It’s only 4 years, dude. It’s only 4 years. Get a good candidate together with a populist platform, fan on the flames of Republican divisions, and it will all be over soon. 4 years is barely enough for a President to sit down, let alone building camps - especially if FEMA is involved.
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It’s also augmented by his anger that you’re not supporting his preferred candidate and (supposedly) not supporting that candidate’s issues long after a combination of a corrupt DNC and complacent Dem primary voters made sure he wouldn’t be the nominee (an outcome which said candidate accepted with extraordinary grace and pragmatism).
That, combined with his determination to be "The Purest Lefty on the Site"™ is why he’s become so adept at alienating allies, including his fellow Sanders supporters. Talk about repeating stupid behaviours.
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In short, it means removing corruption from politics. It is an analogy to the difficultly of building in a swamp. You have to drain it first to create solid ground to lay a foundation on.
In long, it is a position that Trump took after Hillary’s pay-to-play Clinton foundation scandals came up, where CF donors were quite often appointed to cushy positions after donating. In a wider sense, it’s more or less common knowledge that these pay-to-play deals happen all the time on both sides, along with the revolving door between lobbyists and politicians. It has greatly contributed to a problem where outside money can influence politics. This is a problem that affects every level of politics. For instance, if you’re in a heavily populated area right now and don’t have fiber internet available, it is most likely because cable industry lobbyists have worked to outlaw municipal networks in your area. That corruption slows down the advancement of nation and stifles the economy.
I don’t think Trump is immune to corruption. I’m sure he has done some shady stuff. I do believe he’s largely disconnected from the corrupt establishment though. After all, they fought very hard on both sides to defeat him. If he could be bought, they would have went that route. It would have been cheaper. What we can really hope for is that he ousts a lot of that corrupt establishment, allowing us to vote some new blood in. If we’re careful, we can avoid creating a new corrupt establishment and lay some groundwork to limit future corruption. Congressional term limits would be a great start. Whether you’re conservative, progressive, or somewhere in between, you can’t build in a swamp!
They’re not. There are several states where Trump’s margin was much less than Johnson’s vote, even one or two (eg Wisconsin) where Stein’s vote was larger than the margin.If 25% of the 3rd part voters stayed home, 25% voted Trump, and 50% voted for Clinton, she would have won.
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It’s hard to treat the question as rhetorical given the circumstances. As I said, different people process things in different ways.
Sexual assault is “shady stuff”?
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The Republicans needed a fiscal conservative who didn’t have any kind of direct involvement in the economic meltdown of 2008. They got one. The only issues Trump honestly cares about are the ones affecting his own bottom line: taxation and business regulations.
Everything else was just the usual nonsense to get poor/working class people to vote against their economic interests. Trump wasn’t saying anything that many Republicans hadn’t already put forward, but usually not on a national level.
The split between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives was overrated. Social Conservatives have always had their agenda ignored and put down at a national level. Nearly 40 years of being a doormat. None of their candidates were even popular enough to make it through the primary with decent numbers. They aren’t going to split any time soon if they want to maintain at least some semblance of power downstream in “Red States”.
Trump won because he carried the Rust Belt states that everyone naturally assumed would go to Hillary. Ones which Obama took handily in 2012. Hillary did jack squat with organized labor, which should have handed those states to her on a silver platter.
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I think the white working class voted their perceived self interest. And I really can’t tell them they were wrong.
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The “This isn’t so bad” rhetoric is the same bullshit that allowed Trump to win. America has a huge apparatus that already watches the populace and imprisons/kills/disappears inconvenient people. Up to this point those people have been “terrorists” (and young black men, and indigenous people). Remember that people see in the world reflections of themselves; what do Trump and his supporters think of Clinton? They think she is corrupt beyond measure, murderous, authoritarian.
When the first late night talk show host who too deeply insults your new president disappears and everyone else falls silent, just keep saying, “It could not happen here, it could not happen here.” Your first amendement says the government can’t pass a law against speech, but both your political parties agree it says nothing about simply killing people without trial. To borrow paraphrase from Chuck D, hell no this ain’t alright.
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I can. They are kidding themselves if they thing tax cuts and deregulation aren’t part of the problem.
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You want to cry? Cry. You want to mourn? Mourn.You have until January if you maybe want to get something done but nothing major. You have until about 3AM EST earlier this morning to start working on something effective. So personally, I see myself as having better shit to do.
Maybe I’m a cruel bastard asshole fuckface dickwad. That’s fine. I embrace that title. Because no matter what I’m not worse than the President Elect. But I am an Arab American bastard asshole fuckface dickwad living in Trump’s America with a Republican House, Senate, and SCOTUS. I don’t have time to mourn. I have plenty of time to drop some heavy, heavy blame all around. Because you know what? I don’t care if we have to stop shitting on the working class, if it averts this disaster. I don’t care if we have to suspend our self-righteousness about privilege and rhetoric that is 100% unconvincing to a margin of people who voted Trump in, if it prevents tragedy. I am prepared to undertake a vicious post-mortem to determine exactly who was responsible for this on the one side that has control of its senses, and lay waste to every corner of the mechanism that brought us here. I don’t care if there are still tears streaming down the faces of half the people on my side of the equation. I have no sympathy for your pain. I have no use for your grief.
Welcome friends, to the long hard slog. If you’re not ready to push and sweat and bleed for what you want, you don’t really want it. You’re going to have to compromise on some of your ideals as part of some real political calculus. People who think that this is a time for us to take pity on each other haven’t yet learned the hard life lesson I have: Pity ain’t pretty, because pity is for hopeless causes.
Repeat after me: There is no crying in politics, because if war is indeed politics by other means (and it certainly is), then politics is war by other means and you’re a fucking conscript whether you want to be or not. You think politics is about what’s fair? Look around you. Trump is a dollar-store reject of a human being, but he beat someone infinitely more qualified. What’s fair got to do with the price of a spray tan? It was a high school popularity contest and the douchebag jock won. You think anything I’ve got to say is something too sour and vile for you to stomach right now? Reality is a far more bitter pill for you to swallow and it’s happening right now whether you like it or not.
So I’m going to be the vile scumbag asshole piece of shit dickwad smegma scrapings off a dog’s asshole and tell everyone to grow the fuck up. Call me whatever the fuck you want. Trump is going to be our next president. Nothing you call me can possibly touch me.
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A corrupt businessman as opposed to a corrupt politician. Trump’s business holdings are a litany of violations, fraud and destruction in his wake. The proverbial polished turd. Poor and working class voters wanted an amateur politician to vote for. But it is also pretty clear the Republican fiscal agenda is going to grind them up and spit them out. Its one thing to complain government isn’t working if you are not the ones in power, it is quite another once you have control.
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Only if we’re changing the definition of “fiscal conservative” from “responsibly manages the country’s finances” to “will eliminate as many taxes on the rich as possible”.
Which, okay yeah I guess you may have a point.
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That has been the case since 1980.
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Clinton did better in Wisconsin than Feingold.
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I wish I felt like this. But I have no hope that anything I actually do will change anything or anyone’s mind.
[ETA] And to add to what you said here (which I’m trying to process and not just get defensive about, like I seem to be doing), here is a list of organizations that one can volunteer for or donate to that do good works in the world:
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4 minutes is long enough to launch a nuclear strike. 4 days is long enough to gut the Paris Agreement. 4 months is long enough to confirm a partisan Supreme Court Justice. If another justice dies or retires in the next four years, we could have an incredibly conservative majority on the supreme court for how long? Decades?
Roe v Wade and Obergefell could both be overturned within four years. Obamacare could be ended in 4 years
We’ve gotten used to taking some basic level of good governance for granted, but a republican president, with a republican house and republican senate can do a shit-ton of damage to the country and the world within four years. Paul Ryan is going to do whatever he can to gut the social safety net, and in this context, he can probably do quite a lot. Trump is going to do whatever he can to enrich himself, regardless of the consequences.
I’m not an american. I’m not a woman. I’m not really a religious minority. I’m not LGBTQ. I’m not trans. I’m not especially reliant on the social safety net. But every american who is in one of those groups has pretty solid reasons to be freaking the fuck out. I’m just freaking out as someone who’s largely a bystander.
Seriously though - a lot can happen in 4 years. Especially when it is so much easier to destroy than to create.
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##This.
#Fucking THIS.
In real life evil often wins, and too many people don’t give a fuck… until it’s them who is directly suffering. Then when it’s far too late to do anything meaningful, suddenly then they care.
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True. Their self-interest is that white Christian American males are entitled to go to the front of the line for jobs that pay a middle class wage whether or not they have an education.
The execution by the person they elected, however, and the actual outcome is another matter: depressingly predictable to the “smug educated coastal elites” they hate so much, but not to them.
It was the same with Brexit: they traded a bunch of bland Continental bureaucrats they were told were “oppressing” them for old-fashioned Tory plutocrat exploiters. All in the name of nationalism and racial superiority. I know it’s an “elitist” thing to say, but they never learn.
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