U.S. Politics: Alabama Jones and the Template of Doom

[Inigima]

Funny you guys should mention Palin. Her son was just arrested for beating the shit out of her husband: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-alaska-palin-20171218-story.html

[Zorral]

56 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Assuming we don't blow ourselves up or cook the planet to a crisp, I think future historians will marvel at how we managed to elect such an utter orange buffoon as president. And I think there is a good chance that they will trace super ultra conservative nuttery back to that era. It was kind of like the golden era of conservative nuttery, before it morphed into something more even sinister - the alt right. 

It actually turned the point with Gingrich and the tea party in the Clinton era -- because the White House belonged to THEM and nobody else!  how could a Clinton inhabit the hallowed bedrooms where Ronnie and Nancy slept? HOW HOW HOW?????  Especially when GHB got elected to the WH after them??????? That's how a Sarah Palin could get the VP slot on a McCain ticket -- and where the eff were HIS brains at the time?

But then, where were the media's brains?  They adored her!  Papers sold! Eyeballs everywhere!

BTW, her son has been arrested for robbery -- break-in -- and assault, back in the town where she was mayor.

 

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, S John said:

I remember in 2006 or 2007 or so listening to Jones sometimes over the internet at work and a coworker and I would laugh about how much of a kook he was. 

Yeah, back in 2006-2007 I had a lot of stuff going on and just really don''t recall either Jones or Beck that early. Neither one really got on my radar screen until about 2009-2010. Of course, I was familiar with the usual conservative buffoons like Hannity, Limbaugh, and OReally. But, Jones and Beck seemed like they took nutty to a whole different level.

[Rippounet]

32 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Historians in the U.S. or in France? Because I could totally see the latter already forgetting about her, but the former sure haven't, though her role has shrunken quite a bit.

Ha ha, yeah, you got me there, the guys I can hang out with are indeed French historians.
Though to be fair -to them- I think they seem to have forgotten Palin, but most of them have their own narrow field of expertise, and because everyone's field is impacted by Trump on some level or the other there's just too much work to talk about her ; I wouldn't presume to say that she has indeed been forgotten.
Seriously, Trump's presidency is only a year old, and I'm already seeing entire books being published about it. And I'm talking serious scholarly work. The man provides so much material that it's hard to keep track of everything.

32 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

As for your examples, yes you have a point, but there was still away to justify their rises in some regards. I really can't say that for Trump. He's the biggest con in American political history, and that's saying something. And I don't think he could have existed in the way that he does today without Palin. She's the turning point when the Establishment began to lose their control over the party to the fire breathers in the base. It would be a mistake to view her as a mere footnote in American conservatism. She's the one that made the base feel like they could utter their deepest, darkest thoughts into existence. And that's what in large part gave rise to Trump. 

All good points. I like your perspective. I guess I'm the one who underestimates Palin's importance. Though to be fair, if everyone had remembered her popularity, Trump might have been seen as the danger he is from the start, i.e. his election would have seemed far more credible before it happened.

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Rippounet said:

All good points. I like your perspective. I guess I'm the one who underestimates Palin's importance. 

Like Trump, I just think Palin might be more of symptom than a cause. It's just seems to me the Republican Party and conservatism in general had an extensional crises that it just couldn't deal with, after the presidency of Dubya imploded and stuff conservatives advocated and believed in went up in flames with Dubya's disastrous presidency and the onset of the financial crises.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I agree with what you wrote, but there's something ironically hypocritical about the bolded. What they're doing with the tax bill right now is literally everything they claimed that the Democrats were doing with the ACA. And of course their claims about the ACA were for the most part all lies. 

True, but I think Palin is the line of demarcation. She's the one who made being a crazy hack conservative the norm.

Palin didn't just set the bar for crazy hack conservatism, but also for lack of intellectual heft conservatism. 

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Speaking of Palin, decades from now, when historians cover this period in time, will they point to Palin as the turning point when American conservatives went absolutely insane? 

They will point to this very moment.

 

[Week]

44 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Palin didn't just set the bar for crazy hack conservatism, but also for lack of intellectual heft conservatism. 

Some goodies -- relevant to Russia:

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border." --Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS's Katie Couric, Sept. 24, 2008 (Watch video clip)

 

"Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke." --Sarah Palin, on how President Obama should deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, CPAC speech, March 8, 2014

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, S John said:

I remember in 2006 or 2007 or so listening to Jones sometimes over the internet at work and a coworker and I would laugh about how much of a kook he was.

Didn't Jones get his start on a very late night radio talk show out of Nevada?  He talked to truck drivers and other folks who are up at night about the mentioned aliens and lizard people and other crazy stuff. 

[ThinkerX]

Since we are going down memory lane here...

There was a middle-aged British woman who posted for a while at another board I participate in about the time the presidential election campaign got underway.  That lady had serious 'anger management' issues.  When Trump announced his candidacy, there was the usual spate of posts about how he was 'joke candidate,' 'unfit to hold office' and so on.  Her comment was different, and stuck with me ever since.  She said, flat out, that 'Donald Trump would be the next president of the US, because he was the president the US deserved.' 

[GAROVORKIN]

50 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Since we are going down memory lane here...

There was a middle-aged British woman who posted for a while at another board I participate in about the time the presidential election campaign got underway.  That lady had serious 'anger management' issues.  When Trump announced his candidacy, there was the usual spate of posts about how he was 'joke candidate,' 'unfit to hold office' and so on.  Her comment was different, and stuck with me ever since.  She said, flat out, that 'Donald Trump would be the next president of the US, because he was the president the US deserved.' 

   When he first ran , I think most people, myself included,  figured that he wouldn't stand a chance against  seasoned politicians. He would run for a few weeks , participate in a debate or two, make a few talking  points, garner some media attention and then be the first to drop out. And what happened? Something completely unexpected.  I couldn't in my wildest dreams, imagine him  becoming President. 

 

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

   When he first ran , I think most people, myself included,  figured that he wouldn't stand a chance against  seasoned politicians. He would run for a few weeks , participate in a debate or two, make a few talking  points, garner some media attention and then be the first to drop out. And what happened? Something completely unexpected.  I couldn't in my wildest dreams, imagine him  becoming President. 

 

I could and so did a lot of the very smart, paying attention people I know.  We all lived in NYC though, it seemed.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, maarsen said:

Palin didn't just set the bar for crazy hack conservatism, but also for lack of intellectual heft conservatism. 

Ecxcept -- you all forget that it was MCCAIN who gave it to her and gave her to us.  Where were his brains and why are we feeling sorry for him (I'm not -- not a bit -- he's got way too much to answer for that's downright evil).

[Darth Richard II]

I always assume he threw a dart at a list of names.

[ThinkerX]

Jill Stein of the Green Party is now caught up in the Senate probe for collusion with Russia.  Uhh...What?  Did somebody spike the Senate Committees coffee or something? 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-intel-committee-investigating-jill-stein-campaign-for-possible-collusion-with-the-russians/ar-BBH0szp?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580

[ThinkerX]

9 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I always assume he threw a dart at a list of names.

When Palin was announced as McCain's VP pick, my reaction - which I wasn't shy about sharing - was...

'McCain just carried Alaska...and lost the election for president.'

Palin's rise to power came about because nobody cared about boring local level politics.  That apathy and a bit of church backing got her into the Mayor's office.  More apathy and a dismal slate of other candidates got her the governorship. But, it became apparent right off she had no idea how the state government actually worked, plus she kept getting involved in petty feuds.    It kind of surprises me that her abrupt resignation from governor without good reason (the announcement came down to 'it's too much work') didn't count against her later on.

 

[Altherion]

15 hours ago, Rippounet said:

So people end up supporting Trump because the Democrats didn't go far enough?
It's not just illogical, it's actually just plain dumb.
Yeah, it's true the Democrats have moved much closer (too close) to the center. They're still closer to the left than the Republicans though.
If you don't vote as far to the left as you can for economic reasons, then how can you blame the Democrats for slowly abandoning these issues?
People forget that politics is not a public service. If you don't vote according to your interests then you can't expect politicians to take them into account. At best you can expect lip service from them.

You are assuming that voting for the left-most candidate actually makes a difference... but remember that a candidate is free to move to the center once he or she is elected. Furthermore, the more locked in you are in voting for the lesser evil, the freer said lesser evil feels to move towards the greater one. Consider, for example, Bill Clinton, who signed quite a few major pieces of legislation (e.g. on trade, welfare and finance) which we now can be quite certain were neither leftist nor in the interests of quite a few people who voted for him.

The real constituency of most politicians are their donors and the latter will almost always push for as much as possible. The elected candidate will comply to the point where the detriment to their career is no longer smaller than the benefit they get from the funding. Barring somebody with inhuman charisma or perhaps mind control technology, you will not convince or coerce the 1% by voting for the less distasteful of the two alternatives they present to you -- all that will happen is that this alternative will move further and further towards the 1% as time goes on (and the other one will move even further to keep a distance between them).

16 hours ago, Rippounet said:

You often blame "divide and conquer" politics Altherion, but have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, the reason identity politics have become so popular is that minorities were just better at organizing?

Oh, there's no doubt that they were better at organizing. Don't get me wrong, what they have managed to achieve is quite impressive. However, there is reason to believe that white people will catch up sooner rather than later.  A majority of the white population already feels that white people are discriminated against and organization should follow shortly (people like Bannon are arguably in the vanguard).

17 hours ago, Rippounet said:

You seem to see politics as a place for miracles and saviors. That's not how things work ; that's how things get romanticized after shit has happened. Anyone with a modicum of historical perspective knows that politics is a slow bottom-to-the-top movement. You need grassroot activism, solid intellectual foundations, and all that.

No, not of miracles and saviors... but not of grassroots activism and intellectual foundations either. The first two do not exist and the last two will not help you when you are playing against people with orders of magnitude more resources than you have. It's gone way, way past the point where the 1% can be outplayed that way.

[Altherion]

17 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

People like you didn’t know what it did. So they could sit there and say “both parties are the same!” You know it seem to me if you don’t like financial crises and the havoc they cause, you could bother to do a little homework.

I wouldn't call it a little homework -- the thing is over 800 pages of legalese and financial jargon. I'm sure it is interesting to people who work with such documents and it will probably prevent a crisis identical to the Great Recession, but in the grand scheme of things, it really, really doesn't matter. Anything that long is almost guaranteed to have loopholes simply by virtue of its complexity, but in this case the guarantee is ironclad because the people who are interested in loopholes had input into the document. It's only a matter of time until they find another way to gamble.

17 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Until all these “ism” are gone, you’ll never get the type of economic policies you’d like (though it seems you really don’t know what you want).

Until the economic policies I'd like come around, the "isms" will never be gone and in fact I expect them to grow stronger as inequality increases.

17 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

And finally, if economic inequality is your thing, you would realize that a good deal of it has both a racial and gender angle. And if you don’t think along those axis, from time to time, then it seems to me your not all that serious about fighting it.

It has these angles, but they are about the distribution or resources within the 99% whereas by far the most serious problem is the runaway wealth of the 1% (and actually the 0.1% and 0.01%). It doesn't matter what race or gender the latter are -- as long as they continue becoming richer faster than everyone else, we're going to have problems including (but not limited to) fighting between various groups.

[ants]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

You are assuming that voting for the left-most candidate actually makes a difference... but remember that a candidate is free to move to the center once he or she is elected. Furthermore, the more locked in you are in voting for the lesser evil, the freer said lesser evil feels to move towards the greater one. Consider, for example, Bill Clinton, who signed quite a few major pieces of legislation (e.g. on trade, welfare and finance) which we now can be quite certain were neither leftist nor in the interests of quite a few people who voted for him.

The real constituency of most politicians are their donors and the latter will almost always push for as much as possible. The elected candidate will comply to the point where the detriment to their career is no longer smaller than the benefit they get from the funding. Barring somebody with inhuman charisma or perhaps mind control technology, you will not convince or coerce the 1% by voting for the less distasteful of the two alternatives they present to you -- all that will happen is that this alternative will move further and further towards the 1% as time goes on (and the other one will move even further to keep a distance between them).

So your response to everyone's evidence of how the Democrats actually did vote and pass legislation differently, that hurt the 1%, is to shrug and claim they all follow their donors so it doesn't matter?

And then use Bill Clinton as an example, when Obama raised taxes on the rich to pay for healthcare for the poor the last time the Democrats had control. 

[lokisnow]

Palin and trump are both symptoms of a disease not the disease itself.

and the disease is our desire for conflict in all arenas of our existence. For instance, The media desires conflict and so it gives both sides equal credence. Forty years of the new deal being completely successful because 2+2=4? that’s boring the other side has the theory that 2-9=1,000,000! Shiny! Amazing! Truthful! Conflict! It must be equally valid because it is the other side! One side can’t just be correct, there’s no story there. 

Additionally, everyone wants to their shiny thumbprint on history, so strengthening evidence based elements of the social contract  that are proven to work is less interesting to human politicians and the electorates they serve than coming up with something they can pee on (and smell) to mark their territory and say “I made this GREAT new thing look how awesome”.

This is functionally a highly fractured way to operate society and doomed to mostly result in (increasingly) suboptimal outcomes (because for instance sewage in the street spreads disease (or means you’re drunk)). But we all think the shit and piss smells so sweet when it flatters our preconceptions and bias towards new n shiny.

additionally, reagan deregulated our media, meaning the fairness doctrine went kaput and as a result Insanity now rules the day for half the country. Didn’t help that we went from 3 TV channels to 3000 channels either.