rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

admittedly I have been getting a lot more sun and in person conversation than many of you presumably are so perhaps my optimism is suspect

I wish that was happening in good, sunny times but I'll take what I can get.

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.)

oh god, now i'm wondering if this doesn't mean that "heightening the contradictions" is an actual effective fucking strategy

i am a chronic depressive who has aced the GAD-7 for several months running so my pessimism is perhaps suspect

The test of this will be what happens with that energy if Biden wins and some sense of normalcy returns.

that is very much something I wonder about

normality will not return when there's this much to clean up, ladies and gents

it will take a while

I'll give one more reason for *some* optimism

recently a set of canadian police chiefs got together, quite out of the blue, to recommend that Canada decriminalize personal drug use across the board - all drugs. probably not a coincidence that this happened amidst the broader national conversation on what, if anything, should be done with police budgets, especially in major cities where they often dwarf money allotted for, say, public housing or transit. if I'm right, this proposal is a (smart!) way to head off rising anti-police sentiment by voluntarily ceding *some* territory, all thanks to BLM (and other) activists throughout the country raising hell. and while there have been many incidents of racist police violence across the country, these events are all unthinkable to me without Americans of conscience first mobilizing in great numbers at home. it doesn't unmake the atrocities but the efforts have mattered and will continue to matter, in ways you may not even consider, is all I'm saying. doompost if you must but I hope you'll organize, too!

cleanup is far in the future. the car crash is still happening. there's just a chance that the back-seat passenger will get flung into the driver's seat and have a turn pumping on the brakes.

i can't see any scenario where a biden win doesn't lead to (at a minimum) scattered acts of violence.

disagree with anyone saying that previous events are equivalent, that there is nothing new, 1968 was as bad, that history repeats itself

this is an unprecedented degree of open corruption, flagrant abuse of power, deliberate degrading of our institutions, disregard for science and education, and contempt for the citizens of this country

preeeeeetty sure Nixon has Trump beat in the "abuse of power" arena

no

preeeeeetty sure Nixon has Trump beat in the "abuse of power" arena

this is an unprecedented degree of open corruption, flagrant abuse of power, deliberate degrading of our institutions, disregard for science and education, and contempt for the citizens of this country

there's a reason "open" and "flagrant" were required to make this make sense. none of the other stuff is new at all

xxpost uhh, yeah, by a long shot. Trump has done some Nixonian things, like fire people who aren't loyalists, or interfere with investigations, but nothing quite on the level of Watergate, which required a Sisyphean level of obfuscation including cover-ups of cover-ups of cover-ups, willful destruction of evidence, ordering the firing of his investigator vis a vis the Saturday Night Massacre, leading to the resignation of several Attorney Generals. He attempted to sabotage LBJ's peace talks in Vietnam....

Nixon would get drunk and try to order nuclear strikes to where Schlesinger/Kissinger essentially told everybody that any military action (nuclear or otherwise) had to go through them first, fearing a vindictive, drunk Nixon in his waning hours was going to outright lose it. He had an "Enemies list" and he and his counsel used it to harass his enemies by demanding the IRS investigate them (which fortunately the IRS seemed to refuse), and using federal mechanisms to screw them out of contracts/grants, etc. He had reporters' phones tapped. his own aides even briefly plotted a murder of a journalist they didn't like though never went through with it.

Fact is, Nixon wouldn't have faced a threat of impeachment in 2020's America, at all....Trump would have back in the Nixon era.

nobody's saying these aren't bad times and they're the scariest of my lifetime atm but "unprecedented", idk about that. disregard for science and education has always been a problem in this country, hence the Scopes monkey trials - it's more visible now because everyone of these anti-science kook assholes has a megaphone via social media, and propaganda travels faster.

after all these years I still just don't understand why they had to keep hitting that monkey with that telescope

it's sad, he was destined to be a Rhode's scholar

xxp the scariest of your lifetime but not unprecedented?

'open' and 'flagrant' are enough to mark this administration as separate from all previous ones

just one example, the deliberate appointment of cabinet members actually opposed to the goals and ideals of the departments they represent?

the scariest of your lifetime but not unprecedented?

How old do you think I am, dude?

every thing I just mentioned upthread happened before I was born

just one example, the deliberate appointment of cabinet members actually opposed to the goals and ideals of the departments they represent?

^ the almost systemic appointment of etc

xpost the fact that there's precedent is pretty much WHY the Trump era is so infuriating, is because we have seen much of this before, know exactly what he's doing or trying to do, and having half of the country willfully believe he's not doing what he's quite obviously doing.

my point is it is unprecedented

...ok

We’ve done this a ton and it’s never so simple...there’s a long list of shit Trump has done that Nixon never did, too.

just one example, the deliberate appointment of cabinet members actually opposed to the goals and ideals of the departments they represent?

Hardly unprecedented, unless you've forgotten Ronald Reagan's Cabinet.

We’ve done this a ton and it’s never so simple...there’s a long list of shit Trump has done that Nixon never did, too.

― singular wolf erotica producer (Hadrian VIII), Friday, July 24, 2020 9:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

like wipe back to front

xp not to this degree

you know he does xp

Between Nixon, Reagan, HW and W there's very little malfeasance that's unprecedented.

xp not to this degree

that means it's precedented!!!!

the scariest thing about Trump, to me, is having cultivated a racist, heavily armed base that he frequently throws the kind of red meat to that even most extreme right politicians usually were reticent to give, and he is willing to use them like junkyard dogs and has them bite who he wants bitten.

using the presidency p much solely to enrich yourself personally and being blackmailed by Russian oligarchs for decades of money laundering is pretty OG you have to admit

where's the tax returns

he's not just a normal historical piece-of-shit republican president

Diverting military escorts to refuel at your golf resorts and purposefully, permanently separating 5000+ children from their parents also groundbreaking

Looking the other way while the planet is frying, also the opposite of what Nixon did

Diverting military escorts to refuel at your golf resorts

Stuff like this shouldn't be added to a list of why we should all be pins and needles about the coming coup.

I don't see a meaningful difference between Trump's relatively small-time personal grifting and all of Bush and Cheney's bros making billions off of Iraq.

I guess for me the difference for me is that those crimes were perpetrated in the name of something like a principle—an obviously perverted belief system, but basically ideological. Something that you can punch back at.

Whereas w Trump there’s nothing there. No values at all, and consequently nothing to fight. It’s like taking swings at a ghost. It’s worse, to me, in that regard.

I was unsure in 2016 if Trump wouldn’t actually be better than a Cruz or a Pence. I suffer no such illusions anymore.

I was always worried about a moment like COVID-19, not specifically a pandemic, but a national emergency that required leadership and he shits the bed and gets people killed.

the fascist stuff is stuff I thought he would tamp down when he took office and that he was just saying inane shit to get elected, but...nope.

"trump's relatively small-time personal grifting"

this is gaslighting. every bit of understanding of what elements of the law we can and will enforce has nefariously shifted under this administration

can we stop using the word gaslighting as a stand-in for "I disagree with what you're saying"

like it's pretty obv I'm by far not the Cap'n-Save-a-Milo of the board but I don't think he was attempting to psychologically manipulate you

I don't think it's wrong to say Cheney was a more successful grifter than Trump

fwiw I agree with a lot of what milo’s been pointing out about previous GOP administrations, but I also agree with what Dan S and others are getting at with regard to Trump’s creeping erosion of multiple institutions in a way that none of his predecessors had the imagination to attempt.

All that said, he still doesn’t get to keep being president after he gets his ass kicked in November.

grifting is the least of it

hope he will lose in November, can hardly wait

every bit of understanding of what elements of the law we can and will enforce has nefariously shifted under this administration

Bush's institutionalized use of torture is much more horrifying and important, for one thing, than Trump's grifting. The security state's expansion and its abuses are an 'element of the law' that was nefariously shifted, apparently permanently, to be continually used by Democrats and Republicans alike.

I see no evidence that Trump's personal abuses will be institutionalized, unless we think Joe Biden's gonna throw some business Hunter's way (I don't).

I was born in 1978. My main reason for thinking Trump is worse than Nixon et al. is that he is blatantly, profoundly horrible at foreign policy in a way that we haven’t seen since JFK.