Sweet Jesus, do I hate Donald J. Trump. I hate that absurd shelf of cotton candy hair that juts out over his forehead. I hate how his piggy little eyes are encircled by pale ovals from his tanning-bed goggles. I hate his big, fat, lying, smirking, leering, bellowing mouth.
I hate his ill-fitting suits and goofy-ass, too-long ties. I despise his dainty little hands. And were I ever so unfortunate as to see them, I’m confident I’d hate his feet too, which are almost certainly short and puffy.
As physically repulsive as Trump is, that’s nothing compared to the hideousness that resides in his bloated noggin. He’s a lying, unprincipled, greedy, cruel, incompetent, self-aggrandizing bully.
I can’t remember a time in my life when I was blissfully unaware of his existence — he’s been lurking in the fringes for decades, an obnoxious, contemptible blowhard who added nothing but vulgarity to our national dialogue and underscored our very worst qualities as a people.
And then the Republican Party, Vladimir Putin and tens of millions of assholes banded together to make the King of Assholes representative of the American people. Months later, I still can’t get my mind around it — that malignant clown rocketed by stupidity, greed and malice into an office once held by Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Obama.
So yeah, I hate Donald Motherfucking Trump. But what I hate even more is how he ruins everything. He’s inescapable!
Want to keep up with current events? It’s the Donald Trump Show. Want to enjoy the holidays with your family? Nope — Donald Trump! See what your auntie in Alabama is up to? Trump! Weather Channel? Trump. Want to escape the constant shit-show fail-parade by watching sports? Nope! Trump!
He’s a noxious orange fart cloud that blots out the fucking sun and rains stupid and evil all day long.
But worst of all, he spreads evil. I know I’m a worse person because of constant exposure to Trump — more driven by spite, more animated by schadenfreude, more angry, cynical and bitter. Will it get better once he is finally driven from office? I honestly don’t know.
Anyhoo, I feel better now that I got that off my chest. Over to you…
JPL
It’s all chaos, just all f..king time.
Major Major Major Major
Hear hear. It’s like he’s stymied my development as a person and now it’s all rearguard actions all the time.
TenguPhule
We all are.
Only if he and every culpable party involved are punished for this travesty.
Capital Punishment. Anything less and I don’t see things improving.
Boosmom
But how do you really feel?
raven
And those are his good points.
narya
The ONLY thing for which I’m grateful is that my family (including my in-their-80s parents) are dyed in the wool democrats, and they loathe that buffoon as much as I do. It makes family gatherings much easier than for many other people.
JC
I am permanently less trusting because of all of this.
frosty
@TenguPhule: Capital punishment? Disgrace, long term incarceration and confiscation of ill-gotten gains is fine with me.
Break them all and let them die old and bitter in jail.
Humboldtblue
I hear ya, rumproaster, but ya can’t hate baby elephants!
catclub
re-read Al Franken’s early books and Trump jumps out you, there, too.
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: I’d be satisfied if he were driven from office in disgrace, became such a blight on his party that it disbanded, was sued into abject poverty and saw his name become such a universal punchline that he knew for certain his descendants five generations hence would disown it. Justice!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: My faith is shattered, and I fear that he could be with us for a long time.
Waldo
Any chance we could have the Oval Office declared a disaster area?
Yoda Dog
I hope he drops dead of a massive coronary or something. I wish that daily.
And like you said, Betty, I am aware that I didn’t used to feel that way about anyone, much less daily, but that realization just makes me hate him all the more.
schrodingers_cat
Amen sister. Even 8 months later I cannot stand to see him or hear him for more than 5 minutes. Its not just his hands that are tiny he is a small person.
Catherine D.
@Waldo:
More of a superfund site, no?
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Hahaha, raven nails it.
My sympathies, Betty, I agree with every single word, nay, every letter you wrote.
trollhattan
Back in the ’70s Trump just fucking appeared in national media as some kind of New York wiz kid who we were told to admire, because reasons (“building” gaudy buildings and snorting coke off supermodel asses at Studio 54 among them). Even then New Yorkers regarded him with suspicion but maybe because New York’s brand was poison back then they were basically ignored.
We should have listened to those New Yonkers in 2015 and ’16. Things would be very different.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: We think alike!
I hadn’t quite leapt forward 5 generations though. Good call.
TenguPhule
@frosty:
I don’t want to take any chances of parole, pardons or escape.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker: Mercy to our enemies is what got us into this predicament starting with Nixon.
He’s done far too much evil to be allowed to skate with such a light punishment.
Treason must never prosper.
catclub
@Humboldtblue: No “Baby Elephant Walk” for the music. I am disappoint.
msdc
You know what really kills me? The rulers.
Those plastic rulers kids get with the pictures of the presidents on them. Or those posters that run around the top of the blackboards on a classroom. I used to be so proud when I saw Obama in that last spot. They have Trump on them now. They always will.
Fuck him and all his enablers forever.
LaNonna
Seconded, the whole sh#tshow has made me horribly cynical. Some days I just cannot, with the news. It’s an energy blackhole.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: @frosty: Yeah, it would take worse than even Trump for me to budge on capital punishment.
catclub
@trollhattan:
Well, WE did. Not so much the rest of the US voting population.
Humboldtblue
@catclub:
Hah! I was jamming to that last week.
pacem appellant
After the election, I knew I would need an outlet, so I took up a difficult musical instrument to pour my energies into. When I get so infuriated I’m going to explode, I practice the bagpipes even more. All the air required is good for stress reduction. If it weren’t for Trump, I’d be making much slower progress.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Republican Party: Hold our beer!
msdc
@Betty Cracker: Mm, that and a life sentence, sure.
TenguPhule
@pacem appellant:
Hey now, I draw the line at torture!
Roger Moore
+eleventy. This is the thing I hate the most about Trump and his ilk; they’re making me into something I hate, and there’s really no way to avoid it. If I stay engaged with politics, I wind up turning into a worse person in the process of fighting him. If I disengage, I acquiesce in his evil. I know the first alternative is better, but I hate being forced to choose.
J
Though no words can to justice to the supreme awfulness of the man, the indecency of him, this eloquent rant was as good as it gets, Betty. I’d to the list of things to hate about him, his voice and his diction, which make my skin crawl.
Philip Roth put it well:
“…neither [Nixon or Bush] was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/philip-roth-e-mails-on-trump
different-church-lady
@Waldo: Superfund site.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: I moved the kitchen back on my fake house plans btw, per your comments, thanks.
Jado
Everyone is upset and puzzled by the people who voted for Trump, but I think part of it is that the Trump voters never consider their vote having an actual impact on things they deal with – voting has become separated from the effects of voting due to propaganda and the complexity of modern life.
The internet got together and voted on a name for the newly-built boat for the Natural Environment Research Council exploration vessel, and ended up with Boaty McBoatface. Now the funny part of this is that there is no law that says that the Natural Environment Research Council had to abide by the vote, so the absurdity of the situation is understandabel as a backlash against an obvious publicity stunt. Some people do not appreciate pandering.
Unfortunately, the Presidential Election is treated the same way by citizens who are in tough straits. If you are a racist and see black people feeling empowered, you want to tear them back down. The same feeling happens when you are refused a raise at your low-skill job again this year, while everything is getting more expensive and those jackass coastal elites are enjoying the trips and vacations that you no longer have access to. The fact that you voted the unions out of existence doesn’t penetrate the bubble of resentment and rage that you have built up, cause you have been constantly told that this is all the fault of coastal elites, minorities, and Democrats.
SO F*%& YOU ALL!! I’M VOTING FOR TRUMP!! becomes a rallying cry for those who can’t understand that their bleeding foot is a direct result of the discharge from their own pistol. At least if Trump shoots EVERYONE’S foot, they won’t be so alone.
Of course, they COULD change their ways and work toward a better tomorrow for everyone, but everyone includes minorities, so….no.
It also might mean admitting they were wrong. So…no.
Corner Stone
I can only hope that his downfall is brought about by Dos Ricos – Mueller nailing him and his whole family on the RICO act, and the outrageous and disgraceful way he is handling Puerto Rico.
Although I want PR to be returned to some form of itself and be made whole, I selfishly want a few hundred thousand people to migrate to FL and TX. Then vote like they are holding the mother of all grudge fucks.
Best Peasant
Preach it, Betty!
MJS
I have to somewhat disagree with the idea that he is making good people like Betty & others worse. Worse towards the idiots that elected him? Sure. But more sympathetic towards those who will be most impacted by the POS’s noxious policies, which is a good thing. In other words, those who are already decent, caring people will remain so, Trump or no Trump.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Bagpipes are their own kind of torture.
Shell
Want to watch the retread of “Will and Grace?” Nope. It was all about Trump!
JustRuss
Yeah. It’s really killed me to see how my fundiegelical relatives have gone all-in for for Trump. “Hate the sin and love the sinner” was always BS, but at least it had a veneer of Christianity to it. Now they’re all comfortable hating the sinner, full-stop. Thanks Donald.
efgoldman
@pacem appellant:
No neighbors for at least a mile away?
lollipopguild
Trump has done such a good job of appealing to our worser natures that even if he was gone today(poof!) he has empowered so many awful assholes that we will be dealing with them for a long time. This is the new normal.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: Not good enough. People like Ryan and turtle and all the other cowards would just whitewash Trump out of the picture. There’s only one thing that will get these guys to straighten up, even for a blip in history. You can see it in the paranoid way even the lesser Cabinet people are obsessed with secrecy and security. They are scared to death of the people.
Betty Cracker
@Yoda Dog: I literally keep a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge in case news reaches me that Trump stroked out on the crapper mid-tweet. I know that’s not right!
schrodingers_cat
The most disgusting thing about the last election is that many thought that this person who can’t even shake hands or smile like a human being would make a good president.
Major Major Major Major
@Jado:
There’s absolutely some truth to this. There’s an anthropologist at Madison studying Trump voters in the upper Midwest, and they say that they don’t actually expect him to improve their lives at all, they just expect him to piss off liberals and hurt brown people.
They ended up naming that boat after David Attenborough. After that name was announced one of my friends sent me a petition for David Attenborough to rename himself Boaty McBoatface. I lol’d.
KithKanan
@Major Major Major Major: I’m generally against capital punishment. Honestly, the main reason I’m not making an exception for Trump is that even bringing back hanging, drawing, and quartering would be too kind in his case.
japa21
I used to have a fantasy that I was on Apprentice, lasted a couple weeks and got fired. Then during the post firing interview I would talk about how thankful I was that I got fired. That it was obvious to me that he was both a horrible person and a horrible businessman. Of course, at about that time I would realize that either it would never be shown or he would just explain it away as sour grapes. I realize now, I probably couldn’t have gotten through 10 minutes without throwing up. Of course, I would try my damnedest to target his shoes.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
In the car today, I found myself screaming at my radio when they played Trumps squeaky nasty voice.
Betty Cracker
@J: Love that Roth quote!
Jeffro
Slate-ish contrarian note: I hate Trumpov just as much of the rest of you, buuuut…while he makes me mad, multiple times daily, when I step back a bit, two things do give me hope. Three, actually.
One: President Obama noting in multiple ways and to multiple audiences that, (paraphrasing here) “If you had to choose a period in history to be alive…no matter your gender or race or whatever…you’d choose right now. There’s a lot of work to do, but things have never been better.” And that’s just true, Trump or no Trump.
Two: Despite the tweets and jets and grifting and the most-unsuited-for-office chief executive in our nation’s history, PLUS the dumbest, most vicious pack of hateful, enabling jackasses ever to serve in Congress…the country is still humming along, even if its government is limping heavily. I don’t know whether to thank the FSM, the redoubtable ‘American Spirit’, or some combination of both (plus knock on wood), but it’s true. We could be doing so much better, of course, but all is not lost.
And Three: I truly do believe this is going to get squared away, in a relatively short time. Trump and his gang are all hanging by a Muellerian thread. The GOP infighting is only going to get worse leading into 2018 and hopefully 2020 as well. The long arc…it really does bend toward justice.
In the meantime, I find I am swearing more than usual…but also working out more than usual. (Probably needed more of both anyway!) So, Fuck Trump and I’ll see y’all at the pool =)
Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California)
My husband and I keep a pen on the dining room table so we can deface every photo of him that appears on the newspaper.
Major Major Major Major
@KithKanan: I’m against it as a first principle, I think.
Frankensteinbeck
While Trump has made the world worst, mostly he’s made people aware. He didn’t invent the travel bans or encouraging police brutality. White Supremacy was the core of the party long before him. He had nothing to do with the unspeakable sadism of Ryan and McConnellcare. While I am often stressed out by the damage done by having Republicans in charge, the whole ‘a new shock every day’ doesn’t affect me much, because I knew this was who they are.
@TenguPhule:
No. Refusing to call racism out for what it is, that is what got us into this predicament. Reagan was the major person who mainstreamed it, and Republican policy and America changed direction drastically when he did. Like Trump and FOX, Republicans getting away with crimes is a symptom, not the disease.
@pacem appellant:
I gotta say, except during the height of the ACA repeal fiascos, I have been writing like a demon. I do nothing else.
CaseyL
I loathe Trump. He’s walking, talking vomit in human form.
But he’s also a symptom of the institutional decay this country has endured – probably since Reagan was elected, and certainly since Fox News went on the air. Russia could not have accomplished its coup without the willing, even eager, cooperation of the GOP, the MSM (all of them, Katie; not just Fox), and tens of millions of ignorant, stupid, hateful citizens.
When I have to think about Trump, I have to think about the underlying disease.
We might be rid of Trump, if Mueller and Schneiderman do their jobs. We might even be rid of most of his carny barker Administration.
But the underlying disease will still be there, and I have no idea what to do about that.
Seth Owen
@schrodingers_cat: I am so glad there are people paid to listen to Trump so that I don’t have to. I never listen to his speeches or press availabilities (sic). I read about it later.
gene108
Being disgusted and angered by Evil does not make me a worse person, and Trump and his minions are Evil. His voters brought this evil into power.
If there were a way to make Trump voters suffer and afflict the rest of us, I’d be in favor.
But I hope he and his minions get hurt, because they are evil and wanting evil hurt is not a bad thing.
Jeffro
@pacem appellant:
Dropkick Murphys looking for a replacement?
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: There was an article in our local paper about how the expected influx of citizens fleeing the devastation in Puerto Rico could turn Florida politics on its head. Welcome, new neighbors!
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
Does that mean we can expect Book 5 soon?
Stardus614
I find myself waiting and hoping and praying for him to resign so he can spend more time with his oncologist. That’s not what a good person does, and I know it, but that’s where I am now.
KithKanan
@Major Major Major Major: I’m mainly against any non-zero possibility of executing an innocent person by mistake.
Duane
I’m listening to the radio. Fox News comes on.Trump speaks about Puerto Rico. “It’s an island. Surrounded by water. Big water, ocean water.” It sounded like the beginning of a third grade geography report.
Betty Cracker
@Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California): I love that! Makes me want to subscribe to a dead tree edition again just for the pleasure of defacing those pictures.
maya
Anyone at BJ know how VooDoo dolls work?
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
And that’s what’s so worrying.
There’s a lot of “nothing to worry about” and “market rising” which is getting people complacent about what’s actually happening. The market is only concerned about next quarter. The country has to worry about a lot longer timescale then that.
And that’s where things truly get ugly. Trump and the GOP are sowing a bumper crop of future horrors which threaten to cause misery and suffering on a scale normally only seen by war or natural disaster.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: Do it! Just don’t be surprised when you end up restocking weekly, at a minimum.
Pro tip: champagne is the one wine that goes with everything–any event, any food pairing, any time of year, any palace coup. Bookmark it, hippies!
Major Major Major Major
@KithKanan: Right, and maintaining it as a first principle is the only way to ensure that. There’s not actually a need to execute anybody, I’m not saying we should be Norway and pay people to be their friends, but we don’t need to execute them.
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
One of the things I’m hoping for, both with Mueller and with the Congressional investigations, is that it will help to expose the institutional failures and not just the Trump campaign’s wrongdoing. The stuff about Facebook and Twitter coming out is likely to be just the beginning.
TomatoQueen
Yes. I hate him too. And all who sail in him, and their death machine. And none of the people I’ve spoken with during the past months are anything other than doing their best, with whatever they can spare of whatever they have to give, to fight back. This is how we find out who we are, by being sorely tested and tried. But we shall NOT be moved. Hands on the plow, eyes on the prize.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: So, Mr. Mensch, when are those indictments coming down, anyway?
Doug R
I’m gonna watch last nights episode of The Orville again.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Yes. I’m guessing a couple of months, including editing time.
joel hanes
I am actually grateful that the Republicans continue to back Trump, nearly unanimously.
He’s destroying their brand for at least one generation, maybe more. It will take time for that to have the effects that we all would wish would come sooner, but the Rs have lashed themselves to this white whale, and in the end will be unable to separate their own fate from his.
If I could wave a wand, I’d sentence him to live out the rest of his life in the scabrous trackside residence hotel depicted in The Blues Brothers, and with no TV or phone — but I don’t think we’ll actually have to devise a fate for him, as I think his health will collapse in some way that can’t be ignored, and before the end of his first term.
trollhattan
Let’s see, they’re nearly all in trouble over something they did or said, which cabinet member’s turn…Perry, you’re up!
Our national goose-step back to the 19th century continues.
catclub
@Corner Stone:
The Croatians and the Kosovars can hold a grudge for 500 years. I cannot think of any group coming to the US doing that. African Americans would have a good reason to.
Corner Stone
I have to give it to them, MSNBC is at least bringing some airtime to all the Trump Cabinet private jet BS.
Jack the Second
@Jeffro: If Mueller announced indictments or whatever his endgame is against Trump, Pence, and everyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in the same room with him, sometime in August-September-October next year, how do you think that would play out?
Patricia Kayden
Did you all see Steven Seagal scolding NFL players for their protest FROM Putin’s RUSSIA? Because abandoning the U.S. for Russia is so patriotic. I swear that irony has been viciously murdered by the Trump regime.
joel hanes
champagne is the one wine that goes with everything
I dearly love it, but the hangovers from real brut are a real brute. Worst headache ever.
So only weddings and the occasional New Year’s celebration are worth paying the Piper-Heidseck
Amir Khalid
@Jado:
As I recall, the name Boaty McBoatface was a popular bit of whimsy rather any sort of protest against being pandered to. The name was eventually given to an autonomous underwater vehicle carried on the ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough.
HeleninEire
@Betty Cracker: You know I was gonna disagree with your up top. Was gonna say “No he should live a long life…in prison.”
But “stroked out on the crapper mid-tweet” has changed my mind.
I’ll take it.
Corner Stone
@catclub: You never met my maternal grandmother. Half Scots and Half Apache.
However, we really only need about two generations of grudge fuck voting to get us moving in a good direction.
ETA – not just PR population but everybody on our side!
Archon
Sixty million people literally took time and energy out of their day and voted for one Donald J. Trump to be the most powerful man in the world. A man who didn’t hide AT ALL how filled he was with avarice and mean-spiritedness.
I’d sleep better if I thought this would all end with Trump’s well deserved demise, but I would suggest Trump is much more the symptom then the disease. And the disease is serious.
catclub
@joel hanes:
I wish. Kind of like the way Nixon destroyed the brand for a generation – that lasted 4+ years. Or Bush Jr. 5+ years.
germy
@CaseyL:
Question for the legal minds here: Any chance of gorsuch going with them?
Major Major Major Major
@maya:
Crudely and through the (hermetic) principle of correspondence?
@germy: My dad says no.
@catclub: Generations are fast these days, what with all the growth hormones in the food supply.
TenguPhule
@joel hanes:
We thought that about Bush the Lesser too.
Like I said, without serious consequences these evil fuckers keep coming back.
rikyrah
THIS is why those who voted for him…
or did some 3 party bullshyt and made him possible..
should NEVER be forgiven.
TenguPhule
@catclub: Not even five years. We only got 3 out of it before they were back with the Teabaggers running the asylum.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re tougher than I am. For me, it’s 5 seconds — which is about how long it takes me to turn off the radio. I found that it’s not good for my blood pressure to be driving down 495, screaming “FUCK YOU, YOU LYING MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE DUMBFUCK et., etc.” at the radio. And that’s just when I’m ‘Luded out. Were I not, I’d probably start ramming my car into vehicles bearing Shitgibbon-supporting stickers.
That motherfucker.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: Let’s not forget the rancid heap of sexism sprinkled on the white supremacy sundae. Our current predicament would not be possible without that.
Feebog
We are headed for a constitutional crisis. Mueller is going to indict Donnie jr. and Kushner. And DOLT45, against all legal and political advice will pardon them both. Will the House impeach and the Senate convict him for obstruction of justice? Will millions march on D.C. demanding impeachment?
jc
Dear Trump voters,
Your understanding of America is deeply flawed. You don’t understand history. You can’t spot the most corrupt con man our nation has ever seen. You bought his lies and bottomless bullshit. You are total losers. You don’t know what your own country stands for. You fell for “drain the swamp” from the biggest grifter ever. You bought the racist, sexist poison. You fell for it all, hook, line and sinker, because you are dopes, and you got dope-slapped good and hard. You are the conned, the suckers, the halfwits, you are the biggest embarrassment to this country today. Your lack of awareness is appalling.
Whether you know it or not, you’ve destroyed your credibility for all time. You’ve disgraced yourself forever. You showed the world you’re a fool, too ignorant to be embarrassed. You have exposed your profound lack of understanding, education, good sense.
It is you, Trump voters, who are the worst people in America, because you can’t bother to educate yourselves, you can’t be bothered to listen to knowledgeable people or to understand when you’re being lied to.
Trump voters, your judgement sucks. Your ignorance sucks. Your bigotry sucks. The disgrace is that it doesn’t trouble you that conservative politicians push lies to deceive fools like you, over and over. And voters like you fall for the lies, over and over.
Hoodie
Trump sucks the life force out of everyone and everything around him. He does this by stripping altruism, sacrifice and generosity of any authenticity, replacing it with a fart cloud of meaningless superlatives that are really just painted over, clapped out lies that he uses to cover the gaping void where his soul should reside. In some ways, he’s the embodiment of a failed body politic, which has kind of turned into a bitter, meth addled bum giving blow jobs in back alleys after stupidly turning down the offer from the nice dark-skinned guy that preceded Trump,all out of a weird self loathing that he wasn’t good enough to deserve the offer.
Corner Stone
I wonder if there’s a way to crowdfund a group to protest by pushing guillotines by the WH and Capitol.
trollhattan
@joel hanes:
It can happen. IIUC the presence of CO2 speeds alcohol update so one must pace. In theory a whiskey and soda will have a quicker effect than a straight shot.
(Bride was once a tour guide at a Napa Valley champag…er…sparkling winery. The French owners make sure nobody used the c-word.)
Redshift
For some random reason I got put on the Republican Governors Association email list a few months ago. This is what they sent out today, with the subject line of “Wear this to an NFL Game?”:
Yeah, it’s fairly unremarkable, but it’s another drip in the endless “we’d rather tear this country apart than cede an inch to anyone!” shitstorm.
gene108
@trollhattan:
90% of New Yorkers voted against Trump, and I’m sure most of the good folks in Yonkers did too.
The problem is the white folks in rural America loved what he was selling, and still do.
TenguPhule
@Feebog:
As Adam Silverman has pointed out, we’re already deep within one.
Corner Stone
@Feebog:
The sooner the better.
Mike in NC
Trump being run over by a rogue golf cart would be nice.
TenguPhule
@jc: And yet they’re still allowed to vote without question.
Meanwhile, we have to fucking fight for that right.
This has got to change.
MomSense
I hate him, his fucking family, all the courtesans in his corrupt administration, the media jerks who fluffed him, every single person who voted for him, and every single selfish idiot who voted for Stein or Johnson.
Oh and I never ever want to read another think piece, watch an interview or focus group with any of the flyover, coal mining, forgotten, white working class trump voters the media seem to be obsessed with. I don’t care about them at all. They are dragging our country down with their ignorance, false pride, and bigotry.
I am a horrible person now. I fully admit it.
NorthLeft12
THIS^^^! Eleventy billion times this. I can’t even watch or listen to Canadian news because Deadbeat Donald’s ugly mug and annoying voice and astounding stupidity are on.
Corner Stone
I am worried about young Mr. Kushner. For someone so youthful he seems to have a powerful issue with memory and recall. I hope he’s receiving appropriate mental care for any issue he may have.
Patricia Kayden
@maya: LOL. You’re just asking for a friend, right? Man, if Voodoo was real, I’d tear up this entire regime. Sigh.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: I don’t think you are BC are horrible people for seeing the truth clearly.
Raoul
I know I’m swearing more, easier to rise to anger, and just generally pissed off and shitty since the orange evil rose to from his TeeVee perch to roost and shit on the GOP primary and then on the whole damn country.
He is more bhopal cloud than fart cloud, really.
A Ghost To Most
You left out traitorous, Betty. To me, that is his biggest sin.
Patricia Kayden
@Mike in NC: Mueller would be driving the cart in my dream and backing up several times.
@Redshift: They’re proud of a country and a flag but could care less that too many Black people in that very country have been killed without justice. By the way, there are thousands of Black members of the military and veterans who understand completely that the NFL protest are not about disrespecting this country. Got it.
schrodingers_cat
@SFAW: The 5 minutes were in between sketches of comedians. If it is straight news, I change the channel.
schrodingers_cat
I never used to drop f bombs IRL or online, but now I do it all the fucking time.
trollhattan
@Redshift:
It’s casual Friday and I’m rocking my shiny new Seahawks 54 jersey to commemorate my boycott of the Fauxtriots ™. We have Trumpsters, they’re just not open about it.
hueyplong
It’s a little bit sobering to note that “stroked out on the crapper in mid-tweet” is probably more likely than “removed from office due to the Mueller investigation.”
It’s even more sobering to think that, a mere 8 months in, either seems like some kind of deliverance. More sobering still to realize that he differs from his party only in repulsively obvious style points.
One of the worst things Trump has done is to cause us so thoroughly to despise so many of our neighbors/friends/acquaintances. It’s a good bet that pretty much everyone here can name several people with whom they have resolved not to communicate for the indefinite future. That will be a large part of his legacy.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s a song title, after all. “America, Fuck Yeah!”
Redshift
@Patricia Kayden: They’ve been shouting about disrespecting the flag ever since this began, doing their best to make sure everyone who listens to them is in a constant state of outrage and never begins to consider the point of the protests.
TenguPhule
@hueyplong: Yep, the masks came off and we now see the monsters among us.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There are not many men who it can fairly be said “dimishes the office one held by GW Bush”, but darn if Trump the Useless Twat isn’t one of them.
Major Major Major Major
@hueyplong:
It turns out they despised us the whole time, so I’m not too torn up about it.
A Ghost To Most
@schrodingers_cat: You truly are an American now.
jonas
@CaseyL:
The rise of rightwing AM talk radio and Fox News is responsible for almost all of it. It was a business model built from the beginning on stoking white racist resentment and tearing down the idea of a secular, pluralistic democracy. Reagan’s role was repealing the Fairness Doctrine.
bemused
@JC:
Absolutely. This nightmare has totally made me distrust that people I know and thought were decent, good people really weren’t. I’m not sure of so many but I still can’t bear to find out for sure. I would have to pretty much cut them out of my life for good. If they actually voted for the most miserable excuse for a human being on earth, then they are living a lie. Besides that, they voted for a monster that threatens my kids and grandkids well-being.
Redshift
“Disrespecting the flag” is the new flag pin. You can sell out the country to the Russians, obstruct a counter-espionage investigation into an attack on this country, and still have your lectures about patriotism welcomed in wingnut-world as long as you pretend to revere the symbols of the country.
(Okay, that’s not actually correct. It’s really just Cleek’s Law; Trump could piss on the flag and they’d accept whatever bullshit reason he gave them for how it makes him a real patriot.)
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Wikipedia tells us that the use of the name is restricted by treaty, law, and regulation to sparkling wines made from a particular type of grape grown and cultivated in a specified way in France’s Champagne region. US regulations do not permit use of the name for domestic wines. So the French owners were just being compliant.
trollhattan
@A Ghost To Most: Heh, yeah, here’s a flag to kneel to and/or snap at a hippie’s ass.
SFAW
@joel hanes:
Stop it. Just fucking stop it.
Look, I know you mean well, but that’s the same bullshit that St. Ralph the Pure tried peddling after the 2000 election. It took Iraq and Katrina — just those two, none of the other terrible policies Bush & Co. enacted — to get MAYBE two years of Dems running things. And the Dems and Obama were sabotaged at almost every turn by Turtle and company.
To get this country back to where we want it to be, it’s going to take a number of things happening (in no particular order):
1) Rupert Murdoch and his family die, and Fox is shuttered. (I’d be OK if it disappeared with Murdoch, that evil fuck, still alive, but it ain’t gonna happen)
2) Old racists die off. That will take years, despite all the “demographics are against the Rethugs” happy happy joy joy BS we keep hearing
3) Public education returns. The real thing, not the “let’s all do charters” version the Rethugs love
4) The MSM stops being the Vichy Press.
There are a few other, but you get the idea — there’s no magic bullet, everything is going to take years. Which is OK, as long as we stick with it.
I was considering saying a new Great Depression would jump-start a return to national liberalism/sanity, but given the insanity I see daily, I am no longer convinced of that. And, frankly, the suffering that it would impose on the people already suffering under Rethug rule is not acceptable.
Sorry, but as you might have figured, this is a hot-button issue for me. And fuck Ralph Nader and Jill Stein — one;s a narcissist, the other’s a moronic Russian asset.
brendancalling
I was on a long run the other day when an old memory popped into my head, from when I was a young teenager (so probably 1983 or 1984, which dates me). Trump was on the cover of some magazine (I’m guessing Newsweek or People, my parents didn’t subscribe to Time) for buying something or other. I remarked to my Mom that I didn’t like Trump, because I thought he was a crook and that he got whatever he wanted no matter whether it was his to take or not.
Maybe more of a premonition, eh?
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
I understand your feelings. But even in these Trumpian times, it’s still fucking rude to swear.
A Ghost To Most
@JPL: As someone who was a-social before all this, it has turned me distinctly anti-social. It is also feeding my depression.
Hell is other people. – Jean-Paul Sartre
J
@Betty Cracker: I should also have praised your insight: hating Trump–and we have no choice–thinking about him all the time–and there seems to be no escape–harms us.
A Ghost To Most
@Amir Khalid: Fuck you, you fucking fuck. Not you, Amir, but all those fucking fucks.
JPL
@A Ghost To Most: I feel your pain.
TenguPhule
@SFAW:
But we’re not going to get those years. Because at best we’re going to be too busy fixing so much shit that’s been broken so far.
Building is hard. Destruction is easy.
I think that’s what I hate about them most.
Its going to be a nightmare just getting back to the Starting Line President Obama finally managed to place us at.
germy
What is to be done about all the young racists?
Trio of white Texas brothers accused of luring black teen to meeting and shooting him dead
SFAW
@Corner Stone:
Welcome back! I was wondering where you’d gone.
TenguPhule
@germy:
I understand that woodchippers are available for bulk purchases.
ETA: They live in White Settlement, TX.
This is not a joke.
hueyplong
@germy: It will be interesting to see what normally execution-happy Texas does with those three.
My money is not on execution. Might not even be on conviction.
germy
McConnell’s motto.
bemused
@Jeffro:
My language deteriorated during the Bush years. It’s gotten considerably worse now but it having grandkids now is helping keep me in check. Can’t let loose in front of them.
Speaking of little kids, no doubt many saw the vid of little boy, 3 or 4? who really likes Katy Tur. I love how he said she reports on the naughty president. Even the tots recognize what Trump says is BAD.
efgoldman
@Feebog:
Will the NY AG issue follow-on indictments. for crimes for which a federal pardon doesn’t apply?
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
To that I say: “Yippie-ki-yay, Mister Falcon”
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, but.
You knew this was coming, yes? :-)
If there’s a more arcane set of laws than how America regulates alcohol I have yet to see it.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
Yep
SO done with THAT bullshyt. Don’t write anymore about these idiots.
You are not horrible.
You are a thinking person.
Nelle
i grew up Mennonite but learned to curse freely during my time in New Zealand. Now I offer my services as a contract curser to those Mennonites who cannot yet bring themselves to do so.
brendancalling
@hueyplong: I didn’t like those people very much anyway.
Manyakitty
@Major Major Major Major: Yep. I can get past it for a little while now and then, but it all comes crashing back, worse than ever.
bemused
@Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California):
If we had a bird, I’d line the birdcage with newspapers with photo. Then again, maybe not, I wouldn’t want to traumatize the bird.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift:
He’s already said both that America has killed a lot of people and that it’s wrong to call America exceptional, either of which would trigger unending ragegasms if spoken by any Democrat in the past century.
rikyrah
@A Ghost To Most:
I just came back to write this.
It’s why I say, this isn’t like Shrub in 2000, or Shrub in 2004.
This is TREASON AGAINST THIS COUNTRY.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
Those who wait in hope that all the old racists will die off forget, alas, that young racists come of age every day.
TenguPhule
@trollhattan:
State Sodomy laws.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
I have to admit, that’s the part of this saga that blows my mind the most. No, not Steven Seagal. The fact that the right wing managed to convince a large number of their followers that selling our country out to Russia was a good thing because, y’know, at least they’re not n****rs, sp*cs, or ch**ks, amirite?
(And the above is the racial slur against Asian-Americans, not “chicks,” though chicks would work, too, given the massive misogyny in 2016.)
SFAW
@TenguPhule:
I know. But I have kids, and hope to have grandkids someday, and I’d prefer them to have enjoyable lives.
But not much can be done until All Those Evil Fucks are sent to the Gulag (figuratively speaking).
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Heh, heh, I’d love to see your defacing artwork.
Manyakitty
@Jeffro: Fingers and toes crossed that you’re right.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
I remember the grief Obama got just for pointing out the obvious, that every nation regards itself as exceptional.
Mnemosyne
@jc:
Slight correction — “drain the swamp” never meant getting rid of corruption, even to Trump’s cultists. It meant one thing only: getting rid of Democrats and liberals in the government. Period.
Mnemosyne
@Mike in NC:
Eaten by a giant alligator as he tries to cheat and move his ball to a better position.
Kay
@msdc:
I agree. I used to think about it with Birthers- and of course Trump is one- that they were now part of our history, and I don’t want them in there.
Imagine reading about birthers 50 years from now.
People will say “OMG, they were so crazy and racist back then!” I’m horrified now and I’m living it. It will look worse to people who aren’t born yet.
rikyrah
Russian Ratf*cking: Why the Special Counsel Must Investigate Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders
In the May 17, 2017 letter instituting the Special Counsel and appointing Robert Mueller in this position, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Muller a mandate to investigate any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and “any matter that arose or may arise directly” from the investigation of that Russian interference into the US presidential elections in 2016.
One matter that should rise directly from the Trump-Russia investigation is the Russian manipulation of social media, news, and popular opinion. And as a matter of fact, the Special Counsel is already investigating this link, having asked and received detailed documents from Facebook on Russian ads purchases during the election under a search warrant.
It is now being reported that some of those ads, which are now on their way to Congress, specifically endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, while others targeted the Left’s resentment of Hillary Clinton. The 3,000 Russian-paid ads on Facebook perfectly align with Putin’s mission: to sow discord and chaos into the 2016 presidential campaigns, and do as much damage as possible to Hillary Clinton. Stein, Sanders and Trump were all beneficiaries of that effort. According to Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner, these ads are only the tip of the iceberg in a coordinated, sophisticated Russian operation to use social media microtargeted by artificial intelligence to defeat Hillary Clinton.
I am sure completely coincidentally, just as Russia was manipulating ads and other traffic on social media against Hillary Clinton, Putin’s puppets at Wikileaks concentrated on the same exact target.
…………………………
Being the direct beneficiaries of Russian ratf*cking, though, can reasonably raise questions whether Putin’s patronage came at a price. Already, we know that Jill Stein was present and accounted for at the same table as Michael Flynn and Vladimir Putin in an event honoring Russian propaganda network RT. We also know that RT lavished praise on and served as essentially a campaign mouthpiece for Jill Stein, and to a lesser degree, for Bernie Sanders in their zeal to take down Hillary Clinton. As if the dots weren’t already connecting themselves, in the middle of that very campaign – about seven months after the propaganda dinner – Stein openly offered to step aside if Sanders would agree to take the top spot on the Green Party ticket.
Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee became interested in communications between Stein and Donald Trump Jr., the Trump spawn who met with a Russian lawyer salivating over promised Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. If the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into this, chances are Mueller is a few steps ahead already.
Bernie Sanders is hardly even one step removed from Stein, given the aforementioned political love affair and Trump’s own crocodile tears for Bernie during the campaign. Bernie bears his own gifts for Putin, though, being one of a lone pair of Senators to have voted against sanctions on Russia. Sanders also hired as his chief strategist during the campaign Tad Devine, a close associate of Paul Manafort’s. Among Manafort’s numerous connections to the Kremlin is his work for corrupt and pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Victor Yanukovych in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama’s election to the US presidency. None other than one Tad Devine was Manafort’s close confidant in that effort. Evidently the two pro-Kremlin American political consultants grew so close that Devine made direct contacts with Manafort during the 2016 campaign in an attempt to set up a Trump-Sanders debate. Yanukovych is currently exiled in Russia and wanted in Ukraine for high treason.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Nile Crocodiles.
Unlike Alligators, they consider humans natural prey.
And they’re already in Florida.
trollhattan
@TenguPhule:
Was taken aback on discovering Confederate Corners, CA.
bemused
@trollhattan:
Perry has a problem. I’ve been reading that too many companies, communities are too far along investing in switching to cheaper, more climate friendly alternatives to make coal come back.
germy
@Mnemosyne: Loses every penny and is forced to get a job. Finds temp work in an office. His supervisor is a woman who is impatient and short with him while training him how to use Excel and Word. He can’t get the copier to work; keeps jamming.
After two days he is fired and has to find a new job. This time it’s in the service industry. He has to bus tables and is mocked by a customer for spilling a glass of water.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: Sorry, but that piece is questionable on its due diligence.
Jury is still out on Sanders working with Russia.
Jill Stein though, she’s guilty as sin.
Manyakitty
@Corner Stone: Don’t you mean MS. Kushner?
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
They care a great deal that black people are regularly gunned down without due process. That’s why they voted for the candidate who promised to treat minorities like vermin rather than the one who would make tangible improvements in their lives. White supremacy is that important to them.
TenguPhule
@germy:
Wingnut welfare.
That’s why I don’t think just losing their current assets is enough.
The Koch and Mercers take care of their own.
Gin & Tonic
@TenguPhule:
Tad Devine is pure as the driven snow, amirite?
A Ghost To Most
@Amir Khalid: Yep. My brother turned his son into an “all-in” white nationalist, and he will probably turn his son the same way.
I haven’t seen them in 10 years now, and probably will not again.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
Look at all the tea and umbrellas that have been so thoughtfully sent to him.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Your idea of a good president is a lot different than theirs.
You want one who supports people and equality.
They want one who craps spectacularly on anyone they don’t like and who makes sure that the rich can tinkle down on them. They aren’t getting showers of gold so golden showers is a good second.
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic: He’s a ratfucker, but he’s a mercenary ratfucker. I think the Russians were paying him to spike our candidates in 2000 & 2004.
He had no loyalty to Sanders or anyone else.
germy
(She got some hilarious replies to this)
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
The main question remaining for me about Sanders is “dupe or conspirator?”
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: Putin paid for FaceBook ads for Sanders as well as Stein. That is at least circumstantial evidence, and I am no longer willing to give Sanders the benefit of doubt.
TenguPhule
@germy: She is just begging to be sent to the front of the tumbrel line.
Smiling Mortician
For me personally, it’s kinda hard to tell how much of what’s wrong with me is the actual cancer that I have and how much is the metaphorical cancer that farts in the Oval Office all day. Probably both.
Anyway, my way of dealing with both of ’em is writing, and my new play, called Hannah, Standing Up, will be produced in November. Anybody within range of Western Washington is cordially invited to come and maybe experience a little katharsis along with me.
Manyakitty
@Mnemosyne: I think Sanders was a dupe who ended up swallowing the party line.
FlipYrWhig
@TenguPhule: That second “Trump” is supposed to say “Hillary,” right?
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: If he is a dupe, he is too stupid to live.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Honestly?
Don’t give a phuck.
germy
@Smiling Mortician: Good for you. There’s nothing like hearing actors deliver your lines. I’m not in Washington but I wish you well.
FlipYrWhig
@Manyakitty: Sanders strikes me as the sort of person who thinks everyone actually believes what he does but a lot of them are lying to themselves. Thus random Russian bots sowing disinformation and chaos just looks to him like The People waking up.
TenguPhule
So much shame for our nation. Each and every day.
Smiling Mortician
@germy: Thanks!
TenguPhule
@FlipYrWhig:
Apparently not.
Millard Filmore
@Corner Stone:
Get a slightly bigger group together and you can trail the guillotines with some tumbrels.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: Yea, and we are the ones having to bear the shame, because they are shameless.
JPL
@rikyrah:
This.. Only those who don’t believe in logic, can support him.
woodrowfan
@schrodingers_cat: that’s four minutes and 58 seconds more than I can listen to him. I’m impressed by your fortitude.
Ruckus
@KithKanan:
I’m not changing my mind on capital punishment because putting him in jail, even if only for a week at which he will die for lack of admiration, would be a longer and more suitable punishment than hanging. You hang, shoot, poison, whatever someone, they suffer for a very short while and then gone. You put them in prison, they get all that time to think about what they aren’t doing, who they aren’t doing, where they aren’t doing it.
I have a HS acquaintance who is still in jail for murder, 45 yrs later. I think that is a far better punishment than an eye for an eye bullshit. You take a life, we take away yours and give you one where all you can do is think about what could have been and what is.
Major Major Major Major
@A Ghost To Most: I don’t think that’s evidence of anything other than Putin thought it would fuck shit up for us. He also paid for pro-BLM ads, does that make them dupes?
@FlipYrWhig: I agree with this assessment.
Roger Moore
@A Ghost To Most:
I want to know what was in his taxes that he was so eager to hide.
Ksmiami
@TenguPhule: there can be no “moving on for the good of the country. The USA needs to be defoxified and detrumpisized- we can start with trials like Nuremberg and end with firing squads
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
It isn’t for him, its for us. All of us.
We need this as a nation to see that bad people in positions of power can and will face the ultimate penalty for their crimes. Otherwise the next Republican power grab can and will pardon the fuckers.
Elmo
@catclub:
Ahem. My Irish ancestors would like a word.
cope
Betty’s diatribe makes her look like Pollyanna in comparison to the dark, haunting, thoroughly depressing thoughts in my head.
Yes, Trump himself is definitely a primary target but what I can’t get away from are the people, attitudes and policies that he is either directly responsible for (Sessions, DeVos, Zinke, ad nauseum) or have flourished in the same hothouse that thrust his putrid presence into the White House (denial of facts, scientific and otherwise; sexism, racism and every other -ism; judicial poisoning; corporatism; the slow and deliberate destruction of public education; the replacement of news with entertainment and a long list of similar atrocities too numerous to list). This is what has driven me to such despair.
Even were he to instantly disappear from the face of this planet, I doubt that the decade or two more that I can expect to live will not be long enough for me to ever feel again that this is a great country.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
I don’t think it really did, although I’d call it conservative policy, a lot of southern dems were really conservatives. But I look and think back and I see that all the conservative leaders were bigoted fucks, long before ronnie raygun. They maybe talked a bit less open about it, but they didn’t feel or act any different. Then ronnie gave them an opening and push to be themselves and not hide behind a veneer of respectability. He made being a bigoted fuck look like a positive.
Roger Moore
@Elmo:
Pikers. Jews are still angry at the Romans.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Kickbacks from Putin?
@Elmo: Indeed, my Indian ancestors can hold a grudge for 1000 years or more!
A Ghost To Most
@Major Major Major Major: Like I said, circumstantial. Add in all the other shit, and a pattern appears, at least to me.
Innocent or not, I’m not taking Sanders word on anything anymore.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Accepting lots and lots of small donations seems like a great way for a foreign government skilled in hacking to funnel money to the campaign without even the campaign catching on to what they were doing.
And I also want to know WTF was in his taxes that he was so eager to hide.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
Is it really horrible to hate, hate?
All those you mention are haters. They even hate enough to harm their families and themselves. Really, is hating them for that all that bad? I hope not because we are in the same boat and it appears to be a pretty big fucking boat with a fair number of fellow travelers.
monobrand
It has been apparent to me for some time now that the POTUS is the creation of a some secret liberal cabal with deep pockets whose primary purpose is to destroy once and forever the Republican Party. President has been doing such a remarkably good job, given the constraints of a balky legislature, of bringing down the Republican Party.
The Republican Party has rejected science, basic economic math, judicial restraint and plain common sense in favor of bigotry, racism, monetary rapacity and capitalistic fantasy. The policies of this party are to protect the advantages of a favored few while creating barriers to prevent the advance of the lower classes.
So, it is with good cheer and glee that I applaud the evil malpractice of the POTUS as his tweets and words reveal the soul of the Republican Party for all to see.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Aren’t they still pissed at the Egyptians?
ljdramone
@Betty Cracker: My wife has had a ready-chilled bottle for years*, but somehow Dick Cheney’s heart (or somebody else’s heart, or whatever it is keeping that’s keeping him alive) just won’t stop.
* No, not the exact same bottle. We rotate the stock every so often.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I mean, Hillary got lots of small donations too. Everybody gets mostly small donations. You certainly don’t have to persistently solicit them to get them by the truckload. EDIT: I see I misread what you said, interesting, I hadn’t thought about it that way.
With you on taxes, glad California has that law (has Brown signed it yet?).
FlyingToaster
So Trump’s rat-bastard ICE minions decided to target sanctuary cities; unfortunately, they’re not all that competent, so as soon as they showed up in a neighborhood, people called/texted/etc. each other and nobody opened their doors.
They made the mistake of demanding papers from an Eastie guy born here in Boston and that started a massive Twitter chain (everyone retweeting to make sure everyone got warned). So the only people that we know ICE netted were the people with warrants. Assholes.
This was trumpeted on drive-time radio; ICE caught *50* undocumented folks in Massachusetts. I could catch 50 at [redacted] on [redacted] morning, or a hundred at [redacted]. But I wouldn’t want to.
I hate this administration SO much.
Major Major Major Major
@ljdramone:
Well, semiotically I’d argue that it is in fact effectively the same bottle (“the ‘Dick Cheney Is Dead Bottle'”), since you only drink it for maintenance reasons. If the bottle went missing and you said, hon, where’s the Dick Cheney Is Dead Bottle?, it was here yesterday, she wouldn’t say, what do you mean, we drank that years ago. It’s a Ship of Theseus issue in the very-micro-cosm.
John O
As a chronic depressive of very long standing, a national political junkie of almost as long standing, and a former believer in the fundamental decency of most people politics aside, I can confirm that you are not alone, Betty.
The Nov. election broke me. Reclusive, single, and lonely to being with, I now can’t get out of the house and meet anyone I don’t already know on account I’ll think they’re some combination of moron and asshole right out of the gate. I’m 58, and have heretofore never judged anyone on their freaking vote. Those days are over.
I know it’s used mostly as a joke, but “nothing matters anymore” rings very true to me now.
CaseyL
@Corner Stone: OMG, I would LOVE this. I’ll help. By god, I will help. You show me that guillotine, baby, and I will help roll it out where they can see it. I’ll even fake being able to knit so I can play Madame DeFarge.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Sorry Amir but rudeness is the least of my worries. People are trying to effectively kill others and rudeness may be the only thing that opens their eyes. And really if they don’t like my rudeness it’s only because I really hate their outright contempt for the lives of so many. I’m not actually being rude, I’m responding to a far worse attack on people of color, of women, of even me, an old white guy. Lack of rudeness has never won over anyone who thinks you should just be dead. They act like rudeness is the big problem but really not being rude has never stopped people who think you should be dead.
pacem appellant
@TenguPhule: @efgoldman: I practice a lot in the garage and in the car, which is surprisingly sound proof. Bagpipes are often practiced on a practice chanter, which is slightly less annoying and a lot quieter. But yes, annoying the neighbors is a perk.
pacem appellant
@Frankensteinbeck: I should be writing, but personal shit is sucking all my emotional energy right now. Good on you! I’ll check out your stuff. I’ve bookmarked your page.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, it’s like, we know that the Russians are experts in money laundering and yet can’t believe that they would figure out a way to make illegal donations to Hillary’s opponents, even without their knowledge? I ain’t that naive.
I would also guess that Gary Johnson got some untraceable donations from the same pot.
zhena gogolia
@Shell:
Apparently that fades away from the second episode on.
trollhattan
@pacem appellant: Maybe bagpipe practice is why Scott Pruitt is getting his EPA soundproof booth?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Johnson wasn’t really doing anything with his money, was he?
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
I HATE fireworks. But on Memorial Day morning the phone rang at 9:00 AM, and for a moment I fantasized that it was my brother calling to say Trump had resigned, and my mind immediately raced to, where am I going to be able to buy fireworks on Memorial Day morning?
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
This thread is really cathartic!
NotMax
Hatred is corrosive. Being eaten up from the inside out saps strength and fritters away political energies better applied externally.
I will do all I legally and morally can to oppose, reverse, squelch, block, or otherwise impede this malicious, dangerously uninformed, repulsive man, his legitimacy and creditability and his equally dangerous and retrograde policies, attempts at policy, including those to whom his office has given authority to implement and carry out same and any and all hangers-on, toadies, and enablers. I will do all I legally and morally can to educate others as to the assault on the very fabric of America, on the very concept of a functional commodious society and as to the deleterious consequences for the globe as a whole he and they represent.
But I refuse to make hatred my co-pilot.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: lemme check with Bobby Three Sticks and see if he’s got Saturday hours…I still have one day left on my predictions! lol/sob
Earlier this week I mentioned I might be a week or two off, but not much more than that. Next Friday I’ll officially stop being optimistic and wait it out like everyone else – can’t have this turn in to a “Friedman Unit” thing.
Ruckus
@TenguPhule:
It may be for you, but it isn’t for me. The death penalty is just wrong. It really is.
We have to be better people. That’s what this entire post is about. Not being just like the assholes we know and hate. That’s what has gotten to a lot of us, that we hate them. That we do for obvious reasons, that they really would like to see us dead, is not in question.
What we do with that is.
MLK was a much better man because he wasn’t for just killing them, he was for trying to educate them about their position, and about being a better person. Killing them is the easy way out, but not even close to the better way.
Jeffro
@Jack the Second: Horribly…but I can’t see it going that long at all.
jl
Some comedian, Louis CK, or maybe Wilmore (?), said during the election that the problem with Trump as president is that everything is about him, and we’ll have to pay. Seems prescient so far.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule:
Reporters really should ask him for more details about this…why, what exactly do you mean, mr. president*? Spell it out for us.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
Too late.
Bonnie
Well said, Betty. I know how you feel. I use to be a “love thy neighbor” person; but, just can’t do it now. I look at my neighbors with squinty eyes wondering did you vote for that a..hole in chief? If so, I don’t want you for a neighbor. I have a friend whose husband I know voted for trump although he hasn’t come out and said that. I always get them Christmas presents. Her husband will be getting a Cyrillic dictionary for Christmas from me with a note for him to get a head start on learning his new language because a vote for trump was a vote for Putin.
I also worked for the Federal Government for 37 years. I never got above a GS-8; but, I could do a much better job at running the entire Federal Government way better than this extraordinarily stupid man.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
And I don’t want them to have the opportunity to try this again within our lifetimes.
We’ve seen how fast they recover, like a fucking Hydra, from El Bush.
And this time, the whole party is up to their necks in High Treason.
I truly believe we need to take a page from the French on this in order to kill this cancer on the body politic.
Mnemosyne
@FlyingToaster:
Can I guess how many of the illegal immigrants arrested were Irish?
The Moar You Know
Trump’s just one guy. An extremely unpleasant one but in the end, just one guy.
What has me ground raw are his self-righteous, arrogant, vicious, awful voters. Who I have to work with and live next to. Who I see on the roads every day. Who are inescapable and utterly worthless and are SO FUCKING HAPPY that they can finally tell everyone how they feel about black people and liberals, among many other things which they feel utterly entitled to pollute the air with.
I am not sick of Trump. There’s one of him in every bar in America. I am sick of morons willing taking marching orders from morally bereft assholes into utterly destroying this nation. And not a one of them is so stupid that they don’t know what they are doing. They all know. They’re all on board.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Be careful what you wish for. The French Revolution also gave rise to Napoleon.
geg6
@narya:
Yes, I, too, have an all Democratic liberal family. It’s one of the few things that makes this entire thing bearable for me. That, and watching a lot of my formerly non-political friends turn into enthusiastic activists. Of course, almost all of them are women, people of color and/or gay. Most of the white men I know are still the assholes they’ve always been but just more loud and proud about it. I avoid them.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: I wholeheartedly agree and have been an absolutist about this until the last year. Because TenguPhule is not wrong. These people are not going to stop until they are made to stop.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
I had a bottle I bought for election night to celebrate the first woman president, just like I did for the first African American president. Not sure if I want to waste it on that bastard, even if it’s to celebrate his shuffling off the mortal coil.
Think I’ll hang onto it for 2020.
NotMax
There’s a theme running through this thread of having let them fundamentally change us.
This is backwards; it’s us who ought to be standing fast and laboring to change them.
Elizabelle
And Tom Price has resigned.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
You need to move about 2 hours north. Heck, one hour to south OC will get you to our deep blue promised land where even old white guys hate Trump and vehemently say so in public.
If I didn’t live here and know that the vast majority of people around me — including white people — hate Trump as much as I do, I don’t think I’d be able to keep my sanity.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Be an optimist and plan to crack it open the day Trump lifts off from the White House in full Nixon style.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Stopping them is not the same as killing them.
An analogy might be burning coal as an energy source. It pollutes far more than many/most other energy sources, it is horrible for the ecology just to dig it up, it is outdated. We can do better and we have, even when the replacement isn’t ideal either, they are better. Progress is slow, can be very frustrating but we should always at least try to move forward, even if only an inch at a time.
The death penalty doesn’t work for one thing. We’ve been doing it for the entirety of our country and we still have murders, kidnapping, etc. It hasn’t changed anything for the positive.
Just like wars seldom do what they were supposed to do, killing doesn’t normally even change the dynamic, it just lowers the number of people on both sides. It isn’t a win in any way, shape or form. WWI didn’t, WWII sort of did, but are there still nazis? Yes. Our civil war didn’t change anything, we still have racists among us. I take the lesson of Germany, on the nazis. Education as to why they are wrong. Change the hearts and minds, not just the body count. And it has for the most part worked. Far better than just kill them all.
I get the dynamic, the emotional side. But it is just wrong. I don’t need a deity to tell me it’s wrong, in fact a lot of deities don’t do that. It’s one way I know religion is bullshit.
Killing is just wrong. It doesn’t make you better, it doesn’t solve the problem, because it’s not the answer. Do you sometimes have no choice? Sure it’s a big world out there and some people will try to kill others because they are wrong. But just like cops killing someone who is not fighting them any longer or who is the wrong person, or who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time it isn’t right. Do we all carry guns and shot the cops on sight? No, because it’s wrong.
FlyingToaster
@Mnemosyne: Just the ones with warrants. I’d guess 3 of the 50.
According to Joe Curtatone (Mayor Joe! I so miss living in Somerville), this was security theater; they picked up 30 people with warrants and then started banging on doors looking for undocumented residents.
East Boston is full of Hispanics, most of them legal. Somerville has Irish, Dominicans, Hmong, Brazilians. Watertown has Armenians, Allston has Brazilians, Charlestown and South Boston have Irish, Framingham and Brockton seem to have everyone. And honestly, we’d be all for ICE picking up the guys with warrants — they’re notified when our local cops arrest them. It’s the random sweeps at soccer games and banging on doors in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods that pisses us off.
lurker dean
@Jeffro: good points. fortunately, trumpov inherited a stable economy. speaking as a minority, though, it’s hellish. it’s really painful to see white supremacy rise up, and to see so many embrace it. it’s painful to see the undocumented being rounded up in so many indecent ways. it’s painful to see so much hatred for african americans standing up for civil rights. i definitely have a different feeling for this country than i’ve had in the past. and while there are certainly many wonderful people who have fought against the hate, once you’ve seen the masks slip from so many, it makes you wonder. the end of this administration cannot come fast enough.
on a more positive note, this guy is great:
SuzieC
Totally agree. Noxious orange fart cloud is poisoning my life. My relationship with my Trumpist sister is totally ruined. My health is going south because I spend every day fuming in rage-filled hate. There is not enough alcohol in the world to get me though this.
J R in WV
Hey, I’m back!
Mission accomplished – wife’s meds all on hand. Here’s what up with that, our local pharmacy/her insurance charges $500 copay for one of her meds. One of her doctors, who prescribes the med, is with a non-profit medical practice, that has a pharmacy. They charge $50 cash total payment for that medication. So her Medicare supplemental insurance is making $450 when she refills that prescription…
because we know that the non-profit pharmacy isn’t losing money on that prescription.
I was really pleased by this Air Force commanding officer’s message to his staff and cadets. I have to admit, a little surprised as well, the AF Academy is well known to be a hotbed of Theocratic conservatism, along with the greater community of Colorado Springs. But it sounds like the Head Man in Charge won’t put up with this shit, which is good.
Note that he wasn’t speaking just to the cadets, but also to the staff. And that’s important, they provide the cadets with leadership and (in theory) the examples needed for the future leaders of the US AF. Of course, we all know that racist and fascist way of thought are embedded early, and hard to beat, so only time will tell if the AF’s Service Academy can meet the expectations set by West Point and Annapolis.
So far, not that good, but current leadership is promising.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Forgot to inquire how the smoked pig do turned out.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I noticed that the staff you could see were listening intently. Couldn’t tell if that was a positive or negative intent but they did seem to be paying attention. And this general did not seem to mince words or speak in lofty sentences. Very clear and very easy to understand.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
“my fake house plans ”
NOT fake, fictional, there’s a big difference. Fake is supportive of criminal plots, fictional is supporting of big money!
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Me too!!! There’s almost always a bottle of sparkling wine chilled in the ‘fridge now. Partly because we love that stuff, and partly to be prepared just in case!!
J R in WV
@Redshift:
You should write them a letter about the Flag Respect statutes in effect, which will,(fi their description is accurate) eliminate sales of their cartoonish banner/scarf.
J R in WV
@Redshift:
Which shirt will violate the Flag Code requirements for showing respect to the flag. Sweating on it, doing illegal racist things wearing the flag… There is nothing less respectful to our flag than using it as an article of clothing. The designers, cutters and sewers of these shirts should all be put out of business forthwith.
Then sent away to re-education camp where they will learn why they are there, and how to treat the flag and their fellow citizens. With respect!
jfly
I fantasize that the Trump Presidency will end with Donnie and Jared being chased and hunted down Pennslvania Avenue like the Romanian Ceaușescu regime ended in 1989.
cleosmom
@Jado: In other words —
“Sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”