…???
Explain yourself.
Obama was a vote for change and so was Trump. This is also why Bernie was popular. People are unhappy with the way their government works, with lobbyists and special interests not taking them into account. Plenty of people are left behind with the economic changes that started in the 80s/90s and as the population is getting older, esp when you calculate inflation, everyone is left with a lot less. Just from a medicine stand point, I can comment on length at how healthcare is fucked at all levels and this is a massive source of confusion and financial distress across the country, and it goes beyond medicine, but a lot of aspects of people’s lives. Add on to that, a media that continuously spreads lies because they’re rewarded instead of punished for it, to convince their viewers that the sky is falling and we have this.
I’m more disappointed that the status quo was maintained and reinforced within the Legislation Branch this time around in spite of the six years of congress flat out stonewalling everything Obama did or tried to do, up to and including barring the nomination of a Justice of the Supreme Court for the last 8 months, and utterly paralyzing the government beyond short lived executive orders.
Also, the hate, bigotry, bigamy and general intolerance is palatable.
Oh I agree. This is fucking stupid and awful.
I’ve managed to avoid the roving death squads so far.
Nulani, can we all come and hide in your basement for a few years?
(it boggles my mind that I only posted a couple thousand times here over the years, but I send thousands of emails a year for work. Ah well.)
I live on a bog, I don’t have a basement. I suppose I could put someone up in the shed. Cold tough. As for the subject of the thread: *Sigh. And good luck. Give him as miserable a time as he looks to already be having.
What I’m looking forward to is when automation kills the trucker job and everything living from it (small diners, non-automated gas stations) and what social chaos will come of it. I’m sure that’ll be fun.
Also I expect the next 4 years to be a shitshow for America and social progress there.
On the one hand, amen brother. On the other hand, given how slow and resistant to change the automotive industry has been in the past, I’m not terribly worried about the rolling out of automated automobiles. On that weird alien third hand sticking out of your chest even though it makes no god damn sense to be there (let alone in that shape, either have opposable thumbs on both sides or make everything double-jointed), even if autobots become a thing, I doubt that a bunch of god fearing farmers would trust soulless driving machines with their wee barins (and wheat bran) over error prone meatbags any time soon.
Economic misery and voter antipathy to a seemingly out-of-touch, or even indifferent [to their plight] elite establishment political class, exacerbated by their being under-informed as they reject conventional/mainstream media as being non-objective and/or in the tank for said elite political establishment class [and one that even if it isn’t, does definitely under-inform them as its profit model revolves around providing entertainment rather than information] and replace it with misinformation from social media and conspiratorial click-bait fake news [even more nakedly providing entertainment content rather than reputable information as a profit model], are highly susceptible to being duped by a Reality TV/Social Media Celebrity moonlighting as a charismatic non-ideological faux populist who taps into that real and legitimate anger and frustration with the establishment, who promises “simple” solutions in punchy easily digestible and regurgitable soundbites that are a balm for what people want to hear (no matter how unrealistic in practice they actually are or how little he actually cares about them as societal issues) and offers himself as a mass protest/Fuck You vote for the people who just want to watch the establishment burn (as it has repeatedly burned them).
ESPECIALLY if he expands his appeal by tapping into good ol’ fashioned racism and xenophobia and grafting that onto his anti-establishment brand.
It didn’t matter how much of a buffoon he sounded like, or how vile his racism etc. were, or how badly Hillary clowned him in debates (or the Bushes, Rubios, et al. did in the primaries before that), or how much the media harped on “LOL he’s horrible” and kept pushing him as the ratings-friendly sideshow. These became features, not bugs, in his branding.
Conventional Republicans serve Wall Street First And Main Street Never. Clintonoid neoliberal Democrats serve Wall Street First and Main Street Never. So fed up and eager to flip this system the bird, people voted for a Wall Street Billionaire who told them what he knew they wanted to hear.
Meanwhile, enough voter apathy and enough people beaten down by the disingenuous “well both sides do it!” equivocation used to excuse the worst policy and corruption, made enough of the people who were excited to vote for “Hope and Change” with Obama to stay home for Hillary or even in some cases flip to Trump. As Bill Maher put it a week or so ago about Trump’s path to victory, “They can’t sell you Trump isn’t horrible. It’s on tape. But they can sell that Hillary is just as bad.”
Trump got fewer votes than Romney in terms of the national popular vote. Yet he won.
People so accustomed to presidential elections (and politics in general) being something like a L.C.D. reality show finally treated it like one. Two parties ostensibly in opposition but both beholden to the same lobbyists and financial backers seems like a joke? VOTE FOR THE BIGGEST JOKE POSSIBLE.
REAL ESTATE MAGNATE HAS SIX EASY STEPS TO FIX YOUR BROKEN SYSTEM!
WALL STREET DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS!
ESTABLISHMENT POLITICIANS HATE HIM!
MAINSTREAM MEDIA HATES HIM (AFTER THEY FIRST LOVED HIM, CREATED HIM, NOW TURNED ON HIM)!!
CLICK HERE!!!
SEND A MESSAGE TO WASHINGTON!
Except the problem is, now that message is actually sent.
Generations of sewing the wind of bullshit antipolitics and people running on “I’m an outsider, not a politician” and “government sucks, run it more like a business” has, like the proverbial frog in the frying pan who won’t jump out but will cook to death if you increase the heat in gradual increments, have finally left us reaping the whirlwind of deliberately voting for the person who is the most unqualified, BECAUSE he’s the most unqualified.
My signature has taken on new, horrifying context.
Well the Cubs finally broke their 108 year long curse, so something had to give in exchange. Way to go Chicago.
Hillary took most of the Rust Belt for granted, never once setting foot in Wisconsin during the general election season. She barely polled Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, etc. because she thought they were givens.
She literally took them for granted. And these were people who were angry about thinking they were always taken for granted.
I got distracted by the link to that post where zep savaged Hades and man
That guy has a way with words
Well everything appears to promptly be going to shit. Time to brace ourselves.
What now?
Trump, as expected, has begun filling his cabinet with people he owed favors to and other business associates, so far he’s got a white supremest on deck along with some other unscrupulous fellow who’s dubious trait I can’t recall at the moment. On top of that, not only is the Legislation Branch holding open a seat on the Supreme Court for Trump to fill, but three other Justices have at least one foot in the grave. Not to mention all the protests and hate crimes flaring up around the country (Thanksgiving Day Parade is going to be one for the books this year assuming they don’t cancel it as Trump Tower, and its recently erected wall of protesters, is right on the route). Trump himself has already begun the long, involved process of reneging on the long con he sold the US over the election campaign. Everyone still in NATO is in the process of freaking out over America electing a con artist and reality TV star to be their next leader, while Russia’s currently rattling its saber over their heads and Putin is doing his best Mr. Burns impression.
I could go on…
I just think it’s funny that The Simpsons were right. They predicted Trump’s presidency 16 years ago. :V
ur welcome
PS if anyone wants to know how to leave the country, I can hook you up with all you need to know - just PM me. Me personally? I’m a rich white male, so I envision four years of relative prosperity (no I didn’t fucking vote for Trump but lol at all the poor white ppl who voted for him on the way to the payday loan center - lol thanks bros and brodettes)
I didn’t realize RPGC loved Hillary Clinton so much. Sad.