What if?

[akiva]

The Electoral College is not going to revolt and deny Trump. But what if it did? How bad would things get? What would happen?

[Phoebe]

Scary prospect. I mean, I am easily scared but I would be really scared about the aftermath. Unprecedented things have indeed been happening in the post-election world, at least in my narrow corner of the universe, and as scary as it is to see what happens when certain people and ideas become emboldened, it would be even scarier to see what those people do when they feel completely cheated and betrayed, even if them's the rules.

[Stan]

Yea, if Trump doesn't become president, whatever the why and how, many people will think it's a liberal plot. The long term threat of fundamentalist Christian terror, as well as far right terror, will come sooner rather than later.

[Phoebe]

I know some people who are ready to fight for Trump. Yep, that scares me. They believe this no matter what he does or says, because absolutely ANY criticism of him is a liberal lie promoted by the losers or the Lugenpresse. This is no longer about democracy for some people, obviously.

[Cazmonster]

I wish the die-hard Trump supporters realized how little he cares for them, or for anyone that isn't him.

[Phoebe]

Even though the far right loves him passionately, they still view him as something of a useful idiot. He is the vehicle by which they can rise in prominence and then start fielding their own ideologues as candidates. He is the only one who has put their political agenda front and center. The dude who writes SlateStarCodex has so disappointed me in this matter. He really doesn't see it; he thinks that if we cannot establish extensive evidence of a racist feeling inside Trump's own soul, the fact that he has put anti-immigration at the top of his list of concerns isn't the right sort of evidence. He thinks that because more non-white voters supported Trump than we would have expected with other candidates, this is evidence that his core message isn't about white nationalism. Wow does he fail to understand white nationalism, and the way that people vote for candidates whose plans and their effects might not have been fully predicted.

[poorpete]

When the republican candidate won, my Republican friend was not happy with the result, because he's sane, but did see silver linings (eg. the SCOTUS, the decimation of the Clinton and Bush machines).

I guess I'd feel similar if the electoral college didn't do what it's expected of them. It would be disastrous in many ways to our govt system, but there'd be one particular silver lining.

[Phoebe]

So did I DREAM that Trump told the Chinese to "keep" the drone they picked up, as if he presently possesses the authority to issue such a directive, or did that really happen? W. T. F. JUST KEEP IT. I have to admire the panache, you know - I have actually been in situations where, when the victim of petty theft, I was like yeah, just KEEP IT, which translates as "you're such scum to me, your effort at petty theft so meaningless, that you can just go ahead and do it because I care so little and you cannot affect me except to produce scorn". So I assume that's what Trump is saying, yet... yet it is the Chinese, to whom one does not simply say such things even if one is in a position to do so.

In other news, does anyone wonder whether the plane crash that surprise killed 32 Russian troops, due to "strong winds", was in fact due to something else? Or am I just trying to pretend Obama is solving everything because I'm so scared by the subsequent Unknown Unpredictable Unstable?