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

great article about identity politics Treeship.

posted in THE ECHO CHAMBER.

us politics is not a topic of universal interest btw

same for danish politics imo

Most of the time it's of no interest whatsoever to anyone outside the USA other than Fred.

i understand it is not the same as 'nebb posting restaurant recommendations and other valuable knowledge in the San Francisco threads, but it ticks (hehehe) some of the same boxes.

You know who's weird? ShariVari! Why is that dude so interested in Russian politics? What's wrong with him?!?

(sorry mate. you can't always protect everyone)

For a start, no-one knows who anyone is, other than Obama, Hilary and Trump. Bernie registered for about a milisecond. Probably because of that bird landing when he was giving that speech.

but yeah to come back to identity politics, I think it's also fair to admit that it was shaped as a response to the racist, homophobic and sexist policies found throughout US history (same for other western nations, I think this discussion concerns most of the Occident right now). so while I think it's important for a head of government to be as inclusive as possible, media reporting on trans people fighting for bathrooms is obviously healthy for democracy.

we literally covered this exact same fucking ground only a few hundred posts ago. why this entertains you all so much to argue about who should be posting here and why is fucking beyond me.

What seems to be getting lost in the atomization of left/progressive strategies and causes is that the planet is about to get completely fucked. Whether that's because everybody has given up on climate change, assumes Elon Musk is going to solve it for us with self-aware electric everything, or because it's something we can all actually AGREE ON isn't clear. But back to Trump & the GOP's stated first 100 days plans for the environment:

* Lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars worth of American energy, including shale, oil, natural gas, and clean coal.
* End bans on offshore drilling in order to end our dependence on Middle East oil and make America energy independent.
* Sign into law the Senate’s existing bill to build the Keystone Pipeline.
* Cancel billions of dollars in payments to U.N. climate change programs, and use that money to fix our own country.

Shall we try to do anything about this?

also Shakey's wapo link above is indeed good

Good article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-resist-a-trump-presidency-ask-what-would-the-abolitionists-do/2016/11/18/2615a136-a767-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.62f01cbbb0af

not arguing who should and shouldn't be posting here, just that people who don't live here and/or have never lived here -- that relationship of poster to topic is sometimes taken into account.

it's not unusual for canadians to be better informed on american politics than americans

I know a fellow in NZ who follows US politics better than most Americans I work with. ANYWAY!!!!

it's like the opinions of people who have never lived anywhere remotely like middle america feeling oh so knowledgeable about "those people," or mansplaining or ... you get the pattern.

it's not unusual for canadians to be better informed on american politics than americans

― iatee, Sunday, November 20, 2016

what about American optics

just that there is a difference between facts and data and reading the best thinkpieces vs. lived experience

Danesplaining?

it's not unusual for canadians to be better informed on american politics than americans

― iatee, 21. november 2016 01:00 (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nor for Danes!

I lived a year in the US with a roommate from Pittsburgh, for what it's worth.

it's like the opinions of people who have never lived anywhere remotely like middle america feeling oh so knowledgeable about "those people," or mansplaining or ... you get the pattern.

there are lots of canadians who have lived in places more like middle america than I have!

I am a british on this thread, because it's partly our fault

I haven't noticed Fred trying to talk down lived experience with think-pieces?

as one of the "worst offenders" in that department, that says very little

I lived a year in the US with a roommate from Pittsburgh, for what it's worth.

we should literally start a separate thread just to talk about how much that is worth

that was an xp to iatee

I'm getting bored with posters in this thread and Facebook telling a gay man of Cuban descent how, where, when, and why I should or should not be upset about.

I'm all for tactics and strategy but this election wasn't lost because thousands of colliers in Pennsylvania thought Hamilton a repulsive example of anti-American political correctness, therefore we liberals have to "tamp down" identity politics.

Also we have a thread about the MENA region and, with a few exceptions ...

ugh sorry I derailed a dumb discussion into an even dumber discussion ...

It's not unusual to have fun with canadians
But when I see you hanging about with canadians
It's not unusual to see me cry

xp:
Until something is done about the demand side (psst, carbon tax), supply side measures don't matter a great deal. For Bakken shale, its $6-7 cheaper to ship by pipe than by rail, but rail suffices.

Nobody is drilling for oil domestically with $46/bbl. Emissions will continue to slowly decline due to NG being so much cheaper than coal in electricity generation.

The big issue with Trump and climate is the international agreements. Getting to Paris was so hard fought that I fear a unilateral exit of Paris and Rio framework will set the whole endeavor back by a decade.

@Alfred: yeah the left-vs-left blame game is something I also see going on and doesn't seem much use unless it's blaming very specific historical instances and blaming actions NOT people

I mean maybe a few people but like, particular, powerful people who actually need holding to account, not just 'feminists', etc.

it's just "weird" idk that today's discussion has been 1/2 foreigners and ex-pats.

― sarahell, Sunday, 20 November 2016 23:37 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this evening's discussion, tbf. i figure its time related

also, the us election killed the rest of ilx. srsly.

Sanpaku that all seems just a tad sanguine to me. Why should we allow this administration to get away with any of their petroleum-first ideas?

whenever ppl mention "optics" it's always worth asking whose gaze is at issue and honestly anybody who cares enough to follow the slam-bam media trifecta of pence going to hamilton, the cast reading out a high-minded plea, and trump following up publicly with a truly improbable level of petty hostility and comes away thinking that trump really stuck it to those liberal assholes, well, they can go kick rocks. i'm not on their side. they don't just need to be called out, they need to lose, all their candidates and their stupid issues, and lose so badly that no one ever wants to be like them again.

the environmental issues are really scary because I can't see what anyone can actually do. The offshore oil drilling was a major accomplishment (at least where i live) in the 80s. It's frightening to think, as you mentioned, how many decades of work this is gonna roll back.

whenever ppl mention "optics" it's always worth asking whose gaze is at issue and honestly anybody who cares enough to follow the slam-bam media trifecta of pence going to hamilton, the cast reading out a high-minded plea, and trump following up publicly with a truly improbable level of petty hostility and comes away thinking that trump really stuck it to those liberal assholes, well, they can go kick rocks. i'm not on their side. they don't just need to be called out, they need to lose, all their candidates and their stupid issues, and lose so badly that no one ever wants to be like them aga

Those of us most destroyed by the Trump victory watched the Chuck Todds and read Talking Points Memo and paid attention to the daily scrim while men and women who used dial-up to log onto AOL in rural Wisconsin read an email forward sent by a cousin with the subject line HILLARY -- BENGHAZI AND THE TRUTH. Following this shit every day brings one no mental health and doesn't even guarantee the results we want.

sorry -- I pasted Tracer Hand in the first graf.

yeowch!

Where were you when Alfred pasted Tracer

@El Tomboto,

What this administration can do domestically in 4 years is host a bunch more poorly bidded lease auctions.

It can't force private industry to produce fossil fuels from them.
Rig count is catastrophic now for any petroleum drillers.
No one is drilling in the U.S. if they aren't required to by lease provisions.
Nearly every coal operator is in bankruptcy. Even low cost operators in the Powder River basin are losing money.

However, we on the environmental side should be mindful of what this means.
By 2019-20, there will be another oil crunch as in 2007-8. When gas is back at $5/gal there won't be popular support for the demand side measures that are necessary.
2016 was a chance to impose painless (at current prices) carbon taxes, or politicians favorable to them.

Green causes could have won in 2016, but won't in 2020 when actual resource shortages start to bite.

I watched I-732 in Washington state. Here was a campaign in a green state that could have set a model for appropriately pricing in externalities, without intersecting with other debates about the size of government.

That was our chance for sane policy this year. I supported it from a distant state. It only got 42%, because morons from the Sierra Club to Van Jones thought they might in the future come up with a better idea.

Otm

In a state with a regressive tax base and a criminally underfunded public school system, writing 732 as a revenue-neutral measure was a mistake. (In fact the fiscal analysis in the voter's guide posited that it would be revenue-negative.) Whatever the other problems with 732, I would've voted for it if it had been revenue-positive.

Being Canadian is like living in the apartment next door to a really loud extrovert, who's good friends with your roommates. Even if you want to ignore him, the way he lives his life has a significant, material impact on the way you live yours. Last week I came home and he was on my couch & wouldn't leave even after I told him I had stuff to do. "You go ahead and do your stuff. By the way, I've been talking with your roommates and we all agree there's gonna be some changes around here."

canada is acoustic, while the us is plugged into a Marshall stack.

on another note:

trump - everything he does, the sheer ridiculousness of it all - is such an infuriating mind-fuck. i'm finding it u+k to not ruminate on this shit, not let it fuck with me. trying to find that fine equipoise where i stay aware and alert, but not gripped or panicked by the whole thing. four more years of this; we need some mental/spiritual tools.

^

Those of us most destroyed by the Trump victory watched the Chuck Todds and read Talking Points Memo and paid attention to the daily scrim while men and women who used dial-up to log onto AOL in rural Wisconsin read an email forward sent by a cousin with the subject line HILLARY -- BENGHAZI AND THE TRUTH. Following this shit every day brings one no mental health and doesn't even guarantee the results we want.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 20, 2016 5:23 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This feels otm to me. Since the election, I know I've altered the sources/amounts of news media I consume, as well as the way I consume it (obviously while still trying to remain an informed person). The whole thing felt like one of those moments where I realized that for all the time and mental energy I was spending on reading the news, I wasn't actually better informed about the world at all and in some ways was less informed the more I spent my reading hours on it.

Whatever else your local issues, getting emissions down should take precedence.

Period.

I don't expect the U.S. dollar to exist in any remotely familiar form in 2100. Its a useful collective fiction.

On the contrary, our greenhouse emissions will be present in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years where the Earth's carrying capacity is markedly reduced. Billions who will never live, because of our generation.

I've followed the climate issue since 1989, and frankly at this point, I think I'd vote in favor on pandemic plague wiping out half the population (including myself) as that would 1) extend the timeline for solutions, and 2) make the endless droughts/famines later this century less destructive. Just be glad I'm too damaged by knowledge to be electable.

Harsh truths

In a state with a regressive tax base and a criminally underfunded public school system, writing 732 as a revenue-neutral measure was a mistake. (In fact the fiscal analysis in the voter's guide posited that it would be revenue-negative.) Whatever the other problems with 732, I would've voted for it if it had been revenue-positive.

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Sunday, November 20, 2016 8:30 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought the WA Carbon tax would have made the overall tax code more progressive? idg why it has to be revenue positive

Washington state has the most regressive state tax system in the entire country

Sorry to state the obvious. I mean that I sort of see silby's point. Of course I also see Sanpaku's as well.