Trump

[Tahlvin]

[akiva]

[quote="Tahlvin"I don't necessarily agree that the country as a whole has shifted to the right. I would agree the extremes on both sides have become more powerful and vocal in recent years. (I refuse to label myself as a Republican).[/quote]

I'm not sure about this. At least at the presidential level, the Democrats are much further right than they were in the 60s and 70s. Clinton explicitly moved the party to the right to get votes; I don't think Obama did much to move it back to the left. And many of the congressional Democrats are centrist.

I agree with Norman Ornstein and E.J. Dionne who argue that while the Democrats have changed some, the Republicans have moved far to the right, and far away from accepted norms of governing. Here's the blurb from their book: "The underlying dynamics of the situation—extremist Republicans holding government hostage to their own ideological, anti-government beliefs—have only gotten worse, further bolstering their argument that Republicans are not merely ideologically different from Democrats, but engaged in a unique form of politics that undermines the system itself. Without a fundamental change in the character and course of the Republican Party, we may have a long way to go before we hit rock bottom."

Keep in mind--Ornstein is a conservative, and has worked for decades at a conservative think tank (AEI).

[Phoebe]

You both seem to be correct on different aspects of the issue. Trump doesn't have a popular majority, and we've finally seen a significant number of Democrats (especially younger ones) supporting all the things Sanders represented. Hillary moved to the left of where she was in 08 and certainly in the 90s, and still got a popular vote majority. Even so, most Democrats are comfortably corporatist and you don't see Sanders types running away with the party, yet. Sometimes Democrats sound more like Eisenhower and Reagan when it comes to foreign and economic policies, even though they're more liberal on social issues. Meanwhile, the Republicans have gone so far to the right as to be pushing us into actual open fascism! So the overall effect is certainly a rightward shift. No longer are Republicans trying to reform and deregulate a few things; they just want to full-scale demolish any possible basis for regulation. It's not that they want less restrictive Clean Air provisions or Dodd-Frank regulations - nowadays it's that they do not want any clean air act or limitation on the financial industry whatsoever! It's not only that they want to repeal Roe v. Wade - they want to criminally prosecute women and literally rape them with vaginal probes.

The other thing is, Republicans have made huge gains at the state and local level, and some of these candidates are shockingly extreme. Until the Democrats figure out how to match that kind of effort - which requires some fixes to election fairness - they're fighting an uphill battle and things shift even farther rightward.

[Phoebe]

Republicans in Congress will not agree to a statement acknowledging that the Holocaust targeted Jewish people, which was omitted from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement. Please keep in mind the white nationalist story is that the reason why we have all this immigration and a sophisticated mainstream media to lie relentlessly about it is that the Jews are trying to destroy Western society from within. They believe that Jewish leaders in finance, media, and other industries are the reason why Europe has become secularized and overrun with immigrants. It's not really clear why the Jews would want to bring in Muslim extremists and encourage European countries to be as hostile to Israel as they are, but who can fathom the deep reasons behind this clever conspiracy? Anyway, the opposition party is going to do that here if we don't stop them first, you see. So all this horrifying anti-Semitism we are seeing, all the sudden uptick of real-life incidents to match what has become commonplace on the internet, springs from a particular narrative. It's not accidental or random - it's that the Jewish people do not want America to have a nice white majority, and they are the masterminds behind the plot to unleash dangerous forces of immigration upon our formerly safe communities. This is also part of the whole "9-11 was an inside job" conspiracy. So while Trump may or may not agree with all this, nevertheless his top advisors come from this twilight zone. They believe in purifying The People and they're not afraid of chaos and violence as an inevitable means of accomplishing this transformation of society. That is truly terrifying. Things don't need to manifest in exactly the same way - it's still real and serious anti-Semitism. This time the hostility to alien people is spread around among a lot of groups, but the ones pulling the strings are supposedly Jewish. None of this makes the slightest bit of sense - it's an inherently insane and self-contradictory narrative. I cannot believe any of this is a real thing - that this has bubbled forth into the mainstream of discourse.

Also someone says the BLM is going to kill thousands of wild horses and I don't have the heart to investigate whether that is real. What's happening in the Outer Hebrides these days, do you suppose? I am very good with textiles, people, don't pass me by.

[Tahlvin]

[Mike]

[Tahlvin]

This past week I watched the movie Denial. Good movie. Scarily appropriate for the times.

[Cazmonster]

And we have the first Trump resignation!

How many more will resign and when?

[salvation122]

[Phoebe]

I find myself without the heart to comment any further (rejoice!). Either we are doomed one way or another or another. God help us.

[Zen]

[Mike]

There's good and bad in recent Trump news. The good is that he seems to be on a self-destruct course. Plus, there are hints that some of the GOP establishment really, really want to turn on him.

The bad news is that it's mostly posturing, and the GOP establishment is resolutely NOT turning on him yet. I suspect that they see him imploding soon as well, but in the meantime, his antics are providing awesome cover for the truly horrific shit they are doing behind the scenes.

Whether he stays or goes though, the tone and precedent he has set for the future of our democracy is abysmal, and I can only hope that we become better and stronger ultimately as a reaction to the terrible things he has done. But also, every moment he gets to keep spewing his garbage only further deepens the bullshit divides between factions of our populace. And having him out of office before his term is up would make all that even worse for a while.

There's a bright future to come, but we're going to have to suffer to achieve it.

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

I understand his dad had Alzheimer's and the prospect is absolutely terrifying.

[Phoebe]

It's to the point where I cannot read about any of it without just despairing and crying. You can give money to organizations you think will be most effective, and you can protest, but really? What now, people? They're starting to round up kids now. They're taking people away from churches. So here we go... this is what some plurality of "the people" wanted and they're going to have it now. At some point the children who come to my sister-in-law's class crying and terrified will disappear and she will never know if they're simply too scared to come to class, or have been detained somewhere, or deposited in some other country where they have no home or family and no means of fending for themselves. It's wonderful. And we're doing this because ------ ??? Because we have so damn many nurses in this country? Because everyone wants to work at the meat-packing plant and they're being cheated out of it?

Big talk: we are going to get rid of all the felons who are here illegally.

Real talk: we are going to get whoever we can get our hands on easiest, which means the law-abiding types who check in with their immigration officers, or the abused women seeking restraining orders, or the children picked up with their parents, or the homeless people seeking shelter. The drug-cartel folks will basically be the last ones deported.

[bralbovsky]

For a long time "D" has stood for dumbass. As in, it's the economy stupid, as in if you're going to fight wars fight them like you mean it, as in if you want to control health care costs (or drug costs, or other science costs) you have to have single payer, and do it like you mean it. The Dems haven't really been either focused nor sincere since before Johnson. Maybe before Truman.

Right now, we're waiting to see whether "R" stands for Russian. Russian oligarch structure, Russian environmental standards, Russian "legal" system, Russian kleptocracy. #trumpknew, and they know he knew, which makes the leadership accessories after the fact. The sadly real question is how many innocent people are going to have to suffer to build enough outrage in the system. I fear it might take all year, and that's as optimistic s you'll find me.

[Phoebe]

Nice of Ivanka Trump to call for religious tolerance after yet another nationwide wave of bomb threats and evacuations of Jewish centers. Meanwhile, Bannon sits at her father's right hand and the alt right nazis harass Jews, and neither her dad nor the Republicans in Congress can sign a statement indicating that the Holocaust targeted Jewish victims!!! Her dad freaks out on even a sympathetic reporter who wants to know what can be done about all the increased anti-Semitic threats in the US. And a British citizen and schoolteacher with no other citizenship is refused entry to the U.S. while on a school trip with his students, apparently for no other reason than being a non-white Muslim, and while the travel ban is supposedly lifted.

[Bonefish]

In all fairness, some 11 to 13 million people died in the holocaust and they were not all Jews. Yes, the Nazis targeted Jews, specifically. They also targeted intellectuals who questioned their quasi-religious idealogy, those who mocked them through satire, those who were mentally handicapped, homosexuals, gypsies, prisoners of war, political opponents and dissidents. 11 to 13 million people were murdered systematically, methodically. The Jews bore the brunt of it, but we should not forget that there were almost as many non jews who were gassed, worked to death, starved, experimented on, and murdered in the night. Also, God died in the camps.

And we're still waching it play out daily, across the world. It's horrible.

[Mike]

Just out of curiosity... in all fairness to whom?

[Phoebe]

Doesn't matter. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to deny that the Holocaust primarily and specifically targeted Jews unless you have some deeply fucked up reason for denying that. To say this obvious fact in no way diminishes the other killings. Finally President Trump came up with a seriously day late dollar short remark on the topic. Meanwhile, the threats against Jews go on, the Jewish cemetery was destroyed and a Muslim group raised money to help repair it.