EPTAlthough I was happy with the phrase quackyhack
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4617
| Forum Index > General Forum |
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28665 Posts
Although I was happy with the phrase quackyhack | ||
|
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9649 Posts
On November 20 2024 22:15 Liquid`Drone wrote: Not to nitpick as I have no interest in defending an obvious quackyhack but surely when he said that reopening schools might increase fatalities by one or two percent he means compared to the current death tolll - so an additional 12-24k, not an additional 3% of the entire population of the united states (which is what you'd need to get 10 million more). The former is also much closer to the reality in terms of how many more deaths would have been caused by reopening schools - maybe 12-24k is a low number but I don't see how there could possibly be grounds for believing that this would move the total casualties of the US from 1.2 million to 11.2 million (or 4.5 million for that matter). No issue with the rest of the critique! Yep that's just a brainfart on my part, I'll edit the post. | ||
|
Introvert
United States4750 Posts
That's a big part of it. On November 20 2024 16:00 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: How do you feel about Dr Oz for a cabinet position? :D Oz is meh again, taking a position like the one he accepted is maybe a good sign? It's not like his potential posting is one where you get play politics or gain big publicity, so maybe he actually wants to do the job. Oz seems like exactly the type of person where the senate goes "OK, unusual but you get your own people I guess" and it's not worth fighting about. Another seemingly excellent pick if he makes it is Jay Bhattacharya for NIH. So really mixed bag here. | ||
|
WombaT
Northern Ireland25321 Posts
On November 20 2024 14:09 Introvert wrote: Well I have very briefly but here's more. Some are good (Rubio and many of the nat sec people or people like Burgum). some are bad, Gaetz and RFK (RFK used to be big in left-wing Hollywood circles, he has a lot of ideas that I don't like beyond vaccine skepticism). Also, we need to flush the Kennedy clan out of the body politic. I think America has had quite enough of the overrated family. Some are eh, like Noem or Gabbard. I wish he had picked someone else for ED sec, but she was in his cabinet last time and she knows how it works. Maybe she'll be good at implementing his agenda too. DeVos was terrific but I think she resigned after Jan 6 so I assume she was never in the running again. It's just muted because, and I know you don't like the hear this, but it would be much worse with a dem president. Even now, Mayorkas and Becerra in particular are awful. Mayor Pete also failing upwards, and his only qualification was...nothing. Trump seems to learned from his first time. Last time he picked people like Tillerson and Mattis who thought they were in charge and not Trump. Qualified on paper, but not really willing to implement the agenda. This time Trump wants to do what he said, the good and the bad. If I had to pick one I would try to stop Gaetz in the senate, the DOJ needs a good thorough cleaning and someone with the competence and focus to get it done while being a good AG. RFK would be second. i like a lot of the things (though by no means all) that they SAY they are going to do, but I don't trust them to do it well. I think Trump has swung too far in the other direction, although again it's not all bad. Hope he finds a place for the previous OMB director, that guy was excellent too. Edit: also curious about Vance. Pence seemed to have some influence on Trump during his last term and it seems like Trump respects Vance and his intellect. I disagree with Vance about a great many things also, but I think as long as he's not a total sycophant he can make a difference for the better. Cheers for the half a dollar. Somewhat stringing the bolded together. Putting on my conservative hat for a second, or indeed just thinking more generally. Trump did get a pretty resounding mandate, and ultimately one does want an administration to do what it says it was going to do. So, you don’t really want a cabinet full of technocrats with maverick tendencies in that regard. On the flip side, you do want some expertise and at least some checks, as opposed to just filling things seemingly on the basis of loyalty or perceived loyalty alone. And not necessarily a loyalty to the program or mandate, but to Trump himself. De Vos isn’t out of the picture because she’s deviated from the policy program. The pendulum can swing too far the other way, as you’ve alluded to. Gaetz I mean, you can’t find another with similar or better qualifications who doesn’t have more baggage than an airport carousel? That one really sticks out as a loyalty appointment and he’s one I’ve seen probably the most conservative misgivings on, including yourself On the flip side, there are plenty I personally really dislike politically but given the overall platform aren’t terrible picks. They stand for x, Trump ran on x, me disliking x isn’t super relevant to them being a decent pick or not. I don’t fundamentally dislike considering one’s clan the better option, I mean it’s why folks identify with one or the other. But I think one should be able to couch supposed enthusiasm in its own terms. If one says they’re loving Trump’s cabinet picks, they should be able to say why they’re so great without a ‘but the Dems’, flip it across the aisle you see much the same stuff. If say, Bernie got a cabinet role in something like health or education in a Dem admin I’d be pretty damn over the moon with that appointment and could wax lyrical about it. People would be free to consider me an idiot for thinking so, but I could praise that hypothetical appointment without couching in it in ‘but the Republicans’. You sent to have a more mixed view of it so that’s a bit different like and you’re not the target of my more general whinge | ||
|
Timebon3s
Norway691 Posts
On November 20 2024 10:44 KwarK wrote: Kamala is half black which is unforgivable for half of America. Then how did Obama win? You democrats can’t help but play identity politics. I honestly don’t know if you’re trolling or not at this point. I guess that’s good trolling :thumbs up: | ||
|
oBlade
United States5585 Posts
On November 20 2024 13:42 WombaT wrote: I think it’s somewhat illuminating that, albeit in my particular corner of reality, I haven’t seen much praise from the right for these cabinet candidates, broadly speaking. Not exclusively of course, these things never are. But it’s either ‘people I don’t like, don’t like this so I’ll defend it’, or on a more moderate slant ‘well the Dems said the sky would fall down, so everything beneath that catastrophic eventuality is now above par’ Like, fuck sake can people just give their actual opinions? Is that too much to ask? Most people do not have informed opinions about these picks whether they want to or not because of the nature of who they are and the positions. A lot of them are not extremely public people, or to the extent they are, have not spoken at length about what they plan to do in the position they have. Except for ones like Vivek, Musk, Carr, RFK. People who have strong opinions are usually not doing it from a place of being informed. Most of this thread would applaud Biden hiring a former Weather Underground member at NOAA on the assumption they must be a qualified meteorologist. As a group they are noticeably focused and also more MAGA than the first term. Like on paper this is one of the strongest cabinets you can expect. There's basically no empty suits, or stiffs, people like Kerry who Obama appointed at a time when he was an old dunce (Kerry was a semi honorable and semi intelligent person maybe 50 years ago). The difference from Pence to Vance is basically reflected in every other position as well. Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson were some of the worst picks from before. Sessions was in Justice like it was a SCOTUS appointment. It's not. Barr wasn't much better. I can't name a single fucking thing Tillerson did, Blumpf has legitimate clever friends from the business world, Tillerson does not seem to have been one of them. Like John Kelly you can say with hindsight it was a mistake, but it still makes sense logically why you would choose him. The reasoning makes sense, it's sound enough, unfortunately the result is sometimes you just make a mistake or miss something. But Tillerson is a complete enigma. Utterly baffling from the day of announcement to the day I heard his confirmation hearing to today. I have no idea where that guy came from or what the fuck happened and continue to think it's hilarious that Blumpf was so fed up he had someone tell the press Tillerson was resigning (which is Blumpf's go-to "amiable" firing method, to tell someone to draft a letter of resignation) before telling Tillerson himself. My only guess is Tillerson, having no experience in government or law or diplomacy, was simply relaying to Blumpf whatever the permanent managerial class at the State Department said, and he had no personality or force or ideas of his own, because his main skill is not rocking the boat in order to perpetuate his own existence. But radical risk aversion didn't get him very far with Blumpf. Literally even Blinken is better. Flynn was okay but basically got railroaded. Kelly was a retard. His problem was relying on military careers to produce reliable (nonpartisan) people but he failed to realize that becoming a general is an inherently political process. By conscious effort or just coincidence, this seems to have informed the choice of Hegseth, who was a major. I previously thought the more he uses that instinct to rely on colonels, etc., rather than generals, the better off he'll be. There is a fucking Kennedy in a Republican administration - I don't know how anyone wouldn't just marvel at that. Speaking of Tillerson and business friends, it's puzzled me for a while that Blumpf didn't have like a lifelong confidant and wingman to just turn to for VP. That is how I would imagine approaching it as an outsider. But he always adapted based on (perceived) political realities. For Tillerson, I feel like Blumpf seemed maybe to view State as an afterthought - seeing himself as the top diplomat and negotiator, and the State Department as vestigial. Nevertheless, there are many he has worked with before. And he's filtered out the shit ones who aren't rejoining. Like Haley, Pompeo. In Haley's case she's an idiot which got proven by Vivek on live TV. And yes, this is about loyalty also because nobody wants to hire someone who hates them and nobody deserves or has some kind of right to a job from someone they shit all over. Dr. Oz is a lifelong Republican, and gave him airtime in 2016 during the "Blumpf is old and unhealthy" tizzy to dispel that at length and talk about health. Blumpf never forgot that. Or that Oz is a literal heart surgeon. People can ridicule him as a quack, but can't then say "trust the experts - just not that expert." My perspective is very simple - show me a man who's never been wrong about something, and I'll show you he's never been right about anything, an armchair coward. Burgum and Ratcliffe are great. Zeldin got far in reddening NY in the 2022 governor race but didn't make it, like Oz didn't end up being PA's choice for senator. Gaetz is a shark. So most surprising is Rubio. Rubio is no longer the nervous water bottle man for Obama's state of the union address. Nor is he the little kid on the debate stage. He's really matured as a national politician and just walks around looking like an absolute killer. That is the one appointment that really makes me curious about their personal relationship or what specifically drove that. Perhaps with experience Blumpf sees the State Department as the most crucial to have experienced Washington hands on it. And it's also dangerous to poach too many legislators. Senators are fine because they can be directly replaced by governors. Like on paper Rubio is a clear choice, foreign relations committee, etc. But they did have contentious moments in the past. So he's surprising like Tillerson but almost for the exact opposite reasons. Even Democrats think Rubio is the pick for State. So it's pretty easy to be cautiously over the moon. Remembering these people are not the president and we have no crystal ball. | ||
|
DarkPlasmaBall
United States44328 Posts
The United States on Wednesday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, where a humanitarian crisis is intensifying and the fighting shows no signs of ending. Fourteen Security Council members voted for the resolution, while only the United States voted against it. The United States said it vetoed the resolution, the fifth the Council has taken up, because it did not make the cease-fire contingent on the release of the hostages held in Gaza. The resolution does call for the release of all hostages, but the wording suggests that their release would come only after a cease-fire were implemented. The veto was the fourth time the United States blocked an effort by the Council to demand a cease-fire since the war began over a year ago, when Hamas led an attack on Israel and took more than 200 people hostage. More than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the course of the war, according to the local health authorities, and a U.N.-backed panel warned that the territory faces the risk of famine. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/world/middleeast/us-veto-gaza-ceasefire.html The bolded part makes me feel like the United States isn't truly interested in solving this crisis. | ||
|
Gahlo
United States35147 Posts
On November 21 2024 03:25 Timebon3s wrote: Then how did Obama win? You democrats can’t help but play identity politics. I honestly don’t know if you’re trolling or not at this point. I guess that’s good trolling :thumbs up: Same way Trump won. People were pissed with the state of things more than him being Black. | ||
KwarK
United States42685 Posts
On November 21 2024 03:25 Timebon3s wrote: Then how did Obama win? You democrats can’t help but play identity politics. I honestly don’t know if you’re trolling or not at this point. I guess that’s good trolling :thumbs up: Obama was exceptional and Bush presided over an economic meltdown. The Democrats could have run a scarecrow that year and still won. | ||
|
WombaT
Northern Ireland25321 Posts
On November 21 2024 04:28 oBlade wrote: Most people do not have informed opinions about these picks whether they want to or not because of the nature of who they are and the positions. A lot of them are not extremely public people, or to the extent they are, have not spoken at length about what they plan to do in the position they have. Except for ones like Vivek, Musk, Carr, RFK. People who have strong opinions are usually not doing it from a place of being informed. Most of this thread would applaud Biden hiring a former Weather Underground member at NOAA on the assumption they must be a qualified meteorologist. As a group they are noticeably focused and also more MAGA than the first term. Like on paper this is one of the strongest cabinets you can expect. There's basically no empty suits, or stiffs, people like Kerry who Obama appointed at a time when he was an old dunce (Kerry was a semi honorable and semi intelligent person maybe 50 years ago). The difference from Pence to Vance is basically reflected in every other position as well. Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson were some of the worst picks from before. Sessions was in Justice like it was a SCOTUS appointment. It's not. Barr wasn't much better. I can't name a single fucking thing Tillerson did, Blumpf has legitimate clever friends from the business world, Tillerson does not seem to have been one of them. Like John Kelly you can say with hindsight it was a mistake, but it still makes sense logically why you would choose him. The reasoning makes sense, it's sound enough, unfortunately the result is sometimes you just make a mistake or miss something. But Tillerson is a complete enigma. Utterly baffling from the day of announcement to the day I heard his confirmation hearing to today. I have no idea where that guy came from or what the fuck happened and continue to think it's hilarious that Blumpf was so fed up he had someone tell the press Tillerson was resigning (which is Blumpf's go-to "amiable" firing method, to tell someone to draft a letter of resignation) before telling Tillerson himself. My only guess is Tillerson, having no experience in government or law or diplomacy, was simply relaying to Blumpf whatever the permanent managerial class at the State Department said, and he had no personality or force or ideas of his own, because his main skill is not rocking the boat in order to perpetuate his own existence. But radical risk aversion didn't get him very far with Blumpf. Literally even Blinken is better. Flynn was okay but basically got railroaded. Kelly was a retard. His problem was relying on military careers to produce reliable (nonpartisan) people but he failed to realize that becoming a general is an inherently political process. By conscious effort or just coincidence, this seems to have informed the choice of Hegseth, who was a major. I previously thought the more he uses that instinct to rely on colonels, etc., rather than generals, the better off he'll be. There is a fucking Kennedy in a Republican administration - I don't know how anyone wouldn't just marvel at that. Speaking of Tillerson and business friends, it's puzzled me for a while that Blumpf didn't have like a lifelong confidant and wingman to just turn to for VP. That is how I would imagine approaching it as an outsider. But he always adapted based on (perceived) political realities. For Tillerson, I feel like Blumpf seemed maybe to view State as an afterthought - seeing himself as the top diplomat and negotiator, and the State Department as vestigial. Nevertheless, there are many he has worked with before. And he's filtered out the shit ones who aren't rejoining. Like Haley, Pompeo. In Haley's case she's an idiot which got proven by Vivek on live TV. And yes, this is about loyalty also because nobody wants to hire someone who hates them and nobody deserves or has some kind of right to a job from someone they shit all over. Dr. Oz is a lifelong Republican, and gave him airtime in 2016 during the "Blumpf is old and unhealthy" tizzy to dispel that at length and talk about health. Blumpf never forgot that. Or that Oz is a literal heart surgeon. People can ridicule him as a quack, but can't then say "trust the experts - just not that expert." My perspective is very simple - show me a man who's never been wrong about something, and I'll show you he's never been right about anything, an armchair coward. Burgum and Ratcliffe are great. Zeldin got far in reddening NY in the 2022 governor race but didn't make it, like Oz didn't end up being PA's choice for senator. Gaetz is a shark. So most surprising is Rubio. Rubio is no longer the nervous water bottle man for Obama's state of the union address. Nor is he the little kid on the debate stage. He's really matured as a national politician and just walks around looking like an absolute killer. That is the one appointment that really makes me curious about their personal relationship or what specifically drove that. Perhaps with experience Blumpf sees the State Department as the most crucial to have experienced Washington hands on it. And it's also dangerous to poach too many legislators. Senators are fine because they can be directly replaced by governors. Like on paper Rubio is a clear choice, foreign relations committee, etc. But they did have contentious moments in the past. So he's surprising like Tillerson but almost for the exact opposite reasons. Even Democrats think Rubio is the pick for State. So it's pretty easy to be cautiously over the moon. Remembering these people are not the president and we have no crystal ball. The bolded just outright isn’t true, you know it isn’t. It may be true in somewhere like r/BlueNoMatterWho (probably not a real sub) sure, but doesn’t really reflect this particular area. People aren’t criticising Dr Oz for his abilities as a heart surgeon. He can be a competent operator there, it doesn’t necessarily follow that his narrow field translates to a wider administrative role. If I get the name wrong, my bad, but I don’t think many doubted Ben Carson’s bona fides as a basically universally respected neurosurgeon. He just said fucking mental stuff in areas outside of that expertise. More broadly aside from political sensibilities you’re not really saying anything different from the critics. The cabinet is chock full of Trump loyalists is the axiom of agreement, you just see that as a good thing, others do not. But hey that’s fair enough, it’s not bullshit masquerading as principle anyway, which to me is much more infuriating. I agree that for lower profile appointees, criticism may be a reflex and some of them may actually be good picks potentially. Higher profile picks have a public record to somewhat ascertain that, but in the absence of that it’s difficult to make a reasonable judgement. PS would it be beyond you to not refer to folks as ‘retards’? Thanks babe | ||
|
WombaT
Northern Ireland25321 Posts
On November 21 2024 04:37 KwarK wrote: Obama was exceptional and Bush presided over an economic meltdown. The Democrats could have run a scarecrow that year and still won. I don’t think they win that hard, and while in some demographics it was a minus point, in others it was a galvanising giant plus point for various reasons. I don’t think Kamala Harris not being white was a particularly big factor this election, I think her being a woman was a bigger impediment in terms of so-called identity politics, and beyond that I think the combo of the Biden years and the tenor of her campaign were bigger than both | ||
|
Vivax
21977 Posts
| ||
|
Zambrah
United States7298 Posts
| ||
|
WombaT
Northern Ireland25321 Posts
On November 21 2024 05:11 Zambrah wrote: Dr Oz was, to my knowledge, a genuinely exceptional heart surgeon, however he discovered the truth about capitalism, which is that it wasn't going to reward him for being a genuinely exceptional heart surgeon who saved lives nearly as much as it would reward him for being a nonsense pill peddler on Oprah or whatever day time TV trash, lol. You mean to tell me Judge Judy isn’t the best judge in America?! | ||
|
oBlade
United States5585 Posts
On November 21 2024 05:03 WombaT wrote: The bolded just outright isn’t true, you know it isn’t. It may be true in somewhere like r/BlueNoMatterWho (probably not a real sub) sure, but doesn’t really reflect this particular area. People aren’t criticising Dr Oz for his abilities as a heart surgeon. He can be a competent operator there, it doesn’t necessarily follow that his narrow field translates to a wider administrative role. If I get the name wrong, my bad, but I don’t think many doubted Ben Carson’s bona fides as a basically universally respected neurosurgeon. He just said fucking mental stuff in areas outside of that expertise. More broadly aside from political sensibilities you’re not really saying anything different from the critics. The cabinet is chock full of Trump loyalists is the axiom of agreement, you just see that as a good thing, others do not. But hey that’s fair enough, it’s not bullshit masquerading as principle anyway, which to me is much more infuriating. I agree that for lower profile appointees, criticism may be a reflex and some of them may actually be good picks potentially. Higher profile picks have a public record to somewhat ascertain that, but in the absence of that it’s difficult to make a reasonable judgement. PS would it be beyond you to not refer to folks as ‘retards’? Thanks babe It being full of loyalists has been the status quo of politics since Herodotus. That's the whole fucking point. "Let me get elected so I can give power to my enemies." What the fuck. Criticism of this plain and manifest fact per se by Democrats who suddenly ululate every time Blumpf does any normal human thing, is an act of severe cognitive impairment. Whether the commentary is "Blumpf hired people that like Blumpf!" or "This person who will run a federal department for the first time never has never run a federal department before!" we can agree is equally vapid because they're self-evident, they're givens. There are many kinds of loyalists, including pure ones, opportunistic ones, and straggling incompetents. My nuanced assessment is not "durr red men pledge to orange man" but that having established his mandate as more than the "fluke" of 2016, having access to a wider pool of talent, with a wider and more concrete base of support, he's been able to trim where necessary. He has said as much, it was his #1 regret according to the Rogan interview - personnel. Not only does he not need the naysayers, he doesn't even need to appease them or haggle with them now. There is a chance for Republican reform the likes of which hasn't been seen since the 19th century. But the key word is chance. Like any honest look, this person is a liberal New Yorker, he's much closer to his true self having some Democrats around him than trying the weird delicate balancing act he had to do in 2016 with demonstrably intellectually bereft RINOs like Paul Ryan who essentially viewed him as an inconvenience, because his existence meant they got exposed for not actually having a single idea of how to do all the shit they said they would do, which interfered with their corporatist grift as honorable loser opposition. In Oz's case it's not like he's a basketcase surgeon who knows how to do nothing else. Not some savant chess wizard who can't even tie his shoes. He's run companies and organizations, for example his millions of dollars hugely successful TV show and almost successful senate campaign. The criticism of "oh he said selenium" is not one against his administrative skills to begin with - hopefully anyway because that wouldn't make sense - but his medical qualification, so obviously explaining his history in practicing medicine would not be a defense of his administrative skills or meant to be one. Similarly Ben Carson you would expect to trust more the closer he gets to his field of training. Taking that someone has leadership confidence as a given from the fact they are put in a role, it's a short jump to say they're more effective in their real field than in other random ones, and Oz is really an actual expert. The bolded was an act of rhetorical exaggeration. If I knew it and you knew it, why are you telling me I knew it. It was not represented as fact but a caricature of the prevalence of ignorance in political kibitzing, slick. | ||
|
BlackJack
United States10499 Posts
On November 21 2024 04:37 KwarK wrote: Obama was exceptional and Bush presided over an economic meltdown. The Democrats could have run a scarecrow that year and still won. Then he won again vs the wealthy white man that “looks the part” | ||
|
Biff The Understudy
France7889 Posts
On November 21 2024 04:37 KwarK wrote: Obama was exceptional and Bush presided over an economic meltdown. The Democrats could have run a scarecrow that year and still won. Also Obama was extremely unacceptable for half of Americans. Also, a large portion of conservatives thought he was muslim and the orange baboon started his political career surfing on the lie he was not born in the US. | ||
|
Biff The Understudy
France7889 Posts
On November 21 2024 05:11 Zambrah wrote: Dr Oz was, to my knowledge, a genuinely exceptional heart surgeon, however he discovered the truth about capitalism, which is that it wasn't going to reward him for being a genuinely exceptional heart surgeon who saved lives nearly as much as it would reward him for being a nonsense pill peddler on Oprah or whatever day time TV trash, lol. Integrity ain’t for everybody, but Oz would sell his mum and his sister for money and fame. | ||
|
KwarK
United States42685 Posts
On November 21 2024 05:42 BlackJack wrote: Then he won again vs the wealthy white man that “looks the part” Yes. He is a capable politician and had incumbent advantage. But if I may deal in unprovable hypotheticals I think an equally charismatic incumbent white president would have too. My issue with Kamala’s race and sex is that it plays into Trump’s identity warrior narrative. Trump’s whole thing is that there is a “them” which is seeking to destroy families, religion, Christmas, flypaper for some reason, sports, and apple pie. Fears about the place of white men in America are central to his identity war. No matter how capable Kamala is, by existing she reminds voters of the “them”. Running a white man would help reassure voters that there isn’t a “them”. The “them” also wants to take away their trucks, reduce concussions in football by making it lame, make them eat insects, force them to have amenities in their local area, make them use electricity, reduce shower water usage, force them to go to Walmart, and turn the frogs gay. I’ll add more as I remember them. | ||
|
BlackJack
United States10499 Posts
On November 21 2024 06:22 KwarK wrote: Yes. He is a capable politician and had incumbent advantage. But if I may deal in unprovable hypotheticals I think an equally charismatic incumbent white president would have too. Yes, agreed. An equally charismatic incumbent would have won, regardless of their race. My issue with Kamala’s race and sex is that it plays into Trump’s identity warrior narrative. Trump’s whole thing is that there is a “them” which is seeking to destroy families, religion, Christmas, flypaper for some reason, sports, and apple pie. Fears about the place of white men in America are central to his identity war. No matter how capable Kamala is, by existing she reminds voters of the “them”. Running a white man would help reassure voters that there isn’t a “them”. The “them” also wants to take away their trucks, reduce concussions in football by making it lame, make them eat insects, force them to have amenities in their local area, make them use electricity, reduce shower water usage, force them to go to Walmart, and turn the frogs gay. I’ll add more as I remember them. So your contention is that Trump's "them" narrative just happens to play better with Dems running Kamala even though it has nothing to do with her being the candidate (since most of your sourced grievances were created when the candidate was a white man). I find it odd that you've done nothing but blame the election loss on race and gender but you insist Trump is the one with the identity warrior narrative. There's only one party obsessed with race and sex. It's the one that makes "white fragility" and "How to be an antiracist baby" into bestsellers. The one that constantly blames the election loss on race and gender even though this is the first time a woman or POC didn't get the most votes while at the top of the ticket. The one's constantly trying to prop up DEI or present discrimination to fix past discrimination. The problem with your listing of Trump's grievances is that a lot of them are baked in truth. The iconic American company Coca-Cola had a training session where they tried to teach their staff to "be less white." Being less white means, according to the training session, to be "less ignorant" and "less oppressive." It's not conservatives pushing this nonsense. But if they complain about it somehow they are the ones identity warrior-ing? Are you sure it's not the other way around? Of course it is. That's the entire point. It's the favorite play in the Dem playbook. Do some crazy shit and then call conservatives whatever -ism if they opposite it. If they even pretend to try to meet you in the middle you just take another giant step to the left so you can keep slinging mud. | ||
| ||
