US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

I assume there's been some "Thank you God, for saving Mr Trump and his holy objective to etc..."

I feel like a lot of the pearl-clutching and 'please don't die, Donnie' bullshit from liberals comes from a desire to hold on to the last remaining threads of normalcy in this country. As I was discussing with my friend the other day, it feels weird to have a Presidential candidate face an attempted assassination, and my initial gut reaction is - "fuck, wish he had better aim". It shouldn't feel very good to have something like this happen, because it's often correlated with societal breakdown, as political assassinations are often a 'break glass in case of emergency' for the oppressed to send a message and shift the balance of power, even if only temporarily.

Not reacting with shock or distress feels counterintuitive, because at an earlier point in time that was less tribalist, there would have been greater unity and time for reflection. but instead, it just illustrates how far gone and perhaps irredeemable we are, and nevermind the fact that there are plenty of great reasons to not feel sympathy for Trump since it's part of the culture he fostered, people want to believe that maybe this will be Ozymandias's octopus that might repair some of the rot.

It won't. we're already past the event horizon. the fight is important but can't be fought if you actually think there's a chance of undoing the damage of the last 8 years - it's done, keep fighting and understand things will be uglier than they've been in a long time along the way while you do.

Its not counterintuitive to me at alll. It doesnt feel bad because it doesnt feel bad when fascists get shot. It’s usually what ends up happening!

well yes, all of us in this thread it doesn't feel that way because we all hate Trump and believe him to be a fascist. I was cracking jokes about it minutes after the fact.

but these are 'center-right' libs I am describing

Fair

it's wild to me how many people in my circle have been lamenting the shooting were the same people who publicly joked about Biden 'calling Seal Team 6' after SCOTUS's ruling basically granting the President immunity.

like be consistent at least

The US Secret Service did not sweep the building from which the shooter in Saturday’s attempted assassination was perched, but instead leaned on local law enforcement to conduct security at that location.

The spokesman added that there was supposed to be local law enforcement posted in that area, but it is not clear where that post was supposed to be located. A source not directly involved but with knowledge of Secret Service operations described possible roaming posts, for example, as part of some operational plans.

The Secret Service regularly and successfully works with local law enforcement agencies to assist with securing events, as is the case in Milwaukee where the Republican National Convention is about to kick off.

Further, the Secret Service utilized two local counter-sniper teams during former President Donald Trump’s rally, in addition to two Secret Service counter-sniper teams.

The spokesman did not know at the time of CNN’s inquiry which local agency should have been responsible for the building.

local law enforcement, welcome to the resistance

how far gone and perhaps irredeemable we are

I had CNN in the background for a couple of hours last night, one of their panels, with the requisite Trump mouthpiece, and it was like people were trying to remember the script for something like this from 20 years ago, and it would work for a couple of minutes, everybody saying the right thing, and then someone would push a button, and they'd be right on the verge of going at it, and then they'd pull back and start over.

I mean I felt v different about the Scalise thing in 2017, posting:

I feel generally uncomfortable being jocular about this shooting. considering I remember how upset I was at Giffords.

does'nt mean dude isn't probably a humongo turd but not really cool w/ gun violence in general.

― Charles "Butt" Stanton (Neanderthal), Wednesday, June 14, 2017 11:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

but the last 4 years have felt like a century and jaded me significantly

I think seeing a million pictures of GOP candidates toting semi-automatics just gives me a "chicken coming home to roost" feeling

as it should

Documents case dismissed lol

obvious point to make, but trump's rallies are so explicitly and profoundly pro-violence it's just really hard not to be like "wtf did you expect?" about this. "political assassination attempt" feels like a category error to me; as others have pointed out, it has the same vibe as a school shooting. I can't be the only one who flashed on those AR-15 christmas cards and lapel pins when they heard about this (xp)

side note: what does "Ozymandias's octopus" mean?

Jfc xp

🚨🚨🚨MAJOR BREAKING: Judge Aileen Cannon has just DROPPED the classified documents case.

This is NOT the good news it first seems. Here’s why:

Jack Smith can now IMMEDIATELY appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

That court is likely to be… pic.twitter.com/h6cNRfQPVq

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) July 15, 2024

though even in that case, it won't be done prior to election after which Trump will dismiss his own case so......

it's a watchmen reference (octopus)

ohh *that* ozymandias lol

The fetishization of non-violence among the liberal-to-left leaning part of the electorate in the US is really unfortunate imho. Of course I want to believe in turning the other cheek, and do to a certain degree, but when the state begins deputizing citizens to join in its monopoly on violence, as is the case with the MAGA crowd, then people on the left need to reevaluate their positions on violence.

otm

I cracked several years ago. I've almost gotten in fist fights.

https://wapo.st/3Y3xB0B

Trump appointed judge Aileen Cannon dismisses Trump documents case claiming special counsel was inappropriately appointed . Will be appealed

Further, the Secret Service utilized two local counter-sniper teams

buried in the details, an incredibly revealing statement about our country: the police department of Butler, PA (population 13,502) apparently has not one but two "counter-sniper teams." even assuming that they joined forces with some neighboring township, this is such a ghastly testament to generations' worth of the "Riotsville, U.S.A." mentality.

this being America, i guess it's also possible that the counter-sniper teams are just enthusiastic volunteers from local gun ranges, or middle-school sniper clubs, or something.

X-post

Justice Thomas's "Cannon-currence" worked.

(In the Trump immunity case, Justice Thomas wrote separately to suggest the special counsel was unlawfully appointed; the reasoning laid out the roadmap for this (wrong) result/decision.) https://t.co/r58hw7DK7K

— Leah Litman (@LeahLitman) July 15, 2024

it's wild to me how many people in my circle have been lamenting the shooting were the same people who publicly joked about Biden 'calling Seal Team 6' after SCOTUS's ruling basically granting the President immunity.

― rick beato meato manifesto (Neanderthal), Monday, July 15, 2024 8:53 AM (twenty minutes ago)

like be consistent at least

― rick beato meato manifesto (Neanderthal), Monday, July 15, 2024 8:53 AM (twenty minutes ago)

almost as if jokes are jokes? I think if the public dialogue is completely acerbic jokes and jingoistically yelling shit about your political rivals the tenor shifts. half of how we got here is the end of "oh, you can't say that in public, we're just joking among friends" and the eversion of the public internet dynamic where you can say things with no real stake into public speech. if people don't get that it's joking, it's not joking

I take no pleasure in it, but I'm glad that I've never deviated from beating the 'Trump will never suffer a single consequence' drum. So traumatized from having false hopes shattered, no hope is the way to go.

I feel like a lot of the pearl-clutching and 'please don't die, Donnie' bullshit from liberals comes from a desire to hold on to the last remaining threads of normalcy in this country. As I was discussing with my friend the other day, it feels weird to have a Presidential candidate face an attempted assassination, and my initial gut reaction is - "fuck, wish he had better aim". It shouldn't feel very good to have something like this happen, because it's often correlated with societal breakdown, as political assassinations are often a 'break glass in case of emergency' for the oppressed to send a message and shift the balance of power, even if only temporarily.

Not reacting with shock or distress feels counterintuitive, because at an earlier point in time that was less tribalist, there would have been greater unity and time for reflection. but instead, it just illustrates how far gone and perhaps irredeemable we are, and nevermind the fact that there are plenty of great reasons to not feel sympathy for Trump since it's part of the culture he fostered, people want to believe that maybe this will be Ozymandias's octopus that might repair some of the rot.

It won't. we're already past the event horizon. the fight is important but can't be fought if you actually think there's a chance of undoing the damage of the last 8 years - it's done, keep fighting and understand things will be uglier than they've been in a long time along the way while you do.

― rick beato meato manifesto (Neanderthal)

my initial reaction was... for five seconds there was "oh shit" and then my reaction was "huh." i'm still trying to figure out how this affects _me_

i don't really engage much with politics because a lot of it is theater and this, weirdly enough, _seems_ like another form of theater

that's what "false flag" means to me, why people claim that even when it's absurd... it's a way of denying the fundamental reality of what happened

what happened _was_ real, a real person really attempted to assassinate a real human being. the thing is, everything about donald trump, everything his followers _believe_ about him, is a fucking lie. he's become the kind of mythic figure people only usually become when they're dead

it just makes me think of the words suetonius attributes to vespasian when he was dying - "oh dear, i think i'm becoming a god"

trump lacks the self-possession to realize what that _means_. to be hyperreal, to be mythic, is to have one's corporeal existence rendered moot, redundant.

why would i want to see him assassinated? he's old. he's a pathetic, incompetent old man. he's had a long life, he's had everything handed to him on a platter, and what has he _done_ with it? he's old, he's been president once, he may well be president again, and what's he going to do with that? this isn't the first time people have given trump the unearned aura of gravitas. in '17, the liberals leaned over backwards for him again. gave him every opportunity, every benefit, to do, well, the stuff he claimed to want to do. instead, his followers are deranged, deluded, completely out of touch with reality. they're dangerous. his followers are absolutely dangerous.

probably within a decade he'll be dead. would i see him assassinated, a martyr? no, there are so many other ways, ordinary ways, _mortal_ ways to die. slow ways. heart failure. lung failure. i want to see his body slowly _fail_ him, the way he's failed everyone and everything, starting with himself. i'm not without my vindictive streak. it just manifests itself in its own way.

-

the thing about ozymandias' octopus - watchmen has a notoriously bad ending, one that... i mean, to me, it typifies the emptiness of liberal thought. the ending is predicated on the assumption that the cold war was not going to end unless _they did something incredibly destructive_, like, i don't know, spending decades making a monstrous neovagina to kill half of manhattan. if they did _that_, then the cold war would end and the americans and soviets would work together to combat the real threat. except it's _not_ a real threat. it's a real threat ozymandias made up, specifically made up to look like a vagina, to exploit the blind dumb fears of the men in power, to create a world where "everyone can get along".

the man is a fucking idiot. he's fixed nothing. solved nothing. just killed a whole fucking bunch of people - most of whom are minorities of various sorts. pretty much all the minority characters in the book. Ozymandias kills them in the service of what he arrogantly believes is the "greater good". ozymandias is, really, the perfect embodiment of liberalism.

11th circuit court previously overruled Cannon on her order to appoint a special master.

how fast this gets done...lol who am I kidding nothing matters anymore

xpost well, the real ending is predicated on the idea that none of that will work because of a crazy dude's diary

Hey, want to feel old? The shooter was born a week after Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was released.

I like the waaaayyyyy you shoot

I take no pleasure in it, but I'm glad that I've never deviated from beating the 'Trump will never suffer a single consequence' drum. So traumatized from having false hopes shattered, no hope is the way to go.

Yep. It really wasn't fun getting scolded by people about how "well, actually THIS case will be the one that yada yada yada".

xpost omg lol

"Notoriously bad ending" in terms of "it ends badly" or in terms of "it's badly written"? Moore clearly hates Ozymandias and I'm not convinced he thinks his plan would work.

almost as if jokes are jokes? I think if the public dialogue is completely acerbic jokes and jingoistically yelling shit about your political rivals the tenor shifts. half of how we got here is the end of "oh, you can't say that in public, we're just joking among friends" and the eversion of the public internet dynamic where you can say things with no real stake into public speech. if people don't get that it's joking, it's not joking

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Monday, July 15, 2024 10:28 AM bookmarkflaglink

well, many of the people I'm describing were also saying things like 'wish someone would just shoot him' while at bars sharing a beer, even before the SCOTUS ruling.

I've hesitated before posting this.

I closed the ILX tab on my browser last night with anger, sadness, boredom, and with a mostly successful attempt at keeping despair at bay. The sense of doom permeating the thread verged on the gleeful; I felt targeted for thinking we've a chance at beating fascism in November. For the last two weeks but especially last night this thread has felt as if to show hope is to reveal yourself as a moron. Yet I haven't defended myself harder because my self-image won't allow myself to look like a Pangloss either.

Complicating matters: I belong to another message board whose posters think "Joe" killed it during his speech last night, the polls are both right and wrong and snapshots of time, etc., stay calm, avoid unattributed sources from panicked officials in stories, that sort of thing. That place is the Earth-3 version of the ILX politics thread. Both places boast smart thoughtful posters who've been right (and wrong) many times.

I'm not sure what answer I need. Y'all know me -- I don't post croakings of doom and I'm been bucking some of y'all up for almost two decades through the financial meltdown, 2008 and 2012 elections, Sandy Hook, 2016, COVID, whatever. But I've seen moments especially since mid June when the message board ethos, which intrinsically favors the pile-on, reinforces an unofficially sanctioned pessimism, and, like I wrote, I'm not programmed for it AND chirpy optimism either.

Part of my trapeze walking comes from working with local volunteers who having fled autocrats genuinely believe in the American system more than I do and certainly more than ILX. Mostly older Hispanic women. Not Terminally Online but people who watch local news and some cable. No unanimity exists: as many believe Biden should drop out in favor of Harris as those who think he should say fuck you to the same critics who dismissed him four years ago. The terrible debate, the SCOTUS decisions, the shooting -- they remain committed to the Dems because in their countries, according to them, they watched democracy die. A woman told me last week her son doesn't talk to her because he's full MAGA. This belief that "we" can do better binds them.

So! I'm not suggesting posters change their behavior. Consider these paragraphs the notes from an 19-year ILX veteran who struggles with agreeing with the online majority and who has much at stake in November. I love the lot of you.

Yep. It really wasn't fun getting scolded by people about how "well, actually THIS case will be the one that yada yada yada".

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, July 15, 2024 9:47 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I dont think I scolded anyone but the classified docs thing did seem like the one thing even Trump couldn't do, my bad I didn't realize how deeply unserious and stupid our country is, nor the way the universe just always bends to the will of God and Jeff Epstein's special boy Donald Trump

xxpost

to piggyback re: Alfred's otm post, having hope isn't a bad thing. if you don't have it, the immediate transformation that can happen to your mental state is scary. believe me, I know. i'm not even at the point yet where I stop daily fantasizing of taking a header over a bridge, even though I'm in a good enough state to where it's only a fantasy atm.

that doesn't mean 'copium/hopium' are necessarily good things, because false hope is just kicking the can down the highway, but a lot of it started as genuine hope that became squashed. I think we all thought Trump would be an underdog in this race two years ago based on all that happened, even knowing how fickle this country was, and I don't think that was based on 'vibes' alone.

the moment the attitude shifts to "nothing matters, it's over" - idk, some people can deal with that, but for many of us, it's the last step before we completely fracture.

I'm not there yet - but that's how the rhetoric itt and elsewhere can sometimes affect me, even though I know it's just venting from people who are equally (or more) anxious about things.

(that's not to say anybody has responsibility for my mental state other than me - just offering a perspective as to why some of the pushback happened from my direction)

yeah I'm fully aware that message board post(ur)ing is a coping mechanism too!

I agree with Alfred and Neanderthal. I'll say no more than that.

"Notoriously bad ending" in terms of "it ends badly" or in terms of "it's badly written"? Moore clearly hates Ozymandias and I'm not convinced he thinks his plan would work.

― Daniel_Rf

moore hates every character in watchmen except for, like, nite owl

if watchmen succeeds it's because moore gets us invested in the lives of these awful fucking people. if it fails it's that, like, nobody should be invested in the internal life of the fucking comedian. and also he writes women absolutely terribly.

as far as the ending, his real-world political analysis skills are just. not good. i was alive in '86, i know that nobody saw the collapse of the soviet union coming. the ending doesn't work in a world where the soviet union was dramatically weakened by a failed war in afghanistan and collapsed basically of its own accord in '89.

because of the ambiguity of moore's writing i think it's easy to give moore as a writer more credit than is actually due him. i don't think, for instance, he genuinely sees dr. manhattan as a misogynist piece of shit for basically the entirety of the story, even though he obviously is. like i genuinely believe moore is serious about the "thermodynamic miracle" thing.

not really sure what hope we should have in this moment, in the last few weeks we watched the Democratic candidate go senile in full view, then refuse to drop out despite polling showing him having no viable path to victory (which most likely tanks the House and Senate too), while Trump's handpicked judges handed him the reigns to do unlimited crime, seeing one case get dismissed and another's sentencing to get delayed (and likely squashed as well), meanwhile he survives an assassination attempt which not only coaxes the media into dropping the mask and going full MAGA but even makes the Democrats, who were (correctly!) calling him a fascist a few days ago to go all "thoughts and prayers for Trump". worth noting of course that all of this happens as more Epstein files get released confirming that Donald Trump has almost certainly raped children, a story which gets virtually no coverage as the media runs thousands of stories on Biden's age. idk I'm trying not to doomer here but what exactly are we pinning our hopes on right now?

Alan Moore is a classic "dumb guy's idea of a smart guy." And yes, I gendered that description on purpose.

Fwiw I don't think "nothing matters, it's over," I am just slightly more sanguine about our current situation because I believe a lot of what I write— we already live in a fascist state, and while it can get much worse, there's also a lot of room to get better, and so that's where I'm at.

Love u Alfred

"Not reacting with shock or distress feels counterintuitive, because at an earlier point in time that was less tribalist, there would have been greater unity and time for reflection."

maybe i would feel different if i didn't think of Trump as some sort of joke/protest vote President put in power by people who liked his xenophobe pro wrestling-style rallies and Republicans with money who figured Trump would throw them some. and he did. but he never felt legitimate to me. he didn't know what he was doing from day one and he was also dangerous from day one. i would have felt bad if Mitt Romney had been shot! Or Nikki Haley for that matter.

i don't think, for instance, he genuinely sees dr. manhattan as a misogynist piece of shit for basically the entirety of the story, even though he obviously is. like i genuinely believe moore is serious about the "thermodynamic miracle" thing.

I don't think he is, at all, and think he's acuteky aware of what Dr Manhattan is, if only because in a work that is about how different superhero tropes are damaging it'd be pretty weird to have one that's actually fine?

I also don't think the real world state of the Soviet Union matters to a story that is explicitly not set in our universe.

Fwiw I don't think "nothing matters, it's over," I am just slightly more sanguine about our current situation because I believe a lot of what I write— we already live in a fascist state, and while it can get much worse, there's also a lot of room to get better, and so that's where I'm at.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

right on

Love u Alfred

― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon),

I love you too.