Be Excellent To Each Other

Conceded, but there are plenty of Republicans who'll stand up and be counted if the really batshit stuff ever remotely comes to pass, and there are the internal machinations of the real powerbrokers in American politics; the corporations, the civil service, FBI and whomever. We'll see.

Obama's legacy looks wretched, though. Great orator for sure, shame about all the other stuff huh.

It's not only politics. America has as good as elected a man who thinks it's ok to "grab [women] by the pussy".

I wanted better than that. Better for me, better for my daughter.

It's definitely not "only" politics.

Have you seen his probably cabinet? Newt Gringrich as SoS. I'm laugh-crying

Clearly I'm trying to put as best as possible a gloss on it for the sake of your feelings here, Jem, though it's turd-polishing to be sure!
I've two daughters and a granddaughter; I'm as egalitarian and a fervent believer in fairness and equality for all as you're ever going to meet, and I care very greatly about the prospects and treatment of women. As I've said, I'm aghast and appalled at the election of Trump to the Presidency, and I'm completely dumbfounded as to how any woman could've voted for the guy - but vote they did, in their millions upon millions.

They can't all be stupid and/or blind, so the only conclusion I can draw is that there must've been other counterweight factor(s) that outbalanced even this primary concern, albeit my powers of empathy desert me in this case; I can't possibly imagine what these are, nor that they are factual/real.

Because sexual assault is so "normal" that it doesn't even factor into the decision whether or not to vote for a man who is complicit?



I honestly don't know.

Yeah, they're funked.

And so are we. Who is going to be the country first asked to join them in bombing Iran, North Korea, whomever?

America has shown that if you're a woman then even if you try your hardest and you're the better candidate you can never be president. But your abuser can be.

Indeed.

I overheard a couple of white well dressed middle aged women on Monday talking about who they were going to vote for, and it basically came down to "Trump says some horrible stuff, but Hillary has done some horrible stuff".

Just like with Brexit, I don't think there was any attempt to look at the claims made by the winning side to see if they were even vaguely plausible. Facts didn't come into it.

We can't afford an air force, so that's our get out of jail card.

Yup, it's got a name, too: Post-truth Politics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics



My word, doesn't that resonate with recent years? "Bullshit baffles brains" springs to mind.
I've posted about this numerous times before (e.g. Scottish indy misinformation, Brexit etc.). For many these days, they believe what they want to believe despite all the objective, empirical evidence to the contrary, presumably finding it impossible to cast off long-held, but now irretrievably and demonstrably discredited political beliefs. *No* amount of hard evidence will ever dissuade them; debate (or even engagement) is utterly, utterly futile therefore. Simply abusing their reasonable detractors is widely looked upon as an actual rebuttal it seems?

It's a dangerous, depressing state of affairs.

I blame the internet. Because it seems that when ordinary folk get hold of it then it becomes far better at spreading absolute total bollocks via Facebook memes etc. than actual knowledge.

Welcome back, Cavey!

That's a dangerous path to tread.

I think the question in my mind for this is how repeatable is it ?

"We" know that most of the stuff spouted was complete rubbish , lots of people seemingly didn't and voted on that - if its shown to be wrong will they vote again that way or will they have learned ?

Why? I'm not suggesting censorship. My only solution and it isn't a quick one, is better education for everyone. Also the only solution that can really secure the future in the long term.

A female friend of mine voted for Trump, but her reasoning seemed to be less about liking him, but her absolutely hating Hillary. For weeks she's been posting several links/comments on FB, not aimed at bigging up Trump (she barely mentioned him), but purely to spread reasons not to vote for Hillary. I wondered what Trump would have had to have done to change that.

I'm curious to see what Trump will be like now that he's won - and how he's going to be towards those people and countries that spoke so openly against him.

I really, really feel like I'm missing something important with the extreme levels of hate for Hilary. Just don't understand it.

In a strange way, me too. Having power is very different to wanting it. Will he change? Will the office change him? Importantly, will he stop the hard right from changing things too much? Or will he just meddle, make a mess of things, and disappear after four years back to his Scottish golf course?

I have a strong feeling Mr Putin will test him early on; how he responds to that might provide a better grasp of the man.

Hopefully he'll at least surround himself with knowledgeable advisors. He could employ someone whose sole job would be to say -
"You shouldn't say that"
"You can't say that"
"You really can't say that"
"If you're going to say that, can we at least say it from the bunker"

The last time GOP controlled both houses and the presidency was 1928 apparently. The Great Depression was 1929

Also, blame white people.

Don't forget there will be a Republican appointment to the Supreme Court as well, making it a 3:2 conservative majority

And that is the problem. She was not a well-liked candidate. If it had been Trump v any other moderate, centrist Democrat he'd have been likely been destroyed.

I think we'll all look back on this in 10 years time and laugh about what an interesting time we had in 2016 and how our subsequent lives have been boring in comparison.

I hope you're right and it won't be: "remember in 2016 when we thought we had it bad? LULZ"

Should they stay poor and educated to a much lesser degree and suffer the consequences of such a state in silence?

"In 2018,As the first bombs fell, Myp and I cracked open the last rad- rat we had found on the body of a starved orphan, shared it and sighed. "2016, eh?". "Shut the fuck up, Myp".

What are you talking about? White people (men and women) voted for Trump in the majority, regardless of age and education.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Russia now. And from what I've heard of Trumps victory speech, it seems very... Unlike his usual - I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up not doing over half of what he promised....if you can consider some of the contradictory things he said promises.
They must've been close to being the two most hated contestants for the presidential election in American history. Of all the Americans I know, I've yet to find one who actually liked either candidate - they just hated one slightly less.
Hey, does a Trump win mean TTIP is cancelled?

In 1860, a split in the Democratic party let the third party outsider in. He was so unpopular, half the country flounced.

It's not just the poor and uneducated though, just as it wasn't with brexit. There aren't enough to deliver a victory just from that demographic.

From here:

viewtopic.php?style=26&p=929108#p929108

And the couple of articles I like linked to. White people without a college degree voted massive for Trump, compared to Clinton. The articles say that by and large wages have shrunk and jobs gave gone. They felt forgotten by the system who only seemed to cater for those with further education. Voting Clinton would propagate this inequality, so they voted Trump as it seems to them to be the best option for a better life. I am not saying it is right, but can understand the motivations. Both the Washington Post and Gruaniad articles are very interesting.

Ummm. Poor people voted Clinton according to that graph. And the majority of white people with a college degree voted Trump. It is clearly a race divide and not a class one.

I tell you what thugh, the next series of Apprentice USA is going to be really good, you get be Secretary of Defense as a prize.

Will Lord Sugar try to copy him? There's no constitutional rule against having a Prime Minister in the Lords, after all.

Older, white people appear to be the typical republican voter. Obama'd victory in 2012 was largely in part a result of high minority turn outs. 59℅ the republican vote was white compared to 63%. There seems to be a large swing in % terms of people voting republican without a college education.

*edit* CBA

It was a campaign based on fear, and being anti- things. It was take the largest single block of voters there is, and tell them everything that is different to them is a threat to them. Muslim terrorists. Hispanic immigrants. Liberals. Godless atheists. Schrodingers job thieves/benefits scroungers. Once you've done all that, and made your opponent stand up for all those groups, you've got that vote locked in. It was exactly, to the playbook, the exact same thing as Brexit. Persuade the electorate to be afraid of things, then they'll believe you can help, even in the absence of any concrete policy or plans.

On the other hand, to completely and entirely dismiss the fears of Trump voters as *entirely* illusionary and non-existent is arrogant, and precisely the catastrophic mistake that the Democrats made (see also: Remain camp, Labour etc. before them). Whether we like it or not, the fact is this: many blue collar men in America (rightly btw) feel they've been left behind in an ever-increasingly globalised world, where their manual jobs are done far more cheaply and efficiently by Chinese or Korean workers on £1/hour or whatever, with no unions and precious little environmental protections or whatever, either. Thatcher saw this coming 40 years ago of course; we still have those in the UK blaming and bemoaning her for exactly the same (inevitable, unavoidable) syndrome: the loss of "great" mining jobs and unskilled factory stuff. The pragmatic approach, of course, is to accept what is inevitable and to try and plan for it/change and refocus, reprioritise the entire economy to suit this new externally-driven reality (the UK in the 80s and 90s, basically), never easy things to do, and impossible without great numbers of casualties along the way. This is preferable, however, to burying one's head in the sand, pretending it isn't happening until far more violent, *enforced* change is foisted upon you by the markets/your creditors, but I digress.

I'm sure Trump's voters have legitimate grievances but he is not the answer. In fact, nothing is. Change and adapt, or die.

I'm not saying I like it, far from it. But there it is.

Oh, I'm not dismissing that the wider America is not delivering what people need, not in the slightest. But the point is that all Trump did was highlight those fears and agree with them. He exaggerated them through a relentless campaign of outright lying, and he offered not one single decent policy or plan on how to address them. That's what I dismiss - not that there are legitimate fears and worries, but that how easy it is to gain support by merely agreeing with people and telling them that it's actually worse than they think.
Just like Brexit. Just like the trash media. Push fear on people and profit from the results.

And the core of the point, about globalisation and offshoring work? Trump is the king of it! All his retail products use cheap foreign labour, all his real estate uses foreign construction materials. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

Cbat

Hah! I don't doubt it!

Read the bit where I said "Trump is not the answer", but there again, nothing is. The idea that this can all be rolled back, even by the American President (and even if his Party controls the Senate and House of Representatives), is absurd. King Canute anyone?

The ship sailed decades ago, it's just that some realised this decades before others. Shit, there are plenty who *still* don't realise it to this day, in America just as here.

Is it ok to try and understand why people vote Brexit/Trump but still regard them as dozy fucking bastards for doing so?

There seems to be a view that it's wrong to chastise people and you should try to understand them instead and create policy to address those issues. Personally I'm quite happy with the idea of doing both at the same time. A bit like when some fucking cunt goes out breaking into houses or does anything else stupid and anti-social.

Not everyone in your socio-economic situation breaks into houses so if you do then it's because you're a dickhead and that's all on you.

Trump voters = Utter Dickheads

It's absolutely fine as far as I'm concerned, I've been doing it long enough.
Others disagree though...

So you are blaming minorities for not voting Clinton (when they did in droves) rather than white people for voting Trump? The mental gymnastics you perform to avoid putting the blame for Trump in the white house on white people (white men in particular) is astounding.