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

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

5k posts in under a month and, again, I'm compelled to point out we still haven't started yet.
This is gonna get unwieldy.
Do we reboot monthly maybe?

That high vs. low output divide has been the focus of critical geographers for a while. You could read Sassen's 'Global City' now and much of it match up with current realities. It's only going to get worse, I think.

I don't really want to live in a city state though...

It seems like there has to be some opportunity to fight back economically on some level though, right? I'm a little dense in this area, but I feel there must be some way we could leverage our wits/economic advantages to fuck up the right for the next 4 years.

ya, move operations to ireland

I'll repeat: they're not drinking wine, that's a bottle of sparkling water in the wine bucket. Ugh.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 30 November 2016 17:47 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As someone who started drinking late, and had a lot of excellent food before that, I might have to ask you to go fuck yourself here? And I suspect some of ILX's recovering alcoholics might have similar views.

I apologize. Neither is a recovering alcoholic though.

I understand that, but there is no moral imperative to drink alcohol with food?

"Who eats a meal without wine?!" is obv daft fronting but hardly offensive

Beer is ok as well, but putting sparkling water in a wine cooler? Monsters!

in the eighties this was called a "spritzer."

It was also called "gross."

While we're talking about it, on the occasion where we dine fine and get some sort of epic tasting menu, it's the alcohol that messes things up, especially for my wife. By course 15 or whatever she/we're pretty drunk, and she's already full, and adding alcohol further pumps the final price up to levels insane enough that she'd rather stick with water or even stay home. So wine with dinner? Sure. Beer, cocktails, whatever. But I can't begrudge these assholes for going with water, even if, in a sad turn of irony, they're already responsible for millions of people drinking more.

But yeah, sparkling water in a wine bucket? That's pretty lame. Fancy restaurant protocol I thought is to bring the bottled water out as needed? I don't think it's to leave the bottle on the table, at least. Maybe Trump asked, because ... he's the boss! (Cue trombone).

One of the few chuckles I've gotten over this knucklehead the last few weeks is the Office of Government Ethics apparently counter-trolling Trump via Twitter yesterday. But Trump for once has a good point. How do you practically divest of real estate, let alone real estate with your name smeared all over it? You can sell stocks and put money and other investments in a blind trust, but you can't do that with big ugly buildings.

that's not anyone's problem but his iirc