You know I filter the comments here and have a fairly extensive block list — it’s necessary. Especially now. You wouldn’t believe the crap people are trying to post here now, emboldened by this recent election. I’ll just put one particularly ugly example from someone calling himself sinceretrupsupporter
below the fold. You might want to skip it. I find it useful to remind myself from time to time what we’re fighting.
It’s about time you fucking cucks got your just desserts. Cunts, niggers, spics, gooks, kikes, fags and sandniggers were never meant to have a say in our great country. Several hundreds of years ago the greatest men to walk the earth (excluding Trump but I’ll get to that soon), the Founding Fathers, made this country great by killing off most of the natives and bringing in niggers as subordinates. Fast forward to now and we live in a degenerate society where niggers are free, the injuns (sorry, NATIVE AMERICANS) still exist and women can vote as well as have sex outside of wedlock. Well Trump has finally come along to change all of that. Now it’s obvious that he’s going to eradicate all the non-whites in America and make women mandatory sex slaves (the attractive ones that is, the ugly/fat ones will obviously be killed) but the important questions are the following. 1) How will we get Trump get elected 4 years from now. 2) How can we alter the Constitution so that Trump can have more terms as president. And finally, 3) When will Trump eradicate all the non-whites outside of America? We have nukes boys, it’s finally time to use them.
Please don’t bother telling me Not All Trump Supporters. I don’t care. This is the filth dragged in with him.
QFT. And the filth that no-one who voted for him has any excuse for not knowing about.
I’ll add the phrase “make America great again” to my dog whistle list, with the definition of the KKK/SS/Gestopo can run loose in the country to intimidate anyone not a WMASP.
I’m sure there’s one of our bridge builders along talking kindly to him and everything and before you know it he’s a bit less awful, right?
Jesus vomited.
If I hear one more idiot saying how we need to be nice to these poor, misunderstood people, I’m gonna explode.
So over the top that you can’t even parody stuff like that.
As for women having sex out of wedlock, from his past I would have to say that Trump supports that.
our great country
Of which “great country” does he speak, I wonder?
If he’s talking about the USA, he’s mistaken – the US is not “great” except in the sense of being a massive empire built atop racism and genocide, with a huge military and a government that ignores its own laws and long ago discarded its own legitimacy. While the commenter used the possessive plural “our” great country to describe the US, they apparently have mistaken it for something they actually are a part of, it doesn’t listen to them (any more than it does me) and its rulers and masters wouldn’t have their limo drivers stop to give him the time of day if he was on fire in the gutter.
Oh, and for all those people who will claim it’s just internet trolling, see here.
Maybe Poe’s law applies here?
:eyeroll:
Well, that didn’t take long. FFS.
0.55 secs to find out there doesn’t exist a “sinceretrupsupporter”
I’m a sincere PZ sumporter. If only I could control my keyboard bahavi[o]r under the regime of Lenovo/Windows 10.
perodatrent #8:
Well yes. Poe’s Law does not state that really bad stuff might be parody therefore don’t worry. It states that you can’t tell the difference between the parody and the real thing, there has to exist a real thing which is, in fact, as awful as the parody. In which case, so fucking what if this particular example were to turn out to be parody? All you’re actually saying is that shit like this really does exist. Gee, thanks.
@Rene 10 What are you on about? How long do you think it takes to make an account to troll from? Did you think PZ was claiming this was the person’s given name?
I should probably add “Poe” to the blocklist. I really fucking hate that term — it’s nothing but an excuse to ignore the odious.
Also, I have far more information about this comment than any of you do: I looked up the email address, which was a one-time throwaway account, because these assholes are cowards.
This is meant to be parody.
Unfortunately, Trumpkins see it as a blueprint.
First, I was going to laugh at his ignorance because Trump has bragged, written, and talked about having had sex, lots of sex, outside wedlock but then I realized, these kinds of assholes are totally fine with it. And he probably knows about them as well and he thinks that white men should be able to do whatever they want.
BTW, I don’t like the term “Trumpkins”. I like pumpkins and I hate it for the association to ruin my positive attitude towards pumpkins.
Wait, you’re telling me that you’re actually buying this as a legitimate Trump supporter? I love to hate on Trump as much as the next guy/gal, but to even pretend to take this seriously in an effort to forward the narrative is incredibly embarrassing to our little corner of the political realm. Obviously it’s fake. It’s on the same level as someone posing as an Obama supporter in a “leaked email” revealing his plans to “round up all the conservatives, take their guns, and put them in FEMA camps.” Jesus, people…
Apparently some people voted for him because they love his blatant misogynist and white supremacist ideas. While others voted for him because they firmly believe in equality for all but would just like more of their pay as take-home income. Or something.
We are told the latter is a category that
a) exists
b) we must be nice to
ayoungcontrarian, #18
Clearly not since Obama had no plans that had anything at all whatsoever to do with rounding up conservative or taking their guns.
ayoungcontrarian @18
What planet are you from where these people cannot possibly exist? It’s definitely not Earth circa 2016.
@Saad 19
I’m sure the latter category indisputably exists. I’m less settled on b though. It would be like, someone is watching a child drown–and that’s it. No attempting a rescue or even trying to get help. Just watching. I think there’s enough info there to make a moral statement.
@ayoungcontrarian (#18)
Are all these headlines on RawStory’s main page “obviously fake” too? (There’ve been a lot more in the last week. These are just the current ones.)
– Laughing men assault Ohio student after telling her ‘President Trump says this is OK’: report
– Mom who took a photo with Hillary Clinton while hiking is now getting death threats from Trump supporters
– ‘N****rs’ slur defaces MLK Center in Spokane: ‘Do not pretend that these are isolated incidents’
– Neo-Nazis throw a tantrum after New Balance denies being the ‘official shoes of white people’
– Racist attack by Trump supporter caught on camera: ‘You’re a little b*tch, eh?’
– WATCH: Anti-Trump protester brutally tackled from behind while giving speech at student center
– Trump-loving coffee shop owner insists he is not racist after threatening to hang black ‘monkeys’
Also, “denialist” isn’t spelled “contrarian.” Just FYI.
While I have the same opinion of Trump supporters as everyone else here, in my darker moments I sometimes wonder if maybe we who consider ourselves progressives are simply wrong about the capacity of humans of different races and religions to live together. Maybe racism is just so firmly impressed in us that we just can’t shake it. (And no, I’m not appealing to evolutionary psychology, which I agree is bullshit, but even if racism is 100% cultural, it can still be so firmly impressed in the culture that it can’t be gotten rid of.) And racism seems to be found pretty much in every culture; I know of no exceptions.
When parents have squabbling children, they separate them. Not because one child is preferred over another, but because it’s the best way to bring about peace. If our experiment in multi-culturalism is a failure, then maybe having places segregated by race is the best way to bring about peace, not because one race is preferred over another, but because more than one race doesn’t seem able to get along.
I hate the idea of it. I really wish I could live in a society in which race were no more noteworthy than whether someone is right handed or what they like for dessert. But that society is not our society, nor any other society on earth from what I can tell, nor is it likely to be for a long time.
A wonderful idea! I’m sure it’s never been tried before with gas chambers or anything.
@25
In short: nope. Trust me, there is no shortage of hate in places that are monoracial or monoethnic. I live in one.
Siobhan, No. 26, where do you find gas chambers in anything I wrote?
Honestly, I think some of these rants are really too offensive to associate with TF Gumby. Obviously stupid or evil is a false choice, but there’s a certain level of evil where Gumbys should be spared of the association. The Gumbys were stupid, but not actually evil, or even angry in any of the Monty Python sketches.
It’s great most of the time, but once the word “cuck” and every racial slur I’ve heard before begin the first sentence, maybe something more akin to a cartoon of the dead Breitbart is more appropriate.
And @A. Noyd (#23):
I’ve only encountered two of those (which I posted about on my own, never read, blog. I said I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of more, but that doesn’t make it any easier to do so.
I could go on, but I’d quickly become extremely uncivil.
thirdmill, @28
TBH, it’s not like you can go from multi to mono without ethnic cleansing, and it usually involves some form of genocide.
Tarhim, No. 27, wherever there are humans there will be hatred, but separating antagonists would give one less thing to actually fight over.
Siobhan @26:
I was thinking it sounded more like bantustans, which themselves didn’t exactly help the problem of racism, but yeah, creating ghettos is a useful prelude when people like Us want to start rounding up people like Them.
Thirdmill #31
Which neighbor must move if there is friction?
I too suspect that racism is part of human nature. Years ago, my uncle raised turkeys. He had a field with five thousand or so black turkeys and one white turkey. Within minutes the white turkey was pecked totally bald and would have been killed if my uncle hadn’t hastily segregated it. In a separate pen, it grew its feathers back and became a magnificent lonely white tom turkey. We are just animals. It’s may be our nature to attack anybody who seems different.
That said, I believe that culture can save us. I’m reminded of Denise Nichols, a black actor I worked with in Toronto, who observed with some wonder “There’s no colour here.” Of course that’s not completely true. Canada has plenty of racism, especially toward the native population. But the cultural influences seem to attenuate the worst of it.
Segregation may work for turkeys, but it won’t work for us. We’ve pretty much proven that.
@thirdmill, 31.
a) you need to split them in the first place, and it is not a peaceful process,
b) it might actually lead to all-out war against other group, it’s not like borders mean anything when you perceive a grudge.
I get that it’s worth pointing out but this is just so blatantly a trolling comment. Even Return of Kings wouldn’t write something as stupid as that comment.
I’m not ready to believe that every Trump voter is a monster and accepting this stuff as real makes us look like pretentious and out of touch. It being a troll doesn’t excuse the nasty words and beliefs in that comment but it’s kind of embarrassing as well to take it seriously.
Joel’s law: the probability that someone will claim Poe’s law approaches one, the more invective, bigoted and poorly spelt the original comment, post, or email is.
flashwit:
It’s real, alright. You meant ‘genuine’.
More to the point, even if it is trolling (I agree with you there) it indicates that the writer knows full well the attitude, ethos and aspirations of this network and has chosen their antithesis as mockery.
(That in itself is rather revealing, no?)
This is so over the top it reads like they watched the new Mad Max and came away with the impression that Immortan Joe was the hero. It’s like they deliberately picked everything that would piss a liberal off, threw it all together, sprinkled “cuck” on for some flavour, and hit blend. I’m sure there are Trump supporters that actually belive shit like this, but they probably keep quiet about it, not go around advertising it to lefty science bloggers, even anonymously. My guess is it’s either someone on the left trying to make Trump supporters look bad (Hint: They don’t need any help in that department.), or someone just trying to stir shit and then laugh because “those stupid sjw lieberals fell for it hur hur hur”.
flashwit #36:
Why?
I’ll take my usual reasoning and say: No, it is all Trump supporters. All Trump supporters knew that he supported and condoned this drek, and they voted for Trump anyways, which makes them morally complicit and morally culpable. Not as culpable as actual KKK members, but voting for a white supremacist apologist for reasons other than white supremacy, when much better alternatives exist, does bear some moral culpability. They enabled it. They allowed it to happen. Fuck everyone who voted for Trump.
For those of you claiming that racism is part of human nature, riddle me this: why is it that Trump tended to do worse in places that have a high degree of diversity? Could it be that knowing and having daily dealings with people of other races might ameliorate racism?
I mean, even if you’re right, and we all harbor some degree of racism, people have still learned to live more or less peacefully in multi-cultural/ethnic/racial societies throughout history. Surely it’s better to strive to live together and move toward the goal of a non-racist society, even if that’s an asymptote that we’re doomed never to reach than for each of us to live in our own little Bantustans.
To thirdmill
It’s endemic to the human condition, and we must fight against it forever. If not race, then something else. Humans will always be able to find something else. For example, look at a place like Ireland, which AFAIK has the same ethnic makeup. There, they created divisions entirely around religion, Catholic vs Protestant. Otherwise, it was almost the same phenomenon, with practically the same results.
The problem is the creation of divisions, tribes, “othering”, in the first place. That is what we must fight. We must fight tribalism and xenophobia, and recognize that every human being has worth. We must constantly fight for lofty idealism, and fight our inner demons and the demons of others to segregate, form tribes, and engage in supremacist thinking.
@40
That’s fine, we take the genuine stuff seriously, but just laugh at the nonsense trolling.
Also, I’m seriously not trying to be contrarian but there have been more than a few notable attacks by Trump supporters that have turned out to be hoaxes. I see the hospital discharge and such so this seems believable, but the hoaxers have now poisoned the well for the real incidents which is pretty disappointing.
Also, how do you do the quotes in response to other comments, it gets kind of confusing.
My dentist, a Jordanian (who says he voted for the first time after political discussions with me), says the other day an older white looked him up and down at a store. Says it had never happened before. These folks feel empowered and emboldened now. It’s going to be a dark four years.
flashwit @45:
<blockquote>
that which is quoted</blockquote>flashwit #44:
A troll who is willing to use bigotry for the lulz is still a bigot.
And there have been many which haven’t.
Yeah. They make the other reports easier to pass off as non-genuine. Which is exactly what you are now doing.
Is produced by:
<blockquote>Paste quoted text here</blockquote>
Thirdmill’s parent obviously separated the siblings following the first tantrum at the age of four, and they lived happily ever after on different continents ever since. Must be true if thirdmill ‘s analogy holds any water.
Just to play the devils advocate for a moment here: If one truly believes that the system is completely broken and corrupt, it becomes a majority issue. It affects everybody. Naturally such a situation would trump (no pun intended) any minority issue, wouldn’t it?
What are the odds of something similar happening in the future? This could be their only chance to change course before it’s too late. I know, I know. The thought of Trump as a savior makes my brain implode, but somehow half the US sees him as one.
Can we ask “sinceretrupsupporter” for a DNA sample to sequence so we can enlighten this person about their own heritage? The 1/16 native american in me just might pay to have it done.
OP: “We have nukes boys, it’s finally time to use them.”
Sheeit, this is frightening, because it is actually how TrumpPence thinks. These feckers are just itching to blow North Korea to shit, they don’t understand nukes are not bullets.
Erlend Meyer:
Not really.
Via Wikipedia, turnout (of eligible voters, not of the population) was 53.6%.
Of those, 47.23% voted Trump.
That yields 25.3% of eligible voters which voted for him; one quarter, not one half.
This is not the time to hand out the benefit of the doubt, not the time to play devil’s advocate, and definitely not the time to dismiss this sort of thing as (relatively) harmless joke or trolling. Those attitudes helped to get the USA into this whole mess to begin with, and the kind of people who write stuff like this paved a long stretch of the road towards Trump’s presidency as well. This is the time to get serious, dead serious, and to give no quarter whatsoever. People are being attacked as we discuss this.
So, thirdmill, in your family were all children made to suffer the consequences of one child’s misbehavior? Separating antagonists is an idea, I guess, but wouldn’t it make more sense to isolate the aggressors? You know, based on behavior, rather than, I don’t know, skin color, or eye shape?
Lots of people, maybe most people, are not “antagonists”. They’re just people. And I’d love to hear how you would separate people by “race”. Just what criteria would that involve, particularly considering that “race” is not an actual thing, just a perceived thing? I figure I’d be separated from my children in your scenario, but would you also separate the olive-skinned kid from the fair one?
Just wondering about the practical logistics of your punish-all-the-kids solution.
Enlightened Liberal @ 41:
Hear, hear! I’ve been saying all week that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept! I live in Wyoming, so I know a lot of Republicans and like them, so I can’t hate them. After all, I know they didn’t intend for the shitstorm that’s coming, but I still hold them culpable. It’s a strange dichotomy.
@ Kreator #54: I’m not trying to trivialize anything, just trying to understand what happened.
@ John Morales #53: That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that 75% of eligible voters did NOT vote against him.
@8, perodatrent:
Of course. Poe’s Law states that it is impossible to create a parody so blatant that it’s impossible to find someone who takes it seriously. The comment in question is a perfect example— as per Poe’s Law, whether or not the comment is a parody is impossible to determine because even if the commenter doesn’t seriously believe it, plenty of other people do.
@19, Saad:
I don’t think they put nearly so much thought into it. It’s probably more like, “others voted for him because they realized, on some level, that they were getting screwed by the system and, lacking any candidate to represent their interests, voted for what they perceived as the candidate most likely to break the system.”
They definitely exist. Whether you’re nice to them is a matter of personal disposition. If we can convince the Democratic Party to run candidates who are actually liberal, we’ll probably get some of their votes, but we should be trying to convince the Democratic Party to run liberal candidates anyway because, you know, liberal policies work better.
@25, thirdmill:
Concern troll is concerned.
@34 zaledalen:
Race (as the concept is currently understood) wasn’t invented until the 17th century, and it was invented for explicitly political reasons. Something so modern and artificial can’t possibly be part of human nature.
@35 tarhim:
Don’t be absurd! Can’t you see how well the “two-state solution” has worked for Israel/Palestine? Simply draw a border between…
…wait, never mind. The opposite happened. Maybe I should see if the Balkans can prove my point?
@57, Erlend Meyer:
The problem is that nearly half the population didn’t vote at all. And it’s a little hard to blame them— who exactly were they supposed to vote for?
I suspect he is about 50 years too late for that to work.
uncle frogy
I suspect the people dismissing this as a parody aren’t getting out enough. Immediately after the election, genuine Nazis started popping up all over the place putting out full-bore racist — primarily antisemitic, but by no means limited to that — comments where they normally wouldn’t even bother trying to register. It was pretty disgusting. If the Nazis are out there posting unbelievably horrible stuff from genuine registered accounts, then anonymous e-mail commentary is entirely believable.
(The pro-Trump Nazi posts were just ever-so-slightly amusing at the same time. If you happen to have been paying attention, Trump backed away from trying to be a wildcard on Israel and has been supporting them fairly strongly for months, backs them against all opponents, and wants Netanyahu to come visit the U.S. sometime soon. It’s one of the few issues he has been fairly constant about. I’m not wild about Israel, and I feel about Netanyahu’s government roughly the same as I feel about Trump’s, but if getting the two together makes American Nazi heads explode I can hardly wait for those flights to be booked.)
My original post was more in the nature of thinking out loud than having a well-thought-out blueprint for actually implementing it, but here’s the problem as I see it: There are far more racists out there than there are egalitarians. We just had an election and they kicked our butts. And world wide, whichever race happens to be the dominant race in any given area behaves just as badly, so it isn’t even a white problem; it’s a human problem. So as much as I would prefer to go after bad behavior — i.e., racism — politically I don’t think that’s possible Not when you can get elected president by saying that Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists. If Americans are willing to elect a president who doesn’t even pretend to not be a racist, then there’s no way that any effective steps to protect minorities are going to be taken. We might get some window dressing here and there, but that’s about it.
So if suppressing bad behavior isn’t a workable option, then what is? Or is there one? Are we as humans simply doomed to continue to have racism and the violence that sometimes accompanies it forever (or until we kill ourselves off)?
If the egalitarian solution of just getting everyone to get along with each other isn’t going to work, then we need to candidly admit as much, and figure out if anything else will. Maybe segregating people back into their own nation-states with a specific ethnic identity isn’t workable either, but maybe it should be looked at as a possibility in case egalitarianism has to be given up on. Maybe instead of genocide and ethnic cleansing, you simply pay people money to move. Maybe you have an international military strong enough to suppress cross-border violence as with the Israelis and Palestinians or the Balkans.
But if after all is said and done that doesn’t work either (and I’m not certain it would), then what’s Option C?
@#52, miles links
Well, yes, it’s sickening. But… why do we have all those nukes, if the intent is never to use them? It’s not like a nuke magically pops into existence every time we spend $100 million on the military, like in a video game — we had to sit down and consciously work to design and build more, and more, and more of them to get to the point where we could destroy every other country in the world and still have enough held in reserve to defend against an alien invasion. Even if you throw in a quite hefty margin to allow for duds or for some of them to be offline in case of maintenance, we have far too many to be justified rationally — unless, of course, the plan all along was to use them casually, in which case we can hardly complain if Trump does that. We’ve had plenty of opportunity to shrink the arsenal down to a size which would be compatible with Mutually Assured Destruction, and haven’t done that, ever, under either party’s leadership.
PZ, are you sure it’s not a false-flag plant?
PZ, are you sure it’s not a bowl of petunias with an ice-cream topping? Or maybe it’s a packet of left-handed compression dust or a Cadillac coupe de ville? Please, can we not bury our heads in the sand and pretend it’s anything, rather than face the fact that it might be what its author states it to be?
Jebus.
#40 Daz Uffish:
Could I just check what your meaning is with “Why?”? The linked tweet seems to be a false accusation of pro-Trump violence, was it your point that both sides lie and Poe? If so, I salute you.
Vicar, 63:
It’s called mutually assured destruction. The clown is out of the box, and he ain’t going back in. What do anti-nuclear people think would happen if the US dismantled all their nuclear weapons one day? I fucking hate it, but Prof Einstein gave it to us, and we are stuck with it. You can’t uninvent fire.
thirdmill wrote:
Why stop there? Let’s separate the green eyed from the brown eyed. The blonde from the brown haired. The dimpled chin from the square chin from the round chin. We can keep sorting and separating people until every person is an independent nation. Obviously none of this would be useful, and we can easily laugh at the foolishness of this idea. But while my separations are obviously bogus, why do you imagine that race isn’t also bogus? Blonde, blue eyed Germans were supposed to be the master race not so long ago, so these arbitrary separations aren’t so far fetched.
Erlend Meyer wrote:
Did not, or could not. Don’t forget that voting happens on a regular work day (Tuesday), that part time employers aren’t required to provide time off for voting, and that significant voter suppression and disenfranchisement efforts have been occurring for years. Honestly, I have no idea what proportion of the non-voting population fits into these categories, but I imagine it’s a very significant number of people.
The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) wrote:
This one may be intended as parody, but it hardly matters. The fact that there are people out there that believe every ridiculous position the post articulates is concern enough, without worrying about if this particular one is genuine or not. There are people who think racial genocide, forcing women into subservience, and the use of nukes to eliminate racial groups outside of the US would be a great idea.
@#67, miles links
Had you actually read my comment, you would see that I already mentioned that concept, thanks. We have more nukes than would be required to assure MAD, by a factor of something like 40 IIRC. Even if you presume that half our nukes might be duds (we can only hope), and that a third of them might be offline at a particular moment (which is never the case), we have way more than we could ever possibly need for as a deterrent — and all of them not only were expensive to build, but cost fairly hefty sums of money to keep around.
miles links #66:
It’s not false. And nor do I unde4rstand why you assumed it was. And my point was that there is no reason to assume that the missive in the OP is false either. There are very nasty people out there, and they are indeed as nasty as their own words paint them.
You may find it hard to imagine smashing someone’s skull in with an iron bar, and you may well want to believe that others are just as squeamish. Well that man stood in front of you screaming abuse and waving an iron bar? He really is planning to smash your skull in with it, and is perfectly capable of doing so, despite your lack of imagination.
This is real, folks. As Kreator said @54, people are being attacked as we discuss this.
@thirdmill, 62:
That’s a lot of bullshit right there.
The racists were given an easy election— the Democrats nominated an unelectable Wall Street toady who alienated half their base while the Republicans nominated a charismatic con man who knew how to appeal to the low information voters and then heaped a massive voter suppression campaign on top of that, and even then they lost the vote— they only “won” the presidency because the electoral college makes racist votes count more than egalitarian ones (which, incidentally, is the reason it was created in the first place).
The racists barely won a race in which every aspect was rigged in their favor. That hardly suggests that there are more racists than egalitarians and they only “kicked our butts” in the mind of a Trumpian concern troll.
ck No. 68, because to my knowledge almost nobody is being attacked or discriminated against based on eye color, hair color or chin shape. And while I agree with your point that it’s just as irrational to discriminate based on skin color, the cold, hard reality is that people are attacked and discriminated against based on skin color. So we have to work on the problems that actually exist, irrational though they are.
I’m also not convinced that race as a construct is that recent an event. The name for it may be relatively new, but you can find examples in the Bible of people being treated badly because of the color of their skin, so racism — whether or not the word had been coined — is at least as old as the Bible. I think racism is actually a form of tribalism, which most certainly is an ancient phenomenon. Again, that doesn’t make it rational, but it does mean that it can’t simply be dismissed as a recent social construct. It appears to have always been with us in one form or another.
But hovering over all of this is the broader question: OK, you don’t like my proposed solution, do you have an alternative of your own to propose? It seems clear at this point that just trying to get everyone to just get along isn’t working, and there’s no reason to think it will work any time soon. So what’s Plan B?
Correction to the link in my previous. [Link]
miles links wrote:
That explains why the U.S. has some nukes. It does not explain why the U.S. still has so damn many of them (4,500 currently) and why certain parties want to build lots more of the damn things.
Oh fuck you Harban. You and Vicar and assholes like you who refused to vote for the only viable alternative to Trump are responsible for what happened. You got the fascism you wanted, asshole, now own it.
thirdmill #72:
Life is not perfect and probably never will be. There is no perfect plan. There’s no easy solution or quick fix. Sorry if this disappoints you—it certainly disappoints me—but all we can do is keep trying.
There was no viable alternative to Trump. That was sort of the point.
I did my part by voting for the best alternative to Trump; it’s hardly my fault that she wasn’t a viable candidate who had no chance of winning.
Bullshit, Harban.
You are responsible for Trump/Pence. All the bad shit that happens over the next 4-8 years is on your conscience.
Own it.
Daz @70
Please let me know if just “Daz” is not what your prefer.
Many people on that twitter thread point out that there was no police report, which they suggest may mean it was just a drunk dude falling over. Some make claims that the victim is a movie makeup specialist, with claims leading from there.
Where you linked to had a link to a newspaper, which included this interesting line:
So the victim seems to feel it was an attack by homophobes, which as he states are all to common, rather than specific to Trump suppporters.
Yes it is. Either own up to your stupidity, or shut the fuck up about the results.
Reality is not your or the Vicar’s friend.
miles links #79:
My point—that there are indeed very very nasty people out there—does not depend on the motive for the attack. There seem to be several people in this thread who are incapable of imagining (or are perhaps unwilling to imagine) that a person, like for instance the sender of the email, can really be as nasty as the sender of the email claims themselves to be. It’s time to wake up.
thirdmill wrote:
So, you’ve never heard of people hating “gingers”? Or someone “joke” that all blondes are dumb? Or even the Nazi example of blonde, blue-eyed being the supposed perfection of humanity I gave in my post? Humanity has found a hell of a lot of reasons to hate one another.
Or how about racism against people who were once considered “coloured”, but now are “white”. Irish and Italians used to be the subject of American racism before being considered “white”. Polish, Roma and other eastern Europeans are sometimes still considered “coloured”, even though their skin tone is pretty much indistinguishable from western Europeans. Much of the anti-Muslim bigotry is functionally indistinguishable from racism, even though only the religious dress codes are the only thing setting them apart. Anti-LGBT bigotry also shares the same features. My point? Racism is arbitrary as hell, and consists of taking any fear of the unknown and wrapping a political ideology around it.
The only thing innate about racism is the general fear of the unknown, and avoiding the unknown at all costs is not something we should encourage. We built most of our greatest accomplishments by boldly striding into the unknown rather than cowering from it.
@#80, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Very important to keep hammering on that message. After all, if people like you tried to accept some responsibility and learn something, you might not fail again next time, and that would just be too bad.
Regarding the “innate racism” discussion, this short piece by Mary Beard seems pertinent.
thirdmill #62:
Even if I were to accept the unproven assertion that every single person who voted for Trump is racist (many seem to be, but all? Don’t think so), and even if I were to also ignore that Trump actually LOST the popular vote (meaning that, using your standards, there’s actually more egalitarians than racists), then what you’re saying is what the majority decides is what goes, and any and all attempts to guard against the tyranny of the majority should not even be attempted. Sorry, no. If we decide the fight is not worth having over race, then, by the same token, the fight is not worth having over sexuality. Or religious beliefs. Or gender. Or, basically, any other difference the majority decides is undesirable.
He’s also been misogynistic. Does this mean we should give up on gender equality? He’s been extremely intolerant of Muslims. Does this mean we should give up on freedom of religion?
If I were to be extremely pessimistic, I would say that yes, the human race is doomed to kill each other over what are, really, relatively minor differences, including race. But then you look at history, and see that progress has been made in spite of views like Trump espoused, even in places and times where such views were, by far, the majority. Yes, it required great effort, and, yes, it required withstanding violence, but progress happened.
Option B is a non-starter. for the very simple reason that some will simply not want to move, as they regard where they live as home, not to mention the simple fact that ethnicity and race can be a much more ambiguous thing than you seem to realise. Unless you want to simply utterly disregard certain freedoms that are widely regarded as essential to any civilised country, option A is the only option. We simply have to find a way to make it work, by some method, no matter what that is, or how much effort that may take.
Nerd 80:
What??!!?? It is the fault of a single internet commenter that Clinton “wasn’t a viable candidate who had no chance of winning”?
Seriously, Nerd, you are an absolute fucking moron. If this is too personal, PZ, please let me know and I will disengage. It’s just that Nerd gets me so fucking angry with their continuous stupidity, combined with an arrogance that suggests they think that they are actually quite intelligent. I know from years of reading that I am not alone in this opinion of them. This idjit is an embarrassment to you and all of us. Good Cod, what a fecking idjit.
Excuse me, Stein.
Might I remind people that the topic of this thread is not “yet another interminable deconstruction of which cause of Clinton’s defeat is the One And Only Only True Cause™.”
America already tried the separating the races thing. Even insisted they were “separate but equal.” But hey, even though it was an atrocity that we never properly dismantled, let’s give Jim Crow another go. Surely it wouldn’t be a massive violation of human rights the second time around. I mean, we can separate the water fountains, rest rooms and lunch counters into wholly different buildings or different cities to minimize resentment or something.
Nope, stop being a hateful asshole.
The Vicar and Jake Harban were relentless and obnoxious for months about their hatred for Clinton. Clinton won the popular vote, so she was not the unviable candidate they claimed except in their delusional minds.
@78, Maroon:
Or in other words, you can’t admit you were wrong so you’re lashing out at the people who warned you ahead of time.
@80, Troll:
You think that I, personally, am responsible for the fact that of the couple hundred million people eligible to vote in this country, Clinton earned a whopping 25% support, most of it through clenched teeth?
Reality is not your friend.
@Troll, 90:
I guess in your little world, there are only two possible opinions— worshipping Clinton as perfect or obnoxiously “hating” her for no reason. I’ve often mocked the idea that you seem to be treating the Democratic Party as a religion, but the more you post the more it seems that you actually do.
Better move those goalposts faster!
Way back when, you claimed that the threshold for “viability” was 45% support. When Clinton dipped below that, you suddenly decided that the threshold for “viability” was 25% support. Now that Clinton has failed to reach that, you dig up the goalposts again and scuttle off with them to “winning the popular vote.”
So if Clinton was “viable” on account of winning the popular vote, does that mean Trump was not viable? He lost the popular vote and he got less than 25% support, so are you going to redefine “viable” again or try to make the claim that a non-viable candidate with absolutely no chance of winning the presidency won the presidency?
Jake Harban:
I note you don’t dispute you were unrelentingly condemnatory of Hillary during the election, yet now you claim it was her unpopularity which allowed Trump to trump her.
(You imagine you and your ilk bear no responsibility for that unpopularity, even while you appeal to reality?!)
I note that you also don’t dispute that Clinton had more popular support (though fewer electoral votes by a largish margin) than Trump. But I’ve addressed this elsethread, so I shan’t belabour it here.
—
PS Nerd has been posting here for a decade. Not a troll, no matter how often you claim that.
(Reality is not your friend!)
thirdmill:
There were more Clinton voters than Trump voters, so our loss of the election is not evidence in support of this claim.
I wasn’t willing to do that. Most voters who voted weren’t willing to do that.
That doesn’t follow.
Our system is more than a person in an office, and it is effective in all sorts of ways. Effective steps to protect minorities have been taken, and nothing prevents more of them from being taken in the future.
Some would tell you the president is just window dressing, which is also a wildly inaccurate way to understand the situation. Maybe it would be entertaining to watch you argue with those people, since neither of you has any facts on your side or any coherent way of resolving the dispute. Maybe it wouldn’t be so entertaining, like a religious crusade or a race war, for instance. Please don’t try bullshitting at home. It can be hazardous to … well … everything.
Suppressing behavior sounds like a bad option, not just an unworkable one. People behave. We can influence them to behave in better ways, which isn’t suppressing their behaviors.
There are many, but yours is certainly not one of them.
I don’t know how to answer that. Maybe? When exactly will we kill ourselves off?
I live in a fairly diverse area racially speaking (one example of the type of community mentioned above, which you’ve assumed doesn’t exist), and I have a racially diverse set of close personal friends. Separating us from each other, because you thought we just couldn’t get along, will not help us. We’re doing okay with each other, in fact, so it’s a real mystery why you believed we weren’t. (You never actually did anything to find out. Don’t make assumptions about empirical facts — look around in the world and find out what they are.)
I haven’t bothered to ask, but I’m sure we’re all in agreement that you should take your segregationist proposal and shove it up your ass.
I just have to wonder… How do you think about sexism? Or do you? Would you be saying that we should segregate men and women from each other, if it were the case (which it isn’t) that fairness with respect to gender doesn’t work? Why or why not?
What made you even think of segregation as a potential resolution to any problem (other than the patently obvious inspiration from racist assholes in the past)? Got nothing here? It’s because you’re a racist asshole in the present.
Do you know which nation-state is “my own”? Do I? Does anyone? My family’s been here a long time, but they certainly did not sprout up from the ground, much less from any one location. There’s also a question about when the relevant nation-states exist, because those are not permanent in time. If it’s the ones which exist now, then what relationship am I supposed to have with any others, except the one I’m living in now?
What about my neighbors, who were also born here, with a very different ancestry who once lived elsewhere? Do you know which nation-states are theirs? Does anybody?
Why isn’t this my country and why isn’t it theirs? How could this make any sense to you? What possibility am I even fucking looking at here?
Most likely a troll post , but that is also beside the point. If there are still people wondering (probably insincerely) why forums / blogs have filters and ban lists, this shit is precidely why. Conversation is pointless against this shit, whether the poster ‘meant’ it or simply wanted to stir shit. Either way, this is not a good faith interlocutor.
Don’t forget the acronym MAGA, which has become the preferred marker of Trump support (and hence white supremacy support). Twitter users should put that on their filter list if they have not already done so.
The fact that anti-racism activism exists at all suggests otherwise. All you need to do is look at historical racism to see that things were worse previously, and that therefore progress is being made. It is slow going, but there are many regions that pride themselves on being welcoming. What we have seen with the election of Trump (and Brexit for that matter) is a setback, but the idea of progress has not been disproven.
Also, areas that have the most diversity tend to have the most tolerance for ‘out’ groups, most likely because such areas don’t see those groups as outsiders in the first place due to that contact. Through being in frequent contact, through sharing space with different groups do those groups some to be seen as normal. It is the monoculture areas that breed hatred for outsiders.
But is isn’t a mere experiment, it actually works, and a setback is not failure. I’m not even bothering with the rest of that line of thinking.
Pedantry: I think you mean 50%. One quarter voted for him, one quarter voted for Clinton, one half did not (or could not – vote suppression is a real thing) vote.
But I take your larger point.
More headlines from RawStory’s main page that came up in the last nine hours:
– Racist fliers warning white women not to date black men posted in dorms at Texas university
– ‘I will tattoo a swastika on your head’: Seattle councilwoman threatened after calling for Trump protests
– Tennessee Official resigns after calling ‘KKK more American than the illegal president!’
– ‘You should be scared’: Trump supporters assault black woman with a brick and threaten to rape her
Even if it’s unlikely the fucker in the OP actually believes all those things will come to pass, those are all things sincere Trump supporters fantasize about. For all the ones that act their fantasies out, you have even more who go the route of “merely” voicing them. But go ahead, denialists, tell us more about how he can’t be for real.
Hi folks, a european citizen butting in on the discussion. I was following the USA election for over a year on a daily (no, hourly) basis, hating everything Trump represents as the most obnoxious example of humankind. I even got stomach cramps upon seeing the result. We fear the planetary consequences of such a political disaster – bye bye Paris treaty on climate control, geopolitical stablity, etc. But if I can add my little bit about racism, seeing as we are pretty good at that over here, I make a simplistic analogy with animal behaviour: on the Serengeti plains during the rainy season, when food is abundant, all the species get along fine, lions drinking next to the zebras (they don’t mind an old or sick one getting picked off from time to time). But in the dry season when resources arre scarce, the populations all separate and look suspiciously at each other (okay, that last bit is a little anthrppomorphic, but anyway). So replace resources” with “economic conditions”, and it’s pretty much what happens in humans. “Foreigners” are tolerated when everyone has a job, but in times of hardship they are to blame. The lesson from the Trump wars is that it is just superficial tolerance, t never really goes away and is just waiting for the right time to show its ugly face again. Even when the hardship is perceived rather than real (since it seems many economic indicators were actually positive, but the poor whites weren’t seeing it that way). Holland and now the UK have gone down the same path, and I wouldn’t be surprised if France and Germany follow suit. Bad times…
QFFT
You should be happy, because you got what you wanted. Sure you showed all those people voting to oppose fascism!
Sure, we get all those reports about hate crimes, emboldened by Trump winning the electoral college, and sure we got the plans to round up 3.000.000 million people, but at least that’s not as bad as Clinton would have been, right?
+++
And then they divide the house into equal parts, build walls and fairly divide all the resources between the kids because obviously the experiment of living together as a family has failed.
Oh, wait, no, that’s not what they do. They separate the children for a short time so they can calm down and then they try to sort out the problem and in most cases the children will happily play together again.
And here’s Michael Hill, president of the neo-Confederate League of the South
(via Caine)
So please, tell me it’s not as bad as it seems. Tell me they don’t mean it. Tell me they are just kidding. Tell me it’s all false flag.
Are there still Putinbots around? Relatively easy to spot with a certain degree of confidence. A clue is when they start mentioning how Clinton will start WW3 with Russia. Also, they often are very upfront with being “a neutral observer” from some other country than either the US or Russia, like for example Greece or Scotland. It surprises me that I can still spot them. I thought that their services were no longer required now that Putin got his way.
Jesus wept. What with the “It’s a troll, nothing to worry about” crowd, the “reluctant” advocates of apartheid (we even have photoreceptor@97 effectively saying human ethnic groups belong to different species ffs), and the relentless smuggery of Jake Harban and the Vicar, who fail to conceal their glee at Trump’s victory because they think it proves them right, reading this thread was as profoundly depressing an experience as I’ve had for a whole week.
What is “viable” supposed to mean here? Obviously it can’t mean “Could have won”, because it’s blindingly obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that Clinton could have won – unless you’re going to insist that in every election, only the candidate or party that actually wins could possibly have won.
Setting aside the stupidity of failing to realise that weapons, including nukes, are often built because it is profitable to weapons manufacturers, I just want to highlight the utter contempt for the potential victims of Trump using nuclear weapons here: the Vicar thinks “we can hardly complain” if he decides to murder a few million people. What kind of disconnect from actual human lives is necessary to say something like that?
Are we really going to blame people who voted for Clinton as the lesser of two evils (because from what I’ve seen all the commenters here critical of Clinton did vote for her in the end) but who were open about their distaste for not sucking it up with sufficient enthusiasm?
They lost you the election because they didn’t pretend to be happy about being forced by realpolitik considerations to vote for a candidate they despised? Because they didn’t lie about their political beliefs to support party propaganda? That’s what you’re choosing to blame the defeat on? That’s going to be your take-away for the next election? That internal dissent needs to be stifled more efficiently so you can maintain control of the political discourse?
I also note that we now have a commenter calling such people “relentlessly smug” and “gleeful” for pointing out that the candidate they thought was rubbish and would fail to enthuse the electorate failed to enthuse the electorate, and suggesting that the Democrats might learn something from that other than “we need to tighten our brand messaging”.
Oh, and completely misrepresenting both Vicar (“we can hardly complain” clearly means “we’ve no-one to blame but ourselves”, not “there’s nothing wrong with it”) and Photoreceptor (using animal species as an analogy for disparate groups of humans does not imply that one literally thinks these groups are separate species. That’s not how analogies work).
The things a two-party system will do to otherwise nice, reasonable people…
I assure you the letter writer is a genuine kook.
Ed Brayton sometimes publishes hate mail that has been sent to a colleague of his, Mike Weinstein. The letter to PZ above is fairly average.
Is it a poe? Yeah, it certainly could be. Focusing on whether the writer is genuine or just being an arsehole is to miss the point of poes entirely. Those exact sentiments have been expressed by Trump supporters for over a year now. Whether this specific example is a poe or not, this world view is what we’re faced with now. They’ve got their man in the White House, they genuinely hope for pogroms, a eugenics program and ultimately genocide. If you didn’t vote for Hillary you allowed this to happen knowing full well what the alternative was. Lets hear it for team stupid, they’ve put team evil in charge.
whats with it has to be almost instant if not give up.
One the vices I have tried with some success to give up is arguing with people who start proclaiming conservative positions. The part I gave up is trying to draw them out to say the really awful stuff that they are implying to get them to just spit it out in simple words out loud. all the racist classist sexist irrational bigoted crap it is always there.
It does feel better to avoid doing that but some times you have to do it and if you have to do it I found that the best results occur when it is the most public..
uncle frogy
The idea that all or even the majority of Trump supporters are racists is bullshit. It is part of the unthinking liberal bubble that has no place here or anywhere there is serious discussion. It is also part of the narrative that fails to understand the major shortcoming of American election system and media and ignores the reality that a lot of people do not trust the media and that there are a lot of low information voters. You also ignore the fact that more minorities voted for Trump than for Romney:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/11/trump-got-more-votes-from-people-of-color-than-romney-did-heres-the-data/
So either you can accept the fact that there was more than ‘just racist votes’ that led to Trump victory, or you can dip your head in sand and declare that polls and data are just bullshit and thus should be ignored.
I love how Jake and The Vicar just stroll into these threads thinking nobody remembers. What a couple of clueless assholes.
Re: the segregation of races
@thirdmill
Actually, in the US and many other countries, people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds (“races” if you will) are already pretty segregated and that never prevented any squabbling from happening.
Wars are only between people who are segregated, not between people who are integrated. Friends fight too, you know, but they hardly ever kill each other.
Besides, where do we draw the line? There are people in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam who equally hate Muslims, but they hate each other too. When one enemy is removed, they just move towards another one.
Multiculturalism is not a failed experiment. It was never an experiment to begin with. It is everyday reality, and it is about time the racists accept that as the fact it is.
I can imagine that you sometimes hang your head in despair, but to us there is no alternative.
Let’s straighten our backs and pick up the fight again.
@lotharloo #106
Sorry, not impressed.
I would be surprised it it was “Trump got more votes from people of color than from white people”, but it isn’t.
Zeppelin@102,
Then I suggest you look again:
Harban is saying he voted for Stein, as he has promised to do all along. Who if anyone the Vicar voted for, I don’t know, but unless I missed it, nothing in this thread justifies your assumption that it was Clinton.
I’m calling them relentlessly smug and gleeful because that’s how they come over. Absolutely no-one among those Jake Harban and the Vicar are criticising has suggested that the Democrats just need to tighten their brand messaging, or should not learn to run more liberal/progressive candidates (that’s just an invention of the smuggist twins – if you or they dispute this, find me an example),
I thought it meant “we can hardly complain”. If Trump decides to – say – nuke Mecca during the Hajj as a response to a jihadi terror attack, the Vicar will be wagging his finger at the rest of us (including the non-Americans, of course) for not breaking the grip of the military-industrial complex over American politics, rather than joining the mass demonstrations calling for Trump’s removal and trial for crimes against humanity, because we’d be complaining, which we’re not entitled to do.
Using animal species as an analogy for “disparate groups of humans” is racist, whether photoreceptor intended it that way or not. Anyone with a smidgeon of sensitivity to the implications of how you use language would have stopped themselves before employing a classic racist trope – if, indeed, they did not intend the racist implications.
I have been a consistent critic of Clinton, here and elsewhere, and earlier in the campaign, announced that if I were American, I would vote for Stein if I was in a state where the winner was a foregone conclusion (I admit, some of her crass stupidities made me reconsider this later). What I and many others here (almost all of whom preferred Sanders in the primary) object to is not criticism of Clinton (another invention of the smuggists), but the pretences that Clinton could not have won andor would hardly have been better than Trump if she had.
The idea that all or even the majority of Trump supporters are racists is bullshit. – lotharloo@106
No, it’s the idea that people can be neatly divided into “racists” and”non-racists” that is bullshit. If you voted for Trump that was a racist act, and that remains true whether you have black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish… friends, or belong to one of those groups yourself. Whatever other motivations a Trump voter had, they voted for a man who made racial bigotry a central plank of his campaign.
@KG: There’s a phenomenon in Switzerland (and other European countries) where immigrants that have lived there for a long time are very xenophobic towards newer immigrants (from other countries, but sometimes even their own country of origin). In Switzerland, it’s mostly Italian immigrants from the 50s and 60s. A not insignificant part of them vote for right-wing racist anti-immigrant parties. I always thought that wouldn’t be transferrable to the Latino community in the US, but now I wonder?
Then why are you arguing with me, instead of bunch of other people who clearly are advocating the ridiculous idea that all or majority of Trump supporters are racists?
No, that is not how analogies work. Looking at some other setting for elements that are relatable to – and provide a useful explanatory medium for – human behavior can be racist, but not necessarily. Even if it is non-human animal behaviour. Otherwise you appear to be saying human behaviour may never be explored using analogy.
#112
“Pull the ladder up, we made it in.”
lotharloo
They did something very deeply racist. Ye gods, if your whole argument hinges on calling people “racist”, fine, have it. They voted for somebody who made white supremacy the centre of his campaign so their vote supported white supremacy.
Because minorities are somehow immune of the toxic soup we swim in, right? First of all, there’s the often existing divide Bernardo Soares mentions: minorities beat each other down viciously. There’s Latin@s who think that “hey, I’m not an undocumented immigrant, this shit has nothing to do with me”. There’s black people who believe that if you’re good you have nothing to fear from the police. It means they are still ok with the horrible policies Trump made front and centre of his campaign for people they believe are the wrong kind of people.
A hell lot of women believe that abortion is something they will never need because they are “not stupid”. Who believe that women can prevent rape by following some rules.
And you know what? It’s much easier to live like that. You feel like much more in control of your life. You know you’re smart and good and hard working, therefore bad things won’t happen to you and if you work hard you will succeed. It still means they were OK with dealing out severe punishment for those they believe are wrong.
@Holms, 114:
The analogy is racist because it insinuates that different groups of people (in this case, “races”) behave towards each other like different animal species, and therefore race in humans is an indicator of difference in behaviour as great as that between a carnivore and a vegetarian. I get the underlying argument – that racism (or inclusion/exclusion ideologies) flares up in times of economic hardship, but that’s a) demonstrably untrue (e.g. colonial Brits or Afrikaners who were overwhelmingly wealthy, but racist to the core) and b) done by a crude analogy that is at the least insensitive towards a long history of people using analogies just like this to justify racism, segregation and discrimination.
To clarify: the analogy would work if the Zebras started to deport those with the wrong stripes from the Serengeti. But guess what: the only ones deported from the Serengeti were the Maasai, because the colonial state (after some convicing by an infamous German documentary director) decided they were disturbing nature with their irresponsible cattle-herding.
Vicar the asshat
I have nothing to learn from an idiotlog like you.
You are boring and wrong. Admit you can be wrong with your hammering technique. It makes you boring, boring, boring. And then ignored.
Harban the asshole.
Then YOUR candidate got less than 0.5% support using your math. Reality says you really wasted your vote.
I was wondering…
Is “sinceretrupsupporter” sincerely supporting trup, or is he supporting sincere trup? His nym is not clear about that.
Experience shows us that the more familiar people are with those who look/dress/speak etc. etc. differently, the less prejudiced we tend to be. One finds it harder (not impossible, but harder) to dehumanise the person at the next desk/who lives next door/is collecting the next child from school. It was noticeable after Brexit that the places with the highest percentages of non-white/foreign-born residents voted Remain; it was the whitest places, the places with fewest immigrants, that were most likely to cite immigration fears and vote Leave.
In short, thirdmill, you have it precisely arse-backwards.
Humans do indeed have tendencies to fear the unfamiliar; the notion that we should take our lead from that is not only completely impossible and impractical, as well as vile in practice, it is also counterproductive. On the contrary, we need to take it into account and work against ghettoisation, and for real integration (yet another reason why I think faith schools are fundamentally divisive and should be phased out as quickly as practically possible, and should certainly not be encouraged by the government)
Bernardo Soares@117,118,
Exactly!
There’s only one difference between Trump jock supporters with their mass spamming and trolling and the mass spamming and trolling by people on behalf of other governments like China (among others).
In the US, they’re not getting paid. They’re volunteers willing to participate in their own enslavement.
So, not being an American I will freely admit to not having any special insight into how the general mindset works. Also, in the UK, we have our own share of stupid, crazy, racist populists taking power.
With that caveat out of the way, my 2p:
In the US election there is, basically, a two-party system. There are 3rd party candidates but the chances of them making a difference largely mean they are a wasted vote.
The effect of this is that voting has 3 possible choices – this year it was Trump, Hillary or WasteVote (don’t turn up, spoil ballot paper, vote 3rd party etc). Boiling it down further, you either vote for the one you want to win or you think they are all so similar it doesn’t matter. If I have got this right, it is important.
I get that a lot of people felt Hillary wasn’t a suitable liberal candidate – and being in Europe, most American politicians are what we would call right wing anyway – but what I don’t get is how thinking she isn’t liberal enough means Trump is an equally acceptable candidate. Hillary has faults and isn’t liberal enough, but Trump is all that +1.
Hillary is in bed with Wall Street. Yes this sucks and means some financial institutions would benefit during her presidency but The Donald is a billionaire property baron with a history which implies he will support the rich at the expense of the poor. This implies that Trump will, if he isn’t already, quickly be at least as “in bed” with Wall Street as Clinton is.
Hillary is a war monger who pushed for military action in Syria / Libya etc. This is true but then so was the People’s Hero Obama and (sadly) a large percentage of all western politicians. Trump has no experience of national power so isn’t tainted with this but, realistically, do people think he would have prevented the attacks? Looking at his rhetoric, my outsider view is that he would be at least as bomby as Clinton. Looking at the advisors he is bringing with him, it seems he may even be more warmongering.
Given that these are the two main things people seem to complain about, I still can’t see why a vote for Trump is “better” than Clinton.
When I add in the other stuff – racism, sexism, climate change denial etc., I am genuinely at a loss as to how anyone can equivocate between the two of them unless there is some other measure. Maybe people really think that Trump’s racist, sexist, homophobic stance, combined with his push to remove workers rights and drive money to the rich is not as important as Clinton’s links to Wall Street bankers. However, if this is true, I think your priorities are broken.
lotharloo:
You thought it was worthwhile to make a stink when people pointed to the fact that (as KG put it) “Whatever other motivations a Trump voter had, they voted for a man who made racial bigotry a central plank of his campaign.”
You’re not contesting the bullshit idea that people can be grouped up neatly into racists/non-racists. Instead, you think you can cite polling data that there exist some minorities who voted for Romney and Trump, as if that changed anything.
Why were we supposed to come to the conclusion that it’s not the case that “low information voters” (and others), using our fucked up election system with its major shortcomings, with the untrustworthy media feeding them racist noise daily which they ate up despite its untrustworthiness, voted for a dumbfuck in a dumbfuck party which has for decades made every flavor of bigotry a core of their campaign strategy as well as their agenda once in office?
What am I failing to understand? Which part of it is “bullshit” from the “unthinking liberal bubble,” when people point out that doing shit like this is racist as hell, since that fact is obvious as hell with a minimal amount of information about anything that’s happened in the past few decades? Did all of these people suddenly wake up from a coma on election day? Were they living under rocks? What the fuck were they thinking, other than “it’s no big deal to me that this candidate and his party are pro-bigotry, because I have other shit I actually care about”?
There’s a new offering on Netflix called Einsatzgruppen that I forced myself to watch, though I had to take frequent breaks to dose myself with a fresh glass of wine or simply take long, hot baths to clear my head. While watching the show I found myself thinking that the men who forced thousands of innocent people into pits and holes and trenches and shot them to death were an aberration, a product of a different time and mindset, and thankfully we would never see their like again. Then I read the racist, genocidal screed this Trump supporter wrote and I realize that, no, an American equivalent of the Einsatzgruppen is still a possibility. A faint possibility to be sure, but the fact that men capable of such horrific crimes live among us should remind us all that such horrors cannot be discounted even in 21st century America.
@consciousness razor:
That calling all or majority of Trump supporters racist is simplistic and unthinking. The rest of your post has nothing to do with this statement and I read a few times to make sure.
@93, John Morales:
Are you seriously claiming that Clinton’s unpopularity is the fault of people who criticized the evil shit that she did and not the result of the evil shit that she did?
You should be seriously embarrassed.
Of course not. Clinton had slightly more popular support than Trump. The problem is that Trump is basically a spoiled toddler who throws a tantrum whenever he doesn’t get his way or when anyone else gets theirs. Beating him is comically easy. That Clinton only barely did it is proof of her sheer incompetence— if you compete against a 2-year-old in the 50-yard dash and make it across the finish line half a second ahead of your toddling opponent, you are not a very fast runner.
And here, I thought it was the content of your posts that determined troll status and not merely the duration of them.
@98 Giliell:
I spent months warning you that this would happen, but you ignored those warnings. You’re not ready to accept responsibility for that, so you have to tell yourself that this is somehow my fault.
@101, KG:
I think you may have misread that. It looked like photoreceptor was using animal behavior as an analogy for the well-known human tendency to react to economic pressure and scarcity by falling back on bigotry and scapegoating. The second half of their post makes that much clear (even though I disagree with it).
We were proven right, but the “smuggery” exists only in the minds of people who can’t accept that they were proven wrong. It’s basically tone trolling— “well, sure you were right but you’re ‘smug’ about it so it doesn’t count.”
It’s Nerd of Redhead’s term. Ask them. They do have a tendency to move the goalposts, though— at the moment, it seems to be either “25% support among the electorate OR won the popular vote” but I suspect their actual definition is “either a Republican or a Democrat.”
Any candidate could have won. If Clinton had embraced actual liberal policies that appealed to voters, she’d have won a landslide victory. Hell, if all the people volunteering and campaigning and donating to Clinton simply because she was the best shot at beating Trump had switched over to Stein, then Stein could have won.
What you need to understand is that Trump is a very low bar— if you can’t beat Trump by more than a razor-thin margin despite having a massive campaign infrastructure and the support of a major party, you just aren’t a serious candidate.
Maybe you should ask Nerd of Redhead— what happens if none of the candidates are “viable, meaning electable by the general population?” If all the people who were eligible to vote but didn’t had instead written in “Nobody” then we’d have an empty White House for the next four years.
@104, bargearse:
Yes. A poe is not a parody or troll— a poe is someone whose parody/troll status is impossible to determine because even if they aren’t serious about it, loads of other people are.
@106, lotharloo:
Don’t bother. You’re talking to die-hard Democratic tribalists. In their world, all Trump voters agree 100% with all aspects of Trump’s platform, in stark contrast to Clinton voters who are pragmatically choosing the lesser evil and are thus absolved of all responsibility for anything Clinton does. Unless, of course, those voters ever criticize anything Clinton does in which case they are responsible for anything Trump does.
Racism was clearly a major factor in Trump’s success, therefore it was the only factor and anyone who tries to mention other factors is a racism apologist.
@109, rietplum:
That’s kind of silly. It seems that you’re basically saying that unless you see evidence that Trump is not racist, you won’t accept the idea that racism was not the sole cause of his success.
@110, KG:
I am? That’s news to me.
Exactly what should we have said that you wouldn’t find “smug and gleeful?”
Start with John Morales, #93 who argues that the only reason Clinton lost is because people criticized her faults, and that we need to take responsibility for failing to chant the brand message “vote blue no matter who.”
Then move on to Nerd of Redhead, who has argued that only a handful of “campus Marxists” believe the Democrats should support more liberal candidates.
After that, consider the claim from one of the Clinton-or-bust crowd that Obama was a staunch progressive who was unfairly betrayed by the left in 2010.
Next, try searching for posts blaming non-voters or third-party voters for Trump’s win while completely excusing the Democrats for failing to nominate a liberal candidate who would appeal to them.
Or if you don’t like searching, read anything applehead posted about Clinton.
Hell, the entire reason you consider us “smug” is because we were right that conservatives like Clinton wouldn’t appeal to liberal voters and, having backed her, you just can’t bring yourself to admit you were wrong.
I’d be charitable and call this a genuine misinterpretation, but then you say…
Look, if you’re so disconnected from reality that you think the people marching in the streets to have Trump removed now won’t be doing so if he nukes Mecca during the Hajj, then you’re clearly so disconnected from reality that you’re not really worth reading.
Bullshit. It’s a classic racist trope to compare oppressed groups to (usually undesirable) animals, but that’s not what photoreceptor did. What photoreceptor did was use the behavior of one group of animals in relation to another as an analogy to describe the behavior of one group of humans in relation to another.
Are you claiming the point itself (“scarcity exacerbates pre-existing prejudice”) is false? Are you claiming the point is true but the analogy isn’t apt? Or are you claiming only that the analogy was an apt description of a legitimate point but was “racist” anyway?
And out of curiosity, of the various animal species photoreceptor mentioned, which do you think were analogous to privileged groups and which to oppressed groups?
John Morales at #93 begs to differ. And that’s just for a start. The idea that any criticism of Clinton is reprehensible is widespread on FTB— and not just among the commenters. Cuttlefish got pissed just because I denounced Clinton’s support for the TPP.
Exactly what do you think Clinton could have done differently to win the election? She had more money, extensive party support, and an extensive volunteer and get-out-the-vote effort. What would have made the difference?
That’s a (probably willful) misinterpretation, but maybe you should answer the first issue first.
@118, Bernardo Soares:
Or in other words, the analogy would work if it were perfect in every way.
That is not how analogies work. I’m pretty sure you already know that.
@119, 120 Troll:
That’s your problem. You refuse to learn from your mistakes, you insult the people who tried to warn you, and then you blame them for your failures.
“MY” candidate got 0.5% support? Who exactly is “my” candidate?
That’s not even wrong.
You are absolutely certain that I “wasted” my vote, despite the fact that:
(1) You don’t know who received my vote.
(2) You don’t have a coherent definition for what it means to “waste” a vote.
(3) You backed a candidate who was not viable, meaning electable by the general population.
Start by defining the criteria by which a vote is “wasted” since you do enjoy moving those goalposts.
@125, lostbrit:
OK, just for starters I think that’s an incredibly simplified view which ignores some key aspects of human nature.
There’s a fairly well-known game theory experiment called the ultimatum game. In short, the game has two participants (I’ll call them Alice and Bob). The experimenter presents a dollar and asks Alice to divide it between themselves and Bob (eg, 60¢ for Alice, 40¢ for Bob). Bob then has the chance to accept or reject the offer. If Bob accepts, each participant gets the specified share, if they reject then no one gets anything.
As long as the split leaves even a penny for Bob, they will be better off accepting, because if they reject then they get nothing. Yet, if the offer is grossly unequal, Bob will almost certainly reject it.
Why? Because decisions are not made in a vacuum. We do not face each decision seeking only to get the best result out of that decision without regard for any other concerns.
In particular, as the Ultimatum Game shows, we are incredibly willing to accept costs to ourselves in order to prevent “cheaters” from prospering. Bob is willing to sacrifice the 25¢ gain just to avoid condoning Alice’s unfair play. Arguing that Bob’s decision isn’t “rational” mutilates the term by simply presuming that Bob must necessarily want what we assume Bob wants— ie, to get the most money out of the game.
I think the lesson of the ultimatum game is highly applicable to the last election. Neither major candidate reached anywhere near majority support; turnout was at a record low and a clear majority of the people who did turn out hated the candidate they voted for. The difference between Trump and Clinton – the extent to which Clinton was better than Trump – was low enough that many people were willing to forgo it rather than condone her unfair play.
While there are some low information voters who voted for Trump because they believed he was better on economic issues, those people are greatly outnumbered by the people who simply didn’t vote at all.
For what it’s worth, if a majority of the votes are “wasted” then you might want to rethink what it means to “waste” a vote. If the non-voters had all backed any candidate, that candidate would have won.
Cupcake, yours truly is German. I fail to see how I can have any responsibility for the outcome of the US election. You, on the other hand, had a vote.
What mistake? Your warning was nothing but bullshit, as you had no viable alternative. Sanders lost the nomination, despite my vote, and that of our esteemed leader, and many others, because a majority of those voting in the democratic primary voted for Clinton.
In fact, I strongly suspect that if we took of poll of those who voted in the democratic primary at this blog, Sanders would have won the Pharyngula vote.
Where you lose any factual claims, is that you think Pharyngula isn’t out on the left of the democratic party. We are. We are nowhere near representative of the general populace. You are to the left of us. Your perspective is warped until you acknowledge YOUR mistake of thinking you are anything other than someone out on the far left, the far 1-2%.
Jake Harban #129:
And that’s where my bullshit-metre finally blew a fuse. Either you truly believe there is little difference between the two, in which case you would seem to have no sense of moral decency, or you’re lying through your teeth rather than admit you’re wrong. I can see no third way to interpret the above.
I only hear this line of bullshit from those on the far left or the far right. Never from those in the middle. You are on the far left. Thanks for the tell confirming what I said above.
Jake Harban:
So, you still don’t dispute you were unrelentingly condemnatory of Hillary during the election, yet now you claim it was her unpopularity which allowed Trump to trump her.
And you’re still at it! “Beating him [Trump] is comically easy. That Clinton only barely did it is proof of her sheer incompetence”.
Whatever the cause of your condemnation, it existed and it exists.
Thread after thread after thread (and I imagine this was not the only media site in which you indulged).
(Whyever would I imagine such relentless condemnation might affect her popularity?)
A small selection from the last few months:
“Funny you should mention Russian roulette. Both Trump and Clinton want me dead, so it’s more like asking me to throw myself in front of a bus to save your privileged ass and expecting me to be enthusiastic about it.”
“Believe me, I’ve looked at both of them and from my personal perspective, Trump and Clinton are equally bad. Overall, Trump is the lesser evil but only because a Trump win will denigrate the Republican Party and spark a liberal backlash while a Clinton win will denigrate the Democratic Party and bolster Trump in the long run.”
“I wouldn’t trust anything Clinton says on the campaign trail; Sanders shouldn’t either.”
“In case you need me to spell it out for you— Clinton is basically a carbon copy of Bush. Electing Clinton would get us basically the same government as a third Bush term.”
(etc etc ad nauseam)
I made no such argument; what I wrote was “(You imagine you and your ilk bear no responsibility for that unpopularity, even while you appeal to reality?!)”
When you strenuously and persistently during the campaign advocated against voting for her, you can’t now credibly claim you weren’t seeking to increase her unpopularity — and it was that very unpopularity you are blaming for her defeat.
FFS. No, I don’t.
#93 was entirely about you, in particular about your smug hypocrisy.
Why did HRC win the democratic nomination?
Total primary votes (via RealClearPolitics):
Clinton 15,805,136
Sanders 12,029,699
I’m certain if the numbers were reversed, Sanders would have got enough superdelegates to change so he would receive the nomination.
Number of regulars here at Pharyngula? Ask PZ. I don’t think it is anywhere near the 3 million vote differential.
Pharyngula is not the problem. We shouldn’t be on the receiving end or your bile/lectures.
Either tell us what you are doing to change things, other than lecturing us, for the next couple of elections, or it is time to fade into the bandwidth.
@130, Giliell:
I didn’t claim you were responsible for the election; I claimed that you were responsible for your continued insistence that I am to blame for the outcome of the election or that I “wanted” Trump to win.
@131, Troll:
Alienating the base.
My warning was “don’t alienate the base.” You alienated the base. You lost.
What does that even mean? “Viable” is not a magic word that means you automatically win.
And Clinton lost the Presidency, despite my vote, and that of our esteemed leader, and many others, because a majority of those voting in the electoral college voted for Trump.
I strongly suspect that if we took a poll of those who voted in the Democratic primary who actually knew who Sanders was, Sanders would have won the high information vote.
I also suspect that if Sanders was the nominee, he would have beaten Trump.
Except that Clinton lost the election by being too far to the right. Clinton lost the election because, given a choice between her and Trump, over half the eligible voters decided to pick “neither,” and over half the people who did pick Clinton said they hated her.
The only way your comments make sense is if you believe the Democratic Party’s membership is far more conservative than that of the general population.
More bullshit.
Name three positions I hold which are clearly to the left of Pharyngula’s regulars.
That’s exactly the mistake you made and refuse to learn from.
You claim that only the “far left 1-2%” think the Democrats should run more liberal candidates. You swear that the Democratic Party membership is largely conservative. And when conservative candidates like Clinton lose because they fail to earn the support of the Democratic Party base, you invent all manner of cockamamie excuses to avoid having to admit that you were wrong.
@132, Daz:
You might want to check the actual numbers, then. Turnout was at a record low, especially among left-leaning demographics.
How about you interpret it the correct way— namely, that while I voted against Trump, many other people reached a different decision and chose to remain home.
While it’s impossible to know for certain exactly why they did it, that doesn’t mean we can’t surmise— right-wing Democrat is dismissive of the left and many of her supporters are openly contemptuous of people who criticize her right-wing policies, so record numbers of people in left-leaning demographics stay home? Gee, I wonder why they might have done that!
I do find it curious that I say: “Many people did X” but you instantly hear “I did X.” If I pointed out that many people voted for Trump because they’re racist as all fuck, would you be denouncing me for Trump-supporting racism?
At first, i thought that “sinceretrupsupporter” was some kind of , quite unimaginative, troll.
But, after that, i thought that, some eighty years ago, almost nobody payed atention to the ramblings (full of hatred and homicidal projects, with war and other disasters) in the “Mein Kampf”, thinking that kind of discourse is “not to really take seriously”.
Anyway: at least the USA is not Weimar Germany, neither the majority of american citizens buy the despicable rethoric of the Trump supporters.
@137, fernando,
Not everyone shares your opinion, and I’m deeply worried about the prospect of the world reliving the thirties.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/11/playtime-is-over.html
#117, #118 Bernardo Soares, and #123 KG
Note the text I quoted from post 110, in which poster KG is making a blanket statement: “Using animal species as an analogy for “disparate groups of humans” is racist…” which is a fundamentally different statement than that which you make: that particular analogy was racist. I dispute the blanket statement about human behaviour analogies, but not your criticism of that particular analogy.
There’s this: The alt-right thrives in opposition. What happens now it’s the establishment?
Pullquote:
@Jake Harban #129 – Either you’re moving goalposts, or knocking down straw men. Nobody says that racism was the sole cause of Trumps success. Just that a number of black votes don’t disprove the racism.
@133, Troll:
The only people I hear complaining about the “far left” are people on the far right. By your own argument, you have proved you are on the far right.
@134, John Morales:
I don’t dispute that I criticized Clinton extensively during the campaign.
And you don’t dispute that she deserved it.
Yes, Trump won due to Clinton’s unpopularity. Where you go completely off the rails is that you think my criticism of her somehow caused her unpopularity instead of the other way around.
Well duh. He’s an unpolished turd whose policy proposals are all some combination of terrible, unpopular, unworkable, and undefined. He got about 25% of the vote, and a hefty majority of the people who voted for him said they hated him, putting his true support at maybe 10% if that.
And Clinton still couldn’t beat him by more than a razor-thin margin despite having more money, the unwavering support of a major political party, and an extensive campaign of volunteers.
Here’s a hint: The cause of my condemnation and the cause of her unpopularity are the same thing— she was a terrible candidate who did lots of evil things.
So what, exactly, would you have preferred I do? Should I have remained silent on the grounds that she’s a Democrat and therefore exempt from criticism? Is there a limit where you’re allowed to criticize a Democrat only to a certain extent? Perhaps I should have prefaced each criticism of Clinton with a disclaimer that despite hating her, I support her unquestioningly as long as Trump is technically worse?
Again, you never actually try to claim that my criticism of Clinton is illegitimate. You argue only that it exists and then try to claim it somehow cost her the election.
If legitimate criticism of a candidate can cost them an election, that’s nobody’s fault but the candidate’s.
My mistake. I should have said: Start with John Morales, #93 who argues that the only reason Clinton lost is because she was unpopular because people criticized her faults…
Once again, you argue that I shouldn’t have criticized Clinton without actually disputing that my criticism was legitimate.
Clinton lost because she was unpopular because of shit that she did, not because people criticized her for it.
You offer no other interpretation of what you said.
@135, Troll:
Why did Donald Trump win the presidency?
Total electoral votes (via CNN):
Clinton: 232
Trump: 290
Considering there are probably more people on Pharyngula who voted for Clinton in the primary than for Trump in the general, then by your own argument the mass denunciation of the Trumpkins is a complete and utter waste of time.
Oh that’s rich coming from you.
You backed a candidate who was not viable, meaning electable by the general population. When she lost, you began spewing bile at anyone who, in your confused opinion, was insufficiently loyal to her. You react to explanations of the outcome with rage, you react to solutions with denial, and you offer absolutely nothing in the way of solutions.
And then you declare that having a perfect solution to the crisis you helped engineer is the price of entry for being allowed to criticize you for it.
Trump won. The Republicans took complete control of the government. Either tell us what you are doing to change things, other than lecturing us, for the next couple of elections, or it is time to fade into the bandwidth.
There was a clear lack of enthusiasm among Clinton voters which means they would be less likely to commit to long lines, hassle of voting on a non-holiday so on. While the same was true for significant part of Trump voters, some non-negligible percentage of Trump voters, i.e., alt-right, were actually very enthusiastic. So yes, Hillary was a bad candidate in the sense that she failed to energize her base.
She energized them enough to win the popular vote by a million votes. Keep that in mind in any analysis.
That’s not really a valid metric because aside from alt-right Trump also had not energized his base and as far as I know, he has recored unpopularity for a newly elect president. So you’ve got to compare it to the previous elections. For example, in 2008 Obama got 69.5 M votes even though the number of eligible voters were about 20M fewer and he had energized his base then, based on the poll numbers on enthusiasm and so on.
Jake Harban, fine. You were only ever reacting, never acting.
(Also, you didn’t vote for Clinton, but you did vote against Trump. Gotcha)
Jake Harban #142:
Here, for context, is the entire paragraph I quoted from. Nowhere did you imply that you meant others, rather than yourself, thought there was little difference between the two.
And frankly, you’re comparing apples with oranges. This is not politics as normal. He’s not a politician, he’s a demagogue. I sincerely doubt that any Democrat could have beaten him—Clinton did well, IMO, to come as close as she did—and anyone to the left of the Democrats, faced with his appeals to popularism and his willingness to offer up scapegoats by the truckload, and in a country where far too many think that socialism and communism are synonyms, and that both are the same thing as Stalinism, would have done far worse.
@135, Troll:
You don’t, in any way, deserve a serious answer to this question but I’ll indulge and give you one anyway even though you’ll ignore it.
First, I called my Senators (both Democrats) and asked them to commit publicly to filibustering anything and everything for the next two years.
Next, I signed a petition calling on the DNC to nominate Keith Ellison as party chair.
When anti-Trump protests were in town, I went to one of them— which is a bigger deal for me than most given my disability.
Next item on the agenda is to call the DNC directly at (202) 863-8000, and impress upon them the importance of abandoning the failed DLC/triangulation approach that cost them nearly every election it was tried.
I’m probably going to double down on the DNC angle, since getting the Democratic Party to actually stand for progressive values is the only way we can win; despite your insistence to the contrary, backing conservative candidates like Clinton just doesn’t work and is actually counterproductive.
Unfortunately, I can’t pressure the DNC on my own— it needs to be a grassroots effort. To that end, I am also trying to convince people who lean towards progressive policies to join me in persuading the DNC to embrace the left rather than simply pay lip service to them as they “strategically” position themselves at the minimum noticeable distance to the left of the Republicans.
Which, incidentally, is the thing I am doing at this very moment.
So are you planning to do anything to change things, or just lecture the people who are trying to change things that they should try to change things or shut up?
@137, Fernando:
The majority of citizens of Weimar Germany didn’t buy the despicable rhetoric of the Hitler supporters either. And like Trump, Hitler “won” by procedural trickery, not by getting a majority of the vote.
Incidentally, Hitler “won” with a considerable (but unintentional) assist from the conservative candidate the German liberals backed as the best shot at defeating Hitler, which I’m sure is totally unrelated and has nothing to do with the current situation. After all, it’s not like Obama spent 8 years dramatically expanding the power of the office Trump will soon occupy.
@141, rietplum:
Several people (most notably, Caine) have at least been implying that racism was the sole cause of Trump’s success.
In any case, I don’t think anyone here has seriously tried to argue that Trump isn’t racist, so it’s hard to see how your comment makes sense otherwise; lotharloo argues (correctly) that there’s more to Trump’s success than just racism, not that Trump isn’t racist.
@144, Troll:
Against Trump. Against one of the most unpopular, unqualified, and despised candidates in recent memory. Clinton barely won a training-wheels election.
@146, John Morales:
What does that even mean?
@147, Daz:
I’m not sure where you’re confused.
I stated quite clearly that (a) Clinton was better than Trump, but (b) Clinton was still horrible, such that (c) the difference between them was low enough that many people were willing to accept the worse candidate as the personal cost of punishing cheating.
Tell that to the people who chose not to vote.
Bullshit. Clinton was an incredibly weak candidate who ran a staggeringly incompetent campaign. Practically any progressive Democrat could have beaten him.
Clinton couldn’t convince her own base to support her.
Who are you kidding? Clinton failed because of her conservatism. Clinton failed because she denied the problems that Trump blamed on scapegoats.
I’ve said it since before the primaries started and I’ll say it again. People are suffering, though they don’t necessarily know why, and they want answers. Sanders would have given them answers— the aristocrats have rigged the system against you. Trump would offer the wrong answers of a fascist— blame the scapegoat. Clinton would have given them nothing— everything is fine, your suffering isn’t real.
In a country where people hate “socialized medicine” but love Medicare. In a country where people hate “welfare” but love Social Security.
People hate “socialism” in the abstract, but they generally support “socialist” policies when they get enacted.
@ Jake Harban 129
This is the bit I have a problem with. If people wanted a more liberal president then voting for Trump was an epic mistake. I get the ultimatum game references but this is basically saying that a large percentage of US voters will genuinely cut off their noses just to spite their faces. This something children get told off for and a normal education system would look to correct.
If people really think that the differences between Clinton and Trump are minimal, then it does point to a society which is predominately racist, sexist etc. Trump carries all the bad traits of Clinton, plus lots of others that in any decent society would be deal breakers. The sheer fact he can joke about disabled people, boast about sexual assault, make horrendously racist comments about all segments of society (including the judiciary), have borderline criminal business practices and be under suspicion if nothing else about multiple sexual assault charges yet still be viewed as basically the same as someone who has NONE of this amazes me. I really dont get this one bit.
Trump is going to asset strip the country, turn back decades of social progress, potentially open the door for all kinds of new global conflict (even if only by enabling the Russians to crush eastern Europe). He has already sparked off right wing nutcases around the world who now think their time has come & will model their campaigns on his constant lies.
How is this broadly the same to what Clinton would have delivered?
Remember, the “anyone but Hillary” line basically says I dont care how racist Trump is, I dont care how many women he has molested, workers he has sacked, businesses he has destroyed, disabled people he mocks, he is still better. Thats why I think people have their priorities wrong.
Definition of a Trump Presidency.
Anybody who didn’t actively oppose it by voting the only other viable candidate, caused this to happen.
I’m looking at Jake Harban and the Vicar.
Nerd of Redhead,
No. They helped cause it.
Well-meaning ideologues, but unfortunately not pragmatists.
(They cut off their nose to spite their faces)
—
… And so the triumphalism evinced by the (probably trollish yet sufficiently-accurate depiction of a particular mindset) featured quotation in the OP.
John Morales
Well, exactly. There are far too many Clintonites who feel that whinging about their Priestess’s loss will somehow cause the result to be overturned. You done lost, badly and through your own mistakes. Pack up, move on, do something positive.
lostbrit:
Yes.
Many people in this country can be really fucking terrible. It usually hides under the surface in polite company, but their hateful ignorant shit is always lurking there, ready to pop out at the most absurd moments. It’s amazing how some people are just beginning to realize it, since Trump did us the service of plastering it on a giant gold billboard which no sane person could possibly miss. But it was there all along, perhaps just not in your personal experience or not while you were paying close attention. That sudden shock of surprise and dismay and confusion you have is what you get with the privilege of not needing to understand this shit your whole life. But none of this is news.
Jake Harban:
-Lots of people are assholes. I’m not talking about Trump or Clinton, but about voters. Let that sink in for a while.
-Many of them wanted an asshole for president.
-Thanks to the electoral college (not due to some mistake or another which Clinton or the Democratic party made) we will soon get an asshole president.
-Without our fucked up electoral system, and without third parties spoiling things all over the place, Clinton would’ve won instead of the asshole that many people genuinely wanted.
Our goal shouldn’t be to win over the asshole vote. I’m sure we can agree on that. However, you have somehow come away from this with some kind of faith that lots of people aren’t assholes and didn’t really want an asshole as their president. They are and they did.
The lesson I take way from it isn’t that a non-asshole or a less-assholish person is easier to elect in this country, because that’s simply not how it works. The lesson also isn’t that Clinton was too much of an asshole for people to stomach — far from it, as evidenced by the ludicrously gratuitous assholishness of her only viable opponent, who was not only nominated by a major party (as grotesque as that is) but also got nearly as many votes as she did and ended up winning. (If you’re not vomiting yet, then read it again slowly.)
This doesn’t mean we should find an asshole of our own, in order to compete and win something that wouldn’t be worth winning, as I already said and will say a thousand more times if necessary.
But it does mean you shouldn’t be so confident about your apparently optimistic or hopeful view that others will consistently make the good, idealistic choice along with you and me and others. They won’t. They never have. That’s not how it works in a democracy (in the sense we even have a democratic system, which the presidential election is emphatically not … vomit more if necessary).
You say she alienated her “base.” That may be, but I don’t really know if that’s true. Where did you get that information? How exactly do we distinguish between those who are or are not in the Democratic “base,” in order for you to count them and determine some pattern in their voting relative to others? I personally felt alienated, which doesn’t say anything about millions of other people, but I voted for her anyway because I had no better options. Maybe I’m unusual, but maybe you are too. Where does that leave us?
Which type of person exactly are we talking about, when you’re talking about people were alienated in some way and decided that it didn’t matter to them whether or not Trump won? Why am I supposed to be so concerned about this sort of person’s worldview? How will it change my views for the better, or how will it get better people in office? Isn’t that what we wanted to do? Did you just feel like you had to find something to complain about? Or what is the point?
As John Morales quoted above, you’ve also been saying absurd things like this for quite a while:
In no sense are they equally bad, and Trump isn’t the lesser evil for any reason at all. You should stop saying bullshit like that.
It’s certainly not a way of encouraging sympathetic, decent people to look at our situation realistically and do the best they can, with the parties/candidates that they actually have. You can criticize all you like, but know what you’re saying, do it constructively and for a reason and without hesitating to accept criticism in return. We don’t need a counsel of despair and hyperbole and fact-free noise, about how it’s all the same and if you squint at it just so Trump is even better, in your speculative fantasyland where you think you can strategize about how parties and millions of people will act over the long run because of some obscure symbolic message that only you can interpret. Please just cut the fucking crap. We need to be able to do something about this stuff and need to be able to vote for someone, and this isn’t helping us do it.
miles links, what?
Both the featured names (by virtue of their perseverance at railing against Clinton here on this blog) were the very opposite of “Clintonites”, to employ your quaint term. Both are yet satisfied they did the right thing, results be damned.
Such stupidity! They really, really thought they were doing something positive.
In passing, it is an example of virtue ethics vs. consequentionalist ethics in action.
(You imagined I was trying to bash Nerd? Heh. I respect him)
John Morales, 155:
You italicized the word “helped” in your original comment. I did not do so, sorry. By italicizing, you were (IMO) pointing out to Nerd that these two people were not solely responsible for Trump’s election, merely contributed to it.
I also respect Nerd greatly, based upon what they have shared and I have read of their private life.
As a commenter/scientist/intellect, however, I think they are a joke, and an embarrassment to this site.
[Meta] Title sounds good.[/Meta]
[meta]
miles links:
Well done! Have a biscuit.
I’ve read Nerd for a decade, and in my estimation he’s far, far smarter than you are. And, also, he’s genuine.
(And he would never be so very stupid as to claim he respects someone they consider to be a joke, unlike you)
—
You didn’t need to explicitly tell me you’re a Slymie, I already worked that out.
157:
“Well done have a biscuit!” Well, I was simply answering your question of “miles links, what?” in response to one of my posts, so no need for the sarcasm.
*sigh* What is a “slymie”, and why does using your silly “Meta” thing make me one? Google is of no help.
Me, 158:
Forget it, I think I know what you mean. Slymepit. OK, gotcha, but no. No.
John Morales:
Anytime I (or another agent) can be said to cause something, I (or they) “helped to” cause it, because in all such cases there are other causes which “helped” just as I (or they) “helped.” Sometimes those are other agents, sometimes not, but that’s neither here nor there.
It’s uninformative to add that phrase, because it always holds, so we can safely leave it implicit without losing anything important. Nerd was certainly not claiming that a person (or two or three) directly and exclusively caused it, while no one else did. It would be perverse to interpret it that way or to expect anybody to make that fact explicit every time they talked informally about people causing stuff.
miles links @158, 159: OK. You still deserve benefit of the doubt.
@Holms, #139: Point taken, though I will say that I interpreted KG’s comment as “Every analogy that relates different human groups to different animal species is racist”, and I do agree with that generalization for the reasons I stated.
Jake Harban
Well, maybe take care of your “yous”. If you quote somebody and direct your comment at them and use “you” they will take it to mean “you, second person singular”.
Also, given the gem John Morales dug up where you claim that Trump is the lesser evil, it is reasonable to think that you indeed got your second best outcome short of a miracle where Stein would win, which you knew full well wouldn’t happen.
And you keep claiming that there’s virtually no difference between Trump and Clinton despite the tons of evidence against it. You can come back when you have credible evidence that Clinton would have made a white supremacist her chief strategist.
To put it in terms of the beloved trolley problem: You did almost everything in your capacity to pull the lever from “running over one person” to “running over 5 people” and now claim that somehow the result has nothing to do with you.
For all the “Clinton was totally weak and incompetent and ran an incompetent campaign” stuff: It’s funny that nobody thought that 2 weeks ago when it looked like Clinton would comfortably win. Pretty obviously not even Trump himself expected to win. No poll or analysis had him winning. Apart from the fact that she did win more votes than Trump, which in any sensible system would make her the winner of the election.
It’S also funny how you keep on discussing lower turn outs and completely forget voter suppression in your analysis, which amounts to “lie by omission”.
@Giliell 163,
For me, and still clinging to the hopeful caveat that I only have exposure to news and sites like this to form an opinion, it seems that the reason why people equivocate between Clinton and Trump is because the bad things from Trump will probably happen to other people.
If this is true, it is easy to think that there isn’t much between the two of them, because really, a White Supremacist is only going to have a negative affect on some people.
Jake Harban #149:
And there you are, saying it again; that the difference between the two is not great; that there is little difference between the two. You’re not saying, unless you’re expressing yourself extremely poorly, that only those other people you talk of saw the difference as small, but are merely saying that this small difference had a different effect on your thinking than on theirs. To which I say…
Huh?
The scenario you’re describing is one where a whole bunch of shoppers look at a bag of mixed nuts, reject it because it contains a few almonds, which they dislike, and then, instead, go on to buy a bag of almonds. You’re making no sense.
lostbrit, I’m pretty sure that most people thought a Clinton presidency would have been more of the same — but the thinking about a Trump presidency was inchoate but worrisome.
No more more of the same now.
We’ll see how it plays out over the next few months. Then we’ll know.
@John Morales #166
I get that people might have “wanted change” and that really, no one knows how it will go – Trump might have been lying about everything and will get restrained by a Republican congress etc.
However, this is still people gambling with everyone else. Saying “Trump is better than Clinton because he might not undermine women’s access to legal abortions, undo gay marriage rights (etc)” basically carries the argument that the person doesn’t care if he does undermine it all and make all these people’s lives worse.
For me there is an interesting thought exercise about the type of people who think “my life is a bit rubbish so screwing over women, Mexicans, muslims, blacks, asians, the disabled, the poor, doesn’t make it any worse…”
@Daz – What’s wrong with almonds? I like almonds.
Kooks, re @ 103.
From Ed Brayton’s blog: “Mikey Gets Email ” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/11/17/mikey-gets-email-26/
Nice piece of compressed hatred.
And what the hell is “a hangman’s switch” ????
Is he talking about electrified gallows?
@birgerjohansson #169
Classy. Much better than a Clinton victory…
Don’t forget the middle- and upper-classes who aren’t Trump or (if they’re lucky) a Trump goon, gay and trans people, socialists, journalists, Jews and atheists and other non-Christians, people who work for a living, people who don’t work for a living, etc. But you are definitely included somewhere in his elaborate “plans” to make America “great.” These people just don’t know exactly how/when it will make their rubbish lives worse, and somehow that is reason enough.
Perhaps Trump even expects to fuck over himself but is hoping it may be a while. Maybe he thinks he’s likely to kick the bucket before that happens, and in the mean time he can’t pass up the chance to shit on everyone and everything.
rietpluim #168:
Bloody almonds, comin’ over ‘ere, takin’ our jobs…
Actually, my only bit of hope is that Trump proves as incompetent at white supremacy as he did with everything else.
+++
There’s people who have something to gain. Reinstalling the millennia old “affirmative action” for white dudes in full will help. Building a “wall” on public dime will create some blue collar jobs for white working class dudes.
Jake Harban #149:
Thing is, in many cases, it is only the perception of suffering or things getting worse that’s real – the actual facts are different. For example, many people think that crime is going up – it’s actually been steadily falling, overall, since the 90s. Many people think the US economy has been teetering on the brink since the 2008 recession – it’s actually been steadily improving. Many think unemployment has ballooned under Obama – it’s actually fallen to half what it was in 2008, going by some measures. Thanks, in part, to the likes of Trump and the right incessantly spouting absolute bullshit (the other part being the tendency of politicians, of all stripes, to use half-truths and spin, even if they don’t outright lie), we now seem to be deeply in what has been described as ‘post-truth politics’, where, to a large chunk of the electorate, things like verifiable facts and what is actually true are either treated with suspicion, or simply regarded as not that important. I think that one reason that Clinton didn’t win is that she failed to recognise this, or underestimated the effect of it, so concentrated too much on showing that the bullshit of the right, including Trump, was actually bullshit, thinking, wrongly, that this would hurt them badly and help her a lot.
derail:
“post-truth” appears to be OED alternative rendering of Truthiness™
I guess Colbert’s Viacom copyrighted it so OED is attempting to kludge it into a generic form.
*shrug*
Harban the asshole.
Doing a Trump on us and believing your own lies if you repeat them often enough? The liberturds also call anybody to the left of them, even known conservatives, socialist and communists. You demonstrate YOUR extremism with such statements.
Yes, I am to the right of you. But I am simply a leftish democrat, definitely to the left of the real center of the general population, and left of center of the democratic party.
@150 lostbrit:
Except that the reason Clinton lost was low turnout— with no one to represent them, a lot of liberals didn’t bother to vote at all.
That’s a funny way of describing the social instinct “don’t let cheaters win.”
There’s a reason for that, you know. If we make every choice in a vacuum by deciding which outcome concretely produces the best result in that scenario without regard for the future, we end up supporting worse and worse “lesser evils” until everything breaks.
Clinton would have done the same.
To a much lesser degree, of course, but when you’re discussing degree, you’ve already lost a large number of voters.
@151, Troll:
What candidate were you thinking of?
@152, John Morales:
The person who thinks it’s improper to criticize Clinton might want to avoid calling anyone else an “ideologue.”
Especially not after they “pragmatically” backed a candidate so unelectable she couldn’t even beat Trump.
@153, miles links:
Basically, yes.
Remember, an “ideologue” is someone who says: “Let’s back a good candidate people actually want,” and when people disregard that advice and back a shitty candidate who loses, switch to saying: “Here’s how we can mitigate the damage. Let’s treat that as a learning experience and maybe next time back a good candidate people actually want.”
In contrast, a pragmatist says: “Let’s back a shitty candidate, and react to her loss by insulting anyone who so much as criticized her.”
@154, consciousness razor:
The assholes are outnumbered. Remember, Trump won a whopping 25% of the vote, and most of his voters hated him. That puts the irredeemable asshole number at maybe 10% of the population— not a significant factor.
Actually, according to your own asinine logic about third parties, their absence would have guaranteed the popular vote to Trump— Gary Johnson “stole” far more votes from him than Jill Stein did from Clinton.
What you don’t seem to understand is that many people don’t simply vote based on party line. The idea that Sanders would have won far more votes than Clinton did simply doesn’t register.
It looks like this is just a slightly rephrased version of the Bigot Binary— the idea seemingly held by a lot of Clinton-or-bust-ers that every single voter is either a Bigot who will always vote Republican or a Not Bigot who will always vote Democratic. Any complexities are simply glossed over in the name of making sure nothing is Clinton’s fault.
Poor rural white voters who know their communities are falling apart and watching their kids get involved in drugs, who want someone promising an end to the “trade” policies that ruined their lives and consider minorities a distant “other” not worth thinking about, who voted for Trump because of his promises to end NAFTA? Well, they voted for Trump, so they’re assholes who wanted an asshole president, and the idea that they’d have voted for Sanders is absurd because assholes will always vote Republican.
Reasonably well off white millennials who can survive 4 years under any president, but see both Clinton and Trump as presenting a huge threat to their future prospects and vote for Trump because he’s more likely to break the system? Well, they voted for Trump so they’re assholes who wanted an asshole president and the idea that they’d vote for Sanders is absurd. They preferred him and even backed him in the primary? Don’t be absurd— they’re assholes who will always vote Republican.
Low information voters who didn’t pay attention to much of the campaign but knew the swamp of Washington needed to be drained and voted for the outsider who said he’d drain it instead of the establishment hack who personified it? Assholes, all of them, who would always vote Republican by definition.
And before you start talking about how all those people are racists and sexists because they voted for Trump, just remember— you don’t need to convince me that they did a bigoted thing, you need to convince them to vote for your candidates. That’s called “pragmatism.” If you want to denounce all of them as bigots and assholes whose votes we shouldn’t seek, that’s up to you— just keep in mind that your demand for ideological purity will cost the Democrats more elections.
The only thing worthy of emesis is your pathetic understand of the math involved.
The Republicans nominated an asshole and got 25% of the vote.
The Democrats nominated a less unpleasant asshole and got 25% of the vote.
50% of the country didn’t vote for either asshole.
And your take-away lesson is that people want an asshole? Sanders was far less of an asshole than Clinton and every poll suggests he was a much stronger candidate.
That’s the advice I’ve been giving since 2012. You ignored that advice and backed assholes, and you’re now quoting my own advice back to me?
Ah, the nihilistic approach— when in doubt, deny all terms and definitions.
OK, so you know how certain demographics reliably vote for certain sets of policies? For example, minorities tend to vote Democratic, while white people who got rich off government subsidies tend to vote Republican. That’s called a “base.” Elections are won and lost by how well each party can encourage turnout among its base.
Turnout among the Democratic base was at a record low. Most of the people who did vote for Clinton said they hated her.
If you’re reduced to claiming we can’t really measure voting trends anyway, you’re pretty much out of arguments.
I’m pretty sure you’re just JAQing off, but here’s a quick summary anyway.
1. Answered above.
2. Answered by question #3.
3. Getting better candidates into office requires getting people to vote for them.
4. Yes.
5. No.
6. Answered by question #3.
You’re now resorting to quote mining, which is a creationist level of dishonesty so I’m not sure why I’m bothering with you, but here’s a quick explanation.
From my personal perspective, Clinton and Trump are equally bad. As in, they are equally bad for me, without regard for anyone else’s life.
The reason for this is because I’m disabled. At the moment, my parents can support me but it’s likely I will have to rely on the social safety net within the next four years. The social safety net is not capable of supporting me, and neither Clinton nor Trump had any intention of expanding it.
Therefore, a vote for either Clinton or Trump is a vote for me being forced to rely on a nonexistent social safety net.
When you say “in no way are they equally bad,” what you mean is that there’s no way they are equally bad for able-bodied people. This complete and utter inability to understand anyone else’s perspective is why Clinton lost and why her supporters are happy to lose every subsequent election.
@155, John Morales:
I’d direct the same comment at you. I’m sure your insistence that criticizing Clinton should be forbidden is based on a genuine belief that getting her elected justifies the means, not a preference for authoritarianism.
“Virtue ethics” is a straw man— I doubt anyone here believes it.
As for consequentialist ethics— now that we know backing Clinton gets us President Trump, now would be a good time for you to admit you were wrong. Unfortunately, you don’t seem to be capable of doing that, as evidenced by your insistence that I “stole” the election from Clinton by criticizing her.
@163, Gilliel:
Quote mining again? Seriously, it’s actually kind of sad to see Clinton’s fans stooping to creationist-level dishonesty in the name of their preferred religion.
I’ve been noticing a recurring theme among the Clinton fanatics— they inevitably have trouble understanding the idea that elections have complex consequences. Perhaps your quote mine was inadvertent; you just ignored the part that you didn’t understand.
I could explain that Trump’s election was the result of a combination of factors, of which the ever-present bigotry is only one. I could then point out that the combination of factors produces right-wing or fascist outbreaks with relative reliability, as seen in countries around the world including Britain, Greece, and Germany. I could then point out that Clinton would only have exacerbated those factors rather than doing anything to address them.
But it would go right over your head. In your little world, only unreasonable people believe that there’s no difference between the person who orders six million people killed and the person who gave them the power to issue the order in the first place.
Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been warning about this nonstop since the primaries.
I hoped it wouldn’t happen, but I gave the warning just in case. And now that it did, you complain that my warning was invalid because nobody was giving it? You might want to double-check your logic— it seems to have gotten a little twisted.
There’s voter suppression in every election. This is just another transparent effort at misdirection.
@164, lostbrit:
See, that’s the huge difference between Trump and Clinton— Clinton only planned to kill people who aren’t eligible to vote in American elections. Mostly.
@165, Daz:
I think at this point it’s clear you’re deliberately “misunderstanding” what I say. How else can I explain it further?
The difference between Clinton and Trump varies from one individual to the next. If you are a Muslim who risks being imprisoned or killed under Trump but not under Clinton, the difference for you is extreme. If you are the child of immigrants whose parents will probably be deported by Clinton and almost certainly be deported by Trump, the difference is merely large. If you are a well-off white man who can survive either but fear what both might do for your future employment prospects, the difference is small. If you are disabled and will likely end up in dire straits or dead under either, the difference is nonexistent. If you are a resident of certain countries in the Middle East, North Africa, or Central Asia which will be bombed under Clinton but not under Trump, the difference is extreme in the opposite direction— but you also can’t vote, so your life doesn’t matter to the Clinton fans.
A substantial number of people clearly felt that the difference between the two candidates was small enough to sacrifice (or at least smaller than the hassle of voting).
If you find the difference between the two to be more massive, you can either blame them out of a sense of ideological purity or pragmatically accept that your candidate wasn’t good enough to win and try harder next time.
It’s more like, a bunch of shoppers look at a bag of mixed nuts, reject it because it contains almonds, check for almond-free mixed nuts, and, upon finding none, simply go home without making any purchase.
Although that analogy only covers the Democratic base, not the low information voters or the “fuck you” voters who picked Trump in the hope he’d break the system.
@167, lostbrit:
Speaking as a poor and disabled person, please shut the fuck up and stop using me as a political pawn.
@174, Zmidponk:
This is a whole nother issue entirely, but the short version is, the economy is in a protracted recession and the “measures” are wrong.
Most of the “measures” of economic improvement are based on things that used to be proxies for economic growth (eg, the stock market) but are no longer. In actuality, wages are stagnant while prices go up and student loans demand to be paid, meaning that the middle class has effectively evaporated.
The employment metrics are similarly misleading. Official “unemployment” rates don’t count people who have given up looking for a job nor anyone who has been unemployed for longer than a certain duration nor anybody who is underemployed— if you get laid off from your six-figure job as an engineer and find a new job earning minimum wage at Walmart, you still count as employed, no loss there. Meanwhile, though large numbers of “jobs” have been added, most of them are minimum wage and/or part time, or reliant on specific technical skills (eg, electrician).
Most people aren’t necessarily aware of the extent of the problem, but they damn well know it exists. Clinton ignored it at her peril and we’re all paying the price for it.
@176, Troll:
It’s called “logic.” You might want to learn how it works.
Talking about “left” and “right” as abstracts while conspicuously avoiding anything specific is another indicator of a far-right extremist.
If you actually are as liberal as you say, you’ll have no problem naming three issues on which I am definitively to the left of you.
However, you named zero.
That, combined with the totality of your arguments here, give credence to the idea that you are a Bush Republican and a concern troll.
Name specific issues, not abstract “left” and “right.”
For example, a slim majority of Americans support universal health care. Among the Democratic Party membership, this figure is even higher. You, however, have stated your opposition to universal health care in the past. Thus, on the issue of health care, you are right of center among the general population, and on the extreme right among Democratic Party membership.
Jake Harban:
Tell you what – you give the figures you’re using to conclude that the US economy has been in recession since 2008, and I’ll take a look, because all the ones I’m seeing show the opposite.
Well, sorry, but, from what I can see, since 2008-2009, unemployment has decreased, underemployment has decreased, even the U-6 figure has come down, and it was just recently announced that applications for unemployment benefits are at a 43-year low. If you’re seriously trying to say that the jobs situation is worse now than it was immediately after the 2008 crash, you definitely need to provide figures for that.
re myself@175:
Called it! Colbert tonight claimed “post-truth” was a blatant copy of his word “truthiness”.
I’m so rarely correct with such insights like this so, I’ll just use this to pat myself on the back.
Thank you. *big smile*
yet @175 was only half right. No comment about word being owned by Viacom or whatever. I was just speculating wildly. shame on me.
*bows out*
If you voted for him, decided not to vote, or didn’t vote for the only person who had any chance of keeping him out, you are an asshole.
No, their absence would produce the exact same popular vote win as the one Clinton actually got, because nobody in their right mind would count (or did count) third party voters when they count Clinton voters and Trump voters.
Sanders wasn’t running for president. I really hoped he would win the primaries, if that matters to you. I have no clue why you’ve suddenly changed the subject to the Democratic primaries, when moments ago it was about third party voters making the wrong choice in the general election.
I don’t care about what always happens, if there were anything that always happen, and I have no interest in making sure nothing is blamed on Clinton. People who let Trump win are responsible for their own actions.
Where did you come up with Sanders? He wasn’t running. Where did you come up with “always”? Trump voters fact made a specific, wrong, assholish choice in this election.
75% wanted the asshole or didn’t keep him out, which is an asshole move.
Sanders, for the last time, was not running for president.
So do you have no regard for anyone else’s life? You should give a shit about other people, so how could it possibly matter, morally speaking, that they are “equally bad” in this fucked up sense of “your personal perspective” which no one including your should take seriously?
Trump will cut all sorts of programs like this, as I’ve already explained to you in a previous thread. Clinton not intending to expand it (even if true) is better than Trump intending to deflate it. So this doesn’t even make sense from a self-absorbed point of view which disregards everyone else, if you should have a point of view like that, which you obviously shouldn’t.
You’re telling me that you’re a selfish asshole who can’t think straight about the very issues you cite as most important, and I’m to be scolded as a quote-mining creationist for saying (as I did the first time when the context was also clear to me) that this is obviously immoral, assholish, nonsensical bullshit which simply can’t be taken seriously. It might explain why you voted as you did — although you’ve been cryptic about how you voted, so for all I know it explains nothing — but it does not in any way, shape or form justify it. If I’m going to be charitable, I’ll assume you believe you can come up with something better than that, since you know it’s bullshit but had to come up with some kind of convenient story to tell us. But it isn’t clear what that could be, because there is no fucking excuse for anyone to give Trump any direct or indirect support.
Jake Harban:
You persist in ascribing claims and opinions to me which I neither hold nor have made.
For the umpteenth time, what I’ve written is about you; specifically, how you have been relentlessly and contumaciously been posting nothing but negative comments about Clinton both during the campaign and now, but imagine that you bear absolutely no responsibility for her unpopularity.
Nowhere will you find me expressing that I think it improper to criticise her.
That you get my written positions on this very thread so wrong is indicative of your acumen.
(So unelectable was she that recent figures show she got nearly 1.5M more votes than Trump despite all the negativity and FUD directed at her. So far, the count is not yet complete)
You’re being cute, you know? Calling everybody who thinks that Clinton was the best shot to prevent fascism in the USA despite her shortcomings a “Clinton fanatic” while accusing people at the same time to be too stupid to understand your arguments is pretty dishonest.
It’S also either extremely naive or dishonest to believe that Trump will actually have some peaceful ideas for the world. He’s more or less already given Netanyahu green light for carrying out whatever genocidal fantasies he has. Do you still want to talk about dead children in the Middle East? Or do they not count because he’s not doing it personally? He has already announced to increase military spending and guess what, that usually means more military action.
@Jake Harban #177
Ok, i get that but it assumes a few things: first that low turnout amongst liberals was a choice; second that the low turn out was biased towards liberals when the voter turnout was fairly close in percentage terms; that Trump is as equally illberal as Clinton.
It is very rare that I have ever had anyone represent my political beliefs in an election but there are people who stand for things I oppose. I could simply ignore the election but then if a candidate who stands against my core beliefs wins, I cant sit back and go “well its [party]’s fault for not giving me a better candidate to vote for.”
Ref not letting cheaters win
Almost every decision people make is about selecting the lesser of two evils. In this case, you are arguing that not voting for Clinton (and allowing a Trump victory) was actually the lesser of the two evils where the alternative was voting for Clinton.
Just to be clear, Clinton is far from perfect but the list of Cheats which Trump should be punished for are much, much longer. This basically says sexual assault on women, racism, homophobia (etc) should all go unpunished because, well, Clinton isn’t a nice woman.
it seems to me that even if you dont think vote/no vote or vote Clinton / vote Trump wasn’t itself a “lesser of two evils” choice, allowing Trump to become president is going to head down the path of “everything breaks” a lot faster than voting for Clinton – and a lot of people will suffer more as a result.
But the degree to which things happens is nearly always the main decider between politicians as, short of revolutionary warfare, social change is almost always incremental.
The problem for me still revolves around the fundamental differences, not the overlaps. For me, if I was an eligible voter,
the rampant discriminatory, inflammatory and predatory behaviour from Trump and his supporters would mean I could never sit back and allow him access to the seat of power through either action or inaction. Its not a case of saying “the leading alternative isn’t as nice as I’d like so burn the world.”
I get this. This makes sense. However I think there are some other things you should consider:
1) Neither may have been likely to increase it but Trump’s power block is likely to decrease it.
2) You aren’t forced to rely on it if it isn’t there.
3) This implies that, despite what else you have said, you are a single issue voter and because neither leading candidate supported your issue you didnt care about the impact on other parts of your society.
By the way, there is almost zero chance Trump wont be funding the military to bomb brown skinned people back to the stone age.
Yet you also decry pragmatism as being a way to alienate voters. Clinton is a largely pragmatic politician which is why (as a woman) she is viewed as a warmonger for doing things the men in similar roles are elected for (then it is described as Strong Leadership). Pragmatic politics is actually selecting the lesser of two evils over and over again.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) #179:
I’m not a subscriber to the OED, but the Grauniad’s story on its the word of the year says it dates to at least as far back as 1992:
Wikipedia’s article on the term notes that “As early as 2004, Ralph Keyes coined the term “post-truth era” in his book by that title,” while its article on truthiness dates Colbert’s coining of that term to a year later; “American television comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word in this meaning as the subject of a segment called “The Word” during the pilot episode of his political satire program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005.”
Jake Harban liar and bullshiter extrodinaire.
What a fuckwitted asshole you are. You can’t keep your own lies straight. Makes what you have to say irrelevant. Please quit lying to yourself. Then you can quit lying to us. We are not your enemy. The enemy is you for lying and bullshitting with your irrational claims and hatred spewed at us for many months.
At present I am on Medicare. Far superior to when I was on private medical insurance. Far cheaper to run as no profits are involved. Those are the facts. And why I support “medicare for everybody”. Another LIE by you refuted.
I know something about SSA disability. The Redhead had a stroke almost five years ago, and is partially paralyzed. She didn’t qualify for disability a she hadn’t worked enough quarters. You don’t notice me ranting and railing about that.
I also know something about the unemployment figures. Some people would consider me unemployed. I am not working. I am not looking for work. I am retired, and my time is spent caring for the Redhead, and taking care of the household chores. Over the years I put the maximum matched funds into my IRAs, ending the minimum recommended of 10 times my salary. That is my income these days.
Until you stop spewing irrational hatred at us, and reality based people like me who bring your idiocy up short for being unrealistic, you can’t get anywhere. Theses last few months has been an object lesson in why your ideas are wrong. But you aren’t listening, so you can’t change your mind. That’s not my problem.
Take your anger elsewhere. It isn’t doing you any good here.