Religion, politics, sex .. and other taboo subjects

FallenAngelina said:
How do you propose to say no to his presidency? He's gonna be our president, that much is certain. Whether you feel that he represents you and whether you agree with his policies is another story, but this "Not my president" thing is a lost protest. He's gonna be our president. There's no such thing as saying no to it.
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The list of possible responses is vast, exhaustive....

  • Folks can join the cession (independence) movements which are gaining steam in states like California... and which are expected to be growing along the entire West coast.

  • They can join the protest movements ... which, if large enough, could embarrass or otherwise "influenece" trump and his running mate right the hell out of office, when it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Americans despise them both--and the people they want to install in our government.

  • They can begin to build a Wall -- around Washington D.C. -- to contain trump and his running mate ... preventing them from doing any further harm to America and Americans through wall-containment.

I don't really care how it is done, but we should certainly NOT take his presidency in any way seriously. It is a complete joke (and hoax) and can't possibly be effective in any sense. This may well be the last American presidential election. And that's fine by me. Let's make a few different countries out of the rubble and ruin this election has forced.
 
River said:
Folks can join the cession (independence) movements which are gaining steam in states like California... and which are expected to be growing along the entire West coast.
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While California certainly has the resources to survive on its own (the 6th largest economy in the world) and indeed subsidizes much of the country, legal secession is unlikely since that requires 2/3 approval from both the House and Senate. Remember, too, that much of California is not liberal leaning. The central agricultural belt and northern counties all went Red. It's an interesting idea for California (and Oregon and Washington?) to secede or even join Canada, but tempers are hot right now and it's a novel idea. Let's see where the movement stands in a year.
 
FallenAngelina said:
While California certainly has the resources to survive on its own (the 6th largest economy in the world) and indeed subsidizes much of the country, legal secession is unlikely since that requires 2/3 approval from both the House and Senate.
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Emphasis mine.

The central government, based in D.C., may not like having new nations emerging which were once part of the USA, but they can ultimately only stop such a decision with force of arms -- by perhaps (e.g.) rolling tanks and troops into the cities of California.

Do you believe Americans will fire upon Americans in such a case?

What America is going through at the moment is sometimes called a "crisis of legitimacy". For the trump regime to be legitimate, it would have to take facts seriously -- including scientific facts, such as the fact of anthropogenic climate change and it's grave risks to all future generations of Earth life. By putting Myron Ebell in charge of the future of the EPA, trump has signaled that he is willing to delegitimize the whole American government, deepening a long-standing crisis of legitimacy on the part of the current establishment order in the world which is commonly known as corporatism and neoliberalism.

If we stay on the track trump is leading us all down we may as well close down all libraries, schools, scientific organizations, universities.... Everything. For none of these mean anything if truth means nothing.
 
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River said:
  • They can join the protest movements ... which, if large enough, could embarrass or otherwise "influenece" trump and his running mate right the hell out of office, when it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Americans despise them both--and the people they want to install in our government.
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What overwhelming majority? You mean those 50 and a few percent of the people who actually voted?
 
I like the idea of building a wall around DC. Like I wish that a huge contingent of Americans would descend upon DC, despite the armed resistance that is sure to ensue, and build a giant wall out of whatever, around the perimeter. And then paint it with rainbow colors and fucking glitter. If we could get hackers to make Trump's assets unavailable to him, frozen as it were, or diverted to like charity or something, and evacuate the normal folks and just put all of the politicians in there and the business tycoons and maybe also the convicted murderers and rapists from the prison systems, just turn them loose in the containment area...everyone who is a menace to society and civilization.

Actually sounds like a movie.

RUN, BABYHANDS!!

Tis a nice fantasy.

Agree with Fallen Angelina on this, though. Much as I'd love to see enough of a stand where people just won't take it anymore and put a stop to all of this, I don't think we have reached the tipping point for that. I think that there IS one...but we're not there. I hope we don't GET there. It would be nice if the Trump administration consists of a bunch of flopping and flailing about, followed by a realization that he's just got to try and survive the next four years somehow, and they all hunker down and nothing changes, until we can get his ass out and get a real president in there. I only hope that we don't face another Great Depression, or WWIII, or anything too heinous during the next 4.

But I could see them doing tons of stuff that hurts the planet, and those who are worried about that would protest and the rest of the nation would shrug. People don't even recycle here. This town would shrug.

I could see Trump taking away women's rights to reproductive choices and hell even try to take women's right to vote. Most men would shrug and deny that there is any problem. Women wouldn't resist hard enough to stop him. The world would not care. Shrug.

I can see Trump having militarized police rolling through the poorest neighborhoods, shooting teenagers and young men, patrolling for "law and order" and shaking down Hispanic communities demanding to see "papers" (ID) and making Muslims register and be investigated and interrogated.

Some folks will stand up against this...until they get shot. But plenty of folks will look at the troops enforcing the will of the government, and hide instead.

But yanno, I could also see if states tried to secede, Russia or other foreign nations lending support to the "rebels" to destabilize America further...I think the rest of the world, or at least many of the world's big interests, would LOVE to see the US broken up. Maybe it should happen. Maybe it would be better if we were more like Europe, a bunch of countries instead of one big one. Maybe this behemoth is unsustainable. I don't know. But I do know that the time of this sort of change won't be an easy one to live through. I'm in a state of fear and grief, because I love my country, my life, my sons...I'm very afraid and sad.

But the kind of resistance that will actually have an effect won't take place, unless government force starts really coming down on people in big and visible and violent ways. Big change won't happen peacefully. We're used to watching war on TV, not out of our windows...so our willingness to put up a fight is limited. Maybe we'll get there eventually. Maybe not.
 
Spork said:
But I do know that the time of this sort of change won't be an easy one to live through. I'm in a state of fear and grief, because I love my country, my life, my sons...I'm very afraid and sad.
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I'm also grieving and afraid. But this is simply an amplification of the fear and grief I've had for the last thirty years or so. It's gotten worse over those decades as I came to understand more and more of what's going on behind the scenes, and why. Almost all of the action is behind the scenes, by which I mean outside of mainstream eyes, ears and discourse -- though more and more of us have been waking up on the fringes. Yeah, my dread and grief is worse following this election. But it wasn't a happy party before, either.

It's interesting what you say about people generally shrugging at the destruction of the natural world. These are people who perhaps don't much care about wild nature, but who at least say they care about their children and their children's children. How it is that they can care about those children and not care about the climate crisis, for example, is beyond me. Obviously there are a lot of loose wires in their brains, so to speak. Something isn't connected up that is meant to be in working order.

Those who know what's going on know that humanity has very nearly passed the point of no return on climate, and that we may be able to alter course away from unthinkable mass extinctions (including our own species) if we dramatically alter course over the next 4, 6, 10, 20 years. Every year we lose now in making this great turning is a year the biosphere cannot afford. We are all literally living a murderous way of life -- robbing the future of itself, making life hellish for innocent others. I can't fathom how anyone could shrug that off. If they are sleep walking, we should wake them the hell up! "Hello? Have a cup of coffee, man, you're sleepwalking!"
 
Tinwen said:
What overwhelming majority? You mean those 50 and a few percent of the people who actually voted?
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Okay, maybe it's not an overwhelming majority. But I do think it is a majority, perhaps even a strong majority. And it is a growing majority, I suspect. It will continue to grow as more and more people realize what sort of a man trump and his running mate are -- and what sort of a political party the Republicans are. The protests will not stop. The resistance will not stop. The contempt will not stop. It will grow. I promise you that.

Please keep in mind that a very large number of those who did not vote for president this time around did not vote because they felt that they were given a choice between two candidates which they could not support.
 
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River said:
These are people who perhaps don't much care about wild nature, but who at least say they care about their children and their children's children. How it is that they can care about those children and not care about the climate crisis, for example, is beyond me.
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Hypothetical example:
You live in Kansas and your livelihood depends on the coal mine. You're stuck in a situation in which your income depends upon an unclean fuel, and you see the push for more green alternatives as death to your community. You may be trying to support a family and see this as a near-term survival thing rather than the long-term "someone can worry about that later" impact on the environment.

It's not easy to get out of such a cycle. I saw it on a more limited scale in my own family, when there seems to be a short window (typically just after high school graduation) when people have the ability to up and leave their situation, otherwise they go to work and stay there. Or get pregnant (especially in states where abstinence-only sex ed is all you get, and verrrry limited access to birth control).

I'm not saying that I'm not for getting away from coal and petroleum - I would LOVE to have more solar and wind farms spring up across the country, but solar and wind energy doesn't have the need for the jobs that will be lost when we eliminate coal.

Again, it's sort of Maslow-y. My needs and survival now are more important than the needs of the future. I have to provide for me and mine.

And then, long-term, we end up dealing with the fallout.

I think we can Monday-Morning-Quarterback it to death 'til the cows come home, but I think the Democrats need to better understand and speak to this part of the US (and maybe try to find a compromise, even though that word is anathema in modern politics). They feel unheard, and they made their voices known.

That said, there's been a nice post circulating on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...86794597.21742.100003401290351&type=3&theater

We are pretty much a purple country. Understanding both sides will be one hell of an advantage for the next group of candidates.
 
Agree with YouAreHere...good response to the "how can you not care about the environment??" question... Most people I know are choosing to believe any sliver of hope that it really isn't that bad, or it's natural cycles of the planet, or basically anything that will allow them to refute evidence that what we're doing is what you say we're doing, River. And the reason they so stubbornly do this, is that they are just trying to get by, and they want to live their own standard of living, and even if dire things are going to happen they figure it won't come home to roost during the lifetimes of anyone they know, so they can let future generations fix it, if it comes to that.

I heard about that thing where they found a way to turn CO2 into ethanol, I want to hear more about that, including new tech that makes practical use of it. That sounded like a big winner to me in terms of sustainable fuels.

But of course if it threatens the revenue streams of enough powerful people, then the fledgling solution will die on the vine. That is the tragedy of the world we live in.

Thing is, I agree that we live in a "purple" country but not necessarily like some think. Most people I know aren't well represented by Democrats OR Republicans. I know a lot of folks who are closer to libertarian than anything. Most people are mixed though and can only be reached in meaningful ways on the merits of a few issues.

Once you hit the right notes on the main points that matter in their lives, it's hands over ears and "LALALALALA" to the rest. So some folks will align with one side or the other, but with objections to other points with which they do not agree.

It might be fairly impossible to get a politician who really represents many people at all. It's just a matter of what particular thing is most important to individuals.

But that's beside the point.

Mainly I figure that RIGHT NOW we aren't at a point where people with a lot to lose are going to really step forward and put their necks on the line to make change happen. Things will have to get a lot uglier first. Will they? I hope not. Like, would I like to see things get torn apart and rebuilt better? In theory yes. But much like the person who doesn't like losing their job even knowing that it will make for a more sustainable tomorrow, I hate the thought of having to actually do the suffering and work of revolution. I'd so much rather just live my life. I don't want to see strife on American soil. But a dethroning of the powers that be is going to probably take major conflict to actually occur.

I just hope that somehow this administration is stopped from doing anything that cannot be undone four years from now. I hope it's survivable, we can hunker down and deal for a minute. And then get him the hell out of there, if he doesn't resign on his own, as soon as possible.

The solution is that the DNC needs to quit fucking around and get a candidate that people like, and get apathetic or disenfranchised voters back on board.
 
Spork said:
The solution is that the DNC needs to quit fucking around and get a candidate that people like, and get apathetic or disenfranchised voters back on board.
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This. And they had a likeable candidate and screwed him over. Whether or not he'd have won against Trump (I know people who say that he would have, hands-down, and I know others who say that the "socialist" thing would have taken him down... guess we won't ever know), I think more people would have voted *for* Bernie than voted *for* Hillary... not counting the *anti* Trump vote. But that's just my opinion, and I hear those are as good as assholes. ;)

Regardless, I hope the DNC is doing some decent soul-searching about how to improve next time.
 
vinsanity0 said:
People don't understand how the elctoral college works. The electors are not independent people chosen by the state. They are picked by the candidates. The odds of several dyed in the wool republicans going rogue are astronomical, especially since the republicans will now control both the House and Senate, as well as having the opportunity to control the SCOTUS for the next 25 years.
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The possibility of enough "faithless electors" is looking less and less preposterous. The electors are chosen by the parties, not the candidates, so although they are long time party loyalists, they are not in the bag. Trump did not ever have cohesive party support and many prominent Republicans turned their backs on him as the election went on. Furthermore, the electoral college vote is anonymous, so individual electors need never reveal how each voted. Here is one Republican elector who has come out publicly as a faithless elector, declaring that he will not be voting for Trump, even though his state (Texas) went red. Two other electors (Washington and Colorado, both Blue) are working to turn Republican colleagues in Red states. The EC vote is on Dec. 19.


Good video that explains the electoral college and how it applies to this election.
 
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some interesting historical context for the word "liberal"

http://prospect.org/article/liberal-label

Have you noticed that many, many folks on the "political right" (so called) have for decades now used the word "liberal" as an epithet so disparaging that it would seem to be a cuss word?
 
FallenAngelina said:
The possibility of enough "faithless electors" is looking less and less preposterous. The electors are chosen by the parties, not the candidates, so although they are long time party loyalists, they are not in the bag for with candidate. Trump did not ever have cohesive party support and many prominent Republicans turned their backs on him. Furthermore, the electoral college vote is anonymous, so individual electors need never reveal how each voted. Here is one Republican elector who has come out publicly as a faithless elector, declaring that he will not be voting for Trump, even though his state (Texas) went red. Two other electors (Washington and Colorado, both Blue) are working to turn Republican colleagues in Red states. The EC vote is on Dec. 19.
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Wow! Thanks for sharing this! Maybe we're not doomed to hell after all. But we'd better join the protests of trump if we're going to persuade enough electors to become "faithless". It won't happen without a massive show of support for dumping the trump. (rump?)
 
For those of you who are still afraid, this guy seems to have done some real investigation, and he insists that the talk about Trump racism and minority-hating is widely overblown:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

"Trump’s official message has been the same vague feel-good pro-diversity rhetoric as any other politician. ...
What if, one day, there is a candidate who hates black people so much that he doesn’t go on a campaign stop to a traditionally black church in Detroit, talk about all of the contributions black people have made to America, promise to fight for black people, and say that his campaign is about opposing racism in all its forms? What if there’s a candidate who does something more like, say, go to a KKK meeting and say that black people are inferior and only whites are real Americans?"

"If you insist that Trump would have to be racist to say or do whatever awful thing he just said or did, you are giving him too much credit. Trump is just randomly and bizarrely terrible. Sometimes his random and bizarre terribleness is about white people, and then we laugh it off. Sometimes it’s about minorities, and then we interpret it as racism."

"Like Snopes, I am not sure if the reports of eight transgender people committing suicide due to the election results are true or false. But if they’re true, it seems really relevant that Trump denounced North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom law, and proudly proclaimed he would let Caitlyn Jenner use whatever bathroom she wanted in Trump Tower, making him by far the most pro-transgender Republican president in history."
 
Trump probably doesn't know what the hell he's doing. But then again, he did get this far.

Sure. Don't be afraid. :rolleyes:
 
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