Clinton's concession speech.

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  • #57427
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    The silver lining is that…hopefully…the progressives who are mad as hell and motivated with Bernie’s run (and many kept at it through the election) will take the mantle and keep fighting and can now do so without the DNC cockblocking them.

    Cuz…fuck the corporate sellout DNC. They’ve been slamming progressives…even co-opting the progressive moniker while taking on virtually no actual progressive positions…even engaging in slimy character assassination that would make Karl Rove proud…all so that they could keep those corporate bucks rolling in.

    Margin call, bitches.

    Now is the time to get to do the REAL, Progressive work and hopefully not have to deal with any more DNC, centrist interference.

    In my view, it’s past time for progressives, too. They’re better than centrists, who are in turn better than wingnuts. But we need stronger medicine than progressivism, and that needs to come from the anticapitalist, radical egalitarian left.

    Our only real hope to achieve social justice is to shit-can the current economic system entirely, IMO. It’s also the only way we’re going to be able to save this planet for wildlife and ourselves.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    #57430
    — X —
    Participant

    can i say winter is coming?

    That’s clearly photoshopped.
    The hands on that guy are yuge.

    You have to be odd, to be number one.
    -- Dr Seuss

    #57431
    Avatar photoInvaderRam
    Moderator

    part of me wonders if this is what was needed to get our asses woken up. if clinton had won, it woulda just been “business as usual”. people continuing to deny that there is a problem.

    maybe things just need to get real shitty before people collectively realize what needs to be done?

    of course trump could just totally fubar this country into the middle ages…

    #57432
    Avatar photoInvaderRam
    Moderator

    The silver lining is that…hopefully…the progressives who are mad as hell and motivated with Bernie’s run (and many kept at it through the election) will take the mantle and keep fighting and can now do so without the DNC cockblocking them.

    Cuz…fuck the corporate sellout DNC. They’ve been slamming progressives…even co-opting the progressive moniker while taking on virtually no actual progressive positions…even engaging in slimy character assassination that would make Karl Rove proud…all so that they could keep those corporate bucks rolling in.

    Margin call, bitches.

    Now is the time to get to do the REAL, Progressive work and hopefully not have to deal with any more DNC, centrist interference.

    In my view, it’s past time for progressives, too. They’re better than centrists, who are in turn better than wingnuts. But we need stronger medicine than progressivism, and that needs to come from the anticapitalist, radical egalitarian left.

    Our only real hope to achieve social justice is to shit-can the current economic system entirely, IMO. It’s also the only way we’re going to be able to save this planet for wildlife and ourselves.

    ya know. my guess is humans will eventually just make their way off this planet and infect the entire galaxy.

    i like your thinking, but we’re too primitive a species to be able to do that.

    robots on the other hand…

    #57438
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    One very dangerous aspect of this country, W, was made all the more apparent by Trump:

    Too many Americans want to be led by the nose. Too many Americans are okay with baby fascists like Trump, if that person has the requisite elements for a cult of personality. It’s more than obvious that nothing he said went beyond sloganeering. He never put forth HOW he would do anything. Apparently, his audience just didn’t care. He just kept repeating his slogan-mantras and his bot crowds ate it up.

    At the risk of jumping into this conversation way too early (I haven’t read beyond this point yet, and it is a long thread that I opened several hours ago, and may be even longer now), I have to say that I think this oversimplifies the Trump supporters. This is a broad brush here, Billy, and like all broad brushes, it coats too many people with insufficient color.

    I believe Trump supporters have a legitimate gripe.

    I don’t believe Trump will address their grievances with policies. I believe he just throws word salad at them. But the Trump supporters are not wrong about everything. And I think Trump THINKS he will help them, like all narcissists, he believes whatever he happens to be saying at any given moment, but like many fools, he thinks that what is best for him is best for everybody. So he will do what is best for billionaire real estate developers and tell the cameras that it will make everybody better off, but that is just the way narcissists think. They don’t actually have the ability to see things from other people’s points of view. That what he says aligns with the grievances of rural white men is totally an accident. Not a conviction of principle. But I don’t think he is a master deceiver leading dummies around with slight of hand. I don’t agree with that perception at all.

    #57439
    Avatar photonittany ram
    Moderator

    ya know. my guess is humans will eventually just make their way off this planet and infect the entire galaxy.

    i like your thinking, but we’re too primitive a species to be able to do that.

    robots on the other hand…

    Unfortunately invader, humans will be extinct long before we have that capability. There’s no place to go. There’s no lifeboat. Our only option is saving this planet. We do that or we die.

    #57442
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    InvaderRam wrote:
    can i say winter is coming?

    ===

    That’s clearly photoshopped.

    ===
    Um. Okay. Believe what you want, then. I guess.

    .

    #57445
    Avatar photoInvaderRam
    Moderator

    ya know. my guess is humans will eventually just make their way off this planet and infect the entire galaxy.

    i like your thinking, but we’re too primitive a species to be able to do that.

    robots on the other hand…

    Unfortunately invader, humans will be extinct long before we have that capability. There’s no place to go. There’s no lifeboat. Our only option is saving this planet. We do that or we die.

    unfortunately?

    or maybe just fortunate enough?

    haha!

    robots it is then.

    #57446
    Mackeyser
    Moderator

    With the embrace of Climate denial, it’s clear I’ll need to move far away from Florida…

    Gonna take some time, but this pretty much cinches it. I 8 years of “going dirty” versus going Green, the extent of damage to the Climate will be massive.

    Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.

    #57449
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    All right. Now I am all caught up. What a great thread. I really enjoyed all the perspectives here, except one little comment by bnw who said “PC is dead” which is wishful thinking, and totally wrong. Trump’s victory didn’t make PC go away any more than a Hillary victory would have made Trump supporters go away. FWIW, PC won’t stop, and will inevitably win as the country becomes less white.

    In fact, this is it. This is the grand finale of “White America,” right here, right now. This is Brett Favre in a Vikings uniform. I don’t say that because I think I’m “right” and “my way” will ultimately prevail with reasonable people everywhere. I say it because demographically, Trump supporters are dying in larger numbers than they are reproducing, and whites in this country will no longer be a majority very soon.

    Anyway.

    I love Mackeyser, and I’m With Her (er… Him) on his assessment of Hillary Clinton and the way she and the DNC ran this election. I have not watched her speech, and do not give one shit about how well she delivered whatever somebody else wrote, or anything else about it. Fuck Hillary Clinton.

    I swear to god, the only thing that could have elevated my spirits last night or this morning would have been video of her face as the results came in last night. Seriously, as awful, and agonizing, and depressing as the past 24 hours have been for me, the ONLY thing that gives me the slightest reprieve right now is knowing that she, and her husband, and Deborah Wassherface Schulz and Donna Brazile are completely vaporized and irrelevant for the rest of eternity.

    We are now in for some very serious nastiness in this country while the Reps who ran from Donald now suddenly rush back into the picture denying that they were ever gone, and rush headlong into destroying every social advance made since leeches were high tech medicine.

    I am hearing that the 2018 elections line up favorably for Republicans because of the seats open are mostly Dem, but at least the DNC should be up for grabs, and the progressives have the momentum there. So let’s go.

    I think it’s too late. I think we are dead. And I think Mack should move to Gold Country in California where we will shortly be owners of beach front property, but I don’t intend to stop pushing for what I believe in.

    http://www.yescalifornia.org/

    #57455
    Avatar photowv
    Participant
    #57456
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    One very dangerous aspect of this country, W, was made all the more apparent by Trump:

    Too many Americans want to be led by the nose. Too many Americans are okay with baby fascists like Trump, if that person has the requisite elements for a cult of personality. It’s more than obvious that nothing he said went beyond sloganeering. He never put forth HOW he would do anything. Apparently, his audience just didn’t care. He just kept repeating his slogan-mantras and his bot crowds ate it up.

    At the risk of jumping into this conversation way too early (I haven’t read beyond this point yet, and it is a long thread that I opened several hours ago, and may be even longer now), I have to say that I think this oversimplifies the Trump supporters. This is a broad brush here, Billy, and like all broad brushes, it coats too many people with insufficient color.

    I believe Trump supporters have a legitimate gripe.

    I don’t believe Trump will address their grievances with policies. I believe he just throws word salad at them. But the Trump supporters are not wrong about everything. And I think Trump THINKS he will help them, like all narcissists, he believes whatever he happens to be saying at any given moment, but like many fools, he thinks that what is best for him is best for everybody. So he will do what is best for billionaire real estate developers and tell the cameras that it will make everybody better off, but that is just the way narcissists think. They don’t actually have the ability to see things from other people’s points of view. That what he says aligns with the grievances of rural white men is totally an accident. Not a conviction of principle. But I don’t think he is a master deceiver leading dummies around with slight of hand. I don’t agree with that perception at all.

    Zooey,

    I think you misread me. I said “too many Americans,” not “all Trump supporters.” And while the part in bold may have been a general summation, and not a critique of what I said, no way do I think Trump is a “master deceiver.” I see him as a used-car salesman and snake-oil guy who just happened to be born with a silver spoon. I don’t think he has the intelligence or creativity to “master” anything. Which is one of the reasons why I do put so much onus on those of his supporters who have fallen blindly for what he peddles.

    He’s not that good. In fact, his shtick is so easy to see through, immediately, it shocked me and millions of others that he got the GOP nom, much less won the presidency. The vast majority of his campaign was based on easily debunked lies, third-rate, lunatic-fringe innuendo and paranoid delusions. I honestly didn’t think he could possible fool enough Americans to “win.”

    And, cuz I always feel the necessity to balance that with the usual: “Clinton was a terrible candidate, and the Democratic Party powers that be are terrible too.” But I honestly think that if we could find that mythical beast, the truly objective human, he/she couldn’t help but conclude the GOP and Trump are worse. Significantly worse, in fact.

    #57461
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    Glenn Greenwald on Brexit, Trump and the Democratz
    link:https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/

    “….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….” see link

    w
    v

    #57464
    Avatar photonittany ram
    Moderator

    Hillaryfan4life said:

    I think it’s too late. I think we are dead. And I think Mack should move to Gold Country in California where we will shortly be owners of beach front property, but I don’t intend to stop pushing for what I believe in.

    Yeah, we’re rapidly approaching the falls. The final outcome has pretty much already been decided. The only question left is how soon do we get there. I’ll continue to paddle against the current but it’s important to look up and appreciate the view every now and then. It’s very easy to get consumed by this stuff. It gets me very angry. I know I come off as some arrogant inflexible left-wing asshole to a lot of people (not here. I know I am beloved here 😉 ). I have lost friends over this and I’ll probably lose some more. It hurts but I can’t help myself. It’s that important to me. But in reality we have very little control over these events and those to come so it’s important to maintain some perspective and remember to focus on the good things in our lives.

    #57466
    bnw
    Blocked

    I have lost friends over this and I’ll probably lose some more. It hurts but I can’t help myself. It’s that important to me.

    That is unfortunate. Family and friends are the treasures of a lifetime.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by bnw.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #57468
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Thanks, WV.

    Lots of good stuff in that article.

    Like:

    It goes without saying that Trump is a sociopathic con artist obsessed with personal enrichment: the opposite of a genuine warrior for the downtrodden. That’s too obvious to debate. But, just as Obama did so powerfully in 2008, he could credibly run as an enemy of the D.C. and Wall Street system that has steamrolled over so many people, while Hillary Clinton is its loyal guardian, its consummate beneficiary.

    Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate (for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently. That, as Matt Stoller’s indispensable article in The Atlantic three weeks ago documented, is the conniving choice the Democratic Party made decades ago: to abandon populism and become the party of technocratically proficient, mildly benevolent managers of elite power. Those are the cynical, self-interested seeds they planted, and now the crop has sprouted.

    Of course there are fundamental differences between Obama’s version of “change” and Trump’s. But at a high level of generality — which is where these messages are often ingested — both were perceived as outside forces on a mission to tear down corrupt elite structures, while Clinton was perceived as devoted to their fortification. That is the choice made by Democrats — largely happy with status quo authorities, believing in their basic goodness — and any honest attempt by Democrats to find the prime author of last night’s debacle will begin with a large mirror.

    Going through the rest of it, etc.

    I have no doubt the Dems will draw the wrong lesson from this. They’ll just try to be more like the GOP. That’s been the pattern since the mid-1970s, when they began their slow, then faster, that really fast trek rightward.

    #57469
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    bnw,

    Heard Chris Christie last night admit — and he’s not the only person from Trump’s circle to do this — they didn’t think they were ahead going into the race either. Their own internal polling had them behind. He said their polling did have them a point or two better than the public polls. But still behind.

    It’s a mistake to view the polling as some kind of conspiracy against Trump. Remember, it also includes right-wing polling like Fox News and Rasmussen. They had Clinton winning going in, and at times in this race, up by double digits. It’s also quite possible that a commanding lead, even a steady one, provokes apathy and drives down voter participation. That helps Trump.

    (Overall voting was down from 2012. As of this morning, seven million fewer Dems showed up, apparently. I didn’t catch the most recent totals for Trump, yet, but since he lost the popular vote, and he doesn’t even have as many as Romney’s losing total, it’s likely GOP turnout was down, too.)

    Very few people, across the political spectrum, predicted a Trump victory. This guy was one of them:

    http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/lichtman.cfm

    #57471
    bnw
    Blocked

    bnw,

    Heard Chris Christie last night admit — and he’s not the only person from Trump’s circle to do this — they didn’t think they were ahead going into the race either. Their own internal polling had them behind. He said their polling did have them a point or two better than the public polls. But still behind.

    It’s a mistake to view the polling as some kind of conspiracy against Trump. Remember, it also includes right-wing polling like Fox News and Rasmussen. They had Clinton winning going in, and at times in this race, up by double digits. It’s also quite possible that a commanding lead, even a steady one, provokes apathy and drives down voter participation. That helps Trump.

    (Overall voting was down from 2012. As of this morning, seven million fewer Dems showed up, apparently. I didn’t catch the most recent totals for Trump, yet, but since he lost the popular vote, and he doesn’t even have as many as Romney’s losing total, it’s likely GOP turnout was down, too.)

    Very few people, across the political spectrum, predicted a Trump victory. This guy was one of them:

    http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/lichtman.cfm

    Whenever I looked into the methodology of polls that showed Hildabeast so far ahead I always noticed an absurd oversampling of democrat voters. That and the fact that she couldn’t draw any crowds on her own once she got the nomination while Trump filled every venue everywhere in this nation to overflowing for a year and a half, and as I posted months ago that when I traveled I only saw Trump signs everywhere and many of those signs were home made. When I talked to people or listened to what was said around me it was overwhelmingly pro Trump. It boiled down to people were angry that change promised was never delivered but real change they still want. Change. Systemic change. That would never be Hildabeast. It could only be Trump. Thats why I never believed the polls that said he was behind.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by bnw.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #57474
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    bnw,

    Heard Chris Christie last night admit — and he’s not the only person from Trump’s circle to do this — they didn’t think they were ahead going into the race either. Their own internal polling had them behind. He said their polling did have them a point or two better than the public polls. But still behind.

    It’s a mistake to view the polling as some kind of conspiracy against Trump. Remember, it also includes right-wing polling like Fox News and Rasmussen. They had Clinton winning going in, and at times in this race, up by double digits. It’s also quite possible that a commanding lead, even a steady one, provokes apathy and drives down voter participation. That helps Trump.

    (Overall voting was down from 2012. As of this morning, seven million fewer Dems showed up, apparently. I didn’t catch the most recent totals for Trump, yet, but since he lost the popular vote, and he doesn’t even have as many as Romney’s losing total, it’s likely GOP turnout was down, too.)

    Very few people, across the political spectrum, predicted a Trump victory. This guy was one of them:

    http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/lichtman.cfm

    Whenever I looked into the methodology of polls that showed Hildabeast so far ahead I always noticed an absurd oversampling of democrat voters. That and the fact that she couldn’t draw any crowds on her own once she got the nomination while Trump filled every venue everywhere in this nation to overflowing for a year and a half, and as I posted months ago that when I traveled I only saw Trump signs everywhere and many of those signs were home made. Thats why I never believed the polls that said he was behind.

    If Democratic turnout had reached 2012 levels, that methodology would have been more than solid. And that’s how they typically do it. They go based upon the previous election breakdown, and update for population increases. What ended up happening — at least from what we know now — is that fewer (by 7 million) Dems turned up at the polls than they did for Obama in 2012. That’s why the polling was wrong. Not because of the way they set up the (sampling) differences between the parties.

    And, remember, Clinton won the popular vote. Trump got fewer total votes. And I’m guessing, when all the counting is finished, she’s going to have a nearly 2 point advantage there.

    As for crowds. Historically, those have been poor indicators for elections. Sarah Palin, for instance, would draw huge crowds in some places for John McCain. But Obama beat them decisively. Of course, he did pretty well in that realm too. But I don’t think we can make accurate assessments about a country this diverse, this large, if we go by partisans turning out for speeches.

    That’s my take, anyway.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    #57481
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    Al Jazeera
    link:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/11/refuse-accept-election-results-161110093108400.html

    The underbelly of the US is exposed for the whole world to see. Let the calamity of Trump do for the US at large what 9/11 failed to do, writes Dabashi [EPA]
    By
    Hamid Dabashi

    @HamidDabashi

    Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

    William Faulkner, in his Banquet Speech at the City Hall in Stockholm, on December 10, 1950, on receiving the Nobel Prize in literature said: “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?”

    What in the world did he mean? “Blown up” by what? How?

    If you lived through the endless night linking the fears of Tuesday evening of November 8 to the terror of the following Wednesday morning wondering how to explain Donald Trump’s victory to your children, you have a glimpse of what frightened Faulkner so many years ago so far from his homeland. But can we still ask serious, even frightening, questions, as Faulkner did, any more?

    “Does America deserve to survive,” Faulkner asked in 1955 at the news of a vicious murder and mutilation of a young black boy.

    Just before this nightmare descended upon us I read that a European philosopher had said that if he were an American he would have voted for Trump. “It will be a kind of big awakening,” he had said, “new political processes will be set in motion.”

    Perhaps, I thought to myself, but this man for sure does not live in the United States. He does not have a child who goes to public school in New York. He has not struggled to calm the raw nerves of an eight-year-old boy who is scared all his Mexican friends will be rounded up and deported from the US.
    The angry liberals
    What will a Trump presidency mean for the US?

    So where would we stand between the gaudy and juvenile Stalinism of what today passes as “the European left” and the delusional liberalism now publicly stunned by Trump’s victory in the US?

    Liberal America is right now flabbergasted, incredulous, violent, recriminatory. It now openly fears that it might be ruled as Chile was ruled by Augusto Pinochet, Iran by the Shah and the Ayatollahs, Egypt by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Russia by Vladimir Putin, Turkey by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Palestine by Benjamin Netanyahu. How dare history to even think to do to liberal America what liberal America has done to the world?

    Recrimination, finger-wagging, and continuing to be deaf and blind to reason and logic have resumed apace among these angry liberals.

    Diehard Clinton supporters are accusing those who as a matter of principle opposed her record of corruption and warmongering of having paved the way for Trump.

    Many Bernie Sanders supporters, myself included, made a strategic choice not to vote for Clinton if we live in safe states like New York, where I live, and where she won, and vote for her in swing states such as Florida or Ohio, which they did and yet she still lost.

    We the first targets of Trump’s xenophobic thuggery and dangerous delusions, we the Muslims, the Mexicans, the African-Americans, women, we are here at the forefront of defying Trump’s ignominy.

    Liberal America refuses to recognise its dangerously delusional blinkers. The anger and violence they wanted safely deposited in Clinton’s White House to unleash on other countries is now launched on Sanders’ and Stein’s supporters who they falsely and conveniently blame for having denied them that treacherous peace of mind.

    Their beloved Barack Obama gifted the Zionist settler colony $38bn in military expenditure over the next 10 years in a lovely liberal gesture to maim and murder more Palestinians, as would have Clinton in even more generous terms, were she to be elected.

    OPINION: Why I will not vote in this US presidential election

    That they don’t mind. But having Trump preside over their national destiny, that they will not tolerate.

    The vulgarity of such accusations, however, is a diversionary tactic, consciously or unconsciously launched to pre-empt a far deeper soul-searching now necessary to hold and heal the soul of this nation.

    Sanders and his supporters had been continuously warning against this outcome for months, when Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile, and the entire leadership of the Democratic Party came together to dismantle and sabotage his campaign, and send a deeply flawed candidate to face the monstrosity of Trump.
    Bringing the US in the fold of humanity

    But such recriminations, left or right, are at this point a waste of time and a distraction. Soul-searching yes, witch-hunt no.

    There should be rethinking of the politics of race and gender, but not at the expense of suspending critical judgment on the global warmongering which Obama inherited from George W Bush and institutionalised chapter and verse, and which Clinton would have widely exacerbated.

    There is no mystery to this result of choosing Trump over Clinton: This is almost the same population that over the past eight years twice elected an African-American to the White House.
    US election: How Muslim Americans are dealing with Trump’s victory

    What happened this year? In its jeremiad mourning for its favourite candidate even The New York Times had to admit what happened: “Democratic Party … attempted a Clinton restoration at a moment when the nation was impatient to escape the status quo.”

    Sanders was the ready and riding answer to that historic call. But what did the Democratic establishment, The New York Times and Washington Post included, do to Sanders?

    Trump is rightly seen as “a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right”. But to fight this banality, we need to go far beyond useless recriminations and reach much deeper into the troubled heart of America itself: a racist, misogynist, ignorant, paranoid, xenophobic, white supremacist America. No liberal sugar-coating of these facts will wish them away.

    OPINION: Donald Trump – The Islamophobia president

    Faulkner thought “the basest of all things is to be afraid”. Then he daringly, defiantly and triumphantly declared: “I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.”

    But how is that prevailing to occur? First and foremost, by collapsing the false binary between the safe inside and the troubled outside. The US militarism has just gone through two successive phases of two terms of Bush’s neoconservative and Obama’s neoliberal imperialism. It has left the earth in shattered chards.

    The US will now need its most recent immigrants more than ever to help it learn how to survive this Trumpian calamity. We have been there: at the receiving end of the US-made Donald Trumps of the world.

    We the tyrannised, we the abused, the dispossessed, the forsaken, we in need of US “humanitarian interventions”, we the refugees of wars US liberal imperialism has caused around the world, we the Palestinians, the Libyans, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Latin Americans, the Africans, we are all here: Trump’s worse nightmare and battle-tested in fighting the bullies of the world.

    We the first targets of Trump’s xenophobic thuggery and dangerous delusions, we the Muslims, the Mexicans, the African-Americans, women, we are here at the forefront of defying Trump’s ignominy.

    Along with millions of other Americans, we the most recent immigrants are now safely home at the dangerous delusions of an angry mob of white supremacist zombies shielding its wild fantasies behind democratic politics.

    The comfort zone of liberal fantasies of peace at home and warmongering abroad is now completely erased.

    The underbelly of the US is exposed for the whole world to see. Let the calamity of Trump do for the US at large what 9/11 failed to do: to bring Americans back to the fold of humanity – with fear and trembling like everyone else, with insecurity fighting the indignity of an ignorant tyrant, seeking to secure a modicum of self-respect in the bewildered belly of this warring beast.

    Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policies.

    #57482
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/the-left-needs-a-new-populism-fast

    “…Some American men feel emasculated by two factors: the demise of skilled secure jobs that gave them a sense of pride and status, and the rise of women’s and LGBT movements, which some men feel undermine their rightful dominance.

    But there is a factor that cannot be ignored. Centrism, the ideology of self-styled moderates, is in a state of collapse. In the 1990s, the third way project championed by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair could claim political dominance in much of the US and Europe. It has shrivelled in the face of challenges from the resurgent populist right and new movements of the left…”

    #57483
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    WV,

    The author is spot on throughout most of that article. He refuses to romanticize Trump voters or Trump’s supposed appeal, and instead brings down the hammer on both parties and both entrenched powers — which, of course, really make up one big shill for the Deep State.

    IMO, we need much more of that. I think it’s going to be just as bad to “normalize” what has happened, and to white-wash the white-lash as it is to excuse the Dems. It’s going to be just as destructive to concentrate solely on the Dems’ decades of betrayals, while forgetting the GOP and the emergence of the alt-right.

    To me, it’s not an either/or thing. We don’t have to choose one or the other, and if we do talk about racism, xenophobia, misogyny and bigotry overall, in no way do we have to also let the Clinton wing, the corporate, neoliberal wing of the Dems off the hook. In no way do we have to ignore its warmongering, mass surveillance, expansion of empire, etc. etc.

    We can do both/and, IMO. And inserting “class” is beyond essential. We’re decades behind in that discourse.

    #57492
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    =====================
    The Big Split

    by John Steppling

    link:http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/10/the-big-split/

    …Trump was the only guy (along with Ted Cruz) more repulsive to the public than Hillary Clinton. Which keeps reminding me of Mel Brooks’ The Producers.

    Max Bialystock: How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?!!

    Trump was the perfect wrong play, wrong director, wrong cast. And he won. Springtime for Hitler is a hit. But something happened during the last month of this election…

    …Trump is not the answer, of course. He is the symptom. He is the symptom of the virus of neo liberal Capitalism…

    …the Dems were arrogant, too. And inept. They ran a terrible campaign with one of the worst candidates ever to run for president. So, no, it wasn’t sexism or racism, it was anger at the status quo. An inarticulate anger, but still anger. The big mistake of liberals was to think Trump was bringing fascism, without realizing fascism was already here.
    ————–

    #57532
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    #57537
    — X —
    Participant

    He does not have a child who goes to public school in New York. He has not struggled to calm the raw nerves of an eight-year-old boy who is scared all his Mexican friends will be rounded up and deported from the US.

    If you lived through the endless night linking the fears of Tuesday evening of November 8 to the terror of the following Wednesday morning wondering how to explain Donald Trump’s victory to your children

    This stuff makes my eyes roll back in my head. Leave your fucking children alone, idiots. Seriously – just stop being drama queens. “Children” have no business being involved in your irrational fears. What elementary school kid is sitting around determining that a new immigration policy is going to spell the deportation of his friends? They don’t pick up on that stuff by themselves. They’re exposed to it deliberately because of your irresponsibility and your ignorance. “Don’t worry, Timmy, daddy will protect you from the big orange man who wants all your friends to die in Mexico.” Asshats. And Sorkin’s letter to his daughters? It would have been literally the funniest thing I have ever read in my life if it wasn’t so offensive that he had to drag his daughters into his personal hell. The fuck is wrong with people anymore?

    You have to be odd, to be number one.
    -- Dr Seuss

    #57540
    bnw
    Blocked

    He does not have a child who goes to public school in New York. He has not struggled to calm the raw nerves of an eight-year-old boy who is scared all his Mexican friends will be rounded up and deported from the US.

    If you lived through the endless night linking the fears of Tuesday evening of November 8 to the terror of the following Wednesday morning wondering how to explain Donald Trump’s victory to your children

    This stuff makes my eyes roll back in my head. Leave your fucking children alone, idiots. Seriously – just stop being drama queens. “Children” have no business being involved in your irrational fears. What elementary school kid is sitting around determining that a new immigration policy is going to spell the deportation of his friends? They don’t pick up on that stuff by themselves. They’re exposed to it deliberately because of your irresponsibility and your ignorance. “Don’t worry, Timmy, daddy will protect you from the big orange man who wants all your friends to die in Mexico.” Asshats. And Sorkin’s letter to his daughters? It would have been literally the funniest thing I have ever read in my life if it wasn’t so offensive that he had to drag his daughters into his personal hell. The fuck is wrong with people anymore?

    Excellent post. They are guilty of child abuse.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #57542
    — X —
    Participant

    [rage video]

    Hah. I liked a lot of that.
    I do think a lot of people are gonna be surprised by Trump’s effectiveness, though. If they can just get past his rhetoric and the angst over already spilled milk long enough to give him a chance, that is.

    You have to be odd, to be number one.
    -- Dr Seuss

    #57543
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    InvaderRam wrote:
    can i say winter is coming?

    ===

    That’s clearly photoshopped.

    ===
    Um. Okay. Believe what you want, then. I guess.

    .

    ————–
    Ok, if Trump is that Game of Thrones winter night king guy,
    who is Hillary?

    w
    v

    #57544
    Avatar photonittany ram
    Moderator

    But hey. At least now, hopefully, that corporatist Clintonista bullshit is dead and we can go back to work on the progressive agenda. Hopefully.

    ff

    ss

    #57545
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    WV,

    Some good stuff in there, but most of it is hooey, IMO. It actually just aids and abets the perception on the right that they’re the innocent, persecuted victims, and everyone is being a meanie to them.

    “Don’t insult others and call them evil! That never leads to victory!”

    Um, well, it worked for Trump. He won the primaries with endless insults and the demonization of his opponents and, for the first time in many decades, the GOP candidate decided to campaign for president the way he campaigned in the primaries. He actually escalated the insults and the demonizations, and whipped his crowds into a frenzy doing just that.

    And anyone who has spent any time arguing with right-wingers in America has experienced a ton of insults and demonizations coming from them. Let’s not kid ourselves and make this seem like “the left” is the only one doing this, or that people on the left even come close to the vitriol spewed by the right. We don’t.

    Of course, he further steps on his own rant by rightfully saying Clinton isn’t on the left. She clearly isn’t. So why, then, should we lefties blame ourselves for this? At least when it comes to his critique about insults and calling others evil? There are other things to look at that the left did wrong. Bu not that. I think the major failure of the left is that it stopped talking in terms of class — which goes back decades now — and to give up on that whole vision thing. It’s supposedly too “utopian” or something.

    What the fuck do people think Trump tried to do with his sloganeering? “Make America great again!” isn’t utopian balderdash, at the very least? I think it’s actually quite sinister in meaning. But it’s at least utopian.

    Anyway . . . again, some good stuff here and there, but it was mostly needless self-flagellation. Sorry, but I don’t belong to Opus Dei.

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