Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503660)

Stop it. You're making shit up to justify your decision making. It's stupid.

No, she wasn't going to flop on Keystone. Probably DAPL, but no, Keystone is dead.

He may not wind up being as terrible as he's promised, but he is going to do things that she would not have. At least in the real world, not the one where you just make up her positions for her.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

I think "believing in things" too much is a lot of what's wrong with this country. We just watched a tribal exercise where believers ignored facts, and a reality TV star nudged out a cipher funded by corporate interests at odds with 90% of her voters.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503665)

Says he who said he couldn't vote for what he acknowledged was the lesser of two evils because he believed too much in individual freedom...

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503663)

There is something to be learned from a dying town: That its residents should have moved out of it long ago.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503658)

There's literally nothing to be learned from an individual dying rural town, aside from the fact that its residents should be thinking about moving.

Originally Posted by soup sandwich (Post 503668)

And this is where I get frustrated. Why don't they move?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

I posted that not because it's from HuffPo, but because she nails it.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

You don't realize that you demonstrate everything you criticize in the quote above. You know everything about everything.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

But you are correct about one thing: I don't believe in much. I'll admit that. I'll own it as "my truth." But you know what? That makes me more qualified to assess that on which I comment. I'm not as emotionally invested. I can see both sides of the coin. I think "believing in things" too much is a lot of what's wrong with this country.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

We just watched a tribal exercise where believers ignored facts, and a reality TV star nudged out a cipher funded by corporate interests at odds with 90% of her voters.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

That was a good article. You should reread it.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503667)

The jobs are not coming back to THERE. The jobs have largely already come back. They're just elsewhere. Move.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503671)

We're going to have to employ a basic living wage safety net at some point. Funny how all the Hayek freaks forget he was a big proponent of that. Yes, that runs contrary to my libertarian leanings, but as I've said, I'm a moderate form of that creature.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503639)

I suspected the last few of your posts were brought to us by the good monks at Chimay. Had a certain looseness to them.

There's not much point beating this dead horse any further. We'll never agree why HRC lost. But for all the same reasons we'd have mocked the Trumpkins for complaining the election was rigged had they lost, we could mock the HRC supporters for spraying blame in all directions but inward.

This thing happened. It isn't going away, and the broader movement behind it is much bigger than a mere election. And that's not going away any time soon.

You, me, almost all of us here... We've enjoyed the benefits of a system that has left a shitload of people in the dust. We thought we could ignore them, or dismiss them with statements like, "well, there are winners and losers in trade..." We thought we could write them off with statements like, "technology ultimately creates more jobs than it eliminates," while coyly ignoring the speed with which it does the latter and the glacial timeline over which it does the former. We've bought into silly Kennedy Era notions like "education will fix it all."

Trump grabbed in excess of 25% of the Latino vote. He stole a huge chunk of the union vote. He won 42% of women.

If you want to look for the true fault lines, and not buy into the "it's mostly racism and sexism" bullshit sold to "the marks" (your term), look at people with assets versus people without. That's where I think the significant split lies. Also look at who's in business for themselves, and who's in small business versus working as a cog in a big business.

The people without assets had nothing to lose voting for Trump. Hillary was bringing more of what Obama and Bush had brought them -- a managed decline, rather than hope of a real job. The people with assets, with capital - people like us - had something to lose. We benefit more from globalism and tech, which delivers to investors at cost to domestic labor. The people who are in business for themselves, who feel acutely and directly the impact of an ever more intrusive state, in the form of licensing strictures and regulation, and compliance bullshit, had much to gain with Trump. The people in jobs at large concerns - the kind of people here - have never felt the direct hand of regulation and compliance concerns on their backs. (They may deal with it, but they don't suffer a hit to the bottom line because of it.)

Who here but Hank actually has to make a payroll every week? I'm not sure any of us are really qualified to explain this phenomenon. But to start flinging blame around without serious looking inward, at your own side's failings - and I mean your side's often limited and tribalist thinking, not the failings of HRC as a candidate - is useless sour grapes. The thing is done. Blame is useless. Try to make the best of it.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503672)

And we could maybe do that if people would vote for Democrats.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 503673)

"Blame is useless"? Only if you don't give a shit. I do. And you actually do too, which is why your schtick is so irritating this week.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503675)

What do I give a shit about here?

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 503670)

No. She nails it from your perspective. You need to understand that.

This is an absolute complete mischaracterization. And maybe that's why you don't get it. I don't know everything about everything. I have opinions about issues based on how people--who may not necessarily be me--are affected by those issues.

I'm not sure why the fuck anything you just said makes you more qualified to assess anything. Taking positions on something doesn't eliminate the ability to see both sides of the coin. That's about as far away from logic as one can get. If you believe Hitler and genocide are bad you are somehow incapable of understanding why he grew to power? You think that because you neither believe that Nazism and genocide are good or bad that you have some sort of unique perspective? What the fuck are you talking about?

And you miss the point that you are invested. You are so invested in convincing everyone how much you don't care that you take one position in one sentence and counter it with a sweeping statement in the next. You're go-to approach to any of your opinions anyone has identified as garbage is, "Well, everyone knows [whatever your opinion happens to be in that moment.] And if you don't you're a fool." Your defense mechanism when confronted is to talk about how silly whoever is doing the confronting is because they're a member of some tribe that agrees with everyone else in that tribe. You think believing in something equates to belonging to a fucking tribe. That is so beyond stupid I can't even explain how stupid it is.

You think of it as a tribal exercise. I think of it as trying to protect people in this country who do not sit in a position of power from the horrific shit that one of those people has been actively promoting. If he wants the law of the land to be stop and frisk, I'm not voting against him because I'm a Democrat and do whatever Democrats do. I'm voting against him because I don't think people (overwhelmingly minority people--wait, more evidence of tribal thinking!) should be stopped and frisked.

The fact that you can recognize that there are issues with both candidates doesn't come as a result of your non-investment in either party. But the fact that you think that gleefully going back and forth pointing out why everyone who has chosen a side is so stupid and can't see past their tribal beliefs makes you insightful is lunacy.

Okay. But I guess that means tomorrow or next week or next year you're not going to wave off The Huffington Post as a liberal trashcan that isn't worth your time when someone posts a link to it, right?

TM

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503654)

Digest this and get back to me.

Some of the Ds get it. You aren't one of them.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503676)

Posing.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 503678)

Let's just recap this exchange, because it's illustrative of how you are being a jackass.

I posted something about how the Republicans have kept people, especially blacks, from voting.

You glibly suggested it didn't matter.

TM told you, fairly enough, to go fuck yourself.

You linked to something worth reading, but not relating in any way to voter suppression.

Hey, the HuffPo article you linked to is interesting in its own right, and worth a discussion, but you're not going to get it by being such a dick.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 503673)

Just for the record, I wasn't drinking and I couldn't see your face, but you got at least part of my meaning. You were pissing me off, most immediately because when I respond to something you say you change your tune. Either Hillary Clinton is particularly corrupt or all politicians are corrupt -- you say things without seeming to care what you mean. Which, I suppose, is symptomatic, because the underlying issue is that I care about what happened this week, maybe too much, and you are at least pretending not to.

If you are going to mock me for spraying blame in all directions but inwards, then you haven't been reading what I've been posting. Which was the point in the preceding paragraph. Actually, it's pretty plain that you haven't been reading, because the only person I called a "mark" was you, and wasn't for the way you voting, but for your mindless repetition of alt-right talking points that you can't be bothered to defend.

Elections are big, complex affairs, and there is plenty of blame to go around. I blame, in no particular order

- Anyone who voted for Trump
- My cousins who call Obama "Kenya"
- Anyone who pretends to be a libertarian and who voted for Johnson instead of against Trump, especially in a state where it might have made a difference
- Anyone who voted for Jill Stein
- Anyone who didn't vote
- Anyone who wouldn't vote for Hillary because Bill cheated on her
- Republicans, for many things which paved the way for Trump
- Obama, for not finding a way to make Republicans pay for their obstruction, and for failing to build institutions around his desire for change
- the Democratic Party, for all sorts of failures
- Hillary, though I suspect she did her best
- the media, for its promotion and normalization of Trump, and for the many fake scandals that dominated its coverage of Hillary
- Justice Roberts and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court, for getting rid of key parts of the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for Republican legislatures to make it harder for people, especially Democrats, to vote
- James Comey, for selfishly injecting himself into the presidential race
- the Electoral College, for handing the Presidency to an incompetent Republican who did not win the popular vote the second time in sixteen years
- myself, for not having done more
- many more, I'm sure

"Blame is useless"? Only if you don't give a shit. I do. And you actually do too, which is why your schtick is so irritating this week.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503675)

What do I give a shit about here?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503655)

Of course she's preferable on climate change. And he's an idiot on that issue.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503681)

Where in this list is "lack of jobs" which hasn't been addressed by either party? Kind of a big omission, no?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503680)

The link I offered addressed the issue. It wasn't about suppression. It was about jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Or more accurately, the lack of them.

You don't want to hear that.

Originally Posted by soup sandwich (Post 503668)

And this is where I get frustrated. Why don't they move? Go to North Dakota and work for a shale oil extractor. Go to Vegas and deal blackjack. Go to California and work in a field picking strawberries. Go somewhere and do something instead of just sitting around vaping and breeding and waiting for the government to save you.

"There's nothing for me in this town, but I am going to stay anyway" makes no sense to me.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 503649)

Who wants to start a new oldskool polling company?

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 503684)

What you don't want to hear is anything else. Fifty people have told you a thousand times that the outcome isn't the result of any one thing. Your smug dismissal of any topic that doesn't confirm your limited outlook is fucking infuriating. You have proven time and again that you don't want to have a discussion.

Pointing out voter suppression doesn't mean that it is the dispositive issue in this election. Pointing it out means it may have contributed. The fact that it's growing and will be a bigger issue going forward is not something to be shooed away because you don't give a fuck about minorities' rights or that you don't give a fuck about anything.

TM

Originally Posted by Not Bob (Post 503686)

I'm in. First we have to get Ma Bell to reinstall landlines and eliminate caller-ID.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 503662)

That was a good article. You should reread it.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 503689)

It wasn't terrible. Stating that speaking to people in areas which consist of defunct industries as if they are adults (eg., the jobs at the coal mine or steel mill are fucking gone, let's examine what's next) is a huge mistake (or better yet, outright neglect) as opposed to having a billionaire who actually moved jobs the fuck out of this country, screwed over small businesses as part of his business strategy, make empty promises of a way back to when coal mines and steel mills dominate the town was the right move, may have been a losing strategy, but what the fuck?

Also, this idea that Democrats just accepted the obsolescence of unions when Republicans worked very hard to destroy them is ridiculous.

But there were some good points.

Now read this: http://www.economist.com/news/united...inee-trump-and

TM

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 503546)

The "Bernie woulda won"s are just a little too much this morning. I don't have the energy and I'm sleep deprived.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 503684)

[Y]ou don't give a fuck about minorities' rights or that you don't give a fuck about anything.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 503696)

Bernie wouldn't have won. But I'm beginning to wonder if we deserved to. Everywhere I looked on the news last night and this morning, I saw the kind of behavior that had me scared as hell of Trump winning. Riots in thee streets. I wanted to puke. Liberals turning into the kind of lawless yahoos that swept Trump to victory. If Trump's real campaign slogan was "Making America White Again" (and it was), the Democrats' reaction is Resurrect the Weather Underground.

Every single person in America of voting age is guilty of putting us into the shit show we now find ourselves in. Democrats are burning and looting like the rule of law, something we were so fucking sanctimonious about, means nothing. Republicans who one by one tried to distance themselves from President Pussygrab are sniffing at his tail like eager puppies.

We have four years of deconstructing America to dread because neither party could manage to get enough people interested enough to put up a candidate who was both electable and not psychotic. So instead, we got Hillary, who most people in America just plain [I]didn't trust[I] and the poster child for bad behavior by someone with the mentality of a schoolyard bully.

Yes, Hillary had some good policies, plans, and experience. But most of America neither liked nor trusted her. And yes, Trump is a racist, sexist, ball of unchecked white privilege. But he gave all the people who used to have to hide in country clubs and dive bars permission to spew their hate in the streets.

After seeing Democrats stopping traffic in LA and Chicago and burning and looting in New York and New Orleans, it's clear that we really aren't all that much better than them.

Note that I'm not accusing anybody on this board of behaving like animals. I'm just observing that we are lying with the same dogs as the Republicans and we have apparently picked up the same fleas.

Stevenson was right. In a democracy, people pretty much get the government they deserve. Maybe instead of pissing and moaning, or thinking we're any better than anyone else, all of us can actually step it up, put what we stand for in our day, every day, and demand politicians do the same, or run them off before they get on the ballot in the first place.

I blame myself.

Originally Posted by Not Bob (Post 503569)

Upon reflection, having previously read the book, I should have realized that it was a Not Great idea. I mean, the whole premise of TTSS is that there's a high-level mole working for the Russians against his country to subvert freedom and democracy and all. I blame the second Manhattan for my mistake.

It's a very good movie, though. Gary Oldman was amazing as George Smiley.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 503689)

Now read this: http://www.economist.com/news/united...inee-trump-and

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 503685)

Look, many of us have moved. But a lot of the people I know who stuck around the dead-end all white town I grew up in had good reasons to stay - a sick parent or sibling, a family business or farm, etc.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503658)

That was better than I thought it would be at the outset, but I have to express frustration with "go to a town that no longer has a reason to exist and see how bad it is."

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 503696)

Bernie wouldn't have won. But I'm beginning to wonder if we deserved to. Everywhere I looked on the news last night and this morning, I saw the kind of behavior that had me scared as hell of Trump winning. Riots in thee streets. I wanted to puke. Liberals turning into the kind of lawless yahoos that swept Trump to victory. If Trump's real campaign slogan was "Making America White Again" (and it was), the Democrats' reaction is Resurrect the Weather Underground.

Every single person in America of voting age is guilty of putting us into the shit show we now find ourselves in. Democrats are burning and looting like the rule of law, something we were so fucking sanctimonious about, means nothing. Republicans who one by one tried to distance themselves from President Pussygrab are sniffing at his tail like eager puppies.

We have four years of deconstructing America to dread because neither party could manage to get enough people interested enough to put up a candidate who was both electable and not psychotic. So instead, we got Hillary, who most people in America just plain [I]didn't trust[I] and the poster child for bad behavior by someone with the mentality of a schoolyard bully.

Yes, Hillary had some good policies, plans, and experience. But most of America neither liked nor trusted her. And yes, Trump is a racist, sexist, ball of unchecked white privilege. But he gave all the people who used to have to hide in country clubs and dive bars permission to spew their hate in the streets.

After seeing Democrats stopping traffic in LA and Chicago and burning and looting in New York and New Orleans, it's clear that we really aren't all that much better than them.

Note that I'm not accusing anybody on this board of behaving like animals. I'm just observing that we are lying with the same dogs as the Republicans and we have apparently picked up the same fleas.

Stevenson was right. In a democracy, people pretty much get the government they deserve. Maybe instead of pissing and moaning, or thinking we're any better than anyone else, all of us can actually step it up, put what we stand for in our day, every day, and demand politicians do the same, or run them off before they get on the ballot in the first place.

I blame myself.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 503696)

Bernie wouldn't have won. But I'm beginning to wonder if we deserved to. Everywhere I looked on the news last night and this morning, I saw the kind of behavior that had me scared as hell of Trump winning. Riots in thee streets. I wanted to puke. Liberals turning into the kind of lawless yahoos that swept Trump to victory. If Trump's real campaign slogan was "Making America White Again" (and it was), the Democrats' reaction is Resurrect the Weather Underground.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 503696)

After seeing Democrats stopping traffic in LA and Chicago and burning and looting in New York and New Orleans, it's clear that we really aren't all that much better than them.

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 503706)

Jesus fucking christ. A man whose rhetoric present an existential threat to all manner of oppressed people is now empowered to take action and your panties are in the bunch about a wee bit of protest? Come on, man.

Also, the Weather Underground (and many others) exploded a whole bunch of bombs. Exactly where have there been bombings this week??



Yes, property damage is just like rounding up all the brown people, stopping and frisking all of the black people and banning Muslim immigration.

ETA: Or painting swastikas on things. Or chanting "build the wall" at your Mexican classmates. Vandalizing a school bathroom with "Tump" and "N*ggers". Or telling the Mexican girl she has to sit in the back of the bus now.