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

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.

OTM

and that doesn't contradict what tombot and alfred were saying either, of course. alarm should lead to some sort of action, ideally. however, i can understand that some people react to alarm by just shutting down.

A question I've been pondering lately: is there something(s) that precipitated this? Because it just feels like directionless hate from people whose lives remain largely unaltered by the object of their hatred. I mean, it's not like some tidal wave of immigrants have flooded the US and taken 'our' jobs en masse. It seems, historically, that there are factors you can point to as the catalyst for reactive uprisings, but what the fuck are these people reacting to aside from, like, rabble rousers on the internet and a dipshit president who says every stupid thing that bubbles out of his brainstem?

pogs

^ was that meant for the things you once thought socially acceptable which now horrify you to remember thread?

that's just a provisional response while we work out a better answer.

the hatred goes waaaaaay back. i was listening to the Daily episode on busing today (which was itself just a summary of the "Busing actually worked" article that the NYT published earlier this week). And no matter how many times i've heard the clip, it's always shocking to hear wallace say "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." while the crowd roars its approval

Abortions for some, Trump-Themed Pogs for others

Reagan opened his 1980 campaign in the Mississippi town where the Freedom Riders men were murdered. He discussed state's rights

hatred isn't something that we can move past, it is a chronic condition that needs to be constantly monitored and intentionally opposed.

i can't tell if i'm saying anything useful or just stating commonly understood things. i guess part of the problem is that what i think is commonly understood now seems to be a radical position to half of the country

A question I've been pondering lately: is there something(s) that precipitated this? Because it just feels like directionless hate from people whose lives remain largely unaltered by the object of their hatred.

Obviously much studied and debated in the aftermath of WWII, and you can argue about the evolutionary mechanisms at work, but at a base level us-vs-them is ALWAYS a politically potent platform and the challenge of building a sense of common purpose and identity in a multi-racial/ethnic/religious society has been part of the American narrative from the start. Economic anxiety certainly fuels it, but there's also I think the reality that it's always lurking there, ready to be triggered. Bosnia, Rwanda, there is a hard-wired response that is available for people willing or eager to tap into it. And it produces a lot of energy! That's the biggest reason for the lack of institutional Republican pushback. They need fuel to run on, and this isn't the fuel the more measured among them would prefer -- or at least, they'd rather it was a smaller percentage of the mix -- but it's what's keeping their engine running now.

What people get out of it on the individual level, the people at the rallies, I think isn't that hard to understand. It feels good. It feels powerful. You're right, they're wrong, you're American, they're not, it's way more fun than listening to someone talk about tax policy. Anger at that level is invigorating, even joyful.

I guess I should have prefaced by saying, yeah, I know the roots of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment run deep and long and are by no means a new thing. It's just this increasing roar of fury which doesn't seem to correspond to any measurable real-world trends. Segregationist sentiment in the mid-20th Century south, for instance, at least made some kind of sense inasmuch as there was an obvious sea change taking place which had an impact on white people. But what's happening right now? In what way are these rally attendees being so traumatically inconvenienced by brown-skinned people at this point in time?

Anger at that level is invigorating, even joyful.

and intensely creepy to anyone reminded of Two Minutes Hate. but yeah. that kind of dynamic will always be there. and if in some utopian future it manages to go away, it will come back even stronger once some innovative tech dude realizes that he can harness the hatred of the masses for political gain and/or profit

What percentage of these people would even be aware of the existence of Rep. Omar if their fuckin' demagogue-in-chief wasn't casting her as a boogieman for them to hurl invective at?

Segregationist sentiment in the mid-20th Century south, for instance, at least made some kind of sense inasmuch as there was an obvious sea change taking place which had an impact on white people. But what's happening right now? In what way are these rally attendees being so traumatically inconvenienced by brown-skinned people at this point in time?

white people are drifting toward the 50% mark in this country. they're confronting what it might mean to lose white privilege (even if they don't think of it in those terms) and suddenly white supremacy seems more appealing (even if they don't think of it in those terms)

Did y’all forget what his rallies were like 3 years ago? This is not a new development!

It's just this increasing roar of fury which doesn't seem to correspond to any measurable real-world trends.

I think they're triggered by seeing people they would probably call the cops on becoming members of congress

And cast members of Star Wars.

One of the harder things for me to realize -- not morally hard, just hard to actually comprehend -- is how many white people really do think of themselves as "white people," as an identity, a tribe. I can't relate to it -- I know I'm white, I'm aware of what it confers in terms of privilege and power, but it's not some affirmative part of my self-conception -- but it is actually a real thing for a lot of people. They may not even realize it themselves until they feel it threatened. They might deny that that's what's motivating them, what's being tapped into, but it's clearly a big part of the picture.

xposts to Karl, I get that, too, but at this point it's still just theoretical. There isn't a lot of real-world impact at the moment.

Part of it, I've thought for a while, is that white people are terrified of the notion of having to eventually compete on an actual level playing field where they're almost certainly going to be found wanting.

LINDSEY GRAHAM blames Democrats when asked about “send her back” chants:

"No, I don't think it's racist to say. … I don't think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would not have been asked to go back. If you're a racist you want everybody from Somalia to go back"

"It's only racist if he called every single black person a 'n_____' instead of just those who disagree with him"

Lindsey please die

i've told this story before, maybe multiple times, but i always think of this time at my atlanta summer bookstore job during college. one of my clearest memories/examples of, as a white person, getting approached by outright racists who assume you're in their same club. time magazine had its "Welcome to Amexica" cover story (June 2001) about like, new cultural hybrids and growing bilingualism in southern Texas. this older white dude - i'm gonna say 50s, 60s at the highest - comes up to the counter with it and is like "have you read this?" and i'm like no, maybe i'll check it out before the new issue comes out and we pull 'em off the shelves, and he says (I'm pretty sure this is word for word) "This is the most important story of our time. In a few years, people like you and me won't be in charge anymore." he was as straightforwardly focused on maintaining his power as a white citizen; there was no dressing up at all. eighteen years ago.

TBRR I say "this is what we are" and "this is America" a lot because this is what we have been for pretty much the entirety of my life and it's a reminder to my white friends that, while I come from just as privileged a background as many of them, the way this country treats me by default is VERY different from the way it treats them

For example, not very many of my white Ivy League friends have been outright hassled by police/security for having the temerity to exist in a space where they were allowed to be; I have and so has every single male in my extended family of educators/state employees. Two of my great-grandfathers were lynched, one in a manner so scandalous that it launched an FBI investigation. This is all intrinsic to the American experience and it's insulting to me that people react as if this suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like all of this animosity and hatred was solved and a few bad actors resurrected it.

It's just this increasing roar of fury which doesn't seem to correspond to any measurable real-world trends.

I don't think that's really right -- it really is true that the proportion of Americans born abroad is larger now than it has been in the lifetime of anyone now living:

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/cspan_fb_slides.pdf

Middle-aged and older Americans grew up in a United States essentially without immigrants, and I think most don't know that the America of today is the historical norm, and the mid-20th-century clampdown on immigration which they see as "normal" was the anomaly.

It should come as no surprise that Miami Cubans over 60 are cool with fascism.

This is all intrinsic to the American experience and it's insulting to me that people react as if this suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like all of this animosity and hatred was solved and a few bad actors resurrected it.

Yeah, it's more like over the last 50 years we reached the latest of a series of plateaus -- each one preceded by fights and violence -- where we were able to at least remove legal segregation in most forms and people more or less agreed to not say certain things in public or mixed company. But we've reached the end of that period, and now you have people wanting to, like, remove Confederate statues! Talk about the racist history of zoning! And just basically be honest, God help us, about American history. And all of that is just a step way too far for people who barely/grudging agreed to the previous terms in the first place.

DJP thoroughly otm. Denying that this is part and parcel of the American experience is like pointing to an imagined, monstrous inhumanity as the sole cause of our species’ innumerable crimes.

I can't help but feel that the internet itself might be the central catalyst of what we're seeing today, inasmuch as it's had this weird dual effect of a) shining a light on the breadth of human experience for those who might otherwise have never seen or experienced much beyond their own community and b) allowing birds of a feather to easily flock together, free of the bounds of geography, and construct little fortified echo chambers where they can collectively reinforce the righteousness of whatever self-description they choose to rally around.

The newly unsealed search warrant materials in Michael Cohen's case are up in SDNY, per judge's order yesterday. In the first exhibit (which is 200+ pages so I don't have a link yet), this is what the prev. redacted section on the campaign contribution allegations looks like now pic.twitter.com/r0pKVoEy4n

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) July 18, 2019

FWIW I don't know that anyone itt has suggested that the hatred and xenophobia currently being expressed are anything novel. The volume and vehemence, however, are certainly at levels I haven't previously experienced in my lifetime.

b) allowing birds of a feather to easily flock together, free of the bounds of geography, and construct little fortified echo chambers where they can collectively reinforce the righteousness of whatever self-description they choose to rally around.

well yeah otherwise they'd have to make due with printing out their own newsletters and calling into AM talk shows