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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
More on the story of the woman who asked for tweets about women getting sexually assaulted.
At one point, she was receiving two tweets per second with sexual assault stories, and there was a 33% spike in calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline
over the weekend. This is apparently something that happens when an assault story makes national headlines, as women feel empowered to speak out.
This is the good and the bad of this ugly campaign. Bad because this stuff is still happening. Good because the public backlash every time we see an instance of it helps women who are suffering abuse to get the support they need, and the long term trend is towards more exposure and less tolerance for sexual predators.
edited 12th Oct '16 7:39:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I mean it's kinda fucked up that a nominee for president (at best) joked about sexually assaulting women and that didn't torpedo his career. I'm really wondering what exactly would it take for him to lose his 40%? Rape? Murder? murderrape?
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?Republicans are caught between a hammer and an anvil on Trump. Stand behind him and they lose a certain set of moderates, especially from the Moral Guardians group who are most repulsed by the Access Hollywood tape. Abandon him and the Basket of Deplorables gets mad. Few Republicans running statewide races, or in competitive congressional districts, can afford to lose either group.
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According to this Congressman
, even rape might not be a deal-breaker.
There are two Republican parties: the economically conservative, business-friendly crowd who don't really want to come across as nakedly racist/sexist/xenophobic, and the unabashed, know-nothing bigots of the Tea Party and the alt-right. Appeal to one, and you risk losing the other. It's a recipe for electoral disaster, and the politicians who've made their careers managing the delicate balancing act of pandering to the extremists while delivering results for the establishment are finding their positions to be increasingly precarious.
Governor Paul LePage of Maine wants Trump to be an authoritarian, to reestablish "rule of law", but condemns Obama's autocratic abuses of power.
Logical consistency has never been a strong suit of the extreme right, but this idiot has lack of it down to an art form. Still satisfied with your third-party vote split that let him win, Maine?
edited 12th Oct '16 7:53:54 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If this thread was a room with all of us having this discussion in person, would there be smoke wafting everywhere and used ashtrays with virtual hills of cigarette butts? And most looked like they either just got up grumpy or just found out their spouse was cheating on them?
edited 12th Oct '16 7:53:53 AM by nervmeister
I don't smoke. Edit: what a page-topper! Also, what?
edited 12th Oct '16 7:56:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The cowardly fallbacks by certain republicans is making me ponder about another subject that's been brought up multiple times: I think the GOP is in something of an identity crisis right now regarding their voterbase and what to define themselves by going forward. It's pretty transparent that they didn't want to end up stuck with Trump, but the demographics that they catered to over the years are either losing relevance (evangelicals) or are tired of not really getting anything from them (dixiecrats/alt-right). They were determined to be regressive for so long that the rug was basically swept under them and now they just look like dinosaurs in a world where their place is slowly eroding.
Even if they were to redefine focus and create a less xenophobic and more racially sensitive platform (which they should do, anyways), it begs the question of just how far they should re-invent themselves, or rather, how far they can reinvent themselves.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:03:06 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Kudos for the brunette for standing up to the Trump's manager bullshit.
I've lived through a Chernobyl level of toxicity this year and even though the worse of this year none of it approached Trump levels. Roommates talking about cheap women and treating women like sluts, sure. Bragging about what qualifies as sexual assault and being able to get away with it? Not a single time.
I've been keeping tabs with /b/ and /pol/ over this for a couple of days, they really think this is a plus for Trump. Like Trump is an Alpha male and Trumps attitude towards women should extend to them as well.
I understand the gullible, uneducated and impoverished Trump supporters, but his younger middle class voters aged between 18 to 30 are the prime example of how despite all education and information available they still decide to pick the most obnoxious and toxic candidate either for teh lulz or because they agree not with the man populist speeches but his toxic attitude towards minorities and women. They want a candidate that represents their brand of misogyny and racism, a candidate that can bring back the times where all you needed to be successful and get laid was to be male, white and middle class and minorities and women didn't have much of a say besides saying "yes sir", they want a candidate that will make their desire of using words like "nigger", "kike" and "spic" acceptable again and put women in a submissive position. For Trump redditers, angry MR As, Stormfronters and channers, Trump's attitudes are huge pluses and they want Trump to get away with saying all that shit because if Trump can spill out all that crap without repercussion so can they.
Basket of deplorables was Hillary being really easy on those people.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:03:20 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesYou know, of the last debate the thing I most vividly remember is Trump standing behind Hillary way too close. It reminded me a little of an encounter I had a few months ago when a child walked up to me as I as walking through my town and looked at me as if I were a curious artwork.
I am not going to pretend to understand why Trump has a support basis among younger non-deprived people at all.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Because a lot of young white males feel that society is depriving them of sex out of an excessive concern for the rights of women. I kid you not.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:10:07 AM by nervmeister
Honestly, the thing that has me anxious in the long term is what'll happen to the GOP. Will they leave the alt right behind, forcing them to become a third party? Will they embrace it, sending their more moderate base over to the Dems? I can't think of any good result, since these bigoted monsters will still have a voice.
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Bigots will always be around. The trick is providing them with a way to "vent" without them interfering with the lives of others (if their minds wont be changed or they cant find something constructive or meaningful to channel their energies into). Trying to suppress them completely is like leaving a pressure cooker on way too long. Something's going to spill over and make a mess.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:20:02 AM by nervmeister
Some good news, a judge in Florida has ordered the state to extend voter registration by a week after Hurricane Matthew caused delays and disruptions.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.The split in the GOP looks very serious, but I highly doubt that it will actually mean that large factions start splitting off from the party. The two-party, FPTP system means that huge and diverse ideological groups have to pick one of two parties and stick with it, or become almost completely irrelevant. It is a fundamentally undemocratic system because it effectively disenfranchises the large majority of voters who would vote for smaller parties if they had a realistic chance to go through.
In the UK you saw this last year, when the two largest parties got between 30 and 40% of the vote each, winning a combined 86% of seats. A party that got about 13% of the vote got 1 seat, as did a party that got 4%. Another party that got about 5% of the vote got 56 seats.
The US is even more stricly divided into just two parties. The practical outcome of this is that if you have a large group of voters, effectively they have to either pick one party and all of its baggage - including potentially fundamentally contradictory ideologies, assuming that they disagree even more with the other major party; or vote for a third party, increasing the odds of the worst possible outcome; or not vote at all, which is what a massive percentage of American voters do each election.
The point is, even if the alt-right and the mainstream Republican establishment have fundamental disagreements on 70% of issues, as long as both sides have 71% disagreements with the Democrats, they will still stay in the Republican party.
If you didn't have a FPTP system you wouldn't have this problem, at least in this scale.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Indeed. A benefit of the delusions of success Trump's supporters have is that despite desperately needing as many votes as he can, Trump can still inspire an attitude in his voterbase of, "Well, it's not as if not bothering to vote will actually HURT him in any way. He's doing fine!"
Yes, if nothing else, this election has certainly been eye-opening. A think a lot of people in the U.S. are re-examining their relationships with certain people in their lives. Trump's rhetoric and the attitudes that have been displayed throughout the States in defense of it has brought naked prejudice out into the light and made it much more difficult for people to believe that racism, sexism, etc. are historical footnotes that haven't existed in years.
Getting people to understand that these fights are still happening, that prejudice has not been solved, has been the hardest battle modern progressives have had to fight. Over the course of his candidacy, Trump's inadvertently won that fight for us.
Now, on that note, here's Trevor Noah ripping into Trump over "locker room talk".
Short version: being crass is not the problem. A lot of guys are crass. The problem is the endorsement of sexual assault, and that's what Trump and his defenders can't seem to get their heads around. Nobody's upset at the foul language used in the clip, but in the ideas that language was used to express.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

Some Republicans who rescinded their endorsement of Trump have changed their minds and backed him again.
No backbone. They get the slightest criticism from their base for not falling in line, and they fold like a cheap tent.