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

maybe they get electroshock therapy like Pence.

People can be held accountable for their speech and action without needing to determine whether these emanate from some essential attribute.

they can, but people also appear to be remarkably resistant to letting themselves be held accountable in ways uncoupled from their conceptions of their essential attributes

trying to come to a calculation in millifucks how much effort it's worth decoupling racist speech from the people who enunciate it

what about the ones who mumble it?

i just heard of this talk of the new potential 'muslim registry' and that resulted in significant google'ing and now i know about the NSEERS list which sure seems like a decade long, pretty gross, and still existing until 2011 'muslim registry' so thanks, internet, for that

That Muslim registry thing has been sort of misreported. It said they were mulling a registry of people immigrating from "Muslim countries." But as immigrants, wouldn't they be registered already? I'm still not sure what more they're talking about at all, especially since I guess this has been a thing since Bush (whatever this thing is).

Non-white nationalists voted for an authoritarian fascist this election out of 1.) impish curiosity 2.) because he promised to "make america great again" 3.) because they are terrified of a country that is changing rapidly at the same time they feel they are losing power 4.) because real wages have been stagnant under obama yet hillary said "america's already great" 5.) because they think it's fun to be racist, especially now that the powers that be are finally starting to tell them that racism is not ok and most importantly 6.) they have been subjected to a decades long misinformation campaign that has taught them to hate and fear democrats, and hillary specifically. Their latent racism and misogyny made them more susceptible to 1-6 then they would have been otherwise. Still, i feel that there has been a profound communication breakdown between ordinary Americans and the conditions of their own society, which can only be broken through via a grass roots kind of politics that gets people involved in their communities. This sideline spectator stuff led to a catastrophe. The dems and republicans (mostly the dems) wanted a rule of "experts" and technocrats and now we've got the opposite.

it was abandoned because it was redundant and was mostly just a panicky islamophobic PR move. as usual, Team Trump has no idea what they are actually doing/talking about.

xp

This is about confusion breeding recklessness imo

Keith Ellison has got it right. Dems need to be talking to people on the ground, starting locally. Federal politics is apparently so opaque that people didn't know any better than to elect a wannabe autocrat. It defies belief but it happened. If they knew what they were watching they couldn't possibly have liked Trump more than Hillary.

Despite all those mitigating factors, though, and my sincere hope that people in rural america get a fair shake now that the democrats are doing some soul searching, I still consider all Trump voters to be ignorant racists. It's offensive to all people who managed not to vote for him to say otherwise. I believe in redemption but I also think a high degree of indifference, recklessness or malice was necessary for them to do what they did. How we move forward without "alienating" them requires some sidestepping I guess -- I believe in redemption -- but the struggles of the rural poor are not more noble now that they have done this horrible thing. They could have made their point another way.

I don't know if this has been posted here, but this is one of the most harrowing interviews I have read https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/a-frank-conversation-with-a-white-nationalist/

Why do republicans/conservatives have to be such dicks? I've always thought if there were a liberal branch of the republican party I would be happy to sign up. Like get rid of the conservative ideals, accept people in their differences but keep a lot of the economic ideas, great! But I'm beginning to think there is something inherent about the platform that attracts vile and mean people.

Yeah gutting the government to punish poor people -- their economic idea -- is inherently vile and mean

and in the united states inherently racist

The only big "economic idea" the Republican party has had in the last half century is supply-side and it's been an unmitigated disaster for everyone but the very richest people in America. So, you know, there's pretty much nothing to recommend it.

https://twitter.com/crushingbort/status/463132110006784000

any sensible economic idea the republican party ever has gets adopted by the democratic party

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-campaign-neglect_us_582cacb0e4b058ce7aa8b861?mfnm5yh9t7bhjjor

holy shit:

In politics, much like anything else, victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. A senior official from Clinton’s campaign noted that they did have a large staff presence in Michigan and Wisconsin (200 and 180 people respectively) while also stressing that one of the reasons they didn’t do more was, in part, because of psychological games they were playing with the Trump campaign. They recognized that Michigan, for example, was a vulnerable state and felt that if they could keep Trump away ― by acting overly confident about their chances ― they would win it by a small margin and with a marginal resource allocation.

Where was Howard Dean when we needed him.

Why do republicans/conservatives have to be such dicks? I've always thought if there were a liberal branch of the republican party I would be happy to sign up. Like get rid of the conservative ideals, accept people in their differences but keep a lot of the economic ideas, great! But I'm beginning to think there is something inherent about the platform that attracts vile and mean people.

Because the party was completely taken over by reactionaries, authoritarians, bathroom warriors, etc. You can do great things if you stoke the ressentiments in any group of people who already fill victimized by modernity, for example.

of course

http://www.joemygod.com/2016/11/16/julian-assange-to-ask-trump-for-presidential-pardon/

when was the last time the party wasn't primarily reactionaries and authoritarians? 1874 or so?

Not that Nixon was the only one you could blame, but you can definitely blame Nixon.

when was the last time the party wasn't primarily reactionaries and authoritarians? 1874 or so?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z),

I would've been fine with Dewey winning in 1948. Ike was fine too. Who knows how Nixon in '60 would've governed.

So has the republican party always been people of a certain class who wanted to hold on to their land/status/jobs going all the way back to Edmund Burke?

when was the last time the party wasn't primarily reactionaries and authoritarians? 1874 or so?

Reactionaries have been around since the French Revolution, Authoritarians the 20th Century.

They didn't dominate the Republican Party, however, til after Goldwater.

xp - it was still the party of Taft and McCarthy at that time - there was no shortage of reactionaries and authoritarians in its ranks

GOP before Goldwater was East Coast-dominated elites: power brokers, entrepreneurs, landed gentry, moderately liberal on race and economic policy.

The policy shifted to the so-called Sun Belt with Goldwater and assumed its gorgeous racist mien starting with the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, accelerated under Nixon, and coalesced around Reagan.

Republicans and Democrats sorta flipped with each other in the 20s.

Culture War over the Soul of America has been going on since the Adams/Jefferson election, however.

people on FB were pining for Teddy Roosevelt today - fuck, at least Trump hasn't committed any war crimes (yet)

Whatever 'good Republicans' there have been, they've been met in equal force by reactionaries and vile people. The party has been the disease for quite some time.

guys, I'm pretty good with the history of our political parties - the point is that they've still mostly been awful even when large numbers of Democrats were awful in a different way. It's not like there was some magical golden era for the 20th Century GOP

Yeah, the geographic and generational changes are viscerally demonstrated in the diff between Georges Bush HW and W.

one of the less-remarked on reasons (I wonder why...) why Nixon lost in 1960: he didn't call Coretta Scott King after MLK was jailed; JFK did. It cost him hundreds of thousands of black votes that had gone Republican in 1956.

Yep -- Poppy Bush was the last gasp for that kind of Eastern dilettante.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-campaign-neglect_us_582cacb0e4b058ce7aa8b861?mfnm5yh9t7bhjjor

holy shit:

In politics, much like anything else, victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. A senior official from Clinton’s campaign noted that they did have a large staff presence in Michigan and Wisconsin (200 and 180 people respectively) while also stressing that one of the reasons they didn’t do more was, in part, because of psychological games they were playing with the Trump campaign. They recognized that Michigan, for example, was a vulnerable state and felt that if they could keep Trump away ― by acting overly confident about their chances ― they would win it by a small margin and with a marginal resource allocation.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), 17. november 2016 01:15 (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that article also points to why I think Sanders would have won. Based on the same data, he would have been in the Midwest anyway. The problem isn't just what Clinton did wrong, the problem is that nobody knew she was doing anything wrong until it was too late.

I've thought at bit about it and have another idea: Her staff was probably too old. Her loyalty meant that she relied on the same people she's relied on for decades, with Podesta, chief of staff to Bill, as the biggest example. They did rely on old ideas, failed to account for the uncertainty in the Midwest, thought they knew. It's worth noting that Trump went through three campaign managers until he found a team that worked, they ironically ended up finding something that worked because their early failures were so spectacular.

were they though? i mean he did get through the primaries with the earlier ones

I guess the reason I said I would join a liberal republican party is because I do believe in a free market and competition of business, the role of government being to ensure business is not discriminatory or abusive. The moral majority type republican party is what has kept me from ever voting right. Gay marriage, equal rights, choices are a given and shouldn't be a problem for anyone. Happy people and a happy society benefits business and overall market forces. Which is why I get baffled by republicans and have to think they are just mean.

the democratic party isn't about to dismantle capitalism or the free market though

And if you take away the mild government restraints on the market the result is unmitigated brutality and horror

one of the less-remarked on reasons (I wonder why...) why Nixon lost in 1960: he didn't call Coretta Scott King after MLK was jailed; JFK did. It cost him hundreds of thousands of black votes that had gone Republican in 1956.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 17, 2016 12:55 AM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's some interesting stuff about that in this article on Jackie Robinson's relationship with Nixon:

Anything might have happened to Dr. King while in the hands of the Georgia penal system, but it was an election year, and the nation was on notice as to how the two major candidates responded to issues affecting minorities and civil rights. Senator Kennedy called King's wife to express his support. Subsequently, when Judge Mitchell told Vandiver that he would release King if the Kennedys provided him with political cover, Robert Kennedy telephoned and asked him to release King. The judge acceded to the request, freeing King on $2000 bail.

Nixon did nothing -- not for Robinson's lack of trying. He begged Nixon to call King. Nixon refused. "He thinks calling Martin would be ‘grandstanding,'" Robinson told Nixon speechwriter William Safire, "Nixon doesn't deserve to win." In his autobiography, Robinson said that he came close to quitting the campaign and denouncing Nixon on several occasions. He did not, perhaps because of his antipathy for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. Robinson himself had a hard time explaining why he stayed. "It has something to do with stubbornness," he wrote, "about continuing to want to believe in people even when everything indicates they are no longer worthy of support."

After King was released, his father, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. announced he would vote for Kennedy "because the Democratic nominee had called his son's wife to express sympathy on his imprisonment. The elder Mr. King, a Baptist, said he had planned to vote against Kennedy because of his religion." Said Governor Vandiver, "It is a sad commentary on the year 1960 when the Democratic nominee for the presidency makes a phone call to the home of the foremost racial agitator in the country."

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/4/15/4225534/jackie-robinson-richard-nixon-42-movie-civil-rights

I guess this is an xxxxxxp to deej.

Binary thinking is endemic to humans and while it always results in clarity, which makes it enduringly popular, it rarely results in an accurate perception of reality, so that when you act upon conclusions derived from binaries you end up with a plenty of certainty, which feels great, but usually get crappy results.

I'll probably get grief for pointing this out, but the same bullshit thinking that gave us the "having one drop of black blood makes you black" is strangely mirrored by the bullshit thinking that "having participated in one thought, word or action with racist content makes you a racist". It appeals to our innate desire for and worship of purity, but applying purity as the standard to be met by verifiable human beings is only ever going to be good as a stick to beat them with.

Beating all Trump voters with that stick is a feel good move, because they have all participated in an action with undeniable racist content, so you can easily justify the beating. But, as a strategy to deal with this reality, it sucks.

JacobSanders the Republican economic ideology is rooted in the idea that people who are useless to the market as wage earners/lanorers are truly useless and they should just die already to decrease the surplus population. That's why they want to destroy medicare.

Hillary is talking rn on msnbc

man she has aged in a week -- and I don't mean it as a pejorative. Reminds me of how Poppy Bush suddenly looked 80 two days after losing.

I learned to like her over the course of the campaign, having before just admired her tenacity and endurance. It is so fucked up to me that she is not the president right now.

well, Obama is right now

Hopefully i'll die before january for some reason

I guess we'll just have to throw your body onto the barricade and carry on.

it's sad that if people had been behind her and liked her more she wouldn't have had to work so hard and have so much tenacity. i got weary just hearing about her tenacity for months. but that is mostly because as a woman she had to work harder to be taken seriously. also, people just tended to not like her much...for various reasons. it was a double whammy.