The Donald J. Trump Presidency

i know people are sickened by the idea of impeaching Trump to install Mike Pence as the President, but it's a moral obligation at this point. this is the same point i made about Cruz being MUCH MUCH better than Trump during the primaries. the country can at least deal with having to fight socially conservative assholes tooth and nail. trying to keep the very fabric of government from crumbling due to gross incompetence is an existential problem for many people.

Every single liberal who was a part of the sarcastic Trump cheering section during the primaries is a piece of shit.

guys, the "least racist person we know" just assumed all black people know each other and yelled at a Jewish journalist for asking about an increase in anti-semitic hate crimes. those were just 2 of the 50 possible headlines from today's press conference. this is fine. everything is fine.

I don't know where else to post this. I hope y'all don't mind.

As for that press conference...yowza.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-trust-idUSKBN15V2SR

this should be happening ad nauseam, every single day

Wonder if anyone will ask Spicer about the now deleted Enemy of the American People Tweet that Trump wrote today.

Nick wrote:Wonder if anyone will ask Spicer about the now deleted Enemy of the American People Tweet that Trump wrote today.

What was this?

undo wrote:

Nick wrote:Wonder if anyone will ask Spicer about the now deleted Enemy of the American People Tweet that Trump wrote today.

What was this?

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/320168-trump-the-media-is-the-enemy-of-the-american-people

There can be no question now, with the way that Donald tries to sidestep and delegitimize essential institutions like the media/judiciary, and the way he talks about "making his appeals directly to the American people", that he intends to subvert our Democratic system in whatever way he can. He must be impeached.

Anyone who ever uttered some version of the phrase "give Trump a chance" should be discredited for the rest of their lives. If you didn't see EVERYTHING that is happening now coming based on the campaign, you are so imperceptive that you might as well be completely ignored on every topic ever. At what point do we stop blaming the media for not "informing the people" and admit that, if you're literate, there was absolutely more than enough information out there to form a very correct opinion on Trump, and anyone who couldn't see that is either incompetent or wants shit to rain down upon us.

This is why I have always said that, as much as it's a nice idea to believe in "power to the people", I strongly believe in oligarchic Democracy.

Ҩ wrote:Every single liberal who was a part of the sarcastic Trump cheering section during the primaries is a piece of shit.

Does this apply to people who wanted him to get the nomination for (what seemed like at the time) strategic election reasons?

Or are you talking about people who bought Trump campaign merch because they thought they were being ironic and hilarious?

chrondog wrote:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/320168-trump-the-media-is-the-enemy-of-the-american-people

I made this post 2 fucking months ago!

https://lopp2.forumotion.com/t90-itt-we-act-disgusted-appointed-at-left-wing-buffoons#30084

undo wrote:I made this post 2 fucking months ago!

i was optimistic for five seconds about teaching old dogs new tricks, but i see that is futile now

chrondog wrote: If you didn't see EVERYTHING that is happening now coming based on the campaign, you are so imperceptive that you might as well be completely ignored on every topic ever. At what point do we stop blaming the media for not "informing the people" and admit that, if you're literate, there was absolutely more than enough information out there to form a very correct opinion on Trump, and anyone who couldn't see that is either incompetent or wants shit to rain down upon us.

Was gonna post something very similar in response to a post you made blaming the media for this mess but I watched some anime instead.

i still love Nate Silver and didn't see him as that wrong about the election, but this Tweet is unbelievably fucking stupid:

The key word here is CONSIDERS. As with Trump LGBT executive order than never happened, good chance this is a trial balloon or distraction. https://t.co/SKVJ3boPnq

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) February 17, 2017

uhh, if the fucking President is talking about using the National Guard to round up immigrants and deport them as a "trial balloon" we better be SO goddamn worried and respond SO GODDAMN FORCEFULLY. what could be more dangerous than the President threatening to deploy the National Guard against non-violent people? are we supposed to wait until hundreds more people are in jail to take THE PRESIDENT seriously? this is so obviously an indicator of what he would like to do. to treat it as some 3-dimensional chess move to outmaneuver the press rather than a statement of intent is willfully ignorant.

Yeah, we're way past the point of "signaling". "Seriously, not literally" was always completely fucking stupid but continuing to insist on it at this point.... jesus.

undo wrote:

Ҩ wrote:Every single liberal who was a part of the sarcastic Trump cheering section during the primaries is a piece of shit.

Does this apply to people who wanted him to get the nomination for (what seemed like at the time) strategic election reasons?

Or are you talking about people who bought Trump campaign merch because they thought they were being ironic and hilarious?

Both. I didn't even know people were doing the latter. That's unfathomable to me. None of this was ever funny.

I think I got swept up during the primaries and I probably made some stupid posts that I would now be deeply ashamed of. It's disgusting.

chrondog wrote:This is why I have always said that, as much as it's a nice idea to believe in "power to the people", I strongly believe in oligarchic Democracy.

I'm not sure if this is sarcastic or not, but it really disappoints me when I see really thoughtful people like yourself say things like this. As disorienting as the first month has been and as horrific as things might get in the next few years it is sad to see people wax nostalgic so soon.

But I think you are being sarcastic so I don't want to expand on this point any further and waste my time.

I'm not sarcastic in the slightest. I think average people are complete idiots and can't be trusted to make informed decisions, especially as the world gets more complex. That doesn't mean I want to see the creation of some sort of biased electoral system (though we already have that through the electoral college, gerrymandering, and party-controlled primaries), I just don't think that a straight representative democracy is going to create the best outcomes.

That was really quick.

It's significant that only 24% of the country voted for Trump in this past election and that Democrats lost more than Republicans won. Voter suppression should be a central concern of any progressive. I am also not sure I want to concede your point that people can not be trusted to make informed decisions. The rampant disinformation of the Administration is not new. The number one cable news channel for the past decade has been doing this shit on a nightly basis. In the process, oligarchs like Murdoch are turning a profit and satisfying their own economic self-interest.

chrondog wrote:That doesn't mean I want to see the creation of some sort of biased electoral system

Ҩ wrote:Voter suppression should be a central concern of any progressive.

It is for me. I don't think it's contradictory to believe that it is a civil right for all citizens to vote and that voting rights should be protected, defended, and expanded, AND question the wisdom of the crowd. I think expanded voting rights and higher participation would help make BETTER decisions, but I fundamentally reject populism because I do not have faith in the ability of people who spend much of their life struggling for a livelihood to be able to properly understand society and diagnose their own problems. I also don't believe that just any group that someone deemed as "oligarchs" would do well for the country either. There are a lot of classically oligarchic groups that would run this country horribly (see: current administration). I merely use the term "oligarch" to suggest that government is better when it is controlled by a small number of well-informed people rather than a pluralistic approach that values as much input as possible. But as the gap between the "experts" and the "regular people" continues to grow and the regular people show a tendency to side with "populists" over experts, the more our country will suffer. Highly educated altruists are the best people to run the country. I suppose that is an intellectual point that doesn't mean jack shit because, as I said, I don't advocate rigging the electoral system towards those people.

'Oligarchic democracy,' if we want to call it that, has accelerated a global environmental crisis and proved itself both unwilling and incapable of dealing with globalization's harsher consequences in general. Before Trump, even relatively stable advanced and industrialized societies were dealing with pronounced levels of underemployment that in certain sectors was a deep crisis.

I will continue to argue that this dual crisis (environmental and work), which is tied back to our capitalist world-system, has contributed to Trump's election and other right-wing populist movements. We can argue about how much of an influence these larger material factors have and how they influence personal ideologies and political mobilization if you'd like, but I don't think that would be very fruitful. Nor am I suggesting that Trump's electoral success can be reduced to this one axiom.

We're obviously quibbling about what to label an "oligarchic democracy" and that is the main source of disagreement. I agree with everything you've said there. As you point out without altruistic governance or wealth distribution the system concentrates money in the hands of the few and the many are upset about that. I would also agree that this problem contributes to the rise of people like Trump. Obviously, I don't think Trump will do anything to reverse this problem and is an oligarch himself, but that's the problem. The voters misdiagnosed the problem and will suffer for it. But again, if I'm not advocating some mechanism to save the voters from themselves, what am I really arguing in favor of? As I've realized, I'm not arguing in favor of anything. I'm clearly just frustrated.

I can laugh at the self destruction of the Republican Party and still be scared to death of the collateral damage it is causing.  You guys didn't think Dr. Strangelove was funny?

chrondog wrote:No matter what action anyone takes on the left it will be branded as "counterproductive" by the media and internet trolls. This is the sickness in the way public discourse treats progressive action. Every obstructionist, trolling, offensive, and borderline illegal behavior by right wingers is "savvy", "politically expedient", or "all part of the plan". All left wing action is "disorganized", "goalless", and "plays right into their hands". Guess what? Pretty much all political action is emotional, disorganized, and often goalless. It's hard to organize people and make their POVs homogenous!

Trump's latest line, which most people will buy hook line and sinker, is that disruptions at GOP town halls are "planned by liberal activists". So it's bad if leftists are disorganized AND protests are invalid if they are planned because they're not spontaneous enough. There can be no winning with most of the cretins out there.

Can we also take this time to note that the Berkeley protests elevated Milo's profile, got him a ton of scrutiny, and eventually got his book deal cancelled? Are people still going to put those people down? This is what I was saying about how insane it is to judge a protest action within 10 minutes of it happening based on some cookie cutter narrative. A bunch of assholes in the media were super snarky about how "all trolls love is attention! just don't pay attention to them and they'll go away!" Uhhh, didn't Milo get a book deal by being a giant troll? Didn't he write all the time at Breitbart by being a troll? Ignoring trolls doesn't make them go away! they can still get book publishers to try and make a profit off of peddling their shit to their narrow audience. Niche can still sell and it does a disservice to borderline dangerous trolls to let them get off like that. By elevating Milo's garbage into the public discourse, he had to defend his views to a broad audience, which he was completely unable to do. In the wider context his abhorrent views were rejected. So next time you want to talk about "feeding the trolls", how bout you shut the fuck up New York Times Magazine writer on Twitter?

Everyday my desire to leave this country grows stronger. This is all just so very stupid and heartbreaking. American conservatism doesn't even make sense. Like, far-right parties in Europe can be violent and scary and there is nothing good about it, but even Boris and Nigel wouldn't think of touching the NHS. In fact, funding social services is actually used as justification for their isolationism and xenophobia.

It just doesn't make sense to me that people would go out of their way to make their own lives qualitatively shittier just so a transgender kid at high school can't use a certain bathroom during their passing period. It will never make sense and it makes me want to fucking explode.