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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Hillary doesn't have enough crazy, gun-worshipping, murder-happy psychopaths on her side for mutually-assured destruction.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub."Donald Trump cannot be allowed to merely lose the election, he needs to be humiliated so badly that the very ideas he represents are discredited in anything resembling mainstream politics for generations to come."
The country is too politically heterogeneous for something like this to happen. I'll settle for a Dem victory, no matter the margin.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."The current 538 polls-plus projections (takes into account polls and things like the economy - this is the model most favorable to Trump at 26.5%) have Clinton with a 47% shot at NC, 39% shot at AZ, just under 1-in-3 for MO, a 27% chance at GA, and 21% for SC. Though I'd imagine these are not independent probabilities.
edited 30th Jun '16 9:03:44 AM by megarockman
The damned queen and the relentless knight.Honestly the thing that scares me about a Trump presidency isn't really the man himself. He's a consummate attention whore, too inept and disinterested to enact any serious policies other than embezzling towards his own coffers before getting impeached. The real danger comes from his supporters who would be emboldened by his election to start burning crosses and firing guns in the streets.
Say what you will about Hillary, her checkered past, and her questionable allegiances, but I wouldn't feel less safe walking down the street around her supporters compared to Trump's.
edited 30th Jun '16 9:05:32 AM by AlleyOop
Trump's ideas won't be discredited as long as the white voters behind him remain feeling like they're under the threat of marginalization, cultural extinction and that the system is out to ruin them.
Racism is ultimately a product of nurture (i.e. it's taught). That voting block will keep voting the way it does as long as it has something to make the mythology of its racism and paranoia feel like it's justified. That all the bad things it hears about Blacks, Muslims and Mexicans 'makes sense' to them.
You can't crush them electorally, that just entrenches and justifies the myth. See how most religious sects/cults work. There's a very strong X cannot Fail, only be Failed thing going on. Trump's ideas will only be hardened and crystallized further.
If you want to kill off those ideas, you've gotta find someway else to do it.
Racism is, at its core, the fundamental root of the problem of 90% of the domestic issues our country faced both today and of decades past.
It's not going away, unfortunately. Especially considering that without the Southern Strategy, the GOP would be irrelevant, if not outright DOA at the polls
New Survey coming this weekend!I'm not saying it isn't the basis of the problem.
I'm saying electoral landslide destruction ain't gonna do it. You need to give the marginalized whites a reason to turn their swords of racism into a plowshare of common humanity. But crushing them electorally, rubbing it into their faces, and mocking and jeering them to death probably sin't gonna fix the problem, or try to get such people to try something else when they end up vilified and a constant joke.
I'm not saying let them be racist, but if you want such ideas to die, you need to give them a reason to throw away those ideas.
edited 30th Jun '16 9:24:06 AM by PotatoesRock
I can only see that making the problems worse — are you suggesting that the answers lie with sustained (and reasonable) economic, political and electoral reform?
edited 30th Jun '16 9:25:33 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnPossibly, and trying to listen to these people and treat them as people instead of Othering them. I think socio-economic reform would help, but I think something else has to be attacked, and I'm not sure exactly what. Those that don't just want to see the world burn and might be easiest to offer the olive branch to, of what I understand, seem to share a belief they've been screwed out of opportunity, and no one gives a fuck about them.
Apparently a lot of the hatred of Blacks, in the south, was started by the Plantation owners to prevent their white subordinates and black slaves from both getting funny ideas together. Yes, it's arguably a bit of a classist issue like Captain keeps hounding on, but if you look, a lot of history trends towards the powerful, regardless of their titles, putting two groups against each other while they, the guys on top, do something the other two groups would object to if they weren't both trying to kill each other.
It probably requires reform, but I don't think it's solely a political answer. I think it's also a cultural one. You need to give these people a reason, that doesn't demean them or belittle them, that they'd be better off.
But the system sure ain't helping.
@Tactical: Really now, all of the domestic problems in America arise from racism? I would beg to differ rather strongly. While the GOP uses racism (and on a related note, religion) as a tool to mobilize poorly educated sectors of the population to vote against their own interests and against the common good, the agenda it has historically pursued when in power has largely been economic and foreign policy related until the traditional bosses lost control of the party to populists.
edited 30th Jun '16 10:33:25 AM by CaptainCapsase
The problem I see is that, at its core, these people are folks who believe their culture and their way of life is being threatened, marginalized, and disenfranchised.
And they are absolutely right to think that, because it is. The culture of prejudice, of systemic oppression, is being steadily crushed under the heel of progress. Every time we start a fight over black kids being shot in the street by white cops, every time we shine a spotlight on rape culture, every time we do anything less than hanging immigrants in the streets for white people to point and sneer at, we are taking a match to the culture these people are so proud of.
We can't assure them that their culture isn't in danger, because it absolutely is. We can't discourage them from being defensive about their ideology, because we have every intention of burning it down. For people who believe they have a God-given right to hang a black man from a tree for looking at a pretty white lady, we have nothing to offer but the fact that they are wrong and that we will do everything in our power to strip their power from them.
The issues that these people feel threatened on are also issues that we can't afford to compromise on. We can't set a quota where, like, 50 black kids shot in the face is acceptable per year but no more than that. There's not a middle ground to be had on it. It has to end. It has to go. And that means people who believe it's a valuable part of their culture worth defending are going to push back on it.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
The long term consequences of applying the "divide and conquer" strategy to ethnic groups is another major part of why race issues in the United States are so serious; you can see a similar situation in the Balkans and in many nations that were formerly part of colonial empires.
@Potatoes: Economically empowering the victims of racial oppression is a good way to start; if blacks had a share of the country's wealth similar to other demographics in the country, I expect there's be significantly less persecution simply due to the fact that it would be much harder for, as an example, a police officer to shoot an unarmed black teenager and get away with it when the victims's family has the resources for a prolonged legal battle.
edited 30th Jun '16 11:08:09 AM by CaptainCapsase
The two are not mutually exclusive. Everyone has problems. Even rich people have problems. Hardship is a universal constant.
But not everyone decides, "The reason I have trouble finding employment? Mexicans. It's because of Mexicans."
And not everyone is looking for someone to blame for their problems. A lot of blame gets thrown around on other people's behalf. When Donald Trump says the Mexicans are sending their rapists into our country, do you think he's speaking from personal experience of having been raped by a Mexican?
edited 30th Jun '16 11:02:42 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Trump is certainly blaming them for his country's problems, and for the problems facing his supporters; in doing so he's telling other people who to blame. It's classic scapegoating, and is a big part of how these backwards attitudes are perpetuated.
edited 30th Jun '16 11:14:22 AM by CaptainCapsase
The incestuous amplification of right-wing rhetoric is pernicious and quite possibly impervious to being broken by reality. The only way to get it out of our politics is to marginalize it, make it a laughingstock, point out how self-defeating and harmful it is. Giving it credence only emboldens it; we've seen that perfectly with Trump.
edited 30th Jun '16 11:14:13 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
There's a difference between giving credence to racists and trying to resolve the underlying economic issues that are driving people to look for someone to blame, and which demagogues like Trump capitalize on. This phenomena isn't uniquely American, it's happening all over the western world.
edited 30th Jun '16 11:16:28 AM by CaptainCapsase

And then soon followed by "Trump murdered"?
Keep Rolling On