Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-07-2016, 05:03 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Living one's life without spirituality of some kind (what means is beside the point) I would call "pretty empty."

I would expect this.  If one's central values are based around X, for any value of X, one would be apt to think life would be "pretty empty" without X.  For me, science and the basic Enlightenment values of equality, rights and democracy would stand for X.  Anyone who doesn't embrace these things might seem to me to be shallow or pretty empty.  For a Christian, X might involve living in accordance to Christ's words as recorded the Bible.  Those who have not found The Word would seem pretty empty.

(11-07-2016, 05:03 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I also value science and do not consider spiritualism and science to be mutually exclusive. So that's a different choice than Bob makes, apparently.

I'm not sure "mutually exclusive" to be the best phrase, but the two ways of looking at the world apply to very different problems and areas of life experience.  Lab equipment isn't much help in finding inner peace.  Astrology isn't a good tool when programming a computer.  I also just am not going to find inner peace if my understanding of the world isn't well anchored in observation, experience and experiment.  Without such things, life, to me, would be pretty empty.

[playwrite]

(11-06-2016, 10:46 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-06-2016, 08:52 PM)playwrite Wrote: But they are hurting others, 10s of millions of others, and they will continue to do so.  The fact that the majority of them are also hurting themselves doesn't make it okay.

Anyone still wasting their time and energy trying to convince them or compromise with them is living in an alternative universe.  They cannot be helped until they are completely and unequivocally defeated. It's no different than 1860.

By 1860, the country was pretty much on the path to all out Civil War.  To me, it is not at all clear this is the case now.

There are disconnects of alternate realities.  Abe Lincon said he did not want to see slavery expand would allow it to continue where it exists, but the southern politicians said he was out to destroy slavery.  Hillary is saying she is in favor of closing gun show loopholes, but Trump says she is out to destroy the 2nd Amendment.  These are just blatant examples of the common practice of totally distorting the other side's position and misleading one's base.  As long as this continues, we're going to be divided and dysfunctional.

If Trump wins, trickle down borrow and spend is going to destroy the economy again, resulting in the Democrats taking over in 4 to 8 years to put the nation back on its feet again.  Eventually, will the middle of the country figure it out?

If Hillary wins, I don't know what becomes of the Republicans.  I can see Faux News and Trump TV selling different sets of excuses, playing the blame game to the hilt, and fighting a battle to establish what the primary conservative platform will be.  Did they lose because of tepid backing of Trump by the Republican establishment, because the system is rigged, or because Trump is a flawed candidate?  Other?  All of the above?  What is the vision going forward?  Does the party need to move beyond trickle down borrow and spend?  Should the southern strategy be played subtly, blatantly or abandoned?

Supposing Trump wins and is as bad at running the country as he is at running businesses, are there enough relatively sane Republicans in Congress to join the Democrats to institute a system of damage control?  How many congressional Republicans will put the good of the country ahead of the success of a Trump presidency that will redefine the meaning of what it is to be conservative and Republican?

However the election turns out, at least one month following the election will involve radical transformation of one or both parties.  I'm not at all sure how it will settle out.

As I said in another recent post, I don't see Trump as a transforming Grey Champion sort who will lead our culture into a new age.  Trump is pushing trickle down borrow and spend plus the southern strategy.  That won't transform anything.  That's the unravelling continued.  

Should Hillary get in, I don't know how far she can get if the Republicans have enough people in Congress to filibuster.  I know she is persistent and able to propose solid policy, but she has been so poisoned by decades of vile propaganda that I anticipate as stubborn an obstruction of the first female president as we had with the first minority president.  The deplorable aspect of the Republican base won't reelect anyone who doesn't go all out obstructionist, and the deplorable wing seems to control the primaries.

The cleanest path to a true transformation might be a damage control alliance of most congressional Democrats and any hypothetical Republicans that care more for their country than they care for Trump.  Whomever makes that alliance work might write the transforming policies and be nominated for president and Grey Champion.

Or if there are not enough sane Republicans, the Democrats have been taught over the last eight years how to filibuster and frustrate a president.  If the Republicans can filibuster and frustrate Hillary, could and would the Democrats filibuster and frustrate The Donald?

Or none of the above.  I don't pretend to be dead sure of what comes next.  I just don't see 1860 as the only possible template.

I thinking more that history rhythms rather than repeats.

The rhyming is the steadfastness of what you call the "values lock."  Today's Trumpster, whether the money grubber elite or their Philistine xenophobic sheeple are no more likely to change their views than the plantation elites or their poor Southern Whites sheeple did in 1860, if ever.  

Hopefully, outside of arresting a few outside of bird sanctuaries, I hope and expect that it will not turn to some mass violence (the vast majority of them are just blowhards).  But their political defeat has to be as resounding as that of 1865.  It is also my hope that it doesn't take 60-something years to provide them a new New Deal that will actually help the current Right wingnut sheeple.

[Eric the Green]

When Republicans send their candidates to us, they're not sending their best. They're rapists, they sniff cocaine before debates...
https://youtu.be/kqpQc7nKK_I?t=9m52s
--Bill Maher

[Bob Butler 54]

One last long opinion piece listing why one long time Republican is voting for Hillary: Ana Navarro: I'm voting for Hillary Clinton -- and against Donald Trump .  Not short, no new ground, but thorough.  Her list of specifics is lengthy.  The closing section follows.

Ana Navarro Wrote:Our founding fathers set up a government of checks and balances. We can and have survived presidents with bad judgment. But I fear the effects on America of a president with bad character.

I worry that Trump brings out the worst in America. Division. Hostility. Racism. Bigotry. Misogyny. Things we used to hide. Feelings we used to try to overcome. Under the guise of not cowing to political correctness, some people are no longer embarrassed or ashamed to show the warts on their souls.

Some tell me, in 2016 we should no longer expect the president of the United States to be a role model. I refuse to accept that.

America used to be the world's last safe refuge. Trump changed that.  Donald Trump has changed the way the world views the US.

The president of the United States has to lift us all in moments of national grief. The president of the United States has to hug the children and spouses of fallen soldiers. That person represents us all. That person is recognized as the face and the voice for America in front of the rest of the world, and more importantly, by our children. A person supported by the Klu Klux Klan and its former Grand Wizard David Duke can never represent me. He can never be a role model for me.

We each have a right and a duty to make a personal choice based on those things that are most important to us, that we value most. My conscience compels me to do every little thing I can to make sure a bad person is not our next president. In America, we don't choose our leaders through violence or armed insurrections.

One vote is our right. One vote is our weapon. I am exercising mine against Donald Trump.

[pbrower2a]

From a German.

[Eric the Green]

One more time, Seth Myers takes a closer look.

[pbrower2a]

Having gotten ourselves a sociopathic kleptocrat from the private sector to become President of the United States and a stooge legislative branch, we will soon be obliged to defer to the tyrant that we are about to get. If we want to laugh about a dictator, then we may need to dust off a video from 1940 in which Charlie Chaplin performs a dual role.

I am now ashamed to be a white American, for that group has achieved what Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo could never achieve -- the murder of American democracy.

It is a murder.

I have seen the sort of person that Donald Trump is, a demagogue and kleptocrat, in recent history. He will be to America what Slobodan Milosevic was to Yugoslavia. Mark my words.

[Eric the Green]

Well, bashing him and making fun of him is probably over now. He is our president.

It's up to him whether he will deserve more bashing soon.

[pbrower2a]

(11-09-2016, 04:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, bashing him and making fun of him is probably over now. He is our president.

It's up to him whether he will deserve more bashing soon.

Considering what his type (sociopath, demagogue, and kleptocrat) has done in other countries that it infests, mocking him in late January or later might be 'good' for a stay in one of the new gulags likely to be established for 'intellectual terrorists'.

[Galen]

(11-09-2016, 04:13 AM)taramarie Wrote: Damn dionysians you tell them and tell them and they do not listen.

Listening is something they do not do.  Welcome to my world.

[Galen]

(11-09-2016, 05:02 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 04:55 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 04:13 AM)taramarie Wrote: Damn dionysians you tell them and tell them and they do not listen.

Listening is something they do not do.  Welcome to my world.

But you would be a dionysian nomad....unless you are a minority Apollonian stuck in a Dionysian run country. That is a possibility.

I am just a survivor of an insane world like most Generation X.  Don't read to much into it.  No matter the generation of Nomads you are talking about they are always damage control.  A necessary but thankless task.

[pbrower2a]

(11-09-2016, 04:35 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 04:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 04:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, bashing him and making fun of him is probably over now. He is our president.

It's up to him whether he will deserve more bashing soon.

Considering what his type (sociopath, demagogue, and kleptocrat) has done in other countries that it infests, mocking him in late January or later might be 'good' for a stay in one of the new gulags likely to be established for 'intellectual terrorists'.

I see you changed your sig (just now i think??) appropriate given what I see Republicans stand for. Yes I looked it up in comparison to what Dems stand for too.

The Kasparov quote became irrelevant on Election Day. Star Wars III is the movie in which the Republic becomes an Evil Empire. Maybe we are entering that stage.

I need to start watching FoX News (how horrible!) to learn how to behave and what to think in the new, post-democratic America.

Or emigrate. Unfortunately I am a bit old for the latter.

[Eric the Green]

Trump will turn the presidency into a reality TV show. The office may well become a laughing stock and lose its legitimacy.

[Eric the Green]

(11-09-2016, 05:07 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 05:02 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 04:55 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 04:13 AM)taramarie Wrote: Damn dionysians you tell them and tell them and they do not listen.

Listening is something they do not do.  Welcome to my world.

But you would be a dionysian nomad....unless you are a minority Apollonian stuck in a Dionysian run country. That is a possibility.

I am just a survivor of an insane world like most Generation X.  Don't read to much into it.  No matter the generation of Nomads you are talking about they are always damage control.  A necessary but thankless task.

I only wish we could have made things even more difficult for you than we did. As it is, you got your way.

[Eric the Green]

This might well sum it up:

In an electoral tantrum for the ages, angry U.S. voters have elected an impulsive, thin-skinned, ignorant con man to the presidency.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opini...olumn.html

I have serious doubts that the American experiment will survive his reign.

The Founders were wary of demagogues and created a political system of checks and balances to weaken the chance that one would take power. That system has survived centuries of domestic and foreign tumult and the occasional election of buffoons and rascals as commander in chief, despite Alexander Hamilton's reassurance in Federalist No. 68 that all presidents would naturally be "preeminent for ability and virtue."

But our republic has never been tested as it will be when Donald Trump is sworn into office. He lacks not only ability and virtue, but he also lacks a fundamental respect for the Constitution (aside from the Second Amendment), he lacks an understanding of the fine points of domestic and foreign policy and he lacks the cool temperament necessary to guide the most important nation on Earth through perilous times.

He fans the flames of tribalism and nationalism, inspiring and comforting those with deplorable views. He purchased the support of a majority of American voters with a set of brazenly false, often contradictory promises. He praised and made common cause with brutal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin while actively undermining domestic confidence in our electoral system.

His campaign and his personal manner were so repulsive that many top members of his own party couldn't even bring themselves to mention his name or say if they were voting for him.

His unfiltered expressions of anger and contempt were so dismaying that his campaign reportedly had to yank his access to Twitter in the waning days of the campaign — yet voters decided to hand him the nuclear launch codes.

Sure, as a lefty I'm discouraged almost beyond words at the fact that Republicans will control the legislative and executive branches of government. This means the end of the extension of health care contained in the Affordable Care Act and pretty much the obliteration of the rest of President Barack Obama's legacy. It means efforts to ameliorate global climate change are dead, that the wealthy will enjoy generous tax cuts and for at least four years we won't see meaningful efforts to curb the easy availability of firearms.

Trump's victory also means that Republicans will regain control of the U.S. Supreme Court — a reward for their outrageous stalling after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February — meaning that the Citizens United decision will stand and the erosion of abortion rights will continue on the state level.

But that's politics and policy. The same would have been true had any of the other umpteen Republican hopefuls won the White House on Tuesday, and I would not be melodramatically forecasting comprehensive doom.

Trump is different. He's an aspiring strongman with a divisive record of bigotry and misogyny. He has put a quiet stamp of approval on white nationalism, and he has mainstreamed hateful anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish and anti-black sentiments that, until the rise of his candidacy, had been pushed far into the social margins.

Much was made of the anger that fueled Trump supporters. Anger at the loss of good-paying jobs for those without college education. Anger at the idea that undocumented immigrants were taking jobs from American citizens. Anger at multiculturalism and the attendant demands of "political correctness." Anger that the government system is rigged against them. Anger that media elites and other establishment types look down on them.

That anger may subside for a time as they celebrate Trump's victory, but it will surely return when they come to recognize — as many of us already have — that he is a grotesque fraud and a spectacular liar.

I'm not saying this to sway anyone's vote. The campaign is over. But many of those who championed him and are now exultant will come to despise him as much as those who have opposed him.

He will not bring jobs back that technology has taken. And if he actually starts the trade wars he has promised, prices for everything in the Walmart will rise, the market for exports will dry up and working people will suffer the most.

He will not build a wall. He will not give low-income people better, cheaper health insurance. He will not put a stop to crime "on Day One" as he promised. He will not lower the national debt or get rid of the tax advantages enjoyed by the wealthy. He will not improve the lives of inner-city African-Americans.

Extreme buyer's remorse will set in.

Oh, he'll blame his comprehensive failures on others — narcissists and hucksters always do. But sooner rather than later he will stand exposed even to his supporters as someone who never had a clue how to make America greater than it is, and who exploited for his own gain the fury and credulity of people who feel marginalized and disrespected.

His hair-trigger temper, poor self-control and failure to appreciate the nuances of foreign policy will make him a singularly dangerous man on the international stage.

His arrogance and his contempt for those who disagree with him will shatter what's left of comity in Washington, because he's not just a phony but a thug, an aspiring autocrat cut from the same cloth as Putin. The limits that our Founders placed on the despotic impulses of demagogues who ascend to the highest office will be severely strained if not broken altogether.

Nearly all the things that Trump falsely claimed during the campaign were a disaster will, in fact, become disasters under his rule.

Could I be wrong?

Well, I've been wrong about Trump at nearly every turn for the last year and a half. I thought he had politically self-destructed at least half a dozen times, most recently with his absolutely bizarre performance in the third and final presidential debate.

And I was wrong about this race until the middle of the evening Tuesday, when I had to stop believing that Americans are too smart not to see through his flim-flam and realize how spectacularly unfit he is for the presidency.

With luck, I'll be wrong again.

Twitter @EricZorn

[pbrower2a]

We did it.




Germany is near the top of the list of countries in which I would seek refuge.

[Odin]

Looks like the joke's on us, now. This country has become a laughing stock.

[Eric the Green]

I wonder how long we'll be laughing.

[radind]

(11-09-2016, 01:16 PM)taramarie Wrote: Guys, the world is not laughing. The world is disgusted and terrified. There is nothing to laugh at here.

A little patience. In my view the USA will be better without Clinton.
I expect Trump to be better than many anticipate.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-09-2016, 01:26 PM)radind Wrote:

(11-09-2016, 01:16 PM)taramarie Wrote: Guys, the world is not laughing. The world is disgusted and terrified. There is nothing to laugh at here.

A little patience. In my view the USA will be better without Clinton.
I expect Trump to be better than many anticipate.

Well, 'better than many anticipate' is an awfully low bar.  I do expect him to clear that one.

Then again, both candidates and their supporters thoroughly demonized the other.  She would have done better than many anticipated too.