US Politics: “How did we come to this...”

[Guy Kilmore]

9 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Going back to the topic of Lindsey Graham and other Republicans breaking from Trump. I'm so sick of seeing people praising Republicans who show the slightest amount of backbone . It's like the bullshit with Jeff Flake, he would voice his disapproval of how Trump was so rude while voting for everything that was put in front of him. I just want yell at anyone who acts like the Lincoln Project are in any way our allies because their adds are a little sassy. These are the same people who laid the path for where we are today, Trump (or someone like Trump) was always the eventual outcome. 

People need to realize that the main issue that most non-Trump aligned Republicans have is on the basis of style, not substance. Trump is doing basically everything they have ever wanted to do, but have been held back by their need to appear reasonable. All Trump has done is taken the mask off, and that is what they don't like him, he has exposed them for who they really are.

It is a hard line to walk, wanting to positively reinforce appropriate behavior, yet also keeping the truth of the person into focus.

[Ser Reptitious]

15 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Going back to the topic of Lindsey Graham and other Republicans breaking from Trump. I'm so sick of seeing people praising Republicans who show the slightest amount of backbone . It's like the bullshit with Jeff Flake, he would voice his disapproval of how Trump was so rude while voting for everything that was put in front of him. I just want yell at anyone who acts like the Lincoln Project are in any way our allies because their adds are a little sassy. These are the same people who laid the path for where we are today, Trump (or someone like Trump) was always the eventual outcome. 

People need to realize that the main issue that most non-Trump aligned Republicans have is on the basis of style, not substance. Trump is doing basically everything they have ever wanted to do, but have been held back by their need to appear reasonable. All Trump has done is taken the mask off, and that is what they don't like him, he has exposed them for who they really are.

Completely agree, but you might as well work with them while it suits you, sort of like the allies held their nose and worked with Stalin in WW2. (Just as long as there is no equivalent to the Yalta Agreement!)

[Maithanet]

20 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

People need to realize that the main issue that most non-Trump aligned Republicans have is on the basis of style, not substance. Trump is doing basically everything they have ever wanted to do, but have been held back by their need to appear reasonable. All Trump has done is taken the mask off, and that is what they don't like him, he has exposed them for who they really are.

I honestly disagree.  I think there is a contingent of Never Trumpers that genuinely object to Trump's racism and anti-science approach on both policy and moral grounds.  Here's a 538 article about why Never Trumpers are so prominent in the media:

Quote

Many of the conservatives in high-profile media slots (like [David] Brooks) were there before Trump’s rise. Robert Saldin, a political science professor at the University of Montana and co-author of a new book on anti-Trump conservatives, said the kind of conservatives who get jobs at places like CNN were predisposed to dislike a Trump-style GOP politician.7

Many prominent “Never Trumpers,” Saldin said, operate and make a living in liberal institutions. “They think of their jobs as translating conservative ideas to liberals. They had invested in the idea that conservatism was respectable,” he said. In particular, Saldin said, these figures had worked hard to suggest that racism was not a major feature of conservatism.

“So they were particularly horrified by Trump because he embodied what they had spent their careers saying was not conservatism,” he added.

These are people who could ignore the racism underlying the Bush presidency because the fig leaves offered by the Republican party were sufficient to them.  And they weren't the only ones, as Clare Malone writes about in an extensive piece on 50 years of racism in the Republican Party, the "compassionate conservatism" was largely bullshit in terms of actual substance, but the line was effective at reaching out to many Hispanic voters in Texas/Florida in particular.  Without the outreach, it is quite possible Texas and Florida would both be blue states already.  

Trump doesn't even offer a fig leaf.  Without it, many Republicans were forced to either leave the party or admit that they had no problem with racism driving policy.  They are Johnny come latelies, but better late than never.  Slapping down everyone who tries to leave the Republican Party is just bad politics.  

[GrimTuesday]

20 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I honestly disagree.  I think there is a contingent of Never Trumpers that genuinely object to Trump's racism and anti-science approach on both policy and moral grounds.  Here's a 538 article about why Never Trumpers are so prominent in the media:

These are people who could ignore the racism underlying the Bush presidency because the fig leaves offered by the Republican party were sufficient to them.  And they weren't the only ones, as Clare Malone writes about in an extensive piece on 50 years of racism in the Republican Party, the "compassionate conservatism" was largely bullshit in terms of actual substance, but the line was effective at reaching out to many Hispanic voters in Texas/Florida in particular.  Without the outreach, it is quite possible Texas and Florida would both be blue states already.  

Trump doesn't even offer a fig leaf.  Without it, many Republicans were forced to either leave the party or admit that they had no problem with racism driving policy.  They are Johnny come latelies, but better late than never.  Slapping down everyone who tries to leave the Republican Party is just bad politics.  

I honestly don't see much distinction between what we are saying here outside of the conclusions we come to at the end.This isn't about the average run of the mill Republican who is waking up and realizing just how bad things have gotten. I am specifically talking about the folks who have been active participants in the road to Trump. If anything, I hold these people in even lower esteem than the racist pieces of shit they are so disgusted by, because they knew what was going on, they knew it was wrong, and they kept going because it made them rich, or it allowed them to control others to live according to their view of the world.

I have a tendency to always come back to narrative, and we are letting them write a narrative that they were the true, faithful republicans, who had the strength of principle to stand up against Trump and racism. We are allowing them to paint themselves as the sane trustworthy type who if only the Republican party would have listened to we could have averted this disaster. Not only that, but it gives them credibility with Democrats because we keep letting them on our media platforms unchallenged, so when they go back to doing the exact same shit, they are not going to receive the level of scrutiny they should. People like this do not deserve to be forgiven or rehabilitated they should have to wear a badge of shame for the rest of their lives. Well, that or my favored punishment method

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

We had life-long Egyptian friends who pointed out that they are Aryan, which means by definition they are white.

Good for them.  None of my friends of Arabic descent consider themselves white, and they certainly aren't considered white by, especially, Trump's America.  

Eta: some quick googling seems 'Aryan' as white was introduced by Arthur de Gobineau as a term for northern European blond blue eyed people.  The original meaning referred to an Indian-Iranian people during the Vedic period, and was cultural and religious in designation, not racial.  Given that I'm not sure your anecdote signifies much other than how your friends refer to themselves.

 

4 hours ago, Ormond said:

I just disagree with that. The official government definition is that natives of the Middle East and North Africa are "White", and most people of Arabic ancestry look generally Mediterranean, not very different from many Italians or Greeks, and almost all Americans would see them as "White". 

The official government definition is one thing, reality is another.  The certainly don't benefit from white privilege in most situations.  I guess it would be useful to see some data on this.  I doubt even two in ten Americans would say MBS was white if shown a picture of him.

[Ormond]

8 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Good for them.  None of my friends of Arabic descent consider themselves white, and they certainly aren't considered white by, especially, Trump's America.  

 

The official government definition is one thing, reality is another.  The certainly don't benefit from white privilege in most situations.  I guess it would be useful to see some data on this.  I doubt even two in ten Americans would say MBS was white if shown a picture of him.

Oh come on. Arab Americans -- especially the 63% majority of them who are Christians -- certainly have benefited from White privilege. Prejudice against Arab Americans comes from the perception that they are Muslim, not that they aren't White. 

I have never anyone say that Arab American entertainment celebrities like Danny Thomas, Jamie Farr, Casey Kasem, Tony Shalhoub, MIchael Ansara, Paul Anka, etc. were not White. And I think if you showed Americans a photo of MBS in Western clothing, 90% of them would say he was White. 

[Martell Spy]

Progressive Black candidates swept key races on Tuesday
The Democratic Party is starting to look more like Democratic voters.

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/24/21301646/progressive-black-candidates-jamaal-bowman-eliot-engel

Quote

 

Progressive candidates of color winning a slate of New York primaries, in particular, represents a significant generational changing of the guard in the Democratic Party.

Middle school principal Jamaal Bowman, 44, soundly defeated the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel, 73. Though it could take days (if not longer) for all of New York’s votes to be counted, Bowman was leading Engel by more than 25 points as of Wednesday afternoon. Mondaire Jones, 32, won the open seat to replace retiring House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey. And in New York’s 12th Congressional District, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney is clinging to a slim 1.7 percent lead over progressive challenger Suraj Patel.

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

Wait, now we're litigating who benefits from white privilege? That's cool if you want to do that, but I lived in this country for like a while now. And I'm pretty sure the two different wars we've been fighting for over fifteen years concurrently were shrugged off by the electorate because the folks getting bombed had brown skin. Like, this isn't a new idea or a personal belief or even some personal anecdote I'm giving outsized importance. This has been the accepted understanding of American comportment in Western Asia for almost two decades now. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous, patently absurd.

I find the desire to qualify a discriminated-against minority group's ethnicity, clearly suggesting they are somehow benefiting from a made-up ethnic distinction, a little disturbing. 

[TrueMetis]

5 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

We had life-long Egyptian friends who pointed out that they are Aryan, which means by definition they are white.

If the Irish and Italians used to be not white, and I've seen Portuguese people dismissed as not being white in modern times then "white" does not have a rigorous enough definition to pull the "by definition" card. Middle Eastern people not being white is like half the reason the west has been okay with bombing them to shit for the last couple decades.

[Larry of the Lawn]

31 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Oh come on. Arab Americans -- especially the 63% majority of them who are Christians -- certainly have benefited from White privilege. Prejudice against Arab Americans comes from the perception that they are Muslim, not that they aren't White. 

I have never anyone say that Arab American entertainment celebrities like Danny Thomas, Jamie Farr, Casey Kasem, Tony Shalhoub, MIchael Ansara, Paul Anka, etc. were not White. And I think if you showed Americans a photo of MBS in Western clothing, 90% of them would say he was White. 

Arab Americans were often deported as non-white aliens pre WW2.  They've been officially designated as white since and there was a SC case, although some jurisdictions said it only applied to Syrians.

Here's an article that has some more nuance:

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-census-middle-east-north-africa-race/

It includes some Arab Americans talking about why they don't consider themselves white.  It also mentions a "generational schism" on this issue, which may be what's playing itself out here.

Post 9/11 they certainly haven't been treated as such. 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

So I just saw that the Tulsa speech included a suggestion of a 1 year prison sentence for burning the US flag. It seems like as the crowd cheered for this suggestion either they don't know flag burning is protected speech, or the people in the crowd were less committed to freedom speech than they would probably claim to be.

[Fragile Bird]

I was thinking there was something funny about that speech yesterday in the church in Arizona, and it suddenly struck me that the shots of the audience that I saw showed only young people. Most without masks. Did the church guarantee a full house and do it by calling upon the young members so their older members wouldn’t face the risk of getting the virus? And show people who didn’t really care about wearing a mask at the same time? 

[GrimTuesday]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

I was thinking there was something funny about that speech yesterday in the church in Arizona, and it suddenly struck me that the shots of the audience that I saw showed only young people. Most without masks. Did the church guarantee a full house and do it by calling upon the young members so their older members wouldn’t face the risk of getting the virus? And show people who didn’t really care about wearing a mask at the same time? 

It was some college group putting it on. Some sort of rival to Turning Points USA if I remember correctly.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So I just saw that the Tulsa speech included a suggestion of a 1 year prison sentence for burning the US flag. It seems like as the crowd cheered for this suggestion either they don't know flag burning is protected speech, or the people in the crowd were less committed to freedom speech than they would probably claim to be.

Option 3: Both of those are true and they're also a mob of slobbering imbeciles at the Disney Sing Along that Walt always wanted.

[Zorral]

29 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

It was some college group putting it on. Some sort of rival to Turning Points USA if I remember correctly.

It was very much hyped, though the hype also included the info they would be wearing masks

Quote

Expect crowd to wear masks at Trump speech at Dream City Church in Phoenix, organizer says

which they did not do. While AZ had the worst day yet of new cases.  My physician Bro in law and Sister in law are in a state, as you can imagine, though she's retired and bil quit practicing a long time ago to make serious art money, and they live in Tucson. Economic crash, spiking pandemic and wildfires they have, all at once.

Quote

The event is planned for Dream City Church in north Phoenix and is organized by Students for Trump, which said the theme of the president’s speech will be an address to America’s youth. 

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2020/06/22/expect-crowd-masks-students-trump-event-dream-city-church-phoenix/3231685001/

So much why the Young are now the super spreaders of the virus.  And the Young are everywhere, and they are still traveling, even if only from one part of a city to another, one state to another, across the country -- and none of them, judging by how they behave right here in my neighborhood, not any of them, are observing in the slightest any of the safety measures, and certainly not wearing masks or practicing distance or even using hand sanitizer.

 

[HoodedCrow]

Yikes

[HoodedCrow]

Trump tells his base what they want to hear.

I guess the right wingers who are literate, as few as those may be, don’t come here. Anyway I thank people here for paying attention to the disaster unfolding.

[ants]

On 6/24/2020 at 8:50 AM, Altherion said:

The US has a strong tradition of not going after high-level politicians and bureaucrats after the latter have left positions of power. Despite actually having a campaign slogan that would imply the breaking of this tradition, Trump has done nothing of the sort and, should Biden win, it's very unlikely that he would break it either -- the consequences are just not worth the risk.

You mean apart from things like the investigation he launched into Hillary?  It didn't get much attention because it didn't find anything ....

[ThinkerX]

I seem to recollect a number of current investigations into Trump and his cronies.  Likely at least a couple of these will be ongoing after the election.  Past traditions aside, it's kind of hard to imagine them all being shelved.  

[GrimTuesday]

Man, if people think things are bad now, wait until the unemployment boost runs out at the end of July. The CARES act running out is going to be a disaster, and the Republicans are going to sit there and twiddle their thumbs suggest minuscule bonuses for going back to work that they know that few people will be able to actually be able to collect. We're going to see mass evictions, and a decent into poverty that is unheard of in the modern age. So many people are going to lose everything because giving money to prop up wall street is more important than the lives of humans.

Meanwhile the Democrats are passing legislation that while it does do some good, the Heroes Act would be a tax giveaway to the rich to the tune of $75 billion. It was put in by the Republicans, but the Democrats could have stripped it out since they weren't getting a vote in the senate one way or another, but don't forget that there are a lot of corporate Dems who serve the same masters.