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

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.

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 !!!!

It is. Basically taking the weaponization potential of 4chan, GamerGate, etc. and putting the power of the presidency behind it. You don't need actual brownshirts to terrorize people when you have a troll army.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/i-just-wanted-to-do-some-good-d-c-pizzeria-gunman-speaks-out-132745428.html?ref=gs

he was just trying to do some good, guys. with his gun.

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.

i'd like to talk about this too - how about this thread: Is there a thread for the rapid death of the newspaper industry?

xp i really love the phrase 'self-investigate' for some reason

It is. Basically taking the weaponization potential of 4chan, GamerGate, etc. and putting the power of the presidency behind it. You don't need actual brownshirts to terrorize people when you have a troll army.

The troll army is going to be spread so thin they won't be able to spend more than 48 hours or so on any given target, and veterans of GG and prior campaigns (i.e. Graeme Frost) have plenty of advice I'm sure they'll be happy to share. It's the normalization of trolling intruding into real life. Edgar Welch is just the beginning, obviously.

They may be spread thin, but you won't need more than a few highly publicized cases of people's lives being wrecked to start to make just about anyone nervous about speaking out. Which is obviously how authoritarianism works in general -- and in this model, it's using freedom of speech protections (which make it hard to police or protect against trolls) as a weapon against dissent.

There are effective ways to fight back, obviously. But it's still some very bad stuff.

The press (broadly speaking) capitulating and normalizing Trump/Trumpism is a distressing prospect.

On the other hand, the press overtly presenting itself as an opposition entity (or counterweight) also has its problems.

Not least that it will sound (to lots and lots of people) like a nakedly partisan stance. It also makes lots of people kneejerkily question the press's ostensible commitment to the mushy and troublesome concepts that usually get called objectivity/fairness/balance/equal time.

I've said this often enough but "we say nice things about each party exactly half the time, and mean things about each party exactly half the time" is a very stupid criterion of fairness. But a lot of people seem to think that's what it means. Changing that perception is not simple.

If roughly half the people think being "objective" means only being mean to the president half the time, then we have a long ways to go before there can be an active fourth estate that has any legitimacy in the eyes of the public and any ability to inform/educate the persuadable public.

As long as there are tens of millions of people saying things like: Snopes is an Obama mouthpiece owned by Soros; why should I trust the obviously partisan Washington Post/New York Times; of COURSE Politifact and Glenn Kessler are biased leftists... The media's just preaching to the converted and it won't change any of the minds that need to change.

I posted this yesterday: https://washingtonspectator.org/press-trump-perlstein/

As long as there are tens of millions of people saying things like: Snopes is an Obama mouthpiece owned by Soros; why should I trust the obviously partisan Washington Post/New York Times; of COURSE Politifact and Glenn Kessler are biased leftists... The media's just preaching to the converted and it won't change any of the minds that need to change.

The GWB years showed that what changes people's minds is actual experience -- once it became clear that GWB had created disaster after disaster, people became much more open to the media reports that detailed why and how. Something similar is likely with Trump. People won't start thinking the press is less biased, but some number of them will find their own biases aligning with the media's. Probably. But who knows?

less social media-oriented media during the bush years though. none, really

Good point, tipsy: the drumbeat of sleaze from the Bush years eventually took on enough weight to tip public consciousness against that crowd: Heckuva job, Brownie. Wide stance Craig. Duke Cunningham. Cheney shooting that lawyer.

But if I understand the liberal consensus correctly, "let it play out" isn't an acceptable stance in 2016. We (I hear) can't just let the Trompoids make their inevitable mistakes and let the public turn against them in the normal manner of pendulums swinging.

They showed us the playbook. Schumer, Pelosi and Ellison better follow it. Total obstruction, all day every day.

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

The New Yorker Radio Hour did a sketch w/ the election as a script pitch a month-plus ago. "Nobody talks like this..."

The Fourth Estate has been declining (defunded, really) for 35 years, it's just moved into full slapstick mode.

xxpost It absolutely isn't an acceptable stance imo. Everything Trump has said and done has clearly been in bad faith, he's demonstrated no curiosity or desire to learn or grow into the job, he's nominated nothing but overt garbage to his cabinet positions. Christ knows as fucking awful as he is I WANT him to do a good or at least passable or at the very least not actively destructive job as president. I WANT to be able to find things that he does or that he supports that I can get behind. But there's literally nothing there. He wants to ruin a thing just because he can. So, yeah, we have to go in swinging and keep swinging until he's knocked the fuck down.

And Tombot OTM.

Snopes is an Obama mouthpiece owned by Soros; why should I trust the obviously partisan Washington Post/New York Times...

^^^ this whole mindset is extremely troubling to me, and I don't have any answers. I need to completely remove myself from online comment sites, because the ubiquity of this shit is really causing me to lose it:

FRINGE? You mean the entire net, the majority of peoples who seek their news online is Fringe? Hey mainstream media, you are in the minority now, and you are fringe! When you hear the mainstream saying things such as "Fringe" or "Fake" there is a very good chance it is real!!

I think some of that is a demoralization tactic, and we also don't know how many people really think that way. I wouldn't despair at it, but it's also clear that we need media sources that reach people who don't read the washington post or nytimes.

I think a good thing to keep in mind about Breitbart is that it succeeds because (1) it is entertaining to its audience to read and (2) it expressed repressed or unpopular views and feelings that a lot of its readers already have

But also don't despair, we *do* have lots of liberal media sources that get wide readership, it's just hard to penetrate to the other side, people who are diametrically opposed to your world view. And we even have our own fake news and/or shitty reporting and/or distorted/biased media.

I feel like the delegitimization of vociferousness needs to be a key point of attack. These people make waves not because there are so many of them or because their arguments hold any water but because they know that volume (or the textual equivalent thereof) gets attention.

worth mentioning that it's a lot easier to write attention-grabbing stories when you're not interested in providing a verifiable account of reality. just make up some shit!

reality is boring and no-one really wants to read about the tedious process of government. but hell yeah i'll read a story about a kid-fucking ring run out of a pizza place!

It makes me feel a little better to realize that in order to flip some seats, we only need to reach the 15% of Trump voters who don't believe Hillary deserves to be in jail