US Politics, August 2018: There must be something wrong, please recheck that poll!

i’m curious why you would throw the well being of the polis out as a metric?

xxxp - Obama caused enormous personal anxiety to the Republican base - they weren't just pretending to believe he was always on the verge of springing his Stalinist trap, taking their guns and sending them to gulags. We can call it irrational and stupid, but it was real.

is this really true? i would love to hear some personal stories about the anxiety you witnessed. i have some i could share w/ you about hyperventilating children.

(i am a teacher in a school w/ a fair number of dreamers)

Because that's not necessarily something controllable. If you're more anxious of Trump than you were of Dubya because Trump doesn't uphold some traditions of civility in discourse or whatever, that's on you.

If you think there are specific actions he's taking that are worse than previous Republican Presidents, then those actions are the problem, not your personal anxiety. It remains to be seen, for the most part, what those consist of.

is this really true?

Is it just fun to play dumb?

Man fuck off

at the beginning of the obama administration i was working in a school in a different part of the county. all of the students in this school were from duncan hunter and darrell issa's districts. we had a fair number of angry students - a number of whom were caught passing around a drawing of obama as a monkey in a noose, accompanied w. a play on words referencing joe biden's last name, (b stood for barack, d stood for dumb and e stood for evil, you can figure out what the other letters stood for). it was a huge scandal. the next year, we were almost sued by a group of parents, because we had put up a flag display w flags from all of the nations our students originated from and failed to put the american one above and larger than the rest. i believe these instances of misbehavior stemmed from a type of anxiety, yes. you might even say they were hyperventilating, but not really.

so i would say the two types of anxiety we are comparing are a bit different.

no dude, it's called socratic method

is it fun to BE dumb?

If you're more anxious of Trump than you were of Dubya because Trump doesn't uphold some traditions of civility in discourse or whatever, that's on you.

ok so discourse =/= action?

good to know

If you think there are specific actions he's taking that are worse than previous Republican Presidents, then those actions are the problem, not your personal anxiety

curious what would be some objectionable actions, in your estimation? assuming that deliberate psychic harm on segments of the population doesn't count?

maybe you might argue - to use something i am familiar with - that being actually deported is bad, but that worrying about it is not. is that the sort of argument you're going to use?

milo's been kinda fucking it up on this thread for a couple of days. as he's a usually excellent and reasonable poster and given that this week has been really extra angry-making / patience-destroying for lots of folks, I figure I'll give him that FP he's earned with his last post and leave it there.

maybe you might argue - to use something i am familiar with - that being actually deported is bad, but that worrying about it is not. is that the sort of argument you're going to use?

Fear of deportation is something that's only existed under Trump?

shut the fuck up

you're so pompous about making sure we don't forget that all presidents and all government workers are shitbags because that's how you reinforce your little nutshell of conscious progressive capitalism - just stfu, and let people vent, and maybe listen for once

Nah. All Republicans are evil and have been for 50 years - getting blinded by Trump's manner just makes it easier for them to maintain their power and slip in all the same shit they'd do under Trump under a President Pence or Cruz or whomever because at least they're being civil about it.

you understand i am talking about DREAMERS, right?

xpost MOTHERFUCKER STFU

Fear of deportation is something that's only existed under Trump?

― louise ck (milo z)

in my direct experience, it's much much worse under trump. qualitatively different. you disagree, or what?

i say this as someone who worked full-time with dreamers in east palo alto during the second half of the bush administration. so my perspective on the matter is not exactly the same, and the immigrant communities i was working with then and now are somewhat different, but i assure you, it was *nothing* like this.

i could talk about how islamic and/or middle eastern communities in my neck of the woods, feel about trump's discourse compared to dubya's, but i really don't want to bore with too many anecdotes. i want to hear your anecdotes, milo!

"If you think there are specific actions he's taking that are worse than previous Republican Presidents, then those actions are the problem, not your personal anxiety."

what does this even mean?

I vote in favor of not being interested in milo’s anecdotes right now because I think maybe he should be spending more time on reflection instead of shoutposting his arrogant takes on how insidious behavior tends to creep up instead of happening all at once

BECAUSE WE COULDN’T SEE

you're right. it's dumb to even worry about whether trump is better or worse than bush or reagan. i think we all agree he's different, the rest of it is just bizarre hardmanning.

brothers and sisters, join hands

The shittiness and mental collapse of everything is earthquake magnitudes. Why the fuck would you ever try to compare analog to tainted clams diarrhea.

tomorrow is another day and shall give unto us a new thread for US politics to shit upon

what does this even mean?

That concrete wrongdoing is more useful to highlight than a vague sense of unease centered on one individual if you want to see political change.

there is a lot of concrete wrongdoing, so I'm not sure what point you're making

but i would say the psychological harm he's doing is equally malevolent

Ok so hearing the president of the united states daily spread paranoid conspiracy theories and racist invective causes more than a “vague sense of unease.”

It's slightly surprising how many sundowning dads Trump reminds people of. He totally reminds me of my dad. That fucking aspirational rat pack era.

He reminds me of Satan

Really, because he seems like a fucking sad fat white man in an adult diaper that somehow managed to live this long with a too hot for him wife and too good for him job. That seems completely ordinary.

lol

Ok so hearing the president of the united states daily spread paranoid conspiracy theories and racist invective causes more than a “vague sense of unease.”

That's my fundamental point: combating this shit as a systemic issue is vitally important. Racist invective and paranoid conspiracy aren't new. "Welfare queens driving Cadillacs," Philadelphia MS, black hands, Tim McVeigh, Bob Jones U, Operation Jade Helm, the list is damn near endless.
Believing this stuff is a fresh result of Trump undercuts the real danger, and as we've seen (in this very thread!) with Bush makes it easier for things to get worse in the future when the past can be whitewashed.

No one cares, dude. People use the word Trump as a stand-in for white supremacy, the GOP, police brutality, white nationalism, NIMBYs, whatevers, oversoying your latte. It's semantics. No one wants to complain about 3rd Eye Blind anymore when they haven't even been trying to put out singles.

Like, I really hate when dudes (it's always dudes) get all libertarian and "I was trying to live in the deep woods, drinking my urine, ages ago, doofuses. WAY before Trump." No one gives a shit.

new thread, plz

Yeah this Papadopoulos bombshell needs a new thread.

Really, because he seems like a fucking sad fat white man in an adult diaper that somehow managed to live this long with a too hot for him wife and too good for him job. That seems completely ordinary.

― Yerac, Saturday, September 1, 2018 12:00 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is funny, but only because trump is an insane through the looking glass grotesque version of your average priviliged white man. Florida retirement homes are not filled with megalomanics who ars pathological liars.

Maybe i am insane but he seems like a very, very bad thing to me—a distillation of everyhing rancid about america, but because he is a distillation far more concentrated, 100 proof American beserk

Treesh go to bed

xxxp - Obama caused enormous personal anxiety to the Republican base - they weren't just pretending to believe he was always on the verge of springing his Stalinist trap, taking their guns and sending them to gulags. We can call it irrational and stupid, but it was real.

is this really true? i would love to hear some personal stories about the anxiety you witnessed. i have some i could share w/ you about hyperventilating children.

― the late great, 1. september 2018 04:29 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It¨s not, no. That personal anxiety was caused by Fox, blaming it on Obama is wrong.

This is funny, but only because trump is an insane through the looking glass grotesque version of your average priviliged white man. Florida retirement homes are not filled with megalomanics who ars pathological liars.

― 🦅 (Trϵϵship)

a lot of trump's supporters (a minority, but a numerically large amount) are just as bad or worse than he is.

I think a big difference is that Bush was triumphalist while Trump is revanchist. Bush and his cronies really did seem to think they were going to democratize the entire middle east and improve the economy. Trump just wants power and to stop things from happening. Bush caused more harm, but his legacy will be easier to get rid off. Trump is something else, and it'll probably require impeachment proceedings against at least Kavanaugh. Stuff like that.

over a hundred people in his administration were indicted or convicted of corruption

The possibility that this won't happen with Trump is bad not good though.

are we really having the Trump-is-the-culmination vs Trump-is-an-aberration argument again?

"Bush's legacy is easier to get rid of" - - only if we're talking strictly within America's borders.

US Politics, September 2018: having a nervous breakdown