They’re like 120 million people or something
not quite that: about 63 million people voted for him in 2016. so don't worry, just 63 million completely deranged dumbasses to worry about
― It is my great honor to post on this messageboard! (Karl Malone), Friday, 4 October 2019 17:24 (six years ago)
at least a couple of those had to just be going on autopilot
― j., Friday, 4 October 2019 17:36 (six years ago)
*fart*
When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:03 (six years ago)
One might almost begin to suspect that there could, if observed at just the right angle, the merest hint of possible impropriety originating from somewhere within the sphere of the president's influence. Allegedly, mind you. It's very concerning.
― Furter-Bursting Tater Squirter (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:08 (six years ago)
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5a86dc9ed030721c008b4837-750-375.jpg
such worriedvery concernwow
― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:09 (six years ago)
breaking: credulity has been strained
― It is my great honor to post on this messageboard! (Karl Malone), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:11 (six years ago)
it is a mild strain, and credulity is expected to be back to normal in 1-2 weeks
I always forget, are you supposed to apply heat or ice to a credulity strain
― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:13 (six years ago)
press hot spoon against the stye iirc
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:14 (six years ago)
Club soda, or corn starch. Wait, that's a stain, not a strain.
― Instant Carmax (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:18 (six years ago)
best approach to a credulity strain is to pretend nothing is wrong and carry on
― It is my great honor to post on this messageboard! (Karl Malone), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:21 (six years ago)
That's unfair, you know Mitt is currently making That Face as hard as he can rn.
― Furter-Bursting Tater Squirter (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:24 (six years ago)
i don't understand what he has to lose. just come out in favor of impeachment.
― treeship., Friday, 4 October 2019 18:27 (six years ago)
some nut could murder him
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 October 2019 18:28 (six years ago)
I'm not trying to make excuses for him, but GOP Senate is both terrified of and utterly beholden to a base they know is full of violent, stupid nutjobs.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 October 2019 18:29 (six years ago)
mitt romney is not even remotely vulvernable in his own state
― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:31 (six years ago)
it's quite a site to see, their cowardice
― treeship., Friday, 4 October 2019 18:31 (six years ago)
those nutjobs all hate Mitt already
― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:31 (six years ago)
yeah, he's not vulnerable to a challenger. he's more popular in utah than trump, i think.
and even if he was, he is infinitely rich and can do whatever he wants.
― treeship., Friday, 4 October 2019 18:32 (six years ago)
― It is my great honor to post on this messageboard! (Karl Malone)
You make it sound like 63 million Americans are in danger of drowning in their own toilets within the next week. If there are specific issues at play it's the allegiance of 63 million Americans, in a political sense, to the interests of their tribe to the exclusion of everything else. That's clearly a serious problem, but it doesn't make them "completely deranged", just people with an exceptionally high capacity for cognitive dissonance. Certainly this makes them dangerous to us but arguably they are more dangerous to themselves. I feel like the best any of us can do is stop mollycoddling their delusions and quit protecting them from the consequences of their own actions.
Now, that's a hard thing for me to do, because some of the people making poor life decisions are people I love, because standing by and doing nothing makes me feel like the sort of an insensitive asshole who stands around a disaster area loudly declaiming about how the people in question "had it coming".
I don't see myself that way. What I've been waiting for for the past three years at least is for Trump supporters to realize they did, in fact, make a mistake in supporting him, for them to say "On consideration, it seems unlikely that this person will, in fact, make America great again." Yes, it seems very obvious to us, yes, they do in fact seem incredibly stupid and/or deranged for not being able to see that, but after three years of living with these people I mostly get the impression that they're by and large ordinary people, subsceptible like all of us to the influence of the people around us, who have, through some combination of mistake and misfortune, fallen in with a bad crowd.
There are a few people, maybe as few as one, causing whatever this fucked up shit going on right now is. There are a number of other people, the truly dangerous ones, who are supporting the ideologues, working to make this man, who is clearly a deranged lunatic, appear to be a respected authority. Most of these people comprise what we think of, through synecdoche, as "The Republican Party", but there are other organizations who serve that function, most notably, hate to keep harping on this, Twitter.
And the rest? The everyday people, the 63 million? Mostly, from what I can tell, they're just along for the ride. They're going along to get along, they're trying to be Good Americans. They're dangerous in that it's these people who always make the worst abuses, the worst injustices, possible, but changing their minds, ENLIGHTENING them, is as out of our reach as making the President a sensible man is. We can't make them accountable to us, but we also don't need to; they will change if and when it becomes necessary for them to do so. It's not necessary yet.
― Calpico Girlfriend (rushomancy), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:34 (six years ago)
what are the chances Romney makes a run for it again? whether in 2024, or, if by some miracle courtesy of Elohim, Trump gets the boot before 2020 and there’s a gop primary scramble? he knows that most of the ppl who voted for Trump will have to be willing to vote for him, too. that’ll be quite a feat if he evinces anything more than just your garden variety Very Serious Concerns.
― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:36 (six years ago)
oh I totally think Romney is keeping an eye on a Trump collapse, as unlikely as it sounds
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:41 (six years ago)
What a dick
― treeship., Friday, 4 October 2019 18:42 (six years ago)
He should try to facilitate that collapse
Further it
Whatever
t/s: Trump collapse vs. Trump prolapse
― Furter-Bursting Tater Squirter (Old Lunch), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:44 (six years ago)
2024 is going to be nuts on the GOP side.Pence, Pompeo, Haley, Cotton will probably run, touting their Trump sycophancy as a badge of honor. However, the defeated Trump will make noise about running again, keeping them all looking small.
A bunch of weirdos, talk show hosts and actors will either run or talk about running to sell their books, each trying out hardman the other.
Then there will be a Return to Sanity candidate or three: Romney, Ryan or some governor.
― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:45 (six years ago)
Ventura in a landslide
― maffew12, Friday, 4 October 2019 18:53 (six years ago)
If there are specific issues at play it's the allegiance of 63 million Americans, in a political sense, to the interests of their tribe to the exclusion of everything else. That's clearly a serious problem, but it doesn't make them "completely deranged"
yes it does
― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, 4 October 2019 18:58 (six years ago)
rush, you took one thing i said and spun it off into many directions, which is fine. it's hard to respond to because of the number of different points you made, several of which i think are incorrect. to pick one in particular, though, that affects the rest of your argument, i disagree with this on multiple levels: "There are a few people, maybe as few as one, causing whatever this fucked up shit going on right now is". clearly the problem goes beyond Trump. you partly address this by saying that the republican machinery plays a role by "working to make this man, who is clearly a deranged lunatic, appear to be a respected authority." but i think of them as also actively causing the problem, rather than just playing a cheerleader role on the side.
i also disagree with the idea that 63 million trump supporters are innocent bystanders who happened to be fooled by the republican machinery. "The everyday people, the 63 million? Mostly, from what I can tell, they're just along for the ride. They're going along to get along, they're trying to be Good Americans." - i completely disagree with that. they know what's up. they know what it means to support trump. when there's a president that is so publicly racist and corrupt, from before the election to today, voting for him means SUPPORTING his behavior. remember the desmond tutu quote? “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." That is still true.
― It is my great honor to post on this messageboard! (Karl Malone), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:01 (six years ago)
xp
and if you think there's a sizable portion of those trump supporters who have somehow remained oblivious to who this man is, you think even less of their intelligence than i do. and i see them as human brainstems, bumping around and scraping against each other until they finally die and fuck off
― It is my great honor to post on this messageboard! (Karl Malone), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:03 (six years ago)
Oh yes, it's absolutely true. Those 63 million people are all _responsible_ for their actions. Their actions and the beliefs which enable those actions are a problem.
Where I draw the line is the idea that those problems are our responsibility. We are literally powerless to do anything to fix their fucked up shit. The extent to which I don't worry about them is the extent to which even though they may support politicians who want me dead, they will always, in practice, consider me one of the "good ones". It's, how far do we need to go to protect ourselves? How dangerous are these people and in what ways?
Given the right circumstances, in the right situation, yeah these are dangerous people. I wouldn't make any of them prison guards (wait, what do you mean they already are?). So I try to manage the situations in which I encounter these people.
I try to stay out of dark alleys, both in the world and in my own head.
― Calpico Girlfriend (rushomancy), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:17 (six years ago)
yeah we’re talking 3-4 million salvageable Trump voters TOPS. any attempt by democrats to woo the other 60m is just the dumbest shit ever, and anyone telling you differently actually wants the Democrats to lose.
― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:19 (six years ago)
I think a lot of these people are dangerous because they are idiots, which is not necessarily the same as being dangerous idiots. That is, they are profoundly ignorant of politics and policy in all but the broadest sense, if that, but those broad feelings and beliefs are what (unfortunately) drive them to vote. The flip side of these folks is I suppose the people profoundly ignorant of politics and policy who *don't* vote, who are no less dangerous in effect. I think a very small fraction (though big enough) of these people in both groups are actually dangerous individuals, but maybe no more than the general population. I also don't think most of these people are necessarily bad people who mean harm and hurt on others. It's just that they are, again, so profoundly ignorant of politics and policy (for lots of reasons) that they might not consider how the politicians they support enable bad things they may not believe in. Or may not realize the ways the politicians they *don't* support could help further the *good* things they believe in! Doesn't make them entirely defensible, but they're not as bad as, say, someone like Stephen Miller or Trump himself, or militia people or whomever, who are outright sociopaths.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 October 2019 19:28 (six years ago)
That's to say, I think that most people, on a micro, case by case, person by person, neighbor by neighbor basis, would offer aid or support to their fellow American if asked. But many of those same people vote for assholes, or don't vote at all.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 October 2019 19:30 (six years ago)
the good news is there are literally no bad people
― cheese canopy (map), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:32 (six years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBCw4_XgouA
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:39 (six years ago)
I can't cosign map's post in a world that contains Logan Paul
― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:40 (six years ago)
lol
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 October 2019 19:47 (six years ago)
Chris Hayes asking a good rhetorical question: why was the US Ambassador to the EU, of which Ukraine is not a part, apparently handling anything involving Ukraine?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 October 2019 19:50 (six years ago)
xpost (Obviously there are plenty of terrible people, just not that many, probably, but it doesn't take many to ruin things for everybody.)
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 October 2019 19:52 (six years ago)
― maffew12, Friday, October 4, 2019
Finally, The Rock has come back to Washington, DC!
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:57 (six years ago)
However, the defeated Trump will make noise about running again, keeping them all looking small.
Trump is not going to be capable of making comprehensible noises in 2024, or of controlling his own bowels. Like Bush going down the memory hole, the second he is out of office the media will feel safe accurately describing him as a senile, racist, incompetent idiot.
― now let's play big lunch take little lunch (sic), Friday, 4 October 2019 19:59 (six years ago)
totally agree with Josh's take
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, 4 October 2019 20:00 (six years ago)
but that's not Bush anymore, he's that nice fella who gives Michelle Obama candy at funerals
so sez Val Jarrett and those other cogs
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 4 October 2019 20:01 (six years ago)
also trying to predict anything about 2024 now is like trying to predict President Trump in 2013
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 4 October 2019 20:02 (six years ago)
or tomorrow.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 October 2019 20:03 (six years ago)
I had a guy in his early 20s recently ask me "so I've been hearing about democrats and uh what's the other ones? repulicans? yeah. what's the deal with them, what are the differences?". I don't think he's all that unusual in just being totally ignorant wrt politics.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, 4 October 2019 20:04 (six years ago)