I think that the Republicans will make this hilarious bit of "I'm Spartacus!" irrelevant by amending it to be a registry of immigrants from Muslim countries.
That will be step one, yes.
Step two, once that is established, will be anyone with family in those countries, or any ties to it, followed closely by anyone of descent from those countries.
Always about the country and the region and not the specific religion is my guess.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
that had like 90% public support, Trump doesn't even have 30% public support
Don't move the goalposts. You said the president does not have that power, and the history is right there to show that the president does have that power and has used it in the past.
Seriously, what the fuck does Trump give a shit about poll numbers?
Gonna be kind of hard to impose martial law on the whole of America when all of the population centers are against you! I imagine the military occupation might be hard for him to pull off
You guys seem to think otherwise but idk
Override, please listen to me. The theoretical 'camps' ain't happenin tomorrow. I can't speak for everyone but I'm not grabbing my essentials and seeking passage on a ship because I think the national park system is going to be turned into holding facilities for Mexicans and Muslims.
I am saying that it is likely that an attack will come--count on that--and that Trump will find himself with support (maybe not 90% but just enough) to take action. We have a vague idea of what those actions will be, because of off the cuff bullshit he said on the campaign trail. Muslim bans come to mind. We know he thinks "law and order" is the solution to our ills. This means more police officers with less oversight. We know he's spouted off some bullshit about a deportation force. This means more money and more manpower aimed directly at minorities. And depending on who he's got running his agencies (Kobach), we might be able to expect registries. We can hope reason will prevail. But America has not been very good at reasonable behavior after a terrorist attack. And America will support a lot of bullshit to feel safer.
I know you think we're blowing it all out of proportion and maybe I am a little, but that's because I'm following a chain that starts with "Introduce and propagate the idea of a ban on Muslims into the general ether" and, with not all that big of a leap, sets the stage for "Keeping track of Muslims moving in and out of this country, encourage citizens to report on them, harass them with law enforcement who won't believe them and won't treat them with respect, and grind them through the legal system on the slightest of pretexts to make people think we're keeping them safe"
that had like 90% public support, Trump doesn't even have 30% public support
Don't move the goalposts. You said the president does not have that power, and the history is right there to show that the president does have that power and has used it in the past.
Seriously, what the fuck does Trump give a shit about poll numbers?
Gonna be kind of hard to impose martial law on the whole of America when all of the population centers are against you! I imagine the military occupation might be hard for him to pull off
You guys seem to think otherwise but idk
I actually agree with this. I don't think we can actually go Full Riech: we're far too big a landmass, too decentralized and diverse, and we're no where near the low levels of wealth or quality of life that bred an acceptance of fascism.
But I do believe that folk like Bannon will try. In some things, they will succeed, and in others they will fail. We may very well see brand new "deportation camps" set up in places Texas, near routes across the border, because the locals will support it and they will be far enough from those on the coasts and in the north that oppose them that we can't really stop it. California will flat out refuse, though.
There will be hate crimes. In Deep Red states, gangs of white supremacists will beat and kill minorities, and the law will turn a blind eye. In Blue states, we will jail these fuckers until the Feds try to force us not to.
Abortion will be made illegal. Weed will be made illegal. Voting Rights will be restricted. Some parts of our nation will follow along, and others will flip the illegitimate Fed the bird.
Are we on the cusp of becoming Nazi Germany? No, not exactly. We're just going to see a weird hodge-podge of policies and actions attempted from the template, mixing with the worst of Christian Fundamentalism. It will not be fun, and it will not end well.
Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material...
As Popehat put it, "whereas" is the legalese version of "I'm not a racist, but..."
Trump isn't going to set up internment camps for Muslims. He's going to set them up for Mexicans. Follow along:
- In his 60 Minutes interview, Trump said the following: "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate." (http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/Trump-Says-He-ll-Add-Fence-to-Wall-Calls-10611473.php)
- Deportation takes time. There are cases that have taken eight years to go through. Combine this with the potential for origin nations to flip us the bird and refuse to cooperate, and you suddenly have a lot of people you're trying to get rid of and can't.
- Our prisons cannot handle an influx of 2-3M new inmates.
- So what do you do with these people? Where do you put them while awaiting deportation?
This + some Jim-Crow-South-esque stuff is what I expect.
that had like 90% public support, Trump doesn't even have 30% public support
Don't move the goalposts. You said the president does not have that power, and the history is right there to show that the president does have that power and has used it in the past.
Seriously, what the fuck does Trump give a shit about poll numbers?
Gonna be kind of hard to impose martial law on the whole of America when all of the population centers are against you! I imagine the military occupation might be hard for him to pull off
You guys seem to think otherwise but idk
I actually agree with this. I don't think we can actually go Full Riech: we're far too big a landmass, too decentralized and diverse, and we're no where near the low levels of wealth or quality of life that bred an acceptance of fascism.
But I do believe that folk like Bannon will try. In some things, they will succeed, and in others they will fail. We may very well see brand new "deportation camps" set up in places Texas, near routes across the border, because the locals will support it and they will be far enough from those on the coasts and in the north that oppose them that we can't really stop it. California will flat out refuse, though.
There will be hate crimes. In Deep Red states, gangs of white supremacists will beat and kill minorities, and the law will turn a blind eye. In Blue states, we will jail these fuckers until the Feds try to force us not to.
Abortion will be made illegal. Weed will be made illegal. Voting Rights will be restricted. Some parts of our nation will follow along, and others will flip the illegitimate Fed the bird.
Are we on the cusp of becoming Nazi Germany? No, not exactly. We're just going to see a weird hodge-podge of policies and actions attempted from the template, mixing with the worst of Christian Fundamentalism. It will not be fun, and it will not end well.
The shit the red states get up to will be the real problem, since the feds will do nothing to curtail them and Trump's going to be appointing hundreds of federal judges
All it will take is one assclown to pull off another Orlando shooting to set the dominoes falling. ISIS/ISIL/etc is well aware of this and will be trying for it.
At that point, getting the undesirables out of the country won't be the primary goal. Punishing them will be.
Honest question: What is ISIS's endgame? They have to know that if we collapse, we're most likely taking a huge chunk of the Middle East with us, right? Are they gunning for an apocalypse the way our Dominionists are?
that had like 90% public support, Trump doesn't even have 30% public support
Don't move the goalposts. You said the president does not have that power, and the history is right there to show that the president does have that power and has used it in the past.
Seriously, what the fuck does Trump give a shit about poll numbers?
Gonna be kind of hard to impose martial law on the whole of America when all of the population centers are against you! I imagine the military occupation might be hard for him to pull off
You guys seem to think otherwise but idk
Override, please listen to me. The theoretical 'camps' ain't happenin tomorrow. I can't speak for everyone but I'm not grabbing my essentials and seeking passage on a ship because I think the national park system is going to be turned into holding facilities for Mexicans and Muslims.
I am saying that it is likely that an attack will come--count on that--and that Trump will find himself with support (maybe not 90% but just enough) to take action. We have a vague idea of what those actions will be, because of off the cuff bullshit he said on the campaign trail. Muslim bans come to mind. We know he thinks "law and order" is the solution to our ills. This means more police officers with less oversight. We know he's spouted off some bullshit about a deportation force. This means more money and more manpower aimed directly at minorities. And depending on who he's got running his agencies (Kobach), we might be able to expect registries. We can hope reason will prevail. But America has not been very good at reasonable behavior after a terrorist attack. And America will support a lot of bullshit to feel safer.
I know you think we're blowing it all out of proportion and maybe I am a little, but that's because I'm following a chain that starts with "Introduce and propagate the idea of a ban on Muslims into the general ether" and, with not all that big of a leap, sets the stage for "Keeping track of Muslims moving in and out of this country, encourage citizens to report on them, harass them with law enforcement who won't believe them and won't treat them with respect, and grind them through the legal system on the slightest of pretexts to make people think we're keeping them safe"
Great then we're in complete agreement and we need to fight that shit tooth and nail, those of us who live in Republican districts in blue states, or live under at risk Republicans will have the most power in fighting it because they can tell their critter that it's a losing battle for them
I think the idea that Trump or his team is going to come up with legislation that is actually liberal/progressive is beyond wishful thinking.
Trump himself isn't going to do it because such legislation is difficult, detail oriented and boring. His team are all arch-conservatives so they're not going to do it. In order to get it introduced he needs the approval of the Republican House who have no interest in doing that.
Now Republicans in Congress and maybe his team will come up with conservative legislation because that's what they want. And Trump doesn't care about most of the issues to oppose it unless it messes with Russia or his financial interests.
Best case scenario is he'd do it to try to shore up his white working class support in 4 years. Does anyone thing Trump has the long term thinking and discipline to deny himself now for potential benefit years from now?
that had like 90% public support, Trump doesn't even have 30% public support
Don't move the goalposts. You said the president does not have that power, and the history is right there to show that the president does have that power and has used it in the past.
Seriously, what the fuck does Trump give a shit about poll numbers?
Gonna be kind of hard to impose martial law on the whole of America when all of the population centers are against you! I imagine the military occupation might be hard for him to pull off
You guys seem to think otherwise but idk
Override, please listen to me. The theoretical 'camps' ain't happenin tomorrow. I can't speak for everyone but I'm not grabbing my essentials and seeking passage on a ship because I think the national park system is going to be turned into holding facilities for Mexicans and Muslims.
I am saying that it is likely that an attack will come--count on that--and that Trump will find himself with support (maybe not 90% but just enough) to take action. We have a vague idea of what those actions will be, because of off the cuff bullshit he said on the campaign trail. Muslim bans come to mind. We know he thinks "law and order" is the solution to our ills. This means more police officers with less oversight. We know he's spouted off some bullshit about a deportation force. This means more money and more manpower aimed directly at minorities. And depending on who he's got running his agencies (Kobach), we might be able to expect registries. We can hope reason will prevail. But America has not been very good at reasonable behavior after a terrorist attack. And America will support a lot of bullshit to feel safer.
I know you think we're blowing it all out of proportion and maybe I am a little, but that's because I'm following a chain that starts with "Introduce and propagate the idea of a ban on Muslims into the general ether" and, with not all that big of a leap, sets the stage for "Keeping track of Muslims moving in and out of this country, encourage citizens to report on them, harass them with law enforcement who won't believe them and won't treat them with respect, and grind them through the legal system on the slightest of pretexts to make people think we're keeping them safe"
Great then we're in complete agreement and we need to fight that shit tooth and nail, those of us who live in Republican districts in blue states, or live under at risk Republicans will have the most power in fighting it because they can tell their critter that it's a losing battle for them
Then I beg those of you who are in republican districts and states with republican representatives to start now. By the time an attack comes it will be too late to beg them to consider reservation.
I've already sent letters to my guys but they're all Dems. I will pick up the phone and call your guys' office too, just let me know. But your word will be stronger than mine, cause you vote for (or against) those people.
All it will take is one assclown to pull off another Orlando shooting to set the dominoes falling. ISIS/ISIL/etc is well aware of this and will be trying for it.
At that point, getting the undesirables out of the country won't be the primary goal. Punishing them will be.
Honest question: What is ISIS's endgame? They have to know that if we collapse, we're most likely taking a huge chunk of the Middle East with us, right? Are they gunning for an apocalypse the way our Dominionists are?
Their endgame seems to be setting up a more militant reimagining of the Umayyad Empire. They try to achieve that goal by driving a wedge between Muslims and western civilization, leaving them with nowhere to go. Those who don't fall in line are then killed for being heretics.
that had like 90% public support, Trump doesn't even have 30% public support
Don't move the goalposts. You said the president does not have that power, and the history is right there to show that the president does have that power and has used it in the past.
Seriously, what the fuck does Trump give a shit about poll numbers?
Gonna be kind of hard to impose martial law on the whole of America when all of the population centers are against you! I imagine the military occupation might be hard for him to pull off
You guys seem to think otherwise but idk
Override, please listen to me. The theoretical 'camps' ain't happenin tomorrow. I can't speak for everyone but I'm not grabbing my essentials and seeking passage on a ship because I think the national park system is going to be turned into holding facilities for Mexicans and Muslims.
I am saying that it is likely that an attack will come--count on that--and that Trump will find himself with support (maybe not 90% but just enough) to take action. We have a vague idea of what those actions will be, because of off the cuff bullshit he said on the campaign trail. Muslim bans come to mind. We know he thinks "law and order" is the solution to our ills. This means more police officers with less oversight. We know he's spouted off some bullshit about a deportation force. This means more money and more manpower aimed directly at minorities. And depending on who he's got running his agencies (Kobach), we might be able to expect registries. We can hope reason will prevail. But America has not been very good at reasonable behavior after a terrorist attack. And America will support a lot of bullshit to feel safer.
I know you think we're blowing it all out of proportion and maybe I am a little, but that's because I'm following a chain that starts with "Introduce and propagate the idea of a ban on Muslims into the general ether" and, with not all that big of a leap, sets the stage for "Keeping track of Muslims moving in and out of this country, encourage citizens to report on them, harass them with law enforcement who won't believe them and won't treat them with respect, and grind them through the legal system on the slightest of pretexts to make people think we're keeping them safe"
Great then we're in complete agreement and we need to fight that shit tooth and nail, those of us who live in Republican districts in blue states, or live under at risk Republicans will have the most power in fighting it because they can tell their critter that it's a losing battle for them
Then I beg those of you who are in republican districts and states with republican representatives to start now. By the time an attack comes it will be too late to beg them to consider reservation.
I've already sent letters to my guys but they're all Dems. I will pick up the phone and call your guys' office too, just let me know. But your word will be stronger than mine, cause you vote for (or against) those people.
I've already written my rep (Paul Ryan) a letter about how I am a staunch Republican who's always supported him, about how I met him that one time at the technical college in elkhorn and how much of a fan I am of his, but how we need to make sure Trump protects the constitution (yeah sure almost all of its a lie who cares, I hate paul ryan, but I was there that day at the school how does he know I'm not one of the students he met?)
I'll be sending him more every time Trump does something crazy
specifically in opposing unconstitutional actions against Americans based on religion, race, country of origin, etc
Well if you live in a red state and you're a minority I would get the fuck out of that state and move somewhere else if you can
But this has been good advice for years
And if Trump starts down the path I think he'll go down (trying to shore up his power with voting rights restrictions and adding complexity/cost/delay to registration) then people moving from the reddest states to marginally less red, but culturally similar, states is what they should do. And we should support them. If Trump thinks its perfectly fine that the popular vote doesn't count, then we are literally going to have to move people around. We don't even need to move that many people. 300k of these 'liberal elites' I hear so much about just need to move from Louisiana, Kentucky and Arkansaw and spread themselves around Texas, Florida, North Dakota, Ohio and Arizona.
The fact that we can win this way, so 'easily', is how you know trumps power is balanced on a knife edge. If they make registration to vote impossible in some states, but not others, desperate people will leave those states and their power collapses. If that happens we need to help fight the bad laws, and help get people (and whole communities) new jobs in new states.
Every demographic trend is still true. This is the battle of the bulge. We have overextended our lines, underestimated the will of the opponent to fight. This is a catastrophe which will cost us lives, pain, and treasure. But we can only lose if we give up. If we view this as the end of our hopes. We won the election. We won against their 'perfect' candidate. With a candidate who we now know was highly flawed for the fight we sent her into. Whose talents as a government official we sadly wasted in a dogfight of bad language and blustering. They have power due to an absurd contrivance of the system which suppressed our popular vote victory. When trump tweets, "Oh, I could have won the popular vote!" he is wrong. Democratic bastions are hugely democratic and had low voter turnout. Republicans IN democratic strongholds already vote in large numbers, and face no voter suppression. Republican large bastions are marginally republican (Really only texas) and had high republican turnout. Democrats in republican large bastions (and small ones) vote in small numbers, and face voter suppression. If this had been a popular vote, he would have been obliterated. He would not have done better. He would have done worse. VASTLY worse. He got the same number of votes as McCain, as Romney. This is all the votes they can get.
We didn't lose black voters, or hispanic voters. We didn't lose young people. The number of minorities who can vote in this country, despite voter suppression, increases every day. Hell, the number of WHITE people from other countries who can vote increases each day. Our country can still be a bastion of hope, but we have to remember that we are WINNING. So when you see hate incidents in your town, don't lie down and be afraid that they will come for you next. Stand up and know that this will not stand. Our future is opposed by an aging and vocal minority. By the next election, many of them will literally be dead of old age. And the same for the one after that, and the one after that. We already won a round of this fight in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Do you really think that the population is as dedicated to racial exclusion as they were then? And still we made life better.
Look at the UK. A vocal and angry minority took to the streets and stole the reigns of power from a liberal majority who thought they had already won. Could they immediately assemble a viable government to enact their horrible whims? No. They could not. Because they hold the reigns at the whim of the liberal majority. They hold power for the same reason they hold it here, because the value our society provides to the majority of people is strong enough that the majority is willing to respect the outcome of the election. We don't need to be afraid of them. They need to be concerned about us. About how they will be viewed in 2 years, or 4 years, or 8 when we stand up again and say "Enough". What will they be doing when saying, "I voted Trump" is about as popular as saying, "I voted Nixon". When saying, "I don't believe transgender people are real people" is about as popular as saying "I believe inter-racial marriage is wrong". When saying, "I don't believe women are good negotiators and that's why they don't earn money" is about as popular as saying "I think that black men and women should be sterilized by the government".
edit - And yes, I do believe that when people look back on this election in 12 years, or 16, that when the analysis is done and the investigations are over we will find that the Republicans only achieved the 'victory' they did thanks to a lot of illegal crap. I think people will go to jail. I think President Will Smith will have to pardon Donald Trump for the good of the nation. The only reason this wont be the case is if we allow them to change environmental law, or just lie down and say that it is all over. Or that we forget that in order to win big in 2 years, or 4, we need to fight our corner smarter. And tell people how much we support them and want to help them.
I know my mom basically swamps all her Republican representatives with how she loves them but Trump scares her and I love her for it (she actually voted Hillary and she campaigned vigorously for her)
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
I have no compunction about lying, I used to be a Republican, I know how to sound like one (not just a caricature of one)
You aren't lying. You can still be a Republican. Welcome to the Democrats, we're your party too now since you are clearly a Republican who believes that good government and the federal guarantee of opportunity for all is important. We can bicker with each other again once we're arguing about the merits of Keynesian vs Hayek economic theory.
if a bunch of cities go against the deportation and possible interment camps, and the states back those cities, do we end up with the national guard fighting the army?
Can we start requiring a more meaningful post than "we're fucked" when posting stuff?
-This is problematic because...
-I wonder if a good way to combat this is...
-I've seen this in my life by way of...
Fine, now that I have my coffee
This is problematic because everything about social media that succeeds does so by means of appealing to our natures and our desires for membership and our inclinations to know what our friends are tribe mates are doing.
People are not realistically going to flood their own social media streams with things they disagree with all the time and there's no social incentive within these systems of winning points (likes, retweets, attention) to irritate your own silo's audience -- people will simply disengage.
Facebook is only used by old people anyway so their belated and quixotic awareness of the duties of a media company aren't even a blip of the radar of the young people posting dumb memes and for-profit objectively false pseudo news articles.
Where are untruths and articles going to be debunked? On twitter, which is continuously losing users? People don't want to hear it if it's debunking something they agree with anyway.
All of which everyone in this thread already knows so it seemed pointless to belabor.
There is no one out there putting forward a cogent plan or technology to actually vault our national discourse back above the grumbling on two sides of a massive wall. It's charming that college students are putting out fact check plugins for chrome and things like that, but what percentage of voters really have that kind of interest or acumen in making sure some phone browser app is working? People barely install ad blockers.
What is happening on the broad cultural level that will actually lessen the odds of meaningless partisan half-truths being propagated and "liked" in the midterm elections? Obviously the traditional old guard media are not going to stem this tide when they can barely stay in business and people get their news through shared sub-buzzfeed links whose headlines they respond to without even reading the listicle.
If we can't gin up a solution to the atomization, centerlessness, or fundamental unaccountability to truth in the media discourse and its concomitant bunkered partisan in-group dialogue tgen yeah
We're fucked
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amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
if a bunch of cities go against the deportation and possible interment camps, and the states back those cities, do we end up with the national guard fighting the army?
cause boy that'll be interesting
No because the president can take control of the National Guard.
edit: However they can't be used on US soil for law enforcement.
Basically boils down to "Well Trump supporters click on these stories and make me a ton of money so that's not my fault" and "Yeah I wrote these ridiculous stories, but I never expected Trump to win!" with a dash of "It's a prank, bro!"
Information Balkanisation has been a problem for decades now. It's just becoming easier to do and easier to measure.
Has it ever been easier or more profitable to perpetuate? I don't doubt that people were reading crackpot letters to the editor in competing newspapers during the rise of the civil rights movement, but there's zero indication the atomization will change current course -- even the idea of a big central platform like Facebook as being the presumed social space for most people will surely seem hilariously quaint as the next few years pass by.
I know my mom basically swamps all her Republican representatives with how she loves them but Trump scares her and I love her for it (she actually voted Hillary and she campaigned vigorously for her)
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
You are wrong, there is another election in 2 years.
I know my mom basically swamps all her Republican representatives with how she loves them but Trump scares her and I love her for it (she actually voted Hillary and she campaigned vigorously for her)
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
You are wrong, there is another election in 2 years.
You know what I mean, we gotta fight for that election but Trump is president until 2020
I made it through that without vomiting, excellent
Man, I cannot imagine what this all must feel like for peeps like Hakks or mRahmani, who might actually be targets of hate from either their fellow citizens or their government. I'm a well off white guy and I'm freaking the fuck out. I'm dizzy, I can't concentrate, I feel disconnected from everything around me, and my brain just keeps running down rabbit holes:
- I wonder if there is any Union iconography we can adopt to represent our outspoken opposition to these fascist and racist principles? Would trying to equate the new administration and their congress to the Confederacy have greater social impact than comparisons to Nazis?
- How do we communicate the illegitimacy of this government, and what do we do about it? How do we convince people that Gerrymandering has subverted the will of the people, and that the Electoral College is a relic of slave-owners wanting to have their cake (giant plantations and fucking slaves) and eat it too (greater influence on government over their fellow citizens)?
- Assuming we can take control, the seeds of evil are still deep in our Constitution. Do we need to throw it out and try again? The concept of Amendments is great, but there's no realistic way to amend, and any amendment might later be broken. Would it be more apt to adopt a new version, that enshrines in it's base that ALL PEOPLE are created equal? That outlaws Gerrymandering? What other pillars of our democracy have been infected with rot and need to be replaced if we can ever hope to survive?
- What happens if it comes to insurrection or war? Is it better that I try and live to protect my children, or die trying to protect my fellow citizens?
- How do we destroy the media bubbles that people have chosen to encapsulate themselves within? How do we maintain a free press while shutting down falsehoods and propaganda?
- Does any of it even matter? Are we all going to starve in a decade when the crops no longer grow, regardless of the justice or injustice in our governance?
- It took far longer to type this than to think any of it, and think it in greater detail and with more branching paths and examinations. I also can't seem to type very well right now, I have to keep correcting very silly mistakes that I normally wouldn't be making. I'm still lightheaded. Is it stress? Disease? Something worse?
How the fuck am I supposed to focus on making power point slides about inane work shit while the world is crumbling down around me?
I know my mom basically swamps all her Republican representatives with how she loves them but Trump scares her and I love her for it (she actually voted Hillary and she campaigned vigorously for her)
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
You are wrong, there is another election in 2 years.
You know what I mean, we gotta fight for that election but Trump is president until 2020
I made it through that without vomiting, excellent
If we win the election in 2018, then Trump is effectively no longer in charge of anything. He serves at our tolerance. We must show that we will no longer approve of his absurdity in 2018.
Hell, there are major governors up for election in 2017. There's a runoff election next week. Act, Donate, Speak.
edit - And even 'winning control of the senate' will be a bonus. Get out and obliterate them in the popular vote. Senate vote in the bluest blue state in the world? Like Hawaii? Get out and cast your name into the tsunami. They may like to pretend it doesn't matter. To scream to the heavens that thats not how the system works. But at its very core, it is how the system works. Their rage against it shows their terror of it. Its a core tenet more important than the constitution, the thing that the entirety of democracy is built on. The democracy exists and can act against the will of the majority because the majority accept that its a good idea That they are not necessarily always right in this instant, and must sometimes tolerate ideas they don't like to improve everyone's lives in the long run. If you take power without the will of the majority, and your actions don't start bringing the majority on board, then you are losing.
I know my mom basically swamps all her Republican representatives with how she loves them but Trump scares her and I love her for it (she actually voted Hillary and she campaigned vigorously for her)
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
You are wrong, there is another election in 2 years.
You know what I mean, we gotta fight for that election but Trump is president until 2020
I made it through that without vomiting, excellent
If we win the election in 2018, then Trump is effectively no longer in charge of anything. He serves at our tolerance. We must show that we will no longer approve of his absurdity in 2018.
Hell, there are major governors up for election in 2017. There's a runoff election next week. Act, Donate, Speak.
I thought most of the seats up in 2018 were already held by Democrats. I didn't think we could take control of either house in even a best-case scenario.
Information Balkanisation has been a problem for decades now. It's just becoming easier to do and easier to measure.
Has it ever been easier or more profitable to perpetuate? I don't doubt that people were reading crackpot letters to the editor in competing newspapers during the rise of the civil rights movement, but there's zero indication the atomization will change current course -- even the idea of a big central platform like Facebook as being the presumed social space for most people will surely seem hilariously quaint as the next few years pass by.
I'm not talking about crackpot letters to the editor, I'm talking about Talk Radio. And Mass Mailers before it. This shit has been around a long time, it's just easier and more profitable and easier to measure now.
People who lean conservative have always been highly susceptible to this kind of marketing.
There's no reason for it to change course because of that. I mean, yeah, it's becoming self-perpetuating on social media, but that hasn't really changed as much as you think. It was already self-perpetuating on talk radio and Fox News and in newsletters and the like. Rush was already his own independent entity running solely off whatever lies made him the most money. Now that same kind of thing has just become crowdsourced.
There wasn't an answer to it before either, sadly.
I know my mom basically swamps all her Republican representatives with how she loves them but Trump scares her and I love her for it (she actually voted Hillary and she campaigned vigorously for her)
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
You are wrong, there is another election in 2 years.
You know what I mean, we gotta fight for that election but Trump is president until 2020
I made it through that without vomiting, excellent
If we win the election in 2018, then Trump is effectively no longer in charge of anything. He serves at our tolerance. We must show that we will no longer approve of his absurdity in 2018.
Hell, there are major governors up for election in 2017. There's a runoff election next week. Act, Donate, Speak.
I thought most of the seats up in 2018 were already held by Democrats. I didn't think we could take control of either house in even a best-case scenario.
The House is always entirely up for election. Do unless we have all the seats we can gain. (Will be able to is another story).
The Senate is 1/3 at a time and yes, most of the seats in 2018 are Dems; but 8 aren't.
Posts
That will be step one, yes.
Step two, once that is established, will be anyone with family in those countries, or any ties to it, followed closely by anyone of descent from those countries.
Always about the country and the region and not the specific religion is my guess.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Don't worry, I'm sure we'll get plenty of creatively awful graphs in the months and years to come. :-D
Oh shit, you weren't kidding.
Override, please listen to me. The theoretical 'camps' ain't happenin tomorrow. I can't speak for everyone but I'm not grabbing my essentials and seeking passage on a ship because I think the national park system is going to be turned into holding facilities for Mexicans and Muslims.
I am saying that it is likely that an attack will come--count on that--and that Trump will find himself with support (maybe not 90% but just enough) to take action. We have a vague idea of what those actions will be, because of off the cuff bullshit he said on the campaign trail. Muslim bans come to mind. We know he thinks "law and order" is the solution to our ills. This means more police officers with less oversight. We know he's spouted off some bullshit about a deportation force. This means more money and more manpower aimed directly at minorities. And depending on who he's got running his agencies (Kobach), we might be able to expect registries. We can hope reason will prevail. But America has not been very good at reasonable behavior after a terrorist attack. And America will support a lot of bullshit to feel safer.
I know you think we're blowing it all out of proportion and maybe I am a little, but that's because I'm following a chain that starts with "Introduce and propagate the idea of a ban on Muslims into the general ether" and, with not all that big of a leap, sets the stage for "Keeping track of Muslims moving in and out of this country, encourage citizens to report on them, harass them with law enforcement who won't believe them and won't treat them with respect, and grind them through the legal system on the slightest of pretexts to make people think we're keeping them safe"
NNID: Hakkekage
Trump and the Republicans either pass the pointless Ivanka plan, or just nothing at all.
I actually agree with this. I don't think we can actually go Full Riech: we're far too big a landmass, too decentralized and diverse, and we're no where near the low levels of wealth or quality of life that bred an acceptance of fascism.
But I do believe that folk like Bannon will try. In some things, they will succeed, and in others they will fail. We may very well see brand new "deportation camps" set up in places Texas, near routes across the border, because the locals will support it and they will be far enough from those on the coasts and in the north that oppose them that we can't really stop it. California will flat out refuse, though.
There will be hate crimes. In Deep Red states, gangs of white supremacists will beat and kill minorities, and the law will turn a blind eye. In Blue states, we will jail these fuckers until the Feds try to force us not to.
Abortion will be made illegal. Weed will be made illegal. Voting Rights will be restricted. Some parts of our nation will follow along, and others will flip the illegitimate Fed the bird.
Are we on the cusp of becoming Nazi Germany? No, not exactly. We're just going to see a weird hodge-podge of policies and actions attempted from the template, mixing with the worst of Christian Fundamentalism. It will not be fun, and it will not end well.
As Popehat put it, "whereas" is the legalese version of "I'm not a racist, but..."
Less than a month after September 11th, America went to war in Afghanistan.
Fifteen years later and that conflict is still ongoing.
http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/16/13659840/facebook-fake-news-chart
We're fucked
This + some Jim-Crow-South-esque stuff is what I expect.
The shit the red states get up to will be the real problem, since the feds will do nothing to curtail them and Trump's going to be appointing hundreds of federal judges
Honest question: What is ISIS's endgame? They have to know that if we collapse, we're most likely taking a huge chunk of the Middle East with us, right? Are they gunning for an apocalypse the way our Dominionists are?
America went to war with Afghanistan, invading California is quite another thing
Great then we're in complete agreement and we need to fight that shit tooth and nail, those of us who live in Republican districts in blue states, or live under at risk Republicans will have the most power in fighting it because they can tell their critter that it's a losing battle for them
Trump himself isn't going to do it because such legislation is difficult, detail oriented and boring. His team are all arch-conservatives so they're not going to do it. In order to get it introduced he needs the approval of the Republican House who have no interest in doing that.
Now Republicans in Congress and maybe his team will come up with conservative legislation because that's what they want. And Trump doesn't care about most of the issues to oppose it unless it messes with Russia or his financial interests.
Best case scenario is he'd do it to try to shore up his white working class support in 4 years. Does anyone thing Trump has the long term thinking and discipline to deny himself now for potential benefit years from now?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Can we start requiring a more meaningful post than "we're fucked" when posting stuff?
-This is problematic because...
-I wonder if a good way to combat this is...
-I've seen this in my life by way of...
Then I beg those of you who are in republican districts and states with republican representatives to start now. By the time an attack comes it will be too late to beg them to consider reservation.
I've already sent letters to my guys but they're all Dems. I will pick up the phone and call your guys' office too, just let me know. But your word will be stronger than mine, cause you vote for (or against) those people.
NNID: Hakkekage
Fuckery most foul?
Their endgame seems to be setting up a more militant reimagining of the Umayyad Empire. They try to achieve that goal by driving a wedge between Muslims and western civilization, leaving them with nowhere to go. Those who don't fall in line are then killed for being heretics.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
Information Balkanisation has been a problem for decades now. It's just becoming easier to do and easier to measure.
I've already written my rep (Paul Ryan) a letter about how I am a staunch Republican who's always supported him, about how I met him that one time at the technical college in elkhorn and how much of a fan I am of his, but how we need to make sure Trump protects the constitution (yeah sure almost all of its a lie who cares, I hate paul ryan, but I was there that day at the school how does he know I'm not one of the students he met?)
I'll be sending him more every time Trump does something crazy
specifically in opposing unconstitutional actions against Americans based on religion, race, country of origin, etc
they have no way of knowing
And if Trump starts down the path I think he'll go down (trying to shore up his power with voting rights restrictions and adding complexity/cost/delay to registration) then people moving from the reddest states to marginally less red, but culturally similar, states is what they should do. And we should support them. If Trump thinks its perfectly fine that the popular vote doesn't count, then we are literally going to have to move people around. We don't even need to move that many people. 300k of these 'liberal elites' I hear so much about just need to move from Louisiana, Kentucky and Arkansaw and spread themselves around Texas, Florida, North Dakota, Ohio and Arizona.
The fact that we can win this way, so 'easily', is how you know trumps power is balanced on a knife edge. If they make registration to vote impossible in some states, but not others, desperate people will leave those states and their power collapses. If that happens we need to help fight the bad laws, and help get people (and whole communities) new jobs in new states.
Every demographic trend is still true. This is the battle of the bulge. We have overextended our lines, underestimated the will of the opponent to fight. This is a catastrophe which will cost us lives, pain, and treasure. But we can only lose if we give up. If we view this as the end of our hopes. We won the election. We won against their 'perfect' candidate. With a candidate who we now know was highly flawed for the fight we sent her into. Whose talents as a government official we sadly wasted in a dogfight of bad language and blustering. They have power due to an absurd contrivance of the system which suppressed our popular vote victory. When trump tweets, "Oh, I could have won the popular vote!" he is wrong. Democratic bastions are hugely democratic and had low voter turnout. Republicans IN democratic strongholds already vote in large numbers, and face no voter suppression. Republican large bastions are marginally republican (Really only texas) and had high republican turnout. Democrats in republican large bastions (and small ones) vote in small numbers, and face voter suppression. If this had been a popular vote, he would have been obliterated. He would not have done better. He would have done worse. VASTLY worse. He got the same number of votes as McCain, as Romney. This is all the votes they can get.
We didn't lose black voters, or hispanic voters. We didn't lose young people. The number of minorities who can vote in this country, despite voter suppression, increases every day. Hell, the number of WHITE people from other countries who can vote increases each day. Our country can still be a bastion of hope, but we have to remember that we are WINNING. So when you see hate incidents in your town, don't lie down and be afraid that they will come for you next. Stand up and know that this will not stand. Our future is opposed by an aging and vocal minority. By the next election, many of them will literally be dead of old age. And the same for the one after that, and the one after that. We already won a round of this fight in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Do you really think that the population is as dedicated to racial exclusion as they were then? And still we made life better.
Look at the UK. A vocal and angry minority took to the streets and stole the reigns of power from a liberal majority who thought they had already won. Could they immediately assemble a viable government to enact their horrible whims? No. They could not. Because they hold the reigns at the whim of the liberal majority. They hold power for the same reason they hold it here, because the value our society provides to the majority of people is strong enough that the majority is willing to respect the outcome of the election. We don't need to be afraid of them. They need to be concerned about us. About how they will be viewed in 2 years, or 4 years, or 8 when we stand up again and say "Enough". What will they be doing when saying, "I voted Trump" is about as popular as saying, "I voted Nixon". When saying, "I don't believe transgender people are real people" is about as popular as saying "I believe inter-racial marriage is wrong". When saying, "I don't believe women are good negotiators and that's why they don't earn money" is about as popular as saying "I think that black men and women should be sterilized by the government".
edit - And yes, I do believe that when people look back on this election in 12 years, or 16, that when the analysis is done and the investigations are over we will find that the Republicans only achieved the 'victory' they did thanks to a lot of illegal crap. I think people will go to jail. I think President Will Smith will have to pardon Donald Trump for the good of the nation. The only reason this wont be the case is if we allow them to change environmental law, or just lie down and say that it is all over. Or that we forget that in order to win big in 2 years, or 4, we need to fight our corner smarter. And tell people how much we support them and want to help them.
Sorry, just a bit disgruntled this morning.
edit: need to repeat this because we should never stop repeating it, Trump got less votes, we can't let him forget it, or the representatives, or anyone, remind them of that and the fact that there's another election in 4 years
I feel like there stopped being a difference a few years ago.
You aren't lying. You can still be a Republican. Welcome to the Democrats, we're your party too now since you are clearly a Republican who believes that good government and the federal guarantee of opportunity for all is important. We can bicker with each other again once we're arguing about the merits of Keynesian vs Hayek economic theory.
if a bunch of cities go against the deportation and possible interment camps, and the states back those cities, do we end up with the national guard fighting the army?
cause boy that'll be interesting
Fine, now that I have my coffee
This is problematic because everything about social media that succeeds does so by means of appealing to our natures and our desires for membership and our inclinations to know what our friends are tribe mates are doing.
People are not realistically going to flood their own social media streams with things they disagree with all the time and there's no social incentive within these systems of winning points (likes, retweets, attention) to irritate your own silo's audience -- people will simply disengage.
Facebook is only used by old people anyway so their belated and quixotic awareness of the duties of a media company aren't even a blip of the radar of the young people posting dumb memes and for-profit objectively false pseudo news articles.
Where are untruths and articles going to be debunked? On twitter, which is continuously losing users? People don't want to hear it if it's debunking something they agree with anyway.
All of which everyone in this thread already knows so it seemed pointless to belabor.
There is no one out there putting forward a cogent plan or technology to actually vault our national discourse back above the grumbling on two sides of a massive wall. It's charming that college students are putting out fact check plugins for chrome and things like that, but what percentage of voters really have that kind of interest or acumen in making sure some phone browser app is working? People barely install ad blockers.
What is happening on the broad cultural level that will actually lessen the odds of meaningless partisan half-truths being propagated and "liked" in the midterm elections? Obviously the traditional old guard media are not going to stem this tide when they can barely stay in business and people get their news through shared sub-buzzfeed links whose headlines they respond to without even reading the listicle.
If we can't gin up a solution to the atomization, centerlessness, or fundamental unaccountability to truth in the media discourse and its concomitant bunkered partisan in-group dialogue tgen yeah
We're fucked
No because the president can take control of the National Guard.
edit: However they can't be used on US soil for law enforcement.
Basically boils down to "Well Trump supporters click on these stories and make me a ton of money so that's not my fault" and "Yeah I wrote these ridiculous stories, but I never expected Trump to win!" with a dash of "It's a prank, bro!"
Has it ever been easier or more profitable to perpetuate? I don't doubt that people were reading crackpot letters to the editor in competing newspapers during the rise of the civil rights movement, but there's zero indication the atomization will change current course -- even the idea of a big central platform like Facebook as being the presumed social space for most people will surely seem hilariously quaint as the next few years pass by.
You are wrong, there is another election in 2 years.
MWO: Adamski
You know what I mean, we gotta fight for that election but Trump is president until 2020
I made it through that without vomiting, excellent
- I wonder if there is any Union iconography we can adopt to represent our outspoken opposition to these fascist and racist principles? Would trying to equate the new administration and their congress to the Confederacy have greater social impact than comparisons to Nazis?
- How do we communicate the illegitimacy of this government, and what do we do about it? How do we convince people that Gerrymandering has subverted the will of the people, and that the Electoral College is a relic of slave-owners wanting to have their cake (giant plantations and fucking slaves) and eat it too (greater influence on government over their fellow citizens)?
- Assuming we can take control, the seeds of evil are still deep in our Constitution. Do we need to throw it out and try again? The concept of Amendments is great, but there's no realistic way to amend, and any amendment might later be broken. Would it be more apt to adopt a new version, that enshrines in it's base that ALL PEOPLE are created equal? That outlaws Gerrymandering? What other pillars of our democracy have been infected with rot and need to be replaced if we can ever hope to survive?
- What happens if it comes to insurrection or war? Is it better that I try and live to protect my children, or die trying to protect my fellow citizens?
- How do we destroy the media bubbles that people have chosen to encapsulate themselves within? How do we maintain a free press while shutting down falsehoods and propaganda?
- Does any of it even matter? Are we all going to starve in a decade when the crops no longer grow, regardless of the justice or injustice in our governance?
- It took far longer to type this than to think any of it, and think it in greater detail and with more branching paths and examinations. I also can't seem to type very well right now, I have to keep correcting very silly mistakes that I normally wouldn't be making. I'm still lightheaded. Is it stress? Disease? Something worse?
How the fuck am I supposed to focus on making power point slides about inane work shit while the world is crumbling down around me?
If we win the election in 2018, then Trump is effectively no longer in charge of anything. He serves at our tolerance. We must show that we will no longer approve of his absurdity in 2018.
Hell, there are major governors up for election in 2017. There's a runoff election next week. Act, Donate, Speak.
edit - And even 'winning control of the senate' will be a bonus. Get out and obliterate them in the popular vote. Senate vote in the bluest blue state in the world? Like Hawaii? Get out and cast your name into the tsunami. They may like to pretend it doesn't matter. To scream to the heavens that thats not how the system works. But at its very core, it is how the system works. Their rage against it shows their terror of it. Its a core tenet more important than the constitution, the thing that the entirety of democracy is built on. The democracy exists and can act against the will of the majority because the majority accept that its a good idea That they are not necessarily always right in this instant, and must sometimes tolerate ideas they don't like to improve everyone's lives in the long run. If you take power without the will of the majority, and your actions don't start bringing the majority on board, then you are losing.
I thought most of the seats up in 2018 were already held by Democrats. I didn't think we could take control of either house in even a best-case scenario.
I'm not talking about crackpot letters to the editor, I'm talking about Talk Radio. And Mass Mailers before it. This shit has been around a long time, it's just easier and more profitable and easier to measure now.
People who lean conservative have always been highly susceptible to this kind of marketing.
There's no reason for it to change course because of that. I mean, yeah, it's becoming self-perpetuating on social media, but that hasn't really changed as much as you think. It was already self-perpetuating on talk radio and Fox News and in newsletters and the like. Rush was already his own independent entity running solely off whatever lies made him the most money. Now that same kind of thing has just become crowdsourced.
There wasn't an answer to it before either, sadly.
The House is always entirely up for election. Do unless we have all the seats we can gain. (Will be able to is another story).
The Senate is 1/3 at a time and yes, most of the seats in 2018 are Dems; but 8 aren't.