POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

[BassAle]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

Gonna defend joe again. I hate the GOP with the fire of a thousand suns but any Republican voter who has come around to a belated recognition of how awful Dump is should be welcomed, not abused. We can only influence the future, and every person who joins the good guys, or at any rate who opposes the bad guys, is doing the Lord's work.

Think how difficult it would be to switch party vote from X to Y, or at least to refrain from X, especially in these times, and especially after a lifelong skein of votes for X. Would any of us be aware and disciplined enough if the rot had set in on our side?

It's easy for me to oppose Dump -- history and my partisanship align. The real heroes of this age are those who will defy their partisanship, maybe just for one cycle, and not facilitate evil. We are not being tested so we should be careful on our high horse; they are.

the day the Democrats nominated someone like Trump would be the day I'm no longer a Democrat. How many of the "never Trumps" in congress are now sucking his dick every chance they get?

 

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

the day the Democrats nominated someone like Trump would be the day I'm no longer a Democrat.

I believe I would as well, however we aren't being tested so it's not a fair comparison. Presumably conservatives would all say that if a genuine threat came from their party they would oppose it. We are equal on hypotheticals -- the real test is realizing that the threat has happened and the call is coming from inside the house. We should treat every conservative who does the right thing and turns to fight Dump as a godd-mn miracle, particularly since we have no idea what percentage of us would actually do the same.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

The most important thing right now is to find a way to get the truth into the mainstream. Get real journalism into the mainstream. The White House and the 33-38 percent (I keep hearing different numbers on the telly) need to be surgically removed from the day to day conversation. They're all a complete waste of time.

 

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

The most important thing right now is to find a way to get the truth into the mainstream. Get real journalism into the mainstream. The White House and the 33-38 percent (I keep hearing different numbers on the telly) need to be surgically removed from the day to day conversation. They're all a complete waste of time.

They are like the people back in the day who only got their news from local newspapers and radio that were controlled by far right syndicates. While they didn't show up in the national dialog they were probably about the same third of the country: rural, low information, reactionary. Talk Radio and Fox did not create these people, they just found them and gave them a national platform. But they aren't growing -- the same cultural walls that make it impossible to deprogram them also leave them hermetically sealed in their programming with no way to spread the disease. You can see the right has now abandoned all those abstract economic messages they used to think were winning the day and has reverted to unabashedly reactionary and xenophobic cultural messaging about a "strong white, Christian nation." That's the evergreen glue of the right. "Small government" and "fiscal conservative" are just tools they use to oppose liberals and moderates when they are in power -- they are tactical rhetoric.

 

[burd]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

They are like the people back in the day who only got their news from local newspapers and radio that were controlled by far right syndicates. While they didn't show up in the national dialog they were probably about the same third of the country: rural, low information, reactionary. Talk Radio and Fox did not create these people, they just found them and gave them a national platform. But they aren't growing -- the same cultural walls that make it impossible to deprogram them also leave them hermetically sealed in their programming with no way to spread the disease. You can see the right has now abandoned all those abstract economic messages they used to think were winning the day and has reverted to unabashedly reactionary and xenophobic cultural messaging about a "strong white, Christian nation." That's the evergreen glue of the right. "Small government" and "fiscal conservative" are just tools they use to oppose liberals and moderates when they are in power -- they are tactical rhetoric.

Good post.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

you must be proud of your man in the Whitehouse!

(you can claim you don't support the orange taint, but as long as you still call yourself a Republican you are okay belonging to a party that would elevate this man to our highest office and forever taint the office of the president)

Gonna defend joe again. I hate the GOP with the fire of a thousand suns but any Republican voter who has come around to a belated recognition of how awful Dump is should be welcomed, not abused. We can only influence the future, and every person who joins the good guys, or at any rate who opposes the bad guys, is doing the Lord's work.

Think how difficult it would be to switch party vote from X to Y, or at least to refrain from X, especially in these times, and especially after a lifelong skein of votes for X. Would any of us be aware and disciplined enough if the rot had set in on our side?

It's easy for me to oppose Dump -- history and my partisanship align. The real heroes of this age are those who will defy their partisanship, maybe just for one cycle, and not facilitate evil. We are not being tested so we should be careful on our high horse; they are.

Note to self: In order to be part of "the in-crowd", you must have preconceived and unalloyed hatreds.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

the day the Democrats nominated someone like Trump would be the day I'm no longer a Democrat. How many of the "never Trumps" in congress are now sucking his dick every chance they get?

You know what's funny? He's pushing policies that are fairly closely aligned to the things Democrats have been asking for in recent history. Sounds like the only reason you don't like him is because of the R next to the name.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

The most important thing right now is to find a way to get the truth into the mainstream. Get real journalism into the mainstream. The White House and the 33-38 percent (I keep hearing different numbers on the telly) need to be surgically removed from the day to day conversation. They're all a complete waste of time.

Then get rid of the illusion of choice. There's a quintopoly in media today (Comcast, Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, Viacom), and they're told what to push via committee. Support your local and independent journalists, because they're the ones that are finding truth and not just regurgitating what the committee says. Doesn't matter if they're left, right, non-partisan, whatever it may be; that's how true capitalism can defeat the cronyism in the US today.

 

[BassAle]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

You know what's funny? He's pushing policies that are fairly closely aligned to the things Democrats have been asking for in recent history. Sounds like the only reason you don't like him is because of the R next to the name.

bull****.

what Democrats have been asking to pull out of the Paris Accord, break up and shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, weaken the EPA, get in a Twitter dick-measuring-contest with North Korea, etc?

 

[SJHovey]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

Gonna defend joe again. I hate the GOP with the fire of a thousand suns but any Republican voter who has come around to a belated recognition of how awful Dump is should be welcomed, not abused. We can only influence the future, and every person who joins the good guys, or at any rate who opposes the bad guys, is doing the Lord's work.

Think how difficult it would be to switch party vote from X to Y, or at least to refrain from X, especially in these times, and especially after a lifelong skein of votes for X. Would any of us be aware and disciplined enough if the rot had set in on our side?

It's easy for me to oppose Dump -- history and my partisanship align. The real heroes of this age are those who will defy their partisanship, maybe just for one cycle, and not facilitate evil. We are not being tested so we should be careful on our high horse; they are.

I think that's a good first step for the left, but it's not nearly enough. Until you recognize that you are as much the cause of Donald Trump, POTUS, as poor, rural, white America, you're not going to make any headway.

For the people who voted for Trump, this is what Donald Trump is. I think many of the people who voted for him know he's mean. They know he's a bit crazy. And they don't for one minute identify with him. But they voted for him because of emotion.

Poor and middle class White America knows they're poor. They know they don't have an Ivy League education. They know large segments of the country think of them as backward, as hicks, as racists, as religious nuts, etc... They are people who have been used by wealthy plantation owners in the south, industrialists in the northeast, by grain merchants in the midwest, for generations. And 99% of them are just very good people. Individuals who consider themselves religious not because they think they are perfect or live by a perfect moral code, but because they think that by being religious it shows they are at least trying to live a moral life.

Donald Trump came in and told them it was ok to be them. It's ok to be white. It's ok to be religious. It's ok to be a man. It's ok to believe marriage should be between a man and a woman. It's ok to fight against the government or others telling you how to live your life. That message struck a pretty deep chord and it carried him into the White House.

That's the conundrum for the Democratic Party. I'm not sure how you're going to be able to deliver that same message with any sincerity. Because you have a lot of voices on the left right now saying it's not ok. If you can't get that message out, you're not going to bring over the poor, middle-class white vote. While they may no longer be the majority, they are still going to be the largest plurality, and that's going to be a problem for you.

 

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

I think that's a good first step for the left, but it's not nearly enough. Until you recognize that you are as much the cause of Donald Trump, POTUS, as poor, rural, white America, you're not going to make any headway.

For the people who voted for Trump, this is what Donald Trump is. I think many of the people who voted for him know he's mean. They know he's a bit crazy. And they don't for one minute identify with him. But they voted for him because of emotion.

Poor and middle class White America knows they're poor. They know they don't have an Ivy League education. They know large segments of the country think of them as backward, as hicks, as racists, as religious nuts, etc... They are people who have been used by wealthy plantation owners in the south, industrialists in the northeast, by grain merchants in the midwest, for generations. And 99% of them are just very good people. Individuals who consider themselves religious not because they think they are perfect or live by a perfect moral code, but because they think that by being religious it shows they are at least trying to live a moral life.

Donald Trump came in and told them it was ok to be them. It's ok to be white. It's ok to be religious. It's ok to be a man. It's ok to believe marriage should be between a man and a woman. It's ok to fight against the government or others telling you how to live your life. That message struck a pretty deep chord and it carried him into the White House.

That's the conundrum for the Democratic Party. I'm not sure how you're going to be able to deliver that same message with any sincerity. Because you have a lot of voices on the left right now saying it's not ok. If you can't get that message out, you're not going to bring over the poor, middle-class white vote. While they may no longer be the majority, they are still going to be the largest plurality, and that's going to be a problem for you.

There's a lot here that is worth responding to.

In part I agree. There is a cultural divide in America and both sides of that divide have an overblown snobbish dislike of the other. The intellectual left used to shut up about their disgust with the barbarian right in the same way that the intellectual right still carefully hides their comic laughter at the barbarian right. With the coming of the internet, and with the collapse of the worship of the industrial working class by the far left, people began to truly speak their mind, and the barbarian right was not ready for the fact that they were a bipartisan national joke. Of course, the barbarian right has never hidden their disgust with the intellectual left, so they had previously benefited from a double standard where they demanded a politically correct gentleness while never displaying it themselves. But the shock was real and it has been exacerbated by the intellectual left's abandonment of that former restraint. We really should study the intellectual right and relearn how to lie. (To some extent we already have a model in which the vanguard of the intellectual left vigorously polices lies about the barbarian left that we are all mandated to maintain by the academic conveyor belt.)

In part, rural white Americans have been manipulated by exploitative elements both macro (the 1%, the RNC, the NRA, the oil industry) and micro (individual hucksters like Rush, Hannity, and Robertson) to override rational interests (opportunity, workers' rights, consumer protection) with emotional themes (culture, religion) that make them feel proud even as the material conditions of their lives are destroyed by those exploiters.

In part, rural white Americans only have themselves to blame. They aren't victims, they have agency and they have opposable thumbs and they could have figured out that the Big Business and Big Religion masters of their plantation do not have their interests at heart. The one thing peasants used to be good at was revolting. And in fact a large part of the self-congratulatory peasant culture is about their supposed bravery and rebelliousness. But in the US the barbarian right has never revolted against their real masters. They have stayed in their cage, gone out of their way to curry favor with their wardens, and snarled like an obediant pit bull whenever anybody has had the bad manners to point this out. Good doggie.

If rural white barbarians really, truly were brave and really, truly wanted to be free, they would burn this whole motherf-cker down to the ground and take out the entire 1%, left and especially right. But they're licked.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

I think that's a good first step for the left, but it's not nearly enough. Until you recognize that you are as much the cause of Donald Trump, POTUS, as poor, rural, white America, you're not going to make any headway.

No. And I'd use a much stronger word here but I'll refrain.

 

[jerphisch]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

Donald Trump came in and told them it was ok to be them. It's ok to be white. It's ok to be religious. It's ok to be a man. It's ok to believe marriage should be between a man and a woman. It's ok to fight against the government or others telling you how to live your life. That message struck a pretty deep chord and it carried him into the White House.

This is absophuckinglutely ridiculous hor5esh|t

 

[joecct]

This is absophuckinglutely ridiculous hor5esh|t

It's also sold tickets in "Flyover America". It played to less than packed houses among the sophisticates.

 

[aparch]

Then get rid of the illusion of choice. There's a quintopoly in media today (Comcast, Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, Viacom), ...

Then how about *YOU* push for your senators to start busting them up like Standard Oil and AT&T was?

AT&T has an even larger stranglehold than it did when it first got broken up.

Oh, right, R's protect the corporations, masquerading as "consumer choice." Hard to choose when the selection is limited.

 

[aparch]

Donald Trump came in and told them it was ok to be them. It's ok to be white. It's ok to be religious. It's ok to be a man. It's ok to believe marriage should be between a man and a woman. It's ok to fight against the government or others telling you how to live your life. That message struck a pretty deep chord and it carried him into the White House.

He was a snake oil salesman. The downtrodden bluecollar rednecks continually beaten down "by those suits in gold plated palaces on Wall Street" put all their faith in a suit living in a gold plated palace on Wall Street, thinking that he's just one of them.

They're rubes.

No offence to the one known here as Rube who isn't as easily sold by this bullsh** as these schmucks.

 

[Kepler]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

It's also sold tickets in "Flyover America". It played to less than packed houses among the sophisticates.

It's ironic that white rurals make fun of urban blacks for insisting "everything leads back to racism," then in the next breath blat their own delusional victim complex.

Country Mouse always seethes with resentment at City Mouse. City Mouse never gives Country Mouse a thought unless he comes directly into view raving like a psychotic and waving some farm implement like a shotgun or a bible. It's an asymmetric rivalry, like Colgate vs Cornell (or Cornell vs Harvard).

If white rurals and urban blacks ever unite they can wipe the rest of us out in an afternoon and not miss the 5 o'clock start of their drinking day. That would not be good for civilization (or college hockey), but it would be just, I'll give them that.

 

[bronconick]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

Bannon calls 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians "treasonous" in new book

Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

I was wondering when they were going to start clawing each other's eyes out.

 

[jerphisch]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

It's also sold tickets in "Flyover America".

Then they are just as dumb and racist as they think we think they are.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: POTUS 45:26 - One million tweets DC!

In part, rural white Americans only have themselves to blame. They aren't victims, they have agency and they have opposable thumbs and they could have figured out that the Big Business and Big Religion masters of their plantation do not have their interests at heart. The one thing peasants used to be good at was revolting. And in fact a large part of the self-congratulatory peasant culture is about their supposed bravery and rebelliousness. But in the US the barbarian right has never revolted against their real masters. They have stayed in their cage, gone out of their way to curry favor with their wardens, and snarled like an obediant pit bull whenever anybody has had the bad manners to point this out. Good doggie.

If rural white barbarians really, truly were brave and really, truly wanted to be free, they would burn this whole motherf-cker down to the ground and take out the entire 1%, left and especially right. But they're licked.

This is exactly where the left fails to understand. They've never understood why the poor and middle-class, rural, white voters are willing to do the bidding of the 1%. Oh, you go to Kansas and write books about it, but until you've actually lived it I don't think it gets understood.

They don't want the 1% destroyed or burned to the ground, even though they know that they're pretty much living under the thumb of them. There is a mutual support system. It's really no different than a feudal system. The sharecropper works under the thumb of the plantation owner and lives on whatever scraps are thrown to him. But the plantation owner provides protection. The plantation owner can't be destroyed, because when he is destroyed then so are we. To the right we see the plantation owner. To the left we see slaves. We sure don't want to be slaves. But we can aspire to be plantation owners.

You and I know that other than a few limited exceptions, the sharecropper never becomes the plantation owner. But that doesn't stop them from hoping to be.

North Dakotans didn't want the Minneapolis grain mills burned to the ground. They just wanted a little bit fairer deal. We needed the grain mills, and they needed us.