Before the election it really did look like the Republicans were coming apart and would have to reinvent themselves or die out, but it now looks like old traditional style Republicans like Gingrich and Bolton have made their peace with the Trumpians and any hope that the onetime “Never Trump” Republicans would be a serious counter-bloc in Congress is pretty minimal at this point.
8 Likes
Yes. The country living folk have perfected the art of assholery. Having spent more than two decades as an anthropological field tech I can scientifically prove that there is a predominance of assholes who chose rural over urban. Country folk are by and large ignorant and whiny. Good hearted city folk subsidize them for some stupid reason or another which I can not understand.
3 Likes
Yep. We were having serious discussions about the appropriate role of my husband’s nuclear family in our children’s lives before this. They use racial slurs regularly, but not when I’m around, since I’m an outsider (and someone described by their slurs). I have, therefore, never left my kids alone with grandma and grandpa. I imagine there are many people like us who are deciding that this is the last straw. People like my in-laws can’t have access to my kids.
18 Likes
Being to the left of Clinton is not “parroting the right-wing smear machine”, sorry. It’s very easy to be to the left of Clinton, even in the US. This isn’t to say I’d vote for Trump, obviously, but I don’t blame anyone for not jumping at the chance to vote Clinton.
9 Likes
I don’t either of course, but I get suspicious when people invoke so many buzz words. At least he didn’t call her “Crooked Hillary”.
3 Likes
Here’s another idea. Some of us stay because it’s home, and because you don’t abandon your home when times are tough. You stay there and try to make it better. Even though it’s tempting to move out to the coasts, on some level it’s letting people down. Also, being treated like an ignorant hillbilly just because I didn’t go to prep school doesn’t appeal to me all that much.
4 Likes
They’re buzzwords, but they happen to be true.
1 Like
Affiliated with which university? What was your thesis on?
An anthropologist would know not to say that.
15 Likes
Psst…whenever you see someone online ‘proving’ the smugness and bigotry of city folk against country folk by making an inflammatory statement like that, assume a paid troll is at work.
6 Likes
It’s clear that they just want to see society burn and don’t give a fuck who gets hurt. They’re sociopaths and psycopaths - fuck 'em, I say. Fuck 'em. Cut off all ties with 'em and let them know just why they’re an asshole in the loudest, boldest possible way. Anybody who supports a nazi is a nazi. Anybody who supports Trump is: misogynist, racist, islamophobic, transphobic, homophobic, christian dominionist facists. These assholes do not deserve respect nor empathy, for they feel neither and give neither.
5 Likes
What I’m curious about are news reports I’m seeing about Trump reaching out to Romney as his Secretary of State pick. With the sheer loathing that Romney laid out against Trump (calling him a repulsive phony and fraud, saying that his entire campaign is “playing the American public for suckers”), I can’t possibly imagine Mitt taking a job with him. To me, the outcome there is the ultimate test of how much people will sell out for Donald.
14 Likes
They don’t appear to be a troll, just clueless and very arrogant.
3 Likes
Except that they didn’t put principles ahead of party. Or maybe they did. Their principles just happen to be “the poor, the colored, the oppressed, the weary… FUCK 'EM”. And they proclaimed that in the loudest possible way. These assholes didn’t just vote for trump - they straight-line voted Republican. These people cannot be reasoned with in any way - facts do not matter to them.
3 Likes
I’d start by asking whether they also support his early cabinet appointments. If so, I think we’d be past any possible reconciliation. If not, we can start talking about where we go from here.
3 Likes
Perhaps Trump is well-read.
Initial appointments should always be hated extremists when taking over a country; they should be used to inflict unpopular but necessary miseries upon the governed; after which the Prince should express regret for these actions, take power from them and rule directly with a lighter hand, keeping those officials rightly feared for the atrocities they have committed always at the ready, perhaps committing further atrocities far afield, so that the populace shall love the Prince for his relative humanity, and fear the consequences should he permit his ministers to rule.
Paraphrased from memory, not a quote or direct translation.
I do not wish to defend Trump nor do I believe I can predict his actions.
13 Likes
There’s a distinct gendered quality to the way many people seem to think about it: “the nanny state” is what they oppose; toughness and order are fine.
Environmental and health laws are feminine, as limitations on gun ownership. Loosening of drug laws and removals of bans on consensual sex are coddling of ill-behaved young(ish) people and are also feminine. The opposites are manly respect for freedom and fair paternal firmness.
9 Likes
And I just saw this, via Twitter, that sums things up:
38 Likes
Try not to cheapen words too much. These are just poorly argued excuses for your own lack of empathy.
This year’s election was hardly a competition between two popular candidates. Many liberals held their nose and voted for Clinton, and many conservatives did the same for Trump. Yes, their act of voting was supporting him, but we can’t read as much into that as we might like. There are a ton of assumptions about other people’s motivations, but people are often quite a bit more complex than we think (especially if we think we can apply blanket labels to 60 million people based on a single complex decision).
4 Likes
Because they create the food and raw materials city folk take for granted.
You should spend some time with city folk who are factory workers - actual dirty handed, sweaty producers of goods, not elite white collars. I suspect you’d have the same contempt for those who make your iLuxuries as you display for the country folk who keep you from starving to death.
I kind of doubt this frame of mind will win the next election. How would you base a strategy on it?
5 Likes
My strategy for next time is to start with a candidate that isn’t massively hated by a large portion of the public, and rely on Trump having failed to deliver any of the positive promises he made, then allow mass dissatisfaction with him to overturn his wafer thin majorities in swing states.
15 Likes
