US Politics, September 2018: having a nervous breakdown

The US political system is complex and unlike any other in the world, and the present situation in US politics is rather abnormal. Most Americans don't understand our politics very well, so it is normal for a non-American taking an interest in it to have questions. Keep asking.

Since several McCain funeral speakers took dead aim at Trump, I figure it's just a matter of minutes before he cuts loose on the twitter.

Bush delivered pointed anti-Trump remarks. That's where we are in 2018.

Great opportunity for W to keep rehabilitating that image of his

I would never get exasperated with anyone for asking whether awful people are ever going to face any consequences for the awful things they do. I reserve my exasperation for the other awful people who enable the first group to skate through their consequence-free lives.

Re: O'Trump's forthcoming jaunt to Ireland. I reckon he'll be the first US President since FDR to either not claim any Irish ancestry or to not have it claimed on his behalf.

He continues to break all the (green, white and) golden rules of American politics.

Top o' the mourning to you?

I bet he says some really dumb things about the Irish and Ireland, intended to be flattery, but instead revealing his abysmal understanding of both Ireland and what constitutes a compliment.

It's on the cards.

(xp) LOLz

I'm betting he hasn't even read the ILX thread on whether Ireland should be referred to as part of the British Isles. :-0

Second straight sub 40% approval rating in a row just came out, this one from IBD/TIPP.

that's good. not good: now we've reached the point where the polls are actually worth paying attention to, and it's stressing me the hell out, i have some serious fucking 2016 ptsd.

I can't tell if it's some kind of privilege that makes me feel like I have 2016 PTSD. I have a pretty good head on my shoulders, but I have found that I am prone to more significant and serious mood swings post election. Real spikes in anger and depression, at least relative to my usual disposition.

i don't know if it's "privilege", i don't care. 2016 fucked me up. 2016 fucked a lot of people i care about up. not all of my friends survived 2016. if somebody wants to give me shit over that, they can try, but they're not going to get very far.

I by no means was suggesting that Stevolende oughtn't be perplexed by the complete abrogation of any upholding of standards or laws by the ruling party; just that continuing to expect a reversal on the matter, at this stage in the administration, might be fruitless.

It's certainly a counterpoint to the gawping despair evinced by everyone else itt (bar qualmsley), though.

at this stage in the administration

also this stage in capitalism

imo i and sic are the only ppl with a handle on how to approach this (ignore, observe, drink)

obviously this administration is doing damage that is and will continue to cause real suffering to u.s. citizens and people the world over, but still, i can't help but get cynical about people who claim to feel traumatized or "fucked up".

Looked like a lot of self-congratulatory effort to go to to say as little as what Sic's saying .

oh I’m 100% in the gawping despair / psychically traumatised column, I’m just not blogging abt it itt

and my actual expectations have only taken one single downtick since he made it into the primaries: during the hours that the state results were coming in on November 9th

You're almost as bad a poster as i

We're livin on the edge

obviously this administration is doing damage that is and will continue to cause real suffering to u.s. citizens and people the world over, but still, i can't help but get cynical about people who claim to feel traumatized or "fucked up".

― rip van wanko, Saturday, September 1, 2018 3:40 PM

this is very condescending

I literally had a conversation with my wife the week after about what it would take for our family to flee the country.

i can't help but get cynical about people who claim to feel traumatized or "fucked up".

An epic failure of imagination here.

i worded that poorly; i'm not being sarcastic, i really do have trouble understanding how the present circumstances are causing acute, direct psychological harm to ilx pundits, esp the str8 white male. the situation is worrisome, even distressing, but anything beyond that makes me suspent you may have a codependent or otherwise dysfunctional relationship to "the news"

people itt have explicitly laid out for you their direct personal connections to profoundly unsettling and traumatic circumstances and threats posed by the trump administration, most notably deportation. idk what more you want man.

i really do have trouble understanding how the present circumstances are causing acute, direct psychological harm to ilx pundits, esp the str8 white male.

In a word: empathy.

"i really do have trouble understanding how the present circumstances are causing acute, direct psychological harm to ilx pundits, esp the str8 white male."

who cares that you think other people might not be having a ‘real’ experience?

when you're Jewish, with a family, and the Nazis are not just marching but have allies in the white house ... do the math.

Wow, yeah. Do you have trouble believing that climate change is equally affecting?

i worded that poorly; i'm not being sarcastic, i really do have trouble understanding how the present circumstances are causing acute, direct psychological harm to ilx pundits, esp the str8 white male. the situation is worrisome, even distressing, but anything beyond that makes me suspent you may have a codependent or otherwise dysfunctional relationship to "the news"

― rip van wanko

thanks for sharing!

there’s been some epic bullshit on this thread today.

trumpism is a new dimension to an existing nightmare.

anybody cynical about the traumatizing effects of it can fuck off as far as I’m concerned because it’s absolutely real, even if it’s not directly tangible to any individual on any day of the week.

actually rvw has just given an all-time amazingly understated description of POTUS

(a str8 white male who finds the situation worrisome, distressing, and more; causing some to suspect he has a codependent or otherwise dysfunctional relationship to "the news")

esp the str8 white male

idk was with em til this

I wouldn't compare any issues I have to people going through far more, but I find that when I'm down now it's a bit worse due to an ambient, chattering unease that's in the air in our u.s. of a.

New thred imo

so i do have to ask - what is the supposed benefit of this gaslightig?

or if you prefer, “nothing to fear but fear itself” hardmanni g

Lunch otm. You don't have to be directly affected to be distressed, if your politics is rooted in empathy for the downtrodden.

That can go too far of course - ask me some time about vicarious traumatization among animal rights activists, for example.

But you can be a straight white dude and find plenty to worry about w/r/t the current regime. Maybe it's not coming for you, but you know it's coming for people you care about. And that is not nothing.

hardmanni g

quality dn material

One time a particularly racist Trump fan neighbor I’ve never met chimed in on a NextDoor thread about Trump and—directly replying to a dude who was worried about things happening and talking around other non-white people and women—said “don’t worry — you’ll be fine.”

The atmosphere has made me feel ill at ease perpetually And what’s happening to some people around here is terrible. There was a fruit vendor who disappeared for a month via ICE and it took the entire community raising money and making noise to get him temporarily out of custody (and back to friends and family who had little notion of where he was.) I suspect he was a lucky one.

i live in a small town that was just raided by ice. i'm not facing lockdown and deportation because of my "citizenship" but it's not like the 9 people who disappeared haven't had a ripple effect in the community, affecting everyone negatively in some way. i get the impulse to call people out when it seems like they're overdoing it based on their social standing but that seems like crossing a boundary in a bad way or what tlg said is gaslighting. you never know how someone is really being affected by all of this. i'm a white gay cis-presenting man so my job or my ability to walk outside in the street isn't being overtly threatened but i'm two generations down from a horrible abuser who is in many ways like trump, so i've had to block out his words/appearances as much as i can because it can honestly be a little triggering psychologically and it will set my day on fire if i'm not careful.

Great post.

i really do have trouble understanding how the present circumstances are causing acute, direct psychological harm to ilx pundits, esp the str8 white male.

Up until February 2017 I used to work for a book publisher who specialized in ESL courses designed to help adult non-English speakers to learn English as their children learned English in grade school. Great folks to work for - I I had been with them full or part-time for almost eight years. One of the few times that a tech job didn't cause me to feel like I was part of the problem. Post-election, almost every school in the border states froze or eliminated the budgets for ESL programs because publicly-funded programs to help immigrants became radioactive.

Is it acute psychological harm? I dunno - I guess I was fucked up by getting laid off and back in the hellscape of being a developer in his 50s who's competing in the job space against 20 year old sociopaths. I feel worse for my friends with the publishing company - they had to put it in stasis.

An assertion Wednesday by a white Republican gubernatorial candidate that Florida voters can't afford to "monkey this up" and vote for his black Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, was widely viewed as a "dog whistle" to rally racists.

If it was a dog-whistle — the GOP candidate denies any racial intent — a jungle music-scored robo-call that has circulated in Florida is more akin to a bullhorn.

If nothing else, the minute-long audio clip is a clear sign of how quickly racism — subtle in some cases, overt in others — has entered the contest to determine who will lead Florida.

"Well hello there,” the call begins as the sounds of drums and monkeys can be heard in the background, according to the New York Times. “I is Andrew Gillum."

"We Negroes . . . done made mud huts while white folk waste a bunch of time making their home out of wood an stone."

The speaker goes on to say he'll pass a law letting African Americans evade arrest “if the Negro know fo' sho he didn't do nothin'."

It is unclear how many people heard the call.

wtf

Kinda wish this wasn't a Ryan Lizza story because fuck that guy, but this is a read for sure:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/

xp "i like coal, ok? i like coal. do you like coal, Senator?"

This is an abominably unethical action by a taxpayer-employed prosecutor. She was literally not allowed to question the alleged perpetrator. She is using her title as a weapon against a survivor. Appalling. https://t.co/HjJhs1r1sH

— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) October 1, 2018

Yeah, read that earlier. Somehow doesn't pay any attention to lack of an investigation or one sidedness of the hearing.
Or trauma or any of a number of reasons why there may be discrepancies or problems with teh orders of things.

Or that the candidate himself was blatantly lying and avowedly partisan. Or the whole timescale of the hearings being totally askew anyway. Would love it if somebody could just reframe the timeframe and show where things stand in terms of normal protocol like being able to go through all the relevant documents in an existing paper trail. Things hould never have really needed to get to this point as it was.
BUt how obvious does it have to be that one party is trying to ram through a candidate taht at least half of teh population disdain.

Also I was just reading through what had been said about the scope of the FBI investigation and what it excluded
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-limits-scope-fbi-s-investigation-allegations-against-brett-n915061

I am still rose-tinted spectacly hoping that a thing called justice might out and things be allowed to be conducted by previously existing protocols. All I'm seeing is a corrupt party trying to ram home a totally unfit candidate for a job that he'll keep for decades thereby depriving a great deal of the population of the country from what it should be able to view as understood rights.

Hopefully this will further catalyse grassroots activity and activists in aiding trauma victims and assault survivors.Which will hopefully lead to further legislation helping attack survivors to live with less trauma. & actually see that develop to being the new norm.
Still hoping this is the last screams of a dying age as the extremely conservative are exposed and their fledgling cohorts are viewed as the idiots they are.

Oh yeah, It's Ctober sho olet's see what Madness and shenanigans they can come up with this month. bless 'em.

A quite long summary of where and how Kavanaugh lied in his testimony.

please god someone start a new thread, september 2018 has been an extraordinarily cursed month in us politics

I like NJR but my lord I wish he had an editor

US Politics October 2018: 'I like beer. Do you like beer?'

please no kav quotes for lol thread titles, guarantee it will be triggering for some

and that article is great, thanks alfred. agreed that it's too long but it's good to get all of that shit in one place.

new thread already started:
US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer