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

No one really thought he was going to bring their jobs back come on. He was a vehicle for white revenge by and large.

― Treeship

late to this but the #1 reason my 85-year-old father-in law voted for Trump was specifically because he was against NAFTA and promised to bring jobs back to the rust belt.

but hey, feel free to continue making the same stupid, blame-shifting generalizations that liberals keep making...

Did he tell you how Trump planned to bring jobs back?

um that's not the point, the point is what people perceived and believed

So does that mean when Trump doesn't deliver they may perceive and believe he has?

my dread that trump will turn out to be the antichrist is dissipating somewhat and now I think he's just going to turn out to be your bog standard shithead republican who everyone will learn to hate when he doesn't deliver manufacturing to everyone, and will be done in 4 years.

I think this is v true tbh

the Hitler comparisons are a bit wide of the mark - Trump doesn't want to invade Mexico or France or whatever and establish global supremacy, and what's more he doesn't have the energy or wherewithal to even plan how to do that. An (admittedly very dangerous) mixture of corruption and ineptitude is much more likely.

xp

xp to Josh

no, I think he is skeptical and worried, and will not hesitate to throw him under the bus when midterms arrive

(he also voted for Eisenhower and JFK, btw, he doesn't toe party lines and I respect that)

I'm finding that people over the age of 60 seem to have a very difficult time telling what's real and what isn't on the internet.

Just want to add that almost everyone I know that voted for Trump has told me it was due to Hilary and Obama's rejection of Keystone XL, Obamacare, cracking down on the enforcement of illegal immigration, and the belief that Clinton would make all of these concerns worse. Today this one guy told me, "I'm sick of people saying I'm sexist because I didn't want Clinton to be president because she's a woman, have Condoleezza Rice run I'll happily vote for her."

like, they not only believe fake news websites, they also allow themselves to get catfished on a regular basis, and share bogus shopping coupons all over the place

and then they get awfully upset when they find out something isn't true...my own mother told me she doesn't believe anything from anywhere anymore. my mother in law continually kept talking to some fake dude with an obviously false social media profile even after we showed her proof that he wasn't who he said he was. what the fuck is wrong with old people?

There's a reason internet scams target the elderly.

What makes Trump scary is no one knows anything. And that's why many have said we should take him at his word. Per the Times:

“There are two options to how you want to anticipate and prepare for a Trump presidency,” Osnos said. “One is to declare that nothing he says is useful and reliable, and we should do nothing. The other is to invest heavily in trying to understand what the history of the presidency tells us.”

“Even if a president doesn’t intend to follow through on a promise,” he continued, “the nature of the presidency compels him to make a good-faith effort to do so because his credibility once in office rests partly on whether he is showing a serious commitment to follow through on the things he does.”

it's not just 60+ year olds, check the long c&p from an HRC canvasser in Ohio upthread for a vivid reminder that even college-educated people in their 30's don't have the time to sort through all this stuff and figure out what's really true.

So the question is, if kicking out Mexicans and Muslims and any other crazy Trump things succeed in making America "great" again to the satisfaction of trump voters, will these people be cool with that? Is that really the price they are willing to pay? If so, then yes, they are every bit the racists they have been painted to be.

how do we confront racism and sexism if we're not allowed to name it?

Kick in the crotch?

just grab it by the pussy

"he says it like it is"
"he says the things that I think but am afraid to say"

these are the classic key phrases of the trump supporter.

but what could these things be that they're proud of him stating bluntly, except for racist things? aren't they afraid to say them because it might sound a little Hitler-y?

serious question. i'm as tired as anybody else of the words. i don't like calling people racist or being called a racist either. i get it. it feels shitty. so what do you do when people vote in favor of, say, racial profiling?

I mean the right uses different words all the time, "law and order" instead of profiling, for example. I do wonder if it would be possible/effective to engage in the same kind of semantic sleight-of-hand.

wait, what is being proposed here?

if someone is in favor of say, racial profiling, we should say "hmm, that sounds like something a racist person would support."

those things are hard to say. but the solution isn't to shy away from calling it what it is. calling it by different names to avoid social awkwardness is what we ALREADY do.

it's possible i'm just missing something here, if so sorry

yeah there's an obvious answer to my admittedly stupid question. just use different words.

the Hitler comparisons are a bit wide of the mark - Trump doesn't want to invade Mexico or France or whatever and establish global supremacy

if hitler came up in scattergories would you really dash down 'desire for global supremacy' ahead of 'demonisation and persecution of vulnerable minorities'?

it took hitler a good 6 years to invade poland iirc

I do think persecution of minorities was secondary to Hitler's goal of Germany dominating Europe/punishing its historical enemies, although the two were def interrelated, obviously.

Collaborators rush in: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/11/silicon-valley-donald-trump-critics-tech-reactions

Under the Trump administration, the argument of contractor v employee falls more on the Uber side than it does under a Clinton administration,” said Tim Wilson, a venture capitalist with Artiman.

Wilson anticipated both opportunity and potential danger under a Trump administration. Trump’s apparent eagerness to set off a trade war with China could be damaging to consumer electronics companies like Apple, which rely on China’s manufacturing infrastructure and workplace, as well as the global supply chain of minerals.

“Apple can’t manufacture a phone overnight in the United States,” he said. “This is a dangerous game to play.”

Still, other Trump promises might create new markets ripe for Silicon Valley’s favorite form of disruptive innovation, such as his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, some of whom form the bulk of the country’s agricultural labor force. That might create opportunity for the “agtech” sector, Wilson said.

“If they really are serious and farm labor gets threatened, then anything that automates labor is something that is going to uptrend,” he said.

it took hitler a good 6 years to invade poland iirc

The Dachau concentration camp opened up in 1933.

Charlie Brooker just hosted the first post US election edition of Have I got News For you just in case you missed it. & it is talked about a lot in the show.

i was specifically responding to the 'global supremacy' and invasion thing but yes you're right many things happened quite quickly

xpost

Point made upthread about older people struggling to make sense of information from the internet seems very very otm to me - consider so much material just churned out to get clicks, the writers and editors even less accountable than the paper press. And then the self-confidence and savvy it takes to be properly suspicious, then how easy it is to fall into a caricature of reasonable suspicion (so you end up believing in conspiracies).

yes, exactly, thank you

Don't most Silicon Valley companies employee large numbers of H1B tech workers at below market rates? I would assume anything there would vastly outweigh "agtech disruption" possibilities.

NY Times reporter on Keith Ellison pick-

https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/797120114042793984

I think he's just going to turn out to be your bog standard shithead republican who everyone will learn to hate when he doesn't deliver manufacturing to everyone, and will be done in 4 years.

yeah maybe his approval ratings will tank once he fucks up the economy.. then again, plenty of scapegoats to go around

thinking maybe he'll have a lot more people (dem pols) talking down to him / screaming directly in his face than he's used to.. not that it matters

That's a grotesque tweet, brownie.

yep, the comments are otm

Many xpost to Tracer Hand: that's the point, for a large number of people facts don't matter, truth doesn't matter. Image and personality matters, and so do memes in the original sense: viral ideas. Dems don't seem to understand that. What this does not mean is that the left should abandon the truth; it means we need to be better at making truth sticky - as shamelessly manipulative about it as the right is about their lies (and as they are about the truth when they get hold of it once in a while). It's a tough job, yeah, but I think it would make everything a hell of a lot better. And we'd win more often, because truth is stronger than lies and love is stronger than hate.

Being deliberately reductive here for the sake of rhetoric.

buried in this puff piece by town and fucking country on hope hicks, the likely new press secretary, are the words "there were early signs that the woman Trump has described as a "beautiful beauty" would climb onto the political stage."

http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a7274/hope-hicks-donald-trump/

But I'll take the black congressmen from Milwaukee.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 11, 2016 2:19 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cmon man, milwaukee??

@hardcore dilettante:

But I would like to hear it from a Trump voter's mouth, or, as I'm typing from the UK, from a Leave voter's mouth, that facts don't matter, truth doesn't matter, to them. Before signing up 100% to the argument that we've moved into a post-fact age.

From what I can gather, most of them think they are in fact in possession of the 'real' facts and the 'real' truth (and are in a dire situation where an evil establishment is always trying to pry this truth out of their hands). That facts don't matter to them, is something that gets said about them.

The thing about 'truth is stronger than lies' is that it's a lie. The truth is that lies are stronger than truth. And I've been telling people this over and over, but it never takes. Because, well, you know...

NY Times reporter on Keith Ellison pick-

https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/797120114042793984

― brownie, Friday, November 11, 2016 7:43 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

guessing nyt didn't take too long on picking out the lewandowski picture for that article

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/11/11/us/11transitionbriefing4/11transitionbriefing4-master675.jpg

xp to self Obvs it's not likely that someone would outright say 'I don't care about facts' because if you didn't, you wouldn't know it. But it looks to me like the fear comes first, and out of that, a mad rush to what looks like safety, where there's no time to look at all these statistics and facts and figures

The thing about 'truth is stronger than lies' is that it's a lie. The truth is that lies are stronger than truth.

Think this is contextual tbh

e.g. 'The sky is green' is a weak lie, 'X and Y and Z are coming to get you!' is a strong lie if said to the right people

Climate-change is a plot by the Chinese, vaccines cause autism, 9/11 is an inside job, etc. etc.

The wells were poisoned years ago

http://cdn.nexternal.com/mef/images/ToxicSludgeIsGoodForYou250.jpg

Many xpost to Tracer Hand: that's the point, for a large number of people facts don't matter, truth doesn't matter. Image and personality matters, and so do memes in the original sense: viral ideas. Dems don't seem to understand that. What this does not mean is that the left should abandon the truth; it means we need to be better at making truth sticky - as shamelessly manipulative about it as the right is about their lies (and as they are about the truth when they get hold of it once in a while). It's a tough job, yeah, but I think it would make everything a hell of a lot better. And we'd win more often, because truth is stronger than lies and love is stronger than hate.

Being deliberately reductive here for the sake of rhetoric.

― hardcore dilettante, Saturday, November 12, 2016 12:52 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it the delivery, or is it the Democratic/liberal establishment is so willfully detached from the public they lost the election because of.

lena dunham rapping. nothing else needs to be said on that.

I hate the counterfactuals but I've decided that while no one can know whether Bernie woulda won (just too much Knightian uncertainty) Martin O'Malley or Joe Biden would be president today if Clinton or Sanders hadn't run. my read of the data is that it was low-enthusiasm for Clinton due to scandals; she ran the best campaign she could have (quibbles aside) and yet still the rep stuck.