I'd really like to know how the black half of your town would respond to this characterization. Because
Also, using the standup comedy bit of “Trump sucks but I really hate the Oscars” as some sort of arguing point is ridiculous. First of all, it’s a comedy bit. You’re saying shit to get laughs — it’s not a manifesto of your world view. I went to a standup show a couple weeks ago where the comedian said he’s glad Trump is president because now there’s a First Lady he can jerk off to and not feel weird about it. The joke didn’t play well (in part because it was stupid, in part because liberal/elite Southern California wasn’t the correct audience for a pro-Trump joke) but its goal was to entertain. In Bakersfield or Fresno it probably kills. Second is that anyone that seriously cares more about what actors are saying than what politicians are doing (no matter what side either are on) has completely lost all perspective.
Talking to Merica et al is such a waste of time I was excited for 4 fresh pages of breaking news and legit insight only to see this charade for the umpteenth time
my point is that the anti trumpers that most people label as anti trump....are not. richard painter....is.
Of course they shouldn't. I'm just saying that they shouldn't act like everyone who disagrees with their stance is deplorable piece of shit. I'm saying democrat values are higher minded and better and we'd be better off acting more civilly. It seems like we saw how republicans acted during Obama's term and decided we should just start acting like hardliner assholes too.
The fact that you see the response to Trump as the same as the response to Obama is the fundamental flaw in your logic
I think most people in my hometown were very proud of how integrated we were. I'm not sure what your point is here?
People should resist a wannabe authoritarian dickweed who has no respect for the law or country or anyone besides himself. That’s not quite the same as saying Obama is trying to institute sharia law because he’s a Kenyan Muslim.
He is just pointing out that people resisted both presidents without giving any thought to the motivations behind the resistance... because of course.
I feel safe in saying everything the establishment GOP has recently done to this countries foundation is deplorable
Yeah because no republicans thought Obama was a wannabe authoritarian dickweed with no respect for the law or country.
And they feel safe in telling you to fuck off then pointing at the scoreboard. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...america-after-tuesday/?utm_term=.7d5cd9e7270e
I can’t wait till Merica votes for Trump in 2020 and cites this thread as the reason why in order to prove himself right. It’s quite the long game.
Republicans dominate US government. Today. They do it by playing identity politics because that tactic works well for them. It doesn't work for democrats, but democrats try to play it anyway.
Obama: Is black Trump: Praises authoritarians and copies their tactics Merica : There's no difference here and it's completely fine to equate the two
Yeah man this country seems really pleased with the way this thing is headed. How are the special elections going?
So democrats should let republicans pass every bill that discriminate against a minority group? What the fuck do you think playing identity politics is? Opposing bills that infringe on the rights of minorities is not a fucking game that is being played.
Of course I do. I think most true conservatives know trump is a fucking buffoon. I think they know Obama is brilliant. At the end of the day though, if they feel like tax cuts are great for the economy, then they prefer trump. When it comes to guns, they prefer trump. When it comes to abortion, they prefer trump. Etc. Of course a lot of people are full on into the cult of personality. And I think those are the people who have no strong fundamental positions when it comes to politics. Most of those people love Trump almost entirely because he tells the liberals they hate to fuck off. And most of them have voted for democrats at some point in their lives. The part liberals play in all of this is when we constantly act like condescending pricks who preach at them all the time. Hollywood especially.
I feel ya. Nothing worse than seeing 5 pages and getting excited to read the breaking news....only to find out it's a mindless Merica/Foaming/Retarded Rules or Saul saving Puerto Rico discussion
That your opinion of the racial climate of your town may not be indicative of the reality for the other half.
I mean it's not huge. He is a god damn joke. I'd trust damn near any person on this website to be the president over him. Him being a god damn mess is the only chance democrats have at getting power back.
I'd say when everybody is poor, there's a fuckload less racial resentment. I promise the resentment is less than the cities most of us dwell in now.
Watching Merica post in this thread is like watching one of those fake Russian Twitter accounts at work.
i mean if we want to do it we can, did your town go Trump? best predictor of Trump voters is score on racial resentment, found in study after study after study
Old, but re-read Merica An American Tragedy By David Remnick November 9, 2016 The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world. Source Photograph by Joe Raedle / Getty The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety. There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve. Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director’s heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like “e-mails,” “Anthony Weiner,” and “fifteen-year-old girl.” But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton. All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering. In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the “innate wisdom” and “essential decency” of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. “The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion,” Orwell wrote in his essay “Freedom of the Park.” “The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.” Trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters—white voters, in the main. And many of those voters—not all, but many—followed Trump because they saw that this slick performer, once a relative cipher when it came to politics, a marginal self-promoting buffoon in the jokescape of eighties and nineties New York, was more than willing to assume their resentments, their fury, their sense of a new world that conspired against their interests. That he was a billionaire of low repute did not dissuade them any more than pro-Brexit voters in Britain were dissuaded by the cynicism of Boris Johnson and so many others. The Democratic electorate might have taken comfort in the fact that the nation had recovered substantially, if unevenly, from the Great Recession in many ways—unemployment is down to 4.9 per cent—but it led them, it led us, to grossly underestimate reality. The Democratic electorate also believed that, with the election of an African-American President and the rise of marriage equality and other such markers, the culture wars were coming to a close. Trump began his campaign declaring Mexican immigrants to be “rapists”; he closed it with an anti-Semitic ad evoking “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; his own behavior made a mockery of the dignity of women and women’s bodies. And, when criticized for any of it, he batted it all away as “political correctness.” Surely such a cruel and retrograde figure could succeed among some voters, but how could he win? Surely, Breitbart News, a site of vile conspiracies, could not become for millions a source of news and mainstream opinion. And yet Trump, who may have set out on his campaign merely as a branding exercise, sooner or later recognized that he could embody and manipulate these dark forces. The fact that “traditional” Republicans, from George H. W. Bush to Mitt Romney, announced their distaste for Trump only seemed to deepen his emotional support. The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so—but this is surely the way fascism can begin. Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent, and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled. Some of this was the result of her ingrown instinct for suspicion, developed over the years after one bogus “scandal” after another. And yet, somehow, no matter how long and committed her earnest public service, she was less trusted than Trump, a flim-flam man who cheated his customers, investors, and contractors; a hollow man whose countless statements and behavior reflect a human being of dismal qualities—greedy, mendacious, and bigoted. His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment. For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber-surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager. It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as the results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do. More on Donald Trump’s victory: Amy Davidson on Trump’s stunning win, Evan Osnos on Trump’s supporters, and Benjamin Wallace-Wells on who is to blame. John Cassidy on how Trump became President-elect. Evan Osnos on Trump’s supporters. David Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992. He is the author of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.” Read more »