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

http://i.imgur.com/ofV18V5.png

Newt GingrichVerified account
‏@newtgingrich
75 years ago the Japanese displayed professional brilliance and technological power launching surprises from Hawaii to the Philippines

Somewhat off topic and inspired by the Ohio bill above, but is anyone familiar with the literature/public discourse of the reproductive rights movement from before Roe v. Wade in the 50s and 60s. Did they have their own version of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring? Right now, my mind is a blank. I imagine pulp novels where loose women "got their due" at a hack abortionist, but to me, there's like a big cultural void in discussing this outside of law courts and narrow confines of reproductive rights feminism before the early 70s.

it just feels like this whole transition has been run by a clutch of dipshit rich kid villains from a savage steve holland movie, guys who don't care about anything except being dicks

Anyone listening to Robert Reich trying to talk sense to Jeffrey Lord on CNN? It's stupefying.

It all just keeps getting worse and worse

yeah running out of small things to be hopeful for

i realize you can all puncture my argument for hope intellectually here but what is the point of that? i am probably younger than most in this thread (or on ILX) and my generation makes me hopeful. and i worked in ed and the kids younger than i give me even more hope. they're smart and informed and capable. you should root for them, and subsquently yourselves

just the settling on accepting all things fucking dire gets really exhausting and i've only personally managed to break out of that, i think logically you are all correct but how does that help anyone, let's get absurd and not agree to this. the worst that can happen is that we die and that's bound to happen sooner or later

Counterpoint: young ppl make me sick

we could die slowly

when I feel despair I try to remember just how many times before America has gone through horrifying shit. We had slavery, we had a civil war, we had jim crow, we had all kinds of restoration-era mayhem, the depression, mccarthy, nixon etc. I mean I try not to get into that "well fuck this is going to ruin america now!" mindset because that implies that America was ok until now, but it only had relatively short periods of okayness, and never for everyone.

I feel like the deep government might kick in and restrain Trump

More specifically i think people in the intelligence community might know he is going to get impeached due to the conflict of interest stuff. That gives us pence which sucks but might be a "safer"adversary now. I think this bc i cant imagine the head of the fbi really wanted trump, as it now appears

Counterpoint: young ppl make me sick
― sleepingbag, Wednesday, December 7, 2016 11:20 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tell me more

what's the last population of young people you've encountered and where and who were they? i'm confronting you on this because i'm probably gonna have to deal with more of the fallout (no pun intended i hope) from this bullshit than you will, so i definitely fucking scorn your cynicism

yeah, go young people, but also they didn't fucking show up to vote in 2016 (4th lowest turnout since 1972), and the white young hopeful people voted for trump 48-43

Jesus, seriously? Do you know the age range for that? Is it under 30 or under 40

18-29

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/what-this-election-taught-us-about-millennial-voters

(based on exit polls so apologies if i'm spreading total bullshit)

when I feel despair I try to remember just how many times before America has gone through horrifying shit. We had slavery, we had a civil war, we had jim crow, we had all kinds of restoration-era mayhem, the depression, mccarthy, nixon etc. I mean I try not to get into that "well fuck this is going to ruin america now!" mindset because that implies that America was ok until now, but it only had relatively short periods of okayness, and never for everyone.

not picking on your post in particular - lots of people have expressed very similar attitude, and it's probably a healthy attitude! i wish i could have that attitude and whistle on my way to work, if i had a job - but my initial reaction is that while the country/ imagined community of the united states survived these terrible things before and remained intact, that doesn't negate the suffering of all the people whose lives whose lives were shattered. yeah, the idea of the country carried on but it fucking BLEW for a lot of people. that makes me feel despair. if there was some sort of deal to prevent the suffering of non-white men over the next 4 years in exchange for a miraculously peaceful dissolution of the united states, i'd take it in a heartbeat. yes, we will suffer through trump and we will see horrifying shit and life will continue, horribly, for millions of people. the rug is on fire and it's spreading to the curtains and the fire department is 25 miles away, but yes, we will take our vital possessions or our hamsters with us and find a new place to live

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-12-07/trump-team-is-said-to-consider-thiel-associate-o-neill-for-fda
https://www.statnews.com/2016/12/07/trump-fda-oneill/

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump is weighing naming as Food and Drug Administration commissioner a staunch libertarian who has called for eliminating the agency’s mandate to determine whether new medicines are effective before approving them for sale.

“Let people start using them, at their own risk,” the candidate, Jim O’Neill, said in a 2014 speech to a biotech group.

O’Neill, has also called for paying organ donors and setting up libertarian societies at sea — and has said he was surprised to discover that FDA regulators actually enjoy science and like working to fight disease.

A source close to the Trump transition team told STAT that Peter Thiel, the billionaire Trump donor who is helping shape the new administration, is pushing for the FDA appointment for O’Neill, his managing director at Mithril Capital Management.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i wonder if i should make appoint jeffrey dahmer as my babysitter

i don't know there are lots of opinions out there but his handshake is firm and my pal dave berkowitz speaks very highly of him

plus you want to kill your children

slightly worse than donald trump, who wants to have sex with his children. and melania, who also loves her children very much

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cy93oDzVQAAvU9A.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-2RnCSUUmM

I've battled on the hopefulness/hopelessness front of not wanting to exaggerate the horrible possibilities of the future - in part knowing I'm part of the most privileged class to ever exist as a straight, white American male and not wanting to overstate the ways it might effect me and how we (as in people, not the country, fuck the country) have made it through worse.

At the same time, I'm economically precarious. A lower-middle class small business owner who has to keep the balls in the air or else my life is ruined and the lives of other people I care about and my options for rebuilding afterward are basically warehouse temp work for $12 an hour if I'm lucky.

I can't even really conceive of a 'future'- I don't have any hope that this gets better. Even if technology cushioned a blow from climate change, it's going to cushion the economically advantaged. That same technology and automation are just going to make it harder and harder for the average person to maintain any semblance of a reasonable life and the few ideas that exist to offset that - minimum basic incomes and comprehensive social safety nets - are never going to happen here. All I fall back on is at least I don't have dependents. My parents are aging (65 and 71 as of January) and have no savings or 401Ks or anything because they've always been working/lower-middle class people who prioritized immediate comfort (which I have no problem with) and that's terrifying but not in the same way I'd be in a constant state of anxiety if I had kids.

A libertarian acquaintance posted on FB about how American industry is doing fine it's just that technology is making jobs redundant etc. and how instead of pining for the old days you have to re-train people... but his 'solution' was 'now instead of manning the machines you have to learn to place ads on Facebook' and I don't know how anyone can reasonably think the low-end of tech jobs are in any way secure (in terms of existence or simply providing income to live on).

Man, given that so many cabinet positions are being filled by people opposed to the very departments they oversee, whether the EPA or the Department of Education or whatever, I am really not sure what there is to be hopeful about.

global tetrahedron, I think the social activism thread is a good place to go for the positive and constructive vibes you're looking for. This thread seems to focus more on the mind-wrenchingly horrifying things that necessitate constructive positivity as an alternative to biting through the cyanide capsule.

I think any writer of fiction who was crafting a villainous character would probably pull back the reins before they got to Trump's level of OTT unbelievability. I honestly feel like he's working to exceed everyone's vision of how bad he could be. And we're still over a month away from him even taking office.

i may have said this elsewhere on ilx, but i'm now almost certain that the world did in fact end in december 2012 with the running-out of the mayan calendar and we're now living a half-real netherworld existence being controlled by a cruel and capricious god

it's almost more comforting to believe that tbh

Trump could privatize the nation's air traffic controllers

http://reut.rs/2gFiD9z

This is the type of shit that seems so unnecessary, expensive, and dangerous that I am shocked anyone would come up with it. What possible benefit could this have?

profit

Ah yes, the only important thing. How could I forget?

feels like there'll be plenty of opportunities to be reminded between now and 2020

Well, you see, Donald Trump is basically cancer. There's no reason why it spreads malignance and destruction. That's just what it does.

Donald Trump insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.

This idiot is sending the alt-right army after individuals and doesn't feel any responsibility. But surely he'll unify the country soon amirite?

once the unrighteous are cleansed all that will be left is unity

i may have said this elsewhere on ilx, but i'm now almost certain that the world did in fact end in december 2012 with the running-out of the mayan calendar and we're now living a half-real netherworld existence being controlled by a cruel and capricious god

― Rush Limbaugh and Lou Reed doing sex with your parents (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 8 December 2016 13:31 (fifty minutes ago) Permalink

does this mean leicester city winning premier league is not canon

It's the leicest timeline

I feel like starting a separate thread on the fourth estate's slow collapse in the face of Trump, fake news and clickbait / ratings worship, but I'm sure we already have one somewhere.

does this mean leicester city winning premier league is not canon

we're living in a post-fact world so everything's up for grabs imo

cool. Pardew never did that touchline dance at the FA Cup final.

We still lost, I'm cool with that. But the dance definitely never happened.

er, possible tangent.

nothing is real, everything is permitted

grasshopper

Donald Trump insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.

This idiot is sending the alt-right army after individuals and doesn't feel any responsibility. But surely he'll unify the country soon amirite?

this is an attack on a normal private citizen not some media elite or political opponent . With one tweet the fucking president-elect can ruin some guys life just because he called him out on his lies. This is scary as shit !!!!

when I feel despair I try to remember just how many times before America has gone through horrifying shit. We had slavery, we had a civil war, we had jim crow, we had all kinds of restoration-era mayhem, the depression, mccarthy, nixon etc. I mean I try not to get into that "well fuck this is going to ruin america now!" mindset because that implies that America was ok until now, but it only had relatively short periods of okayness, and never for everyone.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Thursday, December 8, 2016 12:24 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not picking on your post in particular - lots of people have expressed very similar attitude, and it's probably a healthy attitude! i wish i could have that attitude and whistle on my way to work, if i had a job - but my initial reaction is that while the country/ imagined community of the united states survived these terrible things before and remained intact, that doesn't negate the suffering of all the people whose lives whose lives were shattered. yeah, the idea of the country carried on but it fucking BLEW for a lot of people. that makes me feel despair. if there was some sort of deal to prevent the suffering of non-white men over the next 4 years in exchange for a miraculously peaceful dissolution of the united states, i'd take it in a heartbeat. yes, we will suffer through trump and we will see horrifying shit and life will continue, horribly, for millions of people. the rug is on fire and it's spreading to the curtains and the fire department is 25 miles away, but yes, we will take our vital possessions or our hamsters with us and find a new place to live

― Karl Malone, Thursday, December 8, 2016 12:55 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ive been trying to have the attitude that man alive has. this is not the first time we've had a white supremacist monster running the country, it won't be the last either. this is not the first time we've had appointees who hate the very departments they've been appointed to run. we've been through worse.

it could be much worse too, i just read that nytimes thing about duterte murdering people in the philippines and bragging about it and it is so gruesome. but still ultimately things will get very bad here, i have little doubts about that, and this is a major, major step back for us. who knows what will happen in 2020 or 2018 but nonetheless it is easy to imagine this presidency inflicting significant, lasting damage that extends far beyond trump's term in office

I would love to have that attitude, but none of those previous eras of suckitude occurred after we had made so much progress that could be rolled back.