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The 2016 Conditional Post-Election Thread
Posts
I would feel that way if we didn't have nuclear weapons and climate change
We tried in Dallas county, we really tried.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
The comparison to Bush seems thin to me at best. Did Bush pledge to build a massive concrete & steel wall across the U.S.-Mexico border? Did Bush pledge to commit war crimes or deport everyone of a given religious identity? I don't recall him doing those things.
The world wasn't nearly in the same paradigm, either. There was no executive-managed drone program as Bush took power, 9/11 hadn't happened, the Korean peninsula was much more stable, Russia hadn't annexed the Ukraine, there wasn't a massive refugee crisis, the U.S. wasn't in the middle of fighting a war against a Jihadist group...
Things were so sunshine and rainbows that Wired published its now much maligned 'The Long Boom' magazine.
Perhaps Trump didn't mean any of the things he said, but he did in fact say them when Bush did not, and in fact Bush several times rejected extremist profiling of Muslims (even though he engaged in a war that ultimately killed many of them). So there is perfectly legitimate cause for alarm.
Who do you propose will stop Trump if he does want to pursue his election agenda? Anyone who does will almost certainly just be replaced by much more compliant figures in the midterm elections.
turns out, no, there is no place for his son in america.
sorry.
Not nearly enough to be happy with, but something.
I just tuned out of the Clinton campaign for the last 6 months because I didn't care for her beyond having to vote for her. Now i have a morbid curiosity to go and look with hindsight because this is just... ugh.
Time to crash with whiskey.
Any other election I could say something about the peaceful transfer of power and ideals of democracy and how civic engagement, standing up for what you believe and working to make things better.
But this? I can't. It would ring hollow. I don't know what to tell my little brother, whose first election was 2008, who proudly voted for Obama and who actively participated in Bernie's campaign because he believed America should do better.
I don't want to go home for Thanksgiving to my grandparents who certainly voted for this because I don't want to discuss it at all and it will certainly come up.
I am genuinely worried for the safety of the Khans, and every woman who ever accused Trump of sexual assault.
Yeah it was actually listenable.
Strangely enough, shame about the face tho.
The problem is, what can you DO? Trump's platform was eminently racist. Racism was one of the few things he was entirely consistent on. But you can't add racism to your platform to compete with him. He worked off reality denial, fear, and othering. None of those are things a real political party should be willing to add to their arsenal.
So what do Dems do?
I was thinking about you a lot during the night. Stay calm in the face of the first flush of insufferable smugness from your family. You'll get to laugh at them as one Trump promise after another crumbles into abject failure. It's petty, but it'll keep you sane.
Oh.
Just waiting for that goose that pops into these thread once every week, on the clock, to gloat now.
Is Sam Wang going to stream himself eating that bug?
Funny part: he got the national margin closer than anyone
Tonight... I wish I could have voted for Kanye.
I don't disagree with you, but I don't think it should be underestimated how this will embolden certain demographics in the US. Anti-immigrant sentiment and violence shot up massively following the Brexit vote.
There's plenty of harm a government can "do" simply by not restraining the bad actors in society.
Did you know trumps first act as president is going to be to give his wife a million dollars? You do now.
and maybe all your Facebook friends should know too.
It's not comforting. And they will blind themselves to his atrocities as they pile up. They'll claim it's the liberal press, etc. There's no victory to be won here. Minutes after the election was called for Trump, the sister who's been sending out crazy Clinton stuff sent out another crazy Clinton email. Because her getting defeated was not enough reason for my sister to stop being obsessed with Clinton conspiracy theories, I guess. Maybe I should take it as a good sign, that my sister needed to try to convince herself that she did the right thing by getting Trump elected.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Me and the LA Times were probably the only ones calling this election correctly. And after all the laughing and scoffing and turning your noses up to literally every single time I pointed out how a Trump victory was not only very possible but indeed plausible, who ended up being right in the end? Who was the sole dissenting voice among all of you, daring to see past the talking points and the smokescreens to examine the actual writing on the wall?
This is democracy, this is what it's all about whether you like it or not. While you were all clinking your teacups and giving each other warm congratulatory pats on the back, I was gauging the winds of change and popular sentiment, the forces that had been set into motion of which you all remained so blissfully unaware.
And what did I get for my troubles, for my attempts to add some small measure of perspective to the ringing chorus of denial?
Ridicule. Scorn. Dismissal.
You had this coming. All of you. You slept and dreamed, and now you're finally starting to wake up, even as you're still struggling to make sense of what's happening.
Well allow me to fill you in so you can finally get caught up: Reality just hit you like a 747. Now enjoy the next four to possibly eight years.
Again, we gotta stop looking at the other side. I don't care what Trump did. Whatever it was that he put out there, we were ineffective at countering. It's false to say we have to be like that to beat it.
I definitely wanted Bernie here and im not going to make a "shoulda been bernie" thing, I know it's not the time. But I'm reminded of all the times when people said they just werent excited by Hiliary, and the response is we SHOULD be, we SHOULD be excited for this and platform. And... I guess? But apparently in the real world people simple WEREN'T, and that's not on anyone but us. We dealt in what people should like and should vote for instead of what they actually DO like and WILL be motivated to vote for.
This wasn't some inevitable racist apocalypse, WE FUCKED IT UP. Somehow. And unless we can fucking grasp that we'll be back at it in 4 years, shaking our fists at the sky at the cruel inevitability of defeat.
...and winning?
The conservative revolt was because they didn't think he could win, no other reason.
Now that he has they're going to send him every bit of fucked up terrible legislation that they've been salivating over for years, and Pence is going to stack the executive branch with a hoard of evangelical approved assholes, and all those neat things we've seen the federal government do the past year and a half (DADT overturned, Justice Department pushing for Title 9 protections for trans students, etc) are going to be slowed down/overturned, and Trump is going to get to sit in the white house and feel like the most important man in the world.
I really don't see how we're not right and truly fucked.
Run a middle aged white dude who believes the right things about what should be done for the country, and has history of helping the black community, while being plenty white and dudely to give him another point or two with white voters. Probably pair him with Warren to bring in women and the far left.
That gives you a point of popular vote, and is enough to give you the presidency.
Canada didn't. France and Germany have a chance soon to show that they are still sensible
Bush didn't have to do exactly what Trump is doing to be terrible. He was absolutely terrible in his own ways, and he didn't need drones to do it. He was engaged in a two front war with Iraq and Afghanistan, openly goaded Al Queada to attack, failed to kill bin Laden, his government refused to do the research available to tell Sunnis and Shi`its apart, he had no problems with Fox News creating an atmosphere that was racist, xenophobic and anti-Muslim, allowed his administration to go to strenuous lengths to make torture legal, his VP leaked Valarie Plame etc. You could fill a book with their horrific war crimes and bullshit.
W. didn't reveal his true colors until 9/11 that is true, and it's debatable his government didn't fuck up to have that happen on their watch. Then his government gleefully exploited 9/11 to disgusting lengths to do what they want.
W. is not as bad as Trump will certainly be, I'm not denying that. But he was still a huge monster who we'd be remiss to forget how awful he was, and his role in making President Trump a reality.
Because FDR kept winning and it pissed off Republicans. Also "tradition."
Has there ever been a denial this isn't an echo chamber?