Well, then well fucking done.
You’re still a shrill hypocrite and pretty much useless piece of shit all the way around.
I got the two mixed up. COMEY helped get Trump elected. MEULLER, by avoiding any MEANINGFUL testimony in support of his OWN report, and kicking the can over to a corrupt Republican dominated Congress, only helped the fucker stay in office.
This. Asashi is correct.
Remember the phrase “fuck your feelings” and savor it. It cuts both ways.
Asahi,I think most of us here are your natural allies. I’ve been calling my representatives, going to demonstrations, donating to Democrats, and advocating for my positions among my social circle and online. Many of the rest of us have been too. The great majority of us are fundamentally on your side. You’re not merely preaching to the choir here; you’re screaming at the choir when their high notes don’t shatter glass.
Frankly, it sounds to me that a lot of asahi’s detractors are trying to wipe off the egg on their faces while throwing shit into his. Me, I find it hard to condemn him for taking a victory lap. Considering the state of the country, it’s must be cold comfort to have been right (or at least on the right track) all this time.
No; not even cold comfort. It’s no comfort at all. Being the first person to smell smoke doesn’t get you a place to sleep after the house burns down.
What has he won, again?
Not really. I’m horrified.
But my thinking all along - not just here but with people I rant off on in real life - is that before the problem of Trumpism can be fixed, it has to be first understood and appreciated for the danger that it is.
Over and over again, I’ve found that a lot of the people who voted for Trump don’t necessarily like him as a person, but they believe that as long as he’s delivering their goods, then his character doesn’t matter.
On the progressive side, there has been this arrogant assumption that facts will matter, that if the public can see more facts, they will be persuaded. No, that’s how academic, epistemology-driven people see the world, but that’s not how a lot of humanity does. A fact is a fact - a fact cannot change. But how people can interpret and perceive facts can change from one person to the next. One set of facts can lead to many “truths.”
Facts aren’t going to defeat Trumpism. They will simply will not. The only thing that will defeat him is when enough people aren’t scared of him, but are fucking infuriated at him - and not just him but the festering pustules Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and the entire GOP. And that absolutely includes his enablers, from Susan Collins to John Kelly. When the people wake up and the reckoning finally comes, I want absolutely no mother fucking mercy for any of these animals.
And I will dehumanize them - I will dehumanize them because they fucking deserve to be, and if anyone reading this doesn’t think that way, then honestly, you can fuck yourself too. We have to get to the point where we are fucking pissed. Where we are uncontrollably outraged. We’re past the point of just fixing the rot to our society with a midterm election and a gridlocked government. We are experiencing an all out assault not only on our government, but on our collective senses and our way of life. There - must - be - no - fucking - mercy. None.
As I’ve said repeatedly, rage is good. This country was founded on it, and if it doesn’t find its inner Thomas Jefferson soon, it’s going to kiss 2 centuries and change of manifest destiny and self-government goodbye.
Solid post; I agree.
Something else that I wanted to add, needed to add.
Economic systems are political systems, and political systems are economic systems. The growing wealth and income inequality in our society should make one thing abundantly clear: there is not just a growing wealth imbalance, there is a growing power imbalance. The tendency isn’t for this imbalance to correct itself. As the wealth/power gap increases, the tendency is for the wealthy (the power class) to do more to guard its wealth and its power. This tendency will outlive Trump because the wealth and power gap is being protected not only by Trump but by the GOP, which has become almost entirely hijacked by these special interests. They will continue to use divide-and-conquer tactics, engage in information warfare, and corrupt institutions - that will happen whether Trump is impeached and removed or not.
The argument that Trump was going to be a greater magnitude of Total Shitshow than the usual run of Republican presidents.
I think everyone knew he was going to be a shitshow, but we disagreed on the reasons. Most of the people who’ve attacked me knew Trump was a shitshow in the making, but they assumed it was because he was an intellectual pygmy and that he would be catastrophically incompetent - I don’t disagree with that assessment at all, btw.
But what I - and others like Thelmalou, like Snowboarder Bo, K9Befriender, and others - have also believed is that Trump represented an extremely dangerous turn in American politics, and one that might ultimately prove fatal to democracy.
Inevitably, if you believed that Trump was just a meandering dolt who would quit (remember that idea? Seems like a long time ago now) - if you believed that, then the idea that Trump was dangerous seemed comical, farcical, and if exposed to that refrain too often, understandably, some posters might have felt inclined to intervene and shut me up.
What I’ve tried to get across is that Trump might be as dumb as a doorknob in terms of knowing about economics and how the political system works, but he’s not dumb when it comes to manipulation. Sociopaths are typically pretty good in that department. Moreover, American democracy itself has been afflicted with a potentially fatal tandem of cynicism, ignorance, and indifference. It’s this social virus that got him elected in the first place, and what does it say about a political culture when his highest approval rating was registered on the same day that Republicans successfully completed a scam trial long after Trump’s blatant corruption had been exposed?
As I said in an earlier post, the first step in getting rid of this Trump problem, this GOP problem is to make sure that everyone understand what the problem is, and just how dangerous it is. Fear is perhaps an appropriate emotion at this time, but an even more appropriate emotion is rage. I’m fucking livid, my blood is boiling at anyone - and I mean anyone - who knowingly (and maybe even unknowingly) supports what the GOP stands for and I’m not going to pretend I’m not. There comes a time when people have to say, I’m not accepting this shit under any circumstances.
To follow up on what I said above. Anyone remember Martin O’Malley? It’s old news, but I got a kick out of reading this a few weeks ago (hadn’t heard about it until then):
Yeah, Ken thought he could just walk out on the town and enjoy a drink, with a dash of some civility and expect that people would distinguish Cuccinelli the individual versus the disgusting public servant. Apparently, O’Malley was havin’ none of it.
Nothing like reminding a neo-Nazi that his grandparents were once in a concentration camp - I don’t mean that literally (Cuccinelli is Italian, AFAIK, but you get the analogy).
Yep, this is what needs to happen. This isn’t how we should treat any and everyone who voted for Trump, but if people are going to go out and wear Trumpism on their sleeve or if someone wants to profit from and make a professional career out of wearing Trump’s jersey on the taxpayer dime…fuck that guy. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. I will gladly say it to that guy’s face. I’m older and just don’t give a fuck anymore.
“Manifest destiny?”
ISTM that the contiguous 48 states are already ours. Unless you’re hinting that we should start annexing portions of British Columbia and/or maybe Baja California…
They know what they did!
Pushing around America like that! We won’t take it, nosiree!
I’m saying that the United States could dissolve.
Consider how Trump is using federal power to punish states that didn’t vote for him, and that Republicans seem to be chuckling over it. Right now, the actions seem symbolic and the repercussions minimal, but if it continues into another 4-year Trump term, with threats of federal funds being withheld for urgent situations (i.e. wildfires and so forth) the ire would be palpable. There would be at least talk of secession.
There would inevitable be threats of secession from within California’s borders as well. I wouldn’t laugh at the possibilities, either. Secession, just like authoritarianism, is going to become more and more of a thing, not just here but globally.
What’s any of that got to do with ‘Manifest Destiny’?
What do you think ‘Manifest Destiny’ means, asahi? Enthrall us with your acumen.
CMC fnord!
fnord!
Another solid post; again: I agree.