The General US Politics Thread

You don't have to be a part of either to be a bigot though. I'm almost positive that a bunch of closeted bigots used Trump's victory as an excuse to come out.

@M84: You've also got the deniers - the people who go "Bannon isn't a neo-Nazi, look at this picture of him standing next to a Jewish person without trying to literally murder them!"

They probably go somewhere in the latter category, admittedly.

@Draghinazzo: Planning, hell - they did it.

Don't forget the room full of alt-Reich^note that's what I'm calling them because that's what they fucking are members going "heil Trump! Heil victory!" and praising this as the beginning of "a new normal."

edited 8th Dec '16 7:31:59 PM by RBluefish

Another thing that concerns me about his Cabinet picks so far is that several of them are openly opposed to the very spirit of their positions. We've got a Climate Change denialist toady of the fossil fuel industry as the head of the EPA, a guy who is opposed to public housing as head of the HUD, a woman who favors private schools over public schools as the Secretary of Education, a guy who wants to slash minimum wage and increase automation as the Secretary of Labor...

Others of course are "just" establishment cronies: we've got a Treasury Secretary who spent nearly two decades working at Goldman-Sachs and Soros hedge funds and a Secretary of Commerce who used to be a Rothschild guy. The Commerce Secretary BTW, is a TPP supporter.

And of course we have the ones who are just plain nuts or incompetent. We're getting a conspiracy nutjob as head of the NSA, and one of the more likely picks for Secretary of State has mishandled classified info in the past. Which is just a little bit galling considering the crap HRC got over that private email server.

edited 8th Dec '16 7:46:24 PM by M84

I wish I didn't see idiots citing all the Hitler = Trump comparisons as another reason to vote for him.

Seriously, the idiots at Stormfront, Daily Stormer, /pol/ and Infowars were ballistic over the prospect of a Trump presidency triggering a Race War or the all mighty Drumpft sending all the queers, Muslims and SJ Ws to concentration camps.

With Bannon on Trump's team, all the reasonable doubt towards Trump not courting the far right and Neo Nazis goes down the window.

And to top it all off, a president-elect who embodies all the very worst elements of America, and in fact should be everything that we oppose as a nation.

I swear to God, it actually seems like Trump is doing everything in his power to fuck up our government beyond all recognition, on purpose. Most of his appointees seem like they should be sick jokes, not reality. But surely nothing in his agenda would hint at such...oh wait.

Can't forget about Bannon, can we? Bannon who is, by all appearances, literally a supervillain?

edited 8th Dec '16 7:44:17 PM by RBluefish

I've been comparing Bannon to Grigori Rasputin for a while now.

I fucking hope we're all just overreacting here and nothing really horrible happens in the next four years. But if it does, let's just say most of us here aren't going to be surprised.

edited 8th Dec '16 7:51:38 PM by M84

Joseph Goebbels has been another popular comparison, especially given Bannon's apparent status as de facto head of pro-GOP propaganda.

To be quite honest, the mainstream US's understanding of racism and general prejudice is extremely juvenile, and this election cycle has made that painfully obvious in some of the discourse that's been going around. ^note The US isn't really unique in that regard, but we'll disegard that for now.

The focus is always on the accused person's intent or their feelings over the person they may have wronged, and there's a reliance on "plausible deniability" based on the idea that you can never 100% know what's inside someone's heart or not, where people are always quick to assume someone isn't racist unless they literally spell it out for you. People are either CardCarryingVillains or decent people without a hint of racism in their body, with at best like one shade of gray, if even that. Sociohistorical context, the effects of education and the media and the actual effects of a statement or action in a larger structure are just completely ignored or glossed over with trite platitudes.

It is literally a child's understanding of how racism works. It doesn't leave any room for nuanced understandings of racial injustice, and is a sociological construct that is extremely easy for cunning racists to abuse or with which to get away with their actions. After Trump many of them aren't seeing a reason to hide it anymore either, if the harassment and hate crimes are any indication.

I don't know that any of us has any kind of reliable statistic about how many mild to virulent racists there are in the US but even if it was a comparatively low number like 5% of the population (a number I just pulled out of nowhere) that's still 5% too many.

edited 8th Dec '16 7:56:48 PM by Draghinazzo

x4 "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

edited 8th Dec '16 7:54:37 PM by kkhohoho

Our society did a good job of demonizing racism, but it did a shit job at properly explaining to people what racism actually is.

edited 8th Dec '16 7:54:46 PM by M84

, So much this. The absurdly reductionist view people hold of racism (and other forms of bigotry) what allows that bigotry to fester and grow in our society. There are so precious few people who actually have a nuanced understanding of the nature of bigotry, of racial injustice, of oppression both systemic and everyday. And if that wasn't the case? Then over sixty million people might not have cast their vote for bigotry on the 8th, and we might not be in this mess.

That's kind of A Thing with things that are heavily demonized, I find. Because when things are demonized heavily enough, they become things done by demons. And, therefore, something not done by Real Human Beings who have Redeeming Qualities. And therefore that thing you just somebody who has at least one Redeeming Quality admit to doing is not the thing that's been so heavily demonized.

So the idea of Nazis holding prominent positions in the white house is so abhorrent, and so removed from the norm, that people decide that these people who don't look that much like cartoonish caricatures of evil must not actually be Nazis, despite the fact that their ideology is pretty much exactly the same as the Nazis. Because who even knows what the Nazi's ideology was? Who says it was anything other than 'we're just miscellaneously evil'?

edited 8th Dec '16 8:08:31 PM by Gilphon

Yup. You see the same sort of phenomenon with things like rape. Everybody knows rape's evil, right? Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, after all. Therefore, all rapists are evil (which is hard to argue with, admittedly). And we all know that everyday people like you and me can't possibly be evil, right? And that guy looks normal, so he can't be evil either. So therefore, if someone seems normal enough, or nice enough, then they can't be a rapist and it must all be just a biiiig overreaction.

It's little logical leaps, each one seemingly minor enough in and of itself, but they lead to an incredibly dangerous conclusion.

It leads to the idea that ultimately a "racist" is someone who is very unlikely to actually exist, because the image people have of a "racist" is essentially a cartoon villain. Which is not really how humans work.

TBF, KKK members in their white robes and hoodies do look kind of cartoonish. So did the Nazis in their uniforms decorated with skulls. Until they went around lynching and gassing people anyway.

We definitely need to start worrying if the WH suddenly starts placing more orders for white fabric and making requests to Hugo Boss.

edited 8th Dec '16 8:15:46 PM by M84

I'd argue that part of the reason they look cartoonish is because they've been cartoon villains so frequently.

Which is part of the reason they stopped wearing the white hoods- people wouldn't take them seriously.

^Same phenomenon. People think 'racism = KKK', so everyone who isn't a member of the KKK, just wishes that maybe fewer of those people lived in the neighborhood, thinks they can't possibly be a racist.

There's also the distinction people draw (in their minds) between BEING A RACIST and DOING RACIST THINGS. It ties in with the 'racists are evil and I'm not evil therefore I'm not a racist' thing - they think that's how racism works, instead of considering how the things they do may be racist. It's like you said, people judge the offenders (or oppressors) by intentions, not by actions or by impact on the oppressed.

I remember Draghinazzo once made the analogy that, if you've just accidentally hit somebody in the face with your frisbee, you shouldn't go "well geez, I wasn't aiming for your face, stop getting so upset." You should go "I'm so sorry I hit you in the face with my frisbee, I'll be more careful with it next time."

If only more people would understand this, we might be a lot less screwed than we are now.

I know there are some idiots who sincerely believe that Trump isn't racist or sexist, and their 'proof' is that he wants some black people and some women in his Cabinet.

"I know he calls women fat disgusting pigs, complains about them not being attractive enough for him, brags about his ability to sexually assault them free of consequence, and has been repeatedly accused of outright rape - but come on, look at him standing in room next to this woman who he's thinking about hiring to do some work for him!^note Probably making 60% of what her colleagues do. What kind of misogynist does that?"

It's been said that Americans really don't like nuance in general. They want simple, black and white explanations where problems are easy to solve, the good guys always win by punching the bad guy, and they personally don't have to do much of anything. This intellectual laziness is what has allowed the extremism of the American right wing to thrive. They provide a nice, clean narrative where all that makes WASP America feel nervous is really pure evil that a mighty conservative will fight and all their efforts would be perfectly rewarded if not for those dastardly liberal demons leading them astray and giving their rewards to undeserving lazy, shiftless minorities. They invested billions on a propaganda operation that allows them to spread their narratives as far as possible and have deliberately sabotaged the nation when possible to ensure as little of that messy reality could possibly reach their base. The rise of the Internet only made this situation far more powerful as now the base could find any number of echo chambers to dive into with even less need to pretend to care about facts.

This anti-intellectualism strain has been cultivated for many years, so there really isn't much chance of countering it before the GOP get their wish of full fascism, but efforts must be undertaken. The Republicans aren't going to let us remove the idiocy they rely on for power without a massive fight, but is must be done if there is any hope for creating a functional democracy.

I'm not sure if this was posted, but if it hasn't Even McMullin gives his advice on how to handle a Trump presidency. In short, he gives ten pieces of advice, which are:

1. Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Know that our basic rights are inalienable.

2. Identify and follow many credible sources of news. Be very well informed and learn to discern truth from untruth.

3. Watch every word, decision and action of Trump and his administration extremely closely, like we have never done before in America.

4. Be very vocal in every forum available to us when we observe Trump's violations of our rights and our democracy. Write, speak, act.

5. Support journalists, artists, academics, clergy and others who speak truth and who inform, inspire and unite us.

6. Build bridges with Americans from the other side of the traditional political spectrum and with members of diverse American communities.

7. Defend others who may be threatened by Trump even if they don't look, think or believe like us. An attack on one is an attack on all.

8. Organize online and in person with other Americans who understand the danger Trump poses and who are also willing to speak up.

9. Hold members of Congress accountable for protecting our rights and democracy through elections and by making public demands of them now.

10. And finally, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, have "malice toward none, with charity for all" and never ever lose hope!

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/07/trump-tv-announces-new-24-hour-network-will-get-access-to-white-house-press-briefings/

Get ready, kid! It's time for Dear Leader's Mandatory Fun Time. For when Fox News is just too honest for your little despot feelings.

What? Are you serious? This his to violate some kind of law. If it doesn't, there should

Frighteningly, there are many things about this election that violate laws. Apparently it doesn't make anybody in positions of powers start caring, though.