World responds to Trump's proposed muslim ban

[Unfriend]

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There’s probably enough of a case to be made for banning him from entering the UK as a hate preacher now.

Between Trump, and seemingly everyone in the US shooting everyone else, this week has looked like America is trying to commit media suicide.

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Trump was amusing…at first. What’s not amusing is that a significant…and growing…segment of the “GOP Base” find him perfectly reasonable. He started out as a loudmouthed, attention-craving buffoon. Now that he’s veered way into looneyland, he’s morphed into a vile buffoon. But he’s still just a buffoon…more ludicrous than ever, and a perpetual gaffe machine. I’m not troubled by his insane bloviating as much as I am by the growing number of my fellow citizens who are jumping on board his crazytrain.

I think it’s simply a symptom of how gullilble, bigoted, racist, shit-headed, fear-driven, selfish, ignorant, hate-filled, and downright stupid so many so-called conservatives have allowed themselves to become. But I worry that this nauseating appeal to the dark underside of American “culture” is maniipulating the pinheads to act on their moronic jingoistic fantasies.

So…Yeah, I’m still laughing. But a little knowledge of history is causing me to laugh a little less convincingly each day.

Trump is a living embodiment of the “evil clown.”

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When I traveled outside the US between 2001 and 2009, I found myself constantly apologizing for President Bush. People would say, “We like Americans, we just don’t like your president.” To which I would reply, “Neither do I!”

I don’t want to go through that again.

Ant Trump is more insane than Bush EVER was!

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Someone should ask Alex Salmond his thoughts. He was a big fan of Trump when the decomposing Cheeto wanted to bulldoze a Site of Special Scientific Interest to build a golf course.

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I’m definitely not an expert fascistologist; but based on Eco’s “14 Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”, I’d give Trump some fascism points, though not full marks(most notably, unlike the classic European fascists, he is tapping into capitalism-induced frustration; but definitely not touching the idea of having an alternative to both capitalism and communism, since the ‘traditional America’ of his cult of tradition is the land of free enterprise).

The hazily-defined ‘make America great again’ slogan definitely has a ‘cult of tradition’ flavor about it. Flexible enough to syncretistically glob on to whatever is handy; but definitely hearkening back to a purer and truer past.

As for ‘rejection of modernism’: Trump definitely has a more capitalist take on it than the Europeans; but his emphasis on negotiation-as-strength and being able to make ‘the deal’ certainly suggests a profoundly anti-enlightenment embrace of the practices of reason and discourse as purely instrumental means of exerting power.

‘Cult of action for action’s sake’? Well, he is definitely leading the pack on proposing splashy, forceful, and wildly disproportionate responses to just about everything, so I’m going to give him this one.

‘Disagreement is treason’ and ‘exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference’. Yup, just a bit.

‘The appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups’. Did I mention that giant wall to keep out the mexican rapists, and how that pesky ‘black lives matter’ guy deserved to be roughed up?

‘The followers must feel humilated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies’: Between resentment of the effete ‘elitists’ who allegedly control the commanding heights of the…liberal media…and adjunct professorships; and the fear of the rising tide of rapidly breeding xenos elements, I’d say yes.

I’m going to stop droning; but I think he has real potential.

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I’ve heard this phrase more times than I could count.

I also had the pleasure of being overseas when Obama was elected, and heard locals very excited and positive about it. “Obama!” with the thumbs up sign, “He is not Bush”, “He looks [dark skinned] like me”, or “We like Obama, we don’t like Bush”.

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See I keep having this argument with friends and family. They’re all concerned because they buy the media narrative that “Trump is winning”. But that doesn’t really look like whats going on to me. What Trump is, and has been, ahead in is early polling of likely Republican primary voters. So its deliberately looking at only one party, Primary voters are the most conservative block of voters, and the sort that respond to polls even more so. An even with that group as your test case he can only muster around 30% support. Less than a third of the most insane, conservative, and dedicated Republicans actually support the guy. You poll him nearly any other way and it doesn’t look too good for him. Look at the whole electorate, the whole Republican party, look at his favorability ratings and nothing looks nearly as rosey for him. And from what I understand he doesn’t even have the basic infrastructure of a campaign in place. So basically the deal with Trump is that his position is inflated by 2 things. The failure of the majority of involved Republicans who hate the guy to coalesce around anyone else (and frankly given your top 3-4 it looks like there’s a majority of support for unqualified assholes), and the media’s monomaniacal obsession with Trump. He’s good for ratings so we hear way more about him than we should.

Frankly it does look like there is some chance the mess on their end has him squeaking out a win in the Republican primaries. I wouldn’t have necessarily bought that a few months ago, so I could be wrong. But when even the Republican party brass are making plans (which they appear to be) to mitigate the damage it doesn’t look too good for a Trump candidacy. They don’t do that unless even their internal information is saying the same thing all the public stuff seems to point too. Trump is bad enough of a choice that he’ll drive Republican voters off, increase Democratic turnout, lose the vast majority of independents, and poison the well for republicans in a great number of other races.

So at this point his existence is still largely a major, major embarrassment for our country. Its a media circus. He just attracts the same vocal and obsessive groups as other nutty “movements”. A loud minority that makes it a point to march out and “defend” their chosen subject at ever opportunity. Like the gamersgate knobs. There might only be a couple thousand of those people (at best), but mention the subject at all and a couple will show up to loudly throw it in your face. But the consolation is the longer this goes on the worse things look for conservative candidates as a whole when the full election starts. And frankly their whole field is coming off like the Keystone Cops. Mistakes left and right, and I haven’t seen too many policy proposals that would even be possible or legal.

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They’re both bloviating loudmouths who are running primarily on “business experience” in spite of both a long history of bankruptcies and the fact that no country can or should be run like a business. And neither one could come up with a coherent policy about anything.

That’s why I think Trump supporters are the same people who stood by Bush up until the very end. They seem him as having the potential to bring back everything they’ve been missing for the past seven years.

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If one were to undergo the Ludovico Technique using Fox News as the input, one might well turn out the same way. It seems that sitting in front of the boob-toob for years on end has a similar result. Funny that. (Though, technically, Ludovico would call for something sane and logical to condition one against - but that’s not the comparison I’m drawing)
I caught a CNN blurb from his last rally where they walked the line of people waiting to get in and asked them if they agreed with Darth Trumps position on “the Muslims”. They all did, but one guy, wide eyed in fear stumbling over his words to say something that ultimately boiled down to “I am afraid because they are not like me & I don’t know what will happen next” seemed the most genuine.
Part of me worries that this (Trump, that Alaskan nutter & Cruz - but a few) are the next logical step. We had a minor course correction after eight years of Bush but, OMG, he’s brown. Will that, added to the new devil you can’t see, be enough to get the segment who are afraid out to vote? Think about it, in the last hundred years we haven’t seen more than 63% turnout at the very most. If fear drives even an extra 10% to the polls it could well throw the election to Trump. The horror, the absolute horror.

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yes , ’ off the grid ’ is still a thing , it is a goal or a way of life rather than a destination ~
solar cells are less than 3 $$ a watt retail , those nifty whole house tesla motor corp batteries are like 3,000 $$ each , so 2 of those and 6 kw of solar is about $$ 24, 000 ( plus installation and inverters and such ) ( less sunny weather is often windier , so an extra 4 k $$ for a pair of small wind turbines and associated towers is a real good add-on ) , which is kinda affordable for median us of a incomes , almost , like a used car ( 2009 lexus ) instead of a new one , or 3 lattes a day for 10 years ~
yes , internet is allowed , if one is an off-gridder , perhaps not if one is an off-gridian , kinda like reform , it is ok , orthodox , not ~
( you prolly already knew most of this , or could have googled it ~ )

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He also lost a lot of his support when BUF members were caught hospitalising hecklers at his rallys. Let’s hope we don’t need things to get that far with Trump.

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I’ll say this for George W. Bush: he had an actual track record in government. It was a pretty TERRIBLE record, mind you, but “Governor of one of the most populous states in the Union” is a perfectly respectable example of the kind of job experience we should look for in a potential President.

If Trump was elected he would be the first President in U.S. history with no record of public service whatsoever. (The same can also be said of Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina.) Republican leaders have spent the last generation trying to convince voters not to trust anyone in government, and it appears that their base has taken them at their word.

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That may be true, but people also do more general polls of “who would you vote for, X or Y?” to see who would win if different candidates were chosen. Trump isn’t polling at 3% in the general population, he’s polling at 43% or higher, and only a few points behind Clinton when the two are paired:

I’m not a fan of Clinton, but this is pretty grim stuff. I know a lot of this is driven by people not paying attention, but if they aren’t paying attention to the current media circus around Trump, then what will catch their attention? In the most recent Canadian election a sudden appeal to anti-Muslim angst made for a brief rise and then a more considerable fall for our Conservatives, and in the long run maybe people don’t like overt racism all that much. But if there were another terrorist attack or two as the election got close, I think Trump could honestly become president.

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I’ll share this: I’m not that scared of terrorist attacks. For whatever reason, it’s not a thing I worry about on a daily basis very much. They’re terrible and I don’t like them, but they don’t keep me holed up in my house for days on end.
But Trump as president? That scares the shit out of me. It makes me want to go all crazy-pants prepper and start stockpiling drinking water and toilet paper.

So that’s where I’m at.

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Actually, it’s pretty simple: it’s a book-promo tour.

The Republicans tolerate him because every time he opens his mouth, he makes the rest of them look like sensible, serious candidates.

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I don’t usually post on the politic stuff (cause, yes, I’m a conservative…) but I did find this awesome…
Love me some Farscape.

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After the first parents’ evening at my new school, my form teacher remarked to me “It seems your father and I threw bricks at the same fascists”. That was the battles of Cable Street, when Mosley’s fascists tried to force their way into the East End chanting “The Jews, the Jews, we’ve got to get rid of the Jews”. (Only the word they used wasn’t Jews, but one which now is forbidden. Which is funny because Tottenham supporters used to identify themselves with that word, turning it back on the fascists.)
Mosley also started to lose support when the East Enders fought back, with the support of Jews and left-wingers from North London. Blairites call Corbyn an “extremist”. They may yet find out who the real extremists are.

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Interesting. The picture on the front cover appears to be Boris Johnson. Have they ever been seen in the same room at the same time?

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This is a really good point. There’s definitely some symbiosis going on there.

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