Trump

[Phoebe]

It's hard to be cheered by it; maybe he's equally effective at pushing his ideology back in his editor position, where he doesn't have to argue with any other powerful people in order to put out the message he wants. Trump admin still seems to be in disarray.

I can't get past the fact that a huge number of people in this country have such a totally f***** up grasp of what happened in Charlottesville. It's not like there aren't any number of eyewitness accounts and films and evidence, if you really aren't sure and need to dig into it past your mistrust of the mainstream media. I find it hard to continue associating with people who express incredibly dumb racist responses to this. We had a big discussion at home about what the proper way to deal with confederate monuments and history is; I'm not hostile to open discussion of these matters! I don't consider them automatically settled questions. Nor is it obvious what to do about protests. Freedom can be a very tricky thing to navigate, even as we prize it fully. But I really cannot deal with the false equivalence mindset. Most of the people I hear expressing it are white people who had an upbringing much like my own and damn well know better.

[Tahlvin]

I forget who posted it, but I saw a post on Twitter saying: It's bad when you here that the Nazi in the White House was fired and you have to ask, "Which one?"

[Phoebe]

Heh, that's amusing. It literally stuns me, like a chipmunk dropped on the floor, to see otherwise intelligent people claim that Trump was right about bad violence on many sides. What the holy fuck? Are these people drunk? On drugs? Putting aside the small fact that a person on one side murdered a person on the other - because I shit you not, but there are people who think it was kinda random that this one dude lost his mind and hopped in a car - you have to be either a mindless idiot or willfully perverse to ignore that those nazis were running around terrorizing normal citizens outside their synagogues and churches, and doing small things like surrounding and throwing lighter fluid on unarmed uva undergrads while waving torches about. Seriously, fuck anyone who sagely nods at all this as "many sides" and thinks Trump had a legit point about that. I give thanks - really - that people have shown their brownshirt asses this way, so I can be sure what I was dealing with.

[Phoebe]

Just underscoring that the sentiment above is not exactly irrational or motivated by an idiosyncratic read of Trump's rhetoric, . Yeah, that liberal, biased rag... but look at the chorus of voices they can point to for concurrence now, who issued formal statements, resigned from their appointments, and more. These people are not all victims of a misinterpretation of Trump's speech (and the blaze of supporting tweets). These people know the cold, stark difference between nazi ideologies and aggression, and the effort to push back and refuse it. They managed to figure out that there's a difference between nazis with guns pushing past arm-linked pastors in robes, and people trying to block that push with fists and sticks. This was not some street brawl between equally complicit antifa and nazis! Watch the videos.

Anyway, it is killing me that various people I know and love don't get this. I don't think I have much love to preserve for people who excuse nazi violence with false equivalencies. There are so many things I can forgive in the people I care about, trust me. And I'm engrossed in some pretty complicated discussions with other friends and family about the issue of monuments and free speech. I get that this is challenging. But apologetics for nazi violence? I can't understand it. Why? Why why? I wish I could somehow tell these people they're better than that and their confusion is in fact destroying my good opinion of them forever, but they have no ears to hear it. You know, in some cases, like my cousin who has been, shall we say, difficult to love for several years now, and other people, I'm kind of despondent that this, of all the stupid things, turns out to be the last straw past which I can't and won't travel. That snotty meme you like or that throwaway comment you made about Trump showed me something cruel in your heart, and it's just a gut punch when loved ones do this. Vote for him, defend him on other stuff, hate libruls, whatever, but this? No. Please, just no, why?

[FlameBlade]

Pardoning someone for willful contempt of law, eh?

At beginning of a category 4 hurricane. Heckuva of a job.

[Cazmonster]

It's petty. But I hope a hurricane eats one of his golf courses.

[FlameBlade]

I want to specifically point out that pardon is essentially an attack against Judiciary branch. Namely, Arapio was found in contempt of the court for not correcting Constitutional issues. Basically, he was found to violate Constitution. By extension, Trump is also attacking Constitution, violating the oath of the office.

[Phoebe]

A relative of ours went to Arpaio's tent prison once for a residential stay, and he's a gung-ho Trump voter (his family too) who trots out the pro-Trump and anti-feminist memes on FB. It's a thing to behold. His friends are struggling to insert "facts" in response, God bless them. The Arpaio thing - could it be an opening?

[Cazmonster]

[Stan]

Trump has never had respect for judges probably because of all the judgments against him. Some analysts have said that the pardon was to fire up the despicable end of his base. Others have implied this was a test case; in the future he might pardon anyone who refuses to give testimony against him.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

Trump is what he is; it's not like it was some mystery before he was elected. Pence pretends to be a good Christian and that really chaps my hide. At least you know what you're getting with Trump. I've always preferred that option to the Pence-type masquerade.

[Bonefish]

Pence also troubles me because he is shrewd and competent. Which means he can accomplish the things he wants to do. Which are generally bad things.

[poorpete]

Pence is preferable in my opinion. Pence is getting his way with a pro life false Justice and an obsene trans ban. His pet peeves are already being addressed. That Trans ban in particular is deeply unpopular and destined for the rubbish bin of history once a Dem pres or moderate GOP pres arrives, or maybe even before if congress works with the military to overturn it. Pence doesn't have everything that makes Trump dangerous. Trump has that plus Pence. Pence would have better advisors and a VP would have to be approved by Congress and thus probably a moderating force.

[Phoebe]

I feel like Pence is less likely to destroy everything with senseless warmaking, but who knows.

[Bonefish]

I am not particularly bothered by the warmongery elements of Trump. It seems like his military orientated advisers(Kelly, McMaster and Mattis) are opposed to him, and I have the feeling that if Trump tried so cray-cray shit, either one of those three would quickly step in and maybe even start proceedings under the 25th amendment. Trumps sheer batshittery makes me think his presidency will be relatively lame for the next three years.

Pence bothers me much more, because he's not only a typical fiscal conservative, but he's also much more likely to push religious discrimination and break down the barriers between the church and state. Which scares me deeply. And he will probably pivot back towards being anti-russian, which has all sorts of wonderful side effects.

[Phoebe]

Some things have been happening lately near me that convince me the world has gone mad. We can elect other people, but the underlying problem is still there and it's just enormous and entrenched. This relatively huge for-what-this-is percentage of the population is totally beyond reasoning with in any way. They are just bald-faced liars and they do not care any more. I really don't know what we do with that. I spend a lot of time working on it instead of just bitching, a lot of time and effort, and those efforts have only made me despair even more that something is really screwed up in a special way these days.

[Stan]

75% of Trump voters believe that the news media is a greater threat than white supremacists.
source: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show ... _fb_maddow

These are people who have been chugging the talk radio koolaid for decades. How do you even deal with people like that?

[Mike]

[Tahlvin]

BTW, I love the whole thing about Eric Trump slamming CNN about not covering his dad's hurricane donation, several hours after CNN sent out a tweet about that very same donation. The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the dying apple tree, does it?