Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

let's not forget, they were coming off of WWI, and that was pretty catastrophically awful too. So you have to imagine plenty of people knew things could get real bad, but perhaps they didn't realize just how bad.

xp

lol sterl

Yeah, I have to believe (even if that belief is ultimately revealed to be unfounded) that a lot of the un- and underinformed voting public voted not out of hate but ignorance, and that seeing daily acts of harassment and violence committed against others in the name of their candidate of choice was not something they ever wanted. Many people are completely lost but I have to believe that many people are still reachable, and that there are ultimately more of us who reject hate than who accept it.

My husband is a 'class-only leftist' who has spent the last couple of days seriously rethinking his position.

let's not forget, they were coming off of WWI, and that was pretty catastrophically awful too. So you have to imagine plenty of people knew things could get real bad, but perhaps they didn't realize just how bad.

xp

― Al Moon Faced Poon (Moodles), Friday, November 11, 2016 11:08 AM (five seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Things were actually abysmally bad for Germans post-WWI, far worse than for the majority of Trump supporters, no? I'm not even sure things got worse for them under Hitler, if you weren't Jewish or gay or catholic or disabled or a dissident, etc., possibly better until they were firebombed and then occupied. Just saying it's not a totally analogous situation.

My husband is a 'class-only leftist' who has spent the last couple of days seriously rethinking his position.

― rhymes with "blondie blast" (cryptosicko), Friday, November 11, 2016 11:09 AM (fifty-two seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We can't be "class only leftists" but the dominant strain of liberalism has essentially been social "leftism" without class, which isn't really leftism at all.

I hate the flyover/coastal narrative so much. Heartland cities are blue and the rural coasts not an hour from urban metropolises are deep red.

ok, personally, i have concluded that trump voters, and only trump voters, are an absolute dead loss. could some of them be "won over" to vote democratic in the next election (assuming the continued existence of free and fair elections)? oh, absolutely. i definitely know people who voted for obama and trump.

but i have to ask, what's more important to me, numbers or values, and my conclusion is that it's values. we've had a democratic party that tried to be everything to everyone and wound up being nothing to anybody. we can approach this as a statistical problem and gobble up every word nate silver has to grace us with, or we can learn to lead.

anybody who voted for trump, _particularly_ if they also voted for obama, _particularly_ if they identify themselves as "not racist", has demonstrated a critical inability to live up to the courage of their convictions. and as long as that situation exists, it is a waste of time for us to try to appeal to them knowing that they'll turn on us for the next asshole with a bullshit slogan.

now, if we want to teach them to have values, hell yes, that's worth doing. but the only way we can do that is to have values ourselves.

I thought one of the most significant things in recent history in 1933 was the crash of 1929. Which meant that money was rendered near worthless. So everybody felt a lack of stability.

demonstrated a critical inability to live up to the courage of their convictions

idk I don't think their convictions are that strong. mid-term elections still have a huge drop-off, people treat the presidency as some solve-everything position and assign blame or credit to the president, having little idea what they do day-to-day

We can't be "class only leftists" but the dominant strain of liberalism has essentially been social "leftism" without class, which isn't really leftism at all.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, November 11, 2016 11:11 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally. I feel like this is/should be the left's "We blew it" moment.

Focusing on educating people on the importance of mid-term voting has to be one of our main drives right now, I think. Like starting right now.

I thought one of the most significant things in recent history in 1933 was the crash of 1929. Which meant that money was rendered near worthless. So everybody felt a lack of stability.

― Stevolende

the biggest weimar hyperinflation crisis was actually in 1923. the depression made things bad- among other things it caused the us to cut off aid to germany- and the effects of sustained economic and political instability, along with partisan street violence, had taken their toll, but 1933 wasn't a particularly low ebb for the country.

idk the continuing efforts to expand continuing education, expansion of community college programs and availability, and the subsidies to let people join those programs are trickling through rural areas (I met someone on a flight who worked for an org in DC doing this)

it's the ability to blame the government for the loss of your job while you're getting subsidized education to learn a new career... that's gonna get killed off when the federal grants for adult education dry up

guys u kno i love talking about early 20th century politics like it's literally one of my favorite things to do but i want to just note that i was being kinda tongue-in-cheek / sardonic in my comment above

xp Stevolende:
The hyperinflation occurred in 1921-1923, a decade prior, but yes, it forced many to beg, middle class women into prostitution, etc., and yes, it was a strong memory.

Indeed, the memory and consequences of the German hyperinflation carry on to the current day, in German support for austerity measures over extending credit to Portugal/Ireland/Greece/Spain in the recent economic crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

So having concluded my self-assessment of being a completely useless armchair liberal for my entire adult life, I've decided that my first steps away from that will be a) a monthly rotating donation of whatever I can reasonably afford split between ten or so different charitable organizations that directly support the groups Trump et all are seeking to marginalize and b) getting involved in local government on some level. I think it's just going to involve joining a committee of some sort at the moment given my complete inexperience in that regard, but the city manager lives in my building so I'd like to take advantage of that convenience and have a conversation with him about what he'd recommend. I have a lot of other ideas brewing but I need to take this one realistic step at a time.

Guys, I'm basically an asocial shut-in who's stepping way out of his comfort zone here because the time to do so is long past. Anybody can do this shit if I can.

good luck, OL

anybody who voted for trump, _particularly_ if they also voted for obama, _particularly_ if they identify themselves as "not racist", has demonstrated a critical inability to live up to the courage of their convictions. and as long as that situation exists, it is a waste of time for us to try to appeal to them knowing that they'll turn on us for the next asshole with a bullshit slogan.

As I commented above w/r/t some parents at my school, I see this in action all the time.

piggybacking on old lunch here, and i apologize if i'm out of line but i've been spitting straight fire on facebook since tuesday. nobody's a great judge of their own writing but i think it's good stuff, and the twenty or so people who read it seem to agree. i kind of want to get it out there better, in the hopes that maybe it might help some people come to grips with this shit, but i've got massive social anxiety and don't even know for sure if it's honestly a good idea or not. thoughts?

BTW I had a really bizarre conversation with a retired teacher on Facebook, seemed perfectly educated, super pro-union, but felt that Clinton-type democrats didn't really support unions (a sentiment I sort of get) and thus VOTED FOR TRUMP. She was talking about how awful Scott Walker is and I was like "you know he's a big supporter of Trump right? You know we have a GOP congress now that wants what he wants, right?" I do not get it at all, but I'm just saying, don't underestimate how much bad perception of Clinton played into this rather than love of Trump.

post it here

xp

WARNING: I do not agree with ALL or even MOST of the following, from comments on a movie blog. i wonder if any of you have encountered this argument much online or offline.

Here's the thing that makes me laugh at the Dems who quiver in terror at the thought of "Orange Hitler" and all that bullshit: this is Donald Fucking Trump. The man has spent his entire life playing a role, bullshitting everyone, and begging for flattery for his shatterglass ego. Why does anyone expect that to change now?

A lifelong NYC liberal, Trump played the role of loutish alt-Righty in the primaries in order to win. He was not, and is not, a Republican-- all along, he was the Left's *parody* of a Republican, the kind that Wells, Sorkin, Moore, Maher etc. all liked to draw. Again, he was playing a role. You think the guy got all those reality show ratings by accident? HE'S GOOD AT THIS SHIT, PEOPLE.

Now that Trump "caught the car," he can cover the White House in gold in chintz, he's going to play a DIFFERENT role. Trump's not going to want to actually *govern*-- he's going to make Obama's golf games and vacations look like a weekend hobby, that's how much Trump's going to enjoy playing the part of president.

I still marvel at how many people fail to see this.

I took myself off of Facebook completely as of Wednesday morning. I am angry, and I *know* that people in my family whom I genuinely love, as well as a lot of very close friends, voted for Trump, and I don't want to lash out in anger at them. Given my general temperament and personality, though, I don't think I can avoid it, so I thought it best to just get the hell out altogether.

At least the fogginess I've been feeling since Tuesday night has somewhat lifted (thanks partially to going home from work last night and sleeping for 11 hours), but I still feel like I need to have my SSRI dose doubled. I'm just walking around in a general state of dismotivation and anxiety and fear that's no good for me or anybody.

I did hear back from the Planned Parenthood Ohio volunteer director yesterday. She informed me that there's a rally next Wednesday night at the statehouse in Columbus to protest the proposed 20-week ban, and that we'll talk soon about available volunteer opportunities.

post it here

xp

― Al Moon Faced Poon (Moodles)

oh, jeez. i love you guys, but even aside from hitting you with three days of straight logorrhea, i'd feel _very_ vulnerable.

xp I think I've seen variations of that -- although lord, the idea that he was ever an "NYC liberal," please -- and the people making it don't seem to understand that, given his vice president and his likely cabinet and appointees, that actually makes it several orders of magnitude worse.

rushomancy, I feel you, and I don't know what the best answer is but I feel like we have to get away from the internet a little, at least. Your words are going to have so much more impact when they aren't lost among dozens of other Facebook posts or tweets. If you can't stomach public speaking, pass out tracts or post flyers or something. Record a rant and burn that shit to a hundred CDs. My own social anxiety is starting to feel more and more like an ego-driven excuse to avoid doing things that might make me look or feel stupid at the expense of doing something to help people whose lives and well-being are under real threat now.

xp yeah, well, GW Bush spent a shitload of time back at the ranch but he left Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the gang running the show

I haven't seen much of that argument but it's out there, and it's really dumb. If Trump had a really center-right cabinet and VP pick I might buy it

hey guys did I miss anything

http://cdn.niketalk.com/d/db/db692f54_ray-liotta-laughing-in-goodfellas.jpeg

WARNING: I do not agree with ALL or even MOST of the following, from comments on a movie blog. i wonder if any of you have encountered this argument much online or offline.

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

oh yeah, i have friends who react like that. a lot of people think he's still a big tacky joke, a comedic incompetent. their reaction is to sit back and reach for the popcorn. it's not a perception i find it worth my while to push back against. i just wind up saying "gee, i sure hope you're right" and leave it at that. if they're wrong, hopefully i can be there for them to help when it finally hits them.

morbs there is totally a chance of that and I think the best case scenario is certainly better than the best case scenario if a reliably ideologue got elected.

but trump also has a long history of nixon-style vengeance, unpredictability, willingness to break the law etc. etc. there is little you can actually count out as possible when it comes to worst case scenarios.

'as not possible', rather

I think Nixon is not a bad touchstone for what a Trump presidency might look like. He also tended to leave the details to others, e.g. Kissinger basically ran the show on foreign policy.

Except it's Nixon with a rabid right-wing congress. That's the scary part.

I hate the flyover/coastal narrative so much. Heartland cities are blue and the rural coasts not an hour from urban metropolises are deep red.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z)

yeah, it's kind of shorthand, but people also internalize it in some really dumb ways. like, almost everyone where i work in suburban kansas was super fucking bummed on wednesday.

not really related, but i was really struck by how few trump signs i saw in the run-up to the election compared to the number of signs for local republicans, even after 6 years of brownback. there were a fuckton of people who were too embarrassed to openly support trump but were definitely voting for him anyway.

nixon was similarly not much of an ideologue xp

rushomancy fwiw I've really appreciated yr posts itt and would love to read more of whatever you're spitting

https://itself.wordpress.com/2016/11/11/the-home-front/

What was disturbing to me was her inability to even hear why I would find Trump especially problematic. It was as though it was just another election. She had an answer for everything. I said that part of why I was worried was that The Girlfriend had been sobbing on Wednesday morning; she said some people may well have been crying if Hillary won. I said Trump was a creepy sexual predator; she said Hillary was pathetic for putting up with her creepy sexual predator husband. I said I didn’t want to ask The Girlfriend to come into an environment where people might be gloating about a Trump win; she was well aware of how Democrats felt about this and knew to keep her mouth shut. Is there any greater intrinsic justification for how Democrats feel? Is their fear and shame more significant than her frustration with her Democratic colleagues who made her feel shut down in political debate? The answer to both questions seemed to be no. Everyone has their opinion and has a right to it.

It’s a familiar sophistry that deflects every objection, leaving nothing but an arbitrary choice of the side that makes you feel most comfortable. It was like I was trying to convince someone on moral and intellectual grounds why they should be a White Sox fan rather than a Cubs fan. What was most disturbing, though, was the dawning realization that the sophistry was partly designed to let her cope with me and my potentially abhorrent views.

Levity!

https://twitter.com/JordanPeele/status/797111664898437120

The history of fascist dictators is also a history of flashy dumdums.

Welcome back, Shakey. Rushomancy OTM all over, but especially "learning to lead."

I hold this to be self-evident: that powerful lies can't be as powerful, in the end, as powerful truths. We have to get better at telling the truth in a way that makes it stick. We have to be as shamelessly manipulative about our truths as they are about their lies, and the truths have to be tailored to stick at lots of different layers.

On the one hand there will always be the bottom layer of pure evil fuckers, the unreachably evil. Then there are the nihilists. Nothing to be done about either group. One up from them are the cynical ideologues whose entrenchment would be tough, if not impossible, to break.

But leapfrogging to the top layers, the winnable layers. The stories "Trump is frightening American children" and "Kids really look up to Hilary and are excited to have her as President" might have got through to some of the exurban/suburban swing voters in a way that could have made a serious difference. Something like what this Jezebel story says, but a pre-emptive strike: http://jezebel.com/what-do-i-say-stories-from-the-classroom-after-electi-1788781296

That's one layer. Then there's a layer that's genuinely concerned with personal and economic security but couldn't give a shit about ideology or policy. They need a narrative that lets them know that the best candidate is going to take care of them. I didn't hear a lot out of Hillary that addressed the fear that Trump shamelessly tapped.

(And by the way when they said "SKANKLES U R COMIN FOR CITIZENS' GUNS" the answer shouldn't have been a nuanced rebuttal that detailed her policy approach; the answer should be "That's ridiculous and nothing but a lie. But we'll make sure that criminals and maniacs don't have assault rifles." Or whatever.)

Lots more winnable layers as you dig deeper but I'm not the Communications Officer and you get my drift anyway.

Avoiding the language that the right has turned against us - currently the jargon of political correctness, "safe spaces," etc - is important when fighting an information war. Adjusting tactics to suit the battleground - fighting reason with better reason, simple lies with simpler truths, bad fear-based policy with good hope-based policy that actually addresses the fears - that's the "listening to middle America" that the Dems should have done.

Also needs to be recognized that YUGE charisma is one of the major qualifications for the job.

Commitment to facts is one of the things I admire most about the party, but facts don't matter if they can't be communicated effectively, with emotionally persuasive impact. That's something we just have to get way, way better at if we're going to win enough hearts and minds to stem the coming tide of assholery.

j., a lot of the issue I have with that is that it is trying to address different points of view from a purely emotional level. The problem with a Trump presidency is much more the concrete changes that it will bring to all of our lives when the Republican government has a free pass to enact their agenda in all three branches.

excellent post hd

Discussing things with our kids and trying to provide perspective has been helpful, even if I still have my deep, dark doubts. In the 1960s, we had presidents and civil rights leaders assassinated, there was the distinct possibility of nuclear annihilation, abortion was illegal, we had tens of thousands of protesters in the streets, often being assaulted by police or national guard, we had a draft fueling an unjust war, we had a huge segment of the population segregated and treated as second-class citizens - legally! And we slowly made progress. And then we got Nixon. And then we slowly made more progress. And so on. It's been two steps forward, and one step back, but many things are still going in the right direction even when they seem like they're not. It's like climate change deniers pointing to a warm winter as proof that climate change is a myth. Well, look at trends, not today's temperature. For that reason I am hopeful, at least in the abstract. We have fought *and won* a lot of battles, and as I noted many posts back, I can't think of the last time our civil rights were not violated but negated and legally reversed, and I'd like to believe doing so remains more difficult than many understand. It is important to be vigilant, but even with literally everything on the table, it is not a practical or even feasible reaction (at least for me) to respond with an equivalent fear of everything.

P.S. Please don't burst my bubble too bigly, I am trying to cope on a minute to minute basis here. Just off the phone with a good friend of Filipino descent who is freaking out and practically afraid to leave the house, and I've been toying with various contingency plans myself for the coming months and years.

Having some similar thoughts to Old Lunch in the past 24 hours.

people treat the presidency as some solve-everything position and assign blame or credit to the president, having little idea what they do day-to-day

including the future president, lol

Josh that notion of two steps forward , one step back was exactly one I shared with my teenage kids the other night.

Been taking some flack from some friends for posting stuff on FB like the "Day 1 of President Trump" thing or reminding them that the Nazis and KKK are celebrating right now - saying I'm "spreading the hate" and "grouping people together" by assuming all Trump voters are racists. I cannot say "Trump voters aren't all racists, but they have shown that they will tolerate it" enough times. And I'm being told "what's wrong with you, you're making it worse, you're giving them what they want." Am I in the wrong here? What do I say to this?