Any Silver Linings Here?
Looking for a silver lining in last night's Bizarro World travesty is sort of like losing your house, being relegated to a cardboard box and then saying “Hey, cool! Now I won't have to deal with those neighborhood kids walking across my lawn any more.”
But in the long run — I know, we'll all be dead in the long run — there was one encouraging statistic in yesterday's election. Voters in the 18 to 25 age bracket voted Democrat in almost every state. The only red states were Kentucky, West Virginia, North Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming.
So, that's the future; if we can live long enough to enjoy it.
posted by Tom Harper @ 11:30 AM
23 Comments:
You see the results of a reality TV host who saw a constituency, and pandered hard to it.
He saw, and knew that the majority of Americans are not the "intellectuals" that have controlled things for so long, but the great "unwashed masses" that watch Honey Boo Boo, NASCAR, and make up the crowds at Walmart. The people that have a LOT of opinions, but don't have much to base them on.
And, a media that is complicit. That did not challenge the constant stream of lies that fed the "popular misconceptions".
So, here we are, in the race to the bottom.
Okay, Mr. Trump, now let's see how those same folks feel when you can't deliver on your election promises. Bring back jobs to America? Who is going to work for 60 cents a day?
"Lock her up, lock her up", and promises to put "Crooked Hillary" in jail in his first 100 days was transformed almost instantly to " We should congratulate Hillary for being such a great person"?! Wasn't locking up Hillary one of your campaign promises?
But, the hillbilly Walmart crowd will stand behind their man, and find ways to blame everyone else for what he fails to deliver on.
Well Well, what will be interesting will be to watch the infighting that occurs within the Republican Party. I much rather have watched it if Hilary won though. Who will win, the Rednecks who supported Trump that really think White people are losing their country, want the wall built, want illegals deported, Muslims Crucified, US out of NATO, No sort of Trade deal, or Fundamentalist Government? Vs the Traditional Plutocrats who want to eliminate all taxes for the rich while letting them stash as much money as they want tax free, hire overseas and eliminate any watchdog regulation that keeps our food, water, and air safe for us. In the middle were the Moderates who have a strong fiscal background but realize the world is changing and understand a weird concept called science and actually want to get something done in Government. Who will survive?
My guess the moderates will get hunted down and shot just like the remaining Liberal Republicans were during Reagan. You also have to wonder will a Trump be a take charge man, or sit in his penthouse will his advisers run the show in his name like Reagan/G.W. Bush?
Ryan and McConnell didn’t campaign for them, what will happen to their leaderships – I hear there’s a fight brewing?
A Mexican friend just came back from visiting his Mexican Family in Mexico. The word there is if Trump starts deporting and builds the wall, there are a number of American Corporations in Mexico enjoying huge Tax Breaks in Subsidies, if Trump starts those breaks are going away.
Let’s see who blinks
Erik
Anonymous: You're right about Trump being an expert media manipulator who knows exactly who to pander to. NASCAR and Honey Boo Boo are In; effete intellectuals who watch PBS and can speak in coherent sentences -- shit out of luck.
Erik: I'm looking forward to the infighting among the GOP. Trump has taken so many stands on every issue in the past year, the best hope is that he just wants the glory -- the trophy -- of being president, and won't follow through with pushing some of his more outrageous proposals.
If Trump does get too outrageous -- the tens of millions of people who voted against him are all still here, and we're not about to just roll over.
Unfortunately, as people get older, they become more conservative. Today's young progressives become tomorrow's conservatives.
Jerry: That's true, but there's conservatism based on free-enterprise and "practicality" rhetoric, and there's the racist xenophobic "take our country back to 1850" Tea Party conservatism that's been rearing its head since the 1990s (or earlier). GOP think tanks have spent decades perfecting the code words and dog whistles that resonate with racists and malcontents who blame everything on women's rights and political correctness. A GOP politician can just drop a few buzz words -- Jesus, the American Flag, Freedom, "the way things used to be" -- and millions of aging white resentment-filled bigots will pick up the message loud and clear.
That's the kind of conservatism that will die out as the old white resenters start decreasing in numbers. A lot of younger and more diverse voters might turn conservative, but they'll have to be convinced on the merits of the each issue. I doubt if they'll just go "ah yes, 'political correctness,' I know what you're saying [wink]."
Tom, I just read an interesting article by Garrison Keeler. I feel a bit more optimistic after reading it. Note - I said a BIT more.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-voters-will-not-like-what-happens-next/2016/11/09/e346ffc2-a67f-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html
well....sometimes you wait until you are terribly sick before you go to the doctor.
AmeriKa is now one sick puppy. The RNC is not happy ...and needs fixing.
The DNC is inept and needs to get it's shit together.
Screw the Doc.....we need to go the emergency room.
jadedj: Excellent article; thanks for the link. I also feel more optimistic now -- just a bit more.
okjimm: Not a good prognosis, is it. If we go to the emergency room, we'll have to do it soon. As soon as President Trump gets rid of that commie Obamacare, the ER will probably start requiring payment in advance.
And we continue to place our fate in these manipulative organizations like the RNC, DNC or any other political party? Is it really the lack of a "good leader", or the concept that we should put our future in the hands of one person that is flawed?
What about us?
Anonymous: I think a lot more people have come around to that same conclusion in the last few days. Both parties are corporate-owned and -operated; with the Democrats seeming like the lesser of 2 evils because they have nicer slogans. People will have to start zeroing in on the issues that are the most important to them, and fight tooth and nail, instead of thinking "oh, the Democrats will take care of that for me."
I heard this on the radio the other day:
"Howard and his colleagues looked at bot activity during each of the three presidential debates. And they found bot activity blossomed after every debate. At its peak, about one in three tweets about the debate was generated by a bot.
Also, the ratio of pro-Trump bots to pro-Clinton bots changed over time. For the first two debates, Clinton bots were outnumbered with four pro-Trump bots for every pro-Clinton bot.
By the final debate, that gap had widened — there were seven pro- Trump bots for every pro-Clinton bot.
But these political bots often don't identify themselves as bots. They pretend to be human users. And they're often used for negative campaigning, or to spread misinformation. They will target specific users and harass them, intimidate them, or try to choke off a conversation.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/political-bots-misinformation-1.3840300
You get what we have when half the eligible voters do even bother to vote. It is not going to get fixed until all voters get involved, at least involved enough to vote. Those are the people to blame first!
Anonymous: Interesting article. Either Samantha Bee or Trevor Noah was talking about that same thing, a week or two ago. But they didn't go into anywhere near as much detail as this article. I guess these "interesting times" are about to get even more interesting.
Jerry: Midterm/non-presidential elections are the most notorious for voter apathy. Older white conservatives always vote -- according to conventional wisdom -- no matter how "insignificant" the election is. Democrats/liberals only vote if it's a presidential year, and then only if it's convenient. That has a lot to do with why off-year elections almost always go Republican. This has to change ASAP or we'll keep getting what we've been getting.
Lee has a valid "Blame Game" clip in today's piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Xi8MX9wB0
About those social media bots. If 33% of the conversations on Face Book and Twitter, amounting to many MILLIONS of comments, are just robots employed by those working to influence the vote, where does that leave so-called democracy?
Vote on it? Based on what? What I was told by a robot masquerading as a "friend of a friend"?
I never heard of Lee Camp before, but he totally nails it. Thanks for the link.
I don't know what to say about the 33% of all Facebook conversations that are just bot-generated. It's sort of a high tech futuristic version of John Prine's "and all your friends turn out to be insurance salesmen."
Here is Thom on the new Cabinet appointees, and Standing Rock topics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsOQhA6S_Vw
And another with Richard Wolff, that speaks to where we are headed, economically:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC9okUjdBEI
Now I hear Trump talk about Congressional Term limits, here we go again. Remember Gingrich during the "Contract with America" period? They just voted in the term limits then went to bar laughing their fool heads off while any 5th grade civics student can tell you what the court had to waste their time to tell them:
You need a Constitutional Amendment!
I wonder how many of their faithful fell for that?
Erik
I looked up Wolff's educational background. BA from Harvard. MA from Stanford. Two MAs from Yale. PhD from Yale.
And he tells us of both the cyclical pattern of "economic crises" that transfer wealth to an increasingly smaller and smaller number of people. Remember earlier this year, when it was announced 62 individuals (mostly Americans) own more wealth than half the population of the planet?
That people are so deep in debt as they try to live the "American Dream" of consumerism, and are hesitant to take on more debt, the banking systems are now offering negative interest rates. An obvious house of cards, standing only on the manipulated beliefs and faith of participants. Any wonder the two candidates were billionaires, millionaires and well established members of the financial elite?
Anybody think the US factories that abandoned their country and families, will be moving manufacturing back to the US any time soon? Have you seen the list of those companies?
Anonymous: So much for Trump's promise that he would "drain the swamp." He's just refilling the swamp with his own fox-guarding-the-henhouse appointees. Maybe he'll flipflop on some of his other campaign promises too. So far he's decided to keep certain portions of Obamacare, and he seems to be less gung ho about deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants.
As far as the Dakota Access Pipeline goes, we're fucked. I don't think the person in the video mentioned one of the other reasons DAPL is getting so little media coverage: a lot of American politicians and VIPs (including Trump) are stockholders in the company that owns DAPL.
I guess Richard Wolff knows what he's talking about, with that many degrees and credentials. Pretty grim outlook. So Hillary wanted to wait until after the election to raise interest rates -- big surprise. And no doubt, the Trump voters who think Trump is going to bring back millions of manufacturing jobs -- riiight.
Erik: Unfortunately, I think 5th grade -- or any public school grade -- civics classes have gone the way of the one-room schoolhouse and the stage coach. This makes the public so much easier to fool.
Question for you and the Group: Did any Republican express any outrage over the leaked hacked Democratic emails, given how they were obtained and it could have been them? All I ever saw was gleeful cackling at the contents.
Erik
Erik: Nope, no outrage, just the selective "outrage" that they're so good at turning on and off like a light switch. It's beyond ironic, when you consider that the Right has been paranoid about "Russia!" "the Communists!" "the Kremlin is masterminding this!" since the 1950s; and now that it's actually true and confirmed, their only reaction is "hee hee hee, they nailed Hillary!"
Those people stand for absolutely Zero.
And now there is talk that Assange is looking to Trump for a pardon?
I have been curious of the stories that Russia was involved in the email releases, and trying to influence the elections. Here is what I found in the NYTimes:
"The official accusation against Russia comes after anonymous American intelligence officials told The New York Times in July that they had “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the hack of the D.N.C., which led to the resignation of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat, as committee chairwoman, amid evidence that the committee was favoring Mrs. Clinton over her competitor for the party nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont."
Not exactly "proof", and sounding very familiar. "Anonymous American intelligence sources"? The same ones who assured us Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and was preparing to attack the US at any moment?
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