The Donald J. Trump Presidency

I mean, we could respond by posting really graphic pictures of Iraqis with drill holes through their head as a result of the sectarian crisis that the United States invasion initiated... I don't really think that is the point though. Both the Trump and Bush administrations are an unmitigated human rights disaster. I just don't think Trump, as a Republican President, is particularly exceptional. Obviously his whole shtick and persona are unlike anything we have ever seen, but Reagan was also like a soap opera star or whatever the fuck who used to practice his military salute so he'd look cool when he got off the helicopter. They've been this way for a while.

he’s gonna win again

My parents moved to Florida three weeks ago. They've already made friends with neighbors...who are all Trump voters!

As you may imagine, I'm ______ over this

Serious question, and if anyone here can help with this I'd really appreciate it.

Does anyone remember leading up to the 2016 election, and in the months that followed, people online saying that Trump would start concentration camps for immigrants and/or Muslims?

And naysayers online (Trump voters, radical sensible centrists, etc.) being all like "nah man, just calm down and don't worry about it, you better believe that if that ever happened the American people would stand up against it, I swear the next day you'd have an angry mob surrounding these camps, they'd be armed and that's why we have the 2nd Amendment, the American people would never let that happen here, lol you're definitely overreacting" etc.

^That's both a paraphrased general version of the kind of general response to this concern that people had, and also word for word a specific message board post I know I saw somewhere in late 2016/early 2017 that I know I read somewhere.

There's got to be a long trial trail of this stuff still online.

I read that someone was killed yesterday after charging at one of those detention facilities.

But yeah, you are definitely right that a lot of people took that attitude and they have been proven wrong. I think in the early weeks and months people were really charged up and eager to publicly resist those early executive orders and that proved to be relatively effective. The situation at the border is a little different because Trump is just enforcing an interpretation of rules that already existed... Family separation was something that the Obama administration had to deal with as well and they found a more "compassionate" way around it. That doesn't mean mass deportation and immigrant detention wasn't already happening though. That isn't to minimize the difference in policy between these two administrations, I just think historicizing this helps to explain the relatively muted public response.

There is a lot of outrage about this stuff both within the United States and internationally, the problem is that this outrage isn't organized. I think a lot of the blame for that falls on the Democratic Party as well. As the opposition party, they should be mobilizing people in the streets to resist these sorts of draconian measures. They aren't interested in doing so because they have a very different conception of how politics and political representation is supposed to function, which is that our role begins and ends at the polling station.

Chrono made a post either a few pages back or in a different thread that Bernie lacks a defined political base and leftists are just opportunistically latching onto his Presidential campaign. I've reflected on that a little bit and think he is really off the mark. Since he made that post, Bernie has been on the campaign trail explicitly defining and defending socialism using the language of freedom and liberty that already exists within the American political lexicon. It's a very effective strategy, I think, but it also demonstrates that he shares the same basic political framework as his most ardent supporters and activists.

We don't need Bernie to transform this country, but we are going to have to adopt some of his strategy, which is to identify enemies and mobilize popular support against them. He is very good at that. This kind of "populist" rhetoric makes technocrats very nervous, but I don't see an alternative. For example, when asked how he would deal with a McConnell led Senate, Bernie responded that his first act as President would be to hold a rally in Kentucky to rally people around a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system. There isn't a single other Democratic nominee who would be willing to do that kind of political legwork because they somehow don't think it is necessary (and also because their policies aren't really popular anyway and they are just weird, awful, means-tested compromises).

Or we can just keep funding ICE and DHS some more because we don't want them to call us un-American Communists or whatever, whichever way works.

What got him to sign this kidney disease executive order? An advisor? His concience?

It "might just get me to vote Republican" said the elderly low information voter who told me about it.

I can’t believe things are just getting worse.

It's always darkest before the dawn

Sometimes the sun goes round the moon

Nick wrote:I can’t believe things are just getting worse.

it will continue to do so

Nick wrote:I can’t believe things are just getting worse.

Ilhan Omar is going to be presenting legislation in the House in support of the BDS movement. The House also passed legislation today to incrementally reach a $15 national minimum wage in the coming years, which is going to put pressure on McConnell and his band of fucking jackals to once again reveal their true selves to the American people. Meanwhile, Trump's comments are viewed as toxically racist by literally every single Democrat, the majority of Americans, as well as a plurality of registered Republican voters.

Not to dismiss what was said and what is happening. I was so mad this morning when I saw that video of the rally in Greenville that I felt like throwing my fist through a concrete wall. Also, I found out that one of my Mom's best friends (who is Mexican) was stopped by ICE on her way to work the other day, which is fucking terrifying...

Things are very, very bad, but there continues to be meaningful social and political resistance. We are in the majority.

I feel like a lot of Americans who aren’t morally repugnant (well... at least not knowingly or with malice) still feel under attack for being conservative, so they refuse to denounce or even acknowledge how gross this racist, white nationalism shit is. Been honestly trying to get inside their heads to better understand how to get undereducated and/or older middle America types to recognize that silence is complicity.

How and why are you still wasting your time on this? They won't change their minds. Complicit isn't a good word, really. The information is right in front of their eyes. They are active and willing participants in these abuses. Full stop.

I strongly recommend focusing your attention elsewhere. If your goal is to really make a meaningful political difference, try to organize people that haven't otherwise been politically active. Otherwise, throw some coin at legal services for migrants seeking asylum.

I under the impulse because there are members of my own family who fit the description of a passive Trump voter and life-long conservative. I mean, they are my family so I tolerate them (and some of them I love) but they are really the absolute worst people. Why sugarcoat this?

Why am I wasting my time?

40% of our country is willing to go along with a cultist white nationalist movement. I’m wasting my time trying to understand, because this scares the fucking shit out of me, and I perhaps naively think that getting into the heads of the part of that 40% that isn’t knowingly or actively evil could help to dissuade them and show them why they are contributing to something horrifically dangerous.

The worst thing about the “everybody’s Hitler now” trope is that it dulls and desensitizes to the point that when a no shit movement with lots of striking parallels to the rise of nazism arises, many brush off our criticisms as “oh, everybody’s Hitler now,” and falsely convince themselves that these jackboot savages aren’t that much worse than whatever liberal figurehead their cult leader accuses of crimes.

I don’t know if any of that is a real answer, but I think American politics and people are complex and worth better understanding.

I wouldn't have known about this if Brexit fucks hadn't lost their shit over it. So thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Music sounds really generic and clichéd but yeah, it's a movie trailer so...

Ned Braden wrote:I don’t know if any of that is a real answer, but I think American politics and people are complex and worth better understanding.

It is true that American politics are much more complex than the binary dichotomies presented in cable news show debates, but we need to stop approaching politics as a psychological condition. I would suggest that understanding the complexities of American politics demands that we understand the unique history and political economy of the United States.

Ned Braden wrote:
40% of our country is willing to go along with a cultist white nationalist movement. I’m wasting my time trying to understand, because this scares the fucking shit out of me, and I perhaps naively think that getting into the heads of the part of that 40% that isn’t knowingly or actively evil could help to dissuade them and show them why they are contributing to something horrifically dangerous.

Why does it matter what is in their heads? I do think you are being naive and wasting your time. I think Beto's campaign is motivated by the same misguided principle that if you can just reason with them, people will stop being racist/nativist/etc. That isn't how it works. Trump is going to continue to maintain a core support of racist pieces of shit. You aren't going to change that by "getting into their heads." You appeal to people's material interests and redirect their anger away from ethnic, racial, and religious others and towards special interests, elites, and more broadly, the property owning capitalist class. That's always been how you defeat fascist tendencies in civil society, not by getting on a soapbox and saying that "we are all Americans."

WP64 wrote:You appeal to people's material interests and redirect their anger away from ethnic, racial, and religious others and towards special interests, elites, and more broadly, the property owning capitalist class.  

Probably misunderstanding you a lot here, but it seems like "getting into their heads" is a part of this. Or perhaps even another term for this very process? But at this point we're probably just arguing over abstract concepts.

Although I agree that appealing to feel-good notions of community and old fashioned patriotism is a waste of time. ("We're heading out to rural America to talk to voters and find out why they voted for Donald Trump!", etc.)

I think everyone agrees that the idea of "reaching out to" and trying to "understand" these people has fuck all to do with winning the next election. But it's imperative to contain this madness beyond 2020 and I don't think the psychological tactics for doing that are going to fall into our laps without having a conversation of some sort... again, this probably sounds like I'm suggesting you suck up to your (hypothetical) racist uncle or whatever, that's really not what I mean and I kind of feel like that's not really what Ned B is talking bout either. But I could be wrong!

undo wrote:

WP64 wrote:You appeal to people's material interests and redirect their anger away from ethnic, racial, and religious others and towards special interests, elites, and more broadly, the property owning capitalist class.  

Probably misunderstanding you a lot here, but it seems like "getting into their heads" is a part of this. Or perhaps even another term for this very process? But at this point we're probably just arguing over abstract concepts.

There are similarities, but I think about it very differently. I think the danger is that once right-wing forces start to advance a credible critique of capitalism and its impact on downwardly mobile or low-income people in the United States, they are going to be able to influence them ideologically as well. That's really scary to me because it would have deep, long-lasting impacts on the American electorate in ways that transcend Trump. I worry about the inability of the current Democratic Party, which is managed by a class of perpetually out-of-touch consultants that almost explicitly market the Party towards a "white collar" managerial class (the 'aspirational' middle classes or some shit like that), to reach these people. And I am not trying to suggest that the Party needs to re-center the white/rural working classes. I am also talking about depoliticized African-American voters in inner cities and literally everyone else who is being exploited by a system that insulates the wealthiest Americans from the risks of the marketplace while hypocritically celebrating the virtue of that same market when it comes to the commodification of our own bodies and health (which is what private insurance actually is).

undo wrote:Although I agree that appealing to feel-good notions of community and old fashioned patriotism is a waste of time. ("We're heading out to rural America to talk to voters and find out why they voted for Donald Trump!", etc.)

I think everyone agrees that the idea of "reaching out to" and trying to "understand" these people has fuck all to do with winning the next election.

So we are basically on the same page. We disagree about where the Party should be focusing its political energy though. Rather than trying to convert people to your side that have demonstrated a complete and total inability for reflection and critical thought, why not try to engage people who aren't politically active or aware. If we want to transform the country in a more democratic and egalitarian way, which is all of our goals, we are going to need more than 48% of the electorate to vote in Presidential elections. It's that simple really.

A combination of antiquated political institutions that give outsized political power to (white) rural voters and the nonexistence of civil education in the United States are the two biggest reasons why a conservative movement headed by a philandering sociopath is ruling over a country that overwhelmingly opposes overturning Roe v. Wade. Any progressive social movement should be focusing their attention on abolishing (or significantly reforming) the Senate, instituting universal voter registration, doing away with weird, outdated bullshit like the electoral college, because without those things we are fighting with our hands tied behind our backs.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1154502673514684416?s=19

I am imagining what it would feel like to read that tweet four years ago without knowing everything that has transpired since and it is really fucking with me.