Author Topic: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington  (Read 387743 times)

0 Members and 8 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline niam2023

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 4213
  • Gender: Male
  • The Forum Chad
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1515 on: August 16, 2017, 09:27:41 pm »
I believe it is false and unhelpful to declare that every single person who voted for Trump to be completely, utterly, irredeemably evil.  Most humans are morally complicated and posses a mixture of good and bad traits (ie my dad was a loving father who dedicated his life to help others as a parole officer because he truly wanted to help others.  He was also a homophobe who told me when I first asked what a gay person was that they were selfish people who didn't follow God's plan).

But to say that Trump voters did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it does not amount to that.  You can say that someone has done wrong without claiming them to be 100% evil.

Is it morally right to vote for a candidate for whose favor the game was rigged? Maybe I should go around telling off Hillary voters for "supporting corruption".

A lot of Americans were caught between a rock and a hard place. There were many who either stayed home or . And I don't blame them. After the revelations that the DNC rigged the game in Hillary's favor, I don't think we have any right to judge people who didn't vote for her.

How many of you understand why so many people voted for Trump? How many of you have looked more deeply into the matter? I've looked, and if I'm honest? For a lot of these people, I can understand, even sympathize with why they did it, even if I don't like the result. Instead of looking down on people for exercising their democratic rights in a way we didn't like, I think we should try to understand their grievances and motivations.

Nazi apologia is completely revolting.

The right choice is never the Nazi. I'll vote lizard over wizard any day, and those that don't cannot be held to be unaccountable for their choices. We do not need to understand the motivations of these people. Voting Trump, heiling him in Nazi style, and supporting white supremacy makes abjectly unremarkable people feel better. That is it. All there is to understand.

They're afraid of the world leaving them behind, and indeed. The world should leave these walking slime molds behind.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2017, 09:29:57 pm by niam2023 »
Living Life, Lifting, Waiting for Summer

Offline Skybison

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 1289
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1516 on: August 16, 2017, 11:27:12 pm »
I believe it is false and unhelpful to declare that every single person who voted for Trump to be completely, utterly, irredeemably evil.  Most humans are morally complicated and posses a mixture of good and bad traits (ie my dad was a loving father who dedicated his life to help others as a parole officer because he truly wanted to help others.  He was also a homophobe who told me when I first asked what a gay person was that they were selfish people who didn't follow God's plan).

But to say that Trump voters did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it does not amount to that.  You can say that someone has done wrong without claiming them to be 100% evil.

Is it morally right to vote for a candidate for whose favor the game was rigged? Maybe I should go around telling off Hillary voters for "supporting corruption".

A lot of Americans were caught between a rock and a hard place. There were many who either stayed home or . And I don't blame them. After the revelations that the DNC rigged the game in Hillary's favor, I don't think we have any right to judge people who didn't vote for her.

How many of you understand why so many people voted for Trump? How many of you have looked more deeply into the matter? I've looked, and if I'm honest? For a lot of these people, I can understand, even sympathize with why they did it, even if I don't like the result. Instead of looking down on people for exercising their democratic rights in a way we didn't like, I think we should try to understand their grievances and motivations.

I have no idea what that has to do with what I said.

Democrats maybe rigging the primary for Hillary doesn't have anything to do with why people supported Trump, that didn't come into it until well after Trump had the republican nomination.  There were 16 other republican candidates to choose from, all of whom, even Ted Cruz, would have been better then Donald.  But Donald made howling Racism central to his campaign and that pulled him to the front of the race.

In fact you know what Direct Question:  Do you agree or disagree that the grievances and motivations of many Trump voters were racist? 

And for the record I take that "Hillary was corrupt" about as seriously as I take the bit from Radiation that she voted Trump because Hillary said something racist.  Donald has a long and well documented history of staggering financial corruption from stealing money from his charities to running a fraudulent "university" if corruption was the problem Hillary was obviously the lesser evil.



Offline Lana Reverse

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 978
  • Gender: Female
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1517 on: August 17, 2017, 12:35:00 am »
I believe it is false and unhelpful to declare that every single person who voted for Trump to be completely, utterly, irredeemably evil.  Most humans are morally complicated and posses a mixture of good and bad traits (ie my dad was a loving father who dedicated his life to help others as a parole officer because he truly wanted to help others.  He was also a homophobe who told me when I first asked what a gay person was that they were selfish people who didn't follow God's plan).

But to say that Trump voters did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it does not amount to that.  You can say that someone has done wrong without claiming them to be 100% evil.

Is it morally right to vote for a candidate for whose favor the game was rigged? Maybe I should go around telling off Hillary voters for "supporting corruption".

A lot of Americans were caught between a rock and a hard place. There were many who either stayed home or . And I don't blame them. After the revelations that the DNC rigged the game in Hillary's favor, I don't think we have any right to judge people who didn't vote for her.

How many of you understand why so many people voted for Trump? How many of you have looked more deeply into the matter? I've looked, and if I'm honest? For a lot of these people, I can understand, even sympathize with why they did it, even if I don't like the result. Instead of looking down on people for exercising their democratic rights in a way we didn't like, I think we should try to understand their grievances and motivations.

I have no idea what that has to do with what I said.

Democrats maybe rigging the primary for Hillary doesn't have anything to do with why people supported Trump, that didn't come into it until well after Trump had the republican nomination.  There were 16 other republican candidates to choose from, all of whom, even Ted Cruz, would have been better then Donald.  But Donald made howling Racism central to his campaign and that pulled him to the front of the race.

In fact you know what Direct Question:  Do you agree or disagree that the grievances and motivations of many Trump voters were racist? 

And for the record I take that "Hillary was corrupt" about as seriously as I take the bit from Radiation that she voted Trump because Hillary said something racist.  Donald has a long and well documented history of staggering financial corruption from stealing money from his charities to running a fraudulent "university" if corruption was the problem Hillary was obviously the lesser evil.

Yes, I agree. But "many" is not the same as "all", or even "most" for that matter.

And I wasn't claiming that Hillary was corrupt, I was pointing out the established fact that the DNC rigged the game in her favor. Condemning people for not voting for her after that little revelation... how is that possibly justifiable?

I believe it is false and unhelpful to declare that every single person who voted for Trump to be completely, utterly, irredeemably evil.  Most humans are morally complicated and posses a mixture of good and bad traits (ie my dad was a loving father who dedicated his life to help others as a parole officer because he truly wanted to help others.  He was also a homophobe who told me when I first asked what a gay person was that they were selfish people who didn't follow God's plan).

But to say that Trump voters did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it does not amount to that.  You can say that someone has done wrong without claiming them to be 100% evil.

Is it morally right to vote for a candidate for whose favor the game was rigged? Maybe I should go around telling off Hillary voters for "supporting corruption".

A lot of Americans were caught between a rock and a hard place. There were many who either stayed home or . And I don't blame them. After the revelations that the DNC rigged the game in Hillary's favor, I don't think we have any right to judge people who didn't vote for her.

How many of you understand why so many people voted for Trump? How many of you have looked more deeply into the matter? I've looked, and if I'm honest? For a lot of these people, I can understand, even sympathize with why they did it, even if I don't like the result. Instead of looking down on people for exercising their democratic rights in a way we didn't like, I think we should try to understand their grievances and motivations.

Nazi apologia is completely revolting.

The right choice is never the Nazi. I'll vote lizard over wizard any day, and those that don't cannot be held to be unaccountable for their choices. We do not need to understand the motivations of these people. Voting Trump, heiling him in Nazi style, and supporting white supremacy makes abjectly unremarkable people feel better. That is it. All there is to understand.

They're afraid of the world leaving them behind, and indeed. The world should leave these walking slime molds behind.

I want to comment on this, but I'm not sure I could do it justice. So at least for now, I'm just going to let it stand and remember it.
Beware those who hate the rich more than they love the poor.

Offline Skybison

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 1289
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1518 on: August 17, 2017, 12:43:09 am »
Is saying "You did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it" the same thing as condemning someone?

Offline Lana Reverse

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 978
  • Gender: Female
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1519 on: August 17, 2017, 12:55:26 am »
Is saying "You did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it" the same thing as condemning someone?

Not quite, but there are some people (not you, from what I can tell) who cross that line. Such as our resident sociopath.
Beware those who hate the rich more than they love the poor.

Offline Svata

  • Doesn't even fucking know anymore
  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 1542
  • Gender: Male
  • No, seriously, fuck astrology.
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1520 on: August 17, 2017, 12:55:34 am »
If you thought Trump was a better option for President of the United States than Hilary Clinton, you are an idiot, and/or evil.
"Politician" is the occupational equivalent of "Florida".

Offline Lana Reverse

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 978
  • Gender: Female
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1521 on: August 17, 2017, 12:56:27 am »
If you thought Trump was a better option for President of the United States than Hilary Clinton, you are an idiot, and/or evil.

Thank you for proving my point.
Beware those who hate the rich more than they love the poor.

Offline niam2023

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 4213
  • Gender: Male
  • The Forum Chad
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1522 on: August 17, 2017, 01:31:03 am »
Is saying "You did something morally wrong and bare responsibility for it" the same thing as condemning someone?

Not quite, but there are some people (not you, from what I can tell) who cross that line. Such as our resident sociopath.

Yes. I will happily condemn the people who voted for a man who wants to make America white again. They could see what his rhetoric was. They were there for his remark equating Somalians with animals, they were there when he asked them to swear an oath of loyalty to him in the Roman Salute style, and they were there for him when he pledged to throw his political adversary in jail.

It is people like you, Lana, that make me glad, downright glad, I will never in a million years experience empathy.
Living Life, Lifting, Waiting for Summer

Offline Askold

  • Definitely not hiding a dark secret.
  • Global Moderator
  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 8358
  • Gender: Male
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1523 on: August 17, 2017, 04:14:16 am »
Lana, can you explain to me how can someone look at Trump during the campaign and not see the racism, sexism and incompetence? I mean really, his own words, his own actions are all the proof one needs.
No matter what happens, no matter what my last words may end up being, I want everyone to claim that they were:
"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Aww, you guys rock. :)  I feel the love... and the pitchforks and torches.  Tingly!

Offline dpareja

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 5680
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1524 on: August 17, 2017, 04:50:39 am »
Lana, can you explain to me how can someone look at Trump during the campaign and not see the racism, sexism and incompetence? I mean really, his own words, his own actions are all the proof one needs.

You can see it, but decide that it doesn't matter, because you are not ever, in a million years, going to vote for Hillary Clinton, the near-literal embodiment of the system you know has been fucking you for decades--and who campaigned on "everything's fine, we just need to tinker around the edges" when your own life has been going to shit.

But then you look at Donald Trump and see this incompetent, racist, sexist baboon. And you either decide that a) that doesn't matter because he's promising some sort of change, b) you can't bring yourself to vote for either of these assholes so you vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or write in Bernie Sanders or something, or c) you just stay home because there's no point, you're fucked either way (or you go, but leave the Presidential line blank). (Or d) you're a victim of voter suppression tactics.)

Look at Wisconsin. In 2012, Barack Obama got 1,620,985 votes, and Mitt Romney got 1,407,966 votes. In 2016, Donald Trump got 1,405,284 votes, and Hillary Clinton got 1,382,536 votes. People didn't want to vote for Trump--more people voted for Romney when he lost than for Trump when he won!--but they even more didn't want to vote for Clinton.

It's funny--I see people blaming the voters for Clinton's loss, as if they somehow owed her their vote. It's not that Clinton failed the voters, the voters failed Clinton, according to this analysis. Here's the thing: nobody owes anyone their vote. It's on the candidate to earn each and every vote. Hillary Clinton wasn't talking about what she would do for people (25% of her ads were about policy, by far the lowest proportion of any modern presidential campaign); she campaigned on "TRUMP BAD." And that's not a winning message. If you don't tell people how electing you will make their lives better, you can't be surprised when they don't bother to vote for you.

Trump, whatever his other faults, told people how he was going to make their lives better (even though he hasn't done much of any of it): he would kill NAFTA, which people blame (rightly or wrongly) for sending their jobs away; he would kill the TPP, which people feared would send even more jobs away; he would bring coal jobs back (even though coal is a dying industry). And, yes, he would kick out all the immigrants who are stealing your jobs (that you won't do anyway) and the Muslims who are going to kill you (even though you're far more likely to be killed by a right-wing terrorist). Trump told people that with him there was at least a chance their lives could be better; Clinton made it pretty clear that things were going to stay largely the same under her Presidency.

And when your income has been stagnant for a decade, you're living paycheque-to-paycheque, your health insurance premiums are flying up (even though they're lower than they would have been had the ACA never been passed--if you could even get insurance without the ACA)... you will take even the faintest glimmer of hope of something better than you will a promise that things will stay the same.

Would I have voted for Trump? Hell fucking no. But does that mean I can't understand what sort of pressures would drive someone to vote for him in spite of his misogyny and bigotry?

I saw it noted that since 1992, the winners of the Presidential elections have been whichever of the major party candidates managed to portray themselves as more the outsider. Tell me--which portrayed themselves better as an outsider, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

Keep in mind that a lot of these Trump voters will cheer, unprompted, when Bernie Sanders outlines his economic agenda for them. Yes, there are Trump voters who cannot be won over--the "deplorables" to whom Clinton accurately referred. But the others can be--but not by someone they see as inextricably linked to the machine that's been screwing them over. Populist sentiment will attach itself to populist candidates sometimes regardless of political ideology--we saw it here in BC where the federal populist vote went from the left-wing NDP in 1988 to the right-wing Reform in 1993 (in part because the BC NDP won power in 1991 provincially and were rather unpopular by 1993). And when that populist sentiment is running sufficiently high, as it was in 2016, and only one candidate actively tries to harness it, that candidate suddenly has a much better chance of winning.

But right now, populist and anti-establishment sentiment is running high. We saw it with Rodrigo Duterte. We saw it with Brexit. We saw it with Donald Trump. We almost saw it with Marine Le Pen. We saw it with Theresa May's crash and burn (or, rather, Jeremy Corbyn's outperforming expectations). We see it with Bernie Sanders being the most popular politician in the US.

Politicial populism is currently a force to be reckoned with. Ignore it at your peril; harness it properly and you will win.

Donald Trump saw that wave and rode it. Hillary Clinton was drowned.
Quote from: Jordan Duram
It doesn't concern you, Sister, that kind of absolutist view of the universe? Right and wrong determined solely by a single all-knowing, all powerful being whose judgment cannot be questioned and in whose name the most horrendous acts can be sanctioned without appeal?

Quote from: Supreme Court of Canada
Being required by someone else’s religious beliefs to behave contrary to one’s sexual identity is degrading and disrespectful.

Offline Tolpuddle Martyr

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 3716
  • Have you got thumbs? SHOW ME YOUR FUCKING THUMBS!
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1525 on: August 17, 2017, 07:47:47 am »
If you thought Trump was a better option for President of the United States than Hilary Clinton, you are an idiot, and/or evil.

Thank you for proving my point.
Oh FFS why is it so bloody important to protect the fee fees of people who voted for someone knowing them to be a racist, rapey, sexist, unstable, chronically stupid douchebag?

Stop it Lana, it's political correctness gone mad!
« Last Edit: August 17, 2017, 07:51:51 am by Tolpuddle Martyr »

Offline Lana Reverse

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 978
  • Gender: Female
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1526 on: August 17, 2017, 04:01:13 pm »
If you thought Trump was a better option for President of the United States than Hilary Clinton, you are an idiot, and/or evil.

Thank you for proving my point.
Oh FFS why is it so bloody important to protect the fee fees of people who voted for someone knowing them to be a racist, rapey, sexist, unstable, chronically stupid douchebag?

Stop it Lana, it's political correctness gone mad!

Haven't you ever considered why so many people voted for Trump? Have you wondered why rural America won Trump the election?

People like to talk about "red states" and "blue states", but looking at the county level gives a more complete picture.



Trump overwhelmingly won rural communities. This is because they're in awful straits, and the country doesn't seem to care about them. To a lot of these people, a vote for Trump was a means to be heard. Everyone lashes out when they don't have a voice. And you want to continue dumping on these people? When you find yourself in a hole, maybe you should stop digging.
Beware those who hate the rich more than they love the poor.

Offline dpareja

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 5680
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1527 on: August 17, 2017, 04:12:26 pm »
That map is misleading, since a lot of those red counties have far lower populations than the blue counties.
Quote from: Jordan Duram
It doesn't concern you, Sister, that kind of absolutist view of the universe? Right and wrong determined solely by a single all-knowing, all powerful being whose judgment cannot be questioned and in whose name the most horrendous acts can be sanctioned without appeal?

Quote from: Supreme Court of Canada
Being required by someone else’s religious beliefs to behave contrary to one’s sexual identity is degrading and disrespectful.

Offline Cloud3514

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 1776
  • 404: Personal text not found.
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1528 on: August 17, 2017, 04:27:21 pm »
The reason why the President isn't elected by county is quite simple: It would give a county with 4,000 people the same amount of power as a city with 4,000,000 people. That's not to say that the current electoral system is great. It's actually pretty garbage that gives more power to smaller states and gives no power to people voting blue in red states and vice versa. However, it's a hell of a lot better than electing by county would be.
Who needs a signature?

Offline dpareja

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 5680
Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #1529 on: August 17, 2017, 04:46:19 pm »
Quote from: Jordan Duram
It doesn't concern you, Sister, that kind of absolutist view of the universe? Right and wrong determined solely by a single all-knowing, all powerful being whose judgment cannot be questioned and in whose name the most horrendous acts can be sanctioned without appeal?

Quote from: Supreme Court of Canada
Being required by someone else’s religious beliefs to behave contrary to one’s sexual identity is degrading and disrespectful.