet protect their 'faith' like a tigress when they feel it is threatened.

and then there's those who gravitated towards it because misreads of scripture legitimized their xenophobia/homophobia etc.

tl;dr - fuck God.

this may come as a shock to you, but god...is actually bad

he also had a long association with professional wrestling

Did not know this! Got me thinking about a Trump Corgan ticket now.

(誤訳侮辱), I agree the worries about Trump are a little overblown, including my own. But look at the things that have happened inspired by Trump: homeless immigrant beaten, armed "counter-protestors" showing up to people protesting getting murdered by police, armed idiots stationing themselves outside mosques. Not to mention all of the mass shootings that have happened using the same language, and coming from people who share the same ideology, as Trump. The climate in this country is pretty tense right now, and with the direction technology and the economy is going, that situation is probably only going to get worse.

And who's to say pragmatist neocons won't be like "OK, looks like we'll have to work with Trump here" and Trump may be like "I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm going to hook up with the powers that be that are already here." Because that would seem like a pretty sensible move to me, and we've seen what these people are capable of. Trump falls along a worrying spectrum of mass shooters, violent racists, religious fanatics, and warmongers, and if you've looked at what's been happening around here recently, these things are getting serious.

Maybe it's trauma from the Bush administration. The worst case scenario for that guy was not only met, but exceeded handsomely. Trump looks like he's overwhelmingly unpopular among most Americans, so I doubt he'll become President, and if he did, that he'd be able to do any major damage. But you have to admit it's pretty fucked this guy has gotten this far already.

But you're assuming he has a chance of winning the presidency.

this may come as a shock to you, but god...is actually bad

― ciderpress, Monday, February 29, 2016 9:57 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bro I quit church years ago for that reason, yer preaching to the choir.

I think unless you're a certainty junkie like Shakey, it's inarguable that he has a chance of winning it.

Maybe it's trauma from the Bush administration. The worst case scenario for that guy was not only met, but exceeded handsomely. Trump looks like he's overwhelmingly unpopular among most Americans, so I doubt he'll become President, and if he did, that he'd be able to do any major damage. But you have to admit it's pretty fucked this guy has gotten this far already.

― larry appleton, Monday, February 29, 2016 9:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but Bush had a lot of things working in his advantage, namely:

*Supreme Court blocking recount
*a country fatigued of Clinton politics who saw Gore as an extension of them
*the general public thinking Gore was an asshole for things like his attempt to intimidate Bush during the debate
*Nader siphoning away some votes

etc etc

as much as the Repubs hate Hilary, many of them hate Trump more. I'm trying to imagine someone on the Democratic ticket that would infuriate us to this degree and I'm drawing a blank. like maybe a cloned Che Guevara? (and even then college kids would be cumming all over him)

Nader.

Honestly, I think fear of Trump betrays a real ignorance of US history. I hate to get all Ta-Nehisi Coates here, but we have always been a country of "mass shooters, violent racists, religious fanatics, and warmongers," even as we have also always been a country of ambitious immigrants and people who marry outside their race or ethnicity. And I genuinely don't think it's getting any worse.

xxpost of course he has a chance as in "anything is possible", but how is he going to carry the minority vote he needs to win? if they stay home, maybe, but uhhh I think his candidacy would have the opposite effect.

everybody's viewing Trump's success through the blinders of a primary housing lots of like-minded people, he isn't battle-ready for the rigors of a general election yet though. he even showed frustration ("just stop it!") with Rubio's light barbs.

I half expect he'd have a Cartman "Faith Plus One" sized tantrum at the third or fourth general debate.

I voted Nader btw - :(

Honestly, I think fear of Trump betrays a real ignorance of US history. I hate to get all Ta-Nehisi Coates here, but we have always been a country of "mass shooters, violent racists, religious fanatics, and warmongers," even as we have also always been a country of ambitious immigrants and people who marry outside their race or ethnicity. And I genuinely don't think it's getting any worse.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Monday, February 29, 2016 3:08 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So you're saying conditions and circumstances never affect anything in the present, because something was "always this way"? If that was a way to look at problems, we'd never have to do anything.

I don't think it will happen of course, but I think/hope that the nation would probably survive Trump's election. It's survived a lot, after all.

Most activities would continue as normal - most of us would just keep going to our jobs, buying our groceries, loving our children, tending our gardens.

If more people are downtrodden in the new regime, then I hope that people of good will will continue to work to reduce their misery (many of them already do so). That should be true of the downtrodden both here and abroad. If/when His Orangeness decides to wreak havoc on innocents - innocents anywhere - I hope even the expatriate antiTrumpers would still help out rather than saying "I'm in Canada now so fuck y'all, not my problem."

Now to government.

Caveat: I am not a political operator and I don't work for the government, but I've lived inside the Beltway for 40 years, and worked in and around Washington for 20.

When people say "D.C." or "THOSE PEOPLE in Washington" or "the government" or "bureaucrats," they're talking about my friends, my customers, my colleagues, my neighbors, my family. They're everyone's favorite punching bag, and it's been years since I heard anyone say anything nice about them.

The actual President is like one-two-hundred-thousandth of the government. There is a solid professional core of the Executive Branch that is fairly diverse, generally liberal, mostly well-intentioned, and 100% human. That means they fuck up sometimes, at about the same rate as private-sector humans (in my experience). That core has trembled as the new right-wing politics has risen, but the last time I checked it was still there, still trying to do its job as best it could by its own lights.

MOSTLY they just keep doing their jobs. Sometimes politics leaks in: In the year of our lord 2000 or so, I had a contract job for HHS: edit a book about the history of women's health. All went fine and it was about to go to press, and the incoming HHS secretary - Tommy Thompson - got wind of the project. His staff directed us to remove any mention of birth control, abortion, and lesbians from the book. It became much slimmer.

A Trump administration will probably have more effect on the basic functions of governance than the incoming Bush administration did, but less than a rabid TeaHadi "close five departments on day one!!!!" administration would.

if the next president reigns [sic] 8 years, it is v likely the land will be much further on its way to uninhabitable no matter who it is (i don't exempt Sanders)

nobody is going to move to canada
trump is an asshole a racist sexist shitbag but probably wouldn't be any worse than GWB, possibly better in some ways
no wall is going to happen
also he won't win but i realize this thread is just talking abotu the hypothetical

xpost ehh Jesus is coming back before then so

So you're saying conditions and circumstances never affect anything in the present, because something was "always this way"? If that was a way to look at problems, we'd never have to do anything.

I'm saying there's actually a pretty narrow range of "how bad can this get?" and it's largely determined by what the place in question has always been like, yeah. This country has always been a violent, entirely money-driven, take-what-you-can-grab place. Trump isn't making it any worse, not really.

The problem here is that you're viewing this entirely through the prism of politics. Trump, I believe, is viewing it more through the prism of showbiz. Remember, he didn't just run The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice for years; he also had a long association with professional wrestling. To him, it's all about twirling on haters. Trump is a fascist the way Beyonce is a revolutionary.

Not sure if this is an xpost - I agree (and that's a great line), but don't consider it important.

Honestly, I think fear of Trump betrays a real ignorance of US history. I hate to get all Ta-Nehisi Coates here, but we have always been a country of "mass shooters, violent racists, religious fanatics, and warmongers," even as we have also always been a country of ambitious immigrants and people who marry outside their race or ethnicity. And I genuinely don't think it's getting any worse.

Well, there was a time when it was acceptable to say so in public as part of an attempt to get elected, and then there was a time when it wasn't (though I get that frequently you didn't need to crack the Enigma code to figure out "hey... is that politician trying to appeal to racists?")

Did not know this! Got me thinking about a Trump Corgan ticket now.

He shaved Shane Mc Mahon's head at WrestleMania - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_23

ye mad puffin pretty much otm

nobody is going to move to canada

Speak for yourself!

Sometimes in darker moments I've favored a quasi-Trotskyite position: the worse things get, the better they get. It is the nature of a pendulum to swing. Let evil get its message out there, even let it win for a few innings. People will see it for what it is and they will recoil from it.

That's pretty much how I thought during the Gingrich / Contract with America era: okay, bring your nasty-ass ideology out into the open, let people see the consequences of it, and the decent people will know from experience that it's not the right way to go. Maybe people need to learn the hard way, by having it actually implemented.

I now think this is privileged and wrongheaded (and have learned that, in part, here at ILX). In short, it's really easy for a white dude to say "let the Klan have their stupid march, good people will recoil!" Because we won't be the ones strung up.

The biggest problem with Trump for me is not his chances of winning (which I still think are small) but that he emboldens hate. I agree with YMP, sunshine does not disinfect this stuff, it helps it grow.

Props to ciderpress for the message of "stick around and help."

If there's a real shitstorm of consequences, having all the good people say "see ya! wouldn't want to be ya!" and head for the border will make things suck all the harder. Just because you're chillin in Vancouver or whatever doesn't mean turning a blind eye to whatever is going on here.

overall imho the state of the American polity has gotten steadily worse since 1980. (not everything) waitin' on that pendulum, runnin outta time.

yes Puffin gen otm

I've lived through two depressions
And seven Dust Bowl droughts
Floods, locusts and tornadoes
And even Donald Trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP94wyr5KB4

not a yank, will hope the cia assassinates him

If there's a real shitstorm of consequences, having all the good people say "see ya! wouldn't want to be ya!" and head for the border will make things suck all the harder. Just because you're chillin in Vancouver or whatever doesn't mean turning a blind eye to whatever is going on here.

― rock me, I'm a deist (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, February 29, 2016 10:45 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but I mean they gotta think about their own happiness too, y'know? there is also a general feeling of hopelessness that drives these moves.

not like I think a Trump presidency would result in anything more than four years (assuming he makes it) of ineptitude, rising partisan anger, etc etc, but it's giving a voice to ignorance, hate, telling Muslims they're not welcome, etc.

the candidacy itself has been disgusting enough, but usually a fringe candidate will disappear when he finishes 7th out of 8 candidates. like said above, his success is 'legitimizing' his followers who no doubt are projecting their own ignorance onto Trump (even as he says things that likely conflict with what they believe).

he'd probably be the first President to use an Executive Order banning croutons on salads tho

not a yank, will hope the cia assassinates him

"What's the first question at a Trump-Clinton debate?"

"'Where's A_ Q___a when you need 'em?'"

A Trump candidacy is giving a voice to ignorance, hate, etc. I have heard more about the Klan's political positions in mainstream media this past week than I've heard in the past seven years WHILE WE'VE HAD A BLACK PRESIDENT.