Yes this is somewhat comical but it probably only takes a modest % of Trump's base having these realizations to put him in peril in 2020 https://t.co/MGVkfxERtI
— Nick Riccardi (@NickRiccardi) December 17, 2018
… I’m a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016. I want our immigration laws to be enforced, and I don’t want open borders. But Mission is not a dangerous place. I’ve lived here all my life. Here at the National Butterfly Center, 6,000 schoolchildren visit each year. Girl Scouts come here when they camp overnight just a mile or so from the Rio Grande. When the president says there’s a crisis at the border that requires an action as drastic as building a massive concrete wall, he either knows that it’s not true or he’s living in an alternate reality.
Before this controversy, I voted, and sometimes I expressed my political views on Facebook, but this issue got me involved in activism for the first time. I had never gone to a protest in my entire life, but last year, I helped organize one: a four-mile march to the La Lomita Chapel, a historic church on U.S. soil that the wall will block. I also joined a group that succeeded in lobbying the Mission City Council to pass an anti-wall resolution. This is a mostly Democratic area, so these experiences were a little uncomfortable for me. Most of the people I worked alongside were anti-Trump from the start. I mostly kept quiet about my party affiliation and my vote in 2016…
… As I followed the news [last week], I was amazed to find myself agreeing with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who called the project “immoral, ineffective and expensive.” Here was a Democrat telling a Republican that a policy would cost too much…
And yet, the pundits cry: Fewer, but purer, Republicans!… Trump is the political equivalent of Kaposi’s sarcoma. If the GOP wasn’t suffering from a fatally compromised immune system, his campaign wouldn’t have been able to get traction even *with* Russia’s assistance.
Yeah, at this point in their terms much of the leadership of Bush & Obama’s election teams had plead guilty or were expecting indictment from the special prosecutor investigating their collusion w a foreign adversary, & Jenna/Barbara & Sasha/Malia were likely headed to prison https://t.co/s7yg8NzaFS
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 17, 2018
Baud
I can’t believe they didn’t title that op-ed “The Butterfly Effect.”
Major Major Major Major
Even so, were the primary held today, I bet he would win.
Quinerly
OT: interesting read
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-youtube-pulled-these-men-down-a-vortex-of-far-right-hate
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: He’ll win two years from now if he’s still in office.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
Probably. The real question is whether he would win the general if it were held today. Or in 2020. Could he really win the EC again? Or would he pull a Bush and win the popular vote outright? I doubt the latter.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: Do you think he would have won if the field had not be split up among 13 candidates?
bbleh
Once upon a time I would have felt that it was somehow wrong to look at something evidently as heartfelt as this and think “what a fkin idiot.”
For some reason, I no longer feel that way.
I wonder whether I can be given a WaPo op-ed column to express my feelings! *
* Ok, I don’t wonder
Baud
@Quinerly: Just wait until Balloon Juice gets exposed.
different-church-lady
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Matchups. It’s all about matchups.
Schlemazel
In honor of the season:
And though its been said
many times, many ways
Merry I voted for Dump because he promised to fuck people over I never dreamed I would be one to be fucked”
Merry fuck you to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Baud
@different-church-lady: We’d probably have Ted Cruz.
lumpkin
What exactly did this ditz expect when she voted for that asshole?
Baud
@lumpkin: Better email management practices.
Doug R
@Baud: Nope. Assuming there are still elections that is.
Baud
@Doug R: I’m talking about the GOP primary.
JLowe
So sorry butterflies that your human steward was so weak. See ya on the other side!
different-church-lady
@JLowe: So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Mnemosyne
@lumpkin:
White people assumed that voting for Trump would only have consequences for people they didn’t know, not for themselves or people they know personally.
It was quite literally an identity vote, and both Trump’s campaign and the Russian propaganda that supported it was carefully crafted to convince white voters that voting for Trump wouldn’t be much more different than shopping at Wal-Mart or listening to country music — just another marker of their identity as white people.
And now they’re shocked to discover that they were manipulated and lied into making that vote that they were told would be consequence-free. It’s all just part of the reality show, right? ?♀️
NotMax
Why paying attention to what was said instead of what FOX says was said is vital, chapter CDLIII.
SiubhanDuinne
There is nothing comical or trivial about a butterfly sanctuary being threatened. Butterflies, bees, and bats — our pollinators — are literally our food-providers, our lifegivers, and they are dying off by the millions. I am hugely upset by their loss and by this blatant abuse of eminent domain.
Miss Bianca
@lumpkin:
from the article:
(my emphasis)
The requisite allusion to leopards, faces, and the Face-Eating Leopard Party shall be taken as read.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: And isn’t if funny that when people natter on about the failure of “identity politics” they seem to imply that “white person” isn’t an identity.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
It really astounds me how numb we’ve all become to this. I try to shout about everything all day, every day, because it is not normal. How many people indicted or convicted or pled guilty so far now? There was nobody who was even indicted under Obama in eight fucking years. We’re up to, what, six or eight in less than two? And that’s leaving out all the assorted and variegated investigations of this clown and his insane posse. I think I saw yesterday that literally–and I use that word in its literal sense–everything Donald Trump has ever had anything to do with is under investigation. Every thing. His administration [sic]. His campaign. His transition. His business. His foundation. His family. His own personal self. Everything. And the people who yelled about Van Jones supposedly once doing something, and I don’t even know what the fuck it was said to have been, now just tell us that it’s no fucking big deal. Nothing at all. And so many of us have just kind of gotten used to it.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
It isn’t an identity. It’s THE identity.
Mnemosyne
Speaking of election manipulation, there’s been some interesting stuff on Twitter today of people really looking at the latest revelations about social media. Some of them (like the guy linked below) have taken a hard look at their own beliefs and decisions in 2016 and realized how mediated they were by the Russian propaganda:
https://mobile.twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1074759598039552001
And others are still closing their eyes and refusing to believe that THEY could have been fooled by propaganda and it’s all still Hillary’s fault for being a bad and weak candidate. ?
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Someone mentioned within earshot that they would be now able to get rid of the cocoons, and Dolt 45 thought the guy was stuttering.
Baud
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Can’t burn out in the first mile.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Let me tell you, people who clearly have “white” as their primary identity get PISSED if you say or even imply that it’s a mere identity. It’s all that is Good and Right and anyone who doesn’t fit the same identity is inferior. It’s like trying to point out how politically correct our conversation about guns is — because their opinion is correct, everyone else has to STFU.
Platonailedit
Unlike the other dunce cultists, this one seems to have finally seen the light. Oh, wait.
Until he personally got fucked, he was color blind.
dmsilev
@Miss Bianca:
Beat me to it. The Wall(tm) is the one promise Trump made during the campaign that he’s actually putting some effort into fulfilling, and this shouldn’t have come as any surprise to anyone who bothered to look at his long long history of racism.
zhena gogolia
About to see Cody Jarrett blow up and planning to mentally photoshop in DJT’s face.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: The Monsters are Due on Maple Street for the digital age. “Understand the procedure now? Just manipulate their social media and devices and memes. Then all we need do is sit back . . . and watch.”
dmsilev
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
It’ll be quite the irony if it was winning the Presidency that finally brought justice to Donald Trump.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
That was satisfying.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
That’s kind of a weird difference between Democratic and Republican voters right now. Democrats expect our candidates to say what they want to accomplish if elected and then take steps to get those things done.
Many Republican voters seem to genuinely expect their elected officials to sit on their asses casting symbolic votes but not actually DO anything. I don’t understand it.
scott (the other one)
@Miss Bianca: Fuuuuuuuuuu…that’s infuriating.
dm
Washington Post alerts me that the Russians started social-mediating Robert Mueller as soon as he was made special prosecutor:
https://s2.washingtonpost.com/e84327/5c1842a4e6e81b54fae30c7b/ZC5wLm1hbmtpbnNAZ21haWwuY29t/2/10/404042f1379497fa50928fdeece44d70
Doug R
@Baud: GOP primary is iffy, depends on “health issues”.
Mike in DC
The only way a primary challenge could seriously hurt Trump is if they pulled out an early upset in some place like New Hampshire. Of course, if a viable mainstream candidate jumped in after an economic downturn and the investigation reached a fever pitch, 45 could be in real trouble.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
As bad as the GOP has been for awhile, they used to be like this. They could be compromised with sometimes and many were genuinely principled conservatives who cared about serving the public trust. Not anymore. Now it’s all about making that money, serving their plutocratic donors, and punishing minorities and their white “libturd” allies.
Platonailedit
Stuart Frasier
@different-church-lady:
I really, really hope the Democratic primary this time around doesn’t end up as fragmented as the Republicans in 2016.
jl
” Jenna/Barbara & Sasha/Malia ”
Would make a good new super hero team. At least compared to the current bums.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: There is something in the right wing and evangelical mindsets that values speech/faith over actual actions, such that hypocrisy is considered better than embracing a value they are opposed to. It’s better, say, to castigate LGBTIQA (did I miss a letter?) people and at the same to personally engage in homosexual acts, than to advocate for equal rights for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation (and regardless of whether the speaker is gay or not). Likewise, colluding with a foreign power that is bent on destroying American power and influence is a-ok, so long as the traitor vows to “make America great again” by taking away rights from non-white Christians.
Amir Khalid
@Miss Bianca:
I don’t like this comparison she made. Immigrants as a class do not damage America — quite the contrary.
debbie
@Baud:
Oh, I disagree. Trump’s clearly a one-termer.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Yikes! Also, gaaaaaagh!
mapaghimagsik
Everything *Drumpf* touches dies? I’m happy to be coming home from my big corporate nightmare content in the knowledge that we managed to go one day without killing anyone.
Probably.
Unless you count falsifying records…*sigh*
Oh and Drumpf being a one-term president (or less..)
“I wish a mutherfucker *would*”
Aleta
Knows his way around the swamp, but up to his waist in quicksand.
A Ghost To Most
@PJ: They like being lied to. In fact, they insist on it.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Let’s face it, though — the fact that something as “weak” as butterflies are going to be damaged by this action is, like, three-quarters of the appeal of it for Trumpists. They’re enjoying that they’re going to get to stomp on some butterflies and damage the environment. That’s the kind of assholes they are. ?
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: Pretty amazing thread. Takeaway: the bullying worked, and far too many were willing to join in. And those who didn’t were too intimidated to punch back.
A Ghost To Most
@mapaghimagsik:
Everything Shit Midas touches turns to evidence.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
White people assumed that voting for Trump would only have consequences for people they don’t care about.
NotMax
Cake baking in the oven, all rooms thoroughly vacuumed, Greench dispatched in WoW.
Small pleasures.
Quinerly
@Baud: Poco worries about that every morning.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
Yeah, remember how giddy we all were when hair furor sewed on the nomination? We knew there was no way he was not going down to the greatest electoral defeat in history
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I fear you’re right. And it’s just sickening.
NotMax
Oh, BTW, for those with a Steam account, check out the free game Dr. Langselov, the Tiger and the Emerald. Not a game so much as a mini-walkthrough adventure, only taking about 20 minutes to play, however the narration is a real hoot. Clever enough dialogue for this codger to go play a second time to hear what else is there by way of alternate or delayed choices and actions.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Yep. It’s not too bad in the replies to that thread, but if you follow to the post he’s replying to, there are a ton of people there who are still in total denial that they could possibly have been influenced by Russian propaganda because everything they believe about Hillary from 2016 is 100 percent true. Sigh.
A Ghost To Most
@Schlemazel:
So did he. In fact, he banked on it. Now he can go down as the biggest grifter/ traitor in American history.
danielx
@bbleh:
Yeah. Myself, I’m holding out for David Brooks’ real estate on the NYT op ed page. I mean, how hard can it be to churn out 800 words of overripe bullshit twice a week, not counting book writing leave and four to six weeks of vacation a year?
Mary G
WaPo says one of the mighty has fallen: Former CBS chairman Les Moonves fired for cause, will not receive severance in wake of sexual misconduct allegations:
The times, they are a-changing. Of course his attorney is claiming he’s been unfairly portrayed and will sue, and the board found that sexual harrassment was not a part of the CBS culture, which is laughable on its face, and will probably settle for some number of dollars less than $120 million but more than any of us will make in our lifetimes. I can’t help but hope this makes Brett Kavanaugh squirm a little bit. I find it hard to believe that more information is not still to come about him.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
Was I completely off the mark at #40?
different-church-lady
@Schlemazel: Not me. My thought was, “If you make it to the Super Bowl, you have a chance to win the Super Bowl.” I never felt comfortable.
Yarrow
Back after a long day. I saw an Infowars bumper sticker on a pickup truck today. An expensive truck–extended cab. It was the only sticker on the truck. One middle aged or possibly older man driving it. Tinted windows so I couldn’t really be sure of his age or race. Probably white but possibly Latino.
I wanted to hate him but then he let me merge into his lane in front of him on a crowded freeway so that made that a little more difficult. I’ve never seen an Infowars bumper sticker before in real life. Weirdly fascinating that it was the only sticker on the truck.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Ironically If you read the original article, this person is most likely Hispanic (I am basing my assumptions on the name and picture from the article in the link)
his name is Luciano Guerra.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
I’ve seen plenty of Trump stickers as well as “Thin Blue Line” American flags on the rear windows of Trucks and SUVs. It’s almost always trucks and SUVs too. I usually tailgate them.
Yarrow
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Why? If they stop suddenly you will be at fault if you hit them. There’s a good chance they are crazy and also have guns. Why make them angry if you don’t have to?
A Ghost To Most
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
You haven’t lived until you’ve been coal-rolled by a jacked up white pickup. My Prius is a magnet for them.
germy
New York Times:
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Tailgating other vehicles is an unsafe driving practice. You would have been taught that as a learner.
sdhays
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, that made me stop too. It’s even more stupid – Mexico isn’t the source of all or even most immigrants, so that side of the analogy fails, and is offensive, too.
But I guess we can’t expect too much in the form of well-defined logic from a person who works for an environmental refuge who votes for the party that literally runs on how stupid (and amoral!) the concept of environmental protection is.
“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest…” indeed!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@lumpkin – why assume the writer is female? If you follow the link to the article: “Luciano Guerra is a nature photographer and outreach coordinator and educator for the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas.”
stinger
@Mnemosyne: Republican voters WANT their candidates/representatives to be liars. All the voters I know, who claim that all politicians are liars, are conservanuts. And they intentionally vote for politicians whose campaign promises those voters believe to be lies. What Democrats “promise” isn’t sufficiently outrageous or so obviously a lie, apparently.
J R in WV
@Mike in DC:
I still like to sit and imagine the next inauguration.
Right after the oath is taken by the next president, the former president is handcuffed and gently pushed into a police car, never to be free again!! I’ll watch that TV !!!
Frankensteinbeck
It’s not the lie they want to hear. Conservative lies deliver a message, that the leopard will eat Those People’s faces, and that white Christians don’t have to care about facts because they’re naturally right about everything. As long as the dogma of cruelty is followed, everything will magically turn out right for the deserving.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne:
And unless someone walks them by the hand up to it, they’ll never each the following conclusion: the REASON you were even able. to. be. influenced. by Russian propaganda is because you were already CONDITIONED to believe the worst about Hillz for 30+ years by the Republican Noise Machine. If you had just followed the facts…followed the actual evidence of your own fine brain, instead of Fox propaganda…you might have been ‘inoculated’ against the Russians. But they – guided by certain folks on the Right – knew just what would work.
Fucking idiots! No Russian influenced me ’cause I knew Hillary was already corrupt, ’cause…’cause!
Sebastian
@Quinerly:
You know, the same thing happened to a lot of young men who got pulled into ISIS. We are withessing global radicalization of young men through YouTube and Facebook. At some point there needs to be accountability.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady:
Same here. My husband would say every day, “Hillary’s going to win,” and I’d say, “It’s too close for comfort.”
Gravenstone
@Yarrow: Last one I saw, also on a high end pickup, was accompanied by a bumper sticker for my local fire department. That was a ‘comforting’ thought – not.
Gravenstone
@J R in WV: The perp walk heard ’round the world.
sm*t cl*de
@Miss Bianca:
“I knew Trump was a lying fraudster with no honour or principles other than self-enrichment, whose every solemn promise is worthless, and that was what convinced me it was OK to vote for him.”
Ladyraxterinok
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for linking this. Some of the replies to the thread’s initial post reflect how the toxic anti-Hillary propaganda is STILL affecting some who call themselves progressive.
Searcher
Who had the idiot piece about taking Trump seriously but not literally?
Ladyraxterinok
@PJ: In charismatic circles like those around Oral Robert’s and those influenced by him(Kenneth Copeland, etc) there’s the belief that if you pray hard enuff and explicitly state what you want/need you will get it. The ‘name it and claim it’s theology, sometimes dubbed the ‘blab and grab’ theology.
Some who grew up in those circles state that they are taught that if they–esp with a group–state something it becomes real. They say it’s like taking bible passages about God speaking and by doing so bringing things into being and then claiming that believers can (maybe, sorta, hopefully) do the same thing.
A Ghost To Most
@germy:
Come on in, the water’s fine.
Sebastian
@Ladyraxterinok:
No different than the manifestation believe in New Age.
randy khan
@Aleta:
Dersh knows that not the standard. As a really good article on Lawfare says about it: “materiality means only that the statement is ‘predictably capable of affecting . . . [an] official decision.’” (And “predictably,” here means the person committing perjury would have predicted it was capable of affecting the decision.”)
Bobby Thomson
That butterfly dude is one serious dumbass.
“Despite my personal experience disproving all the Republican propaganda I have unquestionably swallowed, I am a lifelong Republican.”
Bobby Thomson
@sdhays:
Yeah, this. And it was so stupid I assumed she was a man.
Bobby Thomson
@NotMax: Sounds like the Stanley Parable.
NotMax
@Bobby Thomson
Yup, same company, IIRC.
JanieM
@Bobby Thomson: @Amir Khalid: @lumpkin:
What am I missing with these references to “she”? The linked article has a picture of a man with a beard named Luciano Guerra. At the bottom it says “As told to Washington Post editor Sophia Nguyen.” But the nature preserve person is clearly a guy.
Mnemosyne
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Actually, with a first name of “Luciano,” he’s probably Italian, which makes him one of my dumbass people. Sigh. “Guerra” is the same word in both Spanish and Italian.
Bonnie
Every Republican and supporter of Trump are all pawns of Putin. They allow Putin to tell them what to say and how to interact with us real Americans who only want the best for our country.