U.S. Politics

[maqroll]

Rodders, what you'd prolly get would be the sporadic mass shooting and dragging of a black man behind a truck until his limbs and head got shredded off.

 

[Rugeley Villa]

2 minutes ago, maqroll said:

No. Young people and non-whites tend to live in cities where protest marches make more sense than a bunch of farmers marching down Main Street in Bumf*ck, USA.

No excuse. If people were really that pissed off about Clinton winning they would protest. 

[Rodders]

the country voted in a narcissist who's openly abusive to women, a sexist, mysogynist, racist, idiot, willfully ignorant of world politics. As a symbol, it's a symbol of monumental failure on behalf of the american populace. a failure of the system, a failure of the media, a failure of the culture, the education, the politics, the economics and all the rest. It's twilight zone insanity. The guy has said the most outrageous quotes insulting anyone who isn't white, and come up with ludicrous policy ideas. Sure it'll pass, someone else will replace him eventually, but a revolting human being, a bully of all stripes, a liar, a tax dodger, a coward has been voted suitable to hold Presidential office. There is nothing good that is indicated by that "human" winning a vote. It's despair inducing, and a fundamental indictment of the failure of capitalist west. To dismiss it as something that will just blow over is to show a complete disregard for anything of any value whatsoever. 

[maqroll]

2 minutes ago, Rodders said:

the country voted in a narcissist who's openly abusive to women, a sexist, mysogynist, racist, idiot, willfully ignorant of world politics. As a symbol, it's a symbol of monumental failure on behalf of the american populace. a failure of the system, a failure of the media, a failure of the culture, the education, the politics, the economics and all the rest. It's twilight zone insanity. The guy has said the most outrageous quotes insulting anyone who isn't white, and come up with ludicrous policy ideas. Sure it'll pass, someone else will replace him eventually, but a revolting human being, a bully of all stripes, a liar, a tax dodger, a coward has been voted suitable to hold Presidential office. There is nothing good that is indicated by that "human" winning a vote. It's despair inducing, and a fundamental indictment of the failure of capitalist west. To dismiss it as something that will just blow over is to show a complete disregard for anything of any value whatsoever. 

He's a circus clown, albeit a very powerful and unpredictable one, but he's not Richard Nixon, or even GWB. The people we need to watch are the ones he'll appoint to his cabinet. 

[maqroll]

7 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

No excuse. If people were really that pissed off about Clinton winning they would protest. 

It's just reality. the majority of his support came from rural areas. Even Omaha Nebraska voted Clinton, but it's because it's a city. It's hard to muster up a protest march in Huckleberryville.

[Rugeley Villa]

Just now, Rodders said:

the country voted in a narcissist who's openly abusive to women, a sexist, mysogynist, racist, idiot, willfully ignorant of world politics. As a symbol, it's a symbol of monumental failure on behalf of the american populace. a failure of the system, a failure of the media, a failure of the culture, the education, the politics, the economics and all the rest. It's twilight zone insanity. The guy has said the most outrageous quotes insulting anyone who isn't white, and come up with ludicrous policy ideas. Sure it'll pass, someone else will replace him eventually, but a revolting human being, a bully of all stripes, a liar, a tax dodger, a coward has been voted suitable to hold Presidential office. There is nothing good that is indicated by that "human" winning a vote. It's despair inducing, and a fundamental indictment of the failure of capitalist west. To dismiss it as something that will just blow over is to show a complete disregard for anything of any value whatsoever. 

Ok he has some right wing views  which I don't personally agree with, but anyone that thinks he will be able to implement those views and ideas entirely are wrong. He's president of America, but he's far from being the man who says what happens. He's no Putin. For me personally I'd rather see the uk in particular and it's other western allies become a bit more conservative in its ways.

[Rodders]

re @maqroll yes, that's true I accept he's not as ideologically destructive as a Nixon or a Reagan at all. He's certainly unpredictable, and may do none of the stupid shit he said to get voted in, but at the same time, it has opened the floodgates to politicians not worrying about the consequences of insulting large groups of people in the future. Or as no doubt some people think -"how refreshing to have someone who isn't pc, I always wanted to feel it was perfectly fine to mock a disabled person and insult women" etc 

and of course, as per the graph on the previous page, it's obvious he's not supported by the whole country, or even half of it. less than 50% of the popular vote went to him, and with turnout of about half, that's only a quarter of the electorate actively supporting Trump, and furthermore when seen via age, the 18-25 group aka the future pretty much universally voted for Clinton across 90% of all the states too. So, one trusts it's a blip, an accident of fate brought about by the ineptitude of Clinton's campaign. 

Edited November 10, 2016 by Rodders

[Rugeley Villa]

2 minutes ago, maqroll said:

It's just reality. the majority of his support came from rural areas. Even Omaha Nebraska voted Clinton, but it's because it's a city. It's hard to muster up a protest march in Huckleberryville.

I've heard huckleberryville can get a bit  dodgy .

[StefanAVFC]

Okay.

I just want to voice how this 'we won, you lost, get over it' mentality is dangerous. Opposition in party politics is healthy and essential.

To have this attitude is also massively hypocritical.

Brexit

Farage says he won't accept result of 52-48 in favour of remain, will demand a 2nd ref.
Farage wants to march 100,000 on the high court as a result of British jobs making a common sense ruling based on British law.

Trump

Says the election is rigged all through the campaign trail.
States he may not even concede in the debates.
Posts the below in 2012, when it was wrongly stated that Romney had won the popular vote, but Obama won the election (ie, exactly what happened now!)

HE advocates marching on Washington and starting a revolution.

The hypocrisy is absolutely mindblowing.

That's all I'm going to say. If I replied to all the other ignorant guff I'd get too angry.

Edited November 10, 2016 by StefanAVFC

[Davkaus]

It's kind of disappointing that a huge portion of the population clearly wanted neither of them, with the lowest voter turnout percentage ever for a presidential election, yet people still couldn't be bothered to look in to third party candidates. Gary Johnson got 3%, another couple and they'd have recieved federal funding and equal ballot access. It's not a wasted vote when it could have helped pave the way to a genuine third party, especially if you don't like either of the main candidates and aren't going to bother to vote.

 

[Chindie]

Gary Johnson is an absolute moron, and I say that as someone more inclined to like the Libertarian Party than many.

[Davkaus]

He's a bit of a tool, I'd go for a third party choice rather than not voting, he's not going to be there forever, but I can see why you wouldn't want to vote for him.

It's just a shame people seem content to let the two party state continue, if a third party can't get over 5% this eyar I can't see it ever happening.

[Davkaus]

12 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

 

 

If ever one screenshot summed him up. An oppurtunistic hypocrite.

[BOF]

This is the best attempt I've read from someone trying to explain why America really voted for Trump and where the discontent came from.  Must say it opened my eyes to an extent and has made me adjust some of my thinking.  It's a bit long but well worth taking in.

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind - 6 reasons for Trump's rise that no-one is talking about

Quote

I'm going to explain the Donald Trump phenomenon in three movies. And then some text.

There's this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys are simple folk from the countryside ...

Lionsgate Films

... while the bad guys are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear stupid clothes:

Lionsgate Films

In Star Wars, Luke is a farm boy ...

LucasFilm

... while the bad guys live in a shiny space station:

LucasFilm

In Braveheart, the main character (Dennis Braveheart) is a simple farmer ...

Paramount Pictures

... and the dastardly Prince Shithead lives in a luxurious castle and wears fancy, foppish clothes:

Paramount Pictures

The theme expresses itself in several ways -- primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban. That tense divide between the two doesn't exist because of these movies, obviously. These movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed.

We country folk are programmed to hate the prissy elites. That brings us to Trump.

#6. It's Not About Red And Blue States -- It's About The Country Vs. The City

Mark Makela/Getty Images

I was born and raised in Trump country. My family are Trump people. If I hadn't moved away and gotten this ridiculous job, I'd be voting for him. I know I would.

See, political types talk about "red states" and "blue states" (where red = Republican/conservative and blue = Democrat/progressive), but forget about states. If you want to understand the Trump phenomenon, dig up the much more detailed county map. Here's how the nation voted county by county in the 2012 election -- again, red is Republican:

Mark Newman / University of Michigan
The country is lava.

Holy cockslaps, that makes it look like Obama's blue party is some kind of fringe political faction that struggles to get 20 percent of the vote. The blue parts, however, are more densely populated -- they're the cities. In the upper left, you see the blue Seattle/Tacoma area, lower down is San Francisco and then L.A. The blue around the dick-shaped Lake Michigan is made of cities like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago. In the northeast is, of course, New York and Boston, leading down into Philadelphia, which leads into a blue band which connects a bunch of southern cities like Charlotte and Atlanta.

Blue islands in an ocean of red. The cities are less than 4 percent of the land mass, but 62 percent of the population and easily 99 percent of the popular culture. Our movies, shows, songs, and news all radiate out from those blue islands.

And if you live in the red, that **** sucks.

See, I'm from a "blue" state -- Illinois -- but the state isn't blue. Freaking Chicago is blue. I'm from a tiny town in one of the blood-red areas:

Inqvisitor / Wiki Commons
Where Oprahs fear to tread.

As a kid, visiting Chicago was like, well, Katniss visiting the capital. Or like Zoey visiting the city of the future in this ridiculous book. "Their ways are strange."

And the whole goddamned world revolves around them.

Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes -- either wide-eyed, naive fluffballs (Parks And Recreation, and before that, Newhart) or filthy murderous mutants (True Detective, and before that, Deliverance). You could feel the arrogance from hundreds of miles away.

Warner Brothers Pictures
You're not allowed to visit a dentist if you live more than 10 miles from the highway, apparently.

"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion in damage.

Mark Wolfe / FEMA
No sports team = no **** given.

But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally important. It matters.

To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"

#5. City People Are From A Different Goddamned Planet

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

"But isn't this really about race? Aren't Trump supporters just a bunch of racists? Don't they hate cities because that's where the brown people live?"

Look, we're going to get actual Nazis in the comment section of this article. Not "calling them Nazis for argument points" Nazis, but actual "Swastikas in their avatars, rooted against Indiana Jones" Nazis. Those people exist.

But what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine ... as long as they acted exactly like us.

Supaflyrobby / Wiki Commons
Our mental image of every single Chicago street corner, regardless of location or time of day.

If you'd asked me at the time, I'd have said the fear and hatred wasn't of people with brown skin, but of that specific tribe they have in Chicago -- you know, the guys with the weird slang, music and clothes, the dope fiends who murder everyone they see. It was all part of the bizarro nature of the cities, as perceived from afar -- a combination of hyper-aggressive savages and frivolous white elites. Their ways are strange. And it wasn't like pop culture was trying to talk me out of it:

Ruthless Records
"... And Into Some Nightmares"

It's not just perception, either -- the stats back up the fact that these are parallel universes. People living in the countryside are twice as likely to own a gun and will probably get married younger. People in the urban "blue" areas talk faster and walk faster. They are more likely to be drug abusers but less likely to be alcoholics. The blues are less likely to own land and, most importantly, they're less likely to be Evangelical Christians.

Mario Tama/Getty Images
A day without hellfire and brimstone is like a day without sunshine.

In the small towns, this often gets expressed as "They don't share our values!" and my progressive friends love to scoff at that. "What, like illiteracy and homophobia?!?!"

Nope. Everything.

#4. Trends Always Start In The Cities -- And Not All Of Them Are Good

Brian Blanco/Getty Images

The cities are always living in the future. I remember when our little town got our first Chinese restaurant and, 20 years later, its first fancy coffee shop. All of this stuff had turned up in movies (set in L.A., of course) decades earlier. I remember watching '80s movies and mocking the "Valley Girl" stereotypes -- young girls from, like, California who would, like, say, "like" in between every third word. Twenty years later, you can hear me doing the same in every Cracked podcast. The cancer started in L.A. and spread to the rest of America.

Well, the perception back then was that those city folks were all turning atheist, abandoning church for their bisexual sex parties. That, we were told, was literally a sign of the Apocalypse. Not just due to the spiritual consequences (which were dire), but the devastation that would come to the culture. I couldn't imagine any rebuttal. In that place, at that time, the church was everything. Don't take my word for it -- listen to the experts:

via Gallup

Church was where you made friends, met girls, networked for jobs, got social support. The poor could get food and clothes there, couples could get advice on their marriages, addicts could try to get clean. But now we're seeing a startling decline in Christianity among the general population, the godless disease having spread alongside Valley Girl talk. So according to Fox News, what's the result of those decadent, atheist, amoral snobs in the cities having turned their noses up at God?

Chaos.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Scott Olson/Getty Images, Darren McCollester/Getty Images

The fabric has broken down, they say, just as predicted. And what rural Americans see on the news today is a sneak peek at their tomorrow.

The savages are coming.

Blacks riot, Muslims set bombs, gays spread AIDS, Mexican cartels behead children, atheists tear down Christmas trees. Meanwhile, those liberal Lena Dunhams in their $5,000-a-month apartments sip wine and say, "But those white Christians are the real problem!" Terror victims scream in the street next to their own severed limbs, and the response from the elites is to cry about how men should be allowed to use women's restrooms and how it's cruel to keep chickens in cages.

Sara D. Davis/Getty Images
Both sides agree with that slogan, but with completely different intentions.

Madness. Their heads are so far up their asses that they can't tell up from down. Basic, obvious truths that have gone unquestioned for thousands of years now get laughed at and shouted down -- the fact that hard work is better than dependence on government, that children do better with both parents in the picture, that peace is better than rioting, that a strict moral code is better than blithe hedonism, that humans tend to value things they've earned more than what they get for free, that not getting exploded by a bomb is better than getting exploded by a bomb.

Or as they say out in the country, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."

The foundation upon which America was undeniably built -- family, faith, and hard work -- had been deemed unfashionable and small-minded. Those snooty elites up in their ivory tower laughed as they kicked away that foundation, and then wrote 10,000-word thinkpieces blaming the builders for the ensuing collapse.

#3. The Rural Areas Have Been Beaten To Shit

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Don't message me saying all those things I listed are wrong. I know they're wrong. Or rather, I think they're wrong, because I now live in a blue county and work for a blue industry. I know the Good Old Days of the past were built on slavery and segregation, I know that entire categories of humanity experienced religion only as a boot on their neck. I know that those "traditional families" involved millions of women trapped in kitchens and bad marriages. I know gays lived in fear and abortions were back-alley affairs.

I know the changes were for the best.

Try telling that to anybody who lives in Trump country.

Mark Makela/Getty Images
Hard to be thrilled about Clinton when your Trump sign is the most valuable thing you own.

They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people **** doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly collapsed.

Economic Innovation Group
They could all move to Vegas, but then there's that whole "decadence and apocalypse" thing.

See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business -- a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs -- small towns cannot. That model doesn't work below a certain population density.

If you don't live in one of these small towns, you can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involve moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called "Cost of Living." Let's say you're a smart kid making $8 an hour at Walgreen's and aspire to greater things. Fine, get ready to move yourself and your new baby into a 700-square-foot apartment for $1,200 a month, and to then pay double what you're paying now for utilities, groceries, and babysitters. Unless, of course, you're planning to move to one of "those" neighborhoods (hope you like being set on fire!).

Tim Boyle/Getty Images
That is, if they don't replace the only room you can afford with a $3,300-per-month high-rise.

In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town -- aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic.

I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive.

And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities.

#2. Everyone Lashes Out When They Don't Have A Voice

Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

It really does feel like the worst of both worlds: all the ravages of poverty, but none of the sympathy. "Blacks burn police cars, and those liberal elites say it's not their fault because they're poor. My son gets jailed and fired over a baggie of meth, and those same elites make jokes about his missing teeth!" You're everyone's punching bag, one of society's last remaining safe comedy targets.

Larry W. Smith/Getty Images
Just because you can afford the big bottle of Pepsi doesn't mean people are punching up when roasting you.

They take it hard. These are people who come from a long line of folks who took pride in looking after themselves. Where I'm from, you weren't a real man unless you could repair a car, patch a roof, hunt your own meat, and defend your home from an intruder. It was a source of shame to be dependent on anyone -- especially the government. You mowed your own lawn and fixed your own pipes when they leaked, you hauled your own firewood in your own pickup truck. (Mine was a 1994 Ford Ranger! The current owner says it still runs!)

Not like those hipsters in their tiny apartments, or "those people" in their public housing projects, waiting for the landlord any time something breaks, knowing if things get too bad they can just pick up and move. When you don't own anything, it's all somebody else's problem. "They probably don't pay taxes, either! Just treating America itself as a subsidized apartment they can trash!"

Charley Gallay/Getty Images
"Oh dear me, the water pressure appears to be off. Time to burn it all down and then sue for a bigger house."

The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse.

Lionsgate Films
Internet startup companies weren't suffering under President Snow for a very good reason.

So yes, they vote for the guy promising to put things back the way they were, the guy who'd be a wake-up call to the blue islands. They voted for the brick through the window.

It was a vote of desperation.

#1. Assholes Are Heroes

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

"But Trump is objectively a piece of shit!" you say. "He insults people, he objectifies women, and cheats whenever possible! And he's not an everyman; he's a smarmy, arrogant billionaire!"

Wait, are you talking about Donald Trump, or this guy:

Marvel Studios
Make The Avengers Assemble Again.

You've never rooted for somebody like that? Someone powerful who gives your enemies the insults they deserve? Somebody with big fun appetites who screws up just enough to make them relatable? Like Dr. House or Walter White? Or any of the several million renegade cop characters who can break all the rules because they get shit done? Who only get shit done because they don't care about the rules?

"But those are fictional characters!" Okay, what about all those millionaire left-leaning talk show hosts? You think they keep their insults classy? Tune into any bit about Chris Christie and start counting down the seconds until the fat joke. Google David Letterman's sex scandals. But it's okay, because they're on our side, and everybody wants an asshole on their team -- a spiked bat to smash their enemies with. That's all Trump is. The howls of elite outrage are like the sounds of bombs landing on the enemy's fortress. The louder the better.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images
And when cameras record said elites BFFing with their supposed enemy, even better.

Already some of you have gotten angry, feeling this gut-level revulsion at any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all, they're hardly people, right? Aren't they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing, spitting subhumans?

Gee, I hope not. I have to hug a bunch of them at Thanksgiving. And when I do, it will be with the knowledge that if I hadn't moved away, I'd be on the other side of the fence, leaving nasty comments on this article the alternate universe version of me wrote.

Cracked
And not just because I reminded Rural Me of Billy Joel's worst song ever.

It feels good to dismiss people, to mock them, to write them off as deplorables. But you might as well take time to try to understand them, because I'm telling you, they'll still be around long after Trump is gone.

 

[Rugeley Villa]

All leaders are hypocrites. 

[Davkaus]

He's just appointed Myron Ebell, a prominent climate change skeptic, as head of his Environmental Protection Agency transition team.

 

[Rugeley Villa]

13 minutes ago, BOF said:

This is the best attempt I've read from someone trying to explain why America really voted for Trump and where the discontent came from.  Must say it opened my eyes to an extent and has made me adjust some of my thinking.  It's a bit long but well worth taking in.

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind - 6 reasons for Trump's rise that no-one is talking about

 

Superb. In a lot of ways it explains how myself and many other people I know feel. Obviously Britain and America although similar in ways are worlds apart. For someone like myself who has trouble explaining why I feel like I do, this sums it up to a degree. I look at the world, especially out part of the world and I kind of long for days gone by. You know, how things used to be.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Rugeley Villa

[StefanAVFC]

I posted that a few pages back BOF

[StefanAVFC]

18 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

All leaders are hypocrites. 

Just like all Trump voters are racist right?

It's easy to make generalisations.

[BOF]

Just now, StefanAVFC said:

I posted that a few pages back BOF

TBH I suspected someone might have because it's so good, but there were so many pages written in this thread since I've been back that I couldn't really check them all.  Soz.  Hat-tip to Stefan