Half hunch, half looking at the changing winds of recent history: I’d bet not. There will be continuing noise from the Old Bitter White American corner for a while, but if Trump loses - and loses the way he should lose - this is Armageddon for all he represents.
While I agree with you that this is the most frightening element of the scenario, I’m not sure it says much about Americans other than they happen to be human beings and human beings suck. People react in very bad ways to threats (real or perceived) and the loss of an imaginary good thing is as much a threat as a real bad thing.
Remember that in “the good old days” America imprisoned people of Japanese origin for no other reason than their ancestry. And then failed to properly compensate them for losses. The kind of impulses that Trump appeals to are not new. You could even argue that building walls, surveilling mosques and banning Muslim travel is downright enlightened behavior compared to what people have done in other times and places.
(Oh wait, but he also wants to torture them, execute them without trials and bomb their families. So, no real progress, then. Just unfortunately human.)
The death throes are gonna be bad.
If Trump wins, my only consolation will be that he will be so bad he’ll definitely for sure lose in a landslide in 2020 and Dems will be able to redo the census to make redistricting more fair. But it would be a brutal 4 years
I’m afraid I have to agree. While the Koch cartel has mostly backed away from donating to Trump’s campaign (not out of altruism, I assure you), they have stated that they will be concentrating on Senate races, instead, in their ongoing and rapacious desire to destroy the middle class and rule as a de facto oligarchy. There can be no other explanation for their relentless pursuit of a free market economy.
I have to agree.
After Obama’s election in 2008, pundits reassured us that the Tea Party was the last gasp of the bitter aging white nationalists. The changing demographics of the nation were supposed to render them irrelevant.
But that didn’t happen. They didn’t go away, and I don’t anticipate them going away this time either. Cruz is positioning himself for another run in 2020, and there’s talk about Tom Cotton running too. The GOP will retain its gerrymandered lock on the House at least until then. Republican governors like Brownback, McCrory, and Rauner will continue wrecking their states to prove their ideological purity.
Hillary, if elected, will act as a firewall for the most extreme stuff; there won’t be an Obamacare repeal. But unless the Democrats retake the Senate, I expect four more years of across-the-board obstruction there too. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the GOP tries to stall on filling Scalia’s seat until 2020.
It’s going to be bad no matter how you slice it.
And if the Kochs succeed and Hillary wins, it will be four more years of gridlock.
Mitch McConnell: “Our only mission will be to see to it that Hillary Clinton is a one-term president!”
If it is any consolation I know of a lot of Americans who can’t stand Trump but trust Hillary even less. I also know of many Americans who are worried about a liberal supreme court appointment. It really is scary how many voters think they like Trump even though they know nothing about him. I feel like it is safe to say that we have almost an equal amount of nut cases on the left who will simply vote blindly with what they perceive as the tide.
No, Americans were terrified by the Niihau Incident.
Now we return to our thread.
Does Trump in any way resemble It Can’t Happen Here?
I agree with this completely. In many ways, the damage is already done, and it has probably been true for some time. I began to be rather pessimistic beginning in 2004 when, despite knowing fully well that the Bush administration had completely lied about the case for war, Bush was rewarded with a second term. Whatever concerns I had were raised several fold after the collapse of the economy. If half a country can’t even agree on what the facts are, on what the problems are, then we will never ever agree on what the solutions are. We have a nation divided into two camps: those who believe whatever the fuck they want to believe and find sources and information that fit their worldview, and we have the rest of us who try to be open minded and fair.
What does it say about us that Donald Trump is already this close to the presidency? It says that many millions of Americans, either through cynicism, ignorance, or both, have decided that a narcissistic political neophyte is an ideal candidate to lead the most powerful nation on earth in the nuclear age, in the age of climate change, in the age of growing international instability. The last few days have been nothing short of surreal: a candidate - a republican candidate no less - not once, but repeatedly going on live television in front of millions and taunting the parents of a dead war hero. We have politically toxic rhetoric. We have a toxic candidate. We have a not so great challenger in Clinton, to tell the truth. Even if Hillary Clinton ‘wins’ what will she have won? What will we have won? It seems like we’ve already past the point of no return.
America is like a bad puppy that keeps shitting on the carpet. At some point, we probably need to have our noses rubbed in it.
As someone else pointed out, the suspense is over whether Trump gets 27% of the vote to Hillary’s 28% or vice versa. (Trump and Clinton are fighting over 2nd place. Did_Not_Vote will come in 1st, as it has in every election since FDR’s 1936 landslide. — LBJ almost beat Did_Not_Vote in 1964.)
Although the votes of the 2% “on the fence” are supremely important it seems silly to use them as the basis for a headline:
*Americans go Bat-shit; elect ignorant demagogue!orSanity Pevails; America rejects fascism and racism!*when the question is whether 28% vote bat-shit, or only 27%.
I hope the Democrats continue to emphasize the message “America is Already Great.”
If you compare stock prices and employment figures it is impossible not to conclude that American prosperity still leads the world. Crime is down; justice is progressing (slowly); the American military has never been stronger. American science and technology still lead the world.
The supposed “greatness” Trump and supporters speak of refers to much best left behind — a time when blacks, minorities, and women “knew their place;” a time when gays stayed hidden in the closet, ashamed; a time when America was ruled by ruthless white men, whether wielding clubs in Selma, or bombs in Vietnam.
The stupidity and irrational anger of American voters is truly frightening.
That requires extensive media cooperation. When the 24/7 coverage is about terrorism, shootings, protests, war, political scandal, rage, racism, outrage, misery and blight, the message of “America is Already Great” will be seen as laughable and phony, even if true.
Am scared that this is the year of the crazy, Brexit vote, Duterte with his extra judicial killings in the Philippines, maybe you just get Trump as your pres.
The world has seriously gone mad
The fact that Trump even exists has already done much to disabuse me of my ideas about America. This year has proven without a doubt that America has a very violent and racist population that is much, much bigger than I ever imagined.
I’m confused… the 100,000 Japanese who were imprisoned were imprisoned on what basis other than their ancestry?
I supposed that is the only reason, but I understood that you meant it was because the USA was at war with Japan and they looked to be Japanese.
Americans were afraid that since some Hawaiians of Japanese ancestry helped a crashed Japanese pilot kill people, that other people of Japanese ancestry would also kill people.
Maybe, but they didn’t inter any of the Japanese Americans in Hawaii.
You misspelled “advertising revenues will go through the roof.”
EVERYBODY STOP WATCHING TV TO GET YOUR NEWS! IT’S OUR ONLY HOPE!
Many Japanese were intered, and German POWs imprisoned in Arkansas, in the center of the USA so that if they escaped, they would be recaptured.
Are you saying that no Japanese from anywhere were intered in Hawaii, or that none of the Japanese in Hawaii were intered any where?
The latter. None who lived in Hawaii were interred anywhere.