NYT op-ed: "Detested and defeated, Donald Trump is now in a tear-the-country-down rage"

ISTR that Barbara Mikulski was the first woman elected to the US Senate without previously being appointed to fill their departed husbund’s seat. Of course if she had lost her first election to the senate, her opponent in that race, Linda Chavez would have had that distinction.

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Remember him being called our “first Black president”? That might have something to do with it. :wink:

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You mean, their plan for Armageddon? :open_mouth:

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And let’s not forget she’s going to be at least partly a product of her times.

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I would hope their plans for peace involve the whole country, not just one ruined ancient city.

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Perfect, except you forgot a veiled threat couched in defending the second amendment.

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I´m German and I shall translate:
“Is Donald Trump a sexual predator?
Michelle Obama horrified: “He is bragging with his sexual assalts againts women.””

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There’s a transcript here:

A paraphrase of Zizek is always hard since Zizek is incapable of expressing even the simplest idea without a few layers of convolution and indirection, but might be that his account of “Political Correctness” is a kind of modern nanny-state neo-authoritarian/totalitarianism, and he expands the term to mean something so nebulous it reaches the point that banning e-cigarettes on flights is “political correctness.” PC seems to become in his mind a catch-all label of humorless manipulative attacks on dissent/unpopular ideas/unpopular behaviors, using guilt as a means of coercion, with the mysteriously generic authorities motivated by the catch-phrase “I know better than you what you really want.” These mystery powers are especially concerned with attacking racist jokes, though.

How he reached that conclusion isn’t explained but talked around, nor does he bother to delineate the mystery-powers coercing others, or explain how they manage their thought policing, and as with everything Zizek says, he meticulously avoids using any clear examples or data, only anecdotes.

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[quote=“gracchus, post:84, topic:87451, full:true”]
Apricot Il Duce[/quote]

LOL! “The Angry Cheeto” is another favorite of mine.

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One of the problems I have when people talk about Elizabeth Warren or Michelle Obama or Condoleeza Rice becoming President is that there is an underlying assumption that they would WANT the position.

Yes, there are very few women in politics at a high enough level (of experience, intelligence, and common sense…not talking about the Palin types, here) and with enough name recognition that they could even be considered for the Presidency, but the answer is to promote more and more women along that path. Some of them will actually WANT to become President. That’s who should run, not those few women who’ve made it to the spotlight so far. Don’t make them do EVERYTHING.

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Good point. Those three women in particular never expressed any interest in the job (though one or more of them might conceivably do so at some point).

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Thank you!

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Except which comes first, the media attention or the public interest? The role of the mass media in the political landscape, and whether it’s driven by viewers or if the viewers are shaped by what they see is by no means entirely clear, I think. [quote=“MaiqTheLiar, post:119, topic:87451”]
Nor is it necessary for the public to take him seriously… just to want to see what happens next.
[/quote]

I guess that we have to ask ourselves why we’re paying attention, though. Is it really just to be more informed, or are we also feeding our outrage/rubber necking quota. Take Rush Limbaugh (though you probably don’t want to!). Lots of people claimed to be listening only to be able to laugh at him/understand the “other” side/ pure entertainment/etc. But that builds up his ratings and ratings = dollars, which equals a greater influence in the political landscape.

So I don’t know how to get at this particular puzzle, to be honest with you.

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I’ve thought about this and disagree with her that it’s wrong for him to do that. However, she never said it was unconstitutional or that she’d want to ban that language. In other words, she has an opinion I dislike, but she still can do her job despite her personal views on the matter. I’m okay with this and still respect her.

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He is, indeed a consummate theorist and philosopher, more interested in big ideas and exploring them, as opposed to more earthy matters, like the realities of electing what amounts to an ethno-nationalist (which in reality, Zizek, being from the former Yugoslavia, knows well enough). Of course, there is nothing wrong with exploring these ideas and concepts, but for me, I always want it to be grounded in reality of the world we’re living in and to take into account power structures that shape our lives. I like me some Zizek for sure, he’s fun to read and listen to. But give me Foucault any day, who had a strong theory-based philosophy that grounded itself quite well in actually existing power structures. When one is employing Foucauldian methods of examining history, it tends to make sense and illuminate more than it obscures.

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I don’t think she should get kicked off the court or anything, but there’s definitely room for some more progressive ideas on the bench.

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Come on, really? The war was totally wrong and totally fucked, but are you really going to say that she and others knowingly voted for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people? There was so much misinformation on the justifications of going in. They thought so much was at stake with WMDs. Of course much much more should have been asked about what happens after the US “wins” before any action was voted on. It was sold as a cake walk as easy and quick as the first gulf war. I don’t think she or anyone else was right to support the war (and the administration of the time should be prosecuted for it), but it doesn’t need to be such a ridiculous exaggeration.

So much false equivalency. But when you only are presented with two sides to compare…

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Exactly!

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