Trump

[Phoebe]

FYI for those unfamiliar with Iowa politics, this has been known for a long time, at least since he was questioning whether non white people contribute anything to "our" civilization, but Rep. Steve King just hung his white nationalism out for all to behold again. I mention this because he will get away with it, given the powerful shift of his own party in this direction, and to underscore why for a long time it has been clear this is not a drill. White nationalism is no longer some fringe thing we can safely assume nearly everyone abhors. Nope, many voters very comfy with it.

Meanwhile, talking with 9 year old about immigration status of her friends to plant a seed of understanding. At some point within a few years if we continue on this course, those friends won't be here or will be facing a crisis. Nevermind they're among the brightest kids in the school - you know, the precise kids we depend on for the flourishing of "our" civilization. Ugh, deplorable was The Right Word.

[poorpete]

[Phoebe]

It's just a weird, misspelled way of saying, if anything is found related to Russia, it's fake news from those who are spying on the President. And also it distracts us from other real things. Here, gape at the egregious lying while we steal you blind! Etc etc.

[Cazmonster]

I can only hope that come 2018 we understand how close we came to the precipice and will step back.

[Phoebe]

Here comes the media to spin this now. NYT headline:
"Steve King, Hurling Insults at Immigrants, Is Rebuked by His Own Party"

Guess what that means?
One (1) state GOP chair in Iowa, who has long had grief with King, complains about him.

One (1) Cuban-American Congressman actually disagrees, via Tweet, of course, the proper mode of all serious political communication.

Paul Ryan's office courageously confirms that Ryan obviously doesn't agree with King.

Wow, that's a deep rebuke, NYT. This man's party never has meaningfully rebuked his racism. I wish they'd start but that's their bread and butter, that's why they can't react with condemnation and horror when Duke and the other nazis chime in their support.

[Cazmonster]

Kayleigh McEnany needs to get dropped into a hole full of hungry weasels.

[Phoebe]

the white nationalism is not likely to disappear easily, regardless of what happens with Trump, because this tribalism is taking the place of religious identity for people who stopped attending church and are increasingly disaffected. Also helps explain the group of people who saw Trump and Sanders as better alternatives to one another, since both are anti-institutionalism while Clinton is pro.

The alt right leaders very much get the appeal of the mystery of paganism, and the exclusivity and promised power of occultism, as a way of making people feel special and important again. It starts with the whole redpill language of initiation and goes up from there. This is also why their movement is so totally sexist, even moreso than, say, Evangelical Christianity. Because the manliness of their followers especially requires building up, in order to both make and keep them as followers, and doing it at the expense of women is the cheapest, easiest way. Thus the natural affinity for Trump's crass, old-fashioned sexism. It's not a moral, religious gender roles thing; it's a pro-porn kind of sexism. Little do they know the "pagans" organizing them are mostly gay men who thrill to this kind of faux manly man as object of lust. But whatever, organized religion is usually weird in this exact way.

[bralbovsky]

More than a little tired of the word "populist." Nationalist? Sexist/racist, other -ists seem inadequate. Certainly doesn't apply numerically, apparently not in The Netherlands either.
The perhaps only light at the end of this tunnel is that the whole Russia thing is slowly unraveling.

[Phoebe]

So we have had to make a formal apology to the British for the lying. Think about that in comparison to everything we've known up to this point in our leadership, whether we agreed or disagreed or thought they were a bunch of clowns at times. We're apologizing shamefully to our closest ally because of some lie a Fox news commentator pulled from his ass on TV and therefore the White House Press Secretary thought it wise to repeat the accusation.

And the truly scary thing is that you know there is no way people with that kind of pathology can let this stand. There is now going to be some kind of Snowden or Russian hacker version 9.2 which tells us all about how the British are really spying on us left and right.

[akiva]

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

And now the President says there's nothing to apologize for. If you see something false on FOX, please proceed to cause an international incident by claiming it as true and blame FOX if you're wrong. After all, how could the U.S. government possibly find out truths without seeing them on non-fake TV news? Oh, is this distracting you from our plan to take away school lunches and insurance for grandma and cancer research and satellite monitoring? Good, good. If the heat gets uncomfortable, I'm sure some RT affiliated hackers will come up with a non-fake story for Assange to leak. This is, like, not a drill! Real. Tillerson invites only FOX to South Korea event and says all options on table. Luckily Israel successfully uses missile defense vs. Syria. Maybe we will too someday. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Mars colony seeming less crazy.

[Bonefish]

Is there some reason why North Korea is suddenly a place we need to invade? I mean, we probably spend more on the F-35 than NK spends on everything.

[Phoebe]

Well, I'm ready to end the simulation here. Can we stop now? I want off the ride. Why isn't it stopping? Who is in charge here? Excuse me, I also want a refund.

[Phoebe]

You'd think I might be pleased that a lot of things are unraveling right now - new revelations about Manafort, weird financial dealings coming to surface, lies about contact exposed... But I'm not the slightest bit happy about it. I wish that none of these things ever had to be dealt with or could possibly be true. It's such an embarrassment to our nation and will be having such a ripple effect on our ability to do things around the globe. Terrible. Can you imagine how people are going to look back at some of the things being accepted at surface value right now? For instance just look at this one statement, where Spicer tries to deflect questions about Manafort by saying that he had a very limited role for a limited period of time. And by that he means that for four months the man ran the whole campaign. Including when the Republican convention was held and the platform was changed to be pro-Russia. How can anybody ever take seriously anything these people say again? But there is zero gloating about it, because we all have them now as our representatives, doing this damage to our credibility.

The other thing is, what looks like obvious dissembling to some people is completely okay to other people. This is the product of many, many years of accepting distortions of fact as normal. A party that rejects science and has done so for a long time, thus normalizing the mechanisms of denying standard sources of objective fact, is not only helpless to do anything about this but could be very dangerous. At a certain point, something truly damaging that cannot be ignored will come out. But what happens then? Many people are completely comfortable now with not having to accept inconvenient facts. Do we expect that group of people to respond well when facts turn out to be very politically inconvenient? I mean, look at what happened on the other side, when it came out that Obama was doing all sorts of things to expand presidential Powers, violate privacy, and even execute American citizens with drone killings. If any of those things had precipitated a real crisis of government, is it imaginable that Obama supporters all would have abandoned him? It seems to be the same way now but multiplied several times on the other side. So even if important truth comes out, I don't see any political good future coming out of this.

[Mike]

We accept that the president of the United States lies brazenly to the American people and the world every single day. We accept that people in the GOP are backing up and justifying those lies even though they know them to be lies and they know that WE KNOW they're lies. And none of that is what's most dangerous to our people and nation and future on any given day.

If Donald Trump finally implodes or is exposed or has a heart attack or whatever... let's say he's removed from office two months from now. It won't fix the damage done and the ugliness exposed. Even if he is completely discredited, there will still be 25%+ of voters who will defend him forever and still believe that all of it was a Democratic Party/Clinton/Obama/Shadow Government plot to tear down a great man and destroy our nation. That's the legacy we live with for another generation.

[akiva]

In the last few days I've a lot of people posting tweets from pro-Trump people last fall about how damaging and awful it'd be to have a president under investigation by the FBI. I assume none of those people have retracted that or said the same thing about the current president under investigation by the FBI.

[Phoebe]

It's really upsetting. You have to go on living your life and dealing with people every day who are totally okay with all of this or having some ostrich-like denial that it is even happening. It is like being in the twilight zone.

[Mike]

The two situations are completely different. Clinton was a manipulative criminal mastermind whose cavalier attitude about government information put the entire nation at risk. Trump is the victim of a political witch hunt.

[Phoebe]

Oh I smiled inside a little bit after reading that. It wasn't enough for the total smile on the outside but was definitely a full inside smile, so thank you.