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

Looking for clues and reading between the lines and putting puzzle pieces together is fun. That shit goes viral and gets upvotes and generates conversations and sharing. It resembles the kind of fun one has with characters in movies or HBO shows.

xpost to self

Trump's dirt isn't very exciting in that regard. It's all just there. So much so that it's exhausting to sift through and the impact of any particular scandal is dulled in context.

Blatant corruption makes you feel hopeless--like it's already RIGHT THERE and nothing happened to it, fighting it now is probably a losing battle. Whereas SECRETS make you feel like you can be powerful just by TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING that *someone* doesn't want talked about. Way easier lift.

And with secret corruption, who knows how big it could be?!

yeah good point. the email "scandal" was fascinating in that everyone could look into it and find their own opinions of Hillary reflected right back at them. those 33,000 deleted emails could be ANYTHING! plans to sell off gov't secrets, MURDER PLOTS PERHAPS??

but I disagree with Evan on one thing, Trump's dirt almost certainly isn't all "out there"...yes, there's a lot out there, but given how basically everyone who ever worked for him or was married to him had to sign a massive NDA, who knows?

clinton deserved the criticism she got for her iraq vote but seems odd that joe biden basically never got any for his

biden wasn't running, and it became clear that in the obama WH clinton pushed for more hawkish policy while biden was more of a dove. showing that you've learned from your mistakes is a nice quality

And you would have to pin a bunch of pictures up on a board with lines drawn between them in order to visualize the web of deception/lies/corruption with Hillary's face right in the middle. And if you found something revealing you could write a post on reddit with the title "Guys, I think I just found something big. This goes higher than you think." So much fun!

xposts

Also: it was widely reported he held rosary beads during Bin Laden raid

biden wasn't running, and it became clear that in the obama WH clinton pushed for more hawkish policy while biden was more of a dove. showing that you've learned from your mistakes is a nice quality

― k3vin k., Wednesday, November 30, 2016 10:21 PM (one minute ago)

yeah no argument here

but I disagree with Evan on one thing, Trump's dirt almost certainly isn't all "out there"...yes, there's a lot out there, but given how basically everyone who ever worked for him or was married to him had to sign a massive NDA, who knows?

― frogbs, Wednesday, November 30, 2016 5:19 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, to varying degrees. I mean, there's a lot of it.

I was speaking relatively.

Trump's big advantage was that his corruption didn't matter as much, if you're in a crap situation in life you don't blame Donald Trump (unless you're one of the thousands of contractors or investors that he dicked over), you blame politicians like Hillary Clinton.

and yeah - there certainly is a ton out there and by all rational measures it should have shot him down ten times over. even the argument that Hillary's scandals were more "mysterious" and/or "secret" doesn't feel right - Trump turned over basically nothing about himself, we know nothing about his business interests, who he owes money to, or what's in his tax returns, while Hillary volunteered basically everything.

I would feel better if we stopped it with the post-mortems tbh. The only real lesson from the election is one that's been in place since idk at least Reagan - the only thing that matters to the voters that decide elections is a believable illusion of authenticity. Everything else is secondary.

Yeah. If I take any comfort from the election, it's that it was no presidential election was no “referendum” on liberalism; forty-five percent of voters said in exit polls that they wanted the next president to be as or more liberal than Barack Obama.

Basically the voter that swings elections literally is that guy who's thought processes re: politics go no farther than "does that guy seem believable to me? does he seem like an actual person/does he fit a recognizable archetype I find appealing?" That's it. There is nothing else involved. No principles, no policies, no positions, no facts, nothing.

Whereas 55% ...

were not distributed in the necessary proportions

"does that guy seem believable to me? does he seem like an actual person/does he fit a recognizable archetype I find appealing?"

yeah this is a big part of it and IMO why I still feel Bernie would've had a shot, a lotta people turned away from Clinton because she felt so robotic and focus-grouped.

they turned away from her because she was Hillary Rodham Clinton, the band they've known all these years.

And still 'they' preferred her by the millions. Except where it mattered most. (And where Sanders would probably have done better. anyway)

Welcome to ILX's favorite bullshit authenticity argument, late 2016 flavor.

many xps but Derek Black's op-ed in the Times this weekend was pretty heartening i thought
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left-white-nationalism.html?_r=0

And you would have to pin a bunch of pictures up on a board with lines drawn between them in order to visualize the web of deception/lies/corruption with Hillary's face right in the middle. And if you found something revealing you could write a post on reddit with the title "Guys, I think I just found something big. This goes higher than you think." So much fun!

xposts

― Evan, Wednesday, 30 November 2016 22:21 (one hour ago) Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buzzXclC5vA

remember oppo dump? I just remembered it. now I think there is no oppo dump in the world that would matter

oppo dump is basically Santa Claus

Yeah, I realize now that Trump's behavior needs to have a direct impact on some people in order for it to matter. You can be sure those former contractors and ex-wives and assault victims didn't vote for him. He'll need to engage in some highly-visible shady shit that has a negative material impact on some people before they'll turn on him.

I wonder when he's planning to have us sign our NDAs.

Vicious cycle: Trump elected, doesn't fix anything in 4 years, re-elect to give his shit time to work (plus he's a guy I'd get a beer with, you know?), doesn't work, either another GOP or Dem gets elected, spends all their time (a la Obama) fixing previous mistakes. Repeat. See also: obstructionist congress claims gov not working, president uses executive action for results, new president elected, reverses executive actions, repeat forever.

Oh, and the Supreme Court implodes.

Our country is fucked. There is no more hope in the next decade than there is in blinding chucking a basketball from half-court in hopes of getting a basket.

I wonder, what would happen if things got really bad, in terms of corruption and crime, and nothing was done about it? What recourse is there? What if the Dems just ... walked off the job?

It's hard for me to predict what will happen because Trump was such a curveball. Maybe we'll have a peaceful communist revolution and all Americans will voluntarily turn in their guns. Who knows.

I could have maybe predicted the possibility of an authoritarian demagogue, maybe even one with an entertainment background, but the insanity of the past 17 months flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about the American electorate.

What recourse is there? What if the Dems just ... walked off the job?

Either they get replaced by assholes or dragged back in for quorum. This happened in Texas when the state GOP wanted to gerrymander the place in the late 90s

I like the idea of the dems proposing a 50 state "atlas shrugged" strategy

pretty sure the odds of another global financial meltdown caused by some fucked up derivatives are pretty high in the next 4-8 years

yeah. this election felt a little bit like having a relative who just got a liver transplant take up drinking again.

Xpost 4-8 years? Try, like, 10-14, so the next guy takes the fall, and Trump will probably be dead anyway.

A bit off topic, but this is what we're up against (I don't think the edit distorts too much):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnaSvvSqY-8

The most vulgar, godless character to win a major party's nomination in several lifetimes, and here he's being treated as the hand of Jesus. There's an alternate reality out there, and there's no way any of us can effectively effectively confront it. They have their own media, their own collective delusions, and they're all members of a nihilist apocalyptic faith.

I wouldn't overestimate the size of the constituency of Jim Bakker -- it's a slice of Trumps base but it's not Trump's base.

He's a longtime televangelist con man and his current thing is selling grossly overpriced survival food.

That video is amazing though and dark as fuck.

xp: Obviously, there's quite a few groups contributing to Trump's 38% approval ratings. The kooky pentacostals, the white nationalists, the coal rollers, the diehard 'R' cheerleaders, the internet nihilists, the moneyed opportunists, etc

On a purely technical basis, how does one get through to any of these? They're immune to factual reporting, science, any emotions resembling empathy or compassion.

I don't think you need to get through to his hardcore supporters. He probably only squeaked by in this election with the help of unenthusiastic supporters who either disliked Clinton more or just didn't know much. Those are the only ones I'd bother trying to reach.

Right. The Christianists, the white supremacists, the money men, the anti-environmentalists .... those people weren't voting for Obama either. There are a lot of pretty normal people who are not locked in a crazed epistemic loop who voted for Trump and who next time will be perfectly open for voting for somebody else.

That WaPo article was a fantastic read-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html

That is a fascinating story.

https://twitter.com/therealbradg/status/804048624615198720

wapo piece on derek black was outstanding and gave me a little hope

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/president-trump-can-send-emergency-alerts-to-everyone.html

lol

I assume something none of us can foresee will happen "next"

The only real lesson from the election is one that's been in place since idk at least Reagan - the only thing that matters to the voters that decide elections is a believable illusion of authenticity.

Give Clinton credit, she tried faking it as many ways as she could come up with.

of note: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/11/29/another-clinton-trump-divide-high-output-america-vs-low-output-america/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=metro