Straight Dope Message Board

[Kamino Neko]

Originally Posted by Grrr!

There's a lesson of humility to be learned here.

Yes, and it's 'humility is bad'.

The bombastic psychopath and his bigot buddy won the election because they screamed lies to the heavens, and half the potential electorate bought it...and stayed home.

Humility lost the election.

[Count Blucher]

Trump

He deflects REAL wrong doing reports because we keep reporting his petty shit like it's reality TV.

When we become numb to Trump stories, that's when he gets away with murder.

So, how about a network executive pledge to NOT report daily petty tantrums, but concentrate on the Real stories when they happen?

America doesn't need "Real Drama Whores of The White House".

America needs "Real Investigative Journalism of the Amicus Curiae".

Sent from my crappy phone on zero net income.

And fuckin' NONE of y'all are wearing clothes....

[Bryan Ekers]

Good point, and it prompts me to reverse my earlier comment. We should have a "Trump twitter" thread and a "Stupid Trump Idea of the Day" thread if the former is only for his twitter comments and the latter is only for his policies and actions, i.e. stuff he does that actually affects something.

But I doubt the dope can discipline demarcation.

[emcee2k]

Originally Posted by Zeke N. Destroi

I think it was very rude of them.

I agree with what they had to say but that is not the time or place.

He paid to watch a play and relax. He did not pay for being subjected to a public berating (no matter how gently worded.)

I don't like anything I have heard of Pence but I think it showed character that he stopped to listen.

Donald Trump ran a campaign based on xenophobia. Openly demonizing and scapegoating minorities. Calling for immigration bans based on religion, and promising to commit war crimes, including bringing back torture (waterboarding and "much worse", "even if it doesn't work").

Mike Pence willingly signed up to be Trump's running mate, and helped him get elected President of United States, lying through his teeth when necessary. If for the rest of his life any time he wants to watch a play and relax, he receives a gently worded berating, that seems like a mild penalty.

[Czarcasm]

The jackass-elect actually ordered the cast to apologize?
That deserves a two word reply: "You first".

[dropzone]

Originally Posted by running coach

Duckspeak is only used in the context of an echo chamber.

I hate you. Nothing personal.

[Broomstick]

Originally Posted by Superdude

You're assuming that Pence is capable of human emotions.

Uh... yeah, he actually is. I may not agree with him, but he has displayed what I believe is genuine human emotion and even, at times, empathy with people. Some people. People who aren't in the classes of people Pence believes should be modified to suit his religious beliefs.

[Broomstick]

Originally Posted by El_Kabong

OK, so Pence got an earful from the cast. That's a lot better than what Lincoln got the last time he attended a play.

Originally Posted by Vinyl Turnip

Go ahead, Donald. Pick a fight with Aaron Burr. What's the worst that could happen?

Man, if nothing else this thread is worth it for the quotable bits!

[Count Blucher]

Originally Posted by Zeke N. Destroi

No different than if Pence, at the end of the play, had heckled them. He was there as a paying audience member, he was not their to receive a once-sided rehash of the stuff he gets in his day to day job.

BULLSHIT.

Welcome to Performance Art. If ANY fuck-faced politician goes to ANY play... the performance may include different interpretations styles and different characterizations.

And, in the case of ANY unpopular politicians or their whores/dates, the cast may choose their choice of Words, Rotten Produce, or Half-Bricks... as hard as they can be thrown.

You bought a ticket to a Performance.
STFU And Take It, or go take your Skank to Mini-Golf.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Grrr!

You think maybe there's someplace in between burring your head and coming off distasteful at inappropriate times to get a perfectly valid point across? And do you think maybe it's this sort of "justified" attitude that has alienated so many people from the left?

Have you taken away any life lesson from this last election? Or do you prefer to keep your eye's closed with your fingers stuck in your ears, because hey, you know you're fucking right?

There's a lesson of humility to be learned here. And if you don't learn that lesson, you're no different from the very people you hate.

Yes. We should all worry that we are just as bad as the bigots when we shame the bigots. That's such an original thought that we should all take totally seriously.

Yeah, we learned humility. We learned that we didn't have this thing won like we thought. We learned we need to redouble our efforts. Not reduce them.

Yeah, having Trump as president isn't normal. THAT'S THE WHOLE REASON WE NEED TO CALL HIM OUT AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY. That's why half-baked approaches are doomed to failure. We need to attack him and his VP on all fronts.

We can be kind to the people who are hurting, who voted a racist despite his racism. But the actual racists and homophobes? No, we can't have "decorum." Decorum lost.

Trump lost votes every single time he turned into an asshole on Twitter. So baiting him is 100% the way to move forward. And that means we need to keep track of everything he says.

We are now in the battle for 2020, and we will win. Or the country will be burned to the ground trying to stop us.

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally Posted by Czarcasm

The jackass-elect actually ordered the cast to apologize?
That deserves a two word reply: "You first".

I might have chosen a somewhat different two-word reply, but that one works too.

[Morgenstern]

Originally Posted by Czarcasm

The jackass-elect actually ordered the cast to apologize?
That deserves a two word reply: "You first".

Achtung. Virst we order them to komply vith the fuhrer's requests.
If they refuse. Ve kill them.
Vait until vou zees die Attorney General ve have for you. Field Marshall Sessions vill make America grate again.

[Chefguy]

It's called the First Amendment. Trump should probably familiarize himself with it. Stupid fuckwit.

[Count Blucher]

Originally Posted by ElvisL1ves

I might have chosen a somewhat different two-word reply, but that one works too.

...I might EVEN suggest a three word phrase response to every and any ridiculous BS Comment made by Trump during his entire term.

On the Internet.
In the audience as he speaks.
In Person.
Just Three Little Words.
*Hint: the last one is Trump*

[Morgyn]

Originally Posted by running coach

Duckspeak is only used in the context of an echo chamber.

Originally Posted by dropzone

I hate you. Nothing personal.

Yep. I saw what he did there, too.

Pure genius.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Grrr!

You think maybe there's someplace in between burring your head and coming off distasteful at inappropriate times to get a perfectly valid point across? And do you think maybe it's this sort of "justified" attitude that has alienated so many people from the left?

Rather the opposite. It's the constant deferring and submitting by the Democrats to people like Trump & Pence that has alienated people from the left. Blacks and women and gays and other targets of Pence and those like him see such behavior and recognize it for what it is: a backstab. A demonstration that the left doesn't really care and won't really stand up for them, not if it means so much as irritating the bigots.

[Superdude]

Originally Posted by Broomstick

Uh... yeah, he actually is. I may not agree with him, but he has displayed what I believe is genuine human emotion and even, at times, empathy with people. Some people. People who aren't in the classes of people Pence believes should be modified to suit his religious beliefs.

I guess my mileage varies. From the southern end of Indiana, vice president-elect and Cotton Hill cosplayer Mike Pence makes me ashamed to be a Hoosier.

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by bucketybuck

Is it not like, really really embarrassing for a country to have its president constantly posting drivel on Twitter like some stupid little child?

This. It's nuts for Trump to be doing this. It's the equivalent of him running around with a can of spray paint tagging buildings.

When he becomes the P-word (still can't say it), will he keep up this ridiculous barrage of tweets? It's inappropriate, undignified, juvenile-- and it would be if ANYONE did it. If Obama, or Hillary, or the POPE did it--it would be completely inappropriate.

Regardless of whether you agree with what the Hamilton cast did*, for Trump to DEMAND that they apologize?? WTF is he thinking?? Oh, right: he doesn't think.




*I thought it was perfectly okay.

[sinjin]

Originally Posted by Stranger On A Train

Not "bury your head"; stop focusing on his trivial offenses with no real lasting impact and turn a shining light on his more abominable actions with horrifying long-term consequences. During this campaign, the media gave Trump a virtually free platform, to the tune of an estimated US$2B, to espouse racist, isolationist, hateful rhetoric in exchange for the recreational outrage of being able to laugh at a clown who is so spitefully petty that he's maintained a grudge to a beauty pagent contesistant and he can't help but respond to a satirical allegation about the size of his hands that has been running on approaching three decades. Guess who got the better side of that deal? In fact, it's probably the best actual deal Donald Trump has ever made. Sure, it's hard to find something substantive to say about a candidate so superficial and desultory as Trump, but even when the media had stories of genuine substance such as Trump harassing black residents or boasting of sexually molesting women, they carried them for a few days, relying on the outrage factor of being able to say "pussy" on air (or tap dance in amused perfunctory prurience around it), and then moved on to the next bizarrely inappropriate but inconsequential Twitter message or vacuous campaign pledge to do something mildly outrageous.

The real horror of this entire election has been the normalization of deviance; the things no candidate short of a radical white nationalist movements should be able to espouse without retreating into hiding in a small Caribbean nation from public shaming became the background noise to Trump's daily antics and fretting over Clinton using a private email server when it is plain that a large number of legislators and officials frequently email sensitive and FOUO information to their Yahoo! and Gmail accounts like they're sending recipies to their in-laws. The truth is that nearly half of the people who turne out to vote elected a loud-mouthed blowhard who demonstrated zero intent or aptitude to actually following through on the hollow promises and bombast that shat out of his mouth faster than diarrhea from a night of binging on Taco Bell specials, and the opposing main candidate was so poorly received that people literally couldn't decide against voting between her or a reality show figuring dipped in Nacho Cheese Dorito crumbs.

In a normal election you have two (or occasionally three) candidates who are critical of each others policies, prior performance, and character to uphold the duties of the office, but never in living memory has a candidate openly leavied unshrouded insults, vengefully threatened repercussions upon taking office, or transparently suggested that his followers should assassinate the opposition. Even if you distrusted or hated Hillary Clinton for any of a number of valid, exaggerated, or totally manufactured reasons, the fact that Trump resorted to this behavior in the course of a campaign, and even in the middle of what was supposed to be a policy debate, this is unacceptable behavior by someone seeking the office of municipal dog catcher, much less President of the United States.

This is not normal. This is historic abnormality in the making. It's the kind of gross abnormality that gets mentioned in history texts right before a nation goes completely fucking off its rocker and starts killing its own citizens or annexing other nations because it wants a better view. The resigned acceptance of this behavior and of Trump's "tear down the system" rage-making as being somewhere on the spectrum of things that sometimes happen in a democracy because employment/trade agreements/corrupt banks/whatever is not remotely normal. But by turning away from this behavior and the tacit approval of the Republicans who gathered behind him (and from whom he stole nearly the entire rhetoric from whole cloth, only saturating it with lighting fluid and setting it aflame), and focusing on whatever stupid or offensive thing that Trump tweeted out to the world while taking his 3:40 AM dump, makes it all seem about equivalent in significance and impact.

Every news story about Donald Trump for the next four years (or however long he remains in office) should start with the words, "This is not normal! (Apologies to John Oliver for stealing his new catchphrase.)" and followed by a detailed examination of how Trump blatantly reneged on some promise to bring jobs or build infrastructure, or how he has issued an executive order in clear violation of Constitutional rights or how he has used his position to increase his personal and family wealth. It shouldn't be about which beauty pagent contestant or talk show host he said something mildly offensive about, or how he plans to redecorate the White House in gilded gold, and it sure to fuck shouldn't be about his latest nearly incoherent Twitter war with a comedian or singer. Doing mildly offensive amusing things to keep the outrage meter pegged so that when something actually worthy of outrage comes along (as it inevitably will on a regular basis) is doing a grave disservice to the principle of informing the public about things they actually need to know to make informed decisions.

Oh, and they also need to stop giving a fuck about Kanye West, too, and any other celebrity who decides to take a ride on the recreational outrage profit train. If you ignore the trolls, they will eventually get bored and go away.

Stranger

I agree completely. THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! I am amazed by all the talking heads smiling and laughing on TV. I am amazed at how the press is trying to make TRUMP look like a normal President elect. STOP getting your panties in a twist about his tweets. Be outraged about his cabinet picks. Report on their backgrounds and their incompetence. Be outraged by his children who are supposedly running his company being on his transition team. Be outraged at his Russian connections and demand an investigation into the Russian interference in the election. I am sick of the damn tweets.

[elucidator]

Originally Posted by Superdude

.... Mike Pence makes me ashamed to be a Hoosier.

Did you check with your father? You know, Hoosier Daddy?

[Broomstick]

Originally Posted by Superdude

I guess my mileage varies. From the southern end of Indiana, vice president-elect and Cotton Hill cosplayer Mike Pence makes me ashamed to be a Hoosier.

I didn't say that his conduct was OK, or that I feel any less ashamed to be a Hoosier. I merely stated I believed Pence was capable of human emotion. That doesn't make him a good man or a sympathetic man or someone I think make wise and/or appropriate decisions for his job.

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by running coach

Duckspeak is only used in the context of an echo chamber.

Ah, yes, I see it now. In my defense, when the duckspeak term comes up in the novel, there is a form of echo chamber - the character with the rapid-fire voice spouting mindless pro-Oceania, anti-thought-criminal doggerel is talking at (not really "to", since there's no indication he's paying any attention to her responses) a woman at his table who expresses various agreements.

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by sinjin

I agree completely. THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! I am amazed by all the talking heads smiling and laughing on TV. I am amazed at how the press is trying to make TRUMP look like a normal President elect. STOP getting your panties in a twist about his tweets. Be outraged about his cabinet picks. Report on their backgrounds and their incompetence. Be outraged by his children who are supposedly running his company being on his transition team. Be outraged at his Russian connections and demand an investigation into the Russian interference in the election. I am sick of the damn tweets.

+1

As I said in another forum, I can only believe that the Men in Black Flashy-Thing has been at work and the people who are normalizing Trump have already forgotten who this man is! He is not just another Republican candidate-- he is way outside the bounds of normality. He isn't even the P-word yet, and we're already seeing a continuation of his outrageous behavior. It's like Emerald City and a giant segment of the population is wearing Trump-colored glasses and can't or won't see what is happening.

This is not Democrat/liberal sour grapes-- the man is not behaving like a normal candidate, P-elect, statesman, or politician.

ETA:

Originally Posted by Kamino Neko

Yes, and it's 'humility is bad'.

The bombastic psychopath and his bigot buddy won the election because they screamed lies to the heavens, and half the potential electorate bought it...and stayed home.
....

Actually LESS than half, by 1.2 million votes.

[Spice Weasel]

Is there any space to acknowledge that Trump is not normal or appropriate without also assuming we are about to lose 100 years of social progress or end in a fiery nuclear war? I'll start freaking out when he actually does something, rather than bloviates about shit he has no intention of doing. I've never seen him follow through on anything or hold the same position for longer than two minutes.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by Spice Weasel

Is there any space to acknowledge that Trump is not normal or appropriate without also assuming we are about to lose 100 years of social progress or end in a fiery nuclear war? I'll start freaking out when he actually does something, rather than bloviates about shit he has no intention of doing. I've never seen him follow through on anything or hold the same position for longer than two minutes.

Yes, it's fair to wait until he takes office at least, and his various appointments start doing their jobs.

Personally, I'm inclined to say Trump is normal, for the United States.

Citizens of the United States are welcome to feel insulted by that observation.

[Superdude]

Originally Posted by Broomstick

I didn't say that his conduct was OK, or that I feel any less ashamed to be a Hoosier. I merely stated I believed Pence was capable of human emotion. That doesn't make him a good man or a sympathetic man or someone I think make wise and/or appropriate decisions for his job.

Fair enough. I suppose I'm using a different metric than you, but that's okay.

Originally Posted by elucidator

Did you check with your father? You know, Hoosier Daddy?

Well, before my dad died, he swore up and down that the only way that he knew I was his is because I'm the middle child, and look like the other two had a kid. So, unless my mom had the same "other guy" knock her up 3 times...

[Kamino Neko]

Originally Posted by Chefguy

It's called the First Amendment.

Isn't that the one that states that Christians don't need to acknowledge other people's same-sex marriages? The Vice President Elect told us this.

[Spice Weasel]

It's hard to feel offended by the insult. I mean, what defense do we even have at this point? Our culture is obviously flawed.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by Spice Weasel

Is there any space to acknowledge that Trump is not normal or appropriate without also assuming we are about to lose 100 years of social progress or end in a fiery nuclear war? I'll start freaking out when he actually does something, rather than bloviates about shit he has no intention of doing. I've never seen him follow through on anything or hold the same position for longer than two minutes.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Check out who he is surrounding himself with. I agree that Trump is inconsistent, has no center, and is a tower of Jell-o. But he's letting a bunch of genies out of a lot of bottles, and he will not be able to control them.

[jsc1953]

Trump's supporters on social media are demanding a boycott of Hamilton, and predicting dire financial consequences for its future, its cast, and touring productions.

Yeah, right. They realize it's playing in New York, right? Not Pocatello, Idaho? And that it's sold out for the next 9 months? This demonstration will not cause Hamilton to lose a single nickel.

[madmonk28]

Originally Posted by madsircool

The cast member was so outraged that he had to read his rant from a card.

You do know that the statement was written by the show's creator and read by an actor right?

[Drunky Smurf]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

Hopefully the human filth that voted for him

This rhetoric is why Hillary lost. Congratulations liberals your own assholishness is why Trump won.

You fucking assholes.

Do you really think that telling someone with a different opinion than you that they are Super Evil Super Satan Super Hitler and that their children should be raped and murdered will convince them to agree with you?

Instead of rational calm conversation?

Oh, but I know, from what I've read on this board, that someone who has a different opinion than you is so Super Duper Evil Satan Hitler that in no way in hell should they be even engaged, is what you'll say. BigT here is your announcement to give me one of your Patently Awesome Lectures. Or what I like to call one of your "pals" because we are all such "pals" here. Well that is unless some one has a differing opinion.

You know, for the Smartest Hippest People on the planet you sure are a bunch of fucking retarded assholes who love to be racist bigoted assholes.

Congratulations! You are exactly what you love to hate.

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by Drunky Smurf

This rhetoric is why Hillary lost. Congratulations liberals your own assholishness is why Trump won.

You fucking assholes.

Do you really think that telling someone with a different opinion than you that they are Super Evil Super Satan Super Hitler and that their children should be raped and murdered will convince them to agree with you?

Instead of rational calm conversation?

Oh, but I know, from what I've read on this board, that someone who has a different opinion than you is so Super Duper Evil Satan Hitler that in no way in hell should they be even engaged, is what you'll say. BigT here is your announcement to give me one of your Patently Awesome Lectures. Or what I like to call one of your "pals" because we are all such "pals" here. Well that is unless some one has a differing opinion.

You know, for the Smartest Hippest People on the planet you sure are a bunch of fucking retarded assholes who love to be racist bigoted assholes.

Congratulations! You are exactly what you love to hate.

My bold.

You mean, like this post? Way to set an example.

[emcee2k]

"I didn't want to vote for the racist, but those mean liberals kept calling me racist, so I had to."

[Stranger On A Train]

Originally Posted by ThelmaLou

Check out who he is surrounding himself with. I agree that Trump is inconsistent, has no center, and is a tower of Jell-o. But he's letting a bunch of genies out of a lot of bottles, and he will not be able to control them.

Precisely. Trump may not be that much of a threat to the institutions and security of the United States himself, and I frankly give even odds that he'll resign within the first half of his term as he either gets bored or does something too egregious for the Republican majority (who has no love for him despite the fact that he's shown them the winning path) to ignore, and he is forced to resign. (Trump would have no patience for impeachment and a Senate trial.)

But Trump appears to be preparing to install some of the most radically reactionary people ever to have control of the apparatus of the nation, and appears to be seeking advisors of similar bent. Setting aside the consequences of abandoning the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas mitigation, the fact that he or his successor will be installing almost certainly three or more Supreme Court justices, developing deep ties with oligarical Russia, weakening NATO and strategic agreements with other nations such as Japan and South Korea, and generally pulling the temple down on our heads across the board on civil liberties from wiretapping, torture, recognition of LGBT and women's protections, and the inevitable graft that we'll see if every indication of what Trump has ever done in the last thirty years of business practice can be taken as indication will all have long term impacts upon the well-being of the nation long after Trump rotting in his gilded tomb.

This isn't just about partisan differences or complaints that if the president doesn't adhere to progressive principles that momentum will be lost and the clock will turn back a bit; Trump is not Mitt Romney or John McCain or Jeb Bush; he is a politically disinterested wheeler-dealer and vocational radical risk-taker who now holds the future of the nation, and indeed, significant control over the fate of the developed world in his toddler-sized hands. He has the temperment of a petulant child and the capability to hand effective control of the nation to conspiracy nutters and white nationalists. This is not normal.

Stranger

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Stranger On A Train

Not "bury your head"; stop focusing on his trivial offenses with no real lasting impact and turn a shining light on his more abominable actions with horrifying long-term consequences. During this campaign, the media gave Trump a virtually free platform, to the tune of an estimated US$2B, to espouse racist, isolationist, hateful rhetoric in exchange for the recreational outrage of being able to laugh at a clown who is so spitefully petty that he's maintained a grudge to a beauty pagent contesistant and he can't help but respond to a satirical allegation about the size of his hands that has been running on approaching three decades. Guess who got the better side of that deal? In fact, it's probably the best actual deal Donald Trump has ever made. Sure, it's hard to find something substantive to say about a candidate so superficial and desultory as Trump, but even when the media had stories of genuine substance such as Trump harassing black residents or boasting of sexually molesting women, they carried them for a few days, relying on the outrage factor of being able to say "pussy" on air (or tap dance in amused perfunctory prurience around it), and then moved on to the next bizarrely inappropriate but inconsequential Twitter message or vacuous campaign pledge to do something mildly outrageous.

The real horror of this entire election has been the normalization of deviance; the things no candidate short of a radical white nationalist movements should be able to espouse without retreating into hiding in a small Caribbean nation from public shaming became the background noise to Trump's daily antics and fretting over Clinton using a private email server when it is plain that a large number of legislators and officials frequently email sensitive and FOUO information to their Yahoo! and Gmail accounts like they're sending recipies to their in-laws. The truth is that nearly half of the people who turne out to vote elected a loud-mouthed blowhard who demonstrated zero intent or aptitude to actually following through on the hollow promises and bombast that shat out of his mouth faster than diarrhea from a night of binging on Taco Bell specials, and the opposing main candidate was so poorly received that people literally couldn't decide against voting between her or a reality show figuring dipped in Nacho Cheese Dorito crumbs.

In a normal election you have two (or occasionally three) candidates who are critical of each others policies, prior performance, and character to uphold the duties of the office, but never in living memory has a candidate openly leavied unshrouded insults, vengefully threatened repercussions upon taking office, or transparently suggested that his followers should assassinate the opposition. Even if you distrusted or hated Hillary Clinton for any of a number of valid, exaggerated, or totally manufactured reasons, the fact that Trump resorted to this behavior in the course of a campaign, and even in the middle of what was supposed to be a policy debate, this is unacceptable behavior by someone seeking the office of municipal dog catcher, much less President of the United States.

This is not normal. This is historic abnormality in the making. It's the kind of gross abnormality that gets mentioned in history texts right before a nation goes completely fucking off its rocker and starts killing its own citizens or annexing other nations because it wants a better view. The resigned acceptance of this behavior and of Trump's "tear down the system" rage-making as being somewhere on the spectrum of things that sometimes happen in a democracy because employment/trade agreements/corrupt banks/whatever is not remotely normal. But by turning away from this behavior and the tacit approval of the Republicans who gathered behind him (and from whom he stole nearly the entire rhetoric from whole cloth, only saturating it with lighting fluid and setting it aflame), and focusing on whatever stupid or offensive thing that Trump tweeted out to the world while taking his 3:40 AM dump, makes it all seem about equivalent in significance and impact.

Every news story about Donald Trump for the next four years (or however long he remains in office) should start with the words, "This is not normal! (Apologies to John Oliver for stealing his new catchphrase.)" and followed by a detailed examination of how Trump blatantly reneged on some promise to bring jobs or build infrastructure, or how he has issued an executive order in clear violation of Constitutional rights or how he has used his position to increase his personal and family wealth. It shouldn't be about which beauty pagent contestant or talk show host he said something mildly offensive about, or how he plans to redecorate the White House in gilded gold, and it sure to fuck shouldn't be about his latest nearly incoherent Twitter war with a comedian or singer. Doing mildly offensive amusing things to keep the outrage meter pegged so that when something actually worthy of outrage comes along (as it inevitably will on a regular basis) is doing a grave disservice to the principle of informing the public about things they actually need to know to make informed decisions.

Oh, and they also need to stop giving a fuck about Kanye West, too, and any other celebrity who decides to take a ride on the recreational outrage profit train. If you ignore the trolls, they will eventually get bored and go away.

Stranger

Originally Posted by Stranger On A Train

Precisely. Trump may not be that much of a threat to the institutions and security of the United States himself, and I frankly give even odds that he'll resign within the first half of his term as he either gets bored or does something too egregious for the Republican majority (who has no love for him despite the fact that he's shown them the winning path) to ignore, and he is forced to resign. (Trump would have no patience for impeachment and a Senate trial.)

But Trump appears to be preparing to install some of the most radically reactionary people ever to have control of the apparatus of the nation, and appears to be seeking advisors of similar bent. Setting aside the consequences of abandoning the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas mitigation, the fact that he or his successor will be installing almost certainly three or more Supreme Court justices, developing deep ties with oligarical Russia, weakening NATO and strategic agreements with other nations such as Japan and South Korea, and generally pulling the temple down on our heads across the board on civil liberties from wiretapping, torture, recognition of LGBT and women's protections, and the inevitable graft that we'll see if every indication of what Trump has ever done in the last thirty years of business practice can be taken as indication will all have long term impacts upon the well-being of the nation long after Trump rotting in his gilded tomb.

This isn't just about partisan differences or complaints that if the president doesn't adhere to progressive principles that momentum will be lost and the clock will turn back a bit; Trump is not Mitt Romney or John McCain or Jeb Bush; he is a politically disinterested wheeler-dealer and vocational radical risk-taker who now holds the future of the nation, and indeed, significant control over the fate of the developed world in his toddler-sized hands. He has the temperment of a petulant child and the capability to hand effective control of the nation to conspiracy nutters and white nationalists. This is not normal.

Stranger

TL;DR

[octopus]

Originally Posted by BigT

Yes. We should all worry that we are just as bad as the bigots when we shame the bigots. That's such an original thought that we should all take totally seriously.

Yeah, we learned humility. We learned that we didn't have this thing won like we thought. We learned we need to redouble our efforts. Not reduce them.

Yeah, having Trump as president isn't normal. THAT'S THE WHOLE REASON WE NEED TO CALL HIM OUT AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY. That's why half-baked approaches are doomed to failure. We need to attack him and his VP on all fronts.

We can be kind to the people who are hurting, who voted a racist despite his racism. But the actual racists and homophobes? No, we can't have "decorum." Decorum lost.

Trump lost votes every single time he turned into an asshole on Twitter. So baiting him is 100% the way to move forward. And that means we need to keep track of everything he says.

We are now in the battle for 2020, and we will win. Or the country will be burned to the ground trying to stop us.

Such fire and conviction! Burn the country to the ground even! Explain 2016?

[octopus]

Originally Posted by Drunky Smurf

This rhetoric is why Hillary lost. Congratulations liberals your own assholishness is why Trump won.

You fucking assholes.

Do you really think that telling someone with a different opinion than you that they are Super Evil Super Satan Super Hitler and that their children should be raped and murdered will convince them to agree with you?

Instead of rational calm conversation?

Oh, but I know, from what I've read on this board, that someone who has a different opinion than you is so Super Duper Evil Satan Hitler that in no way in hell should they be even engaged, is what you'll say. BigT here is your announcement to give me one of your Patently Awesome Lectures. Or what I like to call one of your "pals" because we are all such "pals" here. Well that is unless some one has a differing opinion.

You know, for the Smartest Hippest People on the planet you sure are a bunch of fucking retarded assholes who love to be racist bigoted assholes.

Congratulations! You are exactly what you love to hate.

They know it and delight in it. Why do you think this board has Pit? It's to allow their true nature to shine without sanction. If you don't virtue signal as hard prepare for a barrage of vulgarity.

[boytyperanma]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

TL;DR

Should have, it's a good read.

He bolded the important part

Originally Posted by Stranger On A Train

This is not normal.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by octopus

Explain 2016?

The Democrats overestimated the intelligence and morality of the American people.

[Alessan]

I think Trump may be coming to realize that while he may have won the country for four years, he's lost New York City forever.

[octopus]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

The Democrats overestimated the intelligence and morality of the American people.

Don't do that! Half the people have <= 100IQ! Stop overestimating. Didn't Idiocracy teach you people anything?

[Baron Greenback]

Originally Posted by Stranger On A Train

Precisely. Trump may not be that much of a threat to the institutions and security of the United States himself, and I frankly give even odds that he'll resign within the first half of his term as he either gets bored or does something too egregious for the Republican majority (who has no love for him despite the fact that he's shown them the winning path) to ignore, and he is forced to resign. (Trump would have no patience for impeachment and a Senate trial.)

But Trump appears to be preparing to install some of the most radically reactionary people ever to have control of the apparatus of the nation, and appears to be seeking advisors of similar bent. Setting aside the consequences of abandoning the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas mitigation, the fact that he or his successor will be installing almost certainly three or more Supreme Court justices, developing deep ties with oligarical Russia, weakening NATO and strategic agreements with other nations such as Japan and South Korea, and generally pulling the temple down on our heads across the board on civil liberties from wiretapping, torture, recognition of LGBT and women's protections, and the inevitable graft that we'll see if every indication of what Trump has ever done in the last thirty years of business practice can be taken as indication will all have long term impacts upon the well-being of the nation long after Trump rotting in his gilded tomb.

This isn't just about partisan differences or complaints that if the president doesn't adhere to progressive principles that momentum will be lost and the clock will turn back a bit; Trump is not Mitt Romney or John McCain or Jeb Bush; he is a politically disinterested wheeler-dealer and vocational radical risk-taker who now holds the future of the nation, and indeed, significant control over the fate of the developed world in his toddler-sized hands. He has the temperment of a petulant child and the capability to hand effective control of the nation to conspiracy nutters and white nationalists. This is not normal.

Stranger

Well said there, Stranger.

I doubt Trump will make it to his second anniversary as President, so the damage might not be too bad, but still wtf America!?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Baron Greenback

I doubt Trump will make it to his second anniversary as President, so the damage might not be too bad, but still wtf America!?

It won't much matter; Trump alone would be bad, but the Republicans control Congress as well. If Trump dropped dead of heart failure tomorrow we'd still be headed for disaster.

[Budget Player Cadet]

Originally Posted by Drunky Smurf

This rhetoric is why Hillary lost. Congratulations liberals your own assholishness is why Trump won.

You fucking assholes.

Do you really think that telling someone with a different opinion than you that they are Super Evil Super Satan Super Hitler and that their children should be raped and murdered will convince them to agree with you?

Instead of rational calm conversation?

Oh, but I know, from what I've read on this board, that someone who has a different opinion than you is so Super Duper Evil Satan Hitler that in no way in hell should they be even engaged, is what you'll say. BigT here is your announcement to give me one of your Patently Awesome Lectures. Or what I like to call one of your "pals" because we are all such "pals" here. Well that is unless some one has a differing opinion.

You know, for the Smartest Hippest People on the planet you sure are a bunch of fucking retarded assholes who love to be racist bigoted assholes.

Congratulations! You are exactly what you love to hate.

The irony of this coming from you is sickening. No, I'm sorry, Mr. Republican Troll Who Never Posts Anything Actually Worth Reading, you don't get to lecture us on our tone when talking about people who eagerly voted for the clueless, experience-free candidate white nationalists were hailing as the second coming and minorities were constantly restating their terror of. You don't get to pretend to take the fucking high ground. That's bullshit.

[Grrr!]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

The irony of this coming from you is sickening. No, I'm sorry, Mr. Republican Troll Who Never Posts Anything Actually Worth Reading, you don't get to lecture us on our tone when talking about people who eagerly voted for the clueless, experience-free candidate white nationalists were hailing as the second coming and minorities were constantly restating their terror of. You don't get to pretend to take the fucking high ground. That's bullshit.

Yes, the racists won this go around because we liberals were too fucking lazy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Instead of rolling our sleeves up and really trying to figure out why such a large segment of the population were voting for Trump, which BTW had large segments of both women and Hispanics, we liberals were all too eager to label them all witches in this fucking witch hunt.

And now, judging from this thread, so many of you still wish to dig your heels in and still cry witch!

Good luck with that.

[enipla]

Originally Posted by Baron Greenback

Well said there, Stranger.

I doubt Trump will make it to his second anniversary as President, so the damage might not be too bad, but still wtf America!?

I donno. He may be able to accept the damage his ego is going to go through by surrounding himself with yes men. And, his supporters will probably not abandon him because he won't be able to close on any of his promises.

They voted against Hillary as much as they voted for Trump. Trump supporters achieved what they wanted, and would like to see trump stir things up as much as possible.

[Son of a Rich]

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

I doubt he has sufficient attention span to watch a play.

Or the wit to appreciate it.

[Spice Weasel]

Originally Posted by Grrr!

Yes, the racists won this go around because we liberals were too fucking lazy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Instead of rolling our sleeves up and really trying to figure out why such a large segment of the population were voting for Trump, which BTW had large segments of both women and Hispanics, we liberals were all too eager to label them all witches in this fucking witch hunt.

This. And I assumed not many people would hold their noses and vote for him. We drastically underestimated the hatred of Hillary Clinton. I have a friend who described herself as 'horrified' by Trump being the Republican nominee, but in the end, she voted for him. It helps to understand that while the mainstream and leftwing media was reporting on every Trump scandal and vulgar comment, Republicans were getting a whole different narrative, one that demonized Clinton and liberals just as much as liberals demonized Trump and conservatives. It's easy to say conservatives just weren't getting, or ignoring, the ''facts,'' but each team plays with its own set of facts, and each team plays just as fast and loose with the facts as the other. Our refusal to acknowledge that our views are shaped by public narrative will be the undoing of us all.

I wasn't shocked by Trump's election, though I was a bit surprised. But there were plenty of statisticians indicating that the polling had a larger margin of error than usual. Nate Silver wasn't wrong.

[Stranger On A Train]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

TL;DR

Well, now we know why print media and the investigative journalism associated with it is dying. Any ideas or arguements that can't be presented in 140 characters aren't worthy of consideration.

Originally Posted by Grrr!

Instead of rolling our sleeves up and really trying to figure out why such a large segment of the population were voting for Trump, which BTW had large segments of both women and Hispanics, we liberals were all too eager to label them all witches in this fucking witch hunt.

And now, judging from this thread, so many of you still wish to dig your heels in and still cry witch.

I don't think it is "the liberals" who are being hunted. But quite honestly, this shouldn't be framed as a "liberals versus conservatives" at this point. The people who voted Trump into the primaries didn't vote for him based upon his conservative values. Donald Trump is not and has never been either a social or fiscal conservative, and he certainly does not reflect the morals and ethics of social conservatives and Evangelicals. He does not advocate a culture of personal responsibility and integrity, and indeed, his history and behavior displays the very antithesis of conservativeism. Trump promoted himself as the barbarian at the gate, the guy who was going to come in with a wrecking ball and tear the system down, "drain the swamp", and send profesional politicians packing. He was going to bring back jobs, get rid of all of the dangerous illegal immigrants who are roaming the streets in search of daughters to rape, and and ban Muslims so that ISIS in America will stop constantly blowing up our buildings and going on shooting sprees. That all of these statements are factually unsupportable is irrelevant; Trump tapped into a basic fear that our government is not capable of providing physical safety and economic security, from terrorism and immigration to employment and safe drinking water, and he pledged simple if completely unworkable solutions. He's basically the Joker come to reality, and he even has a similar countenance and manner of speaking.

The essential point here is that what Trump is doing is going to harm everyone in this country in some way, and wil probably harm some of the very people who voted for him the most. That message needs to be pointed out every time he does something of substantive harm to the nation as a whole or to significant parts of it, and it shouldn't be diluted by outrage over some shitty thing he says on Twitter at a point that normal people are in bed having nightmares about having elected the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu in a bad combover as president. The focus cannot just be on Trump driving his gilded clown car through the halls of government until he is feted and resigns so he can spend more time sniffling through the dressing rooms of beauty pageant contestants or being the focus of a reality TV show, but also on the bevy of hateful reactionary people he is bringing with him and will remain once he is back grabbing pussy as once more a private citizen.

There is merit in pointing out that in selecting future candidates and focusing on issues, the Democrats can't just focus on the wealthy suburban coastline base, and need to pay particular attention to demonstrating that their candidate is not someone who is beholden in any way to the very interests which savaged the economy for their own personal gain. They need to appeal to the mass of people who are looking for actual reform without endorsing the angry Hulk-smash mentality. They need to look beyond provincialism and select a candidate not based upon party loyalty and fundraising ability but who appeals to a wider range of people, and certainly someone who doesn't enter a race with a predictable net negative approval rating. They'll go in knowing that the right wing smear machine is going to sling manufactured scandal on a daily basis, but they shouldn't be giving it any credibility by having a history of nontransparency and poor decision making.

But by the same token, the people who voted for Trump this year need to be reminded that even though they may not be racist, misogynistic, or homophobic themselves, when they hate-voted for a candidate who espoused those values, behaved like an ill-mannered toddler, and surrounded himself with people who were genuinely hateful, the result is what we have now. Not just Donald Trump, the Man-Baby President, but all of the shitty people, corrupt lobbyists, and alt-right radical reactionaries that he is brought with him. They need to be reminded that nearly everything Trump has claimed about himself and his values in this election has been a complete fabrication, and the result is going to be the antithesis of what he has promised. Those points need to be made clear so that enough people are not swayed by bombastic demagogues like Trump that there is anything close to this kind of election again. The next time there is a candidate who threatens to jail his opponent during a policy debate as if he is some kind of Central African strongman, the point needs to be made plainly that this is not normal or acceptable behavior from someone seeking public office, because by winning this election using those very tactics Trump has made it the new standard and you can bet that other candidates will ape this behavior in trying to get similar results.

None of this is normal, and the very fact that essential elements of this campaign appear to have been pulled from Arrested Development to an astonishing degree almost as if Trump had been on a late-night Netflix binge while putting together his strategy should highlight that.

Stranger