What's so frustrating is this guy assembled a rogues gallery. These people aren't competent. But voters simply didn't care. https://t.co/sYHaUfzK5p
— Brian Rosenwald (@brianros1) November 6, 2024
Confusion to our enemies, she said piously; they’re pretty confused already… From the Telegraph, “Trump campaign quietly distances itself from RFK Jr after new vaccine safety comments”:
… Advisers to the president-elect questioned whether Mr Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic who has also been the subject of a series of bizarre stories involving animals, would make it through a security check for a cabinet position.
It raises questions about what role, if any, Mr Kennedy would be given in the Trump administration, as the Republican’s transition team sets about filling thousands of federal posts for his return to the White House.
Mr Kennedy had previously said that Mr Trump had “promised” him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and public health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
However, there is disquiet in the Trump team about media attention on the former independent candidate after he was pressed in a post-election interview with NBC about his vaccine scepticism…
Scramble for Cabinet places
Separately, Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator, reportedly ruled himself out of contention as CIA director or defence secretary despite being seen as a top contender for those positions.Mr Cotton, a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, will instead remain in the Senate, where he is a slim favourite to become the GOP conference chairman, sources told Axios. If elected on Wednesday, it would make the 47-year-old the third-ranking Republican in the Senate.
Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in the first Trump administration, could return in his old role but has also been touted as a future defence secretary…
Sources close to Mr Trump have said that he wants to staff his national security team, which will be tasked with ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, with businessmen and chief executives rather than military figures.
The Republican appointed a number of three and four-star generals during his first administration, referring to them affectionately as “my generals” before their relationship spectacularly fell apart…
Elon Musk, who was praised as a “new star” and “amazing guy” by Mr Trump on Tuesday, is expected to be handed a key administration role.
The president-elect has previously said he plans to install the Tesla billionaire, who has called for the federal budget to be slashed by $2 trillion, as the head of a new government efficiency commission…
In many ways, Trump is already a lame-duck ‘president’. Reality tv shows and wrestling federations always struggle with having to rewrite storylines for a second season, when the marks have grown bored with the old narratives. We know all Donold’s routines, and even assuming he makes it to January 21st, he’s not going to learn any new lines at this stage. Politically, he doesn’t have a natural successor — Vance is an obvious puppet for anti-American agents (Peter Thiel / Vladimir Putin), and none of the Trump kids could get elected even to their condo co-op boards. Every Repub theoretically working for Trump has a personal agenda, most of which involve backstabbing every other Repub first & most fatally. If revenge is a dish best served cold… it’s gonna be a very brisk January.
War for Ukraine Day 988: A Brief Thursday Night Update
YY_Sima Qian
I’ve always thought the “accelerationism” & “heighten the contradictions” that some Left Wingers have advocated to be dangerously & capriciously naive, but I guess this is we are ending up anyway.
Trump’s reign is sizing up to be both farcical & lethal.
SpaceUnit
@YY_Sima Qian:
Lethal. These sorts of movements have no brakes.
Betty Cracker
@YY_Sima Qian: The “heighten the contradictions” canard occurred to me too. I’ve been mostly avoiding the news but just saw something about Herschel Walker being put in charge of missile defense shield development? That seems too absurd to be true. Maybe I hallucinated the whole thing.
Geminid
Tom Cotton knows better than to trade a safe Senate seat for a Cabinet position. With Trump, a Cabinet job is less a stepping stone than a trap door.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
The quote from the last maladministration still holds true: “their only saving grace is their incompetence.” Given that Trump hasn’t grown more competent in the last four years, much the reverse in fact, his inner circle is probably going to be a knives-at-throats, Death-of-Stalin level charlie-foxtrot in short order.
As for “heighten the contradictions?” Probably a bad idea, but to quote Isaac Clarke from Dead Space, when you’re out of good ideas, guess what’s left…
Kay
I’m still sorting through what happened, but so far the only thing I know is we don’t have enough information yet on how people voted to draw any conclusions. I don’t think the numbers justify the media’s “historic realignment” narrative.
They’re bad at numbers. Just remember that when reading “hot takes”.
The biggest challenge for us going forward IMO is to hang on to reality, and doing that is going to involve being patient and waiting for good information rather than grabbing whatever garbage is served up to us –
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: god. Good point!
Viva BrisVegas
RFK Jr starting to realise that a Trump promise is worth its weight in gold.
Gloria DryGarden
“Heighten the contradictions” seems to be a whole thing, not just a buzz word. Will I understand it better if I google it? What is the historical context? No need to derail the thread, just if it’s an easy answer.
Baud used it the other day, and I commented, and Dorothy winsor turned it into a poem…
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Good point. Exit polls are notoriously dicey. We won’t have much in the way of reliable data for weeks if not months.
Gloria DryGarden
@Betty Cracker: if you have a dick, you can do missiles. That’s all you need to understand these big things. /s
i do hope it is only a bad dream..
Ksmiami
@Kay: we failed to compete in the new media environment. Period. Talking Points has a good article on this. Kamala did better in places where she had more media saturation. And Democrats have to constantly remind voters of their successes and not wait till an election.
Ksmiami
@Viva BrisVegas: that’s actually a good thing. If even Trumps inner circle thinks you’re nuts…
Gloria DryGarden
In the cartoon, what is that object in Lincoln’s hands¿? Not popcorn? I’m missing something.
btw, it’s pleasant that RFK won’t be the health guy.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Gloria DryGarden: it looks to me like he’s holding a bag, either for breathing into to help with an anxiety attack or to throw up into.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Lincoln is showing the cartoonist’s telltales for nausea, so my guess is it’s a receptacle for vomit.
Gloria DryGarden
yes. Next time we have some type of normal government. And even right away in all the states and jurisdictions, while it lasts.
too bad that wasn’t already going on, and supported by media coverage in a balanced way.
Baud
The assumption behind “heighten the contradictions” is that people would see clearly and choose us. There was never any basis for that assumption.
Gloria DryGarden
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): or first one, and then the other….
Baud
Dems should play to his ego and find areas of common ground. He wants to be seen in a positive light, and enacting a bunch of bipartisan stuff would make him feel the best president ever.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I am kind of relieved that Cotton will remain one of 100 Senators, & not be in charge of the massive defense bureaucracy, w/ direct influence over the entire MIC. Maybe I’m missing something.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Sorry, I’ve lost faith in our ability to talk positively about ourselves, even in the face of national destruction.
Chris Johnson
I figure I owe Adam an apology, though I’m not sure that would be believed. But that’s not mine to control, so all I can say is we ended up at the same assessment at different speeds.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: thx.
I’m just naive and optimist enough to still think when you see the comparison, it’s obvious one would choose us.
i could sing a whole opera aria on a Libra version of
“ don’t they see?/ it’s not fair” with a bunch of trembling drama and vibrato.
A meme came up on my Facebook, that said “I suffer from a mental illness where I believe if I message it clearly and explain the facts, that people will see it”
dadgum it!
Geminid
I see Susan Wiles has been named White House Chief of Staff. A logical choice, and a reward for a nasty job well done.
In a way, Wiles has come full circle. Wiles was two years out of college when she went to work for the 1980 Reagan campagn, and her work on Reagan’s advance teams earned Wiles a reputation for “making the trains run on time.”
Wiles stayed on Reagan’s team throughout his Presidency and beyond, finishing as the retired President’s chief of staff as he slid further into dementia. Some valuable experience there.
Wiles’ career afterwards had its ups and downs until 2011, when a mostly unknown businessman hired her to run his campaign for Florida Governor. Wiles helped Rick Scott win two elections by the barest of margins, and that experience was valuable because every detail counts in such close races.
So next year Suzan Wiles will be back in the White House, managing another addled client. I think she’ll be the second powerful person in Washington, at least for a while; sort of a Thomas Cromwell to Trump’s Henry the Eighth.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chris Johnson: now I want to know more; the short version, for first graders
PsiFighter37
I have zero doubt there’s going to be a lot of backstabbing. And I would venture to guess that as soon as something is perceived to be unpopular, or someone whispers in his ear that it’s not good, he will change his mind.
People have very short memories of how it went the first time around. The blatant lack of know-how may be the only thing that saves us.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: maybe we need Eolirin,to teach us the different between branding (they said it’s needed) and messaging (they said that alone was not enough).
It appears they have some expertise in it. However, they might be rather unavailable. And it might be a moot point.
Except communicating, and selling our pov and ideas is always needed. The struggle continues..
More learning for me, I guess
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Cromwell and Henry IIIV is an apt comparison. And we all know what happened to Cromwell.
Gloria DryGarden
@PsiFighter37: this is where we have an in. With the whispers of unpopularity. This we can do, to influence policy. Perhaps
Chris Johnson
@Baud: There’s something to that, but not in the ‘appease Trump’ way.
I’m basically a digital toymaker: I make open source software and am paid through Patreon. I’m making tools for people who might not have access to them, and that means I might be the only resource for some marginalized people but I am ALSO available for the worst of the worst, because it’s open.
I’m exploitable, abusable, somewhat ignorable… pretty much a peon who happens to take pains to be accessible to the people that I want to bring help. I do a bit of signaling (I like colors, so a lot of my stuff seems gay-tastic) but have never leaned into being edgy and having a lot of demands.
That puts me in a singular position. I saw a video where the Lincoln Project guy showed his face, along with Michael Steele. Both were on low-fi webcam in unrecognizable places. Those are guys who have to run like hell because they took point and were all about making enemies.
I didn’t do that, and have not been spitting at fools who voted their country away, and my autism is heavy enough that I can sort of ‘go Data’ and seem not to understand what’s around me. I’m a digital toymaker. I’m legitimately buried in my work: it’s a shelter and distraction and is available for all. I can continue to do that.
And then if shit goes down, I can knowingly but ‘naively’ be there going ‘I don’t understand. I thought this was supposed to be great! Are you telling me those people were right, and this is NOT great?’
Worked on Twitter after getting banned for asking why people were talking about Stonetoss a nazi cartoonist. I got banned and my response was ‘I don’t understand. Does this mean those people are right about Twitter trying to shut off all the talk about a nazi cartoonist?’ And boom, unban.
Not everybody can do this, but all the ‘normies’ can. It’s important. Promises were made, and you can’t suddenly immiserate all the normies without backlash. Some of them have to stay asleep their whole lives. So that is an exploit: if you are a protected class, be naive on the surface and if there’s trouble, bring up that promises were made.
‘cos it is very easy to turn normies against angry hostile enemies, but the last thing the regime wants to see is the normies waking up. That could turn ugly, and that’s why the blanket of propaganda and control is so important. That’s really what won their war… for now.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: your explanation on the other thread was great. I can look up my missing background knowledge from that. I left you a comment there.
This #1 comment goes only a little over my head, I’ll ask the Pollyanna to explain it to me.
You guys are so kind to help me catch on..
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Ksmiami: people have been talking about RW radio since the early 2000s. There is virtually no LW radio nationwide. People’s jobs are more mobile then ever and all you have is 24/7 RW radio. People have been talking something on the left to balance out all the RW think tanks since CAP was founded. Same for tv. Stop spending as much money on TV ads and spend it media training and some stipends for a bunch of lefty spokespeople. It’s cheap. They apparently don’t have to even be experts in their field. Just be good at debating on teevee.
Geminid
@Kay: I don’t see any historic realignment either. This election reminds more of Youngkin’s win in 2021, which in retrospect seems like a one-off. The big difference is that Youngkin couldn’t do much damage to Virginia and had no incentive to.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chris Johnson: oh my gosh. They want sleeping unaware people. Very interesting applications you described.
Chris Johnson
@Gloria DryGarden: No. I haven’t always trusted Adam, but I forgot what happened to Bernie: because of what he did, he got fleas on him reinforcing useful narratives, and he got exploited. A lot of people around here correctly spotted the way Bernie got exploited by Russia but assumed it’s because he was himself suspect. I’ve made a similar mistake, reading too deeply into narratives that actively help Russia… but that ambiguity now becomes a strength. The Lincoln Project guy seems to have gone into hiding, for obvious reasons. Bernie doesn’t need to go into hiding because he can be what he is but it’s unclear whether he’s being used to help the enemy, and anyhow part of what he’s earnestly saying is exploitable.
I’ve been unfair to Adam because he’s in a similar position. Naomi Klein had advice in ‘The Shock Doctrine’ on resisting by remembering and staying aware of what reality had been (all too relevant now). Hyping the cruelty of Russians reads as dooming on their behalf but is also serving the purpose of not letting people forget it’s happening, and to my shame I’ve lost track of that.
But I did have the sense to shut up and mind my own business, and I’m now glad I bit my tongue about it. He HAS to be right to have seen this coming. I didn’t entirely spot it, though I’ve been havering like crazy, and playing spot-the-pretend-journalist. In that I’m not wrong either. Twitter and media were the real weapons.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
The only thing that can wake normies up in our favor is a bad economy. Every win we’ve had since Bill Clinton has been based on that.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@PsiFighter37: yes people have short memories but I really think this a lot of this country seems to have put a collective mental block into remembering COVID especially 2020 because it was so traumatic. Add on top the firehose of TFG scandals, people just don’t have the internal memory storage to remember this stuff.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: Happy to help and learn from each other.
suzanne
And why exactly do you think this is disqualifying?
I’m sorry. Our side keeps overestimating the American people and underestimating the strength of our opposition. it’s a failure of imagination at this point.
I’m terrified of Vance.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: I couldn’t do it. can you? Zelensky is having to.
[If I have to try to see his good side, I need a barf bag, or an anti-panic -attack breathing bag.
I might accidentally pass him one of my chemically treated cards that you give to rapists, that makes their dick fall off. Or I might start screaming. I don’t understand how people can be in the room w him, let alone like him.]
Someone might need to sit with him like he’s a three year old and chant “make good choices.”
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
That’s why leaders are leaders. They are able to do those sorts of things.
Gloria DryGarden
@suzanne: terrified, and aware . Seems appropriate.
The people who are asleep might not see it.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: they’re brave. Thank goddess for them. What an amazing skill.
Although it’s eerie to think of anyone in the trump administration being a leader. It’s a weird concept.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker:
Shot on Fifth Avenue?
Chris Johnson
I’m also going to mention the panopticon concept: kind of like social media in China, you can assume that EVERYTHING is watched and known, for a start. Like living on the ground in Russia. Like that. That’s a decent place to start at. So if you’re looking to be hostile and make enemies that’s what’s being watched for.
Enemies of the state are super useful TO that state. Lots of effort is put into making them seem bigger and scarier than they are. It’s like the Lincoln Project guy, painting a giant target on your face is fun and perhaps manly but you best not miss, and if you do miss, you’re now the rodeo clown. That’s another thing to do: if that IS you, rodeo clown is now your job, be chased, put on a show.
If that’s not you and you’re not of interest (even as a ‘bad category of person’), the thing about the panopticon is it’s a sea of data. You can’t drink all the sea. You can predict the sort of behavior, the things one might say that will interest the state: either intelligently calculated keywords and ideas, or perhaps just dumb stuff that is what a dumb person would search for if they wanted to find the bad guys.
If you’re not of interest, your thoughts are relatively free, and the secret police (I bet they’ll find a use for those proud boys and insurrectionists) are busy beating up somebody more obvious. Maybe let them trip over their own dicks for a while and scare the normies. If you can pass as a normie, that looks a lot like compliance and it’s impossible to check whether you’re really a convert or just a normie.
You can even be happy about all the great promises that were made of prosperity and that nothing bad would really happen. After all, that helps reinforce those promises too. Not your fault if they turned out to be calculated lies, or if you’re quick to notice when the promises are broken.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Not for 70 million Americans.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
I keep on thinking of Obama talking about how during his presidency he would get letters from people asking for help and st times he would just write his own check and help the person out. This was he said because steering the US government is like steering a big aircraft carrier sized ship and those size ships move slowly. I know how perilous a situation we are in, i just hope the US government is too unwieldy to make massive changes quickly. Elon runs a private company. A private company no matter its size is not the US government. I don’t see Elon lasting. He’s too volatile and unstable and has a similar personality to TFGs. Btw.what happened to Tulsi?
Suzanne
@Gloria DryGarden: The most manifestly unfit person in the country just got duly elected to the presidency. I don’t know why anyone here would ever think that “normal disqualifiers” matter. We have evidence that they do not.
Baud
@Suzanne:
They don’t matter. The only thing that matters is cult of personality. Trump has it. Vance may or may not.
p.a.
So… to what extent do Congressional Dems try to prevent the apparent disaster of tRumponomics? (Assuming they can move that needle at all?)
“Vote Democrat! We helped make things marginally less bad!”
ooof.
Freemark
Unfortunately we need to remember the Nazis were also extremely incompetent and back stabbing. Counting on that to save us probably isn’t the best idea.
WereBear
@Baud: Vance might be handicapped there.
By his utter lack of personality.
Suzanne
@Baud: Vance is a puppet for the worst people in the world. If he becomes unpopular, they’ll find a replacement.
Baud
@Suzanne:
They’ll try. It’s a pretty unique skill to have.
Baud
@p.a.:
I don’t think we have that much influence over the direction of the economy.
waspuppet
Donald Trump is an obvious puppet for anti-American agents, and half the people who voted for him freely admit they wouldn’t vote for him to be on their condo board. But they voted for him to be president because they think their condo board has more of an effect on their lives.
Gloria DryGarden
@Suzanne: evidence says. And as baud points out, 70 m people.
But Inside I’m squirming and thrashing around, hollering and wondering how can they not see, where is their bullshit detector, where is their moral compass, what good do they imagine will come from this guy who’s track record is available to observe….
And sad and impatient, over former friends lost because of this.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: which skill, to be a puppet, or to be unpopular?
Being a puppet seems very risky…
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Gloria DryGarden: We shoulda been slapping “Thanks Trump!” stickers on the empty toilet paper shelves from the jump and definitely should start that kind of micro messaging when stuff starts going sideways in his second term.
Baud
@waspuppet:
Yes, a lot of voters have been convinced that who runs the government doesn’t matter. And that bit of propaganda is spread across the ideological spectrum.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
To be the leader of a personality cult.
YY_Sima Qian
@p.a.: Don’t let the Congressional Ds be held hostage by the Congressional Rs, who will package a whole lot of regressive & authoritarian laws w/ a few hostages on social welfare. Insist on passing the legislations separately. Don’t be afraid of the Rs passing the whole package by themselves & run against Ds for refusing to “release” the hostages. Don’t engage w/ that at all. R misrule will provide plenty of fodder for Ds.
That assumes Congressional Rs can manage such maneuvers to begin w/.
The Audacity of Krope
Ah, another fine morning in the United States of Jonestown.
sab
@Gloria DryGarden: It has carried him pretty far up to now.
TBone
An excerpt from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s newsletter today:
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: OT but thanks for some reading suggestions a few threads back.
ColoradoGuy
I don’t see the Cult transferring its affections, or even its semi-divine adoration, to a nonentity like JD Vance. He has zero charisma, and most of Trump’s appeal is the hold he has on his audience. More than anything else, Trump’s an TV entertainer who projects a Mussolini-like image of macho domination. He is exceptionally good at that; it repulses anyone who feels compassion or a sense of humanity, but it appeals to people who are attracted to brutality.
But … his mind is going, and the actual power center is going to continually shift amongst staffers. Maybe for a month or two it’ll be Musk, but his ketamine drug addiction is going to take a toll under the relentless pressure of the White House. And it’s not like these people like each other; they don’t. Comparisons to Hitler are valid insofar as Trump’s desire to kill millions of people, but his ability to carry any project through will be affected by his short attention span. I’m not sure this group of half-crazed prima donna’s are capable of forming a stable structure.
And I still think he will try to sell Alaska to Putin.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: You are welcome.
Betty Cracker
@TBone:
I’m not sure I believe that. But we have to try anyway.
TBone
I’m rallying my IRL fighters, my peeps who are too stunned to feel much right now. I’m in touch with everyone I know IRL who is on our team, sending out my encouragement and my call to GET UPPITY with it! We will never obey! Some are already assuming a fighting stance, and some need to be uplifted so that they can bear the arms necessary to resist. Resist we shall!
lowtechcyclist
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
People have been talking about RW radio since Rush Limbaugh became a household name. That was 1992 or earlier.
I’m pretty sure an attempt was made at LW radio later in the 1990s or maybe during the early Bush years, but us lefties aren’t going to spend hours listening to political radio, so it doesn’t work. The best you can do is have a regular radio station, or network of them, where the brief bits of news are done from a left-of-center POV. But that’s a lot to manage for a rather slight gain.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Same. As I said before the election, I’d rather be defeated than surrender.
That said, I think the resistance needs to be very different than the first time, which apparently didn’t inspire that many people in any event. Too soon to know how it should be different.
But in the end, it’s not my call. The future belongs to young people, not me.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: This Spring I read a long article about Suzie Wiles in Politico Magazine. There was a lot of material about Wiles’ early life and her relationship to her father Pat Sumerall. He was an ex-NFL player and a very successful sports broadcaster, and was also an alcoholic.
There wasn’t much detail about Wiles” role in Trump’s campaign except that she had Trump’s confidence and other people in his orbit knew that. But how did she do it?
I developed a theory based on a story my friend Joan told me. It was about her experience working with a high-end Charlottesvile general contractor.
Joan was in her late 20s when she hired on as a carpenter, and she was the only woman among 20 carpenters and carpenter’s helpers. Joan weathered some hazing her first few months without too much trouble; she was a smart, tough Lesbian who knew she had to stand up for herself. Besides, Joan was a single mother and she needed that job.
But a couple years in Joan was still having trouble with the men she worked with. There was a lack of cooperation from the other carpenters, and a sort of passive-aggressive resistance from the helpers. This was a professional challenge as well as a personal one, because these jobs require teamwork and Joan could not do her job efficiently with unwilling teammates.
Then one day an older friend gave Joan a suggestion: “Act like you’re their Mother.” By then, Joan’s son was nine years old, and she knew how to apply her friend’s advice. It worked too, and I wonder if Susan Wiles learned this trick.
realworldrj
Americans want socialism but under a different name. Democrats need to realize that and figure out how to offer what people want – housing, rent control, childcare, etc – without making it sound like a handout or welfare. Trump’s ‘I will fix it’ is really messaging around that. Dems message was something about opportunity economy, combating price gouging, and making government work. People don’t care – they just want free stuff. Stop worrying about the New York Times yelling about the deficit and identify politics and let money rain on the population.
The Audacity of Krope
It’s almost like we like to cultivate a robust set of interests on our side.The obsessiveness is the scariest part of watching these true MAGA go through life.
schrodingers_cat
Boycott the MSM, this is the victory of their relentless 4 year campaign against our President. Which many Democrats joined this summer, even though they should have known better because he was too old, had a cold and stuttered.
Baud
@realworldrj:
They want white socialism.
Easy peasy.
ETA: Tim Walz instituted free lunch for kids in Minnesota schools. The right hates it.
p.a.
I brought this up in Adam’s not-Ukraine-war post last night. Most fascist regimes don’t outlive dear leader. The dopamine high is a one-off, non-transferable. The exceptions I noted were possibly Central & South America’s “succession of governments by colonels.” The other pointed out to me was N. Korea, a family dictatorship. Uday & Qusay tRump? Not bloody likely.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yep.
Some white women are organizing a Woman’s march (early exit polling data shows 53% to 57% have voted for T) and are promoting some friendship bracelets.
Yeah no.
p.a.
@lowtechcyclist: I remember the meme from back then: conservatives listen to radio. Liberals read books.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Yep, it’s a problem for the yoots to figure out.
There was a wonderful scene in “The Crown” between Princess Alice (mother of Prince Philip) and Lord Mountbatten (her brother). Both are old farts at this point in the story, and the Queen had just given Mountbatten hell for plotting a coup against the Labour government.
Alice tells Mountbatten that one of the few good things about being an old fart is that you become a spectator rather than a participant, and the best thing to do is stay out of the way.
raven
@Betty Cracker: I’m sure feeling that.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It is somewhat liberating.
Suzanne
@realworldrj:
Yes.
I get really tired of hearing certain demographic groups talked about as being very concerned with “hard work”, as if that is somehow unique. Everyone I know works really hard. I do recognize that what people mean when they say this is that physical labor is real and intellectual labor is not. But, like, people want to have a conception of themselves that they earn things, while others take free stuff.
Chris Johnson
@Gloria DryGarden: Being a puppet seems like it would SUCK.
I’m wondering what the chances are that ‘I’m no puppet, you’re the puppet’ can turn into a twist ending. Dude is rightly very touchy about that, and all the propagandists work super hard to bury that idea. It’s an incongruity, a detail out of place that won’t go away.
I don’t believe he loves Putin any more than I believe Tucker Carlson loves HIM. All these people hate each other for good reason: it’s a Bondian world of pressure, extortion, and betrayal.
If he is in fact the criminal he’s been proved to be, and on top of that has been a kompromat machine all his life with his gilded cage a rented one propped up by more propaganda, just to get him into a position like this (again!), and he’s also deteriorating and being whispered to by American oligarchs… has Musk, has Thiel, maybe thinks he’s finally won and can be a real boy now…
what if he flips? What if, in his dotage, he thinks he can have his revenge on his seemingly omnipotent owner, reverse the strings? They are both old madmen and more miserable and fucked-up than we can imagine. Living in the conspiracy world rots your damn brain. It’s power, but at a horrible cost.
I feel like if the guy really truly has been the puppet all these years, and I’ve been certain of that, then there is a risk of him throwing off the strings and seeking to become the puppeteer and punish his longtime owner. That would get WEIRD, quick.
I’m not convinced the likes of Thiel and Musk are all-in on being obedient slaves of the Kremlin, either. They sure used that infrastructure to seize power… but then what? When all the very old men are gone, what happens after that? Thiel has many ideas along those lines but I’m unsure what he’d choose. He’s going to be aware of the basic time limit afforded to the men who currently sit on the thrones.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: WE are definitely better than this. The voters who did this do not represent the majority, as is proven everywhere abortion is on the ballot. Just because we may have been outvoted, that doesn’t mean we are outnumbered!
K-Mo
@Kay: word.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Black women on Twitter are absolutely derisive of that.
“You shoulda marched your pale pink asses to the voting booth! WE ARE DONE WITH YOU.”
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t blame them.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
That’s what feudalism was. A lord had serfs, but had to pledge fealty to the king. It’s a system.
Chris Johnson
Also note Thiel is the immortality guy, the one who literally consumes young blood to cheat death.
Whether or not he succeeded, the men currently on the thrones are old and dying and if he promises them immortality and it seems like he’s not lying, he’s now the dealer and the kings are now his junkies. That makes him incredibly important, whether or not there’s any truth to his ideas about that.
Shalimar
The next 4 years is going to be constant “I warned you” to the small percentage of Trump voters who are self-aware enough to realize how badly he is fucking them. I assume the vast majority will continue to blame Democrats even though Dems don’t have any power at all, in the same way they stupidly blame trans people now despite never having even met one.
Betty Cracker
@Professor Bigfoot: Seems counterproductive to shit on white women who DID show up.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: one of my favorite sayings ever:
My Gramps used to shout it out 😆❤️
Baud
@Shalimar:
Expect a lot of “the Dems need to do/should have done more to stop this!” over the next four years, and not only by bots.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: mmm hmm but it’s a great way to sow division and shatter coalition.
Working on presenting a unified front is penultimate.
Chris Johnson
@Shalimar: NO. At all costs, no ‘I told you so’. I’m dead serious.
If you get such an opportunity (seems like a nonzero chance), do NOT ‘I told you so’. No Simpsons ‘HA haaa!’. Here is your script, burn it into your brain:
“Oh no! I too am shocked and dismayed! I guess we are all shocked, dismayed and so very disappointed!”
Learn that, no joking. Your job is not to cosh the waking people to punish them for sleeping. Your job is to wake them UP. Coshing them is sure to knock them back out, they’ll be groggy.
I daresay for now, “Well, it’s SUPPOSED to be good… I guess we’ll give it a chance and see how it works out…” is good preparation for that. We know it’s a trap, but they don’t.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: What Americans want is for them to get all the benefits and for the Black people to get none.
Davis X. Machina said it right here a long time ago: “The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”
“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” – Toni Morrison
different-church-lady
Oh you’re just precious.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot:
And be eternally thankful to be allowed to exist even in supposedly liberal spaces like this one.
My addition..
Betty Cracker
@TBone: In Florida, the reproductive rights ballot initiative got 57% of the vote while Trump got 56%, so some of the same people who wanted to enshrine abortion rights also voted for Trump. In Missouri, reproductive rights won and so did horrid anti-abortion senator Josh Hawley and Trump. There are people who want abortion rights AND to be represented by Trump and anti-choice politicians. Make it make sense!
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: Perhaps, but when after listening to white women say that “THIS TIME IT’S GOING TO BE DIFFERENT” and they INCREASED their support for Trump.
They don’t trust white women, and neither do I, and RIGHTFULLY SO. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
TBone
@Chris Johnson: 💙
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: We get tired of getting lied to.
Every goddamn day for the last year I saw white women on Twitter proclaiming that THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT, and “NOT THIS WHITE WOMAN,” and Trump INCREASED his percentage of white woman voters.
I’m sick and fucking tired of being lied to by white people.
moonbat
Elect a reality TV show star, get a reality TV show government. It’s the only script Trump’s addled brain knows how to follow. ‘Firings’ and drama is all this fool will deliver but what happens under the radar from those with specific agendas is what will hurt us the most.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: I cannot do that, but I can remind everyone that we didn’t suddenly become lesser in number merely because we lost an election.
We have the Swifties.
We have the Beyhive.
WE have all the sane!
We are LEGION.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: This is a very controversial take in this white space.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, I agree. But they don’t just want the benefits, they also want the illusion that they earned those benefits. That they are hardworking while others are lazy.
They also want to humiliate college-educated white-collar workers, as well. It’s worth noting that every demographic group shifted rightward…. except for college-educated women.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. That’s schrodinger’s cat’s job.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: As the man once said, “It is what it is.”
“I SAID WHAT I SAID.”
clay
@Professor Bigfoot: The ones marching probably are the white women who DID vote for Harris.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: I have some salve for that butthurt. I too am butthurt! You’d have to be an asshole not to be!
Am I gonna wallow in a shitty diaper? Oh hell NO.
Fake Irishman
@Baud:
perhaps in presidential years, but in 2006 and 2018, the economy was either growing or at the top of a cycle.
Also since Bill Clinton is pretty low N for elections. We can overfit data points. Not saying you’re wrong, but this is all messy.
Geminid
Maybe we need post dedicated to blame-casting and grievance-flogging. It could be titled:
The Audacity of Krope
@clay: So we’re holding my sister responsible for my mother now. Doesn’t seem right.
Professor Bigfoot
@clay: Are they?
I frankly don’t trust any of you that I don’t personally know, and *maybe not even then.*
A LOT of trust was broken Tuesday, and Black people hurting over it; and white people just don’t seem to give a flying fuck.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: No, but then, I DIDN’T SHIT THE GODDAMN DIAPER.
We Black folks knew the goddamn assignment and WE CARRIED THROUGH.
Dorothy A. Winsor
To me, reelecting Trump is like our Brexit. The country did it to themselves, mostly over fear of outsiders. Great Britain doesn’t seem to have thrived as a consequence. I don’t expect we will either. And I’m not sure the damage will be reversible, given the way power and money protect themselves. Given power, they act to assure the situation will be permanent.
Elizabelle
I watched youtube clips of Jimmy Kimmel’s and Stephen Colbert’s opening monologues after the election. Kimmel’s was way more honest.
With Colbert: he took two or three shots at what a doddering old fool Biden is. I was shocked at the ridicule. Way to go Colbert. Yeah, we need a “change election” from the senility and out of touch old guy you purveyed.
Really disappointed.
But. The fault lies in American voters, and not in our stars.
I’ve seen people here claim people have amnesia due to the pandemic years. Really?
Aren’t we the doddering old set?
Professor Bigfoot
Oh, and By The Way– we’re not interested in hearing about “people of color,” because they went for Trump too.
Who do we have? Black folks, Jews, and LGBTQ.
Straight white people? Arabs in Detroit? Yeah, we know who y’all are.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Exactly. And that’s just not something we can offer. That’s not who we are.
On another point, you noted that we only seem to get elected to (you didn’t use this phrase, but) ‘clean up after the elephants’ after they’ve made a mess of things. 1992, 2008, 2020.
But Clinton and Obama were able to get re-elected in 1996 and 2012 even though the economic recoveries weren’t all that far along under them. Been wondering what was different this time, especially given that the economy in 2024 was a hell of a lot better than in either 1996 or 2012.
Maybe the RW noise machine, with a great deal of help from the MSM, was able to paint this economy as being far worse than it was. Or maybe Cheetolini was just a more compelling candidate than Bob Dole or Mitt Romney.
I think both played a part, but mostly the latter. I’ve never underestimated his charisma; he’s definitely got some mojo that most pols don’t. I figured that once we won this election and his brain turned into mush, we’d catch a break because there didn’t seem to be anyone else on their side with that touch.
Of course we lost, and now they’ve got the levers of power whether or not they can continue to prop him up, so it’s gonna be a rough ride even after his brain falls apart.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Do we have numbers on LGBTQ? I haven’t seen those. I’ve saw that black voters and Jewish voters stayed level from 2020.
Elizabelle
@Professor Bigfoot:
That’s not true of the people here, and the people who voted for Kamala. But I wholly understand how hurt and disgusted you are.
Thinking of the upbeat and determined Black people I canvassed this past week, and what a cruel shock it was to them, and all of us.
One really cool older guy, and I wanted so much for him to be happy with election night. (Also Jimmy Carter, for that matter. How sad.)
It is fucking disgusting that this country could not elect someone as qualified as Kamala Harris. It’s a tragedy.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
My guess is Obama likely won because he was Obama. Charisma can get you a long way. Maybe true of Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole in 1996.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Black voters went up for Harris from 2020… but everyone else (save Jews and LGBTQ) went up for Trump.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yup. Biggest self-own since Brexit. After other European countries got it right. (France, Moldova.)
We are living through history. And furious at the people who brought this upon us.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Yeah, there’s gonna be some of that after a heartbreak like Tuesday. We’re all hurting. Sometimes the best response is no response, which is a lesson I have to constantly relearn for some reason.
prostratedragon
Interesting:
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Kamala Harris has PLENTY of charisma.
That’s not why she lost.
She lost because she’s a Black woman in a white male supremacist country.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chris Johnson: ahh, that’s kind of shock, isn’t it, (said in empathetic voice) . That’s pretty disappointing, isn’t it..
or, oh, you thought it was going to be different….
lets them save face.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I didn’t realize they went up, but I was just eyeballing the comparison. Glad to hear it, especially after all the noise about Trump getting more support from black men.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I agree. But she wasn’t the incumbent president seeking reelection, like Obama and Clinton were.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Yeah, that was utter bullshit.
We were NEVER going to go for Trump in a big way.
I saw a LOT of conversations with those dudes and other Black men were gathering them up.
And of course, Black women led the charge.
Baud
I really want data on the Dem voters who stayed home.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: That makes two of us.
Something is terrifically rotten in Denmark.
Suzanne
@Baud: Exit poll data indicates that LGBTQ voters went for Harris 86/13.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
You don’t have to convince me about black women.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Thanks. Good to hear. There was also a lot of noise about their dissatisfaction with Dems.
We are so awash in propaganda.
Suzanne
@Baud: Sarah Longwell made a convincing argument on one of the Bulwark podcasts that Harris was viewed as the incumbent, because she was seen as the successor to Biden.
IMO, no Democrat would have won this year.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Though T did increase his Latino vote, Harris got over 50% of that vote. AAPI data is more scattered will take some time to assemble. But in the last several elections with the exception of the Vietnamese Americans, most AAPI have voted D.
As do 70% of naturalized citizens.
Disinformation effects are real. In my anecdata, most Indians in India I spoke were convinced that Biden is senile and US is deep in recession. I heard that several times in my stay there from people who didn’t have a horse in the presidential race.
But I get your frustration. I am waiting for California’s data to draw conclusions.
The Audacity of Krope
Trump got majority support among the black men in my life. Am I lashing out at black men as a community? Am I even lashing out at my friends?
prostratedragon
@Betty Cracker: What you have to say when trying to rally people. Depends on what the meaning of the word “we” is.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: why are you YELLING at an ally who also carried her weight? I can hear you just fine in lower case.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Viewed as the incumbent is not the same as being the incumbent. If Harris has been elected president in 2020, had the same record as Biden, and was running for reelection, then it would be an apples to apples comparison.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Well, maybe you ought to write the post. You know. let it all hang out!
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Wow.
The Black men who support Trump are maybe 1 in 5. To know that many of them personally is pretty amazing.
The biggest hotep I knew had a Harris-Walz sign in front of the shop.
So, no, I don’t think your anecdote is particularly extendable to the majority of the Black male electorate.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Oh, excuse me.
<whispers> I, We, Black people *did not shit the goddamn diaper.*
White women did.
Deal with it.
TBone
@Baud: me too. The narrative so far is perplexing to the nth degree.
The Audacity of Krope
Speaking of things not permitted under the law, Boston Herald headline today says Governor Healey is getting “slammed” for saying MA state police won’t deport people.
These people thrive on misinformation and their most hideous guy reactions.
Suzanne
@Baud: That exit poll data is staggering. Takeaways include:
Latino men went more for Trump than white women did.
People with military service backgrounds went hugely for Trump.
The 50-64 age cohort was the only age cohort to go more for Trump than for Harris.
Educational polarization is staggering among white people. White non-college grads went for Trump 66/32. White college grads went for Harris 52/45.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Record turnout everywhere but somehow there were 20 million fewer votes counted?
Something is VERY rotten in Denmark.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: 😆 ok? Are you mad because I said I was butthurt or because I mentioned a shitty diaper like Donold wears? Grievance is just not my thing, man. But you do you!
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve seen reports that the Jewish American vote was 79% for Harris. If so, that would the highest this century.
Baud
@Geminid:
Good on them. The Republicans really made a play for the Jewish vote.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: I’m angry, I’m hurt, I am filled with rage, and right now I really don’t want to hear any “NOT THIS WHITE WOMAN” or “NOT THIS LATINO MAN,” especially when they also want to point to Black men supporting Trump.
1 in 5 Black men does not come close to over 50% of white women.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: we are in complete agreement and should act like it. I can’t fix all white women but I’m sure giving it hell.
But I am no man’s doormat.
🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s-bKFo30o2o
prostratedragon
@Geminid: “sort of a Thomas Cromwell to Trump’s Henry the Eighth.” Oh, goody!
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: This is like a 3 for Trump, 2 for Harris, 4 not voting type deal. The one non-voter inclined to talk about it wasn’t happy, though.
My heart bleeds.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: I had so much hope. My mantra on Twitter was, “I don’t believe white women are going to go for Harris, but I HOPE. Please, white ladies, make me eat this crow.”
And instead more of them voted for that marigold motherfucker.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Are we sure about the record turnout, or is that just misinformation?
p.a.
Did the Swift, Beyoncé, SnapChat “register to vote” do any good? Were the numbers documented? Did the utes vote? I’ve seen that the percentage numbers were good for Dems, but were the volume numbers? “The youth vote” has been a chimera in the past: always sought, seldom seen. Not shitting on the young, it’s documented they don’t go to the polls reliably. And as for gross numbers, are there enough to make a difference? Population demographics.
One positive I know: voting young is a reliable indicator of political involvement throughout life.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: hugs
My hope is that yours will be rekindled by random acts of kindness that we’ll ALL perform in the years to come.
TBone
@Baud: 🎯
Baud
@p.a.:
It’s a lesson we never learn.
The Audacity of Krope
Here’s a thought. Maybe thinking about people as demographics instead of people is bad.
catclub
I am thinking the vote for Biden in 2020 was a historic vote by mail anomaly. US voters are mostly lazy.
Trump got fewer voters in 2024 than in 2020.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: There’s the thing. Anecdotally, every early voting location had long lines; and regular polling places on Election day were also busy as hell.
So I’m not sure… but I’m not gonna discount the evidence of my own eyes.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Same here.
To those that are hurt by the facts stated by Prof. Bigfoot and me:
If you did the right thing and voted for Harris good on you. Why do you need bouquets and constant affirmation of what a wonderful person you are.
It should prompt some self reflection not lashing back at the messenger that the most influential demographic in this country has voted for a convicted felon.
satby
@clay: Nope. Not here. Fuck them and their cute little pink hats.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: With respect, thats a perfectly white male thing to say.
Like America hasn’t purposefully selected for straight white Christian men for the last 250 years; or maybe like THAT isn’t a “demographic.”
That’s one of the insidious things about American white supremacy: you see, white people are just “people.”
As Toni Morrison put it so plainly, “In this country American means white. The rest of us have to hyphenate.”
moonbat
Last thing I’m going to say on this subject. Biden’s super power as a progressive president was that he was an older, white male. He looked ‘safe’ to the majority of the electorate and therefore was able to pass a progressive agenda the likes of which this nation hasn’t seen in 50 years. Everything in this stupid country comes down to race. Obama would have been a one term president had he tried to enact Biden’s policies because othering him would have been so easy. Ooooh, ‘scary black socialism’. Look at the extremely hard time he had getting the ACA through hampered in part by members of his own party.
Harris was an inspiring candidate but the misogynoir that very much lurks within the D party made her ‘unsafe’ enough to not support to a significant percentage of our voters. Until the D party reckons with its own race problems we’re going to continue to get sucker punched by our white voters. I’m reminded of a Reconstruction era cartoon that showed a drowning white man cursing at a black man on the dock trying to save his life and refusing to take his hand while the water closes over his head.
Suzanne
@p.a.: I’m interested in that question, too. I’m hoping for better data in upcoming weeks.
One interesting thing: due to declining birth rates in recent decades, the median voter this cycle was 44 years old, which is the oldest it has ever been. So the youth vote is just a smaller percentage of the total, even if they turn out.
The age data is interesting. In the past, it’s been that the oldest age cohorts are the reddest. This time, the 50-64 cohort seems to be the reddest, and the 65-and-up cohort was evenly split.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Exactly this. And Britain is still struggling over it years later.
HeleninEire
Good morning friends.
Trump not picking Kennedy as the next Health Czar would be our first victory. However he may pick that crazy Florida health commissioner guy who was anti-mask. The only saving grace is that DeSantas is pushing him and, well, Trump will be looking for revenge against DeSantis so…..
Jesus, what a horrible ride the next 4 years are gonna be.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Reminds me of when I expressed my fear of the threat to my fellow queer folk at work. My boss callously points out my gay, black colleague who voted for Trump.
I simply pointed out people support their own subjugation all the time.
Individuals make choices, never uniformly as a group.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: Yep. This country will never elect a woman in my lifetime, admittedly probably less than 20 years left at this point.
Elizabelle
@moonbat: Good comment.
The Audacity of Krope
Those 65 and older have a living memory of a functional government and some even remember what was done to break it in the first place.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
I wouldn’t mind seeing non-college educated straight white Southern Christian males leading a protest against Trump
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Indeed, but in aggregate there is data to be understood.
IN AGGREGATE Black people did not in any way support Trump.
IN AGGREGATE the majority of white people did.
That says plainly that if I run across any white person in America, there’s an enormous chance that they’re a Trump supporter, and would love to see me and mine dead or in chains.
Your mileage, as a white person, obviously will vary.
p.a.
Ronald fucking Reagan’s continuing “gift” to the Republic. They really think THAT PARTICULAR brain-addled media personality (holy shit; sense a trend?🤬) defeated the USSR!
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: They understood the assignment.
Ceci7
Delurking to say a general thanks to this site and the discussions that happen here – and JFC it would be great if we white women could grow up and not melt down during frank talk about whiteness.
schrodingers_cat
Logging off BJ to figure out what should I do next with my life.
@Ceci7: Thanks.
Baud
All this reminds me of when black voters were blamed for Proposition 8 in California the year Obama was elected.
I appreciate white voters who go against their tribe, which is not an easy thing to do. But it’s also not easy to completely divorce oneself from tribal identity either. People’s social networks are still largely based on their tribal affiliations.
Michael Bersin
@Betty Cracker:
Amendment 3 (women’s reproductive and abortion rights) passed in Missouri with 51.605% of the vote. Not a great margin, but it passed. The campaign committee raised and spent over $30 million.
Several opposition groups/committees (the usual suspects) spent much less – their campaign consisted of asserting that the amendment would unleash all kinds of horrors on the children of Missouri. And yard signs popping up as forests at churches. And propaganda flyers left on car windshields in parking lots.
It was too damn close.
The result of this presidential election is on the voters. We found out who we are.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: I wouldn’t mind seeing non-college educated straight white Southern Christian males leading a protest against Trump
Well, here’s one to get you started (suppose I’m making assumptions about his education).
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Those who did not understand the assignment are far more likely to be straight white people.
Those who will tell us that we’re overreacting are also far more likely to be straight white people.
They’re convinced they will not be negatively impacted.
And that the people they hate the most (Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ Americans) will suffer.
TBone
Shirley Chisholm
The Audacity of Krope
Data science is the Democrats’ toxic best friend who other friends are encouraging them to get away from, but they just love it so much.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Fine. White people voted for Harris and Black people are the reason she’s not President Elect.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Wow, you’re a fucking idiot. Maybe you’ll take that message to heart, since “treat people as individuals” doesn’t seem to be registering.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
We tried vibes, but that didn’t work out to well for us either.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m a straight white woman almost entirely dependent on SS as 90% of my income, so I will definitely suffer if the Rs enact much of the agenda they want too. But unlike most MAGAs, I’m on great terms with the children I may become dependent on decades before I expected to. And I’m just petty enough to enjoy their confusion and despair when SS is reduced and the families they stabbed in the back don’t step up to help them. Because elections have consequences.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Ah, see, I was trying to be polite in honor of the hosts wishes.
But you can go fuck yourself, white man. Fuck you, fuck the horse you rode in on, fuck the mare that gave birth to the horse you rode in on.
Fuck you, white man.
TBone
@The Audacity of Krope: thank you, would’ve missed that if you hadn’t shared it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gloria DryGarden: No, YOU wrote a poem. I just arranged it on the page. :-)
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: Might have worked if given a fair chance. We tried vibes after the poll-driven calumnious pageant of no-confidence Democrats put on for Biden.
They did what they needed to retain my vote after that bullshit, but the internal problems that created that event still exist. Liberals get their news from organizations that put out polls like they’re crack for fiends.
That’s all before you even get into election financing.
Michael Bersin
@Professor Bigfoot:
“…And that the people they hate the most (Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ Americans) will suffer…”
Exactly this. And we know it.
satby
@Ceci7: JFC it would be great if we white women could grow up and not melt down during frank talk about whiteness.
Assumes a maturity not at all in evidence.
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: 💜💜💜💜💜💜
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: By my ethics, I say always better to attack someone personally for their own actions than groups for guilt by association.
I’m not on here bitching about the depravity of straight people, just you, and I don’t know if you’re straight or not.
Nettoyeur
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Thomas Cromwell was a powerful aid to King Henry VIII, who fell from grace after arranging the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves, who Henry found repulsive. He was set up on a bunch of charges and beheaded, some say badly (multiple chops). Trump is similar to Henry VIII in a number of ways.
Soprano2
@Baud: I agree, I hear that stuff from people who aren’t politically aware. The message that it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge because they’re all corrupt has been sold to people pretty successfully. Most of them don’t realize how these things actually affect their lives.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: What part of “go fuck yourself” did you not fucking understand?
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Shit, you ain’t the boss of me.
Soprano2
This is true. I read a post at Digby’s a long time ago about how all the countries in Europe that have robust welfare states have pretty homogeneous white populations, and as the population becomes more diverse the support for the welfare programs goes down. There’s a universal perception on the part of many white people that minorities who get help are lazy and undeserving. If they could pass child tax credits that only went to white families, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: A point I have mentioned several times only to be shit upon by some valued commenters who have more than one FPer and the blogrunner on their side
Soprano2
I’m fed up with this too. I was meeting with some of the flusher crews yesterday about something new they need to do, and one of them said “Give us a break because we’re having to do “x” and “y” and “z”, it’s hard”, and I said “Yeah, I’ve had to answer the phone and work on the computer at the same time, I know what you mean”. They think when you’re in the office all you do is sit on your butt all day. I’ve come to believe most of us have no idea what other people do in their jobs, which makes it easy for us to look down on them.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: Do they think the women who are planning this didn’t vote? I do get tired of being grouped in with people who don’t think or believe the way I do.
I think everyone is hurting and lashing out in non-productive ways.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: I cannot, it doesn’t make sense.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m really not sure what you want. I can’t control what other white women do, I can only control myself. I’m sure those women who said that are as upset and brokenhearted and freaked out and stressed as you are (I know I am). Why are you shitting on me for something I didn’t do?
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Well, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: No. But it tells me who this blog values.
BarcaChicago
@Professor Bigfoot: except for college-educated white women, who always vote majority Democratic and did so in this election as well. I think it’s relevant because they’re the only section of white women that do consistently vote Democratic – and why is that? I don’t think it has to do with academia, I think it has to do with leaving your white bubble and interacting with a wide array of people in the college environment. It widens awareness and the key to maintaining whiteness is the refusal of awareness.
Soprano2
I wonder if they realize how similar this is to what regimes like the Khmer Rouge and Communist China did, either killing the educated elite or sending them to work with their hands in the fields in order to “humble” them.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Well, I’m a white woman and I can clearly see the truth of this. It’s why the programs established during the Great Depression mostly weren’t available to black people, and as those programs became more universal white people turned on them.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: White people want to burn the country down rather than share it with people they deem inferior.
That’s why they (and the aspiring white adjacents) voted for a known arsonist
The question for me is what to do next. Help put out the fire that has been wilfully started or try to escape the flames before they light the match
Last time around I had faith in the Democratic party but after what Nancy Pelosi and other party elites engineered this summer my trust is not at very high levels. I am going to see who ends up leading the Dems to decide whether to register as an independent.
Soprano2
I don’t think people have amnesia, I think they’ve actively worked to forget 2020 and most of 2021. Every time I heard someone ask if you’re better off now than 4 years ago I wanted the person to scream “Yes, everything was awful 4 years ago, don’t you remember?”, but I think politicians realized that reminding people of that would actually make them turn against you.
The Audacity of Krope
Trump is supported by the trashiest elements of every demographic. White trash easily has the biggest, most established support network.
schrodingers_cat
@The Audacity of Krope: We are in agreement here.
BarcaChicago
@Professor Bigfoot: THIS. Record turnout, record small donors (after Kamala became the nominee), record new voter registrations, suddenly 18,000,000 less democratic votes? That glaringly does not make sense to me. And then so many of the swing states had Democratic wins in the down ballot races, but Trump wins on the top? I genuinely don’t understand it. I am saying many people also feeling the same way about these discrepancies.
Soprano2
Also because of voter anger over the disruptions caused by Covid. They just want someone to “fix it”, and since they think Biden hasn’t they think maybe the Orange Menace can.
Chris Johnson
Friendly reminder that, if indeed the election swung on massive propaganda and ratfucking, in part done by a host of embedded trolls with personalities and often identity tropes (see: twitter trolls forgetting to switch to or from their black avatars) then there are two obvious conclusions…
One: boy howdy did it work. Twice now.
Two: they’re not done, they have to keep that up FOREVER as it’s the only way to manage the shitshow. This occurs in Russia, too. People get exhausted, yeah, but if they’re not exhausted they’re harried and flustered by endless chaos even if they know it’s all trollage! It’s impossible to be sure.
So, you can’t know who is or isn’t a troll, and don’t engage if it might be a troll, especially don’t battle the troll. If you don’t engage and you find later that it wasn’t a troll you’ll be glad you refrained.
This is a time when picking a fight is sus. Would that it weren’t that way: we’re Democrats, we’re in a multicultural democracy, we’re SUPPOSED to squabble. Formerly, that’s how we stirred stuff up and built a roaring economy and enviable prosperity: we didn’t make it cushy for ourselves, we jumped into the stew and started duking it out with the best the world had to offer. We’re Democrats, the heirs to the melting pot.
It’s not safe to pick fights and quarrel anymore. That has been weaponized against us. Lean in to cooperation and watch for betrayal of promises, and when you see the regime blunder and betray, act SURPRISED, don’t gloat.
You CANNOT run by circular firing squad if you have ringers who snuck in and are going ‘did you hear what that guy said about you?’. Circular firing squad only works in peacetime when everyone is on the same side and reasonably trustworthy. It doesn’t work now. Demonstrably.
Soprano2
@Baud: I really want all the data on this election. I’m afraid the Democratic Party is going to take the wrong lesson from it and lurch to the right. I don’t think that’s what people were saying (except on immigration, the fearmongering about that was pretty effective), what they’re saying seems to me to be “Fix all the disruptions caused by Covid and make prices and rent go back down because I can’t afford to live like I want to”.
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: We’ve been in agreement about a few things in the last few months. Maybe I’ll stop going out of my way to not acknowledge them.
The Thin Black Duke
@The Audacity of Krope: You’re still an asshole, dude.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gloria DryGarden:
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I evidently missed whatever thread that exchange was in, and would love to read the poem “arranged on the page.” Can you tell me what thread, please, so I can look for it? Thanks.
TBone
@Chris Johnson: 🎯😍
Elizabelle
Look at the blogpost title, and look at what’s going on on this thread, people.
Soprano2
I don’t need bouquets, but I also don’t particularly like being shit on by people who are usually allies. Do you think I’m any happier about how white women as a whole voted than you are? Good God, my mother was one of them! What could I do about that? It makes me sick, I don’t understand it at all. I had a day-long anxiety attack over this election result – even though I’m not personally in danger it terrifies me because I know how bad it’s going to be. I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to say – am I supposed to assume collective guilt for how all white women voted?
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Accept it as a data point and move on. Don’t construe it as a personal attack because it is not.
The Audacity of Krope
@The Thin Black Duke: No, I’m being an asshole to someone being an asshole. This is return fire.
The instant someone makes an obtuse remark, whether willfully so or not. I say we should not be blaming groups and this buttmunch is in here asserting I want to blame black men.
Dishonest accusations are the only reason I pie. So the professor here is gonna be in there alone with Quinerly.
Gloria DryGarden
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yes ma’am. You arranged it and showed me it was a poem.
Chris Johnson
On the subject of pies: I feel that ‘white people want to burn the country down’ is not consistent with my analysis, or the idea that a lot of voters are effectively asleep and checked out, believing only what they’re told. I’ve seen some of these people who likely voted whitely for Trump, and they seemed blissed and relieved and spoke to me gently about other things, as if they’d woken from a scary bad dream. I saw no trace of ‘and now we’ll get them!’.
I’m sure they’d start looking more like you expect if I’d slapped them and told them they want to burn the country down and that I had their number and was coming to GET them. But these are people who thought I was poor, and tried to literally give me cast-off clothing. Mind you, it most likely wouldn’t have happened if I was less of a pinkster!
And in some cases it might even have happened then, on the feeblest of grounds, because the ‘other’ is always those people off somewhere else burning down a city you’ll never see but were told about in the news. The person in front of you is never the ‘other’ unless you’re REAL twitchy, or they make themselves be.
Ain’t nobody voting to burn the country down, but a lot of people sure are stupid or overly trusting. That’s how the trick was WORKED. If the orange dude was a jaywalker we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but he crimes so big that it can’t be believed by normies.
Soprano2
@BarcaChicago: I think there’s something to this. Many of the people I know who aren’t college educated don’t have any interest in widening their sphere of knowledge by travelling or reading. They want to take cruises with other white people and never leave the U.S. or go to any big cities.
Soprano2
I think this is part of it, but not all of it. I also think racism and misogyny by people who say they’re on our side played a role, plus people’s anger at all the disruptions caused by Covid and their desire for someone to just do something to make it all better. A lot of these people’s brains were broken by Obama being elected president, and what’s happening now is part of that.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I know, but sometimes it sure feels that way. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say – “All white women suck?” As I said above, I think people are hurting and lashing out because of it.
BarcaChicago
White supremacy is at the very foundation of this country, and it’s why Trump has success and it’s why the majority of white people in America will vote for anyone who promises to maintain it. When people talk about working class white people voting against their own interests by voting for Republicans, they’re actually voting for their interest in maintaining the white supremacist structure of the country. That is the ugly truth of it, and I expected white people to keep doing that in this election so I’m not surprised. Whiteness has a tremendous insidious power over the majority of white Americans. And it’s supported by a refusal of awareness.
Omnes Omnibus
Oh good, let’s shit on one another. Whatever any demographic did in general, the people here under stood the assignment. At the same time, were I am member of a vulnerable group, I would be looking askance at any white person I didn’t know well, and probably most of those that I did.
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m sorry my brethren are idiots but I’d like for all of us to rebuild and regroup. And it will have to start with Blue States as beacons of success and models for the nation. We have a lot of misinformed and frightened voters in this shit hole country and there’s a big part of me that wants to divorce the idiocracy.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Going forward, as we collectively process the anger phase, I’m going to try really hard not to take the bait. And also post more dog content.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: i have said for years that america would have scandinavian style socialism at every level if we could find a way to only give it to white christians.
On a semi related note. I hate to say it, but this election has given me a new appreciation for eversor.
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: i can see this. My RWNJ sister has actually traveled significantly more than me over our lives. But nearly, every time she has left the state of mississippi, it has been on some church related “mission trip.”
KatKapCC
we’re all gonna die
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: i will say that it is a terrible mistake to lump all white women together. I think white women who voted for Kamala and white women who voted for Shitgibbon’ have very different upbringings, educational backgrounds, and world views. And I suspect that the vast majority of Trump voting white women absolutely hate Dem white women as much as they do any LGBT or person of color. They bitterly resent other white women who went out and made something of themselves without becoming subservient to a man or to church teachings. And they absolutely despise women who assert that they have no interest in having children.
SomeRandomGuy
What Trump and a Republican Congress can do, that can’t be unrolled in under decades time, is more than sufficient. He doesn’t need to learn any new “lines”.
Um. Not scolding, just, generally cranky and that bit bit stung –
@Betty Cracker: You heard it. Not saying it will happen, but, it was in pre-election news. He really is *that* stupid.
SomeRandomGuy
@Kay: If Trump leaves NATO, that, just that, is a historic realignment. If the Rs expand the SCOTUS to have a 10-3 majority, that, just that, is a historic realignment. If Trump kicks the “disloyal” civil servants out, that, just that…
SomeRandomGuy
@Gloria DryGarden: “Show how shitty Republicans are, so people reject them.”
JaneE
I was wondering about the security clearance for cabinet positions. Can’t Trump grant them clearance regardless? I suspect more than one of his choices would have problems getting cleared.
SomeRandomGuy
@Gloria DryGarden: One of the troubles, is, Republicans are constantly doing so much evil shit, there’s little time and resources to engage in branding. The billionaires *know* they will do better under Rs, so, there goes the billions in PAC money for branding.
I think, somehow, we need a network of love and joy, both for mutual support, and for the creativity and additional joy it engenders. Go watch Klaus, and read the above again – it might make more sense.
(wtf, a misanthrope can’t like people having wonderful dreams of what could be? You think I’m a misanthrope who lives in fucking HEAVEN? More Klaus-like thought, I wouldn’t have to *be* a misanthrope.)
SomeRandomGuy
@Gloria DryGarden: If you want to dig in, then, you have to recognize, we are in a knife fight. “I don’t understand why people like that monstrously fat toad,” is OKAY in a knife fight, but you should try to dig in so deep, the shit smushes out of his off-brand diapers.
Ahem. Trekkies? DS9? “If you’re not willing to kill collaborators, you can’t win the revolution” speech. Same principle, just they gave Kamala the Deep Throat treatment, we can’t be afraid to call the man Don Von ShitsHisPants because it’s ableist.
NB Didn’t say that would be RIGHT to do – I’m not your personal moral guide (whoever reads this – *you* are), but mostly, I see this as “well, you have to remember, you voted for the diaper don, I just don’t know why?” questions, and not a sudden loss of all politeness in each and every blog post/news column/etc..
They’ll accuse us, en masse, of pedophilia. They, the people who secretly believe there was nothing wrong with slavery, where a pedophile could… uh, well, I’m sure you never thought about that, vulgar thing to bring up, but, fuck me, *now* you know.
(The above was also e.g. (hoping that’s right…) to help really bring out the liberal guilt, if any could ever exist in a person’s heart – remind them of what slavery was.)
Fuck it. My fingers don’t work any more.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Professor Bigfoot: exactly. I am an older white woman who has voted Democratic all my life, and I just don’t emotionally understand this racism and sexism and support of the patriarchy from so many white women, but it is clearly a powerful thing. I truly thought this would be the women’s election, but no. I am so sad for all of us.
artem1s
@p.a.:
Hasten it. Make them shut down the government rather than concede any ground on Social welfare programs or anything to get another continuing resolution. The faster the next crash happens the quicker we’re going to be able to work with GOPer congress critters to mitigate the long term damage and eventually get the Senate and House back. They haven’t been able to kill ACA despite having a majority tri-fecta twice. Even W couldn’t get it done and he had the golden ticket 9/12 mandate.
The Red states who are taking more federal dollars than they give are the ones who will be hurt the most when the government goes on furlough. Hakeem learned from Nancy how to steer from behind and count the vote. McCarthy is gone because Dems held fast. Speaker Moses is already on thin ice. Hakeem’s and our mantra should be ‘Never, how does never sound to you?’
Stop spending, start hording your dollars in fixed FDIC insured accounts. Withhold and show the GOP what negative consumer confidence looks like this Christmas and all of 2025.