At the risk of stating the obvious, the July 2019 US Politics Thread is horse-sh*t

that's what disturbs me. but...they've always been there. maybe when Trump goes away, they lose cohesion, access to power, and public boldness.

Of course he's going to win again, an electorally significant number of Americans wanted this kind of president, and he has met their expectations plus the economy numbers look good if you don't dig below the surface.

and they're gonna vote for president ivanka someday

or Kardashian

Some encouraging news this morning.

this has all become worse than i ever thought it would be

I've expected the n-word and "bitch" at rallies since spring '16, and we may yet get them.

The n-word would still sort of surprise me simply because so many of these morons seem to believe as long as they don't use it they can plausibly deny their bigotry.

Anything goes, except women of colour using the f-word.

My evangelical acquaintances (cons but of the Jimmy Carter type) on fb today are noting the president’s profanity last night, that is, his violation of the third commandment, apparently for the first time at a rally. That used to be the worst thing you could say for conservative Christians, but my acquaintances expect that he’ll again get an exception as the culture further degrades.

Anything the left tells them they should feel ashamed for they will instead start yelling it louder.

Anything the left tells them they should feel ashamed for they will instead start yelling it louder.

Whoops

Nobody GAF what I think, but engaging in premature, despairing concession to Trump 2020, always accompanied by moaning “this is who we are” or something to that effect, is as offensive to me as actually being a Trump supporter, or as close as makes no difference.

^^^ otm

I'm generalizing here, but eight or nine times out of ten it's my white acquaintances who engage in croakings of doom. I got angrier and more resolved after last night.

yes

evangelical acquaintances (cons but of the Jimmy Carter type)

is this a type? Jimmy Carter conservatives?

Carter was the first president to command explicit fundie support

Interesting article about ways Europe and Australia try to deter migrants and the ways in which harsher policies with more politically correct language often elicit less outrage than more permissive policies accompanied by racist language:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/world/trump-migration.html

xp yeah but that was before the ascent of Ralph Reed and xtian coalition etc.

he was pro-choice (not personally but as policy) among other things

Yes, they’re a type, though not electorally important. These people probably voted for Bush in 2000 but Kerry in 2004, and Obama in both 2008 and 2012. But they’re not registered Dems.

tombot otm re: despairing concession.

I am guilty of engaging in this, but when I do it's really just to relieve a sense of powerlessness...seeing that chant at the rally last night, zeroing in on one person in the crowd and imagining the impossibility of changing her worldview...it's a kind of relief to just throw up your hands occasionally

Nobody GAF what I think, but engaging in premature, despairing concession to Trump 2020, always accompanied by moaning “this is who we are” or something to that effect, is as offensive to me as actually being a Trump supporter, or as close as makes no difference.

― El Tomboto, Thursday

i have to believe that a much more polarizing election than even 2016 will favor those of us that aren't openly racist or sympathizers of those that are but shit for now it's hard not to feel some kind of dread about it all turning out horribly again.

xxxposts

tbf lots of white people—progressive urbanites incl—are sometimes exposed to words and ideas of actual family, soc media “friends”, and even random strangers who’ve mistakenly presumed they’re in a ‘safe space’ that POCs might not.

but honestly what causes the most despair for me personally is craven Democratic leaders who continue to undercut popular ideas and the only politicians in their party who are arguing for anything close to an alternative to outright plutocracy and environmental destruction

and pls don’t read that as “spare a thought for the poor put-upon white progressive” — def not what I mean

Despair is fine as long as Sisyphus loses none of his stubbornness and pugnaciousness.

So just to be clear, the reason we aren't starting impeachment on the most criminal "president" in history is so that we don't alienate this crowd of mouth breathers at the #TrumpRally chanting "send them back"? Cool strategy, Dems. #ImpeachNow

— Danny Zuker (@DannyZuker) July 18, 2019

i don't even know who that is but the sentiment is not lost on me

I didn’t watch the rally so I feel about the same as 2 days ago.

a couple weeks ago I thought about starting a catastrophism quarantine thread to vent/brace yourself for the possibility of trump's reelection, but I decided there are already too many US politics threads

I just unfriended a bunch of women on fb because in the midst of all this, while they usually don't post anything political, all of a sudden they felt obligated to post something about how Melania is so pretty or how AOC is so annoying. I sent them each a private "oh this is who you are?" message and then unfriended.

^^^ like this is as gross to me as people (otm usually white) still constantly lamenting how emotionally upset they are/despairing concession while nothing in their life has materially changed besides their reading habits.

TBF I don't need things to materially change in my own life to be upset about how things are materially changing in the lives of others.

Who didn't vote for Trump in 2016 but will in 2020? There are only so many racist(+) first-time voters tho I assume that is who he is targeting the most.

were they people that liked him but stayed home because he wasn't racist enough ? idk probably

how much would he have to lose the popular vote by to cause active uprising? 5 million? 10 million?

You mean how much would he have to lose by and still win the electoral college? The threshold is at least 3 million. Everyone already seems to have forgiven and forgotten about that

There’s no better system than the electoral college, you just have to accept that 40% of the presidential elections in the 21st century have been won by the loser

i would guess that number could easily be bumped and fudged to at least five million with zero repercussions beside four more years of ongoing litigation and general hand wringing, but they're clearly shameless and unwilling to relinquish power so I guess i'm asking what sort of mandate would be necessary for these fuckers to voluntarily step out of the way

if he wins the EC there's not going to be an uprising no matter what the popular vote discrepancy might be. hopefully it won't come to that. I think the likelier scenario is that he loses the EC by a slim margin but refuses to accept the outcome and demands a DOJ investigation into imagined "voting irregularities" in one or two swing states.

ftr, i'm not saying i think that's the likeliest scenario. it just sucks that even if this election is roughly a 50-50 proposition right now, some percentage of the outcomes in which Trump loses are going to involve this scenario or something like it coming to pass, whereas if he wins I think essentially every scenario just involves everyone saying "oh well" and moving on.

Luckily politicians can’t redraw state lines every 10 years like they do with Congressional districts or the discrepancy could be even larger.

weird that the people I have on FB who have been whining for five days straight about being called racist are now actively cheering on the "send her back" chants

Unfriend, irl and on Facebook

tbf we forced them into cheering by being shrill

don't really see them IRL anymore but part of me enjoys having high blood pressure and getting into the occasional argument for dumb idiots

i don't unfriend people i disagree with unless they're really just getting on my nerves all the time

to that point though they really don't care how racist it is they get off on the "liberal tears" it generates first and foremost

xxp

Nobody GAF what I think, but engaging in premature, despairing concession to Trump 2020, always accompanied by moaning “this is who we are” or something to that effect, is as offensive to me as actually being a Trump supporter, or as close as makes no difference.

― El Tomboto, Thursday, July 18, 2019 12:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm generalizing here, but eight or nine times out of ten it's my white acquaintances who engage in croakings of doom. I got angrier and more resolved after last night.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 18, 2019 12:59 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Feel this, I agree there's no use for despair or croakings. But now that we've gotten a real taste of what the 2020 race is going to be, it is pretty alarming. It's one thing to anticipate it, it's another to actually see and hear the rallies. The rising fascism talk gets less and less hyperbolic all the time.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2019/07/donald-trumps-attacks-ilhan-omar-show-fascism-coming-us?fbclid=IwAR0OcH7eFi336DHZS_LxkyL7bc0mL8KXdbeN14Pv9hyWfBgcx9_QpbZbA20

I mean, he's right, this is in fact how it happens, step by step. We're still at a point where there's institutional resolve to, say, at least pretend to be offended by those posts on the CBP officers' Facebook group. But we're not too far away from that kind of thing being just the official line of the state. The cruelty and dehumanization are real and are being implicitly and now to some degree explicitly endorsed at the highest levels.

The Nazi analogies only get you so far, there are a ton of differences between the U.S. in 2020 and Germany in 1930, and a Trump re-election doesn't mean authoritarian military rule. It will take a different, American form. But it already is taking that form, it's coalescing, it doesn't happen all at once but piece by piece. None of which is inevitable or should prompt despair, but the stakes are being raised. It's hard to ever point to one single turning point, everything seems super significant until the next damn thing. But that rally last night is about as stark a signal as you get. They're not kidding, and they're not going away quietly.