US Elections - From Russia with Love

[mormont]

To be fair, what McBigski is saying is not that the media currently hold Trump to account, but that they would do so once he were elected President. And they might very well try to do that. They'd have no more need for a 'horse-race' narrative, after all.

What he doesn't do is offer any reason (convincing or otherwise) to believe that the media wouldn't hold Clinton to account in the same way if she were elected. There's also the question of whether media attempts to hold President Trump to account would have any effect. If Trump has shown one thing, it's that he doesn't care for media efforts to hold him to account. His attitude to the media is clear - he wants to reign in their influence. So counting on that influence to restrain him seems... naive.

[butterbumps!]

Altherion, what is your incentive for writing the kinds of posts like the one quoted below and the one wondering whether there's a better man behind Trump's odious public "act?"   I'm genuinely asking-- why are you holding out hope that Trump is somehow less disgraceful than he's shown us?   

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

He obviously can stand still and focus on one thing for a long time when he needs to or he would not be able to give the longest acceptance speech in four decades. Egotistical and spiteful are unpleasant, but hardly disqualifying -- quite a few politicians are thus. I've read his old interviews and while he undoubtedly likes to boast, I don't see anything there that is particularly unreasonable. Furthermore, he has been interacting with the elites for decades. If he really had obvious psychological issues rather than eccentricities, they would not have lent him the massive amounts of money he lost in the bankruptcies.

Ok, so you say these interviews don't make him seem unreasonable.   But how many interviews in general have you read that make their subjects seem utterly reprehensible and unreasonable?   If it was common practice, no one would ever agree to an interview with that reporter or publication.    

Despite that, we do know that he's a misogynist from various comments he's made over the years.  We also know he's deeply problematic and petty because of his long history of viciously and totally enforcing confidentiality agreements (I don't think most other companies with non disclosure policies are as litigious about it as he's famous for being).  We know he's a con man, because of things like Trump University.  We also know that he historically shirks responsibility, as he has a pattern of not paying his workers.    We know he's incredibly reckless and not a fraction of the genius businessman he claims to be because of the string of bankruptcies he's left behind.  And I could keep going with this.    All of which is totally consistent with his public persona.  Are you suggesting that all of these actions of his are also an act?   

I wish NBC would start releasing the unedited Apprentices, as I've heard he's even more odious and outrageous in what was left out.

But ok, even if this guy is only Joffrey Baratheon Reborn in public (but has a really good heart behind the facade), why in god's name does that matter???      He's fear-mongering.  He's normalizing racism, misogyny, Islamaphobia, ablism, and xenophobia.  He's glorifying bullying.  Do you honestly believe that the fact that someone with his public persona-- facade or not-- so close to the presidency, is not extremely damaging already?  

[Inigima]

7 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Dude, we've known that since Nazi Germany.

Sorry, what?

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

What he doesn't do is offer any reason (convincing or otherwise) to believe that the media wouldn't hold Clinton to account in the same way if she were elected. There's also the question of whether media attempts to hold President Trump to account would have any effect. If Trump has shown one thing, it's that he doesn't care for media efforts to hold him to account. His attitude to the media is clear - he wants to reign in their influence. So counting on that influence to restrain him seems... naive.

I think the news media are typically hostile to anyone named Clinton, and the Clintons have in response become more secretive, which makes media more hostile...it's a vicious circle. In any case, there is no way the newsies are backing off Clinton if she wins; on the contrary, they'll likely be tougher than ever.

I thought Clinton's acceptance speech was solid, and to my mind she really got going about a third of the way in when she talked about coming together to solve problems. I think that "Stonger Together" isn't just a campaign theme but a theme in her life, so it's to be expected that talking about it makes her natural passion come through.

Also, that "seventy-odd minutes...and I do mean odd" was great. The library was open!

[Xray the Enforcer]

21 minutes ago, Inigima said:

Sorry, what?

It's a sarcastic riff on an idiotic thing that Jill Stein said in the earlier-linked article. edit: here's the link again: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/jill-steins-plan-to-stop-trump-by-electing-him.html

[mcbigski]

5 hours ago, Wethers said:

Huh?  I, for some reason, still have Yahoo mail and not Gmail, and Yahoo sent me nothing about either Clinton or Trump any time during the last 2 weeks.  I checked my spam folder as well, though I doubt anything directly from my mail provider would go there.  

They weren't sending emails.  Just using the same notification I would see if I had gotten an email to get my attention for a pro Clinton message push on my phone.  I expect them to have a bias.  That's not the real issue.  My main frustration is that yahoo mail is taking what was a decent app and degrading my user experience to spoon feed superficial political crap.  The icon for new mail is now also simultaneously the icon for occasional agitprop.  (Reminds me of the windows 10 push where x-ing out the popup became agreeing to install.)

 

[LongRider]

21 hours ago, Inigima said:

Hello!

I link this whenever Reagan comes up. (The mini-essay is the important thing, not the comic.)

http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly040609a.htm

THANK YOU!  I really enjoyed that.  I remember Reagan, a bigger shit bag there never was.  

edt; the comic was great too, they can't bury Reagan deep enough.

[sologdin]

16 hours ago, Kalbear said:

But they're US citizens being sent away. If they're being repatriated, they're being sent to their own country...which is the US. 

Again, I know of no way for the government to remove US citizenship from a US citizen currently. A citizen can by changing their citizenship (there is no way to get dual citizenship if you are already a US citizen - once you claim another citizenship you volunteer to renounce your US citizenship) but the US can't do it by force. 

there's a denaturalization process. it has a finite list of grounds (terrorism, dishonorable discharge from military, &c.).  likely they'll try to add things like 'swarthy' and 'anchor baby' to the list.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Clinton's speech was better than I expected. It wasn't a great speech, but it was probably the best speech she could have given. She did an effective job of undercutting Trump and showing how unprepared he is for the job while also doing a pretty good job of humanizing herself. Hands down the best line of the night was:

Quote

I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men –  the ones moved by fear and pride .

 

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

Altherion, what is your incentive for writing the kinds of posts like the one quoted below and the one wondering whether there's a better man behind Trump's odious public "act?"   I'm genuinely asking-- why are you holding out hope that Trump is somehow less disgraceful than he's shown us?

I am trying to understand the dynamics of the current election. The narrative presented by the vast majority of the American media is highly unsatisfying for what I believe to be fairly obvious reasons. I write posts like the one you quoted because I would like to hear some distinct opinions on the matter similar to the Greenwald article I posted above (although on this board, the responses I mainly get consist mainly of regurgitation of the media narrative).

Quote

But ok, even if this guy is only Joffrey Baratheon Reborn in public (but has a really good heart behind the facade), why in god's name does that matter???      He's fear-mongering.  He's normalizing racism, misogyny, Islamaphobia, ablism, and xenophobia.  He's glorifying bullying.  Do you honestly believe that the fact that someone with his public persona-- facade or not-- so close to the presidency, is not extremely damaging already?

This is where it gets interesting. The list of insulting words which you've just leveled at him (which, incidentally, is a repetition of a very common refrain from the media) is somewhat misleading, but it is not entirely baseless. Trump has in fact spoken in a way which goes against established norms... and, surprisingly, a substantial fraction of the electorate not only did not care, but actually rewarded him for it. I am ambiguous about whether what he is doing is good or bad. Certainly, the pure ideas behind some of the things he is attacking sound like they would be part of a society better than ours. However, the implementation of some of them in our society is such that they only marginally benefit the groups they claim to help and are quite likely detrimental to society as a whole.

Basically, I'm not convinced that Trump's deviations from the norm are, on average, bad. A few of the things he has said are offensive to me, but on the whole, I don't regard this as worse than the bland politicians who aim to never say anything controversial and thus very rarely say anything worthwhile at all.

[butterbumps!]

21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I am trying to understand the dynamics of the current election. The narrative presented by the vast majority of the American media is highly unsatisfying for what I believe to be fairly obvious reasons. I write posts like the one you quoted because I would like to hear some distinct opinions on the matter similar to the Greenwald article I posted above (although on this board, the responses I mainly get consist mainly of regurgitation of the media narrative).

I can't address all of this right now but how on earth can you chalk these allegations and characterization a up to the media?     He-- himself-- presents himself this way.    He clearly believes that this "persona" is of great value and/ or virtue.   "The media" is not running his Twitter account!   Is trump also part of this media conspiracy against him?   You are basically suggesting that trump could be pulling off a Prestige-level deception of his apparently more palatable inner self, despite decades suggesting the contrary.    

That article you quoted stated that these people who follow trump are powerless and legitimately fucked over by the system: The reason they resonated is that people have been so fucked by the prevailing order in such deep and fundamental and enduring ways that they can’t imagine that anything is worse than preservation of the status quo. You have this huge portion of the populace in both the U.K. and the US that is so angry and so helpless that they view exploding things without any idea of what the resulting debris is going to be to be preferable to having things continue

Are these people actually worse off and powerless?     Or is their feeling this way the product of thinking only in binaries and seeing the world as zero sum, the idea that if things are better for previously oppressed classes it must be worse for them?   As trump supporters have been known to point out the average income for a trump supporter is apparently higher than for Hillary. 

on the rest of your post I honestly can't believe that you question whether his campaign of fear hate and hypocrisy is "bad" for the country.   

[Altherion]

3 minutes ago, butterbumps! said:

I can't address all of this right now but how on earth can you chalk these allegations and characterization a up to the media?     He-- himself-- presents himself this way.    He clearly believes that this "persona" is of great value and/ or virtue.   "The media" is not running his Twitter account!   Is trump also part of this media conspiracy against him?   You are basically suggesting that trump could be pulling off a Prestige-level deception of his apparently more palatable inner self, despite decades suggesting the contrary.  

No, Trump is most certainly deliberately presenting himself as a buffoon and the persona does have great value whether it is close to how he would normally behave or not. The media narrative I am referring to is the idea of the election as a fairy tale reenactment wherein the fool somehow triumphs over supposedly smarter individuals. I do not see it that way. If you consider only the Republican primary, Trump made quite a few choices which were contrary to the prevailing wisdom and turned out to be quite effective.

Quote

Are these people actually worse off and powerless?     Or is their feeling this way the product of thinking only in binaries and seeing the world as zero sum, the idea that if things are better for previously oppressed classes it must be worse for them?

They are actually worse off and powerless. Furthermore, the previously oppressed classes are not materially better off as a whole. Most of them are still badly off and powerless (although a small number of individuals may have joined the elite).

Quote

on the rest of your post I honestly can't believe that you question whether his campaign of fear hate and hypocrisy is "bad" for the country.

The hatred is there independently of Trump and is almost entirely harmless in the form that he channels it. If you look at history, it can get much, much worse than that (and quite likely will if there is no meaningful change in the short to medium term).

[Mexal]

3 minutes ago, Altherion said:

No, Trump is most certainly deliberately presenting himself as a buffoon and the persona does have great value whether it is close to how he would normally behave or not. The media narrative I am referring to is the idea of the election as a fairy tale reenactment wherein the fool somehow triumphs over supposedly smarter individuals. I do not see it that way. If you consider only the Republican primary, Trump made quite a few choices which were contrary to the prevailing wisdom and turned out to be quite effective.

If deliberately means "Trump is being myself" then you're right. If you mean it's a deliberate choice and it is different from how he would normally act, then there is absolutely no evidence from the past 30 years to suggest that.

[Wethers]

3 hours ago, mcbigski said:

They weren't sending emails.  Just using the same notification I would see if I had gotten an email to get my attention for a pro Clinton message push on my phone.  I expect them to have a bias.  That's not the real issue.  My main frustration is that yahoo mail is taking what was a decent app and degrading my user experience to spoon feed superficial political crap.  The icon for new mail is now also simultaneously the icon for occasional agitprop.  (Reminds me of the windows 10 push where x-ing out the popup became agreeing to install.)

 

Again - I have Yahoo mail and I use both my laptop and my phone to access it.  I never got anything like that, pro- or con- Clinton or Trump, and a couple other people in my office that use Yahoo for personal email (for some reason, we should switch to Gmail but for inertia) also got nothing.  Suffice it to say, not everyone is getting the notifications you are.

Perhaps Yahoo does targeted pushes of notifications at people they think are interested and based on some metadata related to your web activity?  Mistakenly targeted in this case.  Others might be getting Trump notifications, or perhaps did during the RNC.

[SkynJay]

3 hours ago, mcbigski said:

They weren't sending emails.  Just using the same notification I would see if I had gotten an email to get my attention for a pro Clinton message push on my phone.  I expect them to have a bias.  That's not the real issue.  My main frustration is that yahoo mail is taking what was a decent app and degrading my user experience to spoon feed superficial political crap.  The icon for new mail is now also simultaneously the icon for occasional agitprop.  (Reminds me of the windows 10 push where x-ing out the popup became agreeing to install.)

 

I got notifications from Yahoo during both conventions.  As I ignored them all I can't say if they leaned left or right.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

5 minutes ago, Wethers said:

Again - I have Yahoo mail and I use both my laptop and my phone to access it.  I never got anything like that, pro- or con- Clinton or Trump, and a couple other people in my office that use Yahoo for personal email (for some reason, we should switch to Gmail but for inertia) also got nothing.  Suffice it to say, not everyone is getting the notifications you are.

Perhaps Yahoo does targeted pushes of notifications at people they think are interested and based on some metadata related to your web activity?  Mistakenly targeted in this case.  Others might be getting Trump notifications, or perhaps did during the RNC.

 Yeah, I think that probably has something to do with it. I was getting a bunch of Trump notifications from Yahoo up to the convention, and Bernie stuff when he was still eligible in the primary. I imagine it has something to with the stories you're searching/reading. 

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

No, Trump is most certainly deliberately presenting himself as a buffoon and the persona does have great value whether it is close to how he would normally behave or not. The media narrative I am referring to is the idea of the election as a fairy tale reenactment wherein the fool somehow triumphs over supposedly smarter individuals. I do not see it that way. If you consider only the Republican primary, Trump made quite a few choices which were contrary to the prevailing wisdom and turned out to be quite effective.

I am honestly perplexed at how you've come to the conclusion that Trump's "presentation" of himself as a buffoon is somehow divorced from his actual personality, which is to say, that it's far, far more likely that he's actually just a buffoon. 

Your entire premise that he's not actually a buffoon appears to be based on the incredibly tenuous assumption that if he weren't a buffoon, somehow people wouldn't invest money into his projects. There seems to me to be no actual evidence being offered in support of your premise - that people are somehow unable or unwilling to invest money foolishly and/or that it's always foolish to invest your money with a buffoon - because neither seem to me to be intuitively correct, and there seems like plenty of empirical evidence to suggest both that large numbers of people invest their money foolishly, and that sometimes it pays off to invest your money with a buffoon, because sometimes even buffoons make money (see, for example, the cast of the Jersey Shore). 

If you're interested in a perspective on Trump from someone outside of the mainstream, you might give Sam Harris a listen. Harris is a neuroscientist who has gotten himself into lots of trouble with other liberals (with whom he largely identifies) for his positions on profiling, torture, and radical Islam. He talks about the idea that Trump might be "faking" his public stupidity, but ultimately rejects it because of the remarkable consistency of Trump's behavior over time, and the difficulty of faking the level of ignorance that Trump has shown. I doubt it will convince you, but you haven't presented anything to suggest that your position on this issue is based on anything other than magical thinking. 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

The Rev Barber takes it to church- 

Khizr Khan humbles us- 

 

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

14 hours ago, alguien said:

Haven't watched much of tonight, but from what I saw, and maybe I'm just an old softy, but I found the speech by the father of the fallen Muslim marine to be moving. 

That was definitely very moving - an exception to an otherwise dull night. Although the power of the speech was not because the father was a good speaker. He wasn't. He did have a compelling story and the overwhelming support of the crowd, though. 

One one of the most interesting (and perhaps concerning) things about the DNC was  how the Democrats are trying to position themselves as the party of national security and muscular foreign policy. Some of the speeches given at the DNC sound like they could have been written by the Project for the New American Century. Some of the delegates on the floor have been very vocal in their opposition to these speakers (Leon Panetta was practically booed off the stage).

I think it may have been a real missed opportunity for Sanders not have had really any foreign policy platform during the primary. His economic positions forced the Clinton camp to make some serious compromises on those issues, but the total lack of pushback on Clinton's foreign policy agenda has swung the Democrats far to the right on this issue. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Let's accept for a moment Altherion's premise that Trump is playing a character and doesn't mean most of what he says. Does that not beg the question of which is worse; to be an angry racist who spews vile beliefs or to be the kind of person who isn't an angry racist, but is willing to look out into a crowd of angry racists and prey on their hate and fear and turn them into a mob for your own gain?