US Politics - We're through the looking glass here people

[TrackerNeil]

I have a co-worker with a "Ben Carson for President" bumper sticker in her cubicle.  I made mention of it one day and she, an older woman maybe in her mid to late 50s, said, "I'm just tired of people calling me a racist because I vote Republican."

Classic.

[Fragile Bird]

Trump has just issued a press release saying that immigration into the US by Muslims should be banned, until the USA can determine why there is such hatred of the USA by Muslims.

 

ETA:  My bad.  I was wrong.  He has called for a ban of all Muslims entering the USA.

By Sky News US Team

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for a "complete and total ban" on Muslims entering the United States.

 

The outspoken billionaire's campaign released a statement on Monday, saying his proposal is in response to the level of hatred among "large segments of the Muslim population" toward Americans.

"Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension," Mr Trump said.

"Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it pose, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life."

 

More follows...

[Fragile Bird]

Maybe this has been a trick played on the media by The Onion?

[Fez]

Good. The less dog whistling and the more clear Trump is, the more likely it is that the media will finally have to confront what a large portion of the far right is like these days (look at the polls specifically of Trump supporters, they overwhelming support him on this and would go even farther). It also shows just how naive and/or ignorant other Republicans are about their base, like Rubio saying yesterday that there was no conservative push to discriminate against Muslims.

[Wise Fool]

Islamic terrorism is good for extreme right wing. This is also why Trump is surging. As people get afraid of Muslims and The Enemies Of The Nation/Party/People/White Race/West, they more eagerly vote for tough-talking authoritarians and fascists. In fact I would say that since Islamic terrorism are themselves extremely conservative, I'm not even saying that "Islamism" and right-wing groups in the west have a symbiotic relationship.... I would say that they are in fact the same thing.

There are right-wing Muslims who want to kill the gays. Right-wing Christians or atheists who do as well. Both groups are anti-democracy, anti-progress, anti-equality, anti-liberal, anti-women, etc. They're the fucking same. After Trump rises to power and starts tearing apart the Constitution you'll all see, only the allegedly constitutionalist conservatives in the US will be too busy cheering him on. All the things they've criticized Obama for allegedly doing, they themselves will do. All the things they fear Muslims doing - they themselves will do.

Somewhere in the bowels of hell, Osama bin Laden is laughing his fucking ass off.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Good. The less dog whistling and the more clear Trump is, the more likely it is that the media will finally have to confront what a large portion of the far right is like these days (look at the polls specifically of Trump supporters, they overwhelming support him on this and would go even farther). It also shows just how naive and/or ignorant other Republicans are about their base, like Rubio saying yesterday that there was no conservative push to discriminate against Muslims.

Except that the Far-Right love it when the media attacks them. It feeds their persecution complex and reaffirms their belief in the "evil liberal media."

[ThinkerX]

Trump has just issued a press release saying that immigration into the US by Muslims should be banned, until the USA can determine why there is such hatred of the USA by Muslims.

 

ETA:  My bad.  I was wrong.  He has called for a ban of all Muslims entering the USA.

 

I have read an article or two on this today.  As the articles themselves pretty much duplicate/confirm the above, I don't see much point to posting a link.  What did interest me, as is usual these days, are the comments:

The conservative crowd is eating this up.  Lots of supportive comments.  Those offering even mild criticism get denounced as traitors or dupes.  That a immigration ban based on religion has no real legal precedent and may even be illegal doesn't even register with these people.  At the same time, they are also very gung-ho about another bit of exclusionary idiocy: building a wall across the southern border to keep out undocumented immigrants and a mass deportation of those already present.  Again, Constitutional and legal issues get waved aside.  Even scarier is the conviction that many of these people have that these are majority views - that these views fail at the ballot box ONLY because of evil 'libruls' or 'libtards' working against them.    

[Fragile Bird]

I have read an article or two on this today.  As the articles themselves pretty much duplicate/confirm the above, I don't see much point to posting a link.  What did interest me, as is usual these days, are the comments:

The conservative crowd is eating this up.  Lots of supportive comments.  Those offering even mild criticism get denounced as traitors or dupes.  That a immigration ban based on religion has no real legal precedent and may even be illegal doesn't even register with these people.  At the same time, they are also very gung-ho about another bit of exclusionary idiocy: building a wall across the southern border to keep out undocumented immigrants and a mass deportation of those already present.  Again, Constitutional and legal issues get waved aside.  Even scarier is the conviction that many of these people have that these are majority views - that these views fail at the ballot box ONLY because of evil 'libruls' or 'libtards' working against them.    

And in the meantime, we are moving heaven and earth to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February, moved back from December because the new Trudeau government begrudgingly had to admit they could not bring them in by the end of December.  Now it's 10,000 by the end of December and 15,000 by the end of February, and maybe another 25,000 by the end of 2016.

I'm going to Fort Lauderdale at the end of January (for a cruise).  I wonder if I'll be asked if I'm a Muslim when I go through customs and immigration...

[Prosesskrift]

Gadaffi. Hillary chucked about his death and said "We came, I conquered," or some other PLEASE PRETEND I HAVE A PENIS bullshit.

 

I think this is why others find it hard to take you seriously in a discussion.

[Mexal]

Trump is double downing on Morning Joe right now. He sees nothing wrong with it and just defended his comments by claiming FDR, a great president, did what he did because he had to by putting Japanese in internment camps. 

If people's support for him starts to wain (polls not showing this yet), it goes to Cruz right? That's not much better.

[Fez]

Except that the Far-Right love it when the media attacks them. It feeds their persecution complex and reaffirms their belief in the "evil liberal media."

Its not for their benefit. Its for the benefit of those who are ignoring, willfully or otherwise, what the far-right has become and how large it is.

[Maithanet]

Trump is double downing on Morning Joe right now. He sees nothing wrong with it and just defended his comments by claiming FDR, a great president, did what he did because he had to by putting Japanese in internment camps. 

If people's support for him starts to wain (polls not showing this yet), it goes to Cruz right? That's not much better.

I go back and forth on whether President Trump would be preferable to President Cruz.  Trump is a lot less predictable (which makes him dangerous), whereas Cruz is just the amalgamation of everything I loathe in the Republican party. 

[Fez]

I go back and forth on whether President Trump would be preferable to President Cruz.  Trump is a lot less predictable (which makes him dangerous), whereas Cruz is just the amalgamation of everything I loathe in the Republican party. 

I'd still take Trump over Cruz. Cruz is only loathed by Republican senators, Republican house members generally seem to like him (or at least, a lot of them do). Trump is loathed by nearly all Republicans in congress. Which means that a President Cruz would have allies in Congress helping him push legislation and he'd get a fair amount of his agenda passed. President Trump would be isolated, forced to govern almost exclusively by executive order, which would either greatly limit what he can do or end up with him getting impeached over massive constitutional violations.

But its not really worth thinking about. Rubio could win the presidency, although I think Clinton is favored, but neither Trump or Cruz could. Also, I think the odds are starting to look decent that Trump would run as an independent if someone else got the nomination and I think there's starting to be a chance (still very slim however) that someone else would run as an independent if Trump got the nomination. And if either of those happen, Clinton isn't just winning she's getting a 40+ state blowout.

[Altherion]

Trump is an interesting study in what is acceptable for a politician to say. I remember the media made a huge fuss over his comments on Senator McCain (the ones challenging McCain's status as a war hero), but in the end his polls just kept rising. There were several other instances of behavior the media and mainstream representatives of both parties found outrageous... but it hasn't hurt him so far. It will be interesting to see whether this latest incident is different.

[Wise Fool]

The discussion threads on the internet concerning Trump are... quite interesting. Not for the faint of heart. The ugly side of America. Trump is feeding America's id and people are indulging in their darkest fantasies. It's disgusting and makes you feel dirty.

[TrackerNeil]

I go back and forth on whether President Trump would be preferable to President Cruz.  Trump is a lot less predictable (which makes him dangerous), whereas Cruz is just the amalgamation of everything I loathe in the Republican party. 

Wow...there's a Sophie's choice!

In general, I think that most Republican presidents govern pretty much the same way, so by that standard** I guess a Trump presidency wouldn't differ much from that of Cruz. That being said, given the political and social forces that would have be in play to make a Trump victory possible, I'm not so sure that very sensible standard would apply. If The Donald becomes president it's either because the economy utterly tanked or the Democratic nominee was discovered feasting upon the flesh of Christian babies. If it's the latter, I say Trump governs the same way as Cruz; if the former...well, it must have been one hell of a downturn, one on the scale of the Great Depression. If that is the case, I suppose anything goes. Muslims go into internment camps, Tehran is carpet-bombed and Planned Parenthood is barred from all fifty states.

**I think this standard applies to Democratic presidents as well.

[Maithanet]

I don't think that Trump is as unelectable as people are imagining.  If he were to win the Republican nomination (a real possibility) then a Democratic victory is probable, but by no means assured.  He is very popular with low-information voters, and sadly those are the majority of Americans. 

I do think that President Trump is likely to be pretty isolated from his party, and as a result less of his policies (whatever those are) are likely to be implemented by what would assuredly be a Republican congress. 

[elarte]

At this point in time, if Hillary Clinton started a press conference by sucking the stem cells out of a newborn baby and then slit the throats of a dozen endangered baby animals and bathed in their blood while promising to let her husband have sex with every 16-year-old virgin in the country, she'd still have my vote over any Republican candidate.  

[Commodore]

What Trump is proposing, even if not applied to citizens, is not logistically possible.

At best you could restrict immigration from specific majority Muslim countries that are known sources of radicals. That probably should be done, lest the US see the same radical infestation Europe has and cannot ever be rid of. It won't stop every jihadi from getting in, but it could prevent the critical mass needed to form communities that become radicalized (Dearborn will be the test case for this). We need to study how Tsarnaev/Farook became radicalized, and if it can be tied to immigration. I imagine there are thousands just like them in the US already. 

Wanting to restrict migration of people from primitive, misogynistic, violent, theocratic cultures doesn't make one a bigot. It's merely acknowledging a problematic ethos that has proven incompatible with Western pluralism. I.e., Until you get your shit straight (reformation), don't bring your problems into our house.  

 

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

I thought he was the new Hitler?

He's not nearly competent enough. More like Mussolini.

 

I think the only thing Trump could say to get people who already support him to stop, would be to insult NASCAR, or call white people who lose their jobs to immigrants losers, Doug Stanhope style.