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The Trump Thread [Please read the OP]
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
This is a place for discussing the Trump administration and the myriad things they are currently doing.
Things are bad. You are welcome to discuss all of these bad things. That said, the Trump thread is currently increasing at a rate of a hundred posts an hour. It is overwhelming, both for those trying to read it and those of us trying to moderate it. With that in mind, some rules:
- It's reasonable to be scared. A lot of this shit is scary. But there is a fine line between healthy concern and limb-flailing alarmism. Please don't make posts that just consist of "we're all going to die", as they just clog up the thread. "Time to stock up on gasoline and guns" is also not helpful.
- Please be super conscientious about staying on-topic.
- Do not endorse violence or illegal acts against anyone. This is an automatic ban. We will not be flexible on this point. Encouraging peaceful protest or passive resistance is fine, but violence is a no-no.
- Just as a general note, panic will not accomplish anything. For your own sanity's sake, acknowledge what's happening, and deal with it soberly. Also, come up for air every so often. Go watch a sitcom or look at pictures of kittens or something, it's therapeutic.
Aaaaaaand go.
Things are bad. You are welcome to discuss all of these bad things. That said, the Trump thread is currently increasing at a rate of a hundred posts an hour. It is overwhelming, both for those trying to read it and those of us trying to moderate it. With that in mind, some rules:
- It's reasonable to be scared. A lot of this shit is scary. But there is a fine line between healthy concern and limb-flailing alarmism. Please don't make posts that just consist of "we're all going to die", as they just clog up the thread. "Time to stock up on gasoline and guns" is also not helpful.
- Please be super conscientious about staying on-topic.
- Do not endorse violence or illegal acts against anyone. This is an automatic ban. We will not be flexible on this point. Encouraging peaceful protest or passive resistance is fine, but violence is a no-no.
- Just as a general note, panic will not accomplish anything. For your own sanity's sake, acknowledge what's happening, and deal with it soberly. Also, come up for air every so often. Go watch a sitcom or look at pictures of kittens or something, it's therapeutic.
Aaaaaaand go.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Like, I can't imagine the corporate money is going to be pleased at how he's destablizing the global economy with his dick waving, the protests going on everywhere have to get the attention of congressmen, his approval rating is dropping into the marianas trench and he's signing multiple EOs per day.
This isn't sustainable even for the most deluded teaper, so what is the point where they realistically begin pushing back?
A little worrying that the reporter isn't sure if they're still holding anyone.
Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding.
Will we even know? Corporations hate being in the limelight - if they take one side, they lose the patronage of the other side, and given how Mr. Trump's success has disobeyed the statistical models they revere, moving forward without a more robust decision algorithm exposes them to unknowable risk. They would probably work through backchannels, away from twitter or the front page to maintain anonymity both to us and to the easily provoked administration, to effect change completely divorced from the plans of the public.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The real problem right now is not that Trump and Bannon and the like are particularly smart or good at this. They aren't. As I've said before, if they were good at what they are trying to do, there wouldn't be protests like this.
The real problem is that the only real check built into the system against nutters like the Trump Admin is Congress. And Congress is controlled by the party who birthed these two and have no respect for the institutions they are straining and potentially destroying.
There's a real question of what levers actually exist here to do anything if the situation escalates. If Trump keeps pushing and the GOP refuses to budge, there does not seem to be any in-system options left on the table.
On one hand, the immediate defiance of protestors, the ACLU, some of the Dems, the Judiciary, that gives me hope. People are taking this seriously.
But on the other hand, it sure looks the White House is playing right out of the dictatorial playbook super hard from the start. Which is terrifying.
I can't find it now but I've been referenced by several friends a tweet from someone in the middle-east saying that this is about the point they'd start looking to see which side the military takes. I really, really don't want it to come to that.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Alternately, I'm a fan of the idea that at the end of the day their media machine runs on money, and closing off that source of money could open their echochamber. Not sure the best way to do that, perhaps the petition to stop amazon from advertizing on breitbart is the way to go, perhaps something more subtle is.
I don't think anyone expected it to escalate this quickly. Honestly, I thought they'd be smarter then that. You go slow and you can diffuse most of the opposition.
Anyway, I mentioned it last thread but I wouldn't worry about the military. The bigger issue in the US is always, as this crisis has demonstrated over the weekend, law enforcement. The police, border security, etc are the people most willing to go authoritarian on the populace, most in place to do so and without even setting off a clusterfuck crisis that brings the country down and most likely to be Trump supporters anyway.
The thing to worry about is the stuff we're seeing unconfirmed hints of right now where enforcement agencies may be ignoring commands from the judicial branch and also attempts by the minority party in the legislative branch to backup the judiciary. And instead just taking orders directly from the highest levels of the executive branch.
But what about the rural white working class? Fuck 'em.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
I read an article pleading the perspective of red rural states, but every attempt to better understand their plight only magnifies the intensity of my contempt. Before, i was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. But after some passive-aggressive behavior during my tour of the midwest last fall, my patience is fraying.
I have a brother who works as a nurse in a blueish city surrounded by red rurality and he definitely feels that the "good salt of the earth" types are far and few in between. Maybe this is because those who wind up in the hospitals because of chronic self-neglect and ignorance tend to be racists, but even so.
Actually you easily could. Get the Democratic base out to vote just a bit harder and it's a win.
However hard it is. I imagine that it is a lot easier than getting the folks who voted for the other guy to switch
It's whatever presidential candidate can be found to fill Trump's hopefully disempowered seat with a Trump picked 9th justice and a republican house and/or senate. The legislative is where the hard earned victories lie, not a single contest an outsider can bumble through.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
My take on Bannon (who is surely behind a lot of this) is that he doesn't want slow and subtle and "without incident". He wants opposition, he wants everyone forced to pick a side, he wants to start the "inevitable" war between races / religions / civilizations. Because he thinks his side will win, and it also cements his power for the duration of the conflict.
Things escalated quickly and horribly, but there's still people trying to help. As awful and sudden as the Muslim Ban was, people immediately jumped in and started fighting the good fight. The ACLU, lawyers who donated their time, and even the protesters in the streets. When things seem hopeless, it's comforting to remember that there's still a lot of good people out there.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
They are making a grand statement about Freedom of Speech
Just not the one they think they are
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I went to r/the_donald earlier today. Most of the posts were trying to troll the rest of Reddit by repeatedly posting pictures of Trump.
That's pretty much their MO. Ignore the heinous shit with memes and try to spin everything else.
And when they say they're "trolling," I mean that they actually like Trump sincerely but just pass it off as them playing pranks and not taking it seriously. U mad bro? Stop being triggered.
The whole thing serves as a thin veneer of plausible deniability.
The tone of the off-color jokes about feminists or Muslims does not feel ironic at all. But couching it in Pepe the Frog and Attack Helicopter memes about the SJW's serves as a kind of secret handshake because they know a lot of us don't find that crap acceptable.
Actually that is one of the things I am really hoping for. Them pushing hard like this out of the gate might lead to the fever breaking, if you get my metaphor. Like, if they had taken their time and done this slowly, people might have been a bit calmer on the response.
Ideally, we can blunt his more authoritarian ambitions now, and set a trend of him trying to overreach and getting smacked back down by the rest of the system.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Unhindered by knowledge of consequences someone can implement a ban on something, not because it has any basis in reality but because he needs to make it look like he is doing something. To quell the unfounded fears of the uneducated masses. The fears that the same person played on to actually get elected.
No legal checks or ethical checks necessary, no weighing of pro's and con's.
Giving an EO for the sake of security is one thing.
Giving x amount in a week just to further your own political agenda issomething entirely different.
Precious few monarchs have such power.
There were 40+ detained on Saturday at the DFW airport (according to travelers), so it's very likely but the authorities aren't giving out hard numbers so it's hard to say for sure.
The ban is awful. But there is a huge, massive gulf between it and something like the Trail of Tears.
As I have said before, forced deportation is the first step. Historically, it's almost always the first step.
AP latest update. Trump rattling sabers, China not backing down, analysts worried. ""it's like announcing war. That would be ridiculous." Which would be much more reassuring without our understanding of the Trump Administration.
Also, we're going through with some base construction in the Philippines, which was part of Obama's China containment strategy but probably looks different to China with an unstable madmen actively alienating every traditional US ally.
My concern is we're going to see the opposite - giant shit sandwich at the beginning causing a huge uproar which eventually dies down after the Republicans run out of wet dreams and we end up with a new normal. Unless they keep pushing shit down our throats at even half pace I think its going to be hard to motivate people to reflect on the nightmarish horror that will be 2019.
Sure, the writing was on the wall back in the Bush era. And I know intellectually it took the better part of two decades to ferment. Part of which was the right making look Obama illegitimate by outright lying and playing on xenophobia. Then the same trick got played on Hillary.
But knowing all this intellectually is not the same thing as suffering the consequences. I'm still not personally affected by the immigration ban. But I know the storm is coming. I just have no idea what shape it'll take.
Still, I'm hoping there's just enough of the system left to fight the dictates of a mad child king. The ACLU is a start.