The General US Politics Thread

Uhm, source would be helpful here.

Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 12th 2019 at 9:58:48 AM

The other day, she made a comment about how it was unfortunate that American Muslims faced hatred after the 9/11 attacks. A bunch of conservatives took her comments out of context to make it look like she was saying 9/11 wasn’t a big deal.

Then today, Trump posted a twitter video cutting between her and footage of the attacks and suggesting she was in favor of them.

She’s already received credible death threats; this is deliberately inciting anger against her in the hope that one of his supporters will hurt/kill her.

After watching the video in question, I think that Ilhan Omar is completely right. "all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties." I think that's a pretty good statement. I think it's also right that the thing in question was 9/11. America changed on that day, and on the whole, not for the better. The video is technically correct, that something was 9/11. However, technically correct is not always the best kind of correct. It's pushing hard to link Ilhan Omar with the terrorists, and that's dangerous. I'll be honest, her twin sister could have been one of the hijackers and this kind of video would still be wrong and dangerous. We strive not to judge people by the color of their skin, but the content of their character, not anyone else's. I may not agree with Omar on everything but she's not a terrorist. Rhetoric like this is part of what is wrong in American politics.

I wouldn't go that far, but as others have pointed out, I'm entirely too much of an optimist.

Edited by Soban on Apr 12th 2019 at 12:19:34 PM

He’s straight up trying to get a Congresswoman killed because she’s Muslim.

It's more that he likes to stir up the crowd and doesn't give a fuck if someone gets hurt than actively trying to get someone killed. If someone does actively goes after her, he'll do some song and dance about how he thinks he's not to blame and something something "very good people on both sides" bullshit.

... he is actively trying to get her killed; what you said doesn’t negate that.

It seems like the issue here is what "active" actually means. If you mean he's actively trying to get to incite people to kill her, as the goal, I believe Spade's point is that, no, he probably isn't. Though it's not like any of us can read his mind so maybe that's exactly what he's after.

If the point is he is actively doing and saying things that make it more likely for people to try and kill her (and thus more likely it happens) and he just wouldn't care if she died then, yes, he's definitely doing that.

Given what we're talking about, I'm not sure the semantic meaning does anything to affect the heinousness, but I'd say it still exists.

Edited by LSBK on Apr 12th 2019 at 12:06:19 PM

It doesn’t make a difference. It’s the same message, whether or not you want to claim it’s a dogwhistle.

Yeah, I mean he's not going for that specific goal. Stirring up anger against his opponents is what he always does, and he's very aware that his favored audience will eat it up. Whether or not this ends up in violence is something he doesn't give a shit about because he doesn't give a shit about what the consequences are for other people, or the level of seriousness, so long as he can cow them. This is his general malice towards all his opponents at work here. Somehow I doubt that Omar is cowed by much considering how hard she's going on pointing out racism.

Now, if he starts saying things like "something ought to do something about her" then I'll believe he's specifically gunning for her.

(At that point I'd consider the dogwhistle ditched.)

Edited by AceofSpades on Apr 12th 2019 at 12:12:35 PM

I guess it all depends on your definition of active. I doubt he’s going out tweeting thinking “yes this will definitely get her killed”, he’s just an aging racist doing his best to say as many racist things as he can.

Hasn't Trump already said things along the lines of 'someone ought to do something'? He's already explicitly advocated for violence in the past - remember that line about paying bail?

Not to mention his hints during the campaign about a "Second Amendment solution" to Hillary.

Cohen has said that Trump almost always talks in Could Say It, But... purely so he can't be blamed when someone actually does it.

Yeah, this is something that Trump does all the time.

The extra sickening thing about all this is that for way too many people in the USA, this shit is exactly why they voted for Trump in the first place.

They wanted a bully for a President.

Edited by M84 on Apr 13th 2019 at 7:10:36 PM

The "he's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting" lady from during the shutdown still chills me to the bones until now. The fact that that's even a mindset someone has is just so unfathomable for me.

I sometimes wonder if those among us who claim we need to somehow reach people like that have any clue how we will manage that.

I suppose it may start with figuring out the answer to the question "how do you reform a bully?"

Because we're dealing with a bunch of bullies who voted for a bully President.

Edited by M84 on Apr 13th 2019 at 7:47:17 PM

I still hold that the most important people to reach are the ones who don’t support this, but didn’t care to vote the first time around.

Part of the problem is that in some states, voting is a serious pain in the ass. No online registration, no vote-by-mail, that sort of thing.

It doesn't help that voting day is a work day, meaning that people who live paycheck-by-paycheck have to choose between voting and being able to afford to pay bills.

Add this to the generations of political apathy festering in the USA, and you've got one serious uphill struggle to get to as close to 100% voter participation as possible.

TBH, if I somehow became POTUS, I'd make increasing voter participation one of my goals in office. For the most part, democracy yields decent results if a greater percentage of the people vote.

Edited by M84 on Apr 13th 2019 at 7:55:46 PM

Weighing in on the discussion further up, I'm gonna say that the difference between

• Trump is trying to have Omar killed.
• Trump is consciously inciting violence against Omar.

is academic at best.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 13th 2019 at 6:15:56 AM

Either way, if some asshole does take a potshot at her, I'm going to blame Trump (after said asshole of course).

Honestly, I'd also pin some blame on every single Trump voter who continues to support him. They're the ones who gave him power and enabled all this.

Don’t forget the collection of pundits and politicians who continuously amplify and escalate his rhetoric.

*Cough*JeaninePirro*Cough*

Edited by ironballs16 on Apr 13th 2019 at 9:41:57 AM

So apparently, not only did the Cheeto tell the CBP agents to go ahead and break the law when it came to blocking asylum applicants, but he also told the new acting head of DHS (and current Commissioner of CBP) that if he ended up going to jail for having asylum seekers blocked, he would pardon him.

This was brought up already in this thread.