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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
A lot of people are going to be hurt in the coming years. I think that much we can all agree on.
The last thing we should be doing is giving up though. As an Anti-Nihilist I refuse to give up even if it's pointless, even if all the fighting all amounts to a big middle finger to an unjust world.
The thing is, oppressive regimes don't last forever. They may eventually come back, but nothing is eternal. The question is how to survive going forward and how to rebuild once the regime breaks.
So yes. That happened.
I've felt shock, anger, and disgust for my own country before I technically got out of bed this morning. Donald Trump will be our next President.
At the time I am writing this, it is being reported that Hillary Clinton has received slightly larger share of the popular vote, and of course since the last votes counted tend to be in Democratic strongholds, her lead is more likely to grow as any remaining votes are tallied then reverse itself. This combined with the fact that Trump has an unusually high percentage of supporters that only voted for him because he's not Hillary (who had those supporters certainly, but apparently in the range you'd expect any Presidential candidate to possess), and the fact his support from the Republican establishment is questionable at best, means that his mandate is extremely weak.
This is not a victory of course, but even in defeat opportunities can sometimes present themselves. And these opportunities are what wenote must now put our focus on.
Trump has two years to actually be a good President. If he fails to do that as he probably will, then as always happens with an unpopular President, the opposition gains power in the midterm elections. This places the Democratic Party in a strong position in state governments ahead of the 2020 census. Which gives them a chance to undo all the gerrymandering that was done back in 2010. And I don't think I need to mention that if the Democratic Party can put forth a solid candidate in 2020 that doesn't have Hillary's baggagenote they could thrash Donald Trump (or anyone who runs in his place, I actually wouldn't rule out him being primaried as crazy as that sounds) in the 2020 election.
In addition, an electoral/popular vote split leading to a truly disastrous President (remember, Bush's approval rating didn't really tank until the back half of his second term, by which point he had won reelection with an absolute majority in the popular vote) could pave the way for real electoral reform. Abolishing the electoral college or more widespread use of more modern systems like approval or preferential voting could go a long way to preventing this sort of thing in the future.
But I recognize these are long term opportunities that don't produce any real results until 2018. So we need to do whatever it is we need to do to make it until then. We need to make sure that those branches of government that can prevent some of his crazier ideas from becoming reality know that they have our support if they chose to defy him. Those of us, such as myself, in a position to help those who would suffer the most from his policies need to commit to doing so and in meaningful ways.
And above all we must not lose hope. We lost this battle this is true, but we have not yet lost this country. And as long as we have have hope, we can win the next battle and perhaps save this country.
Dark days may be ahead. But let us not make them any darker then they absolutely have to be.
That white supremacy, bigotry and fascism are on the rise in the US atm, and that people are very misinformed and gave into their fear instead of reason. I think that's the most curt assessment I could make.
edited 9th Nov '16 6:18:07 AM by Draghinazzo
Top Worries Climate change will keep going unchecked Hate crimes on the rise, specially by the police The rise of true Muslim extremism after Trump bans Muslims and recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The global economy will be in shackles by the combined effect of trade wars, actual wars and the 1% getting richer.
Is that implausible? He's kind of an idiot and things are projected to get pretty shitty under him, and on top of that because he's an idiot I expect a lot of gaffes and idiotic mistakes.
...then again, the sexual assault scandal wasn't enough to dethrone him so maybe I'm just being overly optimistic about the moral fiber of America.
Also here's another thing (yes there are lots of things today):
If anti establishment was the message, why select the GOP candidate who will do GOP things? Only tenfold this time?
I mean fuck, why not just vote for Johnson? Or for Stein? So that the Libertarians and the Greens can get federal funding and truly shake up Washington.
Hell there's an actual Nazi Party in America. Why vote for the one who skirts around it instead of one who's upfront? At least it'll be a shake up.
Damnit
I voted Libertarian because neither of the big two was good. I live in West Virginia. Coal country. Gun country. Both industries Clinton said she wanted to downsize. Heck, coal and soldiers are the two major economic mainstays we really have. All the other industries in our state work to support them, or get damaged by them (tourism, I'm looking at you). So for me, voting for Clinton would have been pissing in the wind.
The electoral college needs serious reform at the very least. It needs to be proportional across the board to even begin to be a good thing. And none of this "If you don't like the popular vote, just fuck 'em and vote how you want" nonsense several states have. We need that electorate to be accountable to ALL voters, not just the majority.
I want to get religion out of politics. We have a President who campaigned against Muslim immigrants, attacked the parents of a soldier based on religious stereotypes, bought into the Muslim from Kenya is illegally our President conspiracy theory and won. Clearly religion, at least one religious group, is no longer a sacred cow. We, as a people, just need to turn the discussion from people, who were likely born into their faith and face daily to weekly proselytizes, to the ideologies that make up the religion itself.
We need don't need to be attacking the people, but the ideology. The cosmology that doesn't lineup with basic math and observable phenomena, the policies antithetical to a merit based society, the laws that are incompatible with our constitution. During this, we have to also point out, that cosmology wise, Christianity isn't very different from Islam. That the Bible is also full of things that don't match up with basic math and observable phenomenon, that there are many practices not denounced in The Bible that have no place in our government. Freedom of religion means people will still be free to practice, but we don't need government promoting and definitely don't need politicians making laws based on their religious convictions. Turn the public against the idea of religion in government and religiously motivated politicians. If veteran families are fair game, Presidents are fair game based on presumed affiliations, then for sure there should be open season on politicians with open affiliation.
And the problem with proselytizing in school, public school, is that school is not for proselyting but education. That has been a problem with college and university in particular for awhile, grades based on adherence to ideology rather than to merit, than ability to actually excel at work that will translate into skilled labor jobs. Social justice is nice and all, but the only fundamental class for that should be history, because human failings are self evident, as are struggles, competition. You shouldn't have to tell students what to think, let them come to their own conclusion based on fact. English can tackle, so far as writing a papers based on historical and current events, but making students better writers, better speakers should be the goal, not telling them what to think.
And it's been a problem with University for decades now, to the point class structure and curriculum get changed around to appease ideological groups rather than those concerned about how effective they are at actually educating, open intention to indoctrinate students is up front in syllabi, it's why there are academic freedom proposals and bills being flown around, though they haven't done much good yet. I went to a school full of liberals, and when they agree with or are at least willing to hear out those like David Horrowitz out something is wrong. Not with the liberals excepting him, but the fact that some are willing to consider the reforms a paranoid neocon who didn't even know the current plural form of syllabus is a sign of desperate they are for reform. But Horowitz was an abrasive man who couldn't help but go on about the ebb and flow of his faith in Christianity, of an "Islamofasictjihad" against Jews, if you went to his website for more information or attended one of his rallies, so in a bit of irony, he alienated a lot of people and became easy to dismiss.
Really, he should have been better at just sticking to the academic freedom issue, worried about religion later, picked one fight at a time, but now that we've accepted a President unafraid to attack a religious group, even if it wasn't exactly what we wanted, the paralyzing, disruptive nature religion in our political process can began to be retrained, so we can get more work done.
Buldogue's lawyer

I'm surprised we haven't seen a time-traveller appear on national tv, back from a post-apocalyptic wasteland, on a solemn mission to keep Trump from winning the presidency to save the world.
edited 9th Nov '16 6:02:08 AM by PushoverMediaCritic