US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6162

On November 10 2016 11:34 Introvert wrote:
There is a belief out there that protests like these help Trump's turnout or his message. I'm not convinced I agree, but it must be noted that it doesn't appear to help Democrat turnout in any way.

People thought there might be violence if Trump won. Again, I'd say recent history leads one to conclude that Trump's victory is more likely to cause riots and the like. It's the left that does this.

But I wish I knew the effect is has.

On November 10 2016 11:47 Blisse wrote:


This is why media networks should be building trust in their audiences, not alienating them. This is a great opportunity to do thorough analysis, talk reasonably about issues, about turnout, explain polling, and give fair, compassionate, relatable opinions about what happens next, and what people can do to be useful. Talk about rioting and what it accomplishes and what message is sent, about civic rights and about democratic rights and processes. Like, good post-mortems. Real journalism. There's all kinds of directions you can take this. Give useful context to stuff that's happening in your own backyard.

There was a time where Americans would always tune into their 7-10pm TVs and watch the news and evening programmes as a family. I'm sure the trust in media was higher back then. The world is different now and I'm not sure what the quality of the content then was like, but still.

Basically just not this partisan bashing and hate smearing and lying to your viewers and condescendingly withhold information from them. I blame a shift to ads-based online media which encourages low content clickbait and partisan demographic retention in order to get more consistent clickthrough numbers for ad revenue for the lower quality of journalism in these news outlets. I'm looking forward to 538's postmortems because their election postmortem sounded human.

On November 10 2016 12:02 biology]major wrote:
Damn, I have never seen so much hate and vitriol on my social media. So many labels, and alerts of panic attacks, while completely glossing over the failure that is Hillary Clinton. When will these liberals realize that there is more to a person's choice of president than just social issues? This insane obsession with bigotry and missing the bigger picture of things like national security, economy, trade is mind boggling.

On another note, we all know that Trump is extremely vengeful and does not let things go, so will he pick a new AG and prosecute HRC? I think it would make him look bad, she's a victim now.

On November 10 2016 12:02 biology]major wrote:
Damn, I have never seen so much hate and vitriol on my social media. So many labels, and alerts of panic attacks, while completely glossing over the failure that is Hillary Clinton. When will these liberals realize that there is more to a person's choice of president than just social issues? This insane obsession with bigotry and missing the bigger picture of things like national security, economy, trade is mind boggling.

On another note, we all know that Trump is extremely vengeful and does not let things go, so will he pick a new AG and prosecute HRC? I think it would make him look bad, she's a victim now.

On November 10 2016 11:52 xDaunt wrote:


I guarantee that the lawlessness of crap like BLM made a difference.

And yes, for all the incessant hand-wringing that I hear from the left regarding how violent and dangerous Trump supporters are, I've never seen anything to substantiate it. In contrast, many of these same people on the left often give passes to BLM or any of the other leftist outbursts that we've seen over the years.

On November 10 2016 12:02 biology]major wrote:
Damn, I have never seen so much hate and vitriol on my social media. So many labels, and alerts of panic attacks, while completely glossing over the failure that is Hillary Clinton. When will these liberals realize that there is more to a person's choice of president than just social issues? This insane obsession with bigotry and missing the bigger picture of things like national security, economy, trade is mind boggling.

On another note, we all know that Trump is extremely vengeful and does not let things go, so will he pick a new AG and prosecute HRC? I think it would make him look bad, she's a victim now.

On November 10 2016 12:07 Blisse wrote:


Jesus Christ man how much of a blind eye can you possibly turn to justify your own reality? That's an insane position to take. I just Googled and took the first 3 results.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/02/a_list_of_violent_incidents_at_donald_trump_rallies_and_events.html
http://billmoyers.com/story/the-normalization-of-violence-trump-deplorables/
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-20/violence-at-trump-rallies-shows-no-sign-of-abating

There is violence on both sides, anti-Trump and pro-Trump. How can you even deny this? How do you advocate for the left to stop hand waving away the concerns of the right when you yourself continue to hand wave away issues like BLM? There are legitimate issues raised on both tables of the assault, with different motives behind each one. You belittle their motives in exactly the same way you get annoyed from people doing to yours.

THE PARALLELS BETWEEN the U.K.’s shocking approval of the Brexit referendum in June and the U.S.’ even more shocking election of Donald Trump as president last night are overwhelming. Elites (outside of populist right-wing circles) aggressively unified across ideological lines in opposition to both. Supporters of Brexit and Trump were continually maligned by the dominant media narrative (validly or otherwise) as primitive, stupid, racist, xenophobic, and irrational. In each case, journalists who spend all day chatting with one another on Twitter and congregating in exclusive social circles in national capitals — constantly re-affirming their own wisdom in an endless feedback loop — were certain of victory. Afterward, the elites whose entitlement to prevail was crushed devoted their energies to blaming everyone they could find except for themselves, while doubling down on their unbridled contempt for those who defied them, steadfastly refusing to examine what drove their insubordination.

The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.

That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.

After the Brexit vote, I wrote an article comprehensively detailing these dynamics, which I won’t repeat here but hope those interested will read. The title conveys the crux: “Brexit Is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions.” That analysis was inspired by a short, incredibly insightful, and now more relevant than ever post-Brexit Facebook note by the Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins, who wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”

For those who tried to remove themselves from the self-affirming, vehemently pro-Clinton elite echo chamber of 2016, the warning signs that Brexit screechingly announced were not hard to see. Two short passages from a Slate interview I gave in July summarized those grave dangers: that opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior.

Like most everyone else who saw the polling data and predictive models of the media’s self-proclaimed data experts, I long believed Clinton would win, but the reasons why she very well could lose were not hard to see. The warning lights were flashing in neon for a long time, but they were in seedy places that elites studiously avoid. The few people who purposely went to those places and listened, such as Chris Arnade, saw and heard them loud and clear. The ongoing failure to take heed of this intense but invisible resentment and suffering guarantees that it will fester and strengthen. This was the last paragraph of my July article on the Brexit fallout:

Instead of acknowledging and addressing the fundamental flaws within themselves, [elites] are devoting their energies to demonizing the victims of their corruption, all in order to delegitimize those grievances and thus relieve themselves of responsibility to meaningfully address them. That reaction only serves to bolster, if not vindicate, the animating perceptions that these elite institutions are hopelessly self-interested, toxic, and destructive and thus cannot be reformed but rather must be destroyed. That, in turn, only ensures there will be many more Brexits, and Trumps, in our collective future.

On November 10 2016 12:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
can't wait to see all these loudmouth left wing US Celebrities showing up at Toronto Raptors games now that they've moved to Canada.

A couple of February's ago the AVERAGE temperature for the month was 10F. and we went 45 straight days with the temperature never exceeding 30F.

If you can't stand the heat... move to the freezer.

On November 10 2016 12:02 biology]major wrote:
Damn, I have never seen so much hate and vitriol on my social media. So many labels, and alerts of panic attacks, while completely glossing over the failure that is Hillary Clinton. When will these liberals realize that there is more to a person's choice of president than just social issues? This insane obsession with bigotry and missing the bigger picture of things like national security, economy, trade is mind boggling.

On November 10 2016 12:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
can't wait to see all these loudmouth left wing US Celebrities showing up at Toronto Raptors games now that they've moved to Canada.

A couple of February's ago the AVERAGE temperature for the month was 10F. and we went 45 straight days with the temperature never exceeding 30F.

If you can't stand the heat... move to the freezer.