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

I know this was commented on even before the election, but I was just jarred by the realization that, regardless of what he actually does or even if he drops dead before his inauguration, the office of POTUS may have been fundamentally altered and tainted by the simple fact that Trump won. How many presidential election cycles are going to be (even more) fucked up circuses of nakedly sociopathic adult babies unleashing their ids first upon one another and then subsequently upon the nation that voted them into office? How do we come back from a president who doesn't care at all about the foundations of the country he's been appointed to run?

All rhetorical questions. Just needed to vent my fresh horror.

A less rhetorical question: how do we get the citizenry to reinvest in a basic knowledge and understanding of civics? How do we sexy up shit like the social contract? Because it's becoming increasingly clear that, if we don't all choose to actively invest in some common core principles, this shit is in danger of unraveling.

Well, a Trotskyite view might be that the worse things get the better.

On that view, people will see how shitty it is when garbage voters elect a shitty president whose administration is full of garbage and whose policies turn out to be made entirely of shit. Perhaps they will recoil from the shit/garbage sandwich and start caring about electing quality humans again.

Public education is already shrilly lambasted for being a liberal indoctrination process. Schools are largely staffed by well-meaning liberal white female Democrats; I'm not sure you can make them even moreso. Kids go to college and reportedly spend all their time cataloging microaggressions, apologizing for their privilege, and seeking safe spaces ringed about by trigger warnings. I'm not sure you can make it even moreso.

On that view, people will see how shitty it is when garbage voters elect a shitty president whose administration is full of garbage and whose policies turn out to be made entirely of shit. Perhaps they will recoil from the shit/garbage sandwich and start caring about electing quality humans again.

It never works this way and no one anywhere on the left side should assume as much, he only gets unseated by active effort.

At this point, I feel like this stuff needs to happen outside of school. I didn't give a shit about government when it was being described in a dry monotone by a teacher who clearly gave an equal amount of shit. But how do you educate people or convince people to seek out education when it isn't compulsory?

I also have no idea whether it's actually true that public schools in red states are staffed by democrats. Not convinced of that.

xxp: Agreed. There's plenty of active effort out there though. Plenty of resistance in the 60+ million people who voted against him and will presumably do so again.

But to put the current anti-Trump coalition over the edge to victory, you need some of his current support to drain away. I don't personally much care whether that's because he turns out to be a hideous shitmonster and people recoil from that, or - contrariwise - because the torches/pitchforks crowd concludes he's not doing ENOUGH.

Anyway, I think it's a mistake to assume that "education" is all we need here. Plenty of educated people become conservative!

the extent to which this guy has already betrayed 90% of the people who voted for him is incredible, really

anyway so what is this deal he supposedly made with Carrier? when did this happen? All I keep hearing is "he's saving jobs already!" but...how??

It's a pretty clever political move that, according to people in the know, is (duh) not as good as it seems. I'll try to find a link.

we're going to be subject to four years of this, huh. "1000 jobs are staying here!!!!" meanwhile everything else is going to shit

labor-involved guy I am fb friends with:

So state of Indiana takes money from public schools to keep Carrier jobs; undisclosed inflated Defense contract payoffs offered. For progressives thinking this is any kind of a good thing, I refer you to a whole organization Good Jobs First (www.goodjobsfirst.org) which has been debunking these kinds of deals for decades. It is the idiot version of industrial policy that saves a few jobs while undermining them for every other worker.

Also they totally went around the union and didn't notify them, but found some rube to say "GEE THAYUNKS MISTER TRUMP" on fox news.

Anyway, I think it's a mistake to assume that "education" is all we need here. Plenty of educated people become conservative!

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Wednesday, November 30, 2016 8:39 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd never suggest that our current problems will be solved by education alone. This is going to have to be a steady assault on a number of fronts. But wrt your latter concerned, I'm less concerned with educated people becoming conservative than I am with uneducated people being played, in the same way that I'm less concerned with how people choose to cast their vote than I am with whether their ability to vote is being actively hindered.

'latter concern'

yeah with no specifics it's hard to tell wtf is going on. especially since the president has no executive power whatsoever at this point. from what I can discern they're still shipping 1000 jobs to Mexico and now most likely getting a big tax break so win/win for them I guess.

amazing how different the headlines look today than what they did when Obama "saved" 1.5 million jobs in the auto industry, but hey

xp also I think Indiana (Gov Pence) offered Carrier some state tax breaks. I don't know how easy it will be to keep pulling off the same move, but I'm sure he'll find some cooperative governors and companies. Maybe even "save" some jobs that were never really going to move.

Of course I wish more people's ideology aligned with mine but ungaming the system so that people can form their own informed opinions and act accordingly is much more important to me.

oh yeah, I'm fully prepared for four years of Trump taking credit for every little thing that goes right between now and 2020, then maybe finding a way to still blame Hillary when the price of gas goes up in a couple years

Anyway, I think it's a mistake to assume that "education" is all we need here. Plenty of educated people become conservative!

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Wednesday, November 30, 2016 8:39 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd never suggest that our current problems will be solved by education alone. This is going to have to be a steady assault on a number of fronts. But wrt your latter concerned, I'm less concerned with educated people becoming conservative than I am with uneducated people being played, in the same way that I'm less concerned with how people choose to cast their vote than I am with whether their ability to vote is being actively hindered.

― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Wednesday, November 30, 2016 9:48 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well that's more a matter of get-out-the-vote operations, helping people get ID in states where necessary, fighting bad legislation, etc. than education.

I spend a lot of time reading Trump forums and comments sections, and these people totally cut themselves off from "MSM". So they just edit out anything critical of Trump. We're always going to have to deal with this problem unless something is done about this refusal to engage in critical thinking. Trump knows damn well he got elected by pandering to people who hate and people who refuse to believe anything they read in the news. If a news story is unfavorable to him, he just says they are biased. There has to be massive pressure on Trump to answer to the idiocy and hate of those who elected him.

This shit needs to be rubbed in his face, whether through massive protests, or mass confrontation on places like Twitter:

https://www.splcenter.org/20161129/ten-days-after-harassment-and-intimidation-aftermath-election

A less rhetorical question: how do we get the citizenry to reinvest in a basic knowledge and understanding of civics? How do we sexy up shit like the social contract? Because it's becoming increasingly clear that, if we don't all choose to actively invest in some common core principles, this shit is in danger of unraveling.

― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch)

my answer is that we don't, not in any of our lifetimes, that first we need to recognize that at least one of the core principles underlying democratic governance has already unravelled.

the basic principle behind voting is that the will of the people, as expressed through elections, is the ultimate defense against tyranny. this principle has failed recently in a number of elections around the globe, most recently and definitively in the united states. we must recognize that elections are not, in fact, an ultimate defense against tyranny, and we must design and implement new systemic defenses against it.

your goal of elevating the level of civic consciousness is a worthy and noble one, but my personal opinion is that the necessary preconditions for this effort to be successful on the required scale do not exist in america, or, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere in the world right now.

I'm less concerned with educated people becoming conservative than I am with uneducated people being played

god, absolutely. it's so alarming how many people out there were so willing to believe stories that had no factual basis whatsoever - as much as everyone blasts the MSM these days they at least have editorial standards

I was talking about this with a (similarly gutted) friend the other day; it's not so much the rise of bigotry that bothers me, it's that people apparently have no standards for fact checking whatsoever, that the snarky "I reject your reality and replace it with my own!" comeback is now apparently a legitimate worldview. cuz one leads to the other, when you follow a site like Breitbart which details every single violent crime committed by a black person or a refugee but stays silent when white people do it, it leads to people holding some pretty internalized racist views. simple really.

to man alive, no disagreement on voter access, GOTV, etc.

FWIW millions more people voted against the clown than for - they just didn't do it in exactly the right places.

Meanwhile: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51099/trump-romney-dinner/

god, absolutely. it's so alarming how many people out there were so willing to believe stories that had no factual basis whatsoever - as much as everyone blasts the MSM these days they at least have editorial standards

I was talking about this with a (similarly gutted) friend the other day; it's not so much the rise of bigotry that bothers me, it's that people apparently have no standards for fact checking whatsoever, that the snarky "I reject your reality and replace it with my own!" comeback is now apparently a legitimate worldview. cuz one leads to the other, when you follow a site like Breitbart which details every single violent crime committed by a black person or a refugee but stays silent when white people do it, it leads to people holding some pretty internalized racist views. simple really.

― frogbs, Wednesday, 30 November 2016 14:59 (seven minutes ago) Permalink

Sure, but the left is susceptible to believing things contradicted by facts too. Politics is emotional. People go to Breitbart because it taps into something they already feel. Maybe those feelings can be redirected differently, but we have to understand that.

otm man alive.

this shit being so emotional and viscerally tribal is why trompe "betraying" the constituencies that electing him is unlikely to make a bit of difference. They got their emotional release from his election; they're not going to turn on him now because they have already gotten the cookie they sought. The middle-finger rush of validation from that giant cosmic "fuck you" is beyond policy and appointments.

I mean democratic politics is emotional too. For a lot of Hillary's she represented something beyond just policy as well -- breaking the glass ceiling, being empowered, etc. Trump's campaign was based on anger, frustration, resentment at feeling left behind and condescended to, fear of rapid cultural change. I do sort of get it, there's something about both Obama and Clinton that can read as aloof to people who are really struggling, Clinton moreso than Obama. This was a vessel for people's anger vs a very closed, walled-off kind of person.

Everyone remembers Bill Clinton for "I feel your pain" -- it's the butt of jokes but everyone who met him at the time said that he made them feel important.

Meanwhile: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51099/trump-romney-dinner/

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, November 30, 2016 10:06 AM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was good. and depressing

That's also why I think Bernie was underestimated as a candidate btw -- people focused on "facts -- he uses the word socialist, he's jewish, etc. But he came across as a tough, sincere and caring guy who voiced people's anger and wanted to make things better, and people responded to that. Counterfactuals are dumb but it would have been interesting to see what he could have done with the party behind him.

the fact that he brought up climate change unprompted over and over again was what made me like him

I was won over to him even though I was almost sure he could never accomplish what he said he wanted to - free college, single-payer healthcare, etc.

Even the appeal to "facts" has an emotional component -- security, familiarity, etc. Professionals are used to dealing with "facts" and "statistics" in certain ways and feel comfortable with people who seem to do the same, even when there is manipulation going on.

"WHEN! WE'RE! under attack! what do we do! / STAND UP! FIGHT BACK!"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/29/fight-for-15-protest-minimum-wage-fast-food-airport-workers

this is an example of how you keep the pressure on

Fight for 15 is a great development

An excellent essay on the electoral college by Scott Lemieux.

people called FF15 crazy but look where they've gotten. 15 is actually less than the average min. wage in the 1960s adjusted for inflation iirc

It's beautifully simple too. Fight for 15, sounds awesome. That's why I had such a problem with Clinton on "I also support a $15 [um REGIONAL] national minimum wage [except some places will have $12]" Wonkily overcomplicating things and sounding two-faced when even $15/hr isn't much, and why not campaign on a pure and simple $15/hr min wage and negotiate later?

it's almost as if she were a centrist technocrat with no idea how to connect w voters

BUT I'M JUST AN UNFROZEN CAVEMAN WITH PIN-SHARP HINDSIGHT

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/803964275756830721

"If Trump did a Carrier-style deal every week for the next 4 years, he could bring back 4% of the manufacturing jobs lost since 2000."

yeah but it would be almost 20% of the jobs obama saved singlehandedly by bailing out the auto industry

there's no greater free market principle than having the president intervene to incentivize specific market decisions

the invisible hand vs trump's tiny baby hands

Oh I don't think he ever campaigned as being free market. He espoused a lot of protectionist policies that go against GOP orthodoxy -- probably moreso than he'll actually back them. I expect a lot of symbolic acts like this with more of the same underneath the surface.

oh for sure, it's just another in a long series of acts by a nominally republican law maker that further confirms the chiefest platform position is "whatever is most politically expedient"

gop platform*

good news everybody:
http://www.wral.com/federal-court-orders-new-nc-legislative-elections-in-2017/16289906/