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

yeah a tape is going to come out with him and two underage hookers and I'm sure we'll all just laugh it off

The American public won't even blink when Trump's spirit cooking tapes are released.

Hm. Guys, I'm beginning to think Trump might not make such a good president after all?

I wonder when the post-Brexit buyer's remorse will start to kick in on this one.

The bulletproof glass thing got me thinking. Apart from the problem of having tons of branded properties all over the world that are now suddenly juicy targets for nefarious baddies, isn't Trump probably one of the most blackmailable people on earth? All the stuff that HASN'T come out.. All the financial shenanigans, all the hookers, all the sexual assault victims. People like that don't get security clearances right? Except he will.

actually he's kinda unblackmailable since he's impervious to scandals!

The American public won't even blink when Trump's spirit cooking tapes are released.

just a healthy display of his alpha male dominance

xp err looks like everyone else pointed that out

Jeff Sessions is AG.

I don't really understand why people take these cabinet positions. is being AG a better gig than being a senator? it's not more prestigious, it doesn't make it easier to run for another office and it's a job with a fixed end date. being a senator in a safe state seems like a pretty good job.

Depends on what you want to achieve, I guess. AG has the power to get things done alone that a Senator can't do.

Kanye has unsurprisingly Kanye-esque thoughts about the election

It's a safe bet Kanye will win the presidency in 2020.

I wonder when the post-Brexit buyer's remorse will start to kick in on this one.

kinda getting irritated by all the people praising him for doing some not-horrible things - meeting with Romney, for example. just saw a surrogate say something like "he doesn't care about personal grudges, he just wants the best person for the job" like...oh really?

now this lobbyist ban actually looks like something useful, though I'm sure Trump himself won't abide by it, and I think that goodwill is undone by his position on campaign finance laws, which would essentially let one filthy rich person bankroll a campaign by themselves

I mean, seriously

“It goes back to Trump’s goal to make sure people aren’t using government to enrich themselves,” transition spokesman Sean Spicer said on a call with reporters.

are we not talking about the guy who funneled a ton of donor money through his own businesses? the guy who jacked up his own campaign office's rent fivefold?

They guy who charged the Secret Service $1.6 million to fly on his private 747.

I think we should look to Brazil as instructive -- when corruption is endemic, it's very easy for a corrupt party in power to use it against a corrupt party not in power. I don't think democrats are exactly free of corruption, and it will make them vulnerable.

btw if you follow him on Twitter he's been talking about "saving" a Ford plant which uh...wasn't going anywhere

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/donald-trump-takes-credit-for-helping-to-save-a-ford-plant-that-wasnt-closing.html?_r=0

This is one of his strangest and most disgusting qualities - how many times during the debates did he say "nobody talked about this before I brought it up"? Same mentality which sees the birther crusade as a favor to Barack Obama. Dude is nuts.

he's just shameless. his supporters are certifiable though.

A useful thing in general that I'm trying to remind myself: Trump, his campaign and his supporters rely heavily on trolling. They may or may not believe what they/he says at all times. But they definitely want to rile us up to the point of paralysis and unclear thinking, and I'm trying to avoid that.

kanye is so fucking dumb

Like when Trump just said RBG should resign, my first reaction was fear, but once I got a grip I felt the right response is more "eat a dick."

the ford plant lie is infuriating. he's been the "PEOTUS" for a week and a half. we're going to have to learn to marshal our stores of disgust.

Jeff Sessions is AG.

I don't really understand why people take these cabinet positions. is being AG a better gig than being a senator? it's not more prestigious, it doesn't make it easier to run for another office and it's a job with a fixed end date. being a senator in a safe state seems like a pretty good job.

― iatee, Friday, November 18, 2016 8:36 AM (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

congresspeople, even senators, i'm given to understand, spend the majority of their time fundraising. the rest of the time is listening to people beg you for a line item in a bill somewhere. a cabinet post is like, you get to actually command something, have a budget, hire and fire.

A useful thing in general that I'm trying to remind myself: Trump, his campaign and his supporters rely heavily on trolling. They may or may not believe what they/he says at all times. But they definitely want to rile us up to the point of paralysis and unclear thinking, and I'm trying to avoid that.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, November 18, 2016 9:19 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, they want to provoke a particular response (fear, despair, resignation, capitulation) and it's incumbent upon us to not respond according to their wishes. But beyond even that, I'm trying to remind myself and others to more generally not allow a handful of elected officials and appointees dictate the tone of an entire country.

A useful thing in general that I'm trying to remind myself: Trump, his campaign and his supporters rely heavily on trolling. They may or may not believe what they/he says at all times.

yeah something I'm hearing a lot from Trump supporters in response to all the "he's not doing what he said he was gonna do" stories - "lol we knew he didn't mean any of that". feels a lot like Scott Adams-style "everything that happens fits my narrative because I'm on a different level than you" garbage.

"PEOTUS" - some people call him Maurice

remnick piece on obama was incredible

https://thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6

sarah kendzior is scaring me

I really would like everyone saying "this is not normal" would go back and actually read through the history of the United States and what this country has done to practically every marginalized group it has ever encountered.

It's helpful to say that the path we are currently on is dangerous; saying it's not "normal" is to glibly ignore all of the horrendous things that have happened in this country's history and to falsely conflate "normal" with "good" and "desireable". The problem is much deeper and much more insidious than that. This is, after all, the same country that lynched members of my family less than 100 years ago; in the global scale of history, that was yesterday.

A good 2002 piece on Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.

DJP otm history is always instructive

altho tbf having a totally unqualified/unprepared moron as chief executive is def not normal

re: that Kendizor link "The days of Free Speech may soon end." I'm getting kinda sick of proclamations like this. We're basically building such a bogeyman that if Trump doesn't end up actually having journalists gunned down in the street he'll look moderate against expectations.

Trump’s appointees need to get confirmed. Attorney General-designee Jeff Sessions, whose nomination to a federal judgeship was blocked in the 1980s by a bipartisan group of senators because of alleged racist comments he had made as U.S. attorney, will not be able to coast through the Judiciary Committee, despite the fact he is a member. (In fact, that actually hurts his prospects – because he cannot vote for himself.)

lol totally forgot about this. confirmation hearings will be fun (I bet he gets in tho)

I'm getting kinda sick of proclamations like this.

agreed that hysteria is not a good look. basically the flipside of "they're comin for our guns!"/FEMA camps/we're at WAR WITH ISLAM stuff

xpost Senators voting down another Senator is not going to happen

true, but imagine the grandstanding

the thrilling empty threats, the blatant lies, the partisan bickering

agreed that hysteria is not a good look. basically the flipside of "they're comin for our guns!"/FEMA camps/we're at WAR WITH ISLAM stuff

^alas, that hysteria proved to be effective

on the subject of leftist steps moving forward, just wanted to take a moment to note the two middle-aged glassy-eyed crank socialist white guys who spent their evening last night outside of a town hall for columbia grad workers contemplating our upcoming union election, trying to berate students (who are already being swayed by an aggressive anti-union campaign from their bosses) into voting 'no' because the UAW ''supports trump'' and anyway because unions are a reformist tool of capitalism and only revolutionary politics represent true solidarity with other workers. not the actual workers in front of them, telling them that they personally, desperately, needed this union in order to get paid on time and secure protections against the depradations of trump as well as columbia, but some other workers somewhere else. to be fair they spent most of this argument convinced they were talking to barnard contingent faculty at a barnard event, so maybe those are the workers they were thinking of. suggestions that they leave and find the people they were actually looking for were viewed with evident suspicion --- a classic reformist trick of the economic nationalists at UAW headquarters, no doubt!

mostly i focused on trying to shepherd students up the stairs in good cheer, and making it clear that the intensive loud men shoving flyers at them were not affiliated with our union. i would have rather been helping set up the refreshment tables but so it goes.

at one point, after they switched to calling us the ''columbia faculty'' and waxing on about how it took the bolsheviks (he struggled to get the name right) to bring revolution in russia, i pointed out that i don't stand outside their meetings telling people the communists or some other group that is not the World Socialist Web (or whatever their flyers said they were) are inside, and they accused me of red-baiting. a student felt so harassed by them that she went to get campus security; they said ''the UAW is calling the police on protesters!'' and started filming her (and her six-month-old baby) on their cellphones. solidarity!

Er ''intense'' not ''intensive''

re: that Kendizor link "The days of Free Speech may soon end." I'm getting kinda sick of proclamations like this. We're basically building such a bogeyman that if Trump doesn't end up actually having journalists gunned down in the street he'll look moderate against expectations.

exactly, not trying to underestimate the awfulness here but we're going to slip into this same pattern where Trump gets praised for any little baby steps he takes towards being "presidential"

^alas, that hysteria proved to be effective

yeah but I would prefer our side to be somewhat fact-based

things are gonna be bad enough, no need to go full-blown makin-shit-up-to-be-scary

i completely agree shakey. just making a minor "btw" point.

Things will be bad, things will probably not be as bad as the worst predictions, and the worst predictions would ideally be framed in terms of 'this is how bad it COULD get and why, and here's what you can do to help forestall the malignity' rather than 'TRUMP WILL LITERALLY EAT YOUR CHILDREN IN FRONT OF YOU, BE VERY AFRAID' (which is not at all what I'm suggesting Kendzior's piece does).

The emphasis should be on skepticism, pragmatism, vigilance, and practical positive action.

otm

I really would like everyone saying "this is not normal" would go back and actually read through the history of the United States and what this country has done to practically every marginalized group it has ever encountered.

It's helpful to say that the path we are currently on is dangerous; saying it's not "normal" is to glibly ignore all of the horrendous things that have happened in this country's history and to falsely conflate "normal" with "good" and "desireable". The problem is much deeper and much more insidious than that. This is, after all, the same country that lynched members of my family less than 100 years ago; in the global scale of history, that was yesterday.

― ¶ (DJP), Friday, 18 November 2016 16:19 (forty minutes ago) Permalink

Yes. This is why I hated the "normal" language during the campaign. "Normal" is not the goal here. "Normal" is a false security blanket. Liberal cocooning with grubhub and prestige television. Trump didn't make Jeff Sessions out of clay, he is in the fucking US Senate.

he is made of clay tho

the "normal" language may not be accurate re: history but I think a lot of the intent is motivational - these people having power should not be just another administration, don't become indifferent to the consequences (esp if you don't face any yourself), stay pissed off rather than depressed and hopeless.

isn't this also about the notion of "normalization"—of accepting false frameworks that do violence as inevitable or acceptable

obviously, lots of bullshit is already normalized—black lives matter was largely a push against the normalization of something terrifying & real & violent. I think the push against normalization is OK if it's done w/out acting as if its an exclusively new thing.

it's a bit of a fine needle to thread, to point out that trump is uniquely bad but also teh systems that have rewarded him are just one data point in a long line of structural violence

You can achieve the same effect with "This is not right".