I still wake up and remember who is the President-elect

November 18, 2016 10:00 AM

A week since the post-truth 2016 US elections and Donald is attempting team selection with Reince Priebus becoming the Chief of Staff (Onion), while Steve Bannon is the Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor and Jeff Sessions could be the Attorney General. Election result analysis continues, including Barack's reaction, rural voters and insiders, as does consideration of the approaching 2018 mid-terms. Post-election, hate crimes have increased and a tally is being kept, while Black Lives Matter issues a statement. There are issues with fake news, and with vote counting in Arizona and Supreme Court control in North Carolina. Meanwhile, down ballot election results bring good news for liberals, Twitter does something, and voters swap media bubbles. Relevant events in the near future include the minority House elections, the Trump University litigation trial (maybe), the Louisiana Senate race runoff, the Electoral College vote and probable climate collapse.

To mod-quote: Don't go after each other, don't poke known sore points. Please check before comment-posting a link whether it's already been included in a previous comment.

Take it to MetaTalk
* What are YOU doing?
* Holidays, gratitude, and Metafilter.
* Grief and Coping Thread: Election 2016.
* MeFites offering refuge for the holidays.
* It's a big snowball - political sub-site discussion.

For legacy content, see posts tagged with election2016. The election thread reference wiki explains some of the terminology used in comments on these threads. There are also many recent election-related threads in Ask MetaFilter.

Relief
* The post-election edition of Have I Got News For You, hosted by Charlie Brooker (alternatives: [1] [2] [3]).
* Biden and Obama memes: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
* I need a good laugh, badly by azpenguin.
* Amber Ruffin invites white people to join the fun.

posted by Wordshore (2712 comments total)

I remember when I was really looking forward to being done with these.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:04 AM on November 18, 2016 [84 favorites]

I'd feel so much worse without these threads.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:05 AM on November 18, 2016 [130 favorites]

Apparently our long national nightmare is just beginning.
posted by mochapickle at 10:06 AM on November 18, 2016 [48 favorites]

I have been avoiding the news, have they called us (Michigan) yet?
posted by INFJ at 10:06 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

With the names being floated for appointments, protest movements need to act hard and fast on expelling and publicly denouncing anyone with even the slightest whiff of being a planted agitator. The Trump administration WILL use that tactic harder and heavier than before.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:06 AM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

So when do the threads switch from commiserating about 2016 to planning for 2018?
posted by Talez at 10:06 AM on November 18, 2016

Mod note: Pre-emptive mod note: it would be really helpful for both the longevity of any given thread and for mod and userbase sanity alike to try and keep these threads relatively focused on what is happening now and what is coming up, rather than falling into space-filling chatter or re-re-relitigation of some of the arguments that have played out during the primary and general campaign season prior to election day. I know we're all kind of fried, but let's try and aim a little for utility and get each other's backs.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:07 AM on November 18, 2016 [77 favorites]

I like jason_steakums' comment from the previous thread about making sure that the Dems come out with alternative plans for everything. It is okay for them to oppose everything that comes down the pike, but they can't just become the new Party of No.

The Republicans spent 8 years treating Obama like he was a fascist dictator -- which was clearly an overreaction -- so it is hard to treat Trump as one without feeling like a hypocrite. It's like being the next guy to see a wolf after the boy has cried wolf too many times.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:07 AM on November 18, 2016 [52 favorites]

The Republicans spent 8 years treating Obama like he was a fascist dictator -- which was clearly an overreaction -- so it is hard to treat Trump as one without feeling like a hypocrite. It's like being the next guy to see a wolf after the boy has cried wolf too many times.

I know, right? WATCH OUT WHITE PEOPLE! Obama is coming to get you with his healthcare! And if that's not scary enough his wife in back ready to try and get your kids to eat FRUITS AND VEGETABLES!
posted by Talez at 10:09 AM on November 18, 2016 [99 favorites]

The Republicans spent 8 years treating Obama like he was a fascist dictator -- which was clearly an overreaction -- so it is hard to treat Trump as one without feeling like a hypocrite.

Not for me. Jeff Sessions uses prosecutorial powers: to go after innocent people trying to help elderly blacks vote.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:09 AM on November 18, 2016 [77 favorites]

Ever since they announced the Muslim registry, I have been spending every day feeling a tightness in my chest and a weight on my shoulders.

I'm not even Muslim, but my family's background is. Who decides what is Muslim enough to go on a list? I'm willing to bet that they aren't hugely concerned about accuracy-- and it's not like it's any less horrifying if they were.

The strangest part of the experience is knowing that I have this constant anxious itch going on in the background all day, every day, but my husband and friends don't. They have other worries, to be sure, and they are obviously against the idea of the registry, but to actually have that threat hanging over my head has been a horror.

He hasn't even entered office yet and I feel oppressed because of my ethnic background. I've been annoyed by ignorant people before, but I've never felt oppressed. It's the strangest thing.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:10 AM on November 18, 2016 [57 favorites]

The Republicans spent 8 years treating Obama like he was a fascist dictator -- which was clearly an overreaction -- so it is hard to treat Trump as one without feeling like a hypocrite.


treating him like a fascist dictator when he acts like a fascist dictator seems like fair game to me
posted by murphy slaw at 10:11 AM on November 18, 2016 [123 favorites]

Democrats do indeed need to be the party of no, as no won't mean, "No, we disagree with Republicans on everything" but rather, "No, we oppose the dismantling of Democracy and civil rights for the enrichment of a racist kleptocrat"
posted by latkes at 10:11 AM on November 18, 2016 [119 favorites]

So when do the threads switch from commiserating about 2016 to planning for 2018?

Don't forget about 2017! Elections for governor, mayor, etc. across the country. If any of the Republican Senate/House nominees to cabinet positions get confirmed, then there may be special elections too.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:11 AM on November 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

I have been avoiding the news, have they called us (Michigan) yet?

According to this we're not totally done, but it looks like the assholes will win by a razor-thin margin. Awfully suspicious, but then that's sort of the story of the whole election, isn't it?
posted by IAmUnaware at 10:12 AM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Is there going to be a Blind Trust for these threads during the Trump administration or what
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:12 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dems hit new low in state legislatures

Republicans will control 4,170 state legislative seats after last week’s elections, while Democrats will control 3,129 seats in the nation’s 98 partisan legislative chambers. Republicans picked up a net gain of 46 seats in Tuesday’s elections, while Democrats lost 46 seats, according to the latest vote counts from The Associated Press.

posted by Golden Eternity at 10:14 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

So is Trump considering appointing anybody who isn't one of the villains from Mississippi Burning?
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:14 AM on November 18, 2016 [86 favorites]

I am trying to figure out how to do solidarity work with local Islamic organizations, and would love further suggestions. I have a group of friends who would like to participate and we are very flexible about what forms of action we could do, depending on the wishes of the group we'd be supporting. I've reached out to a couple community organizations but no response yet (which is totally understandable). If anyone knows of ways in to this specific work, suggestions welcome. I am in the SF Bay Area.
posted by latkes at 10:14 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

The only thing keeping me sane right now is the thought that the Muslim Registry would be managed by the kind of people who would fuck up an office secret santa list.
posted by theodolite at 10:14 AM on November 18, 2016 [49 favorites]

In case anyone needs more resources for what actions you can take, I finally had the heart to catch up on the rest of the internet yesterday and found that Autostraddle has been putting together some really great guides. A lot of overlap from what's been posted, but since they're a website for queer ladies, they lean towards a queerer/younger demographic and some of the resources they posted I haven't seen here yet:

Be the Change: 5 Ways to Stand Up to Trump’s Tyranny Right Now: this more like 5 categories, a LOT of great links here .

We Grieve, and Then We Get to Work: I bring this up to say, when you look at the future and think how can we possibly go on, how can we possibly fight this, look to the groups who have been living in the world you were just recently inducted into for generations. When living under the constant threat of state violence, surveillance and oppression, how have Black and brown and Muslim and indigenous people gone on? How have they fought?

A website put together with some Autostraddle staffers aiming towards the hail mary electoral college save.

And, for fun(??): This Thanksgiving, Be The Raging Feminist Killjoy Your Family Fears with FASHION

posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 10:16 AM on November 18, 2016 [58 favorites]

The only thing keeping me sane right now is the thought that the Muslim Registry would be managed by the kind of people who would fuck up an office secret santa list.

that just means they're gonna sometimes oppress the wrong person
posted by murphy slaw at 10:17 AM on November 18, 2016 [17 favorites]

Flynn. Trump has offered General Michael Flynn the role of National Security Advisor.
posted by mistersquid at 10:17 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Awfully suspicious, but then that's sort of the story of the whole election, isn't it?

Once again, Michigan Dems receive more votes in the State House, but Republicans hold onto power .
posted by MaritaCov at 10:17 AM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Dems hit new low in state legislatures

This article fails to mention the most terrifying thing. Democrats now control only 13 state legislatures (26%). If Democrats lose ONE MORE state legislature, they will fall below the 25% threshold necessary to stop a Constitutional amendment.

This is why mid-term and local elections are SO FUCKING IMPORTANT.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:18 AM on November 18, 2016 [104 favorites]

The Right Way to Resist Trump

Mr. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different.
posted by philip-random at 10:21 AM on November 18, 2016 [75 favorites]

I think all this is taking away from the controversy over the election north of the border.
posted by Damienmce at 10:21 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Reposting from the old thread, because this is useful:

Countable alerts users about laws that Congress is considering, and enables you to automatically contact your elected officials to voice your opinion about those bills. It also lets you see how your representatives voted on those bills.

posted by monospace at 10:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [37 favorites]

Let anyone who wants to compare Democratic obstructionism c. 2017 and Republican obstructionism c. 2015 cite a single instance of Obama's alleged tyranny that can draw an uncontroversial comparison to Hilter.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

that just means they're gonna sometimes oppress the wrong person

Think for a second about what you're implying about a hypothetical competently-run registry.
posted by theodolite at 10:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I haven't really been participating in these election threads very much, so apologies if this has already been covered in a previous thread.

With Sessions leaving the Senate for the Trump administration, is there now an opening to replace him with a Democrat (yeah, yeah, I know, deep red state)?
posted by noneuclidean at 10:25 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's okay to cry wolf when there is actually a wolf.
posted by Splunge at 10:25 AM on November 18, 2016 [41 favorites]

Definitely be the party of no, but also call your shots - no, because here's what will happen, and here's what we should do instead. And then keep reminding people that you called it when "no" isn't enough.

The Republicans pulled a shady version of this with the ACA - rates went up by less than they would have without the ACA, but they still went up, and Republicans called that and ran with the I-told-you-so's to great effect.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:25 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

"wrong person" from their point of view, not mine
posted by murphy slaw at 10:25 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ever since they announced the Muslim registry

This blew up on my Facebook feed in the last few days, and I had to remind people that this isn't new. Trump was justifying a Muslim registry with the existence of internment camps back in December. The only surprising thing about this is is that it's a show of consistency from a campaign that has been extremely inconsistent.

NBC has a good round up of Trump's early statements on Muslims here.

Also:

Trump is also being advised on national security by Frank Gaffney. This is the Islamophobic conspiracy theorist who has accused both Huma Abedin and fucking Grover Norquist of being secret agents of the Muslim broherhood. This is the paranoid, dangerous dickhead who accused Obama of being a closet Muslim, and reads secret messages of submission to Islam in innocuous government logos.

He's surrounding himself with paranoid, far-right bigots like Gaffney and Bannon, and rejecting intelligence from experts. He doesn't care about reality. This is a really, really worrying direction.

I'm not in the country right now, but if I was, I would be offering all of my Muslim acquantainces as much protection as I could offer, such as crashing at my place, help with transportation to safe places, protest, etc. There needs to be massive, concerted effort on the part of every citizen to impede Trump's plan to persecute Muslims. For now I am going to make another donation to the ACLU.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:26 AM on November 18, 2016 [48 favorites]

With Sessions leaving the Senate for the Trump administration, is there now an opening to replace him with a Democrat (yeah, yeah, I know, deep red state)?

The governor will appoint someone, and then there will be an election to replace them later on. So probably not.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:26 AM on November 18, 2016

I think all this is taking away from the controversy over the election north of the border.

Only f***ing Canadians could choose what's effectively a more streamlined pigeon as their national bird. And it's called a grey jay. Absent all colour (Canadian spelling there). Seriously, liberal American friends, do think twice before escaping to the true north bland and free.
posted by philip-random at 10:26 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's okay to cry wolf when there is actually a wolf.

but panic remains panic
posted by philip-random at 10:27 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

With the names being floated for appointments, protest movements need to act hard and fast on expelling and publicly denouncing anyone with even the slightest whiff of being a planted agitator.

I actually want to provide some real-world counters to this, because while the advice is well meant, it's actually incredibly dangerous.

While infiltration of activist groups is absolutely real - we had two verified infiltrators in an anti-war group I was a part of in the 2000s - the danger of infiltration is nothing compared to the danger of bad-jacketing. It's a tactic that is used by actual infiltrators in order to throw blame off themselves, and usually to take down movement figures who are too successful. The FBI used bad jacketing against both AIM and the Black Panthers with great success. It has a strong risk and long history of getting people murdered.

Tools to guard against infiltration include: giving no one person too much power or gate keeping authority in your organization, and avoiding any "security" people whose job it is to evaluate for infiltration- it's the first job taken over, generally. Practice robust security culture and share information on a need to know basis only.
posted by corb at 10:27 AM on November 18, 2016 [101 favorites]

With Sessions leaving the Senate for the Trump administration, is there now an opening to replace him with a Democrat (yeah, yeah, I know, deep red state)?

Theoretically, sure. There will be a special election, but given that Sessions ran unopposed in 2014 and won by more than 25 points in 2008, the odds aren't great.
posted by Etrigan at 10:28 AM on November 18, 2016

Corb, thanks for your take on that! I've just got images of Fred Hampton and of the Trump admin framing protest groups for actual terrorist attacks in my head and it's really worrying me.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:30 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Also

- four hundred years of white supremacist ideology & theology
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:31 AM on November 18, 2016 [50 favorites]

but panic remains panic

This woman's 8 year old son was beaten by a 13 year old boy who slammed him to the ground breaking his arm & giving him a concussion, a 6 year old threw mulch at them, and a 9 year old told him to "Go back to the cotton farm!". Panic does not remain panic.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:32 AM on November 18, 2016 [42 favorites]

Tools to guard against infiltration include:

Charge dues. Anyone who pays is clearly an infiltrator.
posted by Etrigan at 10:32 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: Anyone who pays is clearly an infiltrator.
posted by maryr at 10:35 AM on November 18, 2016 [62 favorites]

but panic remains panic

Yup, I am feeling panic, which I believe based on a cursory study of history and our current situation, is justified.
posted by latkes at 10:36 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan is going to try to kill Medicare as we know it in the first few months.
posted by rouftop at 10:37 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

So when do the threads switch from commiserating about 2016 to planning for 2018?

Hold on, according to Steven Rosenfeld, we may not yet be finished with 2016: A Fair Election? Serious, Hard-to-Explain Questions Arise About Trump Vote Totals in 3 Key States.
posted by justso at 10:40 AM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

I'm the only American on my floor at work and just returned from a two-week trip in the US (wherein I had the worst hangover of my life the day after the election). People have been quite keen to ask me or solicit my opinion on the current situation in my home country. I demur, thinking, "If I have to think about what happened for more than five minutes, I will just start crying and fearing for my family and friends."
posted by Kitteh at 10:40 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I have pretty much avoided political news not because I am so upset but rather because all is at the speculation stage. I wait till the new president takes office and what gets done or not done is his to own.
posted by Postroad at 10:40 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

How the alt-right emerged from men’s self-help

"Aspects of alt-right culture overlaps with men’s self-help, and with classical virtue ethics like Stoicism.

This may come as a surprise to those who think of the alt-right as gamer-nerds and illiterate meme-fanatics, but a lot of it appears to be driven by disaffected young college-educated men looking for a code to live by. Some of them are drawn to classical virtue ethics like Stoicism because it offers a way to feel strong in a chaotic world. Clearly, they misinterpret ancient philosophy. But their interest in it offers a way that educators can engage with them. [......]

Into this ethical vacuum [of contemporary masculinity] step alt-right preachers of ‘neo-masculinity’, like radical Imams, if radical Imans were also pick-up artists."

posted by Rumple at 10:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [37 favorites]

Apparently our long national nightmare is just beginning.

The Onion can just run its Bush-era "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Oer" story again.
posted by Gelatin at 10:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

Can we replicate that on the other side? We have those things, right?

It's possible, but there are other key ingredients they had that we lack, such as:

* A fundamental disdain for the institutions of democracy if they're not giving us what we want
* Tacit support from local law enforcement
* Proven willingness to primary the shit out of anybody who gives a single inch for any reason at all, ever.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:42 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

Let's not forget that Congressional Republicans are also gearing up to end Medicare. What might that look like? We are in luck, because it has been a part of the Ryan budget that has been voted on by the House every year since 2011.
posted by indubitable at 10:45 AM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

So when do the threads switch from commiserating about 2016 to planning for 2018?

Why wait? The Republicans were plotting their electoral-comeback-and-obstruction strategy as Obama was taking the oath of Office, and managed to successfully re-brand its most conservative wing, the ones who still felt George W. Bush was not a miserable failure, as a "grass-roots" movement that still controls a powerful caucus in the House.

Midterm elections tend to go against the president's party anyway, but one thing we shouldn't forget is that 1) Donald Trump is vastly unpopular and b) He isn't likely to get much more popular, given his initial blundering and inevitable breaking of campaign promises.

Just as the Republicans did in 2010, Democrats need to hang Trump around the necks of the Republican Party like a dead albatross, making them run from his unpopularity down into ignoble electoral defeat.

The odds are long, I admit, but if the Democrats can take the Senate back in 2018, they can put a check on Trump's worse impulses and appointments. And Democrats must prepare to sweep everything -- including statehouses -- in 2020, so they can break up Republican gerrymandering.
posted by Gelatin at 10:47 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

"Fascism is not just the big bang of mass rallies and extreme violence; it is also the creeping fog that incrementally occupies power while obscuring its motives, its moves and its goals". For those interested in historical comparisons, thoughtful, wise and well-informed commentary here from Professor Jane Caplan, and some suggestions on how to respond.
posted by melisande at 10:47 AM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

Here's my post-election round up of shit to raise hell about, shinola to give praise about and things to keep an eye about:

Shinola:
TX bill would remove odious language regarding homosexuality from TX Law.

TX bill would create Gender ID protections

TX bill would exempt taxes on feminine products

TX bill Allows HIV positive organ donations to HIV positive recipients

Shit:
TX bill requiring fetal remains from abortion to be buried or cremated

TX Bill requires ISD's to notify parents if a child comes out as trans/gay/etc, disallows ISD's from enacting policies that protect LGBT student privacy.

MASSIVE UGLY SHIT:

TX Bill to override local control of city ordinances, would override city charters protecting LGBT folks.

TX Bill would allow the state to refuse to follow any federal laws that violate the Texas Constitution

Federal Level Massive Bullshit:
"First Amendment Defense Act: Would allow for pretty much any kind of nationwide discrimination of LGBT folks based on grounds of religious freedom.

SCOTUS Cases:

Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., most likely will pick back up after February 21st

5th Circuit Cases:

Texas case against the ACA, seeking to allow religious freedom exceptions. Would allow doctors to discriminate against LGBT people in emergencies and routine care.

Texas VS. US: Relating to the DOJ "Dear Colleague Letter that covered guidelines for accommodating transgender students. Will most likely go away after Trumpence reverses DOJ letter.

That's what I'm gonna be fighting for and against in my neck of the woods and on the national stage. I dunno, share, read, do whatever with this info.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:51 AM on November 18, 2016 [61 favorites]

Sarah Kendzior:

Today is November 18, 2016. I want you to write about who you are, what you have experienced, and what you have endured.

Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.

Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.

Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.

Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.

posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 10:51 AM on November 18, 2016 [75 favorites]

Forgive me if this reference has already been made, but in commiserating with a friend about Jeff Session's appointment, it occurred to me that Trump's cabinet choices are truly a "basket of deplorables."
posted by Gelatin at 10:51 AM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

I guess all this talk of the next election cycle seems to lose the thread that this is different. It's different from Bush, it's different even from the huge shift that happened when Reagan was elected. Because Trump campaigned on an agenda of literally breaking current laws. He is already completely undermining standards of ethical behavior (see his financial conflict of interest) and he has already exhibited behavior that massively violates most norms of what we have until now considered "presidential", especially in terms of overt racism, islamophobia, misogyny and going after people with disabilities.

This isn't just a nightmare, as both Bushes and Reagan were. This is an upending of the US representational democracy project.
posted by latkes at 10:53 AM on November 18, 2016 [77 favorites]

That Electoral College petition thing is being blocked by Google's Terms of Service, FYI
posted by leotrotsky at 10:53 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: if radical imams were also pick-up artists
posted by zokni at 10:54 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Something that might be very useful in the coming years is to make it socially admirable to say basically "I believe in policies X, Y and Z but here's the line I won't cross to get them." Positively socially reinforce a public statement of what you would consider shameful behavior if it came from your reps in the pursuit of things you'd otherwise support. And yeah it'll get bogged down in dumb false equivalency bullshit but I do think it's a valuable notion and appealing to moderates. Look to the anti-Brownback reaction in Kansas to see the value and effectiveness of giving moderates a loud voice. Something like "#IDrawTheLine at X", just easily digestible and shareable stuff that gives individual moderates that slacktivist satisfaction but in the aggregate does something to frame the discussion.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:55 AM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hold on, according to Steven Rosenfeld, we may not yet be finished with 2016: A Fair Election? Serious, Hard-to-Explain Questions Arise About Trump Vote Totals in 3 Key States.

I don't know if figuring that out would be a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, we wouldn't have a president Trump. On the other hand, it would be an act of war by Russia.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:57 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

but panic remains panic

Yup, I am feeling panic, which I believe based on a cursory study of history and our current situation, is justified.

I recall reading a memoir from a guy (call him Joe) of one of the San Francisco earthquakes. He was in his van when it happened, pulled over and parked, sat out the initial shake, then looked down a couple of blocks and noticed a building had collapsed. Next thing he knew, he was digging through the rubble with his bare hands along with others from the neighborhood. At some point, somebody said, if only we had a ladder and a shovel. At which point Joe remembered he had both back in his van, two blocks away.

Joe's conclusion: "You will panic when catastrophe strikes. It's natural. But you'll only start to be useful once you get past it."

Also worth noting, Joe had those tools in his van because he'd read somewhere that, living in a earthquake zone as he did, they were very useful things to have on hand. So another conclusion of his was that, even if you're prepared for catastrophe, you'll make some wrong calls in the initial panic. But the preparation quickly gives you something to grab onto, get focused, effective.
posted by philip-random at 10:57 AM on November 18, 2016 [67 favorites]

I am going to begin calling him Donald Caligula. I will know that I am correct when they come and take me away for doing so.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 10:59 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Hold on, according to Steven Rosenfeld, we may not yet be finished with 2016: A Fair Election? Serious, Hard-to-Explain Questions Arise About Trump Vote Totals in 3 Key States.

Oh I did not need to see this. All the polls had Hillary ahead. Trump said the vote was going to be rigged. I even now don't want to believe it was possible that Russia hacked the actual election because I want to believe in the right of law and people being good actors. But the thought that we just took these unexpected and unprcedented election results and collectively assumed "I guess America is more racist / misogynist / populist than we thought" instead of "WTF - that doesn't make sense something is fishy here we should start recounting"...

Have we been armchair-quarterbacking the completely wrong assumptions? And if so, is it too late to make that process happen, BECAUSE we didn't challenge that reality sooner?
posted by Mchelly at 11:00 AM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

The Electoral College is not going to overturn Trump's win, given the whole partisan and pledged slates-of-electors thing, barring something more outlandish that comes out about Trump than anything seen over the past year. The petition effort is dumb, as well as offensive, in going against democratic values. If you give those up, you'll have little to nothing left once Trump and Trumpism are gone.
posted by raysmj at 11:01 AM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm not even Muslim, but my family's background is. Who decides what is Muslim enough to go on a list?

I'm an atheist, but if they force registration, I will decide I'm Muslim enough to go on the list.
posted by Gelatin at 11:01 AM on November 18, 2016 [45 favorites]

The reason the Democrats mustn't just be the new party of no is because that means they take the weight of Trump's failures on their own shoulders. Four years from now, when everything is shit, and Trump has failed to bring steel mill jobs back to Pennsylvania and coal mining jobs to West Virginia, we want this year's Trump voters to have no doubts that he let them down. What we do not want is for them to say, well, the liberals were against him from the beginning and wouldn't let him help us.

So obviously we need to fight back hard against the stuff that's clearly unacceptable. Stuff that's meant to hurt people. But we need to at least be willing to work with the Trump administration on policies that are designed to help solve real problems real people face.

The difficulty there, of course, is that it assumes Trump actually advances some kind of helpful policy initiative, which is far from a given. Even his vaunted infrastructure idea apparently is just going to be more tax breaks for the rich. So if he just keeps calling for horrible policies and calling them Infrastructure Renewal or Health Care Reform, and so on, I don't know what the hell we do.
posted by Naberius at 11:02 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

The problem won't be convincing people to sign up for the Muslim registry. Millions of people will do that. The problem is that these lists, if they happen, will not be lists you can sign up for, and may not include anyone actually living here.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:03 AM on November 18, 2016 [18 favorites]

i don't know why anyone thinks this will be a voluntary list. do you think the jews got on those trains like it was a fun holiday.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:04 AM on November 18, 2016 [98 favorites]

I'm an atheist, but if they force registration, I will decide I'm Muslim enough to go on the list.

It's really unlikely that the people who end up on the list will have any say as to whether they should be on it.

It's far more likely that it won't be all Muslims, just people who have immigrated from Muslim countries, which they already have a list of.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:04 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

treating him like a fascist dictator when he acts like a fascist dictator seems like fair game to me

I agree, but that means not making that comparison when Trump overturns Obama's executive orders on overtime and the environment and other things.

As the party of better plans, Democrats need to complain not about Trump usurping illegal authority, like the Republicans did -- because he isn't -- but about the harm Trump is doing to the American people and environment.

Trump is going to do much that should drive his popularity down, and Democrats should stand ready to throw him an anchor every step of the way.
posted by Gelatin at 11:04 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Joe's conclusion: "You will panic when catastrophe strikes. It's natural. But you'll only start to be useful once you get past it."

There are few things more unhelpful to this discussion than lecturing people about their level of panic and how it's not going to help in the long run. Different people here have different downside risks of a Trump presidency. Even if it's your position that their panic is self-defeating, telling them so is not going to change anything. We all have to get through the stages of grief at our own pace, and deal with the results of this election in whatever way we feel creates a better outcome. Ten days out does not seem like an unreasonable time to still be in "panic" mode when the stakes are this high.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:04 AM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

But we need to at least be willing to work with the Trump administration on policies that are designed to help solve real problems real people face.

An awful lot of the problems they've mentioned are imaginary, or the solutions proposed by them wouldn't solve anything. What then?
posted by LionIndex at 11:05 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I read the above-linked article: "Hold on, according to Steven Rosenfeld, we may not yet be finished with 2016: A Fair Election? Serious, Hard-to-Explain Questions Arise About Trump Vote Totals in 3 Key States."

What I didn't get from it was a sense of whether teams are actually going to follow up on these investigations or not. Only that they're expensive. Surely not prohibitively expensive, I find myself thinking, and yeah, I'd think American officials of any stripe would WANT to know if we were so hacked.

But why isn't this news reported anywhere else? Where else would I find information on whether this is BS or not?

I'm tired. I don't have energy for false hope.
posted by clever sheep at 11:07 AM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

It's far more likely that it won't be all Muslims, just people who have immigrated from Muslim countries, which they already have a list of.

One of Trump's surrogates cited the internment of Japanese-Americans as precedent (not surprisingly, since the odious Michelle Malkin wrote a book making that exact argument in the wake of 9/11). That internment was not of enemy aliens but of American citizens. I would not trust Trump's howling base at all to stop with immigrants or refugees.

And if they do that, there will have to be some kind of registration program. i don't think we declare our religions on our tax returns. Yet.
posted by Gelatin at 11:08 AM on November 18, 2016

HOW WE RESIST TRUMP AND HIS EXTREME AGENDA By Congressman Jerry Nadler
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:09 AM on November 18, 2016 [17 favorites]

In the dark of night, when I wake up in a panic and my brain spirals through the reality that Trump is the President elect and we are all fucked, I have concocted a fantasy that helps me go back to sleep. It gets more elaborate by the day, but it works to quell the despair enough to turn my brain off.

It goes thusly: a principled FBI whistleblower exposes the fact that the agency knew and covered up direct Russian involvement in the Trump campaign, culminating in Comey bleating about the emails at the appropriate time. This gives the (craven and personally threatened by this new administration like Ryan) Republicans in congress a defensible out to oust Trump/Pence and hopefully prosecute the lot of them. If before 12/19, the Electors switch to Clinton as the clear winner of the popular vote. If after 12/19, well, it can't be any worse if congress gets to pick, though a small part of me thinks they might go for Clinton anyway with a nice deal built in of no supreme court appointees and one term presidency to "let the people decide fairly" in 2020.

I SHARE IN CASE ANYONE NEEDS IT.
posted by lydhre at 11:09 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

If this Muslim registry happens I, for one, would like to see bout 48% of the country nominally convert for about six hours or so.
posted by Shepherd at 11:09 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Trump Theory of Racism: Go Big or Go Home

Chait writes that "Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism." But I'm not sure those norms are gone exactly. Since Trump announced his presidential candidacy, quite a few minor officials, mostly in state and local politics, have made racist statements or written (or retransmitted) racist online postings. Those people continue to get in trouble for doing this sort of thing. For instance, just this week a mayor and a director of a county development corporation in West Virginia left office under pressure after the public learned about a jolly online exchange in which they agreed that First Lady Michelle Obama is an "ape in heels."

But what Trump proved in his campaign is that it's easier to survive if you make dozens of offensive remarks than if you make one. One (justifiably) puts a target on your back. A multitude ought to rally the public against you in a big way, but instead you're marked as someone so brazen that the public and the political world respond with paralysis.

That's what Trump appears to be counting on in filling his administration: that there'll be so many appointees giving so much offense that no one will quite know where to start in attacking them. Obviously it worked in the campaign. It'll probably work in the presidency, too.

posted by tonycpsu at 11:10 AM on November 18, 2016 [26 favorites]

I agree, but that means not making that comparison when Trump overturns Obama's executive orders on overtime and the environment and other things.

Brutally rolling back workers' rights and protections is a big part of fascism, sorry.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:11 AM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

An awful lot of the problems they've mentioned are imaginary, or the solutions proposed by them wouldn't solve anything. What then?

That's sort of my point. Things aren't going to be any better for places like western Pennsylvania in four years. It's important that we make Trump own that, and not take the blame for him.
posted by Naberius at 11:11 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Peter Thiel has created a secret database called the 'Plum List' to screen and 'fast-track' top talent who have shown loyalty to Trump - and come from OUTSIDE the Beltway
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:12 AM on November 18, 2016

I'm an atheist, but if they force registration, I will decide I'm Muslim enough to go on the list.

They have been specifically talking about registering all immigrants from countries they seem to be Muslim, and I'm pretty sure the reason they're doing it this way is specifically to prevent this. I don't think they really want to be nice to American-born Muslims or anything--I think they're doing it specifically to make sure that nobody else can throw themselves in front of the bus. If they extend it to American citizens, I think they'll do so by including the children and spouses of said immigrants, and at best, possibly American citizens who have visited the countries in question.
posted by Sequence at 11:12 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

As an addendum to philip-random's comment about the importance of preparation and working past panic, since the election results came in, I have been thinking about a story I heard of a man who was diagnosed with diabetes back when there was no real treatment for it and diabetes patients generally didn't live for more than two years. This man decided he was going to live for as long as he possibly could by following his doctor's recommendations to the letter, even if it meant he might only get a few extra weeks or months. As a result, he was still alive three years later when Banting and Best discovered that insulin could be used to treat diabetics, he was one of the first patients to receive insulin, and he enjoyed a pretty normal life span.

Sometimes when a situation seem hopeless but you decide to do everything you possibly can to make it better anyway, you put yourself in a position to make use of future opportunities that aren't apparent at present, and things end out working pretty well after all.
posted by orange swan at 11:13 AM on November 18, 2016 [72 favorites]

Look, the point is, if you're saying, "Don't panic" to mean, "Let's wait and see what happens", then you're missing what has already happened. We are already in a situation where we have an amoral xenophobe at the helm of a white supremacist organization that will shortly control the nuclear codes and climate policy for the world.

If you are trying to say, "This is fucked, let's all think very carefully, and not let ourselves be manipulated or led astray by information that hasn't been fully validated yet, as we strategize about how to resist this as effectively as possible." then sure, I agree.
posted by latkes at 11:18 AM on November 18, 2016 [56 favorites]

Winter In America : Kaleb Horton talks to every day people about America's future and it's dark days indeed
posted by The Whelk at 11:18 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is fucked, let's all think very carefully, and not let ourselves be manipulated or led astray by information that hasn't been fully validated yet, as we strategize about how to resist this as effectively as possible.
posted by mazola at 11:19 AM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

Can we replicate that on the other side? We have those things, right?

The Tea Party also operates within a party that has a lot of single issue voters that will for for almost anyone as long as they identify as Republican and say they're anti-gay, pro-gun, pro-Christianity, and anti-abortion. There's not really an equivalent in the liberal side of things, so if the Coffee Party in the Democrats start putting forth candidates that are too radical, a bunch of voters simply won't bother to show up at the polls.
posted by Candleman at 11:20 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Congressional Democrats have nothing to fear from standing up to Trump, in one chart.

Spoiler: Gallup shows Trump's favorable/unfavorable stuck at 42/55 as of last week, an unprecedented statistic in the past two decades.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:20 AM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

I've been thinking a little more broadly about what we're seeing these days. Usually it's considered bad form to be too pessimistic around here or a sign of irrational panic, so please skip this is you find such things distressing. But it seems worth considering the possibility that this isn't just a big setback, but that we are gradually losing, on a large scale, over the last 50 or so years. I'm not saying it's true, but it seems worth thinking about the possibility that we are in a temporal bubble as much as ideological: that we are actually losing the game, one step forward for each two steps back, where optimism is preserved by seeing each gain as the march of history, and each loss as a temporary setback. But over the last 50 years, in aggregate, there are good arguments that we may be losing more ground than we are gaining (which is not to diminish the reality and importance of those gains, particularly on the social, cultural and legal dimensions).

Internationally, this is perhaps starkest right now. Currently, 3 of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are far-right (Russia, US, China), with the other two conservative (UK) or soon to be conservative (France, though it may also make it 4/5 far-right with Le Pen). Of the 20 largest economies, by my rough count, approximately 7 are far-right, 10 are conservative (some debatably), and of the remaining 3, two are France (which will soon be conservative) and Brazil (which is at best a mess, and at worst heading for much worse). Ie, there is one major, forthrightly liberal government out of the top 20 right now -- 5% -- and 7 of those 20 are rightwing fascists or similar. Nor is this just a period of bad luck -- things have been gradually ratcheting this way since at least the 90s.

Domestically, since since 1970 we've seen a lot of progress, but on major governmental policies at least, arguably two steps back for each step forward. Each Democratic administration has moved things forward a bit, only to have things move even farther backward during the next Republican administration. Since 1970, taxes are down, services for the poor are down, infrastructure is down, prisons are up, income is stagnant, death rates for the poor are up, abortion is progressively curtailed, etc. Gay marriage and other social rights have moved forward, largely thanks to the courts, but many can just as well be rolled back during the next two-steps-back phase. Health care has moved one step forward, but seems likely to take two steps back with voucherized medicare and medicaid block grants, leaving us far behind where we were in 1970. Again, this isn't to say there aren't many important policies that have progressed, particularly on the social and cultural side, and many of those are hugely important -- gains for women, LGBT folks, African Americans, disabled persons, and many others. But on the federal and international scale on the level of government policy and control (70% of US states, 90% of top-20 governments), it's arguable that we're losing the big game, optimistically convincing ourselves that these are just temporary setbacks in the march of history, when actually history may be marching in a very different direction. Which doesn't mean our job is impossible, just that it may be bigger even than stopping Trump.
posted by chortly at 11:20 AM on November 18, 2016 [154 favorites]

America's future? One hundred million eligible voters dis not vote. What, they worry?
posted by Postroad at 11:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

THANKS CHORTLY I REALLY NEEDED THAT PICKER UPPER AFTER JEFF SESSIONS WAS TAPPED FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL

favorited tho
posted by radicalawyer at 11:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [23 favorites]

Congressional Democrats have nothing to fear from standing up to Trump, in one chart.

Spoiler: Gallup shows Trump's favorable/unfavorable stuck at 42/55 as of last week, an unprecedented statistic in the past two decades.

Always worth reminding ourselves that he is in office by the skin of his teeth and the quirks of the system, and large swaths of even his own party don't want him. There is still leverage there.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:26 AM on November 18, 2016 [41 favorites]

Wow, really thoughtful point chortly. I keep forgetting to contextualize Trump within the world - and specifically within the rise of the populist, racist right in Western Europe. (I know you talked about more than that too...)
posted by latkes at 11:27 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

What happened when I went for a run in my I’M WITH HER shirt after the election: I’m no stranger to sexual harassment. I’ve been a runner for eight years. I’ve been a woman for thirty-one. I’ve been called a slut, a whore, and a pig before, but never with such spite as I heard from these men, just days after America elected a boastful, villainous, self-aggrandizing misogynist to be its next president. No one spat at me before Donald Trump’s shameful victory.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:28 AM on November 18, 2016 [59 favorites]

From the above essay "That's real. That suffering is real. But it's not the only suffering in this country. And it's not just that suffering that made Trump successful, not even close. Yes, there were hopeless people in small towns who were screaming inside and voted Trump. But there were plenty of assholes with two new trucks and a boat in the driveway and Confederate flag bumper stickers who voted for him too. There were people who voted for him because they hated black people or gay people or Mexicans or Muslims, often without ever meeting one, people who can watch a black man get murdered by a cop and think the black man, you know, probably did some shit the news didn't talk about."
posted by The Whelk at 11:29 AM on November 18, 2016 [23 favorites]

There is still leverage there.

He appears to be going full tilt at removing that leverage before he even takes the oath of office, and his own party would drink ground glass if it meant rolling back ACA and Roe v Wade.
posted by Mooski at 11:30 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Here's how I see things given the current situation. I'm sure this will change as this abomination of a presidency evolves, here's my .$02:

1. In Trump world, the whiter you are the better off you're going to be. Unfortunately, not everybody is, and there are some dark days coming for anyone with skin darker than Caucasian and a name that "sounds funny." Not ha-ha funny, but INSERT RACIAL/ETHNIC EPITHET HERE funny. And not just from the government, but from the general Trump-supporitng citizenry. In an election year, when my candidate lost, I could normally swallow the bad economic policy and stupid foreign policy, as long as I didn't have to swallow a mouthful of fascism along with it. Now we have a Golden Corral-sized buffet of it. The fact that a white nationalist is senior adviser to the President-elect and everyone on his team seems totally ok with this does not bode well.

2. Our President-elect is finding out that winning the job and doing the job are two totally different things, and it's pretty clear he's in way over his head. One of the few things I'm going to enjoy immensely is watching a constitutionally ignorant Trump fumble his way through periodic bouts of "Is that wrong? Should I not do that?"

3. I hope I see a lot more protests. Like a shitload more. I've never wanted a presidency to fail more spectacularly than Trump's. I think the thing that should be attacked the most is his approval rating, because that's what he cares about. He used the strategy of a reality TV star to get the job, now use the metric of a reality TV star to tell him he sucks at it, oh and by the way, you're an asshole to boot.

4. Let's say, we're all reeeeeeaaaaaalllly lucky and he decides, "You know what, the wall was impractical, we don't really need to round up Muslims, and I'm not gonna try and prosecute Hillary." Then it switches from scary to wildly entertaining, because we then get to watch all the racist assholes that voted for him (and it's a large enough demographic to be considered a voting bloc) go absolutely apoplectic. He'll learn the consequences of using thoughtless, careless, irresponsible language when you have a national platform with a megaphone.
posted by prepmonkey at 11:31 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I just wanna talk up the Louisiana senate race thing some. I grew up there and have been perpetually embarrassed by the shit the state's senators stand for; now it's down to a runoff between a Repub and a Dem, and it'd be REALLY NICE to occasionally hear bits of DC news that have something I AGREE with coming out of the mouth of one of the senators from Louisiana for once.

I've donated some money to Foster Campbell's campaign, and I encourage everyone else who has some free cash to do the same. Even if you don't give a shit about the honor of my home state, one more liberal voice in the Senate is a thing I'm sure everyone here can get behind.

(I am at least heartened by the fact that perennial candidate and ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke got a mere 3% of the vote in that race. That man runs for something every goddamn race and he's just such a perfect distillation of everything fucked up about LA; it makes me smile to see him do poorly.)
posted by egypturnash at 11:32 AM on November 18, 2016 [18 favorites]

THANKS CHORTLY I REALLY NEEDED THAT PICKER UPPER AFTER JEFF SESSIONS WAS TAPPED FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL

Yeah, sorry. I debated not posting if for excessive downerism. And I don't entirely believe it, that's for sure. But there seems to be some utility in thinking these things through a bit, even with the social costs. The one thing I've learned from Trump is that, while I think our 20% prediction of his win was about right (ie, it was unexpected, but not terribly surprising), we didn't spend enough time strategizing ahead of time about what to do in that lower-probability eventuality. So while the doom scenario is only one possibility, it's worth perhaps strategizing a bit down that pathway even if we don't think it is necessarily the most likely interpretation.
posted by chortly at 11:33 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

go absolutely apoplectic

They won't
posted by The Whelk at 11:33 AM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

The fact that Trump didn't understand you had to hire your own staff and don't inherit them from the previous administration is just one of many many things that I want to scream at his supporters about. HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HOW THE FUCKING OFFICE WORKS
posted by Kitteh at 11:35 AM on November 18, 2016 [54 favorites]

One of the few things I'm going to enjoy immensely is watching a constitutionally ignorant Trump fumble his way through periodic bouts of "Is that wrong? Should I not do that?"

That only works when there's a functioning system of checks and balances to stop him.
posted by Candleman at 11:35 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

They won't

i mean, they will, like they have been all year, but again, not about anything happening in the real world, and not towards him.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:35 AM on November 18, 2016

HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HOW THE FUCKING OFFICE WORKS

This also suggests that none of his inner circle told him, perhaps because they don't know either. Or, that he refuses to listen to anyone who knows more than he does.
posted by thelonius at 11:37 AM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

The Right Way to Resist Trump

Mr. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different.

An Italian colleague of mine with direct experience in Italian politics (both as an advisor and as a politician himself) had very similar thoughts about Trump not long after the party conventions. He was much less sanguine about Hillary than the polls suggested. He said that the focus on Trump's personality and bad behavior was the wrong way to go about it, and that a similar approach had failed over and over again with Berlusconi.

On the other hand, Trump's policies were so incoherent and insubstantial during the campaign that it made it difficult to attack them head on. But now, at least, he has no choice but to create a record that he and his supporters will be running on in 2018 and (giant meteor help us) 2020.
posted by jedicus at 11:37 AM on November 18, 2016 [37 favorites]

I just realized this is how we got to the 2015 timeline in Back To The Future II. They were just off by a couple of years.
posted by Mchelly at 11:38 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Mark Lilla at the NYT: The End of Identity Liberalism

But how should…diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:38 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

This also suggests that none of his inner circle told him, perhaps because they don't know either.

Jesus Christ, the position of POTUS is not a "fake it til you make it" job.
posted by Kitteh at 11:39 AM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Or, that he refuses to listen to anyone who knows more than he does.

This is your periodic reminder that the Dilettante-in-Chief-Elect has maintained for years that "I hear so many times, 'Oh, I want my people to be smarter than I am.' It’s a lot of crap. You want to be smarter than your people, if possible."
posted by Etrigan at 11:40 AM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

Brutally rolling back workers' rights and protections is a big part of fascism

But unlike the Republicans complaining when Obama issued his executive orders, they're withing Trump's legal rights to do so. We're supposed to be the reality-based party, so let's not pretend, as the Republicans did when Obama was President but not when Bush was, that issuing or rescinding executive orders is some kind of unprecedented and illegal tactic.

I already said that, instead, Democrats absolutely should criticize Trump on the substance of his policies. So by all means, Democrats should point out that Trump just took away worker's rights and took money from their pockets. Let's show the working class that no, Republicans don't care about their interests least of all Trump.
posted by Gelatin at 11:40 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I hope I see a lot more protests. Like a shitload more.

Yes, it's important to get beyond the "oh, you're just butthurt because your side lost" stage, and make conservatives understand that this election is fundamentally unlike other elections, and that they crossed a line this time.

That said, at a certain point, marching in the streets and holding up clever signs loses its (already very limited) utility and does nothing but make you a target. I am convinced that sooner or later there will be brownshirt attacks on a protest march somewhere. The Oath Keepers in particular sound really eager to mix it up with some liberals.

At the end of the day, I don't think the model that's going to work this time is Occupy Wall Street, but the French Resistance. The people of Paris didn't march through the streets shouting "Not MY Führer," and I don't think that would have been a very good idea.
posted by Naberius at 11:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

> The fact that the President-Elect didn't understand you had to hire your own staff and don't inherit them from the previous administration is just one of many many things that I want to scream at his supporters about. HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HOW THE FUCKING OFFICE WORKS

I am somewhat complexly disappointed that the Obama administration didn't lie to him about this and tell him that often a significant number of staffers stay between administrations. One of my hopes for coming out of this intact is that the people in the bureaucracy who actually know how things work will gaslight the President-Elect into letting power slip through his hands, into the hands of well-positioned stay-behinds.

But that's a pipe dream of course.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [21 favorites]

I applaud everyone who has been able to remain functional and do productive things. I'm just staring off into space while screaming internally.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:42 AM on November 18, 2016 [39 favorites]

Mark Lilla at the NYT: The End of Identity Liberalism

FYI here are the contact addresses for the NYT, if you want to express an opinion about their publishing of this op-ed: [e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail]
posted by melissasaurus at 11:42 AM on November 18, 2016 [18 favorites]

One of the few things I'm going to enjoy immensely is watching a constitutionally ignorant Trump fumble his way through periodic bouts of "Is that wrong? Should I not do that?"

i mean. he doesn't look at thing as right or wrong, only as whether or not doing a thing will make thousands of rabid foaming fans scream his name excitedly. i don't think he really understands that things can actually, factually, be wrong, whether legally or morally. those kinds of things are for other people.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:42 AM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

Alabama, home to revolting human Senator Sessions, has a very shallow bench of Democrats. To give you an idea, the name that comes up when I have been searching for prominent Democrats, again and again, is Walt Maddox who is a four time mayor of Tuscaloosa. Alabama votes crimson red and I'm not sure who on the blue side might lean purple enough to turn the seat D without essentially being a DINO.

That said, the Democrats had best run somebody once Sessions steps down. I think the closest thing to a winning issue for Ds in Alabama might be "The Republicans under Ryan want to strip away your Medicare and the best way to prevent that is to elect a Democrat to the Senate."
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:42 AM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

Derail: I just hung up my new 16-month calendar at work and remembered that Chinese New Year is coming up at the end of January. Out of idle Friday-afternoon curiosity, I looked up the Chinese astrological animal for the year 2017/4714: The Chicken, specifically the Fire Chicken, also known as the Red Chicken.

That's right: Mere days after Trump gets sworn in, we'll be welcoming the Year of the Fiery Red Cock.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:44 AM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

Mark Lilla at the NYT: The End of Identity Liberalism

What Are the SJWs Ruining Now? A Continuing Series, Part MCXVIII: Liberalism
posted by tonycpsu at 11:45 AM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

Mike Pence’s Hateful Laws Almost Kept Me From My Dying Wife: As a resident of Indiana for five years, I got to know Governor Mike Pence better than the average Indiana constituent. Now that he is about to be our next vice president, I want all Americans to know exactly how he treated my family when my wife, Niki, was dying of ovarian cancer.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:45 AM on November 18, 2016 [49 favorites]

The other thing the Tea Party had: a massive media infrastructure including Fox News (remember how the initial rallies were branded as "Fox News Tea Party Rallies" and the biggest Fox stars were sent to attend rallies?) plus thousands of talk radio stations all over the country where they could get their message out 24/7. (This is not even counting mainstream media fascination with the movement - CNN embedding reporters with the Tea Party Express, anyone?) Unfortunately, we have nothing anywhere close to this.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:46 AM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

That said, at a certain point, marching in the streets and holding up clever signs loses its (already very limited) utility and does nothing but make you a target.

You're more of a target alone than in a crowd.

The people of Paris didn't march through the streets shouting "Not MY Führer,"

...yes, because people who have actually just been conquered by an occupying foreign army and had their government violently overthrown tend to behave differently than people who lost an election but still remain in possession of their democratic rights.

The question you should be asking yourself is what would have happened if there had been stronger and more concerted public opposition to the Nazis within the German democracy before the takeover.
posted by praemunire at 11:47 AM on November 18, 2016 [37 favorites]

One of my hopes for coming out of this intact is that the people in the bureaucracy who actually know how things work will gaslight the President-Elect into letting power slip through his hands, into the hands of well-positioned stay-behinds.

Anyone who signed on for that duty would deserve every medal you could pin on them.
posted by Etrigan at 11:47 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

If you thought the official line from the Obama administration on the transition seemed too sunny, you're probably right:

The official line at the White House was that the hour-and-a-half meeting with Trump went well and that Trump was solicitous. Later, when I asked Obama how things had really gone, he smiled thinly and said, “I think I can’t characterize it without . . . ” Then he stopped himself and said that he would tell me, “at some point over a beer—off the record.”
…
Denis McDonough strolled by with some friends and family. The day before, the person Trump sent to debrief him about how to staff and run a White House was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. They had taken a walk on the South Lawn.

I asked McDonough how it was going, and he gave me a death-skull grin. “Everything’s great!” he said. He clenched his teeth and grinned harder in self-mockery. McDonough is the picture of rectitude: the ramrod posture, the trimmed white hair, the ashen mien of a bishop who has missed two meals in a row. “I guess if you keep repeating it, it’s like a mantra, and it will be O.K. ‘Everything will be O.K., everything will be O.K.’ ”

from the New Yorker
posted by murphy slaw at 11:48 AM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

The other thing the Tea Party had: a massive media infrastructure

This is why it is so important to really push our elected and appointed representatives to make public statements. The media will only cover something if a Senator or other important-enough person makes a statement.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:48 AM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

+1 for We’re heading into dark times by Sarah Kendzior

It is increasingly clear, as Donald Trump appoints his cabinet of white supremacists and war-mongers, as hate crimes rise, as the institutions that are supposed to protect us cower, as international norms are shattered, that his ascendency to power is not normal.

This is an American authoritarian kleptocracy, backed by millionaire white nationalists both in the United States and abroad, meant to strip our country down for parts, often using ethnic violence to do so.

This is not a win for anyone except them. This is a moral loss and a dangerous threat for everyone in the United States, and by extension, everyone abroad.

I have been studying authoritarian states for over a decade, and I would never exaggerate the severity of this threat. Others who study or have lived in authoritarian states have come to the same conclusion as me.

Meanwhile, for her birthday, Holly Wood asks we write public letters to American children, explaining what has happened.

Let’s say there’s a kid named Billy, and he always wants the swing at the end of the set. If anyone else is on his swing, he pulls them off, and if anyone tries to get him off that swing, he punches them. Pretty soon, you’d just ignore that swing, right? America works kinda the same way, except instead of a swing, it’s oil drilling, or charter schools, or prescription drugs, and instead of just one Billy, there’s thousands of them, enough for every swing.

If the rest of us all got together, we could get the Billies off the swings and take turns like civilized adults, but the Billies all look out for each other and kick *hard* when we try, so we mostly don’t. The good news is that most of the Billies are old, and some of them are even getting tired of hogging the swings. But we’ve left them on there so long that your lives are going to be a lot harder than they needed to be, and I’m sorry for that.

Irish Senator Aodhan O Riordian says America has just elected a facist:

What is happening in Britain is appalling. What is happening across Europe is appalling. It has echoes of the 1930s. And America, the most powerful country in the world, has just elected a facist... when are we going to have the moral courage to speak about things other than the economy all the time, and to realise what is happening.

Call it for what it is. We are doing nothing.

As we go into dark times, and great men do nothing, encryption is highly recommended as Britain passes the snooper's charter.
posted by nickrussell at 11:49 AM on November 18, 2016 [27 favorites]

One of the few things I'm going to enjoy immensely is watching a constitutionally ignorant Trump fumble his way through periodic bouts of "Is that wrong? Should I not do that?"

For Ford's sake, he had his daughter on hand to meet with the Japanese dignitaries, and Marketplace -- no bastion of liberalism -- reported today that Jared Kushner is floating some kind of position in the Trump Administration. This despite clear and longstanding anti-nepotism laws.

They want to run government like their business because as incompetent as that is, they truly have no idea what they're doing otherwise.
posted by Gelatin at 11:49 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

anyway are there any betting pools open yet on which collaborating shitstain is gonna perform at the inauguration
posted by poffin boffin at 11:56 AM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

The question you should be asking yourself is what would have happened if there had been stronger and more concerted public opposition to the Nazis within the German democracy before the takeover.

There was plenty of street violence during Weimar. Socialists, communists and Nazis would duke it out regularly. But the Nazis were able to frame it as "those degenerates" versus "loyal Germans" and in uncertain times, "law and order" always wins.
posted by monospace at 11:57 AM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

So I've been talking to my wife about this, but we've been trying to have a baby for five or six years. We've both really wanted to be parents. This election has made me feel like we shouldn't have kids. I just don't feel comfortable bringing a kid into the world with Trump as president and no hope for the foreseeable future.

I'm going to fight like hell against the shit they're planning, but I feel like everything is awful and nothing matters anymore except stopping them at every turn.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

from the This Would Be Hilarious If They Weren't Winning Dept:

Trump supporters "protest" Starbucks by purchasing Starbucks products
posted by murphy slaw at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

People talking about what will tell our grandchildren like those are going to happen.
posted by The Whelk at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

This article fails to mention the most terrifying thing. Democrats now control only 13 state legislatures (26%). If Democrats lose ONE MORE state legislature, they will fall below the 25% threshold necessary to stop a Constitutional amendment.

There are six state legislatures that are split, with one party controlling the house and another the senate, so we're still a long way away from Republicans easily pushing through an actual Constitutional amendment. And Republicans only hold the legislature + the governor in about half the states, so if governors are able to veto amendment ratification (I'm not sure on the details) then the GOP is even further away. There's going to be a lot of horrible stuff happening in the next two to four years, but I don't think they'll actually be able to tinker with the Constitution.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:00 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Y'all just wait until it's Kanye 2020 vs. The Rock.
posted by clawsoon at 12:00 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

People talking about what will tell our grandchildren like those are going to happen.


stephen hawking is all "we have 1000 years to get into space or we'll go extinct" and i am like look at this fucking optimist over here
posted by murphy slaw at 12:01 PM on November 18, 2016 [91 favorites]

Poffin Boffin: I'll put my money on Ted Nugent.
posted by SisterHavana at 12:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

I just don't feel comfortable bringing a kid into the world with Trump as president and no hope for the foreseeable future
unsolicited personal observation that-is-not-really-my business: my friends had their baby on Nov 9. i'd say only this: awesome, concientious, intelligent people having babies sort of *is* the hope for the future.
posted by j_curiouser at 12:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [58 favorites]

And Republicans only hold the legislature + the governor in about half the states, so if governors are able to veto amendment ratification (I'm not sure on the details) then the GOP is even further away.

...which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states...

Nothing about governors in there.
posted by Etrigan at 12:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

The thing about our grandchildren is that they'll all carry the shame of this election. When people think back on Germany in the 1930's and 40's, they don't think "well, some Germans opposed Hitler" (though some surely did) - they think "oh, the Germans let Hitler lead them to do all sorts of awful things."

All of us - conservative, liberal and non-voter alike - will be seen as complicit in his atrocities by our grandchildren. History has its eyes on all of us.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [36 favorites]

Toronto Star - Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’

Facebook and Google recently announced that they’d no longer let fake-news sites use their advertising platforms. I know you basically make your living from those services. How worried are you about this?

This whole Google AdSense thing is pretty scary. And all this Facebook stuff. I make most of my money from AdSense — like, you wouldn’t believe how much money I make from it. Right now I make like $10,000 a month from AdSense.

I know ways of getting hooked up under different names and sites. So probably if they cracked down, I would try different things. I have at least 10 sites right now. If they crack down on a couple, I’ll just use others. They could shut down advertising on all my sites, and I think I’d be OK. Plus, Facebook and AdSense make a lot of money from (advertising on fake news sites) for them to just get rid of it. They’d lose a lot of money.

But if it did really go away, that would suck. I don’t know what I would do.

Thinking about this less selfishly, though — it might be good if Facebook and Google took action, right? Because the effects you’re describing are pretty scary.

Yeah, I mean — a lot of the sites people are talking about, they’re just total BS sites. There’s no creativity or purpose behind them. I’m glad they’re getting rid of them. I don’t like getting lumped in with Huzlers. I like getting lumped in with the Onion. The stuff I do — I spend more time on it. There’s purpose and meaning behind it. I don’t just write fake news just to write it.

So, yeah, I see a lot of the sites they’re listing, and I’m like — good. There are so many horrible sites out there. I’m glad they’re getting rid of those sites.

I just hope they don’t get rid of mine, too.

posted by mannequito at 12:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

People talking about what will tell our grandchildren like those are going to happen.

Dang though. That's bleak... but it's real.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

the Facebook fake news guys have standards, good to know
posted by thelonius at 12:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can tear apart that shitty Mark Lilla article line by line

(raises hand, would like to see)
posted by zutalors! at 12:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

TPM: President Barack Obama acknowledged in a New Yorker profile published online Thursday that his first meeting with Donald Trump may not have actually lived up to its sunny official description.

“I think I can’t characterize it without…” Obama began before stopping. “At some point over a beer—off the record.”

So it was basically Obama trying to explain the intricacies of the Iran deal while Trump keeps interrupting whining about if he really had to live there.
posted by PenDevil at 12:12 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

There was plenty of street violence during Weimar. Socialists, communists and Nazis would duke it out regularly. But the Nazis were able to frame it as "those degenerates" versus "loyal Germans" and in uncertain times, "law and order" always wins.

Weimar is a super interesting period (and now, extra super depressing!). Freikorps (right-wing paramilitary) organizations were more numerous and violent than left organizations. IIRC, members of the judiciary who were viewed as too left were targeted for assassination by the freikorps.

That's actually something I'm getting worried about, too - there's so much specifically Trumpist rage and violence churning around right now but not really any killing. We're a bit lucky because we don't have a lot of youngish men who were in a war, as they did during Weimar, so people are not accustomed to war-like violence or military authority structures. But you could easily see targeting non-compliant judges after Trump is sworn in - they will be one of the few bulwarks against Trump, and they're hard to get rid of.

We have so little political violence in this country. What's happening at Standing Rock, for instance - that's political violence, but if this were Columbia or indigenous land in Mexico, the state would send the military and the military would kill people until they cleared out. We have little enough political violence in this country that you can actually make a learnable list of it. But that's not how it's been under right-wing regimes in Guatemala or Brazil or Argentina, or even Italy or, god knows, Germany.

I mean, I am really afraid of all of this. I'm afraid of how I'll feel if the choice is to comply or get shot or arrested - really arrested, not just booked and released. I'm afraid of how I'll feel if I'm looking down the barrel of withheld medical care, or having my bank account seized.

Peace is really, really fragile. From living memory in this country, we've always operated under the assumption that the state can't, in the last instance, kill you just because you're in the way. I've often wondered why the government has stuck to this principle, because bloody-handed tyranny seems easier and cheaper and isn't unprecedented even on this continent. And now the same thing has occurred, apparently, to the Republicans.
posted by Frowner at 12:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [55 favorites]

Can I just point out that both Cyclops and Magneto where right and registration acts are not a new idea.
posted by signal at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

“I think I can’t characterize it without…” Obama began before stopping. “At some point over a beer—off the record.”

"12:01 PM, 1/20/17, Old Ebbitt Grill, you're buying and you'd better have a lot of room on your credit card."
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

Can I just point out that both Cyclops and Magneto where right and registration acts are not a new idea.

The only lighthearted thing that's come out of this all for me is that I'm seriously considering a "Magneto was right" t-shirt.
posted by Frowner at 12:18 PM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

if this were Columbia or indigenous land in Mexico, the state would send the military and the military would kill people until they cleared out

yeah here in america we send private security contractors to attack them with dogs instead
posted by poffin boffin at 12:20 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

The thing about our grandchildren is that they'll all carry the shame of this election

With luck.

In a less optimistic scenario, there are no grandchildren, because we have killed the oceans.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:23 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

minorities: hey please stop killing us
mark the douche: A MORAL PANIC!
minorities: no, see, we just want to not be murdered
mark the douche: STOP DESTROYING DEMOCRACY!
posted by poffin boffin at 12:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [44 favorites]

Babies and Bathwater

So much of the response from Dems in post-mortems seems like they are treating a problem that didn’t occur. Democrats won the popular vote (by what looks like it will be millions of votes) and would have won control of the House absent gerrymandering. It was a consequential election not a landslide. These things are different. The consequences haven’t been greater in a long time, but acting like it was 1984 or 1972 is an error all in itself.

I’m extremely skeptical of the “economic anxiety” argument and all of the pathos for the white working class and I’m completely fed up with being treated like I don’t exist because I live on the coast.

All of the interpretations of this as some massive failure by the Dems implicitly argue that (a) Trump was unelectable which requires us believing that partisanship isn’t as strong as we know it is, (b) that voters care about “norms” instead of outcomes, and (c) that the fundamentals of a third term election aren’t difficult to begin with.

But, Dems being Dems, they will blame themselves, learn the lesson, change into something they’re not, and lose anyway for not being authentic.

posted by kirkaracha at 12:25 PM on November 18, 2016 [66 favorites]

yeah here in america we send private security contractors to attack them with dogs instead

Yes, this is my point. In the US, state violence is largely survivable - you get beaten, you get targeted, you get chewed on by dogs, but the army doesn't kill you. In the US, we've always outsourced that kind of state violence - leave it to the states whose right-wing regimes we support and install, kill people in the interests of United Fruit and cheap imports. While it doesn't seem unfair that we would be facing the same degree of state repression that people have faced under US-backed regimes elsewhere, it is certainly a change for the worse from a quality of life standpoint.

I mean seriously, I did a tiny banner drop with a guy from Columbia whose political milieu was where labor organizers were being murdered by the state in the interests of banana packing companies - there is a huge difference between the degree of state violence here in the heart of empire and what gets dealt on the periphery. The two things are related, yes, but it's a change if that violence comes here.

I cannot overemphasize how much more violent and dangerous to civiliains US client regimes in Mexico and South and Central America have been than the US government, and I am always confused when the left does the whole "it's equally bad everywhere" thing. It's not - I assure you that it is not.
posted by Frowner at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [55 favorites]

minorities: hey please stop killing us
mark the douche: A MORAL PANIC!
minorities: no, see, we just want to not be murdered
mark the douche: STOP DESTROYING DEMOCRACY!

It's because the common discourse is to (straight, cisgender) white people by (straight, cisgender) white people. Because there's no way to tell a marginalized person that they're making a big deal of things without looking ridiculous. Easier to say it's some high falutin white city person issue.
posted by zutalors! at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

How is it none of you are talking about Russia? Email hacks, social media propaganda, a Russian sympathizer for presdient, Russian sympathizers given cabinet positions, and the corruption of the FBI. Seriously, what the shit?
posted by Brocktoon at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

I don't know if it's been discussed already, but what is it that would legally bar President Obama from basically saying "This man's a piece of shit from the word 'go,' fight him for all your worth." I mean, I get the whole peaceful transfer of power thing, but is that what's holding him back?
posted by Mooski at 12:29 PM on November 18, 2016

we were told all that 'red scare' stuff was dated and silly
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:29 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Pet peeve, Columbia != Colombia
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 12:29 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

How is it none of you are talking about Russia? Email hacks, social media propaganda, a Russian sympathizer for presdient, Russian sympathizers given cabinet positions, and the corruption of the FBI. Seriously, what the shit?

That makes no sense to worry about. What do you think America and Russia are going to do? Just divide up the globe 50/50 along some imaginary lines through Europe?
posted by woof at 12:30 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Columbia = District of
Colombia = Republic of
posted by signal at 12:31 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

we were told all that 'red scare' stuff was dated and silly

Extra-confusingly, in fact, since Russia is only "red" in the "red state" sense, not in the red-hot communist sense. It's not a "red scare" unless we travel back through time to, like, 1988.
posted by Frowner at 12:31 PM on November 18, 2016

Pet peeve, Columbia != Colombia

Apologies - that was dumb and accidental. I will be accurate going forward.
posted by Frowner at 12:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

> How is it none of you are talking about Russia? Email hacks, social media propaganda, a Russian sympathizer for presdient, Russian sympathizers given cabinet positions, and the corruption of the FBI. Seriously, what the shit?

We have talked about Russia a great deal (see, for example, this cstross essay posted in the last thread). but mostly I think we're trying to figure out concrete things we can do.

It doesn't matter what we talk about so long as what we talk about can be hooked up to action in some way or another. See this thread on metatalk, which I'm currently thinking of as the real metafilter political thread — I'm trying to get myself to focus on that one instead of this one, but as you can tell, I haven't quite broken myself of this thread yet.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

From Glenn Beck's The Blaze: Trump is giving you the chance to vote in your picks for his cabinet positions

President Trump Administration Survey can be found here.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

anyway are there any betting pools open yet on which collaborating shitstain is gonna perform at the inauguration

Jimmy Fallon as MC. Playing the national anthem on toy instruments.
posted by Recliner of Rage at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

But it seems worth considering the possibility that this isn't just a big setback, but that we are gradually losing, on a large scale, over the last 50 or so years.

So you're saying maybe the arc of the moral universe doesn't bend towards justice? It's a plausible and scary thought and I hope you're wrong but maybe you aren't. That said, I also think that even if we are losing 1) we will definitely lose if we just give up 2) if we don't keep working for what's right, even if evil winning seems inevitable, what good are we?
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

In the US, we've always outsourced that kind of state violence

Except I am totally wrong - we have outsourced that violence since the mid-20th century, but we have practiced it during slavery and Jim Crow, and during the seizure of land from indigenous people. It's living memory that's the issue, but the US was founded on this type of violence.
posted by Frowner at 12:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [18 favorites]

President Trump Administration Survey can be found here.

Well, this is insane.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [28 favorites]

basically it's a long long thread, we've got a lot to talk about, and you can't say "why aren't you guys talking about x," because

1. we probably have and
2. there's so many fires being lit that we've got to discuss all of them, and find whatever small ways we have to intervene in all of them, and
3. we can't talk about all things at once, so we've sort of been focusing on one fire at a time (even though, yes, all the fires are interconnected).

If we're not talking about the x you consider most important right now, search through the previous threads and find where we've (almost certainly) already discussed that x in detail.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

I cannot overemphasize how much more violent and dangerous to civiliains US client regimes in Mexico and South and Central America have been than the US government

since, for example, the US co-sponsored a program to sterilize 300k women of my age cohort and ethnicity i assure you i am indeed aware of how indigenous people are treated in south and central america, thank you.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

I filled it out.
posted by prefpara at 12:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

From Glenn Beck's The Blaze: Trump is giving you the chance to vote in your picks for his cabinet positions

well here I go taking marching orders from Glenn Beck, fucking 2016

President Trump Administration Survey can be found here.

any suggestions for names we can put here that wouldn't come off as obvious liberal crankery? like, Mitt Romney for SoS, sure whatever, but how about the rest?
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'd like to complete the Trump survey, but I'm not informed enough about potential candidates who would provide more liberal, inclusive leadership perspectives. Is there a good guide available?
posted by samthemander at 12:39 PM on November 18, 2016

Maybe we just list the current staff?
posted by samthemander at 12:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

That said, having submitted my troll/heartrending sincere plea, I have to say that this stupid "survey" exists only so someone can someday try to use it to make the inevitably awful picks seem legitimate. It is pure advertising BS meant to resonate with the "man of the people" contingent. If I could, I'd spit in it.
posted by prefpara at 12:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

what if we travel back in time to tell 2012 pbo that in the future we're all kind of relieved to hear mitt romney's name floated for a cabinet position
posted by poffin boffin at 12:40 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

I'm entirely pro-understanding, empathizing, and being less mob mentality. I'll admit I increasingly have my doubts that the sort of shout-and-shame social justice I've engaged in has been productive.

The instant I admit this, though, there's always some commentator who's like "Yes, exactly! And that's why you need to stop with all these demands that you're a human worthy of basic respect and rights!" and I'm back to wondering what the hell is wrong with everyone.
posted by naju at 12:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [22 favorites]

Well, heck, let's come up with a slate of ten metafilter choices and all vote for them.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

> The thing about our grandchildren is that they'll all carry the shame of this election

With luck.

In a less optimistic scenario, there are no grandchildren, because we have killed the oceans.

I've been unsuccessfully trying to figure out a non-depressing way to say this, but even besides climate change, the only reason Nazi Germany isn't still around right now is that they almost immediately started a two-front war and lost it. So, a Fascist America that successfully takes root now might well cast a shadow long enough to cover anyone's grandchildren.
posted by XMLicious at 12:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

since, for example, the US co-sponsored a program to sterilize 300k women of my age cohort and ethnicity i assure you i am indeed aware of how indigenous people are treated in south and central, thank you.

I apologize, poffin boffin.

I think I misread your first comment. It seemed to chime with a really frustrating real life conversation I had earlier ( basically "everything is always terrible, complaining about Trump is stupid because he is no worse than any other president") and I thought you were saying something similar and got irrationally upset.
posted by Frowner at 12:42 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

That said, I also think that even if we are losing 1) we will definitely lose if we just give up 2) if we don't keep working for what's right, even if evil winning seems inevitable, what good are we?

A friend and I were talking about this very thing a couple nights ago (in a conversation that spanned politics, the Matrix and Muad'dib, among many other things), and we decided that sometimes winning wasn't something that happened in the lifetimes of the ones who first take up the fight.

Still have to start the fight, though, so somebody can win it.
posted by Mooski at 12:42 PM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

What if we use the survey to push blue-state GOP senators for cabinet posts? Pat Toomey would be a horrendous secretary of anything, but if you accept that any Trump cabinet would be awful, maybe they'd at least be dumb enough to sabotage their legislative majority.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:44 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

How is it none of you are talking about Russia? Email hacks, social media propaganda, a Russian sympathizer for presdient, Russian sympathizers given cabinet positions, and the corruption of the FBI. Seriously, what the shit?

That makes no sense to worry about. What do you think America and Russia are going to do? Just divide up the globe 50/50 along some imaginary lines through Europe?
posted by woof at 12:30 PM on November 18 [+] [!]

It makes plenty of sense to worry about. Personally I am plenty worried about this aspect. I feel like the 50/50 example you give is willfully absurd and dismissive. Crony capitalism in Russia didn't happen by accident and we likely have a crony-in-chief elected to president now.

If you genuinely think it's nothing to worry about then I suppose I should just envy you in some sense.
posted by Golem XIV at 12:44 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

and we decided that sometimes winning wasn't something that happened in the lifetimes of the ones who first take up the fight. Still have to start the fight, though, so somebody can win it.


Assuming there's anybody left in a few more lifetimes. Because they weren't killed (or never born) because of the decisions (or lack of) made in this lifetime.
posted by signal at 12:46 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Jesus Christ, the position of POTUS is not now a "fake it til you make it" job.

FTFY
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:46 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

TFW Sessions is too fucking racist for a Tea Party Republican and chairman of the Liberty Caucus.

@justinamash
Unlike the CIA director, the AG has a lot of independent policy authority and prosecutorial discretion. I'm deeply concerned about Sessions.
posted by chris24 at 12:47 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

what if we travel back in time to tell 2012 pbo that in the future we're all kind of relieved to hear mitt romney's name floated for a cabinet position

it's been awhile since I've had any time travelers but all the last one could do was apologize and ugly-cry
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:47 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

John McCain for something. Tim Pawlenty? Carly Fiorina? I never thought I'd be recommending these people for anything but when the alternatives are Sarah Palin and literal white supremacists, then fuck yeah, Tim Pawlenty.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:47 PM on November 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

Mike Kasich? he's not optimum, but he's no insane.
posted by suelac at 12:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Such a pleasant, uplifting thread, this...
posted by tgrundke at 12:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't think they'll actually be able to tinker with the Constitution

Not yet, no. However, we may be reaching the logical limits of it to govern the country. While the constitution held as the population rose from 2.5M people (in 1776) to 320M people (today), this is a warning shot on how the United States executes governance – namely the representative systems like the Electoral College.

While the Senate (n of states) and House (n of population) balance remains intact, the ability of state governments to effect constitutional change will only increase as division increases. I doubt the framers of the constitution could foresee a time when the most populace state had 65 times the number of people as the least populous state, hundreds of thousands measured to tens of millions.

If we are getting close to an (n state) based problem – like ratifying an amendment to the constitution, we have a very real threat ahead. Logically, given what's going on, it is unlikely that we'll see massive shifts in population between the Red States and the Blue States, rather we'll see each continue on existing growth trajectories.

With one exception, which is anti-immigrant crackdowns, which may well serve to depopulate Red States slightly. People will either be deported, or move to Blue States where they're safe(r). If that happens, you may well see a shrinking of the democratic electorate in Red States. You don't even need an increase in the Republican electorate (which is unlikely to happen regardless).

The fact that the constitution lacks a density argument for Amendments may well be its undoing in a situation where Democrats cluster in a decreasing number of states. While the House arrangement maintains some degree of legislative balance, anything that is not the House becomes at risk of being forced by a large swath of low-density states. In fact, the more hostile states become to Democratic voters, the more those voters will concentrate in Blue states.

If I were a fiction author, that sounds like a nearly-plausible conspiracy theory plot. Although I'd like to think it's not been planned like that. Rather, it's the result of self-reinforcing network effects. The network brings prosperity to a fewer number of states with increasing density, at the expense of a larger number of states.

That allows a microcosm of the population to choose the President (apparently less than 17% of the voting electorate mattered in this election). Further, it opens the door for any area governed by (n states) rather than (n population) to be abused. The constitution was designed to become obstructionistic if the electorate grew too alien and far apart. That we're already seeing.

The deeper concern is that America is effectively splitting into two countries – two nations, two ideologies, two world views, etc – that are dividing time in a common capital. While Washington presumes itself to be the all-powerful entity in the country, two states (New York and California) make up 25% of the country's GDP.

If Trump attempts to truly lay down facist policies, he's going to trigger a state's right rebellion. The states would logically look to enforce the de facto permissions granted in the constitution, while Washington would look to claim rights over greater permissions.

If we get to that point, we will see the same single market fractures already exposed in Europe. We will also see an acceleration of people moving to Blue States or Red States. Given that the immigrant populations have the largest birthrates and growth, we end up with the density problem that could allow for an amendment of the constitution by Red States alone.

We appear to have reached the limit of the (n states) and (n population) balance, which means logically we may already have reached the end of the constitution.

One could also presume that by the fact the world sees that the United States has elected a facist president with a history of lying, sexual assault, and intimidation who is stocking his pantry with racist men, and being celebrated by the dictators of failed states and white supremacists.

In my mind's eye, I foresee an event – I don't know whether it will be a police shooting, or a campus protest, or what – something that catalyses riots and civil dissent. To which the reaction is martial law. Looking at the pantry DT is putting together, that looks like a horrific oppression of dissenters at the hands of militarised white police. From there, we quickly get to the plots of Rome, Star Wars, and any of the other fictional and non-fictional warning signs when it comes to "charismatic" dictators. If you can call DT charismatic. (You're charismatic... for a sexual predator? Does that work?)

The way that the Right is using this win to justify violence and bigotry is atrocious. Police attacking women. Fistfights in Starbucks. Hate crimes against both adults and children.

The left is split, between "reorganise" and "cry", because good Americans accept the outcomes of their competitions. I don't know how many times we can say that this was not a fair competition. One of the candidates was hacked by an unknown foreign entity, attacked by the FBI during the election, and still won the popular vote.

What the left should bedoing is mobilising for a real fight. Not a fight on Twitter, or Facebook timeline trades, or safe spaces to cry, but to act like the fundamental structure of American democracy is at risk. If one believes that this election does not represent either the will or the people or the best interests of the country, then one must have a call to action, which is not to accept its outcome.

The Republicans seemed to own the position of "refusing to accept a Hillary Clinton win". Similarly, there's absolutely no reason for the Democrats to simply accept a Donald Trump win. It does not make one unpatriotic to protest what has just happened, in fact, it would be unpatriotic to simply accept it.

If DT is unable to heal the country – which I doubt he will be able to do – at some point, Americans will have to start saying aloud their truths.

A man who would deport 11 million people is not my countrymen.
A man who would reverse abortion rights is not my countrymen.
A man who would intern people based on their race and creed is not my countrymen.
A man who would support leaders of failed states is not my countrymen.

Hence, what you're really saying about the amendment (and I'm not putting words in your mouth here, rather this is my interpretation), is that we are quickly getting to the point where we say that the man leading the country is not my countrymen.

That the pantry of bigots that man has installed are not my countrymen. That this election was not conducted in propriety, and the will of the people was not elected.

If you truly believe that there will soon come a day where Republicans could unilaterally amend the constitution, then the validity of the constitution has already expired, and we are already being led by people who are not our countrymen.

If that is the case, then we do not have to respect this presidency. In fact, it would be unpatriotic to support this presidency, if all it serves to illustrate is that the constitution of the United States can no longer maintain the best interests of the union.

That doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater, but it does mean that we can call a spade a spade, and recognise that potentially we have just elected a facist leader capable only of destroying the fortunes of the nation, killing both American and foreign citizens, and accelerating climate devastation by an unknowable multiple.

That doesn't mean we tear up the constitution at all. Rather, it needs to be patched because it may well now have a zero day vulnerability. If that's the case, then Trump is at best a kernel panic, and at worst, ransomware.

But it does not mean we have to accept this result.
He does not have a mandate.
If there are any mechanisations to change the constitution, that will effectively be the end of the Republic.

So maybe we are on Governance Defcon 4 now.

That doesn't mean sit and cry about it and accept it. The first step is to never mentally accept it. Twice in 20 years have the elections not reflected the will of the people. The first time, we started unending wars in the Middle East that still rage today in Syria. And that was someone we recognised as a Republican.

No, no. If there is even a chance that the constitution is reaching its limits, our goal must be to update it. Else, we're going to end up with an American version of ISIS coming out of the Red States – a constitutional caliphate that could truly bring about end-times.

We can never accept what has happened. Even if it endures, we cannot and must not accept it. That man is not fit to serve. He is an accident of history – and all that stands between him and death is allegiance masquerading as patriotism.
posted by nickrussell at 12:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [122 favorites]

John McCain for something. Tim Pawlenty? Carly Fiorina? I never thought I'd be recommending these people for anything but when the alternatives are Sarah Palin and literal white supremacists, then fuck yeah, Tim Pawlenty.

I mean, Tim Pawlenty got smacked around by the rather progressive Minnesota Supreme Court for confusing the state with his personal fiefdom, so he'd fit right in. And still be an improvement.
posted by hoyland at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2016

I mean the whole Mark Lilla thesis and all the "forgotten white voter" stuff boils down to "white people are so offended that you're offended that they're going to vote for a supremacist."
posted by zutalors! at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2016 [30 favorites]

I'm calling my blue state Dem. rep on Monday to voice concern about these appointments. I don't know that it will do much, but it would be hard for trump to have picked three worse people for these roles.
posted by codacorolla at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2016

what if we travel back in time to tell 2012 pbo that in the future we're all kind of relieved to hear mitt romney's name floated for a cabinet position

it's been awhile since I've had any time travelers but all the last one could do was apologize and ugly-cry

The rise of Donald Trump may disprove the possibility of time travel
posted by Etrigan at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Err... I just called the MN Supreme Court progressive. It's not. At all. But fixing that would certainly be an abuse of the edit window.
posted by hoyland at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2016

i know a catchy tune about marco rubio that might help
posted by poffin boffin at 12:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

> I'm calling my blue state Dem. rep on Monday to voice concern about these appointments

Can you call them now? Next week is Thanksgiving; they might take the whole week off.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:53 PM on November 18, 2016

Here's Obama's current Cabinet.
posted by samthemander at 12:53 PM on November 18, 2016

Such a pleasant, uplifting thread, this...

Imagine for a moment that the legislative branch of your government was fully in the control of a group of people who seemed determined to roll back decades of progress and leave the poorest third of the population to die.

Then imagine that the only thing holding the legislative branch in check were the Executive and Judicial branch, but that in the space of twelve months, we went from having some hope of progress to finding that our first best hope to block complete insanity in the Executive and Judicial branches was the aforementioned assholes in the legislative branch.

Yeah, not feeling very uplifted about that.
posted by Mooski at 12:54 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

The Rude Pundit (who is taking a leave of absence): Like America, I'm Feeling Broken
posted by homunculus at 12:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

The (Electoral College) petition effort is dumb, as well as offensive, in going against democratic values.

I'd love to hear the twisted logic in which honoring the popular vote is un-democratic. Seriously, try it.

If Donald Trump were in Hillary Clinton's position right now, there would signs all over WI, PA, FL, and MI (and elsewhere), urging:

"ELECTORAL COLLEGE: DO YOUR JOB AND HONOR THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE OF AMERICANS"

1. Clinton appears to have won the popular vote by 1.5-2 million votes. Not insignificant. The vote was not a 50-50 split.
2. By many objective standards, Donald Trump appears unqualified to be president of the US. Lack of government experience is only one concern.
3. Many allegations of sexual assault
4. Many questions about his connections with a powerful foreign government
5. Many, many, many questions about GOP efforts in key states to suppress votes from citizens of color (see Crosscheck)

Any one of those reasons should be enough for electors to refuse to vote for Donald Trump.

We have 31 days. Call your reps every day.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [27 favorites]

From today's Hollywood Reporter interview with Trump's new chief strategist Steve Bannon:

“Darkness is good,” says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they—“ I believe by “they” he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster “—get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

This is fine.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:56 PM on November 18, 2016 [30 favorites]

The Rude Pundit (who is taking a leave of absence): Like America, I'm Feeling Broken

2. The members of the Electoral College have a constitutional duty to save us from someone like Trump. They would be derelict in that duty if they let him take office.

Hear hear. I think like, millions of people agree here. Maybe one of the Democrats in office would help a little ...
posted by mrgrimm at 12:58 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

The rise of Donald Trump may disprove the possibility of time travel

Nah, everybody kills Trump on their first trip.
posted by Pink Frost at 12:59 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer

He looks like Ron Swanson's evil alcoholic brother.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:00 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm not caught up, but I just did have an interesting lunch date I wanted to share.

I have a high school friend who works at the same institution I do and last year we reconnected and started having lunch together regularly. Aside from working her full time job here, she's also the mayor of a small town outside our city (one of those small rust belt mill towns you probably heard so much about during the election, pop. ~5000). She's lived in that town her whole life and her family has always been very involved in the community so she got elected despite the fact that she's extremely progressive.

Anyway, her message about what to do in the wake of the election was this: Get involved in local politics. Also: local politics sucks. But: the reason local politics sucks so bad is that no one wants to get involved. So often local politics is just ceded to the old cranks because they're the only people with the time and the desire to get involved. And it just gets to be old cranks all the way down as they're the only people who ever get political experience and then they just camp out and block any and all progress from happening. (I was talking to a colleague who lives in another one of these small mill towns and he rattled off the mayors of all the towns up the river and they're all over 80 years old and have been in office for decades.)

And get involved in your local Democratic Committee. Again, her experience as a Democratic elected official is that so many local committees are just a bunch of old dudes going through the motions, holding that once-a-year spaghetti dinner and going home. If we want a Democratic Party that is dynamic and activist and progressive, we're going to have to be the change we wish to see.

I live in the city so local politics for me looks a bit different and harder to break into, but there's still the local Democratic Committee, and my neighborhood has a community association which is at least a start. I'm ready to rumble.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:02 PM on November 18, 2016 [61 favorites]

Al Jazeera had a damn good expose on Crosscheck ... in 2014. Not many U.S. outlets covered it.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

The rise of Donald Trump may disprove the possibility of time travel

Alternately:

Time travel is possible, but we're going to kill ourselves before we develop the necessary technology so it's a moot point.
Time travel is possible, and the increasing ridiculousness of the election was actually dueling factions of time travelers trying to correct and un-correct history by turns.
Time travel is possible, but will be discovered and used exclusively by future Nazis to remake the world in their image. (c.f. The Guns of the South)
Time travel is possible, and what's happening now is somehow better than other possible futures, at least from the time travelers' perspective. (c.f. Pastwatch)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:04 PM on November 18, 2016 [22 favorites]

i mean i can't believe that right now today i am alive in a world where i'm legitimately struggling to decide who would be less horrifying as attorney general, jeff sessions or rudy guiliani

like someone is saying to me "of course you have a choice, this is america! you can choose between colon cancer or esophageal cancer"

could i just have herpes please, i can live with herpes, give me the herpes
posted by poffin boffin at 1:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [22 favorites]

TRUMP ADMIN:
Mike Pence
Steve Bannon
Reince Priebus
Jeff Sessions
Mike Flynn
Mike Pompeo
Mike Huckabee

➞ Mikes: 4
➞ Women/Minorities: 0
(twitter)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [33 favorites]

could i just have herpes please, i can live with herpes, give me the herpes

Ted Cruz it is then
posted by XMLicious at 1:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

Ringside With Steve Bannon at Trump Tower as the President-Elect's Strategist Plots "An Entirely New Political Movement" (Exclusive)

“I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”
...
“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
...
“The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” he continues. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what’s going on. If The New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening.”
...
It is clear when we return to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed over, but the conservative one too — not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. “They got it more wrong than anybody,” he says. “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they’ll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.” Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes — whom Bannon describes as an important mentor, and who Kelly’s accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in July — called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too.
...
When the campaign seemed most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump — even after the leak of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio — was speaking to ever-growing crowds of thirty-five or forty thousand. “He gets it, he gets it intuitively,” says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found such an ideal vessel. “You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don’t speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids.”
...
“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

Odd that he admires Andrew Jackson so much. According to Fukuyama, Jackson put patronage networks in place that took decades to recover from.

My guess is they will undo our progress in civil rights and try to make up for it with some sort of economic hand outs - the best ones going to their friends of course. This is not America. I'm wondering if part of Bannon's psyche is sort of a Catholic revenge on Protestantism. Is he going back to war against the civil rights movement, the French revolution, the American revolution, and the Thirty Years war?
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [18 favorites]

Apropos nothing much at all, I'm spending my afternoon submitting my resume for jobs in the Trump transition team.

Because every minute they spend talking to me is a minute they've wasted. And I looooove killing time.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 1:13 PM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

That Hollywood Reporter essay - it....actually refers to how Bannon is in charge of "making the trains run on time". Is this the reporter's desperate cry for help, or is it that people have completely lost the understanding that fascism is, historically speaking, bad?

Probably the latter - the article refers to "making Trumpism mean something".

God, I hope we're just in for Peron and not Franco.
posted by Frowner at 1:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

The Electoral College is what the U.S. uses to select presidents, and most campaigning is done in swing states as a result. Them's the rules. That Trump disagreed with this before he changed his mind and was OK with it matters little to me. What else is new with him?

I'm not happy with the Electoral College, have long thought it crazy. But I'd be less happy with non-elected people choosing a president who went against the will of their people in their states. A switch is a next-to-impossible thing anyway, due to the partisan slates-of-electors bit. I understand that people were just lashing out with this in days after the election, but it really is a waste of time and a bad idea on a number of levels. Google is not wrong to shut that down, if it has.

I'm also thinking, however, that 2016 has been such a weird year that Trump could do something so bad that even pledged slates of electors might freak out. Not hopeful about this, but who the hell knows this year? Otherwise, it's better to concentrate on 2018 and 2020, state and local organizing, and the like.
posted by raysmj at 1:16 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Mooski: I don't know if it's been discussed already, but what is it that would legally bar President Obama from basically saying "This man's a piece of shit from the word 'go,' fight him for all your worth." I mean, I get the whole peaceful transfer of power thing, but is that what's holding him back?

Obama's kind of a hostage negotiator at this point: As long as he's nice to and supportive of DJT, Obama has a chance to talk him into honoring the basic principles of our government. He has leverage as An Important Person Who Has Also Received Public Acclaim. I think Obama's conduct so far illustrates that understanding, and that he'll swallow a lot of tedium and disgust if he thinks he can exert some positive influence on this fustercluck.
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 1:17 PM on November 18, 2016 [37 favorites]

My guess is they will undo our progress in civil rights and try to make up for it with some sort of economic hand outs - the best ones going to their friends of course.

That appears to be the plan, yes. Rallies to punish recalcitrant pols and to reward loyalists, government largesse used the same way, government regulators, too. It's an entirely new way of governing, "as exciting as the 1930s" (in Italy and Germany).

Feh.
posted by notyou at 1:20 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mikes: 4
Steves: 0

This is not America!
posted by kirkaracha at 1:22 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

President-elect Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle civil fraud suits against Trump University
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

The "making trains work on time" bothers me a bit; they didn't, those in power just said they did.

But drained swamps ==> less mosquitos ==> less malaria.
posted by porpoise at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mikes: 4
Steves: 0

They'll need at least one Meredith. Gotta have a scapegoat.

Though maybe we're all Meredith now.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:25 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Ughhh. Why why why did they settle ughh
posted by samthemander at 1:26 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I've been calling my Senators at their various offices, and today have been calling the members of the Oversight Committee about Trump's conflicts of interest. According to people who have been staffers for our elected representatives, emails get form responses, letters don't necessarily get read, but phone calls get tallied. And talking to actual people who work with the representatives does have an effect.

I took a lot of action before the election, and donated more money than I could afford to Clinton's campaign, but it looks as if I have to take even more action. I hope others do the same.

If the idea of calling a stranger to complain makes you sick to your stomach, just do what I do, pretend to be a nice respectable voter who is very disturbed by how this is messing with our nice government.

(Oh, and remember that staffers aren't the offenders. Try not to shout at them.)
posted by Peach at 1:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

Y'know, a little bit bigger gap in the popular vote and Trump would have lost it by a number of votes equal to the entire population of the country in 1776.
posted by XMLicious at 1:29 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'd mentioned this in the thread on the gray, but Jason Chaffetz's aide was a full-on dick to me. FYI.
posted by pxe2000 at 1:30 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

$25 million? That's fucking it?
posted by zachlipton at 1:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

Hey folks! Please add this multi-sheet Google Sheet to your Drive or keep the link bookmarked because it's amazing and has CALLING SCRIPTS for a number of issues, a weekly CALL TO ACTION targeted on a particular issue, and the phone numbers for literally everyone. Keep it handy, call every day.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [55 favorites]

The "making trains work on time" bothers me a bit; they didn't, those in power just said they did.

For whatever reason I think about this idea a lot and I think there are two ways to understand it:

1) The strict rule of fascism meant that, while rights were curtailed, basic services happened in an orderly and punctual way.

2) When a government has absolute power, they are able to define reality such that they can say "Oh, the train arrived at 10:03? Well, that was the 10:03 train so it was on time. Stay tuned to see what time the train was always scheduled for tomorrow when it arrives!".

One doesn't work, but two does. Donald Trump and the people associated with him have already demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to attempt to redefine reality and tell people that the trains are on time because they always meant to do that. The people in power in this kind of system can make the trains run on time JUST BY SAYING THE TRAINS ARE RUNNING ON TIME! This is exactly what's happening now and we all have to work really hard to say "just because you are saying things doesn't actually change how reality works". It's gaslighting on a national scale and we have to watch out for each other and make sure we're staying sane by calling out the crazy things we're being told to believe.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [51 favorites]

$25 million? That's fucking it?

The news article I read said there were over 5000 people involved in this lawsuit, which works out to $5000 each, minus legal fees. And that some had paid $35K for tuition. Under the circumstances, $25M is peanuts.
posted by orange swan at 1:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [27 favorites]

Parental report:

My mother (70-ish) is a True Believer. She still thinks that Sarah Palin would be the ideal President but she is happier than a pig in shit that The Donald has won. She is looking forward to Trump implementing his agenda in full and driving all the unbelievers into the sea. Christmas is gonna suck.

My father (70-ish) is not a True Believer. I have reason to believe that he voted for Hillary with extreme reluctance, but he has spent the last four years bitching loudly about Obama and everything Facebook's told him that Obama's done, spent the lead-up to this election telling me about every Horrible Scandal Hillary has (the EMAILS, the FOUNDATION, the MONEY, the PAID PROTESTERS, the PALLING AROUND WITH AL SHARPTON, the USING THE N WORD CONSTANTLY, I could go on). His current gripe is how horrible it is that these protesters keep doing stupid stuff (did you hear that black protesters BLOCKED A STREET and KEPT AN AMBULANCE FROM GOING THROUGH and CAUSED THE DEATH OF AN ELDERLY MAN INSIDE? Snopes: NOPE), because people just don't understand that THERE'S NO REASON AT ALL TO PROTEST because TRUMP HASN'T EVEN DONE ANYTHING YET and YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HE'S GOING TO DO ONCE HE'S IN THERE and MOST OF THE PEOPLE who voted for Trump didn't vote FOR TRUMP or FOR WHAT TRUMP WANTS but just voted AGAINST THAT WOMAN and they know that so they're not going to do anything crazy.

Sometimes I wonder if our mailman or our milkman was a liberal, 'cause otherwise I'm not sure where I get it from.
posted by delfin at 1:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

I know "Wolf Hall" is the shit and all, but unironically likening oneself to Thomas fucking Cromwell is maybe not something that you want to be saying "with relish" on the record...
posted by Dorinda at 1:38 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

Might want to read up on the end of that story before you join it, buddy.
posted by praemunire at 1:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [65 favorites]

“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

He... uh... he has some idea what happened to Thomas Cromwell, right?
posted by Sequence at 1:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

I take that repetition to signify just how BLINDINGLY OBVIOUSLY BAD that is.
posted by Sequence at 1:40 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

He... uh... he has some idea what happened to Thomas Cromwell, right?

To be fair, The Mirror and the Light still hasn't come out. Until someone writes a review of it, how is he to know?
posted by praemunire at 1:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

I've been reading stories on Pantsuit Nation about people losing friends and family and even spouses over the election results. Couples separating, people getting disowned by parents, friends deleting them off their Facebook lists.

I am so, so grateful for my mother, whose seething contempt for Trump is both a joy and a comfort to me. (Favourite quote: "He has that little pink mouth. I just want to punch it!")
posted by orange swan at 1:42 PM on November 18, 2016 [13 favorites]

I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

Well, court of the Tudors is right, anyhow.
posted by corb at 1:45 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.
It should be noted that Thomas Cromwell was executed as a convicted traitor.
posted by adamvasco at 1:45 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

bodywithoutorgans: President-elect Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle civil fraud suits against Trump University (Washington Post, November 18, 2016)

President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly bragged he never settles lawsuits despite a long history of doing so, has agreed to a $25 million settlement to end the fraud cases pending against his defunct real estate seminar program, Trump University, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Schneiderman said in a Friday statement that the settlement includes a $1 million penalty paid to New York state for violating the state’s education laws by calling the program a “university” despite offering no degrees or traditional education.

Schneiderman said his office had sued Trump for “swindling thousands of innocent Americans out of millions of dollars” and that the settlement had come despite resistance from Trump. “Today, that all changes. Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university,” he said.

"Trump's attorney did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Trump will not admit to any wrongdoing in the final agreement." (CNBC, November 18, 2016)
posted by filthy light thief at 1:47 PM on November 18, 2016

Dear Trump,

Take our governor - please!

Sincerely, Illinois
posted by SisterHavana at 1:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

There is a new MetaTalk by Devonian entitled MeFi in the time of Trump - managing news.
posted by Wordshore at 1:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wonder where Trump will get the $25 million from, or if the hush money will even amount to that.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:50 PM on November 18, 2016

I've been thinking, how much worse is this than George W., to whom I was one who proudly shouted "NOT MY PRESIDENT."

orange swan: I've been reading stories on Pantsuit Nation about people losing friends and family and even spouses over the election results. Couples separating, people getting disowned by parents, friends deleting them off their Facebook lists.

Yup, between this and the spike in hate crimes, it's a lot worse. And he still has two months before he's actually president.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:51 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

My new favorite: white people complaining about kanye... while not boycotting their dad or mom who voted for Trump!
posted by yonation at 1:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have really only one thing to say about the possibility of Muslim registry:

لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

"I feel like I'm gonna die, Bart."
"We're all gonna die, Lis."
"I meant soon!"
"So did I."
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

It should be noted that Thomas Cromwell was executed as a convicted traitor.

And better than that: It was because one of the things he tried to orchestrate went badly, and the span of time between Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves and Thomas Cromwell's execution was less than eight months. It's about the worst possible story to be going to for this. If I actually thought he'd even gone as far as reading the Wikipedia page for Cromwell, I'd think this was some kind of signal that he's got terminal cancer or something that lets him do this without worrying about the consequences.
posted by Sequence at 1:57 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

There's a good comparison between Trump and Duterte's style of communication (Duerte, populist demagogue from the Philippines) by Adrian Chen:
Twitter link

Excerpt:
The "unhinged populist" style is perfectly suited for today's media ecosystem; it plays traditional + social media against each other.
While journalists pick out the most outrageous (i.e. newsworthy) bits, anyone can see the source material.
So social media diehards--crucial to both Duterte Trump--are mobilized by a constant freaking out about "dishonest media."
It fits perfectly into the anti-elitist message of the unhinged populist, while generating tons of free attention.
And because it's never clear what they mean, exactly, the unhinged populist can "test out" extreme positions in real time.
Based on the Duterte experience, I think it is important not to let Trump shrug off extreme statements as jokes or "campaign talk".
But I don't think it's helpful to get so hung up on the literal meaning of his words that you lose sight of the game he is playing.
Which is speaking in a way that maximizes the size of the gap between how his supporters and opponents understand his words.
He gets power from that misunderstanding--the more people fight over what he says, the less people fight about what he does.
The challenge for journalists will be to seriously explore the gap between how Trump's supporters and opponents understand him.
In a way that doesn't excuse or rationalize it, but totally destroys its bullshit power.
posted by typecloud at 2:02 PM on November 18, 2016 [29 favorites]

I'll just leave this here because I can't deal any more today: Canada has quietly made some adjustments to Immigration policy. From the Walrus, A Door Opens to Canada.
posted by jokeefe at 2:11 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Bannon 2016: "With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks."

GOP 2011: Investigate and maybe impeach President Obama because of Solyndra.
posted by zachlipton at 2:16 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

I received my personal response from Sen. Brian Schatz re Bannon today:

Thank you for contacting me. I condemn President-Elect Donald Trump's appointment of Stephen Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior counselor. His association with white supremacists and white nationalists is disturbing and should disqualify him from serving in such an important position in the White House.

While the position to which Mr. Bannon has been appointed does not require Senate confirmation, I will fight against the confirmation of any other appointees who do not demonstrate a deep commitment to upholding equal rights for all Americans, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, color, national origin, disability, age, religion, or sexual orientation.

Please know that I will remain vigilant and will fight against efforts to undermine the founding principles of our government or diminish the fundamental rights that define who we are as a nation. We must all work together to protect the hard won progress we have made as a nation and remain faithful to the promise of "a more perfect union."

Thank you for your efforts as an engaged citizen to share your views and fight for your beliefs. Please continue to remain engaged, as your civic participation is essential to the health of our democracy.

posted by melissasaurus at 2:16 PM on November 18, 2016 [59 favorites]

Watching the plans for the Trump administration is anyone else wondering if you should start working out to prepare for the resistance or just enjoy yourself while you can because we're all clearly going to die soon?
posted by asteria at 2:19 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

I called Tillis' office today and after I delivered my little spiel the staffer told me 'Sen. Tillis has already posted a message on his site explaining his position on Jeff Sessions' which is, of course, totally positive.

Getting positive responses from Democratic Senators doesn't matter if not a single Republican Senator will budge. Is there any notion of which Republicans might actually be receptive to this stuff?
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:23 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

God, I hope we're just in for Peron and not Franco.
posted by Frowner

So, I live in Spain, which seems like is one of the only countries in western europe without an ascendent far-right political movement*, and I think it's because we lived under fascism until 1975, and everyone still remembers, and no one wants to go back. Not enough time has passed for fascism to look good again.

*knock on wood, throw salt over shoulder, pray to everyone in the Wikipedia article "list of gods and goddesses"
posted by lollymccatburglar at 2:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [36 favorites]

Sessions is gonna be confirmed. I suspect he'll even get a couple Democratic votes. Senators are super buddy-buddy.
posted by Justinian at 2:25 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Except for Ted Cruz who everyone hates because he is a giant sniveling baby and an asshole.
posted by Justinian at 2:26 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

They are okay with the klan just not sniveling babies?
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I really think Dems should rally around Medicare.

My reasons: 1) There are 50 million people on medicare
2)Most of the working population is paying into medicare
3)Private Insurance wise they don't want medicare members because it is 1)the elderly and 2)the disabled. Essentially it is one big high risk pool which cuts into profits.
4) Members of medicare and current payment into medicare is by people able/were able to hold jobs, which means it is a group of people able and willing to organize and can commit to a cause long term (here, I'm trying to refer to the subset of medicaid that for whatever reason has no job history, the developmentally disabled , persons with severe disabilities and those who are severely mentally ill - groups that have lost lots of services without much successful pushback because the actual people affected cannot advocate for themselves).
5)Its a talking point that people are familiar with.
posted by AlexiaSky at 2:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [34 favorites]

Bannon probably thinks he's smart enough to avoid Cromwell's fate.
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 2:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Watching the plans for the Trump administration is anyone else wondering if you should start working out to prepare for the resistance or just enjoy yourself while you can because we're all clearly going to die soon?

Yes! I am doing both, because we really do not know what will happen. It could be 4 years of incompetence accomplishing nothing; it could be a fascist nightmare. If just incompetence, there will probably still be fun things to do in between resisting. If fascist nightmare, all the fun in the world will be unavailable for the duration of dystopia.

So I guess what I'm saying is smoke 'em if you got 'em, see the coral reefs now, visit the national parks while they're still around, see a panda if you have an interest in seeing a panda, eat well while there's relative food security, and generally give yourself the motivation to continue resisting later in life.
posted by blnkfrnk at 2:48 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

the Nazis were able to frame it as "those degenerates" versus "loyal Germans" and in uncertain times, "law and order" always wins

The entire country had just gone through a war and a revolution. The left-wing militias had attempted to make that a half-million-man communist revolution, whose descriptions make it sound like "Occupy Wallstreet but with slightly more organization and many more guns", which turned out about as poorly as you'd expect. Putting down that as well as a few smaller short-lived communist takeovers was the Freikorps excuse to continue existing. They refused to be disbanded and tried their own coup, and the general strike protesting that fell into the control of a small communist army. During the next decade even the "moderates" created their own paramilitary groups, either in response to more little coup attempts or just because it was the popular thing to do.

I'm honestly not sure what lesson to draw from this, even in the unlikely case that the above paragraph is not seriously misreading or oversimplifying the facts.

Responding to violence with violence obviously didn't help in the end, at least not when done internally to Germany.

Try to use non-violent tactics instead? The Freikorps were hired partly in response to non-violent tactics, under the theory that the regular Army was too ineffectual.

Violence limited by some set of moral principles? Similar problem: apparently groups whose principles made them "ineffectual" got replaced by groups who weren't, and it doesn't take much of that sort of artificial selection before you're literally left with fascist stormtroopers.

Violence limited by locality? "Don't be the one who has to travel farther to a fight" seems like a vaguely moral principle, and "keep your supply lines short" doesn't sound ineffectual. But obviously that doesn't work unless your opponents feel the same way. You can't afford to try out communism in the Ruhr alone if there's a much larger country outside who won't tolerate that.

How about violence limited by realistic goals and compromises? If the fascists had been satisfied to stop the communists' crazy ideas without trying to enforce all their own, or vice versa, they could have had a coalition with the moderates, and the result might not have been such an atrocity. And that's a limitation which seems more tractable in modern times, with overwhelming examples of totalitarian state disasters to look back on as cautionary tales.

But I can't help but be reminded of a hypothesis I read once, that it might not be a coincidence that the 1990s stock bubble happened shortly after everyone who remembered the 1920s stock bubble died off. You can try to piece this stuff together from history classes and books and summaries, and maybe you don't get the facts too far wrong, but you don't get the emotional resonance, and logic enough isn't enough to stop people from making emotionally appealing mistakes. If that's the case, then, well, it's now been about 70 years since fascism had its resounding global failures, so we're just about due.

That sounds crazy, but on preview:

So, I live in Spain, which seems like is one of the only countries in western europe without an ascendent far-right political movement*, and I think it's because we lived under fascism until 1975, and everyone still remembers, and no one wants to go back. Not enough time has passed for fascism to look good again.

Shit.
posted by roystgnr at 2:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [29 favorites]

So, from a ways upthread, but...

because we don't have a lot of youngish men who were in a war, as they did during Weimar, so people are not accustomed to war-like violence or military authority structures.

...is surreally inaccurate, Frowner. I'm sure, given your grasp of history, that it's just an oversight on your part, but thanks to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld et al. we have a few hundred thousand people in our society with recent combat experience. Just because they haven't (yet) self-organized into Freikorps, just because there is (yet) no Stahlhelm to give them collective voice doesn't mean that we're out of the woods.

I have friends and family members who've seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other theaters where we've never officially had troops on the ground. I can't believe you intentionally meant to write them out of history.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

>Not enough time has passed for fascism to look good again.

That's odd, I've never lived under fascism, but for some reason it STILL doesn't look good to me...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:54 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

it's now been about 70 years since fascism had its resounding global failures, so we're just about due.

My Jewish inlaws voted for Trump. They have relatives who survived the Holocaust and who are still alive. My sister-in-law – their daughter –is married to a woman and just had a baby.

Didn't stop them. They're in full-on "let's just wait and see what happens" mode.
posted by monospace at 2:56 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

(And yes, the US military is hardly organized on the Prussian disciplinary model, and yes, the 2010s are not the 1920s, and yes, the comparisons are indirect at best. But good god, you've read your Theweleit — what does MRA/PUA culture sound like to you if not a reasonably direct analogue for the stratum of popular media he set forth?)
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

what is it that would legally bar President Obama from basically saying "This man's a piece of shit from the word 'go,' fight him for all your worth."

The people who've spent the last eight years calling Barack Obama a tyrant and a traitor to the Constitution should be ashamed of themselves. He's about to hand over power peacefully to a man he believes is a manifest threat to the country and the world, and do everything in his power to help him succeed. That's how much he believes in democracy and the rule of law.
posted by EarBucket at 3:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [47 favorites]

Two Charts That Help Explain Why Pelosi's Hopelessly Inept DCCC Isn't Capable Of Winning Back Congress
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:12 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

President-elect Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle civil fraud suits against Trump University

One down, seventy four to go.
posted by piyushnz at 3:14 PM on November 18, 2016

Quick Status: I received a nice e-mail from Michael Bennett (D-CO) - or at least the nice form reply from his office - in regards to my initial contact about Bannon. It stated in part "I agree with you that President-elect Trump should reconsider this decision to hire Mr. Bannon. Recently, I released the following statement regarding this matter ... " and went on to quote his public statement from earlier in the week.
posted by jazon at 3:17 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Congressional phones jammed by calls for Trump conflict-of-interest investigation

If you’re trying to call the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, you might find yourself on hold for . . . the afternoon.

The committee’s phones became jammed most of Friday after a Facebook post calling for an investigation into President-elect Donald Trump’s finances started to go viral. The message urged readers to call the panel to “support the call for a bipartisan review of Trump’s financials and apparent conflicts of interest” after Trump’s daughter and son-in-law joined his private meeting Thursday night at Trump Tower with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
...
Over on Capitol Hill, an Oversight Committee aide said the staff is answering calls as fast as they can, but that the system is “backed up.” That’s true — we tested it ourselves. As of 3:30 p.m., calls were going through to voice mail after a message stating the line is “not available.”

posted by zachlipton at 3:19 PM on November 18, 2016 [27 favorites]

An idea I had while scrolling through this new thread: is there a well-funded Super PAC (or can one be formed) that puts out weekly "adverts" in major TV markets that can call out the lies, deceits, and bad actions the new Administration will take over the next four years? We had a lot of ads from Trump here in Colorado, and while we stayed Blue, there was a lot of propaganda gushing out. I wonder how effective a Super PAC driven message machine would be, to skirt around news organizations' attempts to be balanced and to counter-act any "normalization" that occurs with Trump?
posted by jazon at 3:20 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

I have friends and family members who've seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other theaters where we've never officially had troops on the ground. I can't believe you intentionally meant to write them out of history.

That's very true, and I sure didn't.

What I was trying to say was more like "compared to Germany post-WWI, the percentage of youngish men who have personally experienced combat is dramatically lower", not "hardly any youngish American men have experienced combat in terms of absolute numbers".

I think the Freikorps were able to work as they did in part because such a huge percentage of young men had been in the military - of those young men, you only need a small percent to be violently fascist and you've got a lot of people, relative to the size of the country. It's not that everyone who was in the army then raced right out to join the Freikorps, it's that so many had been in the army. And you've also got a big population who've seen the really visceral, immediate violence of WWI, and I feel like that probably changed people's norms.

So basically, I'm also not trying to say "naturally, if you've been in combat you're five minutes away from joining a fascist militia", more that the situation in Germany post-WWI was different from ours.
posted by Frowner at 3:20 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

NPR and CNN: "Democrats claim Trump administration is full of white supremacists. Trump denies this. Opinions differ."

"Coming up, a Clinton e-mail bombshell that will shake up the political landscape."

The media bears a great deal of responsibility for what is coming.

Those of you who are NPR listeners, contact them and let them know you'd like some actual journalism these next few years. Cause they sure fucked up this last election.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:23 PM on November 18, 2016 [39 favorites]

is there a well-funded Super PAC (or can one be formed) that puts out weekly "adverts" in major TV markets that can call out the lies, deceits, and bad actions the new Administration will take over the next four years?

Convince Colbert to restart Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow?
posted by Golem XIV at 3:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is actually worth reading, imo, but it's really disturbing me.

Why social media is terrible for multiethnic democracies

Haidt’s research focuses on the links between moral intuitions and political beliefs. His work is especially useful now because it explains how emotions and core value judgments drive political behavior.
...
I think the economic trends are much less than half the story, and to the extent that they matter, they matter through social processes.
...
The sacred values of the left the and right grow out of the 19th-century conflict between labor and capital. This was filtered through the battle between communism and capitalism in the 20th century. This is what the left and right has been for most of the past 150 years.

But with the rise of the new left in the 1960s in America and in Europe, a new set of issues comes to the fore. The concerns now are around civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, all of which are important and all of which involve high moral stakes.
...
The new sacred values on the left are about anti-racism and fighting discrimination — this has been at the heart of the progressive projects since the 1960s. And this is the force behind multiculturalism...

So this is one side of the new divide, the multiculturalism side. You may call it the globalist side, although it’s not so much global trade as the free movement of people and the unity of all mankind, all humankind.
...
Multiculturalism and diversity have many benefits, including creativity and economic dynamism, but they also have major drawbacks, which is that they generally reduce social capital and trust and they amplify tribal tendencies.
...
There are existential questions at stake, and this election has felt really apocalyptic for both sides. The right thinks the country is crashing into a void and that Trump, while crazy, is our only hope. The left thinks Trump will bring about a fascist coup, a war with China, or a betrayal of our alliances.

I don't like his blanket assertion that multiculturalism reduces social capital. I think it can increase it. But I guess it really depends on those involved, and what do you do when you have a bunch of right wing racists in the mix?

Why does the right think the country is crashing into a void? Does the Marxist left actually agree with them? It seems to me they are both wrong, and Obama had us on a pretty good track. Fuck everyone.

Politics is always about factions, always about competing groups. At the time of the founders, those groups involved economic interests — the Northern industrialists versus the Southern agrarians and so on.

But in a world in which factions are based on race or ethnicity, rather than economic interests, that’s the worst possible world. It’s the most intractable world we can inhabit, and it’s the one that will lead to the ugliest outcome.
...
We have to recognize that we’re in a crisis, and that the left-right divide is probably unbridgeable. And if it is, we’ll have to give up on doing big things in Washington, and do as little as we possibly can at the national level....

Polarization is here to stay for many decades, and it’s probably going to get worse, and so the question is: How do we adapt our democracy for life under intense polarization?
...
In the 1960s, surveys asked people how they’d feel if their child married a Republican or an African American or a Jew, and back then some people really didn’t want their kids to marry someone of a different ethnicity, but a different political party wasn’t as big a deal. Now the opposite is true.

So I’m quite confident that there is affective polarization or emotional polarization in recent years.
...
Well, I think that’s exactly the divide: Is America a melting pot, or is the melting pot, and the concomitant assimilation, a form of cultural genocide? As a product of assimilated Jews, my mother always told me that America is the promised land for Jews, because it basically just got out of their way and allowed them to assimilate and then succeed. And that was true for many other ethnic groups.

So what do we do now about our multiethnic democracy? Do we try to assimilate and emphasize our similarities, or do we celebrate differences and endorse multiculturalism?

This is exactly what we need to debate and discuss as a country, and my vote is firmly for emphasizing assimilation, similarity, and unity — this, I think, is the best way to have a multiethnic democracy.

This last section really bothers me. He seems to create a false dichotomy between assimilation and multiculturalism and he chooses assimilation. I would think successful "multiethnic democracy" is a process that includes both some assimilation - faith in our institutions and democracy, some shared values - and a celebration of our differences. This has me so depressed. What the fuck is going on?
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'm seeing a current from a lot of people (Sam Harris, etc) that the "new left" and/or intersectional feminism is responsible in some way for what is happening - in particular BLM, LGBTQ rights, and the language that they have developed around "wokeness," "cultural appropriation," etc. But this is batshit insane because it is not a threat to anyone. I guess there are some real separatist movements being born out of BLM and elsewhere, but these are insignificantly small and typically located in blue states anyway. The fact that this psychologist seems to appeal to that attitude is deplorable.
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:29 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Yes, there are several hundred thousand men at home who served in the military. But assuming that they are just sitting there waiting to become militant force for fascism and Trump doesn't not necessarily follow. First, 30% of the military is black and Hispanic. Secondly, Trump's support is overwhelmingly older. Clinton won 18-29 year olds by 18% and 30-44 year olds by 8%. It was people over 45 who elected Trump. And they're not typically the type for street violence.
posted by chris24 at 3:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Bannon probably thinks he's smart enough to avoid Cromwell's fate.

Cromwell thought he was smart enough to avoid his fate. If Bannon's a big Hilary Mantel fan, though, what does it say about the tenor of Trump's court? (And it's shaping up to resemble a court rather than any kind of democratic administration.)

President-elect Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle civil fraud suits against Trump University

But, but, but Trump tweeted back in March, "The phony lawsuit against Trump U could have been easily settled by me but I want to go to court. 98% approval rating by students. Easy win."

Despite Trump getting away with this (he isn't admitting wrongdoing), this is a salutary reminder about Trump's true nature: Like many a bully, he is, at heart, a coward.

Here's a post from Deadspin back in August (with a great section title "Donald Trump Folds More Than a Laundromat"):

Donald Trump loves to brag that he doesn’t settle lawsuits. He is also well-known for his public feuds with everyone from his ex-wife Ivana to Rosie O’Donnell, and his sometimes obstinate refusal to apologize for the outrageous or offensive words he spews. All of these supposed characteristics are tent poles supporting the grand myth of Trump: that he is a tough guy who relishes a good scrape and doesn’t back down. Once again, however, a review of Trump’s easily-verified history shows that, more often than not, the opposite is true: Donald Trump caves all the time. He just doesn’t like to admit it. As one of his former attorneys told Vanity Fair, “The key to Donald, like with any bully, is to tell him to go fuck himself.” And when people have done that, literally or metaphorically, Trump, more often than not, has reacted in much the same way he did when faced with the draft: He’s found a way to get out as quickly and quietly as possible. {emphasis goddamn added}

To reiterate, the key to winning against Trump is first to stand up to him, then offer him an ignominious retreat. He'll take the coward's way out every time.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [34 favorites]

I think Reid's seat might be in good hands.

@CatherineForNV
Jeff Sessions for AG? The man supports anti-immigrant policies and was deemed too racist for federal judgeship by GOP Senate. Unacceptable.
posted by chris24 at 3:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [26 favorites]

Here is the problem: many people love hiearchy. When I was growing up I was taught god created hierarchy in family's to resemble man's relationship with god.

Social hiearchy when one is on the top is cozy and reassurung. Your needs will be met, people will listen, make excuses for your faults and emphasize your good traits (see trump). One just have to compete with one group of people: people just like oneself.

These people have to go through their lives and revaluate their successes compared to everyone. That hurts. Of course it does. (That doesn't make it right) It doesn't feel safe.

This doesn't even get into empathy or recognizing one may actually be a racist asshole. Which brings shame.

When we talk about the people who need to listen to us, we don't think they are giving anything up. We want to be equal and treated fairly. But, being equal suddenly means that the entire country competes, and makes ones skills relatively less valuable.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jonathan Haidt has developed a reputation over the years as a conservative concern troll whose main research goal seems to be to provide David Brooks types with empirical underpinnings to confirm their reactionary first principles. Anyone who cites John Lennon's Imagine to make a point about what liberals think in 2016 isn't worth taking seriously, no matter how valid his research findings may be.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:44 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

Open letter by Sophie Theallet [tweet w screencap], Michelle Obama's stylist, saying she will not dress Melania Trump and urges other designers to boycott working for her as well.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:47 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

On a somewhat related note to stylists possibly boycotting the incoming First Family, does anyone imagine that the inauguration and the inaugural balls and other such traditional White House social events will be other than sparsely attended from 2017 on? That the Trumps will be able to get anyone of note to perform at them? (Does Scott Baio sing?) The Obamas always attracted an A-list crowd; the Trumps will rank far lower in the alphabet.
posted by orange swan at 3:53 PM on November 18, 2016

And then there's the awful “religious freedom” law that will legalise all kinds of discrimination, as long as it comes from “moral conviction” and has to do with “sexual conduct”; it overrides all local bans on discrimination (extinguishing safe havens in liberal cities), but no laws allowing more discrimination.

It's really going to suck to be LGBT+ or in a premarital or interracial relationship or whatever in America for the next... I was thinking 50 years (how long it would take for the Supreme Court to turn around), but I'm not even sure that it'll change by then. It might not be long until people are looking back at the old America from any time between JFK and Obama with the same sense of incredulity as those photos of university campuses in 1960s Afghanistan.
posted by acb at 3:54 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

Yah, I can't wait until Trump appoints Bazooka Joe as poet laureate.
posted by valkane at 3:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

On a somewhat related note to stylists possibly boycotting the incoming First Family, does anyone imagine that the inauguration and the inaugural balls and other such traditional White House social events going forward will be other than sparsely attended? That the Trumps will be able to get anyone of note to perform at them?

There'll be enough who see an opportunity in the new regime. Patronage is patronage, after all. Chances are the Trump regime will attract its own sycophantic hangers-on, who will be richly rewarded in the loyal media.
posted by acb at 3:56 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I just wanted to thank you, melissasaurus, for the work you've done organizing phone-ins to our representatives in Congress. It's been one of the few concrete things I've been able to do this past week, and while I'm not super-sanguine about it making a difference in the end, it at least feels like something other than complete capitulation.
posted by adamgreenfield at 3:57 PM on November 18, 2016 [31 favorites]

I have friends and family members who've seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other theaters where we've never officially had troops on the ground

i think we're also overlooking the military fantasists. that is, the angry disaffected young white men who honestly believe that their lives are a constant battle against the women who won't fuck them as they deserve unconditionally, and the minorities and accursed sjws who are stealing something from them, be it jobs or the aforementioned women or their "way of life" or their freedom of hate speech on the internet. i think in our new dystopia the trumpian freikorps would likely be drawn more from these furious CoD fantasists than from actual former servicemembers, especially when you consider how dismissive and mocking trump has been towards actual veterans.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:59 PM on November 18, 2016 [40 favorites]

Richly rewarded? First of all, the White House under Trump may not pay them, and secondly, they will know perfectly well that they'll face considerable blow back from the more than half of the population that is against Trump. We certainly didn't see any A-list celebrities endorsing Trump during his campaign. There's no reason to suppose they'll suddenly get in line now.
posted by orange swan at 3:59 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

NYT headline just now, BTW: "[Cabinet] Choices Reflect Unapologetic Terror Stance."

Oh, no doubt. I can by all means believe that Flynn, Sessions and Pompeo are unapologetic about their desire to inflict terror.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:00 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I can't wait until Trump appoints Bazooka Joe as poet laureate.

I recently raised the question of Trump's likely poet laureate with a group of friends, and one of them suggested what I think will be the correct answer: "All Quiet On The Western Front."
posted by contraption at 4:02 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

As far as who is going to perform at the Inauguration, does Trump actually like music or art? He doesn't really seem to be somebody who has any interest in that sort of thing.

If I were a betting man, I would put money on them having some sort of popular real 'Murican country singer. Maybe Toby Keith.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

That the Trumps will be able to get anyone of note to perform at them? (Does Scott Baio sing?) The Obamas always attracted an A-list crowd; the Trumps will rank far lower in the alphabet.

every regime, no matter how repugnant, always attracts its own share of sycophants and collaborators. this one will be no different.
posted by poffin boffin at 4:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

First of all, the White House under Trump may not pay them, and secondly, they will know perfectly well that they'll face considerable blow back from the more than half of the population that is against Trump.

They don't have to pay them from their own money; they can do so with spoils confiscated from those who don't cooperate, one way or another; redistributing to the loyalists (and still keeping a cut).
posted by acb at 4:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

If I were a betting man, I would put money on them having some sort of popular real 'Murican country singer. Maybe Toby Keith.

Or Billy Corgan.
posted by acb at 4:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

there's still time for the foam to devour trump

all hail the foam
posted by poffin boffin at 4:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [13 favorites]

Maybe Milo for poet laureate?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

i think we're also overlooking the military fantasists.

Yeah, and some of those fantasists are in the military. Every unit I ever served in always had at least one of these guys — we always used to call them Sekrit Ninjas. They always had all the latest high-speed/lo-drag gear, duct-taped their magazines top-to-bottom, and did MMA and whatnot on top of the official PT. They were always some mixture of scary and risible. I tended to keep my distance.

Military culture is a complicated thing, and one of the few places where I agree with the folks who are ranting about the coastal elitists living in their bubble is that virtually nobody in my day-to-day life, personal or professional, has any experience of that culture. I have to believe we'd treat and use the military differently if things were otherwise.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

@RalstonReports:
“Does Senator Heller Agree with Trump’s Choice of Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions?” -- NV Dems release.

It begins.
#2018
posted by chris24 at 4:07 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

*mental image of ted nugent playing inauguration ball*
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 4:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Inauguration is just going to be "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on repeat.
posted by zachlipton at 4:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [13 favorites]

And then there's the awful 'religious freedom' law

Easy test to see if this is a bullshit law: how would straight people feel if a gay-owned bakery refused to bake them a cake for religious reasons? How would a Christian feel if a Muslim business owner denied them on religious grounds?

Conclusion: it's a bullshit law.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Here is the problem: many people love hiearchy. When I was growing up I was taught god created hierarchy in family's to resemble man's relationship with god.

Correction: many *old* people love patiarchy. My parents both volunteered for the HRC campaign, but growing up it was undoubtedly certain that if wife and husband disagreed, the husband was the leader of the family and made the final decisions.

They were born in 42-43. I was born in 72. The patriarchal mindset is far less prevalent in my generation and will continue to diminish.

It begins.
#2018

That is obviously one of the HUGE problems of the American political system. Politicians spend more time fund-raising and campaigning for election than performing their assigned duties. It's getting worse and worse.

Even if they are in the minority, the Democrats could do plenty in the next two years. They should try something instead of punting and blocking.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:12 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

As far as who is going to perform at the Inauguration, does Trump actually like music or art? He doesn't really seem to be somebody who has any interest in that sort of thing.

Didn't he want it to be a thing that he personally curated the playlists for his rallies?
posted by XMLicious at 4:16 PM on November 18, 2016

The people of Paris didn't march through the streets shouting "Not MY Führer,"

You guys.

Can you please do a modicum of basic research before posting nonsense that you claim you want to base your behavior on.

Manifestation du 11 novembre 1940 against the Nazis in Paris. A manifestation is a protest march.

The French article on the French Resistance points out that strikes and protests were commonly organized. Why on earth that wasn't properly translated into the English wiki article is beyond me. (Unfortunately I do not have time to correct it, nor do I have time to do battle with alt-right nitwits on Wikipedia who might try to revert it. Oh how they love fucking with French history to make them look like pushovers.)
posted by fraula at 4:18 PM on November 18, 2016 [65 favorites]

A little more about Myron Ebell, who is leading the transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency. As the main in-house climate-change denier for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a libertarian think tank partially funded by oil and coal companies), he appears often in the media to provide “balance” to mainstream science.
posted by adamvasco at 4:20 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Maybe Kanye West will play the inauguration.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:22 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Even if they are in the minority, the Democrats could do plenty in the next two years.

Personally, I think the best thing they can do in the minority is fight Trump tooth and nail and tie those who support him to his awful policies and appointments so that we take back the Senate in 2018. And using fear of that reckoning to try to affect their behavior now is good politics, not just for 2018 but for today.
posted by chris24 at 4:23 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

CNN: Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil will perform at President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington

I'm doing that "simultaneously laughing and wheezing for breath" thing.
posted by orange swan at 4:23 PM on November 18, 2016 [27 favorites]

Maybe Kanye West will play the inauguration.

Maybe he'll sing "New Slaves".
posted by indubitable at 4:25 PM on November 18, 2016

there's not gonna enough coke
posted by j_curiouser at 4:25 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Neil also will appear on the next season of "Celebrity Apprentice" with Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who is taking over for Trump as host -- set to air on NBC in January.

Gosh, why do people have such a hard time figuring out which news items are fake?
posted by contraption at 4:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

CNN: Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil will perform at President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington

So I'm guessing it will be either "Dr. Feelgood" or "Treat me Like The Dog I Am."
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:27 PM on November 18, 2016

fake news

@GovMikeHuckabee: Media buzz that I was named Amb to Israel is NOT true. Was never discussed with PE Trump; slot probably not picked until State Dept in place
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:29 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hilary Clinton's Flawed Algorithm Pissed Off the Data Science Gods

Machine learning algorithms have one big weakness: they cannot analyze or understand events that never happened before. For example, you buy beach front property where in the past two hundred (200) years numerous hurricanes never caused water waves to rise above twenty (20) feet. So you build a house on strong concrete stilts thirty (30) feet high to protect from future hurricanes. Along comes a hurricane with forty (40) foot water waves that washes your house away.

(no sure where to post this, a bit small for a fpp, but such a good blog title)
posted by sammyo at 4:31 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Vince Neil is truly the Scott Baio of music.
posted by EarBucket at 4:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Mark Lilla at the NYT: The End of Identity Liberalism

But how should…diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

Frowner predicted this in a previous thread. This shit needs to be stamped out immediately. We're not fucking throwing minorities, women, and members of the lgbt community under the bus because some racists got mad. This is a hard line in the sand as far as I'm concerned.

The interests of the white working class are not discounted by also attending to the issues of literally everyone else. Identity politics are central to contemporary American progressivism because they represent the concerns of the people who make up the American progressive movement. Fucking duh. There's no reason Dems couldn't do better outreach within WWC communities while still representing the interests of the rest of America. There's no incompatibility. Unifying the country does not happen by only focusing on the wants and needs of white people.

Even just strategically speaking it's dumb. How many WCC Trump supporters and evangelicals are really available to be picked off by the Dems? Probably not enough to win a national election, after factoring the loss of millions votes from the communities the author has decided shouldn't be heard right now. Or is he suggesting that those communities just shut up and take one for the team? Either way: a hearty 'fuck you' Mark Lilla!
posted by camneely at 4:35 PM on November 18, 2016 [48 favorites]

@SimonWDC
Dear Democrats, Trump is giving us some clues on what he thinks won him the election. Not sure it was all abt economic anxiety.

@ThePlumLineGS Retweeted Simon Rosenberg
Economically anxious voters clearly gave Trump a mandate to prioritize staffing his administration with bigots and xenophobes.
posted by chris24 at 4:38 PM on November 18, 2016 [31 favorites]

The Inauguration administration is just going to be "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on repeat stamping on a human face, forever.
posted by Cookiebastard at 4:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

#notallxenophobes
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Overheard on Facebook:

about Trump's appointments: Gee, they look so different with their hoods off!
posted by philip-random at 4:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

How did ‘less than stellar’ high school student Jared Kushner get into Harvard?

...New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5m to Harvard University not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, which at the time accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of 20.)
I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less-than-stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,’’ a former official at the Frisch school in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA [grade point average] did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.’’
posted by futz at 4:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

Watching the plans for the Trump administration is anyone else wondering if you should start working out to prepare for the resistance or just enjoy yourself while you can because we're all clearly going to die soon?

Been following the alt-right online for a while now, the numba 1 piece of advice they give is to lift. Those of us on the left who can should follow suit imo. Makes you feel better in general with the helpful side effect of being ready to throw down with fascists
posted by todayandtomorrow at 4:44 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

That "Clinton's flawed article pissed off the data science gods" claims at one point that 53% of all women voted for the President-Elect. In reality 53% of white women voted for the President-Elect.

Needless to say, I have trouble trusting the analysis of someone who can make that sort of error.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:45 PM on November 18, 2016 [29 favorites]

Multiple NBA teams canceling stays at Trump properties.
posted by futz at 4:46 PM on November 18, 2016 [39 favorites]

Yeah, the data science gods article isn't doing it for me. According to her campaign, the rust belt numbers started to get shaky with the first Comey letter, and collapsed with the second one. They might have overestimated the enthusiasm of her support in those states if it could turn that quickly, but she was polling ahead in almost every poll right up until the end. They knew it was happening, they just had to head into election night hoping they could still eke out a win at that point.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is good for a laugh:

WSJ The Trump Family Political Business

Mr. Trump’s best option is to liquidate his stake in the company. Richard Painter and Norman Eisen, ethics lawyers for George W. Bush and President Obama, respectively, have laid out a plan, which involves a leveraged buyout or an initial public offering.

Mr. Trump could put the cash proceeds in a true blind trust. The Trump children can keep the assets in their name, and he can transfer more to them as long as he pays a hefty gift tax. Finally, Mr. Trump should stipulate that he and his children will have no communication about family business matters.

The alternatives are fraught, perhaps even for the Trump Organization’s bottom line: Thanks to a Clinton Administration precedent, Presidents can face litigation in private matters—so the company will become a supermagnet for lawsuits. Rudy Giuliani lamented on television that divestment would put the Trump children “out of work,” but reorganizing the company may be better for business than unending scrutiny from the press. Progressive groups will soon be out of power and they are already shouting that the Trump family wants to profit from the Presidency.

So just sell off Trump Tower and the progressives can't yell at you! Are you listening, DJT?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

Multiple NBA teams canceling stays at Trump properties.

I called the Portland Trail Blazers today and asked them to do this, and they said they already avoided Trump hotels. It'd be nice if they announced it though.
posted by middlethird at 4:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

I mean, before this year, neither an algorithm nor a human consultant was ever going to throw out "what if the FBI ratfucks you right before election day?" as a high-probability event.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [36 favorites]

“The key to Donald, like with any bully, is to tell him to go fuck himself.”

Okay, who's on this?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:51 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

Mr. Trump’s best option is to liquidate his stake in the company. Richard Painter and Norman Eisen, ethics lawyers for George W. Bush and President Obama, respectively, have laid out a plan, which involves a leveraged buyout or an initial public offering.

This is really just two more people who are in denial about what a Trump presidency will be.
posted by indubitable at 4:54 PM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

CNN Giuliani defends foreign business ties: 'Comparisons to Hillary Clinton are nuts'

I conducted myself in a very honorable way. Including a somewhat courageous way, to add, yeah, 'I think you should've been bombed,'" Giuliani also said, referring to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. "How many people go to a city and say, 'I think it was okay you were bombed. You know how often I've done that?"
Giuliani further cited his relationship with Viktor Yushchenko, the former Ukrainian president and foe of Vladimir Putin who was poisoned in 2004. He said that when he went to Ukraine, he was told that he couldn't meet with Yushchenko (Giuliani misspoke and said he couldn't meet with Viktor Yanukovych, another former Ukrainian president and a Putin ally, but described him in the interview as "the Viktor that Putin poisoned or allegedly poisoned"). The former mayor said that he met with Yushchenko anyway.
"I said, 'F*ck you, I'll meet with him,'" he said. "And I did. And they took away my security and almost didn't let me out the country. And that's before the poor man was poisoned. He and his wife have become good friends of mine. And what I am upset about is the attacks on my reputation."

That's our beloved rascal, Guiliani. "I think you should have been bombed." Oh he would make a lovely Secretary of State.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:57 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

If only there was some way to play John Goodman saying "Shut the fuck up, Donny" in the Big Lebowski over and over for Trump for the next four years. Drones? Endless twittering?
posted by not that mimi at 4:57 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

We're not fucking throwing minorities, women, and members of the lgbt community under the bus because some racists got mad. This is a hard line in the sand as far as I'm concerned.

Make it a line in concrete, then, because I guarantee you that most of us will be changing our tune in two years.

We're not going to get a raise in the minimum wage or a repeal of the Hyde amendment. We'll be lucky if we survive with Roe v Wade intact. Gay marriage, or a version of it, will probably survive due to visibility, but good luck with trans* rights.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:59 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

BRB, looking into Canada's 'points system'.
posted by eclectist at 5:01 PM on November 18, 2016

OMG I am reading the comments in the WSJ article and they are hilarious.

When Donald said "I didn't need this." he wasn't kidding. Self funding was just the beginning.
First he has to leave Trump Tower and abandon the freedom to travel as a private citizen from one home to another. Instead he has to live in the White House, a step down and can't move without the press and the Secret Service dogging him.
Then he has to leave the world's greatest media, business and financial mecca - New York, and move to a one horse town, by comparison - Washington DC.
Now he has to liquidate a lifetime of assets for 4 years of thankless hard work, and inconvenience his children's careers because they have the nerve to be spectacular business moguls in their own right.
I know, poor little rich family, right? OK but why do it? Ego? No. To make American great again.
Other pols aspire to the luxury of Washington's government housing and perks. Sure they come from places like Dubuque. Trump's a billionaire who has earned and will give up, a lot to be POTUS.
And his pay... $1.00!

I'm choosing to read this as straight-up satire (how many Presidents have come from Dubuque?) but I really think the writer is serious.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:04 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

L.A. Times on Kanye West's pro-Trump comments, in case anyone cared
posted by Apocryphon at 5:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

L.A. Times on Kanye West's pro-Trump comments, in case anyone cared

I can't say that anyone will care about Kanye hating black people but we appreciate it and your work finding and posting it for reference purposes.
posted by Talez at 5:07 PM on November 18, 2016

Azealia Banks Slams President-Elect Donald Trump For 'Snorting Coke And Wearing Spray Tan'
posted by Apocryphon at 5:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump can't refuse the presidential salary or reduce it to a $1; something that is apparently going to screw up his tax avoidance schemes.

Gelatin: "They want to run government like their business because as incompetent as that is, they truly have no idea what they're doing otherwise."

Long term only Family will work with Donald.
posted by Mitheral at 5:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'm choosing to read this as straight-up satire (how many Presidents have come from Dubuque?) but I really think the writer is serious.

I'm halfway wondering if the commenter is The Donald himself!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 5:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's not clear to me that he couldn't decline the salary.

Constructive receipt is generally a timing rule: I can't take an amount already earned and then push it into a future tax year. If he waives his right to the salary, though, it seems different.
posted by jpe at 5:18 PM on November 18, 2016

As if the IRS is going to have any enforcement capacity left once the Infowars comment section is confirmed as their next administrator.
posted by feloniousmonk at 5:21 PM on November 18, 2016 [32 favorites]

The "making trains work on time" bothers me a bit; they didn't, those in power just said they did.

I know little about everyday life in fascist Italy but Eco said the trains between Milan and the Alpine resorts ran pretty great.
posted by bukvich at 5:21 PM on November 18, 2016

It would be awesome if there turned out to be some technicality that not only screwed up his tax avoidance scheme, but because he already announced the $1 gimmick he'd be forced for PR purposes to take the full salary but donate it to a real charity rather than offset the tax avoidance losses.
posted by XMLicious at 5:26 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Whether he doesn't take the salary or donates it, the result is pretty similar for tax purposes. For most people it wouldn't be, but either he's in a loss position (in which case it doesn't matter) or he's got plenty of income to absorb the deduction. NY would limit the deduction to 50%, so the tax drag would be around $18k.
posted by jpe at 5:32 PM on November 18, 2016

"Steve Bannon looks like a walking alimony payment."

Not my line.
posted by porn in the woods at 5:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

Steve Bannon to me looks like someone who is trying to drink himself to death.
posted by chaoticgood at 5:48 PM on November 18, 2016 [32 favorites]

Ho boy, this will go well:

AP House chairman: Trump favors privatizing air traffic control

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee chairman says President-elect Donald Trump likes the idea of spinning off air traffic control operations from the government and placing them under the control of a private, non-profit corporation chartered by Congress.

Rep. Bill Shuster, head of the House transportation committee, told The Associated Press that he spoke to Trump about the idea several times both before and during the presidential election.[...]

Earlier this year, Shuster included a plan to privatize air traffic control in a bill to extend the FAA's operating authority. The bill was approved by the transportation committee, but Shuster was unable to get it to the House floor after several influential lawmakers, including the Ways and Means Committee chairman and the House and Senate Appropriations Committee chairmen, raised objections. Democrats, some segments of the aviation industry and some FAA unions also oppose the plan, although the National Air Traffic Controllers Association endorsed the bill.

A "private, non-profit corporation chartered by congress" sounds a lot like the USPS which was broken off and meant to be self-funding entity. The problem is that it is still controlled by congress who expect it to run like a business but with none of the flexibility of a business because it is actually a service. The USPS is now 15 billion in debt. Which gives congressmen like Issa grounds to call for its sell off.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

I don't think he can waive or reduce the salary because it's required by law to be paid. Constructive receipt says you need to report the income in the year it was received, even if you don't take it then, or you never take it at all (or if you donate it to charity). It sounds to me that even if he says he's only taking $1, he still needs to report the full $400k as income, because it was "made available" to him (per statute).
posted by triggerfinger at 5:53 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Charles Pierce: Russia's Involvement in the 2016 Election Is Growing by the Day. Now the NSA director admits Russia used Wikileaks to meddle in the campaign.

This Isn't About Partisan Bickering. This Is About Protecting Civil Rights. Donald Trump's nomination of Jeff Sessions is a national disgrace.

Someone Has to Hold Donald Trump and His Business Dealings Accountable. Here's a Start. The United States presidency is not a Trump property.

If Hulk Hogan Got a Cabinet Position, Would You Really Be Surprised? Out on the weekend.
posted by homunculus at 5:56 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

The ‘Hell No’ Caucus: Some Democrats May Not Work With Donald Trump At All
posted by futz at 5:58 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah, but if you waive your right to it before you earn it, then you're not "turning your back on income you've earned" (the classic constructive receipt formulation).

So, for example, in PLR 201024045, government employees that received a statutory salary but were permitted to waive their salary could do so long as the waiver preceded the period in which it was earned. That ruling leaned on the executor fee cases, where an executor can waive statutory fees.

Seems close enough that he'd have a strong argument.
posted by jpe at 5:59 PM on November 18, 2016

Ivanka Trump Tours Harlem Charter School with Eva Moskowitz

HARLEM — Ivanka Trump made a surprise visit to Success Academy Harlem 1 charter school Friday morning, meeting with its CEO Eva Moskowitz.

Trump was given a tour of the school around 9 a.m., a day after Moskowitz quashed suspicion that President-elect Donald Trump would tap her to head the Department of Education in his cabinet.

"If I left and went to D.C., who would keep their eyes on Mayor de Blasio?" said Moskowitz, who has famously sparred with the mayor over securing space for her network's rapidly-growing schools, at a press conference Thursday on the steps of City Hall.

"At this time, I will not be entertaining prospective opportunities," added Moskowitz, who confirmed that she met with the president-elect at Trump Tower on Wednesday.

Nothing to see here, just the daughter of the PEOTUS vetting candidates for possible cabinet positions.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:59 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

If only there was some way to play John Goodman saying "Shut the fuck up, Donny" in the Big Lebowski over and over for Trump for the next four years.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:00 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

The drip drip of Russia news seems like they are just slowly boiling the water so that when he is president it slowly dawns on us that the country has been taken over by the inside by infiltrating the stupid and mean portion of the elite.
posted by ian1977 at 6:01 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am completely baffled by the plan to privatize air traffic control. I get that they want to privatize all the things, but it seems like such a weird place to start. I think most people would be wary of testing radical innovations on the system that keeps planes from falling out of the sky.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

He may not have the right to waive the salary though. The law requires him to receive it.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Regarding Medicare and just about everything else, Paul Ryan's phone number is [phone]. Mitch McConnell's is [phone] (but you can't leave a voicemail so emailing or writing may be better). This info is readily available and probably already posted, but I thought I'd share for convenience.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 6:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

The USPS is now 15 billion in debt. Which gives congressmen like Issa grounds to call for its sell off.

This always make me laugh. The party with the Constitutional originalism fetish wants to eliminate a part of the government that is literally required by the Constitution to exist.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:04 PM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

The constitution authorizes, but doesn't require, a post office.
posted by jpe at 6:06 PM on November 18, 2016

He may not have the right to waive the salary though. The law requires him to receive it.

Actually, it would be awesome if the House passed a law allowing him to waive it and the Senate Democrats filibustered it, just to fuck with him...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

and the Senate Democrats filibustered it, just to fuck with him...

Honestly, put whatever the fuck you want in front of that.
posted by Mooski at 6:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

ArbitraryAndCapricious: "I am completely baffled by the plan to privatize air traffic control."

I'm guessing Air Traffic Controllers make good money and very few "business" men are managing to take a cut off the top. Lots of "fat" to be trimmed and redirected to the capital class.
posted by Mitheral at 6:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

Pence went to see Hamilton tonight. Unreal scene here - Mike Pence walks in and there's a massive mix of cheers and boos.{link is to tweet with picture]

I, too, am flabbergasted by the move to privatize air traffic control. I assume it is because they want to make it self-funding and so that they can pay less to the controllers and work around any federal regulations. However, it does not seem like a bright idea having control of the skies out of the government's hands. So does this mean Air Force One will have to wait its turn? Or perhaps certain airlines can pay for premium service so they can land and take-off first.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:11 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am completely baffled by the plan to privatize air traffic control.

Well...

Trump To Pocket Millions By Charging Government For Using His Plane
posted by futz at 6:14 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

In the slightly less racist news:

WaPo Bob Woodson says he is being considered by Trump for housing post

Robert L. Woodson Sr., who heads the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in Washington and advises House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on poverty issues, said late Friday that he is under consideration to be secretary of housing and urban development in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

If selected, Woodson, who is black, would add diversity to Trump’s team. And he would be responsible for leading education and social reforms in predominantly African American areas, which Trump repeatedly described during the campaign as “failed” and vowed to repair.

“They seem to be very serious about it,” Woodson, 79, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I’m not job hunting, but we’re talking about how I could possibly work with him. We’re talking about how we could work with those across the aisle to do these things together.”

When asked if Trump officials have specifically discussed a potential Cabinet appointment, Woodson said, “Yes, we’re talking about HUD.”

but Jesus, 79 years old. This is going to be one hell of an old cabinet.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:18 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Secret Service compensating campaigns for flying their officers on protective duty is SOP, though.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:19 PM on November 18, 2016

This is going to be one hell of an old cabinet.

It's like, after Obama, America didn't just swing to the other side in terms of opinions on race and open-mindedness, but also in terms of opinions on age.
posted by Apocryphon at 6:22 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

it totally fucking infuriates me that Mike fucking Pence is sitting in Hamilton tonight.

See this is an example of where I think there is too little shaming in modern life. It is New York City, Broadway, a musical where the cast is specifically racially diverse yet this homophobic asshole who pals around with racists gets some cheers? No. Throw fucking tomatoes, guys. I think the cast should all stand on stage and Boo in one voice until he leaves the theater.

The Secret Service compensating campaigns for flying their officers on protective duty is SOP, though.

Yeah but what is NOT SOP is that the candidate owns the airline. So maybe there should be some rules about not using your own businesses. I'm still wondering how much Trump is going to charge America so that Trump Tower can become White House 2, Electric Boogaloo.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

'Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified to be president,' biographer says

As somebody who has been following Trump for decades, what are your biggest concerns about his presidency?

"Donald Trump is manifestly unqualified to be president of the United States. He is a world class narcissist who believes in his genetic superiority and greatness. Throughout his life, he has been defrauding workers of small business vendors and investors. He also has life-long associations with American mafia, Russian mobsters, con artists, swindlers, violent felons and a confessed cocaine trafficker. He thinks that he can learn everything you need to know about missiles in 90 minutes.

All of these things together, especially his fragile and immature psyche, pose a grave threat to the world. I cannot see how this will end - except badly. But if he turns out to be a great president, I'll be the first person saying 'Man, did I get this dead wrong.'"
posted by futz at 6:27 PM on November 18, 2016 [24 favorites]

I think most people would be wary of testing radical innovations on the system that keeps planes from falling out of the sky.

No problem, the invisible hand of market forces will catch them! How do you think they get aloft in the first place?
posted by indubitable at 6:28 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

(Hey buddy, wanna buy the post office)

mental image of ted nugent playing inauguration ball*
posted by Quonsar

Consider this
trivmph of the century
Got to pee...
millions of juke boxs
table-side and playing constantly
Soon the sign, the times, the floor
flailing around me
tangos upon the line but
Ive said to much
Way to much cuz
thats Ted in the spot Light
losing his guitar pic
It fell, he folds, it fools
and we have had
Quite enough.
posted by clavdivs at 6:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

The King sang his song to Pence. What are you going to do now that you have to lead & every1 hates you. Every1 burst into applause #Hamilton
posted by Brainy at 6:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [45 favorites]

From futz's link: Trump does not even know what the president's job description is

This is the clearest thing to emerge in the last few days. Trump pursued the Presidency because the election was a game he thought he could win, and it must be cool if so many people wanted it so very much. But his post-victory meeting with Obama seems to be the first time he has realized that the job actually comes with duties. And His Orangeness most certainly didn't run for this prize in order to get saddled with duties. Sure he wants the power to ram through favorable legislation, appoint favorable judges, and otherwise expand and enrichen his sacred brand. But he doesn't want to have to work for those things, because work is what Trump gets little people like us to do for him. Then he doesn't pay us, because Trump.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

Manchin is backing Sessions. So now it's "bipartisan". Get used to this, a LOT. Manchin is the new Lieberman, he'll play his role voting for the Trumpist bill every single time over the next 2 years, and switch parties right before 2018 if it looks like he's in any danger of losing, or at the first moment if the Dems ever manage to regain control.

And Schumer just put him in fucking Leadership.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

I just had an epiphany/grock moment. I don't know how really valid it is, but the reframe kind of just 'made sense' for me.

HK SAR born, moved to Canada when I was 5, went to the US to do my undergrad in the mid/late '90s, and returned (edit for clarity: to Canada). It was an expensive-ish private liberal arts college with an enrollment of about a 1000 from all over the country and a near-100% white townie population of about the same, right in between Cedar Rapids and Iowa city.

My friends and acquaintances, naturally, trended progressive, and I definitely blocked out a lot of memories of ignorant/casual/active/malicious racism (which a lot of is coming back to the surface now, damnit).

Initially, I couldn't grasp how/why there were more than expected numbers of higher income and college credentialed white men, and especially women, went Trump. Then I saw someone's comment referencing BLM - and it finally occurred to me that people are scared. Scared of a caricature of minorities relentlessly force fed to everyone through popular media. I guess there really are a lot of people who are scared of their PoC neighbours, for no reason other than that it has just been conditioned into them since birth.

Those who went Trump might have seen the BLM movement not as an awareness raising campaign and an outlet of intense community grief, but as an assertion of their rights - couched perhaps in different terms - (c.f. equalization after being privileged feels like being downtrodden) and continued progressiveness would continue to erode white privilege.

In my head, it was a big ooooOOOh moment.

Any and all excuses that could be used against Hillary 'let' them vote against progressivism. A fear that "the minorities will take over and there'll be violence and then racism will be directed at me."

I think that's consistent with the "I'm not a racist" assertions after doing racist things, and the now 'taboo' of telling people that they are racist/are doing racist things, as these confrontations are the twinkle in the eye of 'and then racism will be directed at me.'

The incredible amounts of cognitive dissonance and the vehement and vocal justification for going Trump, I guess then, is kind of like 'saving face' for many traditional Chinese people.

Only, after we've saved face, we'll work on avoiding situations where we'll need to, you know, have to do something stupid/annoying to save face again.

Ok, so maybe it is just straight up racism and sexism.
posted by porpoise at 6:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Prophecy, and funny. And sorta catchy...
I had a dream, I don't know what it meant
I dreamt Donald Trump was our president
It gets worse, just wait there's more
He made Jeff Sessions Secretary of War
And just like he promised, he built him that wall
He blew up Cuba and carpet-bombed Montreal
...
https://youtu.be/cjINbGQ9Vpo
posted by beckybakeroo at 6:41 PM on November 18, 2016

To Pence, the openly gay, cancer-survivor, HIV+ lead actor [of Hamilton] should've had electroshock "conversion".

I agree: throw tomatoes.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Maria Aspan: '"When your people say they hate you, don't come running back to me." #hamilton audience stopped the show w/ 30 seconds of applause at that.'
posted by holgate at 6:45 PM on November 18, 2016 [17 favorites]

Jesus, 79 years old. This is going to be one hell of an old cabinet.

It's trying to win the last Boomer argument by destroying everything that the Boomers benefitted from at every stage of their lives.
posted by holgate at 6:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Oh god, I want a full report on this and pence's reaction if he even had one or understood at all. pleasepleaseplease.
posted by futz at 6:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

It seems like that private letter ruling is saying that, for a certain set of gov't employees, there was a law that allowed them to waive a certain, specified amount of their salary. Whether or not this was includable as income on their tax returns was what the ruling was deciding. In that case, the answer was no, but it was seems like it was based on a very narrow set of circumstances. If there were:

1. statutory fees and commisions
2. received by the executor of an estate,
3. who waives his/her right to receive them,
4. within a reasonable time after appointment, and
5. "all his other actions with respect to the estate are consistent with an intention to render gratuitous service"

...then it is not includible in their income. It seems like a real stretch for anyone to take this ruling and try to apply it to the full base salary of the POTUS.

I'm really interested if he can find any way to not have to report his salary as income, what tax implications it would have for him if he couldn't avoid it, and if any of it ultimately would matter. Given all of his conflicts of interest, borderline nepotism, 74 still-pending lawsuits, etc, what would it take for him to 1) convince sufficient electors to not vote for him, or 2) be enough to actually make impeachment a realistic scenario. I am still hoping there's a line for the handful of GOP congresspeople that would be needed. I'm wondering what it is. How bad does it need to get for someone like McCain to be like "nope, no more of this."
posted by triggerfinger at 6:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pence going to see Hamilton is where I'm currently focusing my anger, and not just out of envy because I know I'll never see it. Pence hates gay people. He's helping to spread racism and anti-immigrant causes. People get hurt, people die, because of Pence's actions.

You don't get to despise so much of what the musical and its cast is about, then get to swan in and enjoy it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:53 PM on November 18, 2016 [22 favorites]

New York's Adam Yauch Park vandalized with swastikas, pro-Trump graffiti

Fuck 2016 so fucking hard.
posted by Cookiebastard at 6:53 PM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

Women Didn’t Abandon Clinton–Nor Did She Fail to Win Their Support
posted by triggerfinger at 6:54 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Manchin is backing Sessions.

This is my surprised face. This is also why, even when it looked like Clinton would win, I knew the Senate would never flip. Manchin would have switched parties to prevent it.
posted by dirigibleman at 6:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

The news article I read said there were over 5000 people involved in this lawsuit, which works out to $5000 each, minus legal fees. And that some had paid $35K for tuition. Under the circumstances, $25M is peanuts.

What the Trump U. Case and Trump’s Candidacy Have in Common

The plaintiffs will now have $25 million to divvy up: nowhere close to the $40 million they spent in total, not to mention interest and credit-card fees.

posted by kirkaracha at 6:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

You don't get to despise so much of what the musical and its cast is about, then get to swan in and enjoy it.

You do if your boss's bullshit charity was funded by a ticket scalper.
posted by holgate at 6:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

In Pence's defense, he probably bought his tickets back when he could safely assume all he'd be doing tonight is being the failed former governor of Indiana.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:00 PM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

Denying the incomers any comfort in culture is important, and it's not just "oh, Broadway and Hollywood Liberals" this time. It needs its joyless and shitty and malevolent nature to shine through.
posted by holgate at 7:04 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

In Pence's defense, he probably bought his tickets back when he could safely assume all he'd be doing tonight is being the failed former governor of Indiana.

You think he bought his tickets? I really doubt that and I doubt that he ever planned on going until the opportunity arose recently. I could be wrong of course but Hamilton doesn't seem like his kind of entertainment.
posted by futz at 7:04 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

He a rich white former radio guy. Broadway plays are totally his kind of entertainment.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Goddamn it, 2016. RIP Miss Sharon Jones.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:08 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

I wonder if Pence is deliberately trying to generate this reaction?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sharon Jones. Dammit. I hate that her last weeks on earth had to be full of, well, this. Rest in peace and power, you glorious, soaring being.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 7:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm sad about Sharon Jones, too; let's give her her own thread and not lose her in this one.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:18 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Steve Bannon to me looks like someone who is trying to drink himself to death.

He makes Dan Harmon look like a fresh-off-the-bus Mormon missionary.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:22 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Steve Bannon to me looks like someone who is trying to drink himself to death.


Breitbart, his predecessor at Breitbart, did exactly that.
posted by ocschwar at 7:34 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

To be honest my biggest fear is that they will put through a jobs bill, like the one Obama tried to put through but they blocked. Or an infrastructure bill, like the one Obama tried to put through but they blocked. Or the bill to retrain workers, or the community college bill, that again, they blocked. And then it will have a positive effect and idiots across the county will say: "See! Why didn't Obama try to help us like this?"
posted by tetsuo at 7:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [32 favorites]

wordshore, i'm in awe of your work on these election threads. but every time you post one--wordshore--that Smiths song gets stuck in my head for a week. so...THANKS!

...please the press in Belgium...
posted by Zerowensboring at 7:42 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

More on the Trump Tower air exclusion zone - it's already in place and is indeed mucking things up, but only until Inauguration Day. Whether it goes beyond that depends on whether he is argued out of the whole TT bed-and-breakfast scheme - I doubt he cares one jot for the chaos and disruption it would cause, but someone will have to foot the bill. That may be legally awkward, but I have no idea.

Still, time to kick off the Trump Is Trashing The Presidency theme. We'll need some good themes when we take those tattered banners of truth into the enemy's social media heartlands. Quite fancy the Maladministration, but it's a bit long.

Perhaps he's confused ATC with the FAA, and wants to give one of his kids the power to deny all carriers except Trump Air rights to NYC airspace.


To be honest my biggest fear is that they will put through a jobs bill...

Of course they will. By then, I hope Obama is off the leash and able to do some righteous nut-kickery. The thing that came through from the New Yorker piece is that he's still got those keen analytics and already has a clear idea of what needs to be done next.

Hell of an ask, though.
posted by Devonian at 7:46 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

And then it will have a positive effect and idiots across the county will say: "See! Why didn't Obama try to help us like this?"

Worrying that the wrong people will give us positive outcomes in this country seems really backward. Will those people who might benefit have to wait until the proper people can take the credit before they can get their legislative relief? Honestly, that sounds like the height of privilege.
posted by indubitable at 7:53 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is the only thing that has made me feel hopeful in a week and a half. Video of the booing.
posted by Brainy at 7:55 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

"I know you're scared honey."
posted by Rumple at 7:56 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

I am going to let Trump actually do something useful first before I worry about it taking away from our message. I mean, considering I still have a daily ugly cry about Horrible Shit that is Suddenly More Likely to Happen to My World, I just refuse to put that worry on my list.
posted by emjaybee at 7:57 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Worrying that the wrong people will give us positive outcomes in this country seems really backward. Will those people who might benefit have to wait until the proper people can take the credit before they can get their legislative relief? Honestly, that sounds like the height of privilege.

Republicans taking credit for some construction projects they blocked under Obama and building political goodwill so they can deport millions of people, roll back civil rights, and gut non-ribbon cutting social programs seems worth fighting against.

But I guess we'll get a few toll-bridges out of it. Fair trade right?
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:01 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

All the replies under the Pence booing video are media companies asking for permission to use it. I know from personal experience this year that there is nothing the press loves more than a topical viral video related to Hamilton (still want to know where you got my cell phone number, Shep Smith's producer). It's perfect fodder for network news. This could be a small thing, at least insofar as anyone pays attention to anything on a Saturday.
posted by zachlipton at 8:01 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, maybe Pence will learn something from the experience.

I loooove it if King Rory actually changed the lyrics.

"Then I saw someone's comment referencing BLM - and it finally occurred to me that people are scared. Scared of a caricature of minorities relentlessly force fed to everyone through popular media. I guess there really are a lot of people who are scared of their PoC neighbours, for no reason other than that it has just been conditioned into them since birth."

So I'm still doing my NaNo novel on presidents and this is reminding me of what Annette Gordon-Reed said in "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy:"

“The history of the South indicated that when whites exercised direct control over blacks, they were far less concerned about exchanging intimacies with them than they became after their system of direct control was shattered. After emancipation, whites who had used black women as wet nurses for their children, as cooks, housekeepers, and maids in the crowded living area of ordinary plantation houses, suddenly became unwilling to sit next to a black person on a park bench.”
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's always been about the 600 ship navy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:09 PM on November 18, 2016

The infrastructure plan (per Bannon, so maybe a caveat there) sounds like a nightmare of weird stupidity spending my taxpayer dollars.

Shipyards and ironworks, straight out of bare-chested fascist manly-manlihood.

(I remember Niall Ferguson -- back when he was an actual historian and not just an obnoxious arsehole -- giving a lecture on the Soviet and Nazi pavilions at the 1937 Expo and the squaring off of competing totalitarianisms in art and architecture.)
posted by holgate at 8:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

The message to Pence from the cast of Hamilton - right before he left

YES!
posted by futz at 8:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [56 favorites]

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right? All those elitist big city libruls getting riled up puts smiles on their faces.

All the replies under the Pence booing video are media companies asking for permission to use it. I know from personal experience this year that there is nothing the press loves more than a topical viral video related to Hamilton (still want to know where you got my cell phone number, Shep Smith's producer). It's perfect fodder for network news.

As with the entire election season, they can play the media like a fiddle.
posted by indubitable at 8:16 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

For those of us unable to listen right now, could somebody sum up the Hamilton cast message to Pence?
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:20 PM on November 18, 2016

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right? All those elitist big city libruls getting riled up puts smiles on their faces.

Of course it does, but also: fuck them. Don't care. Don't care. If they want to go and watch "White People Sing Dull Songs" in Branson, MO, then let them enjoy the breadsticks. Even if it's trolling, because everything is trolling, the basic point is this: you fuckers do not own these parts of culture, and when you step into those rooms you play by their fucking rules, and we will boo you and give you lectures because when you no longer hear those boos then the fucking canary is dead.

But mainly fuck Mike Pence.
posted by holgate at 8:22 PM on November 18, 2016 [93 favorites]

To be honest my biggest fear is that they will put through a jobs bill...

It seems pretty clear they are planning stuff like this, and it will probably go along with rolling back of civil rights and undoing the social safety net. And the stimulus will probably target their own voters as much as possible.

But I think the most damaging narrative to the country and to progressives is this nationalism vs multiculturalism narrative. If Americans can be disavowed of their fear of multiculturalism, it will castrate the Republican Party. So perhaps one of the best things progressives can do is create thriving multicultural communities of our own. Don't let the GOP get in the way of that. Hopefully at some point in time they come to see that our way is working, and their way is failing. To a large extent, I don't think they can unless we let them.

Of course we should also work hard to reveal the stupidity, corruption and injustice of this administration in ways that no one can deny.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:23 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Honestly if I had to pick a most unlikely part of this whole fiasco, it would be "a second act for Mike Pence," who is DUMB AS A ROCK and I really cannot believe is going to be Vice President. Trump is at least "crazy like a fox" as my mom likes to say, but Pence is Just. Flat. Dumb. I just cannot even.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

You can be dumb as a rock and win if you are also mean as a snake.
posted by emjaybee at 8:28 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right? All those elitist big city libruls getting riled up puts smiles on their faces.


Really Really Really don't care what they think. Fuck 'em.
posted by futz at 8:31 PM on November 18, 2016 [29 favorites]

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right? All those elitist big city libruls getting riled up puts smiles on their faces.

You know what they'd enjoy even more? Us rolling over and taking it meekly. The only language such people and their chosen president are going to understand is straight-up resistance.

The sooner people get it into their heads that Trump voters just said, "screw all of you, screw any sense that the country has to have a president of minimal competence, and screw our professed values of godliness and patriotism, too: we just want cash and white male supremacy," the better. Making concessions, seeking "common ground," trying not to "antagonize"...all that does is signal that we are too weak to stand up for ourselves.
posted by praemunire at 8:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [89 favorites]

@MimsyYamaguchi tweeted: I would boo him on a boat ⛵️. Boo him with a 🐐 goat. Boo him here! Boo him there! Boo Mike Pence anywhere. #Hamilton

hee
posted by emjaybee at 8:35 PM on November 18, 2016 [38 favorites]

To elaborate and broaden: if "big city libruls" are under orders not to provide lulz fodder for the denizens of Dumbfuckistan, then we've already lost. Because those are the people who shat themselves senseless for the past eight years.
posted by holgate at 8:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

For those of us unable to listen right now, could somebody sum up the Hamilton cast message to Pence?

"We welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do. We sir, we, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, [cheers] our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us, all of us [applause]. Again, we truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds, and orientations [applause]. And we truly hope that you [?] our show, because you are going to represent all of us. To that end, ladies and gentlemen [cuts off]"
posted by zachlipton at 8:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [42 favorites]

Gonna be such cognitive dissonance for folks when Trump or Pence go to a sporting event and...guess what...also get booed but in a stadium.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:39 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

"The sooner people get it into their heads that Trump voters just said, "screw all of you, screw any sense that the country has to have a president of minimal competence, and screw our professed values of godliness and patriotism, too: we just want cash and white male supremacy," the better. Making concessions, seeking "common ground," trying not to "antagonize"...all that does is signal that we are too weak to stand up for ourselves."

In response to that, I give you Kameron Hurley:

"I stayed up watching the last two Hunger Games movies and realized the point at which things turn is when people realize the capital is going to kill them anyway. This is why I have reiterated and accepted early that this is the new normal, and that it’s following a typical fascist rise to power narrative. Because once you accept that you are among those on the chopping block, you realize you have nothing to lose. And it becomes easier to throw yourself into the fray as willing cannon fodder so the folks with the battering rams can come in behind you if you know you are going to die anyway."
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:40 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Back to infrastructure for a second, wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards? Is there a ship supply shortage we don't know about? The US navy is worried more about antiship missiles these days, and already has a modernized littoral combat ship program and the carrier groups planned out for the next 30 years. Civilian shipping just went through a phase of building out super-capacity Suez-max and Malacca-max container ships which aren't being fully utilized due to the slow down in global growth vs what was projected. Unless we're going to start competing with Dutch and German super-yacht manufacturers, where the hell is the need to sink billions into retrofitting and reactivating shipyards that are currently functioning as a Nordstroms?
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

We were at a different show tonight, a few blocks away, but God Bless the cast of Hamilton.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

But I think the most damaging narrative to the country and to progressives is this nationalism vs multiculturalism narrative.

The narrative the DNC deliberately pushed back against at the convention?

I guess that's gone too, now.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:43 PM on November 18, 2016

Another curtain speech video posted. Actually, many, many such videos now, since the cast invited the audience to film and post it.

A fuller transcript, from a few videos: "Thank you so much for joining us. You know, we had a guest in the audience this evening [laughter], and Vice President-elect Pence, I see you are walking out but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There's nothing to boo here ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing to boo here. We're all sharing a story of love. We have a message for you sir and we hope that you will hear us out. And I encourage everyone to pull out your phones and tweet and post because this message needs to be spread far and wide, ok?

Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do. We sir, we, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, [cheers] our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us, all of us [applause]. Again, we truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds, and orientations [applause]. And we truly hope that you heard our message, because you are going to represent all of us. To that end, ladies and gentlemen, we also thank you for joining us and in that message in that solidarity and truth and standing with your fellow man in any and every circumstance no matter our differences. We are asking you to join with us as well as the other Broadway companies around the world to help support support an organization that we support money for, we raise money for at this time of year. It's called Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. [goes on with the BC/EFA fundraising pitch, which has some new meaning with Pence present.]
posted by zachlipton at 8:48 PM on November 18, 2016 [46 favorites]

wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards?
he doesn't need to show a profit, or actually sell ships. he just has to pay wages to a shit ton of blue collar for four years. he could even finance it with government loans that are never repaid, then let the borrowers file bankruptcy or default. he doesn't fucking care. same with steel.

tl;dr deficit-funded jobs program for white, racist voters.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:48 PM on November 18, 2016 [14 favorites]

Back to infrastructure for a second, wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards?

Marinetti, ''The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism":

We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

So, basically, early 20th-century proto-fascism, male vigour bound up with sparks and hot metal and welding torches and riveting guns. Also:

We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.

Yeah, I know this shit too well.
posted by holgate at 8:53 PM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards?

These guys are doing their level best to fuck us into having a permanent Northwest Passage and will want to capitalize on that. Also, hey, unlimited Arctic shipping's gonna be great for Russia too, funny how that works out.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:02 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

They don't have that much of a plan. Bannon saw it in a movie somewhere and thinks it will go over with the rubes.
posted by benzenedream at 9:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards?

He used to be in the Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer. I'm not sure how much that impacts his thought process but he was in back in the '80s - the days of Reagan's 600 ship Navy plans. As an active duty Naval Officer for the next few months, I and pretty much everyone I know in the Navy is pretty WTF on the announced 12 carriers, 350 ship Navy plan they're shopping around. We're not sure where they'd be based, who'd man them and most importantly, what their mission would be. But all that is apparently optional in the new reality.

I was already scheduled to retire next year but after the election I've moved it up as soon as is possible. 1 April 2017 and I'm out of this DOD mess and hopefully able to do something to resist the craziness that is the Trump administration.
posted by macfly at 9:06 PM on November 18, 2016 [45 favorites]

wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards?

Presumably the dock workers of Kansas, Ohio and Indiana will be especially grateful for all these new jobs.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [34 favorites]

Back to infrastructure for a second, wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards?

I thought that maybe it was similar to Ayn Rand's ladyboner for trains.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Mr. Trump’s best option is to liquidate his stake in the company.

oh, Ivanka, did you have to ruin the country for this? you know your father's not well
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 9:14 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

he doesn't need to show a profit, or actually sell ships. he just has to pay wages to a shit ton of blue collar for four years. he could even finance it with government loans that are never repaid, then let the borrowers file bankruptcy or default. he doesn't fucking care. same with steel.

tl;dr deficit-funded jobs program for white, racist voters.

a. shipbuilding is a skilled profession. And a dangerous one. You don't pick it up in a few days.
b. lotsa black people built ships too.
c. I believe there are unions involved in shipbuilding who aren't going to be thrilled with a bunch of unskilled new scabs.
d. How much of it is automated now? I don't know, I doubt he does either.

I mean, maybe he can provide a Potemkin fake-ship-building set of jobs, maybe, but even that is not an easy thing to do.
posted by emjaybee at 9:14 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

I and pretty much everyone I know in the Navy is pretty WTF on the announced 12 carriers, 350 ship Navy plan they're shopping around

12 more carriers? We already have 14 plus however many helicopter assault ships, more than the rest of the world combined. I joked about the 600 ship navy, but maybe it is always 1983 in Trumpistan. Maybe we can take all the museum plaques down and recommission the USS Missouri while we're at it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:17 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I thought that maybe it was similar to Ayn Rand's ladyboner for trains.

Same impulse as Marinetti.

Yeah, Bannon's a sad-looking old schlub who makes hate-filled websites and shitty films, but man-spaces filled with sparks and glowing metal and velocity is clearly his erectile dysfunction medicine. It's entirely symbolic.

(My grandad worked on a shipyard, and was chosen to go on sea trials because he could cook well enough for the galley. He also fought in a war against fascists.)

Paul Kennedy of Yale has talked a lot about the commitment to maintain of carrier groups as an indication of a failing imperial-style great power. He typically bets on elections with a UK-based bookie; I don't know where he placed his money this time.
posted by holgate at 9:19 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Back to infrastructure for a second, wtf is the deal with Bannon's obsession with shipyards? Is there a ship supply shortage we don't know about?

It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls

The right war can be profitable for the powerful.
posted by Candleman at 9:20 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

There's also a Republican narrative that I first heard with Romney, but continued with Trump that Obama let the military decay and the proof is that we have fewer ships than $arbitrary_point_in_the_past.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:29 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

12 more carriers?

12 total as I understand it. We're at 10 active right now, 1 floated but not commissioned (Ford) and one keel laid, under construction (Kennedy). So 12 isn't a change to the existing planned number but 350 would be about 75 more ships than we currently have. We can't keep the 270 ships in maintenance funding or manpower so adding 75 more is going to require tons more budget. However, typically, congress wants to spend money to build ships (parts can get made in many different districts), to pay for the wars (hoorah, 'Murica!) but not so much to maintain ships (pretty limited to Norfolk, San Diego, Puget Sound) or adequately man them (people are expensive!).
posted by macfly at 9:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

"the days of Reagan's 600 ship Navy plans."

We have a 430 ship navy and the Iron Islands is stupid.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I live pretty close to two of the top shipyards in the US (Bath Ironworks and Kittery Shipyard). Shipbuilding is crazy competitive, and BIW jobs are highly sought after and hard to get. Bidding on new contracts is big news here, and BIW recently lost a significant Coast Guard contract to a non union yard in Florida. The local reporting about it gives a pretty good lay of the land for shipyards, I think.

http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/15/biw-loses-coast-guard-cutter-contract/
posted by anastasiav at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Candleman, even the "wrong" war is profitable for the powerful. All the powerful want is more power.
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 9:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's also a Republican narrative that I first heard with Romney, but continued with Trump that Obama let the military decay and the proof is that we have fewer ships than $arbitrary_point_in_the_past.

"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets."
Goddamn, Obama's aged a lot in the last four years.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:36 PM on November 18, 2016 [15 favorites]

The rate that Trump went from "Move to postpone" to "Cash Settlement" in a week is amazing.

Hmm. The woman who was suing Trump for raping her when she was 13 recently withdrew HER case.

Paula Jones got 800k from Bill Clinton to withdraw her case against him.

If Donald J. Trump paid off the women he allegedly raped when they were 12 and 13, how much did each of them get?
posted by mikelieman at 9:44 PM on November 18, 2016

They don't have that much of a plan. Bannon saw it in a movie somewhere and thinks it will go over with the rubes.

I'm starting to wonder if the best chance the Democrats have of getting policy enacted the next four years is by getting the ear of the scriptwriters on House Of Cards.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:49 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

She didn't withdraw because he paid her. She withdrew because of the avalanche of death threats.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [19 favorites]

Been following the alt-right online for a while now, the numba 1 piece of advice they give is to lift. Those of us on the left who can should follow suit imo. Makes you feel better in general with the helpful side effect of being ready to throw down with fascists

Don't forget cardio! You'll need both strength and endurance to run from jackbooted thugs. "Fortunately" there are lots of hills to sprint up here in SF
posted by en forme de poire at 9:52 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

For foreign diplomats, Trump hotel is place to be

About 100 foreign diplomats, from Brazil to Turkey, gathered at the Trump International Hotel this week to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.

The event for the diplomatic community, held one week after the election, was in the Lincoln Library, a junior ballroom with 16-foot ceilings and velvet drapes that is also available for rent.
...
In interviews with a dozen diplomats, many of whom declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak about anything related to the next U.S. president, some said spending money at Trump’s hotel is an easy, friendly gesture to the new president.

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’ ” said one Asian diplomat.

Guests at the Trump hotel have begun parking themselves in the lobby, ordering expensive cocktails, hoping to see one of the Trump family members or the latest Cabinet pick. One foreign official hoped Trump, famous for the personal interest he takes in his businesses, might check the guest logs himself.

But several expressed concern that spending thousands of dollars on a Trump property could look like an attempt to buy access or favors.

I'm sure this is being treated with the same seriousness as the Clinton Foundation, right?
posted by zachlipton at 9:59 PM on November 18, 2016 [88 favorites]

I'm sure this is being treated with the same seriousness as the Clinton Foundation, right?

But what if the libruls boo Pence? Just think of the optics.
posted by futz at 10:05 PM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

I am much more offended that people interrupted Hamilton than that they booed Pence. For god's sake wait until the show is over.
posted by corb at 10:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

About 100 foreign diplomats, from Brazil to Turkey, gathered at the Trump International Hotel this week to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.

Vomit
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:24 PM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

I am much more offended that people interrupted Hamilton than that they booed Pence. For god's sake wait until the show is over.

They booed him when he was walking in, which was before the show began. They applauded especially loudly at the bits that could be interpreted in ways not quite so amenable to his beliefs. Live theatre sort of allows you to do that. And he fucked off out before the post-curtain words, which is rude. (I see that pitty-Pat Healey, frustrated NYT theatre politics writer was in attendance also.)

As for the diplomats staying at the Old Post Office, they probably know how kleptocracies work and are just applying their experience to a new setting. This is how it will be until it isn't. Let's see what Freedom House is willing to say next year.
posted by holgate at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

She didn't withdraw because he paid her. She withdrew because of the avalanche of death threats.

I've *heard* that, but can't figure out how the harassers pierced the anonymous veils of "Jane Doe" and "Katie Johnson" ( when it was filed in California ), myself to deliver the threats.

An out-of-court settlement makes the most sense. And fits the M.O. in the Trump University Lawsuit.

Avoid being deposed under oath at all costs.

Expect more of the same with the NY Attorney General's Trump Foundation investigation.
posted by mikelieman at 10:41 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am much more offended that people interrupted Hamilton than that they booed Pence. For god's sake wait until the show is over.

They booed him when he was walking in, which was before the show began. They applauded especially loudly at the bits that could be interpreted in ways not quite so amenable to his beliefs

I am 99.9% sure that corb was making light of the situation. In other words, corb was making a joke.
posted by futz at 10:43 PM on November 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

The multiculturalism vs assimilation argument is something that probably does need some attention, at least from a, well, perspective perspective. If you plotted a line from uniformity or complete assimilation to multiculturalism, as its often perceived where it represents body of unassimilated groups or groups lacking common culture sharing the same space, one can potentially see where the fear of the latter would lie as people often fear those they don't understand and who are seeming to actively resist being understood by adopting common sets of values or norms.

Between these two points though is the concept of diversity, where different groups share the same space and keep some aspects of cultural difference, but largely share the same belief sets in regards to public behaviors and shared institutions and the like. Diversity, for example, in food choices, with the ever widening variety of ethnic specialties available to all bothers very few people as it isn't generally seen as ideological in itself. Something like music, however, where people tend to attach ideology to identity in their choice of arts to appreciate can seem more fraught with conflict as the ideas or feelings the works express can seem hostile to those unfamiliar as music is a different sort of shared experience than food, which is both an individual choice and language free in its partaking. Music played in common areas is a shared experience and it contains rational and non-rational appeals that can disrupt or challenge competing value sets. This can be even more true for other forms of language and life style choices depending on what they are based around and what they are competing against or "threatening".

Celebrating multiculturalism can be perceived then as more of an attack on values or a move away from uniformity or commonality than simply acknowledging diversity might, if that diversity is still based in an acceptance of shared ideological norms. The irony is, of course, that it is the fear of multiculturalism that has pushed the right to ignore or actively seek to destroy many cultural norms in our political system and public sphere due to fears of others they believe are seeking to do the same. Those fears are largely unfounded in the areas they are seeking to change and for laws they are seeking to retard, but there is some basis for apprehension in areas of discourse where different groups are now able to talk to each other and are sharing widely different attitudes towards what things mean. Now, most of us would likely agree on many areas over that discourse and how to best understand its meaning, but it does represent a real challenge to many established beliefs, and in that, those holding those beliefs will feel threatened.

It doesn't work, I think, to simply dismiss these fears of differing values as being only the product of racism or sexism since there is in them, if taken as a group, an incoherence that is hard to smooth over. The same is true for many established beliefs, Christianity, for example, is often spoken of as a monolithic value system, when it too is almost completely incoherent when looked at in practice or in comparisons of individual's beliefs. It only "makes sense" because of its established history and long standing practice of being held at arm's length from close examination in the public sphere. Newer values do not have that luxury, so they spark more intense examination or speculation. As with so many things in this election, the solution to this problem comes through education and dialogue, but those are precisely the areas that have proven weakest lately and that is due to these vary things shaping perspectives. It's crucial that we find a way to better communicate and work to reduce ignorance all around, but I fear we are entering a time when that may not be possible given the areas of divide that we are operating from.

To uphold the values of things like largely unfettered free speech and established rules of law against those who would misuse those tools to harm or who would favor censorship and violence to the constitution is an impossible position to maintain for long if the will to harm is strong enough as values which only exist by dint of commonality are easily destroyed by denial of norms. One ends up in a position of having to wait for a significant violation of norms before one can act, otherwise you yourself are the one breaking the social contract.

This places the potential violators in the position of power as they are the ones who will decide which values are upheld and which are denied. It's only the will of the populace then that will decide the fate of the social contract, and when so many people are completely disengaged from the process, the importance of communication becomes central to maintaining or creating understanding of the importance of given beliefs. Communicating that importance becomes almost impossible when groups cannot come together in common understanding or language to express shared sympathies. And that is, I fear, where we find ourselves now, with the right on the verge of destroying our system of values and rules and the left unable to express consistent or clear opposition due to the multiplicity of beliefs vying for prominence. We are at an impasse and in this system, the impasse itself may prove to be the agent of dissolution.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:46 PM on November 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Alt-right retaliates against Twitter ban by creating 'fake black accounts’

White supremacist website the Daily Stormer claims that it has already created thousand of what it refers to as “fake black person” accounts to troll Twitter and confuse its users. It is now urging its readers to do the same in retaliation for Twitter suspending high-profile rightwing users.

...In a YouTube video complaining about his suspension from Twitter, Spencer described the “great purge” as “corporate Stalinism”.

“I am alive physically, but digitally speaking, there have been execution squads across the alt-right,” he said.

It’s not clear what the alt-right plans to do with these newly created Twitter accounts, but Anglin seems intent on damaging the company, arguing that it won’t be able to “maintain its prominent role in the social networking market when it bans all non-SJW [‘social justice warrior’, aka liberal] political accounts and becomes a safespace hugbox”.

He told his readers that “further orders will follow shortly”.
posted by futz at 11:02 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hilary Clinton's Flawed Algorithm Pissed Off the Data Science Gods

There was a bit more on Naked Capitalism about the problems with the Ada software and the campaign in general.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:31 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I joked about the 600 ship navy, but maybe it is always 1983 in Trumpistan.

do you think he knows that nick fury's helicarriers were fictional?
posted by poffin boffin at 11:48 PM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

I for reals went through a *no medical marijuana is it time for me to look at that Canada possibility again* and then took a beat and started laughing like hell.

Because, since the election I've been feeling like a shitty person because I'm not gay, black, trans*, or Latin@. Like because I'm not in those groups, I won't take the brunt of the bad things the election will bring, at least, not for a bit. I'm a disabled woman, but really, come on, I'm white, and while the disabled may get it in a few years it's gonna be a few more groups in the camps before they get to us chronically ill people. And while I will have a hard time taking any woman seriously who I know voted for Trump for sexual assault reasons, white men are going to need some way to breed, and I imagine that The Handmaids Tale is a few years out, too.

Ah, but medical marijuana. I've tried everything under the sun, and, marijuana is the only the that allows me to transcend my pain 95% of the time. I've been buying my illegally for years, so when the libertarians get all excited about it, I roll my eyes. But at the same time, I've been glad to see it legalized. It means that the laws won't be applied racially anymore, and it meant that I didn't have to treat my frequent use like a shameful secret.

Sigh, weed. You're a wonderful plant. I didn't anticipate until now that my dependence upon you might be might be greatly impacted by this election.

I mean Jeff Sessions is a bastard for all sorts of reasons, his weird weed hatred maybe being the least important of said reasons.
posted by angrycat at 12:10 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Joey Michaels: "Presumably the dock workers of Kansas, Ohio and Indiana will be especially grateful for all these new jobs."

Lots of sub assemblies can be built in places far from any deep water port/shipyard. See for example the Space Shuttle which had assemblies made in dozens of states.
posted by Mitheral at 12:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Agreed I'm mocking his obsession with shipyards specifically.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:34 AM on November 19, 2016

I'm sorry, I feel like I wrote that badly. What I meant to say was that I'd had been feeling bad since the election that I didn't have the target on my back that some people near and dear to me do have. And it feels really weird that *weed* would put a target on my back, like, that's a fake target, knock it off. But I've tried everything and marijuana is the only thing that allows me to enjoy a quality of life. So while I've always been *whatever* with libertarians and demands that Obama legalize pot, I am worried that Sessions will be like *you chemotherapy patient with a month to live should not be eating brownies and you are not a good person* and he will get away with it because a) Trump won't give a shit b) The cabinet will feel empowered to go after whatever the hell they want.
posted by angrycat at 1:09 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

danah boyd, social data specialist, on the media's handling of polling, and data-tech's task ahead: "Reality check: I blame the media."

The media is supposed to be a check to power, but, for years now, it has basked in becoming power in its own right. What worries me right now is that, as it continues to report out the spectacle, it has no structure for self-reflection, for understanding its weaknesses, its potential for manipulation. [...]

This election has been a spectacle because the media has enjoyed making it as such. And in doing so, they showcased just how easily they could be gamed. I refer to the sector as a whole because individual journalists and editors are operating within a structural frame, unmotivated to change the status quo even as they see similar structural problems to the ones I do. They feel as though they “have” to tell a story because others are doing so, because their readers can’t resist reading. They live in the world pressured by clicks and other elements of the attention economy. They need attention in order to survive financially. And they need a spectacle, a close race.
We all know that story. It’s not new. What is new is that they got played.[...]

In the tech sector, we imagined that decentralized networks would bring people together for a healthier democracy. We hung onto this belief even as we saw that this wasn’t playing out. We built the structures for hate to flow along the same pathways as knowledge, but we kept hoping that this wasn’t really what was happening. We aided and abetted the media’s suicide.[...]

We live in a world shaped by fear and hype, not because it has to be that way, but because this is the obvious paradigm that can fuel the capitalist information architectures we have produced.[...]

We need to actively work to understand complexity, respectfully engage people where they’re at, and build the infrastructure to enable people to hear and appreciate different perspectives. This is what it means to be truly informed.[...]

The media industry needs to take responsibility for its role in producing spectacle for selfish purposes. There is a reason that the public doesn’t trust institutions in this country. And what the media has chosen to do is far from producing information. It has chosen to produce anxiety in the hopes that we will obsessively come back for more. That is unhealthy. And it’s making us an unhealthy country.

Spectacle has a cost. It always has. And we are about to see what that cost will be.
posted by progosk at 1:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [31 favorites]

Listening to a war story of a POC friend of a friend who flew from California to Ohio to canvass for Clinton. He admits that after the Jay-Z/Beyoncé concert, Hillary came on stage to speak for four minutes, and people left during it. They just didn't vibe with her. He describes the boarded up buildings in Cleveland. He talked to the most African Americans in his entire life. The way the recession affected people in California is far different from how it affected people in Ohio- real evictions. He states that if Trump was somehow not racist, he wouldnt be sure if he wouldn't vote for her. Hanging out with other Democratic staffers in Ohio, he ended up taking a 190 mile Uber ride to the airport with the driver's friend, both Trump supporters. He realized:

1. The driver, a young and religious millennial, believed that despite Trump's infidelities, having a "man of God next to him" in the form of Mike Pence allowed him the chance for salvation.

2. He asked them that suppose there was a paragon of virtue, like a Mother Theresa, running for office, except Jewish. Would they vote for that person? And they said no.

3. One evinced that the pro-life position did not stop at the birth of an unwanted child, but the ideal is to take care of the mother and her child for the rest of their lives. I expressed great skepticism there at the hypocrisy of the Republican Party, but I'm just reporting what he said.

He talked of houses in East Cleveland that in Cupertino would cost $2.2 million these days, easy, that cost only $1200 now. About asking people (not only white) why they don't leave in the advent of the closing of the GM plant and the collapse of the local economy and being met with "Why would we leave? It's home."

95% of the folks he knocked on were African American, they called him a "dirty Muslim" despite that not being his faith. Most were voting for Trump.

As someone on a coast, I feel that I'm completely ignorant of the plight of these fellow citizens. That's what this friend of a friend concluded as well.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:54 AM on November 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

Vote with your feet, y'all. Canada has just relaxed immigration rules that make it easier for Americans to get permanent residency.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 2:09 AM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Do it quick; offer only valid while NAFTA is in force.
posted by Mitheral at 2:17 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump to inherit drone assassination programme which has 'no effective rules'.
The programme for which Barack Obama failed to put any effective rules in place has killed up to 4,666 people, including 745 civilians, under his presidency, new figures show
posted by adamvasco at 3:01 AM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

#NameAPenceMusical is trending and brutal.
posted by zachlipton at 3:36 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Russian spokeswoman says Jews behind Trump win because why the fsck not.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:02 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

There was a bit more on Naked Capitalism about the problems with the Ada software and the campaign in general.

I used to love Naked Capitalism but I felt like they lost their minds during the election. Their vitriol against Clinton and tolerance of Trump was really hard to take. I had to stop reading them, and they used to be one of my daily must reads.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:15 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Corb, I saw this and thought of you.
posted by Talez at 4:29 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Listening to a war story of a POC friend of a friend who flew from California to Ohio to canvass for Clinton.

I canvassed in and around Columbus, and I too was shocked at some of the poverty I saw, but also how raw the lists were. On election day I was still knocking on doors to find that the person had moved, and found two eviction notices.

I still need to process what happened the four days I was there. I just tried to write something and it was incoherent.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:31 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

This Jacobin piece is absolutely brutal and very worth the read. It takes no prisoners.
posted by adamvasco at 4:37 AM on November 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'd like to know more about this Ada software we were apparently so heavily dependent upon.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:48 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

As someone on a coast, I feel that I'm completely ignorant of the plight of these fellow citizens.

You mean the uber-anti-abortion, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim bigots?

Yeah. They can cry me a river. The only reason I could care about them is to get their votes. I have no sympathy.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:17 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump supporters "protest" Starbucks by purchasing Starbucks products

In other silly coffee-related news, the Russiano: making Americanos great again.
posted by peeedro at 5:20 AM on November 19, 2016

build the infrastructure to enable people to hear and appreciate different perspectives

What infrastructure? She can't mean the technology infrastructure - as she notes above, we built it already, and people used it for Pepe the frog
posted by thelonius at 5:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

for example the Space Shuttle which had assemblies made in dozens of states.

Ok, so if we learned anything, it's don't do it that way. It BARELY worked and NEVER met expectations.
posted by mikelieman at 5:48 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

So, basically, early 20th-century proto-fascism, male vigour bound up with sparks and hot metal and welding torches and riveting guns. Also:

Look, I'm not Sigmund Freud, but...
posted by acb at 5:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

That Jacobin piece is truly brutal and flies in the face of a lot of the sub-discussions in these MeFi threads, but man, this was the scariest part for me:

"Incredible though it may seem, our systems are better girded against a soft left than a hard right. Whether in Europe or America, the elite consensus to destroy any left wingers crazy enough to decry the state of things, in even the mildest terms, exists to preserve what they have now."

posted by klarck at 5:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

We need to actively work to understand complexity, respectfully engage people where they’re at, and build the infrastructure to enable people to hear and appreciate different perspectives. This is what it means to be truly informed.[...]

The media industry needs to take responsibility for its role in producing spectacle for selfish purposes

Now that Facebook has an established monopoly for the demand for, well, Facebook,
and the same applies to Google and Twitter, all these players have a responsibility for 1. not being played by propaganda outfits, and 2. bursting filter bubbles.

I know first hand Facebook employees are looking at this.
posted by ocschwar at 5:52 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Incredible though it may seem, our systems are better girded against a soft left than a hard right. Whether in Europe or America, the elite consensus to destroy any left wingers crazy enough to decry the state of things, in even the mildest terms, exists to preserve what they have now."

That's completely true, and has been obvious to anybody even vaguely left of the Dems for years. To get the feds on you on the militia right you need to be planning murders. To get the feds on you on the socialist left you pretty much need to form an organization and hold meetings.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:56 AM on November 19, 2016 [41 favorites]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:05 AM on November 19, 2016 [33 favorites]

Pope Guilty, I just made a sound I didn't know I could make.

I may keep making it for a while, now.
posted by vers at 6:09 AM on November 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.

Best response I've seen so far: "So we not only need to coddle bigots, we need to ensure that public buildings become safe spaces for them?"
posted by Talez at 6:13 AM on November 19, 2016 [40 favorites]

Shipyards?

Oh, for fuck;'s sake, someone brief Steve Bannon about the ghost fleet of idle ships anchored around the Straits of Malacca.

We need shipyards like we need backyard furnaces for a Great Leap Forward to Make America Great Again!

Down with Liberal Imperialist Running Dogs!
posted by ocschwar at 6:24 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.

Can't wait to see how this motherfucker reacts to the way the citizens of DC greet him at his reception.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:25 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Can't wait to see how this motherfucker reacts to the way the citizens of DC greet him at his reception.


Stock up on vuvuzelas.
posted by ocschwar at 6:26 AM on November 19, 2016 [38 favorites]

Maybe they can convert the shipyards to shipbreaking facilities once America has swapped places with Bangladesh.
posted by acb at 6:28 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.

It was the "Apologize!" that made me laugh outloud-- with gusto.

The penny dropped for me on reading the WaPo article posted by zachlipton that of course the Old Post Office is going to be a money maker for the Trump family empire. I had taken comfort in all those articles about how bookings were down and they had to slash their room rates but having a Trump business only blocks from the Trump White House is going to be a natural draw for lobbyists, diplomats, and tourists. Another punch to the gut.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:28 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

From Trump's reaction, you'd think last night was the worse thing to ever happen to a politician at a play.
posted by chris24 at 6:31 AM on November 19, 2016 [99 favorites]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.

Yet on Day 1 schools will no longer be safe spaces, guns will be allowed.

.....
posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:36 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yet on Day 1 schools will no longer be safe spaces, guns will be allowed.

To be fair, they only consider white males above the age of 18 to be people so at least they're internally consistent.
posted by Talez at 6:37 AM on November 19, 2016

A group of white high school students in Mississippi placed a noose around a black student’s neck and “yanked backward,” according to an NAACP leader, who described the incident Monday and demanded that federal authorities treat it as a hate crime. . . .

Initially, the Stone County Sheriff’s Department discouraged the student’s parents from filing a police report because one of the white students’ parents is a former law enforcement officer, Johnson said.

Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Boggs disputed that account, saying he told Stacey Payton, the mother, that filing a criminal case could stir resentment among some students and bring her son troubles at school, according to the AP.
posted by EarBucket at 6:39 AM on November 19, 2016 [24 favorites]

Mod note: A few deleted; the commenter removed the link. As a reminder, please don't use edit to substantially change your comment. It's meant to be for typos and small errors only, to avoid confusion like a half dozen+ people responding to a comment that is now no longer there.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:40 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

angrycat's comment last night made me spend some time reflecting about how we are all checking ourselves for vulnerabilities:

I work for the EPA but at least I'm not Jewish
I'm a woman but at least I'm not gay
I'm handicapped but at least I'm not Latinx
I'm Black but at least I'm not Muslim
I'm poor but at least I'm not here illegally*

trying assess ourselves, our families, our friends-- how bad is it going to be? When will it start? Should I prepare for the worst, and how?

This is not normal. This is unprecedented. We have elected a President not an executioner yet somehow there is sense of doom, of waiting in line to be punished for being, for existing.

(*I hope this doesn't come across as me ranking people in any way nor pitting one group against each other. What I am trying to convey in my clumsy way is that we are terrified of a Trump Presidency.)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:44 AM on November 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

that filing a criminal case could stir resentment among some students and bring her son troubles at school

But not, uh, the noose being put around his neck. That doesn't count as trouble, apparently. Or resentment.

I gotta say, even for 2016, that's some blatant "we don't give a fuck about black kids".
posted by E. Whitehall at 6:46 AM on November 19, 2016 [39 favorites]

This is where we are now, where I start to respect Axl Rose again.

@axlrose
Good people don't listen to, acknowledge, nominate or elect people like Senator Jeff Sessions.
posted by chris24 at 6:47 AM on November 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

I was just thinking this morning that he's a hell of a frontman.
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

So Trump tweets in outrage at Hamilton, stays silent on actual school lynching.

At this point, I no longer care about protocol, because they are beyond protocol except as a weapon of restrain.

I want Obama to address the nation and lay it on the line.
posted by Devonian at 6:59 AM on November 19, 2016 [32 favorites]

I like Hishelm a lot more when he's writing about Trump.

The America we deserve and cherish
posted by Golden Eternity at 6:59 AM on November 19, 2016

The best part of Trump's Hamilton tweets is how much he shows he can't handle any disapproval or boos. Which just guarantees that he has 4 years of it.

Don't boo, vote. But once the votes are counted, boo unmercifully.
posted by chris24 at 7:01 AM on November 19, 2016 [43 favorites]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.

From that "truly brutal" Jacobin piece mentioned above:

Now, every day, and in every way, it is time to say “go fuck yourself” to Trump and his ilk, until the weapons capable of destroying him can be perfected.

posted by Mister Bijou at 7:03 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Oct 2015 Bloomberg longform article on Steve Bannon that I couldn't find linked previously makes a pretty good case (in retrospect) that the Brietbart machine put Trump in the White House.
posted by sammyo at 7:07 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

This Jacobin piece is absolutely brutal and very worth the read. It takes no prisoners.
posted by adamvasco at 7:37 AM on November 19

Finally before I start on my day and get some shit done, I really wanted to comment on this piece. It is indeed a muscular essay with an attention-getting intro-- but be aware it is a hit piece by a die-hard BernieBro who thinks Clinton is The Worst Presidential Candidate in American History. His evidence that she is The Worst is that she lost. (Also she is venal, mediocre, and had no good reason to pursue the highest office in the land other then that she nowhere else to go but up.) I'm seeing this "evidence" a lot lately-- she lost to Terrible Trump the monster-- ergo she must be the The Worst, ever. This, coupled with the idea that the Democrats must now build a bridge to the WWC, is giving me the impression that some people are thinking "We gave you a chance, women, at the highest office in the land and you fucked up. Back to the kitchen. You can't handle being President."

I could go through and counter each of his points against her ( she never apologized for the EMAILZ, thinking she knew how to do the job well was not a good enough reason to run, she cannibalized Bernie's platform for her own selfish use etc, etc) but we have gone over and over this same ground and it is tiresome. And what it boils down to is an essay is a one-sided argument and you, the reader, have to shut up and take the hits even if it makes you crazed with anger.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:09 AM on November 19, 2016 [63 favorites]

Also the Hunter S Thompson wannabe intro to the Jacobin piece sucks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:11 AM on November 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

she never apologized for the EMAILZ

Hillary Clinton apologizes for e-mail system: ‘I take responsibility’

“As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility,” Clinton said in an interview with ABC News.

Hillary Clinton just gave her best answer on the email controversy. By far.

"I have been asked many, many questions in the past year about emails, and what I have learned is that when I try to explain what happened, it can sound like I am trying to excuse what I did," Clinton said. "And there are no excuses. I want people to know that the decision to have a single account was mine. I take responsibility for it. I apologize for it."
posted by chris24 at 7:12 AM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

One more thing: #BoycottHamilton is the number one trend on Twitter right now. Hilarious and on a par with "punish Starbucks by buying their coffee." Hamilton is sold out for the next year-- so bring on the boycott! Maybe somebody who really wants to see it will be able to get tickets.


“As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility,” Clinton said in an interview with ABC News.

Chris24, you can repeat this til you are blue in the face and it doesn't matter. Hillary is the Worst because she never apologized is a well established "factoid" now in post-truth America.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:17 AM on November 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

She 100% gets a pass from me on the emails bullshit. The fact that she had a particular headwind against her as the object of a twenty-year misogynist smear campaign, that's more complicated but it's certainly not her fault and I don't see what else the Dem electorate could have done -- it's not like it would have been right to throw her under the bus because of that.

But the campaign, in retrospect, relied on crappy data, misallocated resources as a result, and ended up narrowly losing* an election that should have been won. That's not on Clinton alone but on the whole campaign and on the whole Democratic Party apparatus.

As much as I distrust the Michael Moores and the Jacobins, the firebrands on the left who tend to content themselves with grandstanding from the sidelines -- well, they did get it right and their analyses deserve a hearing.

I think the only cure for fascism is a genuinely multiracial and intersectional social democratic movement. Democrats must build that movement, and quickly.

*I know she won the popular vote. And that's useful for rhetorical purposes, and for undermining claims of a fascist popular mandate -- but it doesn't mean she "really" won. She really lost, under the clear if stupid and racist rules of our system.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:22 AM on November 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

you can repeat this til you are blue in the face and it doesn't matter.

Not disagreeing with the larger prediction, but for myself, I really appreciate the linkage and refutation of points like that, from folks who have followed the details of all this more closely than I have. I do think there are a lot of people (not all but some) who are susceptible to the chipping away of "no, here, take a look, reconsider that source because they're wrong about this".
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

@jbouie
If demands for safety and security from nonwhite groups leads to white identity politics, that tells you about the character of the latter.
posted by chris24 at 7:25 AM on November 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

The Stark Contrast Between GOP’s Self-Criticism in 2012 and Democrats’ Blame-Everyone-Else Posture Now; Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept.
posted by bukvich at 7:26 AM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, well, I would love to see some self-reflection from the people on the left who insisted that Hillary and Trump were identical and she was just as bad as him because neoliberalism. I don't expect to see it, but it would be nice.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:31 AM on November 19, 2016 [42 favorites]

The last time the President got involved in a Broadway controversy. : The cast's reservations turned out to be well-founded, Hunt says, when the White House called a second time. "All of a sudden they came back and asked if we would make some cuts in the show," Hunt says. Hunt, librettist Peter Stone and the cast all felt it was no coincidence that the Nixon White House wanted to cut "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men," a Broadway-style minuet sung by conservatives intent on steering the country, as Sherman Edwards' lyric goes, "never to the left ... forever to the right." Nixon staffers also requested excision of the song "Momma Look Sharp," a dialogue between a dying soldier and his mother.

According to Daniels, the production stood its ground: "The producers told them no, absolutely not." And Hunt adds, "We told them it was a kind of censorship." Nixon's staff dropped the request for cuts, and the cast decided that the show should play the White House.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:34 AM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah, well, I would love to see some self-reflection from the people on the left who insisted that Hillary and Trump were identical and she was just as bad as him because neoliberalism. I don't expect to see it, but it would be nice.

Absolutely, I agree with this as well. I think pretty much everyone could stand a healthy dose of self-criticism right now, including us Mefites and including me.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:41 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Chris24, you can repeat this til you are blue in the face and it doesn't matter. Hillary is the Worst because she never apologized is a well established "factoid" now in post-truth America.

This is true; but we should also not stop telling the truth just because it's being shut down, ignored or outshouted. The truth is still the truth, even if no one seems to be listening.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:48 AM on November 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I kind of feel whatever wise words Obama had to say to Trump about the First Amendment hit some circuitry in Trump's brain where everything Obama said reminded Trump of his own twitter account and all the sick burns he planned to make.
posted by angrycat at 7:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The latest visual manifestation of Trump's America comes from Adam Yauch Park, a playground named for the late Beastie Boy in the neighborhood he grew up in, Brooklyn Heights. On Friday afternoon a few photos surfaced on Twitter showing two swastikas painted on the children's playground equipment, along with the words: "Go Trump."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:56 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Stark Contrast Between GOP’s Self-Criticism in 2012 and Democrats’ Blame-Everyone-Else Posture Now; Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept.

One irony of 2016 is that the candidate who won the GOP nomination, and ultimately the presidency, not only ignored many of the autopsy’s core recommendations but embodied everything it warned against.

"I realize my argument is basically garbage, but I'm going to make it anyway."
posted by fleacircus at 7:57 AM on November 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right?

The thing about cats is that they will fuck shit up even without catnip.
posted by srboisvert at 7:58 AM on November 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

Yeah, well, I would love to see some self-reflection from the people on the left who insisted that Hillary and Trump were identical and she was just as bad as him because neoliberalism. I don't expect to see it, but it would be nice.

It's very interesting that the left blogs who were all "Hillary and Trump are equally bad" are now talking up how terrible the crisis is, and my friends who were saying that Hillary was worse ("she'll get us into WWII" was the talking point) are all "it's so terrible now Trump is president". I am going to move past this, because look, they were just wrong in a climate when many were, but sometimes I wish I could tell them, "Have the courage of your convictions - the less bad candidate won, right? Shouldn't you be celebrating that we won't be getting into WWIII?" And these are people of the left.

Orwell talked about this kind of thinking - where we on the left willfully pretend we don't think something we do think, because it doesn't go with our ideology. His point was that in reality, anyone on the British left would always prefer America to the Stalin-era USSR, automatically and immediately, if they actually had to choose a ruler, but that everyone pretended otherwise because it was politically incorrect to admit your real feelings. Similarly, I think almost everyone on the left actually preferred Hillary given a forced-choice, but we didn't want to say that. I remember the same thing from the Nader era. I didn't talk politics with any of my left friends because a chilly silence descended every time I said I was worried about Trump winning and would prefer Hillary. Ironically, I talked far more politics with centrists than anyone else this year.

This was very clear to me in my head at the time, but I believed Hillary would win so I let it alone. I knew I was keeping quiet around certain people because there would be a huge social cost. Even now, I know that saying I wish Hillary had won and I'm worried about social security and medicare is not cool - whether that's because we on the left think we're never going to age (but we're all forty, for fuck's sake! with retired parents!) or because we think the revolution is going to come soon.

I think I need to start speaking up about why I'm personally worried about these things. In reality, I think people believe it bourgeois and spoiled to talk about retirement, but that's because they haven't seen working class people get too old/disabled to work anymore, and also because of age segregation in the movement. And also because a surprising number of people in my social milieu are from solidly middle-class backgrounds. I don't think they realize that their parents' retirements would be a lot, a LOT harder without social security and medicare. You have to be pretty rich before those things don't matter, even if you have investments as well.

Also, city people don't see that whole "shitty part time work until you're fifty and your health gives out so you go on disability" thing that is everywhere in the countryside - it's not that it doesn't happen here, but it's not your whole town. What do we all think is going to happen to those people? They should just crawl in the street and die?

My union at least has some common sense on this and I'm going to have to get more plugged in with them, which I signed up for yesterday.
posted by Frowner at 7:59 AM on November 19, 2016 [64 favorites]

I think that when nobody was predicting Trump's victory (well, nobody looking at the data, anyway), it was very easy to make booming pronouncements of moral purity. It's super easy to talk about how shitty it is to have a roof when you don't think you'll actually get rained on.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:04 AM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

guys lets focus on assigning blame instead of stopping the literal fascist regime hatching ok
posted by entropicamericana at 8:06 AM on November 19, 2016 [32 favorites]

@carlbernstein: ReTrump-Hamilton: painfully clear last 24 hrs trump doesn't comprehend the American idea and is sadly ignorant of our history & its meaning.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:10 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Similarly, I think almost everyone on the left actually preferred Hillary given a forced-choice, but we didn't want to say that. I remember the same thing from the Nader era.

I voted for Nader in 2000. At the time, it didn't seem to me like there was too much difference between the parties -- both neoliberal and beholden to corporate interests. One of them had an unhealthy fascination with other people's sex lives, but that seemed pretty inconsequential at the time. It didn't occur to me at the time what kind of practical consequences this could have... .

One thing I clearly remember about Bush II: after becoming President despite the loss of the popular vote, his approval ratings were consistently low and there were regular anti-Bush demonstrations. Then, 9/11 happened. Now I think the idea that this was somehow an orchestrated event to boost his popularity is ridiculous; a non-starter. But I do worry that the people around soon-to-be-President Trump might look at that change and start getting ideas.
posted by Slothrup at 8:11 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Have any prominent Republicans commented on the swastika becoming an unofficial symbol of their party yet?
posted by EarBucket at 8:16 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

i think the horrible truth is that there are not legitimate means to stop the hatching of the regime, so there are only a few ways that panicked minds can take the conversation. i am not interested in autopsies of the HRC campaign myself, but I understand why people want to go that way.

The tremendous anxiety and anger is like the little girl's power in Firestarter: it either has to start some shit on fire or get thrown into the water. Reliving the campaign is a kind of water for our collective anger/anxiety. Except that the metaphorical water doesn't really soothe anything here, so maybe that's a shit metaphor.
posted by angrycat at 8:18 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

guys lets focus on assigning blame instead of stopping the literal fascist regime hatching ok

Why not both? What good is stopping this particular regime if we can't learn from the mistakes that led to this one?
posted by tonycpsu at 8:19 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh my god, you guys.Donald Trump meeting with Gen James Matthis Saturday, considering him for SecDef.

If he does this his loyalty from the military will immediately shoot up. Mattis was most of our secret dreams for President.
posted by corb at 8:20 AM on November 19, 2016

Well obviously the swastika taggers don't represent the whole party. But every IED on the planet is a reflection on all of Islam. Duh.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:21 AM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Why not both? What good is stopping this particular regime if we can't learn from the mistakes that led to this one?

when i am literally on fire, i tend to stop, drop, and roll and THEN rethink the path that let to that place ymmv
posted by entropicamericana at 8:31 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Abraham Lincoln would have fully supported making the theatre a safe space.
posted by dr_dank at 8:32 AM on November 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

when i am literally on fire, i tend to stop, drop, and roll and THEN rethink the path that let to that place ymmv

Many of us are already doing everything we can to put out the fire, but the fire is not going to go out for as long as Donald Trump is President, which, by your logic, means we cannot possibly assign any resources to learning lessons and planning for the next fight until 11/4/2020. Of course then if he gets reelected, we're on fire again, so the time for learning is literally never until we get the President we want.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:38 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right?

The thing about cats is that they will fuck shit up even without catnip.


If 'is this catnip for Trump voters' is considered before taking any action, might as well just sit back and do nothing. Any 'Trump and his admin are bad' action is catnip at this point. Currently these folks are getting pissed at every little thing that's not 'oh great leader, we worship you, and yes we know you won and we'll shut up now'.
posted by Jalliah at 8:40 AM on November 19, 2016 [40 favorites]

re: Email.

you can repeat this til you are blue in the face and it doesn't matter.

I've run email servers since the days I had to apply patches to the qmail source and compile them myself.

And I read the entirety of the FBI report.

I've explained the facts carefully, fully, and completely to many people.

Doesn't matter a whit.

Indeed. This is, as described earlier, "post-Truth America."
posted by mikelieman at 8:44 AM on November 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. Cool it with the sarcastic thing over whether retrospection is useful. If you want to talk about something else go ahead and talk about that instead.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:44 AM on November 19, 2016

Conflict of Interest Watch...

In between the tweeting and meeting. Also mentions other deals in India. The art of the deal: work with local developers via brand licensing agreements and not make any equity investment.

Donald Trump’s firm signs deal for Kolkata real estate project
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:47 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

If 'is this catnip for Trump voters' is considered before taking any action, might as well just sit back and do nothing.

Yeah, I don't care if what I do makes them happy. They're happy that I'm angry? Fuck their joy, I'm going to be angry anyways, and push back whenever I can. I don't give a damn if it makes the channers hard, because, y'know what? Their erections accomplish nothing but pushing back wherever we can matters.
posted by jackbishop at 8:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't really have a lot of "blame" feelings about the election, actually. We were all wrong, really wrong, for a variety of structural reasons. And something else that no one has said too often - it's rare in recent history for a two-term president to be followed by another of the same party. I think that between that fact and the structural issues, we would be looking at a Republican no matter what. It may be that Trump is a better option than Cruz, because he will provoke more resistance - I know that's "making lemonade out of disgusting moldy lemons at the bottom of the fruit bowl, and no sugar either", but we'd still be looking at the Ryan budget if Cruz won, and no booing at Hamilton, I bet.

That's one of the things that Jacobin piece gets really, really right (although I don't think Sanders would have won) - that this election was heavily determined by a lot of stuff in place before it even started.

Another that I think it gets right is the idea that a mixture of feelings provoked Republican reactionary sentiment. We don't have to make nice with racists to see that in a racist country, economic and social decline gets channeled into old, familiar white racism - the racism is there already as a bedrock, but the really existing problems bring it to the surface. I think, actually, that Jacobin is right (again; this is like a nightmare!) that the only conscionable response to this mixture of racism and actual suffering is a multi-racial popular movement about economic justice - some white racists will abandon their racism if there's a better alternative (we've seen this in labor history) and then you have a coalition. It's not acceptable to pander to white racists, no matter how much they're hurting economically, but the economic problem is real and can be targeted by the same measures that benefit everyone.
posted by Frowner at 8:52 AM on November 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

A recap of the Mike Pence Hamilton experience.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:56 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

the racism is there already as a bedrock

Two hundred years of slavery, 100 years of apartheid, 50 years of post-apartheid.
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:56 AM on November 19, 2016

On the subject of reaching a compromise with Trumpists, and on what we can do to make them less angry at everyone not them, and what we can do to get them to work with us instead of hating us, I think it's time to bust out Abe's old Cooper Union speech:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

If we eagerly supported the deportation of our undocumented friends and the registration of our Muslim friends and the conversion of our queer friends and the subordination of our Black friends and the revocation of women's right to decide whether or not they want to carry out the grueling task of building babies inside their bodies, then they would stop being mad at us. If we joined with the Dark Enlightenment loons in supporting monarchy — and, gosh, looks like the Dark Enlightenment went out and found themselves a monarch, didn't they? — they'd like us.

If we became them, morality be damned, sense be damned, they'd like us. But only then.

And that's why I don't care what hardcore Trumpists think about any damn thing anyone on the left or center or center-right does.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:58 AM on November 19, 2016 [74 favorites]

I can only manage to check in with the news or these threads about once a week, so forgive me if I'm both ignorant and bewildered, but:

Has there emerged any leadership to oppose this administration? At all?>
posted by schadenfrau at 8:59 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Another thing I think college educated and/or middle class white people have to do - we have to take a hard look at the Democratic party. There will be little if any leadership from national politicians to oppose Trump - because they are all rich. They have very little skin in the game. If everything turns to shit, right, they'll still be making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. They will benefit from Trump's tax breaks, will they or never so. Many of them actually socialize with Republican politicians and lobbyists - remember that bit about Chelsea and Ivanka being "friends"? What kind of progressive is friends with Ivanka Trump?

We are ruled by rich people. Even the nicest ones will never, ever really get it because it's not real to them. They're like little children who don't understand why mommy and daddy can't afford something. They will not oppose Trump on any serious level because it would mess up their career paths and social lives, and because Trump won't really hurt them. I'm not saying they're terrible people; I'm saying that they are protected and will do very little for us.

If there's real anti-Trump leadership to be found, it will come from the fringes of the party or outside it all together, and the rest of us would do well to remember that rich people are different from you and me.
posted by Frowner at 9:04 AM on November 19, 2016 [46 favorites]

SNL could do worse than to cold open with the statement read to Mike Pence.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:13 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

More like Jeff Secessions, amirite?
posted by kirkaracha at 9:13 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

i wish. i think we'd all be willing to let them go at this point
posted by entropicamericana at 9:16 AM on November 19, 2016

I can't wait for Pence and/or Trump to attend a sporting event in Philadelphia, where the fans will show them how one gets booed properly.
posted by TwoStride at 9:17 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Obama loyalists plot Trump resistance

In the past week, Obama alumni have planned gatherings at Glascott’s Saloon in Chicago (an old campaign haunt) and The Winslow in New York. In Washington, they’re meeting in hotel lobbies, 14th Street bars, nonprofits’ conference rooms and living rooms, plotting the resistance over beer and hummus.

One attendee called the meetings “Obama Anonymous,” and while they largely started as impromptu commiseration, they’ve shifted to mobilization. It’s an early sign that Obama can continue to command a formidable movement and potentially launch a serious defense of his legacy as a private citizen.

posted by kirkaracha at 9:18 AM on November 19, 2016 [60 favorites]

We are ruled by rich people. Even the nicest ones will never, ever really get it because it's not real to them.

And it may come to pass that, when the aging narcissist is finished toying with a sick and tortured world, and can find nothing pure left to pervert, and only one thing remains that has the power to juice him to the gills with the surge of malevolent glee that is his raison d'être, then it will cease being real to everybody.
posted by perspicio at 9:19 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

@NormOrnstein
A vote for Sessions is a vote for a guy who applauded Russia's illegal hacking to sway our election. Our chief law enforcement official!
posted by chris24 at 9:19 AM on November 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

> I really cannot believe [Mike Pence] is going to be Vice President.

Washington can't help you now; no more Mr. Nice President.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:22 AM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Economic anxiety.

‏@AngelTilaLove Tila Tequila Verified account
Seig heil! ✋ [pic of her in a bar giving Nazi salute with 2 white male Trumpsters]
posted by chris24 at 9:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

A recap of the Mike Pence Hamilton experience.

Lou Freshwater ‏@LFreshwater goes deeper into the significance of Pence's attendance and Trump's reaction in a series of tweets:

Really important - The 'harassers' are being identified as the brown cast NOT the white booers in audience. This is intentional, SCARY.

Nor was this a story about just a guy wanting to take his girl to a show. These people are deliberate in poking the eyes of the wounded.

They knew what reaction to this man would be. They are now ignoring the white people who booed and focusing on a polite statement by POC.

This is not trivial.This is a message to Trumpland that the brown people in the hellscape city are harassing the good guys so feel free to..

We cannot continue operating as if they're bumbling through winning. They are not. They're manipulating their followers as these regimes do.

I'd add only that Trump and Pence's manipulation is more atavistically instinctive than intellectually Machiavellian. For demagoguery, that can be an advantage if the opposition doesn't pull together, however.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [52 favorites]

what is a tila tequila
posted by entropicamericana at 9:25 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Trump’s big infrastructure plan? It’s a trap.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:28 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

what is a tila tequila

My guess? Given that the other cabinet selections seem to have been made based on the job they're least qualified for, I'd say Secretary of Labor.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:28 AM on November 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

I think everyone at the inauguration should show up with a lifeguard whistle. Much like Trump's hands they are small, like his finances they are discrete, and like Trump they are shrill and disruptive. Just start wailing on them whenever you feel it is appropriate. Bring a spare for your friend, bring ear plugs and live tweet the inauguration!
posted by furtive at 9:28 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Frowner's comment is worth noting.

Clinton supporters didn't pre-empt Warren and drag her past Sanders because they didn't know how unpopular she was and didn't remember the complacency and incompetence of her 2007-2008 campaign ... it was because they were deeply threatened, whether at the level of ideology or simply at the level of self-interest, by the notion of a seriously left-wing President.

Now, I'm not sure that a seriously left-wing Presidential nominee beats Trump, of course. Democrats deeply depend upon the support of corporate America, rich people and the corporate media. A lot of them will reluctantly embrace Trump if the alternative is someone who threatens their core economic interests, just as (for example) the core conservative vote did so last week.
posted by MattD at 9:31 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Economic anxiety.

‏@AngelTilaLove Tila Tequila Verified account
Seig heil! ✋ [pic of her in a bar giving Nazi salute with 2 white male Trumpsters)

These fascist idiots can't even spell their genocidal rallying cry correctly.
posted by dis_integration at 9:32 AM on November 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Pence getting booed at a performance of Hamilton is like catnip to Trump voters, you guys understand this, right? All those elitist big city libruls getting riled up puts smiles on their faces.

I'm going to go ahead and put it out there that a lot of Trump voters are also scared about what's next. These aren't the people who are being assholes to anyone expressing fear or anger about Trump on social media or in public and they aren't the people who are like "stupid liberal elite crybaby snowflakes!" These are more likely to be the people who are keeping their mouths shut through all of this and waiting to see what's next.
posted by wondermouse at 9:33 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Clinton supporters didn't pre-empt Warren

...because Warren didn't want to run.

and drag her past Sanders

Ah, yes, the profoundly undemocratic practice of "voting" in a primary is now "dragging" a candidate past another.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:36 AM on November 19, 2016 [43 favorites]

it was because they were deeply threatened, whether at the level of ideology or simply at the level of self-interest, by the notion of a seriously left-wing President.

Or because the GOP would have eaten Bernie alive in the general.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:38 AM on November 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

Crap, there's a loophole in the oath of office:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

"To the best of my ability"? He's incompetent.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:38 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Clinton supporters didn't pre-empt Warren and drag her past Sanders because they didn't know how unpopular she was and didn't remember the complacency and incompetence of her 2007-2008 campaign ... it was because they were deeply threatened, whether at the level of ideology or simply at the level of self-interest, by the notion of a seriously left-wing President.

This is asinine and unhelpful.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:42 AM on November 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

"To the best of my ability"? He's incompetent.

He won the Electoral college and will be President of the United State, do not underestimate his competence. You and I may not like what he does, but clearly it resonates with millions of people.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:43 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Teddy Roosevelt
posted by kirkaracha at 9:43 AM on November 19, 2016 [61 favorites]

Disrespect: It's for Conservatives Only, Please

So this happened last night:

Vice-president elect Mike Pence went to see the hip-hop musical “Hamilton” on Broadway Friday night, and the performance was disrupted when the audience wouldn’t stop booing him....

Upon arrival at the Richard Rodgers Theater, he was loudly booed — although some audience members also cheered him on....

Rod Dreher is beside himself:

This makes me angrier than it should....

The man was elected vice president of the United States, and this is how they treat him.

Don’t think people outside your cultural bubble aren’t noticing all this, taking note, and learning. You think your emotions and your passion entitles you to crap on everybody else, and not even to show them basic respect. You people saw about ten days ago where that gets you, but you won’t stop and can’t stop politicizing everything, filling it with your spite, even a night out at the theater.

You are taking America to the brink.

Funny, I don't recall Dreher reacting this way two months ago: [...] Or in November 2013: [...] Or in October 2012: [...] Or in November 2011: [...] Or in March 2012: [...] [...] Or in June 2009:

But imagine if President-Elect Hillary Clinton or Vice President-Elect Tim Kaine had gone into a white working-class neighborhood this week and heard a lecture like this from one of the locals -- a lecture saying, "You must pay attention to us." Commentators across the spectrum -- from Sandersites on the left to centrist pundits to the entire conservative movement -- would agree that Attention Must Be Paid. And any boos would be deemed more Clinton or Kaine's fault than the booers'.

posted by tonycpsu at 9:47 AM on November 19, 2016 [54 favorites]

>> Clinton supporters didn't pre-empt Warren

> ...because Warren didn't want to run.

I trust the scuttlebutt I've been hearing since like 2014 about how Clinton put serious pressure on all the major DC consulting firms to not work with anyone but her, lest they be cut out of future Democratic Party work. Which is why the only real other real alternative-to-Clinton candidate was an outsider working with outsiders.

I'm like three layers removed from that scuttlebutt — I know people in California and Washington who know people in D.C. who were making noises way back about how there's certain things they'd like to do but couldn't because Clinton — so feel free not to trust it.

But also keep in mind that elections are material processes, not ideal ones. Running a winning campaign is about more than having a winning platform; it's also about having access to the people with the skills and connections required to effectively promulgate your message. Warren's decision not to run was very likely influenced by how she was, in advance, locked out of the institutional tools needed to run.

I'm not saying this as a "boo Clinton Clinton sucks" statement. Gaining control over institutional power is what politics is about. If you don't think politics are about taking the levers of power and then working them for everything they're worth, feel free to join the Greens, or one of the Trotskyist newspaper-sales organizations. But don't count on anything good coming from them.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:49 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

All of there people I know, myself included, who voted Bernie in the primary and then worked hard for the Clinton campaign in the general are clearly fictitious. No no, all Clinton supporters are neoliberal running dogs, though and through. It had nothing at all to do with trying to stop fascism in its tracks even if it meant not getting all the desired ponies this time around.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:51 AM on November 19, 2016 [49 favorites]

He won the Electoral college and will be President of the United State, do not underestimate his competence. You and I may not like what he does, but clearly it resonates with millions of people.

Getting the job and doing the job are different things. I don't dispute that he won, but a large part of why he won is promising people things he can't deliver.

His behavior since the election has already demonstrated his inability or disinterest in doing the job: attacking the New York Times, planning a red state-only victory tour, picking a team of racists, Tweeting about how people shouldn't exercise their free speech rights. He didn't know he had to replace the White House staff or much of the Executive Branch. Incompetence is the best-case scenario over competent evil.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:52 AM on November 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

"Scuttlebutt", and the media's embrace of it, is what transformed Hillary Clinton from an accomplished politician who made some mistakes into the murdering, lying, lesbian Republican monster that so many see in her now. We'd do well to insist on better sourcing than that for our ideas about our political candidates.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:55 AM on November 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

> The man was elected vice president of the United States, and this is how they treat him. Don’t think people outside your cultural bubble aren’t noticing all this, taking note, and learning. You think your emotions and your passion entitles you to crap on everybody else, and not even to show them basic respect.

"You lie!"
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:55 AM on November 19, 2016 [17 favorites]

> "Scuttlebutt", and the media's embrace of it, is what transformed Hillary Clinton from an accomplished politician who made some mistakes into the murdering, lying, lesbian Republican monster that so many see in her now. We'd do well to insist on better sourcing than that for our ideas about our political candidates.

I think every politician on the Democratic side should work every institutional advantage they can in whatever way they can. It is not an insult to say that a politician is willing to work institutional advantages to improve their position. It is an insult to a politician to say that they're not willing to work institutional advantages.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:58 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

There is no place for idealistic naïvety in left politics. Pretending politics is about the will of the people or whatever instead of about working a complex system is a form of political suicide.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:00 AM on November 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

I wasn't judging your conclusions, just one of the data points. Whether you feel her use of her connections and power was good or bad is irrelevant to how propagating these things we've heard about a candidate affects perceptions of them.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:01 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

@Evan_McMullin
President & VP Elect Trump and Pence feel harassed when politely asked to respect Americans' equality and inalienable rights. Telling.
posted by chris24 at 10:02 AM on November 19, 2016 [120 favorites]

The point isn't that Clinton supporters are awful neoliberal running dogs, etc. Clinton is a qualified, plausible choice for a centrist president, and there were very, very good reasons - given the reality of the world - for people of all left stripes to support her. The fact that she's a talented political operative who, you know, really wanted to run for president does not separate her from other big Democratic figures. I'm sure they've all pressed people to support their candidacies too.

The point is that big Democratic figures are not of the left and they don't have our interests at heart in any deep way. I voted for Clinton, I think she would have been a pretty good president as US presidents go, I think she actually does believe her beliefs - it's not about that, it's about actual material class interests and experience. Rule by wealth is still rule by wealth - it's like having a super nice CEO. Even if they're really great, they can change their mind any time and you never know who you'll get next.
posted by Frowner at 10:02 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Cheesed Off Egg Goes HAM on Trumpence
posted by tonycpsu at 10:04 AM on November 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

Late breaking Biden-Obama meme...
posted by Wordshore at 10:14 AM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

mikelieman: "Ok, so if we learned anything, it's don't do it that way. It BARELY worked and NEVER met expectations."

To be fair lots of big projects get built this way. The Airbus 380 for example gets built all over Europe.
posted by Mitheral at 10:15 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Paul Krugman: Infrastructure Build or Privatization Scam?

Trumpists are touting the idea of a big infrastructure build, and some Democrats are making conciliatory noises about working with the new regime on that front. But remember who you’re dealing with: if you invest anything with this guy, be it money or reputation, you are at great risk of being scammed. So, what do we know about the Trump infrastructure plan, such as it is?

Crucially, it’s not a plan to borrow $1 trillion and spend it on much-needed projects — which would be the straightforward, obvious thing to do. It is, instead, supposed to involve having private investors do the work both of raising money and building the projects — with the aid of a huge tax credit that gives them back 82 percent of the equity they put in. To compensate for the small sliver of additional equity and the interest on their borrowing, the private investors then have to somehow make profits on the assets they end up owning. [...]

Again, all of these questions could be avoided by doing things the straightforward way: if you think we should build more infrastructure, then build more infrastructure, and never mind the complicated private equity/tax credits stuff. You could try to come up with some justification for the complexity of the scheme, but one simple answer would be that it’s not about investment, it’s about ripping off taxpayers. Is that implausible, given who we’re talking about?

posted by tonycpsu at 10:20 AM on November 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

>Listening to a war story of a POC friend of a friend who flew from California to Ohio to canvass for Clinton.

Sorry, Apocryphon, as an actual Cleveland resident I gotta say there are large bits of your friend-of-a-friend's story that seem . . . . . . off. Misinterpreted or questionable conclusions, at least.

He admits that after the Jay-Z/Beyoncé concert, Hillary came on stage to speak for four minutes, and people left during it.

Um, yeah. This is how people behave at concerts. Once you've seen the act you wanted to see, you take off. Of course some people were just there for the free show - no ad agency expects all 14 million people who see a McDonald's commercial to immediately rush right out and buy a McGriddle, and I'm sure the Clinton campaign knew that some people would take off before or during her speech. And if you already know you're voting for Hillary, you might not feel much incentive to stick around when you've gotta get up in the morning and/or get home to your kids. While the show was kinda marketed as a GOTV effort, it was also intended as a motivator and "thank you" show for campaign staff and volunteers. Unless someone can demonstrate (with actual numbers) that, like, over half of the audience was gone immediately, I wouldn't take this as much of a sign of anything.


The way the recession affected people in California is far different from how it affected people in Ohio- real evictions.

He or she may well be right, here. I have no idea how the recession affected people in California, but it was a serious crisis here. OTOH, comparing "California" to "Cleveland" or "East Cleveland" is a bit apples-to-oranges. "Watts" or "South LA" or "East Oakland" comparisons might be more relevant. If he or she was comparing Cleveland to Cupertino that's more than a little oblivious.

he ended up taking a 190 mile Uber ride to the airport with the driver's friend, both Trump supporters.

Were they white? Because there are definitely white evangelicals here - stumbling on a couple is not a useful metric for how Cleveland or Cuyahoga County as a whole viewed the election. There are plenty of white conservative evangelicals in California, too.

He talked of houses in East Cleveland that in Cupertino would cost $2.2 million these days, easy, that cost only $1200 now.

Yeeaaaahh . . . . . look, we may have a lower living cost than Cupertino, but we're not so broke that we're all eating gravel and living under tarps. IF there are actually houses available for outright sale for like $1200 (which I'm not finding in various real estate searches - vacant lots, yes, outright houses, no) it's a foreclosure that's been sitting around for years. All the plumbing and electrical have been stripped by scrappers, and the roof is caving in, and the windows are gone. A quick Zillow search suggests that $2 million dollar homes in Cupertino are not exactly in "condemned" condition. Either your FOAF is exaggerating, or they misread rental signs or "$1200 down" signs.

About asking people (not only white) why they don't leave in the advent of the closing of the GM plant and the collapse of the local economy and being met with "Why would we leave? It's home."

Which means even if you're broke and unemployed you have a support network of family and friends to ensure that you and your kids stay fed and have some kind of roof over your heads. Being surprised that people don't just blithely pick up and leave to find a job is a fairly privileged viewpoint.

95% of the folks he knocked on were African American, they called him a "dirty Muslim" despite that not being his faith. Most were voting for Trump.

I've got some serious doubts about this, unless your FOAF stumbled into some hidden tiny pocket of, frankly, weirdos. While I don't doubt that there are African-Americans bigoted against Arab or Indian-Americans, 1) my own canvassing efforts (as a white dude) in Black/Latinx areas of Cleveland netted me 1 (ONE) black Trump voter; 2) we are not so far removed from the 60's that Black Muslims are not still important and respected community leaders and participants, so a majority of residents calling him "dirty Muslim" seems pretty damn unlikely, and 3) even if he stumbled on a group of black evangelicals who would disagree strongly with his religion, I have never seen black evangelicals be anything but respectful and polite and well aware that their common experiences as African-Americans outweigh any religious disagreements.

As someone on a coast, I feel that I'm completely ignorant of the plight of these fellow citizens. That's what this friend of a friend concluded as well.

I'm sorry to say that the experiences of your friend of a friend don't seem to have done anything to combat their ignorance, their "war stories" seem more "story" than "actual on-the-ground-experience", and bluntly I am not thrilled that your FOAF seemed to treat the whole trip as an exotic safari to The ShantyTowns of Dumbfuckistan.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [54 favorites]

it was because they were deeply threatened, whether at the level of ideology or simply at the level of self-interest, by the notion of a seriously left-wing President.

You really aren't qualified to make this judgement, and it shows.
posted by holgate at 10:26 AM on November 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

Late breaking Biden-Obama meme...

also this: Donald Trump Born in Pakistan
posted by philip-random at 10:27 AM on November 19, 2016

If you want to talk about economic resentment, they you have to go back to its roots which is Obama's bungling of the Great Recession. It was rightfully viewed as bailing out rich bankers and leaving middle Americans out in the cold. Remember that Obama brought all the bankers into the White House and told them that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks, and he made good on that promise. Despite over 200 billion dollars of fines and penalties for fraud and illegal activity, not one single banker went to jail. Back in the 1987 savings and loan crisis, over 1100 people went to jail for bank fraud, so it isn't impossible. It simple requires the will to prosecute.

And I'm not talking about the fact that Republicans would have opposed more stimulus spending. I'm talking about Obama giving up and actively adopting Republican austerity policies.

The worst was in 2010 when Obama wiped his hands, declared his work done and told America that government needed to tighten its belt, a Republican austerity policy. Sure the banks were in good shape, but middle Americans were not. He wasted a lot of time with his Grand Bargain selling out liberal values in order to balance the budget. And of course we see today what that bought him as Republicans once again, when a Republican is in the White House, suddenly decide that deficits aren't really a problem after all. He ended up imposing punishing austerity on Middle Americans so that Republicans now have more breathing room for deficit spending.

Perhaps most unforgivable was Obama's failure to provide real mortgage relief to Middle Americans at the same time he was bailing out the rich bankers. There was $60 billion written into the TARP bill by Congress specifically for mortgage relief but Obama never spent it. That was because of Rick Santelli's famous TV rant on the floor of the commodity exchange screaming about lazy poor people getting free houses. Recall this was the founding moment of the Tea Party and Obama made a cowardly political calculation that mortgage relief might cause him grief.

But it was worse than just not giving relief. They dangled the empty promise of HARP relief in front of homeowners if only they remained eligible by continuing to pay their mortgages instead of walking away. Relief never came, and after they spent their last dime homeowners were evicted, but it bought time for the bankers to spread out their foreclosures. As Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner put it, we need to "foam the runway" with the bodies of mortgagees to soften the landing for the banks.

Obama did a lot of great things. He may go down as one of America's greatest presidents. But his big failure was the handling of the financial crisis. Middle America rightfully felt that the rich were coddled and nobody responsible paid a price for the suffering of ordinary Americans. I think that economic resentment and feeling of unfairness was reflected in the election.
posted by JackFlash at 10:30 AM on November 19, 2016 [31 favorites]

I didn't like the way Obama handled the financial crisis either, and for the same reasons, but it seems insane to say that had more to do with any of this than the screaming, frothing racism that was there the whole damn time.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:39 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

The thing is, Obama got elected to a second term. What do you think changed between 2012 and 2016, assuming it's just all Obama's centrist, neoliberal proclivities?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:42 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

So, as pointed out previously, the way people have jumped to denounce the PoC cast of Hamilton for being rude, when all they did was make a polite speech in line with theater curtain tradition, and when it was largely white people doing the booing, should be a reminder to white people who want to practice allyship: your behavior is going to be blamed on us. See also: white anarchist dudes showing up to racial protests and throwing rocks, then it being PoC protesters accused of being violent. This is a pattern.

What's particularly hilarious to me is that the white people who lack patience to deal with other white people gracefully - whether it's shouting at people for being racist or posting comments on Facebook saying they're unfriending anyone who voted for Trump - are also frequently the ones saying PoC are too shrill and demanding that we hold everyone's hands and sing Kumbaya. It's really a brilliant move, shoving the responsibility and consequences of your actions on PoC, and then twisting the logic of us suffering from your idiotic behavior into a just world rationalization that we must have been responsible for the behavior in the first place.
posted by Conspire at 10:43 AM on November 19, 2016 [63 favorites]

Obviously people wanted to be fucked out of their homes and livelihoods even more ruthlessly.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:44 AM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

> The thing is, Obama got elected to a second term. What do you think changed between 2012 and 2016, assuming it's just all Obama's centrist, neoliberal proclivities?

Has anyone else been turned into a media determinist by this election?

Cause I've been turned into a media determinist by this election. Marshall McLuhan was right; the form of the medium is the message of the medium, rather than what's conveyed over that medium. What's changed between 2012 and 2016 is that we've moved all of our communication to the Internet and then a bunch of us lost our minds.

The things that actually exist in a meaningful sense in society are the things that are most visible in society — the things that are easiest to surface. And this is what our networks are best at surfacing right now.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:49 AM on November 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

Were they white?

They were.

Being surprised that people don't just blithely pick up and leave to find a job is a fairly privileged viewpoint.

It's a very coastal viewpoint. I'm saying the story got us all to realize how insulated we are in our bubbles, and did in fact point out to us our privilege.

so a majority of residents calling him "dirty Muslim" seems pretty damn unlikely,

That was poorly worded on my part, I meant that one of the residents called them that, not a majority.

an exotic safari to The ShantyTowns of Dumbfuckistan

No condescension was intended, and if any is construed, I apologize to both the residents of the Rust Belt, and to the friend of a friend, for being an unreliable transcriber.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:49 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

So, as pointed out previously, the way people have jumped to denounce the PoC cast of Hamilton for being rude, when all they did was make a polite speech in line with theater curtain tradition, and when it was largely white people doing the booing, should be a reminder to white people who want to practice allyship: your behavior is going to be blamed on us.

I don't think any of those people in the audience, many of whom waited a year to be there, could have foreseen that Donald Trump, either willfully or ignorantly, would have tweeted what he did overnight, as president-elect.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Grab 'em by the pussy = locker room talk, get over it!
Please respect us = harassment, apologize!
posted by gatorae at 10:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [79 favorites]

We've basically had eight straight years of economic growth and job growth. The handling of the economic crisis is one thing I think Obama deserves a lot of credit for. It's easy to say things in hindsight. At the time, I don't think we knew how bad it would be and we needed Wall Street to help fix the problem. Criminal charges probably would have been good symbolically.

I agree that middle America has been neglected by Obama and this will be a huge mark on his legacy that has added to the downfall of the Democratic Party. Perhaps his stimulus could have done more. But GOP obstruction and austerity was probably the biggest cause of it. Look at Kansas.
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:51 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

The thing is, Obama got elected to a second term.

Running Mr. Moneybags Romney was a pretty poor choice on the part of the RNC.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:53 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

i'm really not sure what you expect obama could have done, considering there is literally nothing he could propose that republicans would not obstruct
posted by entropicamericana at 10:54 AM on November 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

I agree that middle America has been neglected by Obama and this will be a huge mark on his legacy that has added to the downfall of the Democratic Party.

There was a post here this week (maybe in the older thread though) that examined why some people in middle-America didn't like Obama, and one woman said she turned on him the day he said Trayvon Martin could have been his son. Now, maybe this is my East Coast elitist attitude coming into play, but I don't think Obama neglected middle America. I think they were never open to him to begin with.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:55 AM on November 19, 2016 [42 favorites]

What's changed between 2012 and 2016 is that we've moved all of our communication to the Internet and then a bunch of us lost our minds.


So it's all Al Gore's fault then for inventing the damn thing! I knew the Dems were behind this mess!

But to answer your question, no, this election didn't turn me into a media determinist, only because I was already on that team, this election just reinforced my thinking.


And to Obama abandoning or failing to help the middle class, unless he had a plan to radically slow techonological growth, there wasn't much he could do since that is the main driver of the issue, and we are all willing passengers on that ride with our love of how it helps kill the middle man and lower prices and get around regulations. That "middle man" was largely the middle class.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:02 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

WaPo: Why Trump gets theater completely and utterly wrong
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:03 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

More like Jeff Secessions, amirite?


Hey I made this sick burn last thread, ok
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:03 AM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

okay so I know what I'm doing is volunteering to do the easy job in the hopes that someone else will do the hard job for me.

but.

I volunteer to build the time machine if someone else volunteers to use it to travel back to the start of the primary season and somehow convince the Democratic Party electorate to vote for Martin O'Malley.

I trust the analyses that say that Sanders would likely have been beaten harder than Clinton — even barring Bloomberg jumping into the race as an independent just to ratfuck him. But I think, maybe, of all people, it was Littlefinger who had the best shot of actually winning.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:03 AM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Sigh We want to be known as the side that won
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 11:04 AM on November 19, 2016

I'm sorry to say that the experiences of your friend of a friend don't seem to have done anything to combat their ignorance, their "war stories" seem more "story" than "actual on-the-ground-experience", and bluntly I am not thrilled that your FOAF seemed to treat the whole trip as an exotic safari to The ShantyTowns of Dumbfuckistan.

Ignorantly valorizing people is really only one step up from ignorantly disregarding them. You'll notice that amongst liberals (there's a different dynamic with the conservatives), it's never the people who actually grew up in the Rust Belt writing the pieces about how hearts there are just so pure that they could pick a proto-fascist for president out of sheer "economic anxiety," and justifiably, too.
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Thank you, Apocryphon.

Just for a bit of reference: Cuyahoga County 2016 election results by precinct. (Bit of a data-dump link, but still a webpage.) Technically "unofficial" because the BoE doesn't officially ratify the results until 11/29, but almost certainly accurate enough. As an example, scroll down a little and you can see that of the 15 precincts in East Cleveland - each precinct being about 4-500 voters - there are three precincts where Trump even broke double digits - one with 12 votes, one with 13, and one with 40. Similar patterns hold when you look at other precincts that are heavily/majority black & Latinx. So finding an area where "most" African-Americans were voting for Trump can only be considered a micro-anomaly, rather than a referendum on Clinton's support in the black community.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:11 AM on November 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

i'm really not sure what you expect obama could have done, considering there is literally nothing he could propose that republicans would not obstruct

Obama’s Foreclosure Relief Program Was Designed to Help Bankers, Not Homeowners

HAMP cannot be justified by the usual Obama-era logic, that it represented the best possible outcome in a captured Washington with Republican obstruction and supermajority hurdles. Before Obama’s election, Congress specifically authorized the executive branch, through the $700 billion bank bailout known as TARP, to “prevent avoidable foreclosures.” And Congress pointedly left the details up to the next president. Swing senators like Olympia Snowe (Maine), Ben Nelson (Nebraska) and Susan Collins (Maine) played no role in HAMP’s design. It was entirely a product of the administration’s economic team, working with the financial industry, so it represents the purest indication of how they prioritized the health of financial institutions over the lives of homeowners.

Obama and his administration must live with the consequences of that original sin, which contrasts with so many of the goals they claim to hold dear. “It’s a terrible irony,” said Damon Silvers, policy director and special counsel for the AFL-CIO, who served as deputy chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. “This man who represents so much to people of color has presided over more wealth destruction of people of color than anyone in American history.”

posted by tonycpsu at 11:11 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted; please don't use the edit function to add or change content, just make a second comment. Also let's really not go back to "Sanders supporters suck vs Clinton supporters suck" in a needing-a-pound-of-flesh-from-each-other way.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:11 AM on November 19, 2016

i'm really not sure what you expect obama could have done, considering there is literally nothing he could propose that republicans would not obstruct

What he could have done is not adopt Republican austerity language. What he could have done is not say "we need to tighten our belts." What he could have done is not waste his time on a Grand Bargain to balance the budget when Republicans really don't care about deficits if they are in the White House.

What he could have done is spend the $60 billion already put in TARP by Congress for mortgage relief. What he could have done is not dangle false hopes of HARP relief in front of underwater homeowners in a cynical attempt to keep them paying their mortgages until their last dime was gone when they would have been better of walking away.
posted by JackFlash at 11:12 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

There might have been things that HRC could have done better but I think that if we're going to blame it on something it was voter suppression.
posted by VTX at 11:16 AM on November 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

You'll notice that amongst liberals (there's a different dynamic with the conservatives), it's never the people who actually grew up in the Rust Belt writing the pieces about how hearts there are just so pure that they could pick a proto-fascist for president out of sheer "economic anxiety," and justifiably, too.

I am never sure which version of the noble savage imaginary rural person I dislike more, the conservative or liberal one.
posted by winna at 11:17 AM on November 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hey I made this sick burn last thread, ok

oh thanks for mentioning this... I confess to having been worried/hopeful that I was witnessing a glitch in the Matrix.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:19 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ignorantly valorizing people is really only one step up from ignorantly disregarding them.

It's less valorizing, and more realizing that a lot of paternalistic coastal perspectives are based on ignorance, just as middle American resentment of the coasts are as well. And a good deal of despair at the disconnect between the two.

I am never sure which version of the noble savage imaginary rural person I dislike more, the conservative or liberal one.

It's not such a hard choice to make.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:19 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

a needing-a-pound-of-flesh-from-each-other way

Thanks to Brexit, though, we only need 3/4 of a pound now
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:20 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't think any of those people in the audience, many of whom waited a year to be there, could have foreseen that Donald Trump, either willfully or ignorantly, would have tweeted what he did overnight, as president-elect.

I, too, long to live in a white liberal bubble of security where I can delude myself into thinking that Trump's first response to anything not going his way won't be to blame minorities.
posted by Conspire at 11:20 AM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

There might have been things that HRC could have done better but I think that if we're going to blame it on something it was voter suppression.

On a related note, if you want to enjoy a bright spot post-election, NC GOP governor McCrory's increasingly unhinged freakout about how the vote was rigged against him is good!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:21 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

As someone who did extensive canvassing in poor communities of color in a rust belt city (and did not have to fly anywhere to do it because oh, hey, I live here), I call super delux BS on anyone claiming to find lots of Trump support there. These were the most plum, cush canvassing turfs imaginable. The worst time I had was with a bunch of white Bernie-or-Bust unwitting gentrifiers (wow they were serious assholes).
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:21 AM on November 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

I think that economic resentment and feeling of unfairness was reflected in the election.

yeah, the election where these same people chose to angrily support an alleged billionaire whose only goal in life is to take as many people just like them for as much as possible.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

hey I've got an idea: whenever anyone feels like their honor has been impugned in an argument about the tactics taken by the Democratic Party in the 2016 election, or in an argument over who we supported during the primaries, we should be able to demand satisfaction. If the person from whom satisfaction is demanded refuses to apologize, then the two parties must face off in a duel.

Actual dueling is of course dumb and immature, not to say illegal everywhere (yes, even in Jersey), and it would be both logistically complicated and completely tragic for us to start getting together to fire pistols at each other. Nevertheless, there must be some truly painful outcome for refusing to back down when satisfaction is demanded.

As such, I propose that a duel should consist of both parties calling Paul Ryan's office at an appointed time.

So if we want to talk crap about each other, remember that there might be consequences.

Kenosha. Dawn. Phones drawn.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:23 AM on November 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

these are the idiot toddlers who smash a toy they've been told to share so no one else can play with it
posted by poffin boffin at 11:24 AM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

It's not such a hard choice to make.

That NR article was... special. Looks like Kevin Williamson thinks that the best way to clear himself from Trumpist charges that the coastal elite looks down on the heartland rubes is to -- wait for it -- tell Midwesterners that yeah, your communities are dead and you should just pack up and move. Like, he literally is making that argument.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Can you even. imagine. the shitstorm. if Obama or Clinton had said any one of those sentences. But IOKIYAR. (Except, looks like the Republican base decided they're not okay with it anymore.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:35 AM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

and speaking of fake news, this is bloody tragic ...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg – who died of heart complications at his Californian home today – says the proliferation of fake news stories on the site he built is over exaggerated. He was 32.

Good night, sweet prince ...
posted by philip-random at 11:39 AM on November 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

What do you think changed between 2012 and 2016, assuming it's just all Obama's centrist, neoliberal proclivities?

Part of what Democrats are still not understanding is that Obama's incredible personal magnetism has masked the utter collapse of their party since 2008. Aside from winning the presidency, the Democrats have been consistently defeated at the state and federal levels since the first GOP wave in 2010. It might have been the presidency, too, if we'd been running anybody but Obama or if Romney had been a better candidate (or perhaps just even a Protestant instead of a Mormon); we've been thinking we were winning when we were losing for a long time now and the bill came due at all once.
posted by gerryblog at 11:49 AM on November 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

Thanks to Brexit, though, we only need 3/4 of a pound now.

Other way around. : . (
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:50 AM on November 19, 2016

declared his work done and told America that government needed to tighten its belt, a Republican austerity policy.

Okay, but no one on the Democratic side seems to be completely immune to this. Even Sanders wouldn't admit that his policies would necessarily increase debt, because our GDP would be higher because of investment.

Do you (not specifically you, but anyone here) think it would be better to just admit, "Yeah, we're totally gonna run up the debt! I'm not a 'tax & spend' Democrat, I'm a 'spend & spend' Democrat!"
posted by FJT at 11:51 AM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Some vote analysis at Isocracy
posted by Golem XIV at 11:54 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Native American council offers amnesty to 220 million undocumented Whites living in The United States.

The “white” problem has been a topic of much debate in the Native American community for centuries, and community leaders have decided the time has come to properly address it.*

Daily Currant reports, “At a meeting of the Native Peoples Council (NPC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico yesterday, Native American leaders considered several proposals on the future of this continent’s large, unauthorized European population.

The elders ultimately decided to extend a pathway to citizenship for those without criminal backgrounds.”
posted by Rumple at 12:06 PM on November 19, 2016 [45 favorites]

It's comforting to see Mike Pence keeping up the grand old tradition of Hoosier VPs walking out of performances.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:09 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

John Cole: Is Our Media Learning?

Spoiler: Our media is not learning.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:11 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

it's never the people who actually grew up in the Rust Belt writing the pieces about how hearts there are just so pure that they could pick a proto-fascist for president out of sheer "economic anxiety," and justifiably, too.

Pretty much the only guy who wrote one before the election was Michael Moore, who did grow up there.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:13 PM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

So while I was "getting shit done" today I listened to a number of podcasts. Here is a quick review of three of them in case you are interested:

Keepin it 1600 discuss what it is actually like to run a transition team. Part that stuck to my brain "On the first day in office when you don't know where the bathrooms are you are supposed to run the country." Also the importance and realities of being surrounded by the press.

Trumpcast Today's episode, One Big Giant Conflict of Interest, is a scary one. Paul Waldman from the Washington Post talks to Jacob about the selling of the Trump name during the Presidency and how this can shape American foreign policy. There will be no oversight because congress is Republican-controlled and DJT will not release his taxes during his term in office. We may never know how much he will make off of being POTUS and where the money will come from. In other words, there will be pay-to-play and it will be massive and on-going throughout DJT's term.

NYT The Run-up began a new series called "Dialogs" where 2 people connected through family or friendship but who voted for opposing parties ask each other a series of pre-written questions. No third parties are involved-- no comments, no judgements, no attempt to manage the situation.

I have to admit this one was the toughest to listen to. Aaron and Kyle were best friends in high school in Illinois before going their separate ways. Aaron stayed in Illinois and went to an AA College, Kyle moved to Florida where he became a big hunting enthusiast. They stayed friends through FaceBook. There was a moment when Trump-supporter, Kyle, mansplains (whitesplains?) to Hillary-supporter Aaron that stop-and-frisk is not a threat if you haven't done anything wrong and besides Aaron dresses so nice the police will not mistake him for a thug. My heart broke. There is no anger, no rage, not even really hurt feelings between these two guys and the fact that Aaron continues to consider Kyle his friend is remarkable

Dialogs continue on Monday with a conversation between two women who are friends, one of whom supported Hillary and has a handicapped child, the other supports Trump.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Why Trump gets theater completely and utterly wrong

This is a good article about the value of theatre to a healthy democracy (a friend suggested Ionescu's The Rhinoceros as a good prophylactic to the new regime), but that headline implies that there is a different answer to "Why Trump gets x completely wrong" than "because he's a hateful dimwit". And there isn't. And people are going to waste too much public time and energy pretending that there's something new to say about this, when the article should just be "Another thing the President was wrong and conceited about", every single time, numbered.
posted by ambrosen at 12:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Pentagon and intelligence community chiefs have urged Obama to remove the head of the NSA. This bit is kind of alarming:

The news comes as Rogers is being considered by President-Elect Donald Trump to be his nominee for DNI, replacing Clapper as the official who oversees all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Rogers, without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower. That caused consternation at senior levels of the administration, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters.

posted by zachlipton at 12:17 PM on November 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

ah, the nsa is finally making its move... the end is nigh
posted by entropicamericana at 12:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Do you (not specifically you, but anyone here) think it would be better to just admit, "Yeah, we're totally gonna run up the debt! I'm not a 'tax & spend' Democrat, I'm a 'spend & spend' Democrat!"

Maybe it's time for Democratic politicians to say something radical like that. The Republicans have been saying wilder and wilder things for a long time, even before this election. Just as Sanders is an unabashed self-avowed socialist, maybe it's time for Democrats to say "I admit that I am a Keynesian - what of it?"
posted by Apocryphon at 12:20 PM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

The Daily Beast Gen. Mike Flynn’s Office Told Women to Wear Makeup, Heels, and Skirts

Women in the Defense Intelligence Agency were told to monitor their levels of makeup, avoid flats, and err on the side of skirts and dresses when the organization was run by Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was tapped to be Donald Trump’s national security adviser Thursday. The January 2013 presentation, entitled “Dress for Success,” was obtained through a Freedom of Information request by MuckRock in 2013.

“Makeup helps women look more attractive,” the presentation declared.

Female DIA employees were instructed to straddle the fine line between avoiding a “Plain Jane” look and the right amount of makeup that would appropriately accentuate their features. Too much makeup was also a potential pitfall, with the presentation saying that it “distracts from a professional look.”

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

I had to scroll through a few days worth of posts knowing that this post would be here. Thank you Wordshore. I was just reading about Pence/ Hamilton and Trump's tweets and I started losing my mind again. I have no clue how I'm going to make it through the next 4 years.
posted by photoslob at 12:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Yeah, we're totally gonna run up the debt! I'm not a 'tax & spend' Democrat, I'm a 'spend & spend' Democrat!"

except position it as, "Yes, we're going to invest our nation's future. Why do you try to make that sound like such a bad thing?"
posted by philip-random at 12:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

But how should…diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

At its heart, identity politics is about basic economic issues: jobs, education, housing, accommodation. The marriage equality fight happened because the Right used non-existent gay marriage as a rationale for punishing the small and independent groups offering equality in jobs, education, housing, and accommodation. Feminists started talking about rape on campus, first because it's a crime, and second because it's educational discrimination. If you deny trans people access to bathrooms, you deny them access to jobs, education, housing, and accommodation. People object to slurs in educational and workplace settings, because the abuse of those slurs is harassment, and a form of discrimination.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

ah, the nsa is finally making its move... the end is nigh

Those dogs
posted by Apocryphon at 12:24 PM on November 19, 2016

Bad News
Vince Neil will not be at the inauguration.
Ted Nugent is probably still available though.
posted by Neronomius at 12:27 PM on November 19, 2016

In the recent Canadian election, Justin Trudeau broke with orthodoxy by promising to run 10 billion dollar deficits. He was roundly condemned from the Right (as expected) but also from the Left, for not being Serious. Needless to say, he won handily.
posted by Rumple at 12:29 PM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

@ami_angelwings
*Trump supporters spraypaint swastikas*
Media: we need to understand their pain
*Trump detractors boo Pence*
Media: This is going too far
posted by chris24 at 12:30 PM on November 19, 2016 [29 favorites]

Is Kid Rock still kickin around? Maybe Scott Baio knows some cool tunes?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:30 PM on November 19, 2016

Kanye West is Trump's showbiz aristocracy go-to man now.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:34 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

After a stressful week, Mike Pence decides to spend a relaxing evening at the theatre...
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:35 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Don’t be distracted by the Trump circus

Trump’s overblown reaction to his VP’s Hamilton experience is indeed telling: Once again, the president-elect is applying a dubious version of freedom of speech that specifically casts constitutionally-protected dissent against himself and his team as out-of-line. He mischaracterized what happened. And an elected leader who hasn’t used his Twitter to decry the hundreds of acts of hate committed after his election, without irony, insisted that his elected running-mate deserves a safe space against booing.

But in setting both the traditional media and social media chasing after boos at a Hamilton performance, Trump is also distracting everyone from the damaging, substantive moves he has made since being elected.

posted by tonycpsu at 12:45 PM on November 19, 2016 [41 favorites]

Alex Q. Arbuckle ‏@alexqarbuckle
Mike Pence getting booed at Hamilton is the worst thing to ever happen to a politician at a play

Alex Q. Arbuckle ‏@alexqarbuckle
Please stop tweeting at me about Abraham Lincoln. I don't know who that is and I don't care

Alex Q. Arbuckle ‏@alexqarbuckle
I've now learned that apparently this Abraham Lincoln guy was some old dude in a big hat. Uhhh pretty sure that's just Pharrell

RIP my sides 1982-2016.
posted by Talez at 12:49 PM on November 19, 2016 [50 favorites]

As someone who will talk about Hamilton at great length with pretty much anyone on just about any occasion, it is incredibly frustrating to me that we're going to spend days talking about this instead of Trump U, hate crimes, the future of Medicare and Medicaid, Trump's DC hotel, or any of a dozen other stories this week.
posted by zachlipton at 12:55 PM on November 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

Comment from the green worth repeating here:
South African here. I've lived in a country where people are ruthlessly divided from each other, where communities are split and tribalism is deeply entrenched, and it is absolutely horrendous. Lives are stunted; people on both sides are killed. The other side will react as strongly as you do, boycotting Dem-supporting businesses, and then throw in a bit of extra punishment on top. Things begin to spiral: businesses aren't just boycotted, they are burnt. Human bodies become targets: someone with a 'Stronger Together' badge gets spat at; a kid gets beaten up at school because his dad voted for Trump. In the words of Yeats, things fall apart:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . ."

Please don't be the person that widens the divide: don't emulate Trump, don't be a wall builder; be a Desmond Tutu or a Nelson Mandela instead. What we have learnt from this election is that the unthinkable can happen, just as it happened in the Balkans and Rwanda. We cannot afford to lose America to hatred.

I would recommend Desmond Tutu's book 'No Future Without Forgiveness', it has all the wisdom you need to find a road ahead. The world needs a strong, unified America, and you can help to make that happen.
posted by matthew.alexander at 8:14 AM on November 18 [74 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
posted by cynicalidealist at 12:58 PM on November 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

I need a word for wanting to punch somebody in the face. It's like a special kind of rage, where you just stop caring about reasoned discourse and you feel your arm muscles tense up. I don't actually plan to punch somebody in the face, I just, you know, want to. Desire without intent.

At any rate, I know that Hamilton isn't the cool kid on the block that it used to be 'round these parts, but god damn am I in that face-punching feeling right now. Pence was a douche for walking out, Trump was a POS for tweeting a single word about it, and I swear you stay away from LLM you fucking monsters.

I have a feeling that leftists got a little gizmo that transmitted their punches into a little bag into electricity we could go tell fossil fuels to fuck off and just live on the power generated by teeth-grinding outrage.
posted by angrycat at 12:59 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'd mentioned this in the thread on the gray, but Jason Chaffetz's aide was a full-on dick to me. FYI.

You were probably taking to Jason, himself.
posted by orange ball at 1:02 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: One deleted. Please don't needle people in here, come on.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:02 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pence was a douche for walking out

Pence left at the end of the performance.

Wow, like needing a word for "wanting to punch in the nose", what we really need a good word for "can everyone take a deep breath and chill just a little bit".
posted by sammyo at 1:04 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Trump and Pence would have a stroke if they were exposed to anything like the vicious polemics of 18th and early 19th Century politics. It's - well, not exactly amusing - that they are so horrified by receiving mild criticism and some people booing.
posted by thelonius at 1:05 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kanye West is Trump's showbiz aristocracy go-to man now.

In which a loose canon unleashes a loose canon. Fun times.
posted by philip-random at 1:06 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

McCain: If Trump Begins Waterboarding He'll Be In Court In 'A New York Minute'

"I don't give a damn what the president wants to do," he said. "We will not waterboard. We will not torture people."

The belated morality is so cute after the horse is out of the barn.
posted by chris24 at 1:08 PM on November 19, 2016 [49 favorites]

Another #nevertrump-er bites the dust?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 1:09 PM on November 19, 2016

McCain fell in line after Gee-Dub's campaign said horrible things about his family. He'll fall in line for Trump.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:10 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

OMG Secret Life of Gravy! I am completely unsurprised Flynn's DIA was telling women to be pretty. NPR had someone on yesterday morning (or the day before?) where the speaker was praising Flynn by turns but also making it clear why he was not a good manager. At one point she said, as if to indicate he was good on "diversity", that he "surrounded himself by women". She didn't seem to see that as a negative but I thought it was an odd wording. Now it's even more odd.
posted by R343L at 1:10 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

And again, most #nevertrump rhetoric was because the GOP couldn't imagine that Trump could win. The right cares for nothing, nothing, like it cares for power, and the Republican Party will fall in line behind him as inauguration approaches.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:11 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Regarding Romney, I can't really blame him for considering being part of his administration. I believe he genuinely wants to do good for the country and at this point one of his few options is to use his influence to become a significant but decent voice in the administration. It's not like the House & Senate Republicans are showing much signs of wanting to reign him in, so it's not like Romney could even organize support for investigations or new laws to limit executive power.
posted by R343L at 1:13 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

I would recommend Desmond Tutu's book 'No Future Without Forgiveness', it has all the wisdom you need to find a road ahead. The world needs a strong, unified America, and you can help to make that happen.

The president-elect stirred up resentment and hatred, and he needs to bring the country together. I can't forgive him or his followers if they can't acknowledge they're responsible for the divisiveness. Clinton's supporters aren't painting swastikas, flying Confederate flags, or assaulting people. He emboldened these people and he needs to make them stop.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:16 PM on November 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

We talked to George W. Bush's ethics lawyer. Trump is in some serious legal trouble.

Surely this.
posted by dirigibleman at 1:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

6. Violation of the Emoluments Clause could subject Trump to suit by a rival hotel or impeachment.
7. Trump has no plans to divest from the hotel. This could get very ugly, very quickly.

Literally any effort to make any hash out of this by the Democrats will be portrayed by the Republicans and the press as a partisan attempt at a coup. This will go nowhere.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:20 PM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

McCain fell in line after Gee-Dub's campaign said horrible things about his family. He'll fall in line for Trump.

McCain prefers presidents who didn't get elected.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:21 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Regarding Romney, I can't really blame him for considering being part of his administration. I believe he genuinely wants to do good for the country and at this point one of his few options is to use his influence to become a significant but decent voice in the administration

I believe people said the same thing about Colin Powell at one point
posted by mcmile at 1:25 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Clinton's supporters aren't painting swastikas, flying Confederate flags, or assaulting people. He emboldened these people and he needs to make them stop.

Sadly, a substantial number of Trump supporters seem to believe that this is exactly what is happening, as some sort of bizarre and unlikely false-flag operation by ornery leftists. I do not know what to do about many peoples confused and confusing relationship to the truth.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:31 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

You know that thing where you have people who a) deny that the Holocaust happened but b) think it was super-awesome? Same phenomenon.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:47 PM on November 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

Literally any effort to make any hash out of this by the Democrats will be portrayed by the Republicans and the press as a partisan attempt at a coup. This will go nowhere.

Pressing on Trump's scandals might not lead to his downfall, and his supporters may not give a damn, but at the very least Democrats can try to force him to spend as much of his time as possible defending himself, and keep some part of his ire focused on Congress and the press rather than, say, Black Lives Matter protesters and other civil rights activists. Every tool of obstruction and opposition available needs to be used.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:52 PM on November 19, 2016 [53 favorites]

Dear world: I do not own Hamilton. I'm the editor in chief of Playbill. Please stop emailing me hate mail.

--@MarkPeikert

Do Trump supporters think Playbill in charge of all Broadway shows or something?
posted by zachlipton at 1:54 PM on November 19, 2016 [23 favorites]

This will go nowhere.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we need to cut it out. We need to make sure that it goes somewhere. We need to hound the news media until they cover legitimate stories the way they should. We need to force them to pay as much attention to Trump's corruption as they did to innuendo about Clinton's speeches. The right wing has spent years getting the media to privilege their narrative, and we need to step up and make sure that we get heard, too.

One thing that would be awesome would be if Bernie people would post as much on social media about Trump's corruption as they did about Hillary's speeches.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:56 PM on November 19, 2016 [77 favorites]

So I've been rewatching Dead Like Me and it was all fun and escapism until George started meditating on the advantages of being an asshole and this happened.
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 2:00 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

he ended up taking a 190 mile Uber ride to the airport with the driver's friend, both Trump supporters.

You are going to hear crazy shit from people who take shared 180 mile uber rides anywhere in the United States.
posted by srboisvert at 2:05 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

again, most #nevertrump rhetoric was because the GOP couldn't imagine that Trump could win. The right cares for nothing, nothing, like it cares for power, and the Republican Party will fall in line behind him as inauguration approaches.

This is 1000% not the case. I mean, I'll admit that I, as a #NeverTrumper, totally cynically exploited Republicans who didn't have that much objection to Trump into opposing him by saying, among many, many other things, that he could "never win". A lot of us did. I have no regrets about it or anything else I did in trying my best to stop this monster. But that doesn't mean it was our actual stance, it was because we were trying to peel party loyalists off.

So yeah, there's probably some people that we flipped by talking about how he could "never win", that are now flipping back now that it's proven he can. Mostly people for whom the Supreme Court is the biggest issue, or things like that. But that doesn't mean that there are no sincere #NeverTrumpers.
posted by corb at 2:07 PM on November 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

The right wing has spent years getting the media to privilege their narrative, and we need to step up and make sure that we get heard, too.
Donald Trump spent years getting the media to "normalize" him personally, independent of the right wing, for his personal, mostly financial benefit (as have many other "rich & famous" people who would never line up with the "right wing", and some, like Kanye, whose allegiance belongs to whomever is on top this week). Many in the media (I like to single out the New York Times) are unaccustomed to making such an adjustment and are still trying to figure out what about him can continue to be normalized and what cannot.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:09 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sadly, a substantial number of Trump supporters seem to believe [...] some sort of bizarre and unlikely false-flag operation by ornery leftists.

I've seen this dynamic a lot, even in the most liberal circles. The logic goes something like this:

I am a Trump supporter and I would never do something like that, so blaming "Trump supporters" for the swastikas is a malicious lie;
People who make malicious lies do so because they want to gain some advantage;
Ergo, you are lying about the swastikas in order to gain some advantage.

If pressed upon it, they might concede that some of the swastikas were made by people who nominally support Trump, but that you can't prove that all of them were. It's not even a case of both sides being the same, because the Trump supporters were just a few unrepresentative crazies, whereas you're deliberately exploiting a false flag to gain political advantage. That's much worse! You're not even sincere about the things you claim to care about!

Consequently, complaining about oppression is an oppressive act in itself, and it's actually far worse than the thing you complain about.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:11 PM on November 19, 2016 [19 favorites]

I am a Trump supporter and I would never do something like that, so blaming "Trump supporters" for the swastikas is a malicious lie.

The classic 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.
posted by dazed_one at 2:21 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

For any Israeli who lived through the “mahapach,” the electoral “upending” of 1977, which brought Menachem Begin’s Likud party to power, Donald Trump’s victory seems dreadfully familiar. It is not simply that America’s most benighted voters—people from the entitled, stressed majority, people living in what has been euphemistically called the “periphery”—turned a protest vote into an unlikely victory for an extremist leader. It is that this protest seems permanent, aimed not at a party or candidate but at the establishment, while the voters themselves seem so fierce in their resentment that they stand to become a permanent fixture of a rightist bloc. During the Obama Administration, Likud became an ally of the Republicans. Now it seems a model for them...

What Americans Against Trump Can Learn from the Failures of the Israeli Opposition
posted by y2karl at 2:31 PM on November 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

Brexit and Trump have exposed the left’s crucial flaw: playing by the rules

If the leavers or the alt-right had lost the vote, they would be howling. The remain camp and the Democrats must learn a tactical lesson – sheer ruthlessness ..... Join me in a little thought experiment. Imagine, if you would, that the Brexit referendum had gone the other way, 48% voting to leave and 52% to remain. What do you think Nigel Farage would have said? Would he have nodded ruefully and declared: “The British people have spoken and this issue is now settled. Our side lost and we have to get over it. It’s time to move on.”

Or would he have said: “We’ve given the establishment the fright of their lives! Despite everything they threw at us, they could only win by the skin of their teeth. It’s clear now that British support for the European project is dead: nearly half the people of this country want rid of it. Our fight goes on.”

posted by Rumple at 2:49 PM on November 19, 2016 [23 favorites]

A lot of those people didn't actually, in their heart of hearts, believe Clinton was as bad or worse than Trump. They were being Special Snowflakes and using those statements to show how they are politically aware unlike the rest of us rubes. Because they didn't actually think Trump would win.
posted by Justinian at 2:49 PM on November 19, 2016 [54 favorites]

M.A.M.O.N. - Latinos VS. Donald Trump

M.A.M.O.N. (Monitor Against Mexicans Over Nationwide) is a satirical fantasy sci-fi shortfilm that explores with black humor and lots of VFX the outrageous consequences of Donald Trump´s plan of banning immigration and building an enormous wall on the Mexico - US border. By Ale Damiani
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:53 PM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't think too many people on the left thought she was as bad as Trump. They thought she was much worse than Bernie because of her stance on and connections to Wall Street and didn't think she was a good politician.

But I do think they and Bernie damaged Hillary significantly. The people I follow were always mocking how bad the Democrats are at politics compared to the brutality of Nixon and others, but they seemed to deride just about everything she did (some of which I though was good), not really offering good alternatitves.
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:00 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Don’t Mourn, Repoliticize! - Malloy Owenin
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:02 PM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

If he does this his loyalty from the military will immediately shoot up. Mattis was most of our secret dreams for President.


Does Mattis have the backbone to check the president's impulses?
Does he have the diplomatic skills to make it still look like he's kissing the president's ass?

A secretary of defense who will prevent Trump from blundering us into major war is worth the price of seeing Trump legitimized by the appointment, IMO
posted by ocschwar at 3:10 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Yes and yes (as much as anyone does).
posted by Etrigan at 3:13 PM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

5. Otherwise, Trump will violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution on DAY 1.
6. Violation of the Emoluments Clause could subject Trump to suit by a rival hotel or impeachment.
7. Trump has no plans to divest from the hotel. This could get very ugly, very quickly.

The problem here being that we just gave Trump "God Mode" access to the US government. Congress could impeach him, but good luck getting the Republican-controlled Congress to do that.
posted by indubitable at 3:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

They actually might, if they think that Pence is a better deal for them.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:16 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

The classic 'No true Scotsman' fallacy.

No true Klansman, surely.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:16 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

> The man was elected vice president of the United States, and this is how they treat him. Don’t think people outside your cultural bubble aren’t noticing all this, taking note, and learning. You think your emotions and your passion entitles you to crap on everybody else, and not even to show them basic respect.

Fuck you sideways with a boat anchor, Rod Dreher.

The Republicans spent the last four years showing the office of the Presidency, its inhabitant, his family, his party, and about half of America absolutely zero respect. They shat on precedent, they shat on nominations, they shat on the very concept of compromise, they shat on common decency and they were rewarded for it with control of all federal levels of government and being a hair's breadth short of the ability to impose their will on the entire nation without opposition.

So it is time to shatter eardrums and break things lest the >50% of voting America that voted for Democratic candidates for President and the Senate end up with no voice at all.
posted by delfin at 3:17 PM on November 19, 2016 [71 favorites]

Does Mattis have the backbone to check the president's impulses?

Yes. Mattis is the one SecDef appointment I've seen proposed who I think truly has the spine to stand up to him if he thinks he's doing something stupid with troops. You make a fair point.
posted by corb at 3:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Donald Trump’s firm signs deal for Kolkata real estate project

Worse, Donald Trump Meets With His Indian Business Partners Despite Blind Trust Promises

Exactly a week after winning the presidential election, Donald Trump took time out to meet with Indian business partners and his three eldest children at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The meeting came despite the president-elect’s assurances that he was handing off his business to his children in a “blind trust” to avoid potential conflicts of interest while serving in the nation’s highest office.

Trump held the talks with business partners Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia and Kalpesh Mehta on Tuesday, the Indian newspaper The Economic Times first reported. Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, who attended the meeting, are supposed to be heading the trust, managing their father’s assets and business portfolio. They also sit on the executive committee of the presidential transition team.

There's zero effort being made here to even acknowledge the conflicts of interest let alone try to deal with them.
posted by zachlipton at 3:24 PM on November 19, 2016 [31 favorites]

You know it's bad when Dubya's ethics lawyer is like "Dude, that is clearly unconstitutional."
posted by EarBucket at 3:33 PM on November 19, 2016 [48 favorites]

Corb would know better than I since everything I know about Mattis is stuff I've read, but everything I've read indicates he would indeed stand up to Trump. Dude's nickname is "Mad Dog".

This is why I don't expect his appointment. It'll be a nutter like Flynn.
posted by Justinian at 3:33 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

One thing that would be awesome would be if Bernie people would post as much on social media about Trump's corruption as they did about Hillary's speeches.
Copy-pasted this to my FB, which has too many Berniebros for my liking.
posted by mumimor at 3:37 PM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Pence left at the end of the performance.

Wow, like needing a word for "wanting to punch in the nose", what we really need a good word for "can everyone take a deep breath and chill just a little bit".

a) He walked out during remarks that were addressed directly to him. Maybe he getting up anyway, don't know, don't really care. Honestly, and I guess I could have been more careful in my wording here, I do actually grok is that the real problem with Mr. Pence is not the timing with which he leaves the theater when polite remarks are aimed at his direction.

b) The PEOTUS has taken to twitter twice to address the incident. He lied about the incident (claiming the cast booed). He commanded that the cast apologize. He demanded that the stage be a "safe space" and who knows what that means but the fact that a man who likes to brag about grabbing the woman by the pussy is agitating about safe spaces after a booing is, well, let's say, richly ironic.

c) Chill a little bit? I'm sorry, and here I'm not talking about Hamilton, it's just a thing that I love but it's not the Bill of Rights or the Geneva Convention, so I'm sorry to get upset about something that is not a matter of life and death BUT HEY CHECK IT OUT our PEOTUS has attacked the first amendment, one of his chief toadies (Giuliani) seems to not acknowledge that the Geneva Convention applies when the U.S. bombs something and you know please tell me when it is okay to not be chill because things seem to be PRETTY FUCKING NOT OKAY
posted by angrycat at 3:38 PM on November 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

Texas judge tells brand-new U.S. citizens to leave country if they don’t like Donald Trump

“I can assure you that whether you voted for him or you did not vote for him, if you are a citizen of the United States, he is your President,” Judge John Primomo said at the Thursday ceremony in San Antonio, according to KENS.

He continued: “He will be your President, and if you do not like that, you need to go to another country.”

Sigh. This is our future now isn't it?
posted by Talez at 3:48 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

can everyone take a deep breath and chill just a little bit

Posted this in the last thread, seems appropriate again:

Say we should all come together and be civil one more time, motherfucker.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:52 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

“He will be your President, and if you do not like that, you need to go to another country.”

Our future, and our past.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:16 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

> These tweets, from Judd Legum at ThinkProgress, are interesting.

Longer piece: Trump poised to violate Constitution his first day in office, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer says. The Constitution doesn’t allow presidents to seek gifts from foreign agents.
posted by homunculus at 4:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

Looks like we're at 1.7million and climbing for Clinton's popular vote margin. What a disaster. We, as a people, said we do not want this man to be President and yet here we are.
posted by Justinian at 4:33 PM on November 19, 2016 [35 favorites]

the clinton campaign knew the rules going in. they fucked up. also, electoral college must go.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:40 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Looks like we're at 1.7million and climbing for Clinton's popular vote margin. What a disaster. We, as a people, said we do not want this man to be President and yet here we are.

Like every other contest in the country, conservatives win by the electoral system rather than any sort of popular support.

If the United States had a real system of representation you'd see liberals winning by German proportions.
posted by Talez at 4:42 PM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Holy fuck, he's still tweeting about Hamilton and attacking them.

@realDonaldTrump
Very rude and insulting of Hamilton cast member to treat our great future V.P. Mike Pence to a theater lecture.Couldn't even memorize lines!
posted by chris24 at 4:48 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Holy fuck, he's still tweeting about Hamilton and attacking them.

Because evidence shows that it if he's saying stupid things about liberals he both riles up the base and the media reports on that instead of his cabinet picks.

He's worked it out. For someone who generally works by feelings and intuition it's pretty fucking obvious.
posted by Talez at 4:51 PM on November 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

Couldn't even memorize lines!

wtf does this even mean?
posted by futz at 4:52 PM on November 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Holy fuck, he's still tweeting about Hamilton and attacking them.


And successfully steering attention away from the Trump University lawsuit settlements.
posted by ocschwar at 4:52 PM on November 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

wtf does this even mean?

The actor read the prepared statement to Pence.
posted by chris24 at 4:54 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

the clinton campaign knew the rules going in. they fucked up.

Gotta disagree. They were leading in those Rust Belt states in poll after poll until the Comey letters. They got ratfucked.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:54 PM on November 19, 2016 [29 favorites]

Holy fuck, he's still tweeting about Hamilton and attacking them.

Because evidence shows that it if he's saying stupid things about liberals he both riles up the base and the media reports on that instead of his cabinet picks.

Notice, however, that the people he goes hardest against for the longest time all just happen to be non-straight-white-men. There's deflection, and then there's his obvious fury at the sheer temerity of those people trying to attack him.
posted by Etrigan at 4:55 PM on November 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

So it was a neener neener moment. got it.
posted by futz at 4:55 PM on November 19, 2016

Weird, Trump deleted the last one. He almost never does that. A draft that accidentally went out?
posted by bluecore at 4:59 PM on November 19, 2016

Oh I can only imagine the fight that must have just gone down in Trump Tower over deleting that tweet, as if that somehow makes us all forget it happened.

Is Trump smart enough to tweet and delete that to prolong the Hamilton story and ensure it leads the Sunday shows and not Trump U or conflicts of interest or anything else?
posted by zachlipton at 5:03 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

A draft that accidentally went out?

It was up for a half hour.
posted by chris24 at 5:03 PM on November 19, 2016

Maybe one of the adults took his toys away.
posted by Justinian at 5:03 PM on November 19, 2016

This is probably the most that trump has even thought about pence since he picked him as his running mate.
posted by ian1977 at 5:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [35 favorites]

If the United States had a real system of representation you'd see liberals winning by German proportions.

I guess you've got the zeal of the new convert behind you, but IMO this is delusional. Large swathes, edging on a majority, of the American citizenry are some combination of venal, stupid and mean. This is not a land of conservatives hiding a liberal inside them, screaming to get out, and this country is so broken that it cannot even get to that state without at least a generation of hard work.
posted by indubitable at 5:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

You can see that last tweet on @RealRealDonaldTrump, the Gawker bot that retweets only the Android ones.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

These fascist idiots can't even spell their genocidal rallying cry correctly

Months back, I typed "Why can't liberals..." into Google, and the first completion suggested was "...think for themselves."

So then I tried "Why can't conservatives..." and the top completion was "...spell."
posted by Rat Spatula at 5:33 PM on November 19, 2016 [29 favorites]

in other perhaps meaningful news, I was, of course, joking when I made this comment a few days ago:

speaking of which, why the hell doesn't the DNC sponsor a team in NASCAR?

But suddenly today, this happens.

Suarez becomes the first foreign-born champion of one of NASCAR’s three national series – Sprint Cup, Xfinity and Trucks.

Daniel Suarez, that is, from Mexico. Meanwhile, in Formula 1 ...

The Hawkers company infuriated (Sergio) Perez on the day after Trump was elected president of the United States when it jested about plans to build a wall on the Mexican border. It urged Mexicans to buy its products to hide their ‘crying eyes tomorrow when you are building the wall’. Perez immediately ended his ties with the company, which meant a run of 20,000 special edition glasses had to be scrapped.

The whole world's watching.
posted by philip-random at 5:35 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

...Yet Mr. Trump loves the tension and drama of a selection process, and has sought to stoke it. A senior adviser (to Trump) described the meeting, in part, as Mr. Romney simply coming to pay his respects to the president-elect and “kiss his ring.”

and then this tidbit.

...Mr. Trump, who does not use a computer or read online, does keep an eye on the television, particularly the now-constant news about himself. Most information he takes in is in person or on the phone.

He is worried, his aides say, that he will not be able to keep his Android phone once he gets to the White House and wonders aloud how isolated he will become — and whether he will be able to keep in touch with his friends — without it as president. He continues to discuss with the Secret Service how much he can return on weekends to Trump Tower, and still expects to use the Bedminister golf club and his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., as vacation retreats.
posted by futz at 5:42 PM on November 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hawkers company infuriated (Sergio) Perez on the day after Trump was elected president of the United States when it jested about plans to build a wall on the Mexican border

Hawkers apology advertisment: Dear Sergio, sometimes we have accidents. You, more than anybody else, knows this. Although we don't expect this accident to be forgotten, we will do everything possible to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

"We will continue to be with you, with the people of Mexico and with all those who oppose discrimination and racism in the world.”

The advert also blamed the Trump gaffe on a community manager.

While I would like to be able to acknowledge the Hawkers company for trying to make amends for a horrible, stupid, ill considered promotion, that "apology" seriously sucks. It's not an accident when you order 20,000 pairs of sunglasses, and trying to place the blame on a "community manager" is just stupid. Man up, say it was a stupid decision (not an "accident") and poor judgement, and that you are sorry. End of story.
posted by nubs at 5:54 PM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wonder whether they deliberately sent Pence in to Hamilton because the smoke and heat that would generate would nicely cover the emoluments scandal/the increasing claims of Russian election rigging/the latest cohort of Klansmen being appointed to high office/other things one should be more concerned about than some celebrity-tabloid news about a play.
posted by acb at 5:57 PM on November 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

I just compare the lack of outcry to the vitriol aimed at HRC for weeks on end about the Clinton Foundation and I can only muster bitter lols.
posted by E. Whitehall at 6:02 PM on November 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

> Looks like we're at 1.7million and climbing for Clinton's popular vote margin. What a disaster. We, as a people, said we do not want this man to be President and yet here we are.

John Nichols, Nov. 16th: Hillary Clinton’s Popular-Vote Victory Is Unprecedented—and Still Growing. Her margin is now bigger than the winning margins for John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
posted by homunculus at 6:06 PM on November 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

John Nichols, Nov. 16th: Hillary Clinton’s Popular-Vote Victory Is Unprecedented—and Still Growing. Her margin is now bigger than the winning margins for John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Is this scaled for population size?
posted by acb at 6:08 PM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

So I kinda wish people would stop attributing Trump or Pence decisions to some sort of 8-dimensional chess. Most likely he sent the tweets for the boringly sincere reason that the Hamilton people pissed him off, so of course he tweeted something caustic like he always does when someone pisses him off. While he has a certain weird charisma and a grifter's knack for saying what people want to hear, he (and Pence) are parsecs away from being keen strategic minds.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:10 PM on November 19, 2016 [36 favorites]

Is this scaled for population size?

Yes, it's based on vote %age not # of votes.
posted by chris24 at 6:11 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Electoral College: an 18th Century idea that has singlehandedly prevented America from entering the 21st Century. And will probably ALWAYS do so.

I have always believed that Government is best divided between the most local jurisdictions and the most universal, and everything inbetween (like Counties and States) is unnecessary baggage. But right now, as a California resident, I am solidly endorsing the principle of States Rights, because until the ENTIRE U.S. Constitution gets a rewrite, California should be a Sanctuary State. I even support the California Secession Movement, even though I vividly remember a 2003 Popular Science article I read (in a hospital where the reading choices were limited) about a speculative California Secession attempt that is squashed in 72 hours because there are so many Federal Military bases, especially air bases, in the state. Duh.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

White Nationalists Celebrate ‘an Awakening’ After Donald Trump’s Victory

The white nationalist embrace of Mr. Trump was on display Saturday at the gathering, which was the annual conference of a group called the National Policy Institute. Guests nibbled on chicken piccata while discussing ways to reorient America’s demographics. Many of the attendees, who were mostly white men, wore red “Make America Great Again” hats. T-shirts emblazoned with Mr. Trump’s face sold quickly.
posted by futz at 6:17 PM on November 19, 2016

While he has a certain weird charisma and a grifter's knack for saying what people want to hear, he (and Pence) are parsecs away from being keen strategic minds

That's the argument being made in this tweet storm and I think there's something to it.
posted by nubs at 6:27 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Obama had to explain Trump’s election win and the racial attacks to his daughters. Here’s what he said

“What I say to them is that people are complicated. Societies and cultures are really complicated … This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry,” Obama told the New Yorker’s David Remnick. “These are living organisms and it’s messy. And your job as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understandings.”

Obama told his teenage daughters that they, too, must expect such racially motivated hatred. “…at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop… You don’t get into a fetal position about it,” Obama said.

I hope that he also told them things that are unbefitting a president and too vulgar to print. I am pretty confident that he did.
posted by futz at 6:32 PM on November 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

That's the argument being made in this tweet storm and I think there's something to it.

I agree with this. There's no master plan designed to distract, just a constant stream of idiocy, impulses, and insults that overwhelms our shitty media's ability/desire to cope. He's the Gish Gallop made incarnate.
posted by chris24 at 6:37 PM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Ah, some details on the claim that liberals are the ones really responsible for painting swastikas: Mike Huckabee Doubles Down on Jewish "False Flag" Allegations

That would be Mike Huckabee, rumored to be the frontrunner for the US ambassador to Israel.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:46 PM on November 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Dumbledore's Army
posted by Grandysaur at 6:55 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

@jeeveswilliams
Trump’s so angry at theatre, he's gonna try to build a fourth wall.
posted by chris24 at 6:57 PM on November 19, 2016 [31 favorites]

Him

His election that November came as a surprise…

by Timothy Snyder

A liittle kooky but this is also interesting and scary by Snyder: The Ancient is the Modern

And this: Nations, Empires, Unions: European Integration and Disintegration Since 1914
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:03 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: No elaborately-described death wishes, please.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

I wonder whether they deliberately sent Pence in to Hamilton because the smoke and heat that would generate would nicely cover the emoluments scandal/the increasing claims of Russian election rigging/the latest cohort of Klansmen being appointed to high office/other things one should be more concerned about than some celebrity-tabloid news about a play.

I agree with others that this is giving Trumple and his minions too much credit. Does this kind of distraction happen way too much with him? Why yes it does but that is because we are dealing with a petty, fragile, histrionic, insecure man child of epic proportions. All of this plus zero self control and an easy medium (twitter) for lashing out and here we are. We get to watch his brain cells fire in real time. It is unprecedented and without a doubt would disqualify (or get him fired) him from most employment opportunities. A person like this would either need to be self employed or president I guess.

My point is that we have a volatile man who insta-reacts to every perceived slight. This is not a man who carefully plans sending Pence to a play where he forsees the outcome of it all and uses that as cover for Trumple U etc.

If the media drops the ball every time they see something shiny, like a cat frenzied by a laser pointer then the media is a useless pile of shit.
posted by futz at 7:24 PM on November 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

But remember that Israel's ambassador already said that they were looking forward to working with Bannon. I just don't think the Likud party minds American anti-Semites as long as they are right wing.

This "Jews secretly support antisemitism" is a really nasty meme that's all too prevalent in supposedly liberal circles. E.g., Ken Livingstone.

I'm pretty sure all ambassadors have made nice noises about working with Trump's team, and that it would have been really really stupid as well as a gross breach of duty for the ambassador of a small and vulnerable country to have given the impression that he was anything other than surprised and pleased to have the opportunity of working with America's Fascist-in-Chief. The US is the one at fault here. Please don't use it as an opportunity to start banging your drum about Israeli politics.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:27 PM on November 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

I will say that I agree that this is not some 8D chess, but at the same time I do think that he is aware of the way his general practices keep attention too saturated with irrelevant crap and that that is to his advantage. General strategy vs specific tactics.
posted by Golem XIV at 7:27 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

If the media drops the ball every time they see something shiny, like a cat frenzied by a laser pointer then the media is a useless pile of shit.

Now tell us something surprising.
posted by delfin at 7:28 PM on November 19, 2016

If the media drops the ball every time they see something shiny, like a cat frenzied by a laser pointer then the media is a useless pile of shit.

The president of CNN has a Trump tweet framed in his office. The CEO of CBS said Trump's campaign 'may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS'.

I feel like calling the media a useless pile of shit is an insult to shit.
posted by airish at 7:30 PM on November 19, 2016 [51 favorites]

I'm pretty sure all ambassadors have made nice noises about working with Trump's team, and that it would have been really really stupid as well as a gross breach of duty for the ambassador of a small and vulnerable country to have given the impression that he was anything other than surprised and pleased to have the opportunity of working with America's Fascist-in-Chief. The US is the one at fault here. Please don't use it as an opportunity to start banging your drum about Israeli politics.

Ron Dermer was a long time Republican operative before becoming Israeli ambassador to the US, I wouldn't put it past him to be a True Believer.
posted by indubitable at 7:31 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I feel like calling the media a useless pile of shit is an insult to shit.

No shit. Agree completely.
posted by futz at 7:38 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is a billboard in Russia
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:43 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Israeli politics argument over, this thread is too long, too convoluted, and too exhausting for me to even begin to moderate it properly.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:47 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

According to Snopes, the billboard is actually in Montenegro and placed by "a pro-Serbian group".
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:47 PM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I feel like calling the media a useless pile of shit is an insult to shit.

Actual shit is useful, and even necessary as fertilizer. Not sure what the media's excuse is for being so distasteful.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:48 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Maybe Mattis can sell Trump on the viability of Theranos
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:58 PM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Remember when Hillary Clinton was scheduled to attend a fundraiser for her charitable foundation in Morocco but backed out to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, even though she held no public office and hadn't even launched her campaign at the time? (Bill and Chelsea attended instead.) And how this was a big scandal when Fox News published details gleaned from Wikileaks email dumps, less than a month ago?

Now both the President-elect and his children (who are supposedly going to run his businesses in a blind trust, and also have personal stakes in their father's D.C. luxury hotel business) are openly meeting with both world leaders and partners of Trump's private businesses (including executives from India, at a time when Pakistan is making loud noises about India's nuclear weapons). Not a peep from Fox News this time, though.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:11 PM on November 19, 2016 [68 favorites]

I feel like calling the media a useless pile of shit is an insult to shit.

Sheeeeit.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:12 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I remember Zizek saying they knew a soviet premier was finished when everyone felt safe telling jokes about them. We should make lots of jokes.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:14 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

@kibblesmith:
Your parents in 1996: Don't trust ANYONE on the Internet.

Your parents in 2016: Freedom Eagle dot Facebook says Hillary invented AIDS.
posted by chris24 at 8:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [98 favorites]

I remember Zizek saying they knew a soviet premier was finished when everyone felt safe telling jokes about them.

I was about to agree, but I also remember Žižek saying that Trump was less dangerous than Clinton, so.

Also, this isn't necessarily true of Trump. Who says people will feel safe telling Trump jokes in six months' time? And with the way news works nowadays, would his supporters even hear aboutthe mockery?
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Zizek's a troll with tenure.
posted by ocschwar at 8:25 PM on November 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

@johnlegend:
If #boycotthamilton goes like #boycottbeyonce I'm gonna start #boycottjohnlegend. Shit seems lucrative.
posted by chris24 at 8:32 PM on November 19, 2016 [24 favorites]

Now both the President-elect and his children (who are supposedly going to run his businesses in a blind trust, and also have personal stakes in their father's D.C. luxury hotel business) are openly meeting with both world leaders and partners of Trump's private businesses (including executives from India, at a time when Pakistan is making loud noises about India's nuclear weapons). Not a peep from Fox News this time, though.

#ImpeachOnDayOne

It's the only answer. I hate Mike Pence and everything he stands for but I'm willing to gamble that demographics and politics-as-usual can beat him fairly, because I believe that, in the end, he will obey the rules... and, it turns out, when everything else falls away, that matters to me. I'm not a revolutionary. I want this system to survive. I would rather have Pence as my President than Donald Trump, and I believe that #NeverTrumpers, Christians, and any Republican who believes in family values, the rule of law, or in any of the core values of their party can agree on this.

Seriously. Tell me that every single goddamned Republican in Congress wouldn't prefer a Pence Presidency to the absurd, embarrassing madness we're living in right now. Tell me that all the people who are so sick of all the stupid annoying politics on their Facebook feeds wouldn't grumble a ton but get over it because they're old and tired and fundamentally don't really care as long as a white dude is in power...plus it'd be nice if their kids talked to them again next Thanksgiving. Tell me Fox News wouldn't get on board because they'd rather not get fucking upended by Breitbart media and it would give them something to moan about. Tell me that you, my fellow Democrats, women, queer people, wouldn't prefer a dumb-as-rocks Christian conservative to the endless wave of terrifying, unpredictable electric shocks that is having Donald Trump as the leader of the free world.

Do I like Mike Pence? No I do not. Do I agree with any of his positions? No I do not. Do I believe that Mike Pence would start WWIII because an elected official from somewhere overseas pissed him off on Twitter? No I do not, and I am sick of having that be my standard. Impeach Trump on January 20th. Put Mike Pence in the Oval Office on January 21st. Everyone take a nap on January 22nd, and on January 23rd start working against him. But first, let's drag that fucking Overton window back into goddamned reality where it belongs.

The only people who really want Trump are the alt-right white supremacists and they can be shoved back the fuck into the margins because that's where they naturally thrive. Let the machine of the state turns its guns on them if they want to rebel...but they won't, because cowards are brave behind their computer screens and nowhere else. I spent the last two weeks believing that I've fundamentally misjudged my country but I don't want to believe that anymore. I believe that most people in this country do not want this. This was a victory that happened because of low turnout, and bad data, and general frustration with politics as usual. We stumbled into disaster, but we can fix it. Because the truth is that nobody wants this. Nobody wants this.

#ImpeachOnDayOne.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:45 PM on November 19, 2016 [81 favorites]

I'm sure a bunch of these have been posted before. Miss Manners weighs in.

THE ANTHROPOPHAGUS HAS QUITTED HIS DEN
How could this have happened?

The willful blindness, the willingness to treat a tiny and tenuous lead in unreliable polls as a promissory note for a future landslide, infected almost everybody — from journalists to diehard Democrats to disaffected non-voters to, possibly, Donald Trump himself. There was, clearly, a faith in the historical process, a belief that a country that elected Barack Obama twice had put itself on a certain course irreversibly. In fact, Dr. King’s overquoted assurance about how the arc of history bends might be valid for the longue durée, but it wasn’t a guide to betting on the elections of 1980, or 1994, or 2010.

README: This is why Trump won.


The Democrats’ Real Turnout Problem

How much of a role did sexism play? Are you still crying wolf? We'll see... also, How Exit Polling Missed the Mark on Asian Americans
Donald Trump Is the Result of White Rage, Not Economic Anxiety &
THE NIGHT WASH JONES WON

A Year Before The Election, Unions Saw Trump Winning Over Their Members.

THE CORSICAN OGRE HAS LANDED AT CAPE JUAN
Obama's Legacy?
In Depressed Rural Kentucky, Worries Mount Over Medicaid Cutbacks. Remember that A lot of nonvoters are mad at the election results. They'll be thrilled with Paul Ryan's plans for Medicare. What about 'disrespect?' New Yorkers Have a Duty: Be Rude to the Trumps. A Trump presidency must also be a laughing matter

THE TIGER HAS ARRIVED AT CAP
We were so worried about [PERON|HITLER|MUSSOLINI] we forgot about Berlusconi. Trump transition appears to have flouted internal ethics rule on lobbyists - business as usual. High in Tower, Trump Reads, Tweets and Plans to violate Constitution from the moment of swearing-in, which is why Donald Trump should sell his entire business.

THE MONSTER SLEPT AT GRENOBLE
Will Trump be ready to deliver on his supporters expectations?

“I think you’ll start seeing improvements in six months,” Bill Polacek said in his corner office at JWF Industries, where he’s one of the owners of one of Johnstown’s last manufacturing plants.

Dave Kirsch stood in the parking lot of Himmel’s Coal Yard in Carrolltown, where he drives a truck, and expressed optimism and preached patience—not, though, that much patience. “My boss, he’s a pretty smart man,” Kirsch told me, “and he said it can’t change overnight, but he said give it six months to a year.”

Maggie Frear, a retired nurse, told me toward the end of our meeting one evening in her home that the changes Trump pledged would “take him at least a couple months.”

Bankers celebrate dawn of Trump era - "A populist candidate who railed against shady financial interests on the trail is putting together an administration that looks like an investment banker's dream."

6 Trump Voters Explain How He’ll Make Their Lives Better

THE REACTION TO TRUMP’S WIN? WHITE SUPREMACY ON PARADE.

US addiction statistics are dire. Small changes won't solve the problem

Mike Pence’s Hateful Laws Almost Kept Me From My Dying Wife

How will Trump make America great again? Truthiness.

But I can promise you that in a very short time, millions of Trump supporters will be convinced that he saved thousands of jobs in Kentucky with just the force of his will. As Jesse Singal observed, within minutes of Trump sending his bogus tweet, the story was spreading in its fake version through the conservative media ecosystem. It’s an inverse of the bitterly sarcastic “Thanks, Obama” meme, wherein the president’s critics blamed him for everything that might go wrong in the country or their own lives, right down to whether their boss was a jerk. Trump’s enthusiastic fans will find a way in their own minds to give him credit for anything, and they already are. Gallup recently reported that in the week before the election, just 16 percent of Republicans said the economy was improving; in the week after, that number shot up by 33 percentage points.

“Sore winner” syndrome: Why are Donald Trump’s supporters still so angry?

THE TYRANT HAS PASSED THOUGH LYONS
Do they expect The GOP’s Anti-LGBT, Anti-Women ‘Religious Freedom’ Law on Steroids

Like state “religious freedom restoration acts,” FADA’s basic principle is that it’s not discrimination when businesses discriminate against LGBT people if they have a religious reason for doing so. The most famous situations have to do with marriage: wedding cake bakers who say that if they bake a cake, they’re violating their religion; Kim Davis, the government clerk who said that signing a secular marriage certificate was a religious act that she could not perform.
But those stories are a red herring. The more important cases are ones like hospitals refusing to treat LGBT people (or their children), pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, businesses refusing to offer health benefits to a same-sex partner, and state-funded adoption agencies refusing to place kids with gay families. Underneath the rhetorical BS, that’s what FADA is all about.

Trump’s election has undermined ‘political correctness.’ That might actually be a problem. - "As Summers’s opinion piece suggests, what some people view as problematic ‘political correctness’ might from another perspective be perceived as a mostly benign set of informal norms and social institutions that prevent people from expressing their actual racism."

I love you. We're dead meat

Let me be clear: this isn’t an essay about bonding with someone who has opposing beliefs or about how people can defy stereotypes. My student is talented, and he’s sensitive, but he still voted for Donald Trump. My student hurt me, and he did it because he’s kind of stupid.

I don’t mean that in a cruel way. He’s stupid in that way that many 18-year-olds are, the way that I was stupid when I was 18. He’s full of good intentions, and he hopes for the best, even from the worst. He voted for Trump because he didn’t believe Trump really meant all those racist things. He hoped–and continues to hope–that Trump will be better than his disgusting rhetoric.

But he says that now he can see how Trump’s victory hurt me, and so many others, and, with that same hope, he hands me his apology.

And I hold this hopeful, well-intentioned apology, as I’ve held apologies before, and I just don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with it.

The Federalist Says Steve Bannon Isn’t Anti-Semitic Because Jewish Girls Really Are Whiny

THE USURPER IS DIRECTING HIS STEPS TOWARDS DIJON
I fully expect a guns-and-graft-and-butter approach to infrastructure spending, to be wholeheartedly endorsed by Republicans, and everyone will forget about the deficit and the debt fearmongering (all that was simply a political ploy to prevent an economic recovery under a Democratic president). It's always about power. Always. Remember this when people talk about reducing the size of the government.

Also, the registry of Muslims won't be something that you can sign up for.

BONAPARTE IS ONLY SIXTY LEAGUES FROM THE CAPITAL
None of this is Normal. All of it is un-American. Really? We know that Much of what we love about America was true only for a moment.

The American Deep State is probably worth a post on it's own.
NSA Head Openly Accuses Russia of Using Wikileaks to Get Trump Elected & The NSA Chief Says Russia Hacked the 2016 Election. Congress Must Investigate. Of course, NSA turmoil could threaten chief's job – and expand Trump's power, when Trump takes control

BONAPARTE IS ADVANCING WITH RAPID STEPS, BUT HE WILL NEVER ENTER PARIS
So now what? TWITTER THREADS!

Yes, we've focused too much on the "economic anxiety" of the right. But believe me, I take no pleasure in anyone's pain. That'd be inhuman.

---

This is important for people who blame Clinton's loss on things like LGBT rights. They're wrong.

---

We're about to learn what "conflict of interest" really means.

---

When Jimmy Carter was elected, he had to give up his sole asset -- a peanut farm that he built with his own hands.

---
README:

So I'm a Mexican American from a poor, rural (mostly white) town in Oklahoma. Missing from this debate? How poor whites see themselves.
...
To fail to transcend poverty, and to admit you are poor, is to admit you are neither hardworking or clever. It's cultural brainwashing.

---

Something really really scary appeared to have just happened and I hope people understand why it matters amidst all the other chaos.

---

Of central importance is the recognition that there are material benefits to whiteness. I think this is a key gap in the way many, many

folks have been trying to talk about the "white working class" and next steps. Like, there's an army of folks who want to argue WWC is

either racist, or not racist, but no one actually has stepped back and thought about class stratification w/in a racist system

and the point is this. The benefits to whiteness for poor and working white folks have decreased

---
NAPOLEON WILL, TOMORROW, BE UNDER OUR RAMPARTS
Just in time for Thanksgiving, A guide to the language of the 'alt-right'. remember the ties between trolling and fascism

THE EMPEROR IS AT FONTAINEBLEAU
Rorty called it.
Skin in the game: White Nationalism at the polls

Finally, John Powell from 2008: Race, Place and Opportunity

What is required is a strategy of "targeted universalism." This approach recognizes that the needs of marginalized groups must be addressed in a coordinated and effective manner. To improve opportunities and living conditions for all residents in a region, we need policies to proactively connect people to jobs, stable housing, and good schools. Targeted universalism recognizes that life is lived in a web of opportunity. Only if we address all of the mutually reinforcing constraints on opportunity can we expect real progress in any one factor.

HIS IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MAJESTY arrived yesterday evening at the Tuileries, amid the joyful acclamation of his devoted and faithful subjects
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:51 PM on November 19, 2016 [66 favorites]

#ImpeachOnDayOne

Pence will rubber stamp anything Trump would and more, he'd be less of a headache for Ryan and McConnell, and it certainly feels like the kind of "see! we're totally not racist!" move that they'd love to point to for years after, especially with how much Trump has normalized the likes of Romney et al... hey, maybe that's their tactic to heed the 2008 election post mortem! I'm sure impeachment is an option that's on the RNC's minds. I feel like they won't try it until they're either forced to, or they feel comfortable their base will swallow it, though.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:07 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

I really want a way for the media to prioritize headlines better. Or atleast in the news about trump that the main points are in every webpage.

Maybe a numbering system ? Color system? Placement on page isn't enough.

I'd also like to see combining of stories Even if it's like "Instead of replacing anti semetic Bannon, PEOTUS admonishes crowd for free speech at Hamilton"
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:17 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm sure impeachment is an option that's on the RNC's minds. I feel like they won't try it until they're either forced to, or they feel comfortable their base will swallow it, though.

I suspect they'd love to do it, but won't do it until everyone is screaming for it.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:19 PM on November 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I suspect they'd love to do it, but won't do it until everyone is screaming for it.

Obama needs to double-dog dare them NOT to impeach Trump, and he needs to triple-dog dare them not to just give Clinton the presidency and give up on this charade.

I don't think they'd do the last part, but it'd be really funny anyway.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:23 PM on November 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

A bunch of my lefty Indiana friends are riffing on Facebook about how booing Pence is an Indiana thing and those darn coastal elites are always stealing our stuff, and how Brooklyn hipsters discover something the Midwest has been doing for 20 years and immediately adopt it as suuuuuuper authentic and act like we haven't been doing it all along and like they originated the idea of publicly booing Mike Pence at all possible opportunities.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:27 PM on November 19, 2016 [66 favorites]

Yeah but did they boo him at Hamilton?
posted by ian1977 at 9:33 PM on November 19, 2016

I just had a vision of a monster truck show event where the producers give a vociferous shout out to trump and to all 'true Americans' and amp up the music and just let shit happen.
posted by ian1977 at 9:42 PM on November 19, 2016

Yeah but did they boo him at Hamilton?

It's possible!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:44 PM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Basically if (and holy shit I should not have to seriously say "if" here wtf) Trump doesn't go full President for Life, he will eventually be a boat anchor around the RNC's necks - he's already got crazy low approval, he barely got elected without this perfect storm of a shitty election year nudging him into a win by technicality, and his proposals to bring back jobs and have everyone love him for it are garbage - and they absolutely have an opportunity to pull a New Coke and have voters loving it when they bring back Republican Classic. And they need to get the public used to Republican Classic because be it 4 years or god forbid 8 they don't have another 2016 Donald Trump they can count on to sell the populist shtick - could you imagine Cruz or Rubio or any of the others attempting that look? I think the two things holding back an impeachment would be public sentiment and especially that of their base, and the dangerously foolish temptation to ride it out for a while to see if they can get some advantage out of him. But likely what they're looking at in 4 years is an unpopular Trump who they'd be afraid to primary for reasons of party unity and Trump's ability to fuck up a primary real good - impeachment takes care of that little problem, and the next sane Republican candidate to run will seem like a breath of fresh air. Hell, Pence might even voluntarily step aside, he's got the look of a man who never expected this in the first place.

Of course what happens in 4 years also depends on how bad Ryan and McConnell fuck things up, but in their minds their proposals can't lose, while toadying up to an unpopular incompetent President probably won't be a good look.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:55 PM on November 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Josh Marshall elaborates on a point I made in past threads: that the presidency remains a republican take on 18th-century monarchy, and is likely to resemble an 18th-century monarchy unless and until the one mechanism to curtail it is called upon. "Impeachment is the only true check on executive power."
posted by holgate at 9:55 PM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think the good news is, there's a solid chance a lot of hackers might get pardoned under a Trump administration. Assuming any of them are American.

And just think: if Snowden & Manning had been less ethical, they could be among them!
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:00 PM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Basically if (and holy shit I should not have to seriously say "if" here wtf) Trump doesn't go full President for Life

Bannon has a 50-year plan in that latest article. The if is pretty fucking shaky there, and I'm not sure Bannon cares about Trump specifically so long as it's someone he can manipulate. Pence, rest his rot, at least has convictions to fight over.

This is what bargaining feels like and I don't like it.
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:06 PM on November 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

A wonk having a 50 year plan is like an author having an idea for the greatest novel.
posted by rhizome at 10:24 PM on November 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

We can only appeal to trump's narcissism. He just wants adulation and praise. If we give him that surely he will acknowledge and accommodate us.


Like...trump! He's eh, ok!

Crowd: how ok is he?!?

He's so okay, that he didn't cancel Medicare... Which the people love!


Crowd: aww trumps the best!
posted by ian1977 at 10:30 PM on November 19, 2016

In Depressed Rural Kentucky, Worries Mount Over Medicaid Cutbacks.

This article is about poverty stricken Clay County, Kentucky in which 60% of the population is on Medicaid. Last year Clay County voted 71% to elect governor Matt Bevin, who vowed to repeal Medicaid expansion in Kentucky.

Now they are worried about Medicaid cutbacks that that they voted for overwhelmingly? What is wrong with these people?
posted by JackFlash at 11:35 PM on November 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

There's a repeated refrain from victims: "Don't they realise they're hurting themselves too?"

And it's true. Over and over again, people support vindictive policies that are absolutely certain to also hurt the people that are inflicting them. I mean, look at the Holocaust; the immediate victims were Jews and other marginalised groups, but as a consequence there were vastly fewer doctors, nurses, pharmacists, soldiers, drivers, and so forth. In fact, the Axis was busily shipping Jews around for extermination at the very time they needed the railways and roads for last-ditch defenses against the Red Army.

I've often wondered about this. I can only conclude that hatred is a tremendously powerful motivating force, more powerful than rationality or even self-preservation.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:58 PM on November 19, 2016 [45 favorites]

Now they are worried about Medicaid cutbacks that that they voted for overwhelmingly?

From last year, one county north:

The community's largest-circulation newspaper, the Three Forks Tradition in Beattyville, did not say much about Kynect ahead of the election. Instead, its editorials roasted Obama and Hillary Clinton, gay marriage, Islam, "liberal race peddlers," "liberal media," black criminals and "the radical Black Lives Matter movement."

"The people I talk to, health care wasn't even mentioned," said Gary Cornett, chairman of the Owsley County Republican Party. "In Southeast Kentucky, the social issues are important. We're a small, traditional, tight-knit community, and there are certain ways we do things."

via Miki Kendall, who concludes: "[a]t some point we have to stop pretending people don't know what they are doing in the voting booth, and start talking about why they do it."

"There are certain ways we do things" is telling. Economic policy is treated as something that just happens to these communities; social policy is where they feel they have agency. Insularity is identity.
posted by holgate at 12:08 AM on November 20, 2016 [38 favorites]

"In Southeast Kentucky, the social issues are important. We're a small, traditional, tight-knit community, and there are certain ways we do things."

That's a really polite way to phrase "racist and insular."
posted by Justinian at 12:26 AM on November 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

what is a tila tequila
posted by entropicamericana at 11:25 AM on November 19

Twenty dollars, same as in town.

I know we're hurting, friends, but we still have honored traditions to maintain.
posted by bryon at 12:29 AM on November 20, 2016 [49 favorites]

Now they are worried about Medicaid cutbacks that that they voted for overwhelmingly?

Instead of talking about these kinds of things as bubble problems, the better analogy might be communities trapped in the night, where they can't see things right next to them due to the darkness, but fear the stars, told they harbor monsters.

In bright light the stars vanish and problems at hand become clear, so, of course, those that name the constellations of worry, also smash the lamps so as to better conceal their complicity in this design.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:34 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

I've been pondering that you can't trust somebody who makes choices that harm themselves not to make choices that harm others.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:13 AM on November 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

Donald Trump's response to Pence being booed is to call for theaters to be safe spaces.

It seems to me like the best way to make theaters safe spaces is to prevent Mike Pence from going to them at all.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:14 AM on November 20, 2016 [16 favorites]

Also sorry because I'm reading this now and responding to stuff from hours ago but:

Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Boggs disputed that account, saying he told Stacey Payton, the mother, that filing a criminal case could stir resentment among some students and bring her son troubles at school, according to the AP.

Bring him troubles at school? BRING him troubles at school? He had fellow students commit a physical act of violence against him because he's black, a violent act that contains the implicit threat of further violence or even murder, and you don't think he's already got troubles at school?
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:18 AM on November 20, 2016 [36 favorites]

Instead of talking about these kinds of things as bubble problems, the better analogy might be communities trapped in the night, where they can't see things right next to them due to the darkness, but fear the stars, told they harbor monsters.

In this case, the monster is Medicaid fraud. The people of Clay County are not voting against themselves -- they truly recognize the help this program provides for people and families who need it. But they're voting against Medicaid for their cousin's neighbor's brother who they heard is lazy and unwilling to work and is getting better assistance than they are and doesn't deserve it. In counties like Clay where lots of people use Medicaid, chances are everyone knows someone who knows someone who they feel is exploiting the system.

There's a segment in the documentary Remote Area Medical that goes into this a bit more. The documentary follows a non-profit medical unit that works in poor, underserved areas like Bristol County, TN. It's on Netflix and definitely worth watching.
posted by mochapickle at 4:13 AM on November 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

Regarding Trump lasting more than 4 years, maybe this is me dreaming, but I really can't see him being elected again*. He rode a perfect storm of events to eke a technical win out this year as the supposed agent of change after 8 years of Obama. But even with that wind at his back, everyone hated the election cycle, was exhausted by it, was so ready for it to be over. And now we have 4 more years of it. And in 2020, he's not going to be the change agent. he's the status quo, and a status quo that has worn everyone the fuck out for 4 years. People were tired of No Drama Obama. Think how tired they're going to be of Tweetin' Trump. Beyond the demographic change that makes 2020 even more favorable than this year where Dems won the vote by 2 million and 100,000 votes changed wins the electoral college, pure Trump fatigue could change those states. Especially with someone less of a lightning rod than Clinton.

* usual caveats on elections ever being held again, can't take anything for granted, etc.
posted by chris24 at 5:20 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behaviori

New tweet from 6:30 this morning. Unbelievable. So now Hamilton is overrated. Next thing he'll be telling is that it's losing money. Oh and reading a prepared speech is terrible behavior.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:30 AM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

For all the million tiny ratfucks, the one that sticks in my craw the most is that we've spent a year with one third of our government completely hamstrung, all in the name of electioneering. How many "I don't like Trump, but..." voters finished that sentence with the words "Supreme Court"?

I say the Democrats should continue to refuse to confirm nominations, saying that we need to let the American people decide if they really REALLY want Trump making that choice by seeing if he gets re-elected after four years. It would only be fair to democracy, after all.

Eventually the problem of even numbers on the court will solve itself. :-/
posted by Scattercat at 5:33 AM on November 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show - nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?

From 5 minutes ago. He really doesn't understand how this whole thing works.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:36 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Just imagine:

"The people and leaders of Iran, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to my administration for their terrible behavior"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:38 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I hope you're right chris24, but I didn't think Bush could be re-elected either. He handled his first term so badly, violated so many norms with torture and surveillance, grated on the ear of so many, and had terrible approval ratings for a president in wartime. 2004 was the sort of gut punch which makes me very skeptical of 2020.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:41 AM on November 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

Republican elected a Manbaby-in-Chief. I didn't realize what was keeping us from greatness was insufficient whining.
posted by chris24 at 5:42 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

I hope you're right chris24

Oh me too. Though I do think the constant drama, insanity and fatigue makes this different than Bush.
posted by chris24 at 5:44 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Regarding Trump lasting more than 4 years, maybe this is me dreaming, but I really can't see him being elected again*
----
* usual caveats on elections ever being held again, can't take anything for granted, etc.

Thank you for your dream. I'm stiicking with your caveats.
posted by Mister Bijou at 5:51 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

It is different than Bush. But sometimes feels like it's different mainly in scale. I mean, Bush seems like a normal politico compared to Trump. But, back then he seemed like a sharp, harsh divergence which threatened the republic at its roots, just as Trump does now.

Part of the GOP downward slide combined with normalization, I guess. Hunter S. Thomson excoriated Nixon for being corrupt and a would-be-tyrant. Only to eventually follow it up with "Bush is worse, Nixon would be an improvement." And now if we could trade Trump for Dubya, we'd probably do it in a heartbeat.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:53 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Everyone who thinks Trump won't be reelected needs to rejigger their imaginations. Sarah Kendzior (i think) suggests writing down a list of things you think could never happen with Trump, and being prepared to cross them off when they happen. He's prepared to cross boundaries we didn't even know existed because they seemed so essential. And Masha Gessen reminds us: Institutions will not save us. Not the media, not the "checks and balances", and not the ballot box. Bannon wants to destroy the institutions, and Trump is without restraint. Unthinkable things are on the horizon, which is why it's so hard to think of them happening now.
posted by dis_integration at 5:56 AM on November 20, 2016 [49 favorites]

Not the media, indeed.
posted by petebest at 5:59 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

This Hamilton blow up is insane--DJT wasn't even there but he is taking the speech (which was non-inflammatory) as a personal insult. It should have already died down now but he is fanning the flames at a time when he has a lot on his plate. He obviously doesn't care about what impression he is making. Anybody out there still think he deserves a fresh start?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:03 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Donald Trump call for apology to 'harassed' Mike Pence rejected by Hamilton cast: 'Conversation is not harassment sir,' actor tells President-elect

@BrandonVDixon (Burr)
@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen.

@Lin_Manuel
Proud of @HamiltonMusical. Proud of @BrandonVDixon, for leading with love.
And proud to remind you that ALL are welcome at the theater.
posted by chris24 at 6:04 AM on November 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

Hazem Salem at the Guardian: Clinton & co are finally gone. That is the silver lining in this disaster.

Hillary Clinton has given us back our freedom. Only such a crushing defeat could break the chains that bound us to the New Democrat elites. The defeat was the result of decades of moving the Democratic party – the party of FDR – away from what it once was and should have remained: a party that represents workers. All workers.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:08 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Everyone who thinks Trump won't be reelected needs to rejigger their imaginations.

no but you see the republican congress that totally didn't endorse him will impeach him first, but even that won't really matter because we'll just keep him distracted with twitter because it's not like he's appointing an entire government that can focus its attention on many things at once. and then when he's impeached he'll lose an election because he's a sex maniac and also i heard he's buddies with putin.

everything is normal, don't worry about it
posted by indubitable at 6:11 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

In slightly better Trump tweet news, he seems to like General Mattis, who, per Corb, would be a sane SoD who would stand up to Trump.

@realDonaldTrump
General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General!
posted by chris24 at 6:13 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just imagine:

"The people and leaders of Iran, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to my administration for their terrible behavior"

I'll play:

"Angela Merkel and the people of Germany, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to my administration for their terrible behavior"
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:14 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

In slightly better Trump tweet news, he seems to like General Mattis, who, per Corb, would be a sane SoD who would stand up to Trump.

yeah, civilian control of the military is for chumps
posted by indubitable at 6:15 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Election bellweather many have forgotten: The Microsoft AI that became a nazi after a day on twitter.
posted by drezdn at 6:20 AM on November 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

yeah, civilian control of the military is for chumps

I agree, but sadly we're in harm reduction mode and someone sane who cares about the institution is probably better than any civilian Trump might nominate.
posted by chris24 at 6:23 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

A question for those who have experiences dealing with people with narcissistic personality disorder: would Ivanka know there's something off about him? Is she just trying keep the boat afloat and save her brand? Or does she think this is all normal and he's just misunderstood?

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around seemingly sane people enabling his insanity.
posted by bluecore at 6:24 AM on November 20, 2016

I think this could be an important moment for us. I want to see how far he takes this. He is in an interesting place between private citizen and President. I'm waiting for some sort of implied threat. For example, calling in to FOX news and talking about the need to take some sort of action such as an investigation into the cast's immigration status or the theater's tax returns. Then we will know how he intends to use the office of the President. How far is he willing to go with the Authoritarian stance and how far will congress and the public let him go?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:26 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Zizek's a troll with tenure.

Žižek's a purveyor of the same kind of muscular red-pill anti-liberalism as the alt-right fascists and the Putinist information-warfare trolls, only rather than bigging up fascism or racial nationalism, he's hearkening back to the Communist strongmen of the Cold War.
posted by acb at 6:30 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

It is different than Bush.

Is it though?
I think the paradigm of a split culture is one that it is imperative to accept and come to terms with. That is, about 55 million people see no problem whatsoever with Trump. Fix yourself a cuppa whatever you need and try to let that sink in - I'm not really so good with it. I mean, I kind of shy away from this as a fact I have to accept but there it is.
Similar but different, some people like the Mets, some the Yankees. Or, Frank Sinatra vs Justin Bieber. And etc. Of course, one would hope that the difference between Trump and someone else would lie in who is most qualified and or competent not which one you 'like' better. But, either I'm wrong for thinking there's no fucking way Trump is competent enough or I'm not and I have no way of verifying my skepticism without putting out a tremendous effort and doing a lot of extra journalistic effort - that is, finding sources (court documents? public filings or one sort or another) un-related to the media.
Bush getting re-elected really fucked me up. I couldn't understand what had happened - then I pulled my head out of my ass and realized I'm not a 'typical' American and I flat out don't understand the people who thought Bush would be a good choice. Same with Trump. I don't get it. And I know I'm not alone in that.
posted by From Bklyn at 6:31 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Don't hold out for getting rid of Trump to fix things.

Social programs, once they are gone, are gone forever - see welfare. Creating social security, medicare and medicaid took enormous amounts of political capital at times when the country was much more liberal than it is likely to be again. Once those are gone, Trump's successor is unlikely to have the political capital to reinstate them. This is part of why Ryan et al are so desperate to get rid of them now.

We have to protect social programs as much as we possibly can in the next four years - if we lose them now, they are gone. Don't kid yourself or pin your hopes on a dream.
posted by Frowner at 6:34 AM on November 20, 2016 [61 favorites]

how far will congress and the public let him go?

Pretty far I bet
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:35 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

> about 55 million people see no problem whatsoever with Trump.

Or at least no problems that weighed heavier than the reasons they had to vote for him. In my view, that's an important distinction.
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:37 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Regarding Trump lasting more than 4 years, maybe this is me dreaming, but I really can't see him being elected again*.

If he gets to get away with openly using his office to reward friends and punish enemies, not only will he be re-elected, he'll get to name his successor in 8 years.
posted by ocschwar at 6:42 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

FOX News Sunday: .@mike_pence: I really enjoyed watching Hamilton. It was a real joy to be there. I heard a few boos. I wasn't offended by what was said.

So not on the same page at all. He must have an assistant keeping track of DJT's twitter feed, right? Or am I giving him too much credit? Is Pence trying to cast himself as the "reasonable one"?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:45 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

The defeat was the result of decades of moving the Democratic party – the party of FDR – away from what it once was and should have remained: a party that represents workers. All workers.

Glad to see Democrats aren't beneath their own purges.

I don't think any of these people understand what losing means.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:45 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't think that guy has a thing to do with the Democratic party. He's just another hard-line leftist who is in denial about what a real catastrophe looks like.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:48 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

He's hugely unpopular. Even after his favorables went from 34% to 42% after the election, he's still by far the most unpopular president elect in modern history.

Gallup Favorable Ratings of Recent Presidents-Elect (Favorable/Unfavorable)
Donald Trump 42/55
Barack Obama 68/27
George W. Bush 59/36
Bill Clinton 58/35

And remember how fast the faves went down on those PEs with good favorabilities once in office. And during the election, when the focus was on Trump, and he was tweeting and doing crazy things like he is now and will keep doing, people didn't like him.
posted by chris24 at 6:49 AM on November 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

"I don't give a damn what the president wants to do," he said. "We will not waterboard. We will not torture people."

The belated morality is so cute after the horse is out of the barn.

No matter how frustrated I am at my dog when she won't do what I tell her, when she finally does it, I reward her just the same. It's important to reward and reinforce that good behavior so she'll get better at doing it faster.

No matter how you feel about him, if you want to see more of this kind of thing, hold your nose and give the man a cookie is what I'm saying. It's not fair but it might be effective.
posted by VTX at 6:51 AM on November 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

But Ivanka is pretty... surely that means she must be a nice person? /s
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:53 AM on November 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

Ivanka probably knows life is easier if she generally goes along with the parental crazy. if she's "on his side," she has a slightly better shot at getting him to be less horrible and talking some reason into him. If she comes out against her father, she knows what happens.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:57 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

i know the wwii generation is rapidly shuffling off this mortal coil, and probably 1/2 or more voted for trump, but can you imagine how gutted those of them who can see what is actually going on must feel?
posted by entropicamericana at 7:02 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

So I woke up this morning with the fun thought that somebody should host and program a counter-inauguration, with Hilary Clinton as a keynote speaker, (the People's, if not the Electoral College's, President).

The country's greatest, most popular musical acts. Hamilton Live. Diversity, joy, excitement and determination. LGBT rights. Climate change a priority. Medicare championed. Vaccines for all.

A turn-out about 100x larger than the "official" inauguration, and a festive, joyous -- and fierce and unyielding -- event that provides the perfect inverse to the withered, raging, and monied spectacle of Republicans grimly taking the knee to their new master across town.

I believe this could happen.
posted by Shepherd at 7:02 AM on November 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

One thing I want to see happen is to have a giant billboard erected before his inauguration in a very visible space.

This billboard will have a giant unflattering picture of him and a list of all of his impeachable offenses as of day one, updated over time as necessary. Keep it up as long as possible, like the national debt ticker we have.

It will first generate conversation in DC and among tourists. Trump will be unable to resist whining about it, making it national news and getting the media talking about impeachment.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:05 AM on November 20, 2016 [26 favorites]

I really don't understand why Ivanka gets the benefit of the doubt. Even when she's on the side of evil we assume she's just doing it to mitigate that evil. She's been pushing her products every time the campaign gave her an opening, she gave a speech at the convention trying to humanize her father by portraying him falsely as an ally of women, she got pissy and short when a Cosmo writer had the temerity to ask a serious question. She fucking married Kushner who has no problem working with an anti-semite, and she doesn't seem to have a problem with it either. Sure, she puts any inheritance at risk by breaking with him, but she has her own brand and is married to a man who's going to inherit billions. She has made her choice abundantly clear. Jesus, some of Reagan's kids stood up against him.
posted by chris24 at 7:06 AM on November 20, 2016 [68 favorites]

So I woke up this morning with the fun thought that somebody should host and program a counter-inauguration, with Hilary Clinton as a keynote speaker, (the People's, if not the Electoral College's, President).

The country's greatest, most popular musical acts. Hamilton Live. Diversity, joy, excitement and determination. LGBT rights. Climate change a priority. Medicare championed. Vaccines for all.

A turn-out about 100x larger than the "official" inauguration, and a festive, joyous -- and fierce and unyielding -- event that provides the perfect inverse to the withered, raging, and monied spectacle of Republicans grimly taking the knee to their new master across town.


Oh. You probably just fell asleep last night with NBC on.
posted by cashman at 7:09 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Sam Rudy, the show’s publicist, later said the speech was composed collectively by Dixon, Miranda, Seller and director Thomas Kail “with input from members of the company.” The text was completed minutes before the end of the performance, Rudy said. [from the Washington Post]

Still no word on how Pence got his tickets. By the way, that Washington Post article has 14 thousand comments already.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:12 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

There are a few people in the world who could've singlehandedly stopped this. Ivanka is one of them. She could've said I love my father but he is not suited to be president. That alone coming from the one "respected" member of the family would've swayed enough votes. She didn't, knowing what and who he was. Millions will suffer and die because of her greed or weakness or whatever. She chose him over country and blacks and latinx and Muslims and LGBT and people with pre-existing conditions and and and.

Not to say that she's more to blame than Donald, or Mitt, or Ryan or his voters, but she sure as hell gets no break or forgiveness from me.
posted by chris24 at 7:16 AM on November 20, 2016 [34 favorites]

I agree, but sadly we're in harm reduction mode and someone sane who cares about the institution is probably better than any civilian Trump might nominate.
- chris24

This immediate rush to accommodation is odd from a strategic POV, and a moral one.
posted by indubitable at 7:22 AM on November 20, 2016

@realDonaldTrump I have always had a good relationship with Chuck Schumer. He is far smarter than Harry R and has the ability to get things done. Good news!

Aside from the third grade maturity level of this tweet, what do we make of it? Schumer is my senator.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on November 20, 2016

> about 55 million people see no problem whatsoever with Trump.

Or at least no problems that weighed heavier than the reasons they had to vote for him. In my view, that's an important distinction.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:37 AM on November 20

Completely serious question - Why is it an important distinction?
posted by soundguy99 at 7:23 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Melania and Barron Trump won’t be moving to the White House: The president-elect’s 46-year-old wife and their 10-year-old son are staying put at the family’s glitzy Trump Tower penthouse so that Barron can continue attending his Upper West Side private school, sources told The Post
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Surely even liberals don't want to see the poor child have to ride in a non-gold elevator. I mean, we're not MONSTERS.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:26 AM on November 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around seemingly sane people enabling his insanity.

Look up some of the pictures of Trump and Ivanka when she was a teen (and preteen). Use keywords like "bed" or "creepy." The stuff you're going to find-- that does things to a person. Not breaking away from that as an adult means she is actively working on the side of evil, and for that she doesn't get moral absolution from me, but if you look at that relationship, I would really question, "seemingly sane," no matter how well she knows how to fake it.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:27 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

This immediate rush to accommodation is odd from a strategic POV, and a moral one.

Republicans have a majority in the Senate. We cannot defeat every nominee. I think we're better focused on stopping dangerous and extreme choices like Sessions, Flynn, Bannon, etc. than sane-ish choices like Mattis and Romney.
posted by chris24 at 7:28 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Completely serious question - Why is it an important distinction?


Because it means they won't go apeshit when he's impeached.
posted by ocschwar at 7:28 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Aside from the third grade maturity level of this tweet, what do we make of it? Schumer is my senator.

You can't do anything except call him up and demand he do his job. You can't primary him for another five years since he was just reelected. That's the nature of senators. They're insulated from public opinion for long stretches of time.
posted by Talez at 7:29 AM on November 20, 2016

The president-elect’s 46-year-old wife and their 10-year-old son are staying put at the family’s glitzy Trump Tower penthouse

So, clarify this for me: does this mean the Secret Service will be cordoning off Trump Tower 24/7 for the next four years?

Did no one go over these details with Trump prior to the election?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:30 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

steady-state strawberry, the article says exactly that, for at least the remainder of this school year (through the end of June), and possibly the entire four years, yes.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:32 AM on November 20, 2016

Considering that clearly no-one went over the "detail" that the White House staff doesn't come with the White House like Trump's win was the equivalent of a corporate takeover - no, I bet they didn't.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:33 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

>>> about 55 million people see no problem whatsoever with Trump.
>> Or at least no problems that weighed heavier than the reasons they had to vote for him. In my view, that's an important distinction.
> Completely serious question - Why is it an important distinction?

Because people who voted for him, but do see certain problems with him, may be open to discussions about the topics they saw problems with. They are probably much easier to talk to than those who are all for Trump, all the way.
I don't think it would serve Democrats well to regard every Trump voter as irredeemable and unreachable. Trump voters are a land of contrasts.
posted by Too-Ticky at 7:34 AM on November 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

Did no one go over these details with Trump prior to the election?

Every CEO/public figure or head of organization breaks or bends the rules at some point. EVERY single one, because really, what's the point of power if you don't use it.

So it wouldn't have mattered if Trump has been told, he would still be doing something that makes his life easier or fits his goals/comforts.

I'm still waiting for someone in the press to ask him where email server will be stored.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:45 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

I filled out that Trump survey on his website asking for suggestions for cabinet members and got my first junk email from them today pitching a get rich scheme. Always be hustlin', I guess.
posted by not that mimi at 7:46 AM on November 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

Pence: I nudged my kids and reminded them that that's what freedom sounds like. At the end, I did hear what was said from the stage and I can tell you - I wasn't offended by what was said. I'll leave to others whether that was the appropriate venue to say it. (Longer response linked)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:47 AM on November 20, 2016 [19 favorites]

Aside from the third grade maturity level of this tweet, what do we make of it? Schumer is my senator.

Schumer doesn't have voicemail at his NY or D.C. offices unfortunately, but he's on my call sheet for tomorrow.

Recommending again that people save important congressional phone #s in their phones (incl. Schumer since he's going to be minority leader soon). I saw that tweet and was like "OH REALLY CHUCK SCHUMER??" double tap home, contacts, dial his office. Couldn't reach him this time bc no voicemail, but I'm loving my new "don't tweet; call" philosophy. (Well, tweet AND call; boo AND vote.)
posted by melissasaurus at 7:48 AM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

MY BAR IS SO LOW I'M ON THE VERGE OF TEARS AT THAT PENCE STATEMENT. I've been going back and forth between white hot rage that this piece of shit is still trying to intimidate Hamilton over twitter and absolute terror that he is going to Pussy Riot them away once he takes office. Wow. What the fuck have we come to.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:55 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

I agree, but sadly we're in harm reduction mode and someone sane who cares about the institution is probably better than any civilian Trump might nominate.

I'm starting to get cautiously optimistic about this. See, remember all those times Trump talked about General MacArthur and we were all "what the actual fuck Trump"? From a superficial level only, the general that most resembles MacArthur is Mattis - he's a kind of macho guy, and he's said some macho quotes, and everybody loves him. So there's a lot of superficial reasons for Trump to appoint him. But he's also said things like this:

"If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don’t take the shot. Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.”

And he's just straight out a good man who doesn't believe in wasting lives and counter-intuitively, places a lot of focus on diplomacy and cultural understanding. I know a lot of Marines who personally served with him, and not a single one has anything bad to say about him - not anything.

He also Does Not Tolerate Bigotry, or even the appearance of bigotry. Do you guys remember the Scout Sniper/SS photo from some time ago? These guys were photo'd using a logo that resembled the SS, it got criticized, everyone was preparing to dig into their corners and be like "it's a tradition" when Mattis got involved and that shit got shut down /hard/.

So yeah. He's pretty much the best pick there could be, and he's got just enough macho icing that Trump might actually make it. I've got my fingers crossed.
posted by corb at 8:06 AM on November 20, 2016 [38 favorites]

MacArthur almost started World War III with China.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:08 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Rightwing "Christians".

@KedronBardwell
2016: Evangelicals switched from least to MOST likely to say a person's immorality has no bearing on his performance
Donald Trump and the Transformation of White Evangelicals

"White evangelical Christians set a new high water mark in their support of Republican candidates by giving Donald Trump 81% of their votes, according to the 2016 exit polls."
posted by chris24 at 8:10 AM on November 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Dixie Chicks performed in concert in London on March 10, 2003 [...] During the introduction to their song "Travelin' Soldier", Natalie Maines, who along with Robison and Maguire is also a native of Texas, said:

"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."

George W. Bush's response:

The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... they shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street ... I don't really care what the Dixie Chicks said. I want to do what I think is right for the American people, and if some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that's fine. That's the great thing about America.

[wikipedia]
posted by AFABulous at 8:12 AM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

Wasn't Mattis on active duty as recently as 2013? Doesn't recent service disqualify him from serving as SecDef?
posted by jackbishop at 8:13 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'll leave to others whether that was the appropriate venue to say it.

This is Team Trump's playbook in its purest form: Any attempt to feign graciousness in the midst of a controversy/scandal is immediately undercut by demagogic exhortation to their followers to let loose on FB, Twitter, etc. against their non-white "enemy".

It's also a total distraction from the important pieces of news: First, Trump caved by settling the fraud lawsuit against Trump U; and second, Trump engaged in egregious conflict of interest by touting his D.C. hotel to foreign diplomats (foreshadowing unconstitutional practices).

We can expect them to use this tactic over and over until it stops working for them. The next four years, to paraphrase Orwell, will need a constant struggle to see what is in front of our noses.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:14 AM on November 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

Ugh, I'm glad Pence made a not terrible response about Hamilton but this good cop, bad cop setup doesn't seem like it will end well.
posted by ferret branca at 8:18 AM on November 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

One of the few things I believe from Trump's campaign is that Pence will be the de-facto president. Trump just can't do the day-to-day job - he is transparently unable - so he'll hand off everything.
posted by Devonian at 8:21 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wasn't Mattis on active duty as recently as 2013? Doesn't recent service disqualify him from serving as SecDef?

Yes, he'd need a waiver from Congress, but I can't imagine them denying it.
posted by corb at 8:24 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Schumer, uuugh, how can you be a lame duck for so many years, I have to chant "don't call him a quisling to his staff, don't call him a quisling" everytime I call. How do I effecwtily convey that young dems in the state hate him?
posted by The Whelk at 8:24 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'll leave to others whether that was the appropriate venue to say it.

I watched that video and I honestly can't tell if he intended this to mean, "it's 1000% not my place as an elected official to be commenting on the choices made by private citizen celebrities in Broadway shows", or, "troll army open fire". I remember seeing a video of him talking to a Trump supporter woman before the election who reassured him that she and her guns would be there making the revolution happened if Hillary "stole" the election, and he looked pretty shaken and told her not to say that. I hope that respect for rule of law is something that stays.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:24 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

How godawful that Pence, the one who thinks it's fine to electrocute gays into being straight, seems like the reasonable one. This is how the normalization will occur. "Oh, Trump is unstable and horrible but at least we have one sane person in government." The VP doesn't even do much.
posted by AFABulous at 8:30 AM on November 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

That video of Pence, though. Holy shit, those scary gimlet eyes. Terrifying face, that guy. Still pretty clearly evil. But if I had to call it? He sounds scared. That fearful eyebrow raise at the second time the dude asked if he wants an apology, "I'll leave it for others to say" sounds like he actually is trying to walk the line of saying "No we are not going to be bringing the power of the state down on celebrities who disagree with us" without explicitly contradicting or offending Trump, because Trump was the one to demand one, and if Pence turns it down he's going to make Trump lose face. Wow.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:31 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yes, he'd need a waiver from Congress, but I can't imagine them denying it.

But it's important to remember that what's normal is civilian control of the military. It's the second sentence in the law that defines the role and responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense.
posted by peeedro at 8:31 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Mattis: "If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don’t take the shot. Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.”

Ah, yes. General Say-One-Thing, General Do-Another.
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:38 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thank you corb, Etrigan, and everyone else for serving and bringing your military knowledge to the discussions here.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:44 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Aside from the third grade maturity level of this tweet, what do we make of it? Schumer is my senator.

Do you mean, "Should I suddenly oppose Schumer because Trump said something nice about him?" No, you shouldn't. That would be a profoundly silly thing to do. Oppose Schumer if you disagree with his actions, once they happen.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:49 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

RE: Trump's tweet about Schumer.

@sahilkapur
Evidently Trump first called Schumer "cunning," then deleted and re-did the tweet. [screenshots]

Text of deleted tweet:

"I have always had a good relationship with Chuck Schumer. He is much smarter than Harry R, and actually, far more cunning - gets things done. Good news!"

But hey, not anti-Semitic at all.
posted by chris24 at 8:53 AM on November 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

@Natt
Oh, I get it. In World War III, Germany gets to save the rest of the world from fascists. That's a pretty solid third act.
posted by chris24 at 8:57 AM on November 20, 2016 [72 favorites]

Governor McCrory of North Carolina is taking a leaf from Trump's book by implying that any election that does not result in his win must be rigged. There are claims that the only reason the Democratic challenger, Roy Cooper, is ahead by 7000 votes (out of 7 million cast) is because ballots were cast by dead people, felons, and people who voted more than once. No proof of voter fraud has been found by any of the county Republican-controlled election boards. Now there is a possibility McCrory will throw the decision over to the Republican-controlled legislature:

NYTimes North Carolina Republicans Battle to Save Governor, Trailing by Whisker

But the immediate question in North Carolina is how long Mr. McCrory will dispute the results and whether he might ultimately ask the General Assembly to consider the election.

Under state law, the legislature could order a new election or, “if it can determine which candidate received the highest number of votes,” it may declare a winner. The law asserts that the legislature’s decision in such a contest is “not reviewable” by the courts.

I have a terrible feeling about this. It is becoming clear that in post-factual America the individual's vote doesn't count. What's going to happen is that the State Legislature will declare the need for a new election because the results are "too close to call" even though there is no evidence of voter fraud. Without Clinton's GOTV structure I think McCrory might win a second election
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:57 AM on November 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

I'm really, really uneasy with any high-ranking military people getting involved in senior civilian leadership, at this time above all others.
posted by Rumple at 8:57 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

But hey, not anti-Semitic at all.

At least he didn't say "crafty" or "covetous".
posted by Talez at 9:00 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Fucking Tea Party leader Congressman Justin Amash is giving me hope and that's... weird. Remember his earlier tweet about Sessions:

@justinamash
Unlike the CIA director, the AG has a lot of independent policy authority and prosecutorial discretion. I'm deeply concerned about Sessions.

Jake Tapper asked him why. His response:

@justinamash
He supports indefinite detention of Americans w/o charge or trial, mass surveillance of law-abiding Americans, civil asset forfeiture, etc.

@justinamash
If a Dem nominee held these views, Rs would be screaming for Senate to reject him. We should be consistent with our constitutional concerns.
posted by chris24 at 9:07 AM on November 20, 2016 [60 favorites]

At least he didn't say "crafty" or "covetous".

Or talk about his “sensual and trigonometric nature”.
posted by acb at 9:08 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award. Sounds like an unequivocal admission of guilt.
posted by morspin at 9:10 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

This is actually a response a friend had to that Pence quote/video and the impression that he looked afraid in it: this is the domestic abuse administration. Pence the anti-gay torturer is now in the position of the SO whose violent partner keeps trying to pick fights over their honor. He is in the abuse cycle stage of trying to de-escalate these fights and to reassure everyone who has just witnessed an incident, "You don't know him, he's a good man, he has a good heart" after an unhinged demand that some innocent, "Apologize!!!" This is just... wow.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 9:13 AM on November 20, 2016 [40 favorites]

"White evangelical Christians set a new high water mark in their support of Republican candidates by giving Donald Trump 81% of their votes, according to the 2016 exit polls."

At my mom's church, they were told the Sunday before the election to pray continuously through Tuesday that Trump would win.
posted by Slothrup at 9:15 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Or talk about his “sensual and trigonometric nature”

Oh baby! Sohcahtoa it to me!
posted by Talez at 9:15 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Possible Trump pick for Defense Secretary said U.S. pays ‘price’ for Israel support

"A former Marine General seen as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidates for Defense Secretary has said West Bank settlements are turning Israel into an apartheid state.

Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who was known as “Mad Dog,” also has said that the United States pays a price for its support of Israel, the Times of Israel reported."
posted by chris24 at 9:16 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

George Bush's response to the Dixie Chick's criticizing the Iraq war bears repeating:

The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... they shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street ... I don't really care what the Dixie Chicks said. I want to do what I think is right for the American people, and if some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that's fine. That's the great thing about America.

And that's why America just lost a little bit more of its greatness when Trump criticized the Hamilton cast.
posted by sour cream at 9:16 AM on November 20, 2016 [19 favorites]

declare the need for a new election because the results are "too close to call" even though there is no evidence of voter fraud.

Ooh, ooh! Do we get to do over the presidential results, too? Do we get to do them over in other states, too? Because THAT I would take.

No? Then Jesus fucking Christ, why is this acceptable?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:19 AM on November 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

Ah, yes. General Say-One-Thing, General Do-Another.

Right now, people in power whose understanding of reality is consistent with mine are rare enough that I'm willing to overlook their failure to act on that understanding.
posted by Slothrup at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

How godawful that Pence, the one who thinks it's fine to electrocute gays into being straight, seems like the reasonable one. This is how the normalization will occur.

We've already got some people in here praising Mitt Romney and putting some right wing general into the normally civilian leadership of the DoD. It's only going to get worse from here.
posted by indubitable at 9:28 AM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yes, he'd need a waiver from Congress, but I can't imagine them denying it.

And this is how Republicans will normalize aberrant behavior from Trump. Just ignore or rewrite the laws when they are inconvenient. There is an important reason that law was put in place, and to simply ignore it is another step down the road to fascism. It's like 1933 all over again.
posted by JackFlash at 9:33 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Acknowledging that Romney is sane and within the normal parameters of a Republican administration is a bit different than praising. I'm certainly open to suggestions on how to get better options than Romney when Trump is choosing and a Republican Senate is confirming.
posted by chris24 at 9:34 AM on November 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

At this point I am willing to pull for anyone in government who isn't actively working to wreck the US system of government from the inside, invoke emergency powers, and install Trump as President for Life. If R-Money is going to be on that list of people, so be it. I don't think that's "normalizing" this administration, for me it's recognizing that the incoming regime is going to be a straight up dictatorship, and that knowing that, it's important to identify any public officials who still value rule of law in any way.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 9:36 AM on November 20, 2016 [25 favorites]

I had that moment from the SNL debate where Kate McKinnon's jaw drops open and she slowly props it up at the Schumer "cunning" comment.

I mean, holy shit.
posted by angrycat at 9:37 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

We've already got some people in here praising Mitt Romney and putting some right wing general into the normally civilian leadership of the DoD. It's only going to get worse from here.

Saying "Well, given the available choices I'd take Mitt Romney because he's not likely to get us into a nuclear war" is the same as normalization. At all.
posted by anastasiav at 9:38 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

> @realDonaldTrump I have always had a good relationship with Chuck Schumer. He is far smarter than Harry R and has the ability to get things done. Good news!

Aside from the third grade maturity level of this tweet, what do we make of it? Schumer is my senator.

I think what you make of it is that Schumer is a good politician who knows how to be polite with the blowhards in his constituency. Donald Trump has always liked it when powerful people schmoozed with him. Therefore, Schumer might actually be a brilliant choice to lead the Senate Democrats, because he can influence Donald. "As one powerful New Yorker to another, this Medicare repeal is a bad idea. That Paul Ryan is bad news, Mr. Trump!"
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

No? Then Jesus fucking Christ, why is this acceptable?

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. "How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?"

"The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. 'Did we do anything wrong?' they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. 'Then why are you chasing us out?' the girls said. 'Catch 22,' the men said. All they kept saying was 'Catch-22, Catch-22. What does it mean, Catch 22? What is Catch-22?"

"Didn't they show it to you?" Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. "Didn't you even make them read it?"

"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."

"What law says they don't have to?"

"Catch-22."

...Book reports are due at the end of the Congressional term.
posted by delfin at 9:41 AM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

Preibus said this morning that some aspects of Islam are "problematic" and that he will not rule out registries.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:54 AM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Wow, people. We're actually happy to have a SecDef nicknamed "Mad Dog" as a counter balance on the cabinet?

We have yet to invent instrumentation sensitive enough to measure the height of this bar.
posted by skippyhacker at 9:58 AM on November 20, 2016 [25 favorites]

Wow, people. We're actually happy to have a SecDef nicknamed "Mad Dog" as a counter balance on the cabinet?

Yep. And he's supposed to be the sane one in the cabinet.
You couldn't make this shit up if you tried to.
posted by sour cream at 10:02 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

We're actually happy

I'd caution against judging the community reception to this pick based on one enthusiastic endorsement and several "well, it could be worse"s. One can be relieved that he's not picking someone much worse and still not be "happy" with the outcome. I can't imagine any Trump picks are going to make most readers here happy, but it's okay to note cases where Trump accidentally picks someone other than the worst possible candidate for the job in question.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:04 AM on November 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

Mattis has been my #1 pick for "leader of the coming military junta" ever since Trump won the GOP nomination, so I'm pleased he seems like a book reader at least.
posted by dis_integration at 10:04 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Because people who voted for him, but do see certain problems with him, may be open to discussions about the topics they saw problems with. They are probably much easier to talk to than those who are all for Trump, all the way.
I don't think it would serve Democrats well to regard every Trump voter as irredeemable and unreachable. Trump voters are a land of contrasts.

Mm. Here's the thing, though - while I think this is a fine concept for one-on-one interactions, like convincing your grumpy uncle via Facebook that Trump's policies are impractical, I think there are real problems with teasing out these distinctions when considering groups of millions (or even thousands) of voters.

I'm gonna quote Lyn Never from this AskMe:

"One of the things I've had my eyes opened about during this election is that a lot of people are less engaged in the political process than they are in football or the office potluck. They don't think of their vote as meaningful, or are essentially single-issue voters who have never even thought that hard about that single issue - just that there's abortion or not-abortion and abortion seems bad so there you go.

Especially white people."

As a white working class person in a Rust Belt city - a member of the group that so many people are hand-wringing about that were lost because Hillary is Hillary or whatever and the Dems have to "consider" them more thoroughly going forward - this rang ALL THE BELLS. Or more accurately, matched with my observations over pretty much my entire life.

There are so many many many voters who choose their candidate out of a vague stew of assumptions and ill-considered "common sense" and a sound-bite level of understanding and consideration of the issues at hand.

"Abortion is bad", so even if they're personally willing to allow for a very limited number of abortions in emergency circumstances, they vote Republican. Because the Dems like abortion.

"This is a Christian nation", so even if they are, on an individual level, kind and polite to LGBQT or POC, well, we all know that the Republicans are the REAL party of Christians.

"Lower taxes are good", and of course we'd all like to see more money in our bank accounts, so there ya go, vote Republican - they don't even stop to consider the larger social implications and longer-term economic results from WHO actually gets the big tax breaks. Bush was awesome because he transformed a budget surplus into an actual $300 check for every working man and woman.

"We wouldn't need welfare if THOSE PEOPLE would get off their lazy asses and find a job." Obviously this is a racist dogwhistle, but a hell of a lot of employed white folks would (and do) say the same about the unemployed "white trash" they encounter - and they think this makes the statement not racist, just common sense.

"We need more good jobs." Of course we do, but they simply can't be bothered to consider HOW we get those good jobs, so since the Repubs yell that the loudest and don't bother complicating that talking point with a lot of complicated plans, well, vote Republican.

"They want to take away our guns." Let's not even go there, but rest assured this is a major "issue" for a lot of white voters.

"Well, I just can't vote for Hillary, she's just too dishonest." Right. And Bernie would've been "too angry", and O'Malley would've been "too inexperienced", and Chuck Schumer's gonna be "too Wall Street" and and and and there's always something where they, gosh darn it, just can't bring themselves to vote Democrat.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Given the decades-long polarization of the American electorate, if you scratch a voter who holds one or more of the above opinions, chances are damn high that you've found a voter who will never ever ever vote Democrat for the foreseeable future.

So, OK. Let's assume that there are plenty of white "lower taxes are good" voters who might, theoretically, be convinced that the Democratic candidate's policies will actually have a positive economic effect on them directly. (I mean, the evidence is against this, considering the Dems have had better economic policies for for-fucking-ever and white people still vote for Republicans in droves. . . . .) But, for the sake of argument, they're out there.

How do you find them?

More importantly, how do you find millions of them? What large-scale demographic definition can you use to find the WWC "low taxes" voter in a sea of WWC "low taxes PLUS my guns PLUS Christian Nation" voters? How do you tell the difference between them on a scale that's useful to national or even state-level campaigns? How do you separate the "don't really like Trump's racism but I like my low-information interpretation of his economic ideas" voter from the "unconscious systemic racist" voter from the "Mexicans are criminals" voter? How do you do this on a scale that's actually practical that hasn't already been done? - Carter, both Clintons, Obama, and Kaine are openly deeply religious, but "single issue Christians" didn't vote for them; we have reams of evidence that liberal/progressive economic policies work and conservative economic policies don't, but "lower my taxes" is all people hear; on and on and on.

Obviously, I think this is an impossible task. We haven't the tools or the skills or the understanding of mass psychology to fine-tune messages when so many voters are not actually thinking about who they vote for (yes, including many Democrats - the American voter, considered as a whole, is more "seething mass of unconscious biases" than "intelligent considered decision-making.") Certainly not in the short-term, short enough for 2018 and 2020. Maybe, say, if progressive/moderate evangelicals can get enough of a foothold in Christian media they can convince a statistically-significant segment of Christian voters to consider more than "abortion" or "The Republican Party is Moar Christian" - by, like, 2032.

Trump voters may be a land of contrasts - but they don't contrast with each other nearly enough to make finding these theoretical "#maybeDemocrat" voters and peeling them off worth the time and effort and money of focusing specifically on them on a large scale. If they desert the Republicans en masse, it'll be because the Trump administration does something(s) utterly disastrous. Otherwise I think in practice Democrats would be better served taking Clinton's platform and getting more non-voters in favorable demographics to show up.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:05 AM on November 20, 2016 [67 favorites]

Is Mattis even eligible for the post of SecDef? Just heard an interview with Ret. Gen. Jack Keane who stated that you have to be seven years retired from your military service to take the post, per the National Security Act of 1947. Mattis retired in 2013.

Another article on the act, with reference to Flynn.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/288961-one-of-trumps-choices-for-defense-secretary-ineligible

EDIT: eh, I see this has been discussed already, never mind. Everything's normal. Nothing to worry about.
posted by longdaysjourney at 10:06 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

A short and terrifying piece about why we should be worried about the fate of America's liberal democracy itself:

Taking Democracy for Granted

How might American democracy end? The United States would not be the first long-lasting government to collapse. Whether they supported communism or not, those who lived under it assumed, in Alexei Yurchak’s words, that communism was forever—until it was no more. Developments in the United States bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those that fore-shadowed the decline of democracy elsewhere in the world (Poland, Hungary, and Russia, and earlier, Latin America in the 1960s and interwar Europe).

There are three pieces to the puzzle of why and how democracies fail. The first involves public opinion. In Russia, for example, growing public worries about crime and social disorder, economic collapse, and national security paved the way for the rise of a leader who promised political order, economic growth, and strong government—in short, making Russia great again. In many instances of democratic collapse, there was a decline in tolerance, as publics grew more polarized, more locked into their own views and into networks of like-minded people, and more distrustful of and angry at each other and the government. There was a thirst for new styles in politics, flamboyant rhetoric, and a willingness to gamble. Citizens voted for change; they did not vote to end democracy.

. . .

Question for the MetaFilter folks: Are there historical examples of such nation-scale anti-democratic trends being successfully resisted and reversed before they slide all the way into authoritarianism? Or is there no way to get off this ride?
posted by a car full of lions at 10:08 AM on November 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

If the NCGA decides to intervene in the gubernatorial election, then the Moral Mondays of years past will look very polite.

(Even though Cooper will face GA supermajorities, the governor's party has a statutory majority in appointments to county and state election boards. This matters.)
posted by holgate at 10:16 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

No Norm Violations, Please -- It's the Trump Era

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama might take an active role in anti-Trump politics after he leaves office:

[...] White House aides say they expect the president to try to refrain from criticism during the transition because of his belief in the importance of a courteous and dignified transfer of power. But while the president holds out hope that he might influence Mr. Trump, he has made it clear that once out of office he will not remain silent if Mr. Trump goes too far in undoing his legacy.

“I’m going to be constrained in what I do with all of you until I am again a private citizen,” Mr. Obama, who will be living a few miles from the White House next year, told a meeting this past week of Organizing for Action, the group that maintains his political movement. “But that’s not so far off.”

A few days ago, when Jonathan Chait suggested that this might happen, I wrote:

Chait correctly notes that "the political-cultural norm of former presidents’ steering clear of politics is not rooted in any particular public interest" -- but a violation of this norm will horrify mainstream political insiders, as well as the right-wing noise machine. If Obama tosses this custom aside, the big news in any statement he makes will be decision to make the statement.... Whatever he's upset about will be a secondary consideration.

That's already happening. [...]

That's right: Barack Obama is going to be attacked for daring to violate political norms, months after the election of Donald Trump. Trump will continue to get away with violating every political norm that stands between him and what he wants, while Obama will be excoriated, by conservatives and (inevitably) by mandarins of the Beltway mainstream, for violating one norm, even though he'll be doing so at a moment of genuine crisis in America.

posted by tonycpsu at 10:25 AM on November 20, 2016 [52 favorites]

That's right: Barack Obama is going to be attacked for daring to violate political norms, months after the election of Donald Trump. Trump will continue to get away with violating every political norm that stands between him and what he wants, while Obama will be excoriated, by conservatives and (inevitably) by mandarins of the Beltway mainstream, for violating one norm, even though he'll be doing so at a moment of genuine crisis in America.

Also, the Trumpists will use this as political cover going forward. But I think we need Obama's help more than ever.
posted by Talez at 10:31 AM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Question for the MetaFilter folks: Are there historical examples of such nation-scale anti-democratic trends being successfully resisted and reversed before they slide all the way into authoritarianism?

Mostly here in the US - Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, US Grant, Teapot Dome, the Business Plot, McCarthyism, Nixon. We're not even all that polarized, compared to stretches in the 19th and early 20th Century. We have had open, armed revolts (apart and aside from the Civil War and Bleeding Kansas leading up to it) and armed civil conflict between Americans over political differences. (Ohio and Michigan had an actual war at one point, tho only one person was wounded in the only battle.)

We have elected an astonishing number of dangerous, grasping or dim-bulb presidents. We'll make it through Trump.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:33 AM on November 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

The countless Americans who were murdered by the policies and prejudices of those presidents might disagree about who consistutes the we there.
posted by winna at 10:39 AM on November 20, 2016 [26 favorites]

Gothamist: "Mayor de Blasio has said that the heightened security measures that have been in place on the blocks surrounding Trump Tower will remain until inauguration day. That means that the NYPD and Secret Service will be patrolling 53rd Street to 57th Street between Madison Avenue and Sixth Avenue; concrete barriers installed on 56th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison will remain; and pedestrians in the area will only be able to pass through after submitting to a bag screening.

These heightened security measures have turned the area surrounding Trump Tower into a pedestrian nightmare—the congestion makes people want to get out as quickly as possible instead of prolonging their time there by stopping at one of the many nearby shops and restaurants."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:40 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

From de Blasio's POV, is that a feature or a bug?
posted by Rumple at 10:45 AM on November 20, 2016

In case anyone missed it and needs some comic relief: SNL did a hilarious skit on Anderson Cooper 360's pundits talking about Trump last night (I'm posting the NBC link because every other link I've found gives away the twist ending).
posted by homunculus at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

WTF CBS? Yeah, don't count on the media.

@CBSNews
"President-elect Trump is going to be inheriting the worse fiscal situation of any president other than President Truman.." [VIDEO]
posted by chris24 at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

"President-elect Trump is going to be inheriting the worse fiscal situation of any president other than President Truman.."

It says "fiscal" and not "economic". Given what the outgoing Congress has done in the last two years, it may be true. Given the wording, however, it implies that this is somehow the President's responsibility.
posted by Slothrup at 10:54 AM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

She's measuring it as debt relative to GDP which sure we have a big debt load but there's exactly 0 agreement among economists about what that means or what we should do, if anything, about it. Although only idiots think the answer is cut all the taxes. It certainly wasn't a big problem for the booming 1950s and 60s.
posted by dis_integration at 10:57 AM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Question for the MetaFilter folks: Are there historical examples of such nation-scale anti-democratic trends being successfully resisted and reversed before they slide all the way into authoritarianism?

You might be interested in this AskMe I posted. Most of the answers turned out to be more about countries that have come back from full-blown authoritarian takeovers, but Berlusconi in Italy seems like a reasonable parallel to me.
posted by contraption at 11:02 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

We're actually happy to have a SecDef nicknamed "Mad Dog" as a counter balance on the cabinet?

It's important to know this is an affectionate nickname from within the military, not a denigrative nickname from without. It doesn't mean he's crazy, it means he's tenacious. His other nickname is "Warrior Monk".

The man is a scholar who literally carries around a book of Marcus Aurelius. I'm pretty sure if named, he would be the most literary man in Trump's cabinet. He's not actually a hothead in the sense you're thinking.
posted by corb at 11:02 AM on November 20, 2016 [30 favorites]

We need to lobby twitter to add a fact check to each of Donald's tweets or stop publishing them. We also need to stop the victory tour and rallies from happening to pre-empt the onslaught of gaslighting, brainwashing and propaganda. The media is still not doing its job. We need to compel them to be factual and fair in their reporting of this trumpocalypse.
posted by cynicalidealist at 11:05 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

"One of the things I've had my eyes opened about during this election is that a lot of people are less engaged in the political process than they are in football or the office potluck. They don't think of their vote as meaningful, or are essentially single-issue voters who have never even thought that hard about that single issue - just that there's abortion or not-abortion and abortion seems bad so there you go.

Especially white people."

There are around 250 million voting-age people in the US, give or take however many are disqualified for one reason or another. Trump and Clinton combined got about 121 Million votes. This is proof positive that most Americans are politically inert.

How do you make a person give a rat's ass about politics? It's pretty simple. You find an issue that smacks them, or their family, or their close friends, or their neighbors (in roughly descending order of likelihood) across the face and PERSONALLY AFFECTS them. It could affect their bank balance, their privileges, their jobs, their commute or their future but it has to be blatant, like the old joke about the 2x4 to the head of a mule to get its attention, and it has to have either a candidate who screams that he/she will fix it or a candidate who is obviously to blame.

You cannot make people care easily. You can talk about Supreme Court decisions or about climate horror or about civil rights violations or about lots of other stuff but they have to make the decision to give a shit and most won't do that unless there's something blatantly in it for them, and future concerns and philosophical arguments and worrisome developments aren't enough. The curb can be two inches high but they have to want to step over it.

There are people for whom, as an example, abortion is the great evil of our time and must be stopped at all costs. Or for whom, as an example, reproductive rights must not be abridged and must be fought for every inch of the way. These are people who are already coming out to vote every time because _they have their issue that affects them_ and have a desire to act. The Democrats need to find an argument that makes people say "hey, I'm FUCKED if I don't vote for/against this" that reaches people who are otherwise self-absorbed.
posted by delfin at 11:11 AM on November 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

The man is a scholar who literally carries around a book of Marcus Aurelius.

Yeah, well David Addington famously carries a copy of the Constitution in his pocket.
posted by rhizome at 11:12 AM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Devonian: "One of the few things I believe from Trump's campaign is that Pence will be the de-facto president. Trump just can't do the day-to-day job - he is transparently unable - so he'll hand off everything."

I don't think Trump will be able to let him. He'd be constantly and randomly contradicting Pence's decisions. This is very different than the apparent power that Cheney during the Bush years. Which means people will end up running everything by Trump anyways.

roomthreeseventeen: "and pedestrians in the area will only be able to pass through after submitting to a bag screening."

Just wow, glad I don't live around there. The security checkpoints include ID checks.

Also why is the security zone so lop sided? IE it extends down to 53rd even though the tower is between 56th and 57th.

Asked this [How will the high-end retail businesses along Fifth Avenue be affected?] on Wednesday, de Blasio said: "I will not tell you that Gucci and Tiffany are my central concerns in life."

There's a statement that says a lot.
posted by Mitheral at 11:14 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

She's measuring it as debt relative to GDP which sure we have a big debt load but there's exactly 0 agreement among economists about what that means or what we should do, if anything, about it. Although only idiots think the answer is cut all the taxes. It certainly wasn't a big problem for the booming 1950s and 60s.

2012: Nobody Cares About the Deficit

Of course, it has been obvious all along that the whole deficit-hawk pose was insincere, that it was all about using the deficit as a club with which to smash the social safety net. But now we have a graphic demonstration.

2013: The Deficit Is Plunging! And Nobody Cares!

Debt hawks are still asking Washington to direct its valuable focus to long-term debt rather than short-term crises like long-term unemployment and wage stagnation. House Republicans are still threatening a showdown over the debt ceiling and a continuing resolution to fund government operations.

The hawkish arguments are unyielding, even as the underlying evidence is changing rapidly.

Since you made it this far, here's my unyielding argument: In the middle of a crisis we knew we were having, we've sacrificed growth and jobs to insure ourselves against a crisis we thought we'd have in the future -- whose imminent threat is fading by the year. The tired cliche says, Washington is miserable at thinking about the future. One sequestration, a thousand cuts, and many trillions of dollars of deficit reduction later, perhaps that cliche could lose its last three words.

2014: How Deficit Hawks Are Pitting Millennials Against Seniors to Attack Social Security and Medicare

When you peel back the details, what’s going on here is simple and not new. Right-wingers—starting at the libertarian Cato Institute which doesn’t want federal social insurance programs to work, going next to Wall Street firms that see a gold mine from privatizing Social Security, and continuing to today’s spokespeople for these interests—want to undermine public confidence in government and push for-profit substitutes. They know that seniors and near-retirees won’t buy into any of this, which is why they have tried for decades—as Republican Congressman Marino’s fundraising letter noted—to create generational grievances pitting America’s young against its elderly.

“I’m not quite a believer in cabals, but that’s sort of what happened,” said Eric Kingson, Syracuse University Professor of Social Work and co-director of Social Security Works, the national advocacy organization. “It [generational warfare] doesn’t take off when people see their parents and their grandparents struggling on fairly minimal income.” [...]

“We must prepare the political ground so that the fiasco of the last 18 months is not repeated,” Cato Journal’s influential 1983 article, “Achieving A “Leninist” Strategy,” began. “We must begin to divide this [pro-Social Security] coalition and cast doubt on the picture of reality it presents to the general public.” Cato knew who it wanted on its team. It “should consist not only of those who will reap benefits from the IRA-based private system [that a lawyer and columnist Peter J.] Ferrara has proposed, but also the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that will gain from providing such plans to the public.”

And Cato knew its target. “The young are the most obvious constituency for reform and a natural ally for the private alternative,” it said. “The overwhelming majority of people in this group have stated repeatedly that they have little or no confidence in the present Social Security system.” Youthful indignation and grievance could be powerful, Cato said, fantasizing about its coming revolution. “Younger workers… would see just how much of a loss they are taking by participating in the program… assuming, for the sake of argument, that they would ever have received those benefits.”

Needless to say, Social Security has not collapsed as Cato forecast—even though today’s generational warfare arguments are basically repeating 30-year-old rhetoric. The program is solvent under promised benefits through 2033—a half-century after Congress reformed it. Social Security advocates say such longevity is a sign of its great success. But, as was the case in 1983, federal law requires Social Security to pay out only what it takes in. The next funding shortfall is predicted to come in 2033, when benefits would be cut by about 20 percent to Baby Boomers and GenXers if no revenue changes were made. But modest increases in payroll taxes—fifty cents a week for most workers, and raising the cap on how much of one’s annual income is subject to Social Security taxes (the first $117,000) would more than offset 2033’s predicted shortfall.

2015: Nobody Cares About the Deficit

One way to see this is to track the disappearance of Alan Simpson from the radar; another is to look at polls that ask people to name important issues. For example, CNN/ORC has been asking consistent questions for several years; here’s the percentage of voters naming the budget deficit as the most important issue:

January 2013: 23 percent

May/June 2014: 15 percent

Sept. 2014: 8 percent

In the most recent CBS/NYTimes poll, which was open-ended, the deficit didn’t even make it onto the list.

And you know what? The public is right, and the Very Serious People were and are wrong.

2016: Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About The Deficit Anymore?

In Obama’s first term, Republicans criticized him — and Democrats in general — for the country’s burgeoning deficits. The issue was a fixture of the 2012 race. But during the 2016 cycle, Republican presidential candidates have mentioned the debt and deficits less frequently. [...]

Perhaps this is simply a reflection of an improving budget outlook. But political calculations surely matter, too. By bringing up the deficit, Republican candidates could be opening themselves up to the retort that it has declined under a Democratic administration. Sure enough, Obama bragged about “cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters” in his final State of the Union address Tuesday night.

And it’s not just GOP candidates, either. Members of Congress utter the words “deficit” or “debt” far less frequently than they did a few years back. That’s according to Capitol Words data provided by the Sunlight Foundation, which mines the Congressional Record to measure how frequently politicians use certain words. [...]

As more people lose interest in the deficit, Republican policy experts face a conundrum: how to raise alarm about what they still consider to be the government’s profligate fiscal policy and how to promote conservative solutions when enthusiasm is waning. [...] In 2016, talk of the deficit and debt, such as it is, elicits only a shrug.

Keep fucking that chicken, "liberal" media.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:15 AM on November 20, 2016 [31 favorites]

Also why is the security zone so lop sided? IE it extends down to 53rd even though the tower is between 56th and 57th.

I mean, you can't get within that distance of the White House either.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:16 AM on November 20, 2016

Sure but I was more wondering why it doesn't extend up to say 60th avenue instead of ending on 57th.
posted by Mitheral at 11:24 AM on November 20, 2016

Oh, because Central Park starts at 59th St.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:25 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Queen 'set to invite Donald Trump to Britain'
posted by futz at 11:36 AM on November 20, 2016

President-elect Trump is going to be inheriting the worse fiscal situation of any president other than President Truman

one error here is counting the $2T+ of debt that the Fed holds, that's neither here nor there.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bPxw shows that Obama's first budget year ended at a 0.85 debt (ex-Fed) / GDP ratio, 2016 will be under that.

The mess the Obama admin inherited in December 2008 was really something.

I think things are relatively copacetic now, and don't expect the GOP braintrust taking over next month to really screw things up, not until their second term in the 2020s.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bPxW is the FRED graph to watch -- the typical GOP pump & dump takes time to build, and we'll be hitting full-speed ahead on the pump cycle just around 2020 I guess.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:42 AM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Jesus Wept: How Can You Call Yourself a Christian If You Voted for Donald Trump.
posted by adamvasco at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

The man is a scholar who literally carries around a book of Marcus Aurelius.

I don't care if he is effing Sun Tzu. There is a law expressly prohibiting a recent military officer assuming the expressly civilian office of Secretary of Defense.

Hey, as long as we are just ignoring laws about eligibility, why not the one prohibiting Obama's third term.
posted by JackFlash at 11:49 AM on November 20, 2016 [31 favorites]

The law in question provides for a congressional waiver, and of course if it didn't, the GOP Congress could just change the law and Trump would sign it.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:53 AM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't care if he is effing Sun Tzu

look what he does in the bedroom isn't germane here
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:03 PM on November 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

Fox host rampages at black ‘Hamilton’ actor: Stick to ‘hip hop and dancing around the stage’

"Fox News host Jeanine Pirro blasted the cast of “Hamilton” over the weekend after one of the black actors told Vice President-elect Mike Pence that Americans feared their rights would not be protected under Donald Trump’s presidency...

“What happened in that theater one block from this studio was out-and-out reverse racism and teed-up hate!” she exclaimed.

Pirro accused the actors using a play about “our American history” as a “political bully pulpit.”
...

“Maybe you want to dance about Hamilton, why not dance about that!” Pirro shouted. “And I’ve got news for you. Don’t lecture this man. You may know a little about hip hop and dancing around a stage.”


Telling a black man to shut up and dance is... interesting.
posted by chris24 at 12:04 PM on November 20, 2016 [71 favorites]

"What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind."

-John Adams
posted by clavdivs at 12:15 PM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Priebus: Citizens of certain countries will be barred

Also in the article:

Priebus also supported Trump’s statements about halting federal funding to "sanctuary cities." New York City and Los Angeles are among dozens of such cities, where police departments don’t actively enforce some federal immigration policies, a practice that has been in place for decades.

...Asked specifically about the city of Los Angeles, which received about $500 million from Washington last year, Priebus said: “I can’t imagine that too many Americans are watching this and thinking that it’s a good idea for a city to allow for blanket amnesty, ignoring federal law — and then saying now give me $500 million.”

“No, that’s not the way life works, and I think that the Trump administration is going to explore this issue and, I think, resolve some of these major problems happening all across the country.”
posted by futz at 12:16 PM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I also find interesting the use of "our American history" rather than just "American history."
posted by RobotHero at 12:17 PM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

chris24: "Fox News host Jeanine Pirro blasted the cast of “Hamilton” over the weekend...

The scary thing is she used to be a county court judge and then the elected district attorney of Westchester County for 12 years.
posted by bluecore at 12:32 PM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

So, Pirro is suggesting that Dixon should talk less, smile more?
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:47 PM on November 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior aide to Barack Obama, said: “If your media outlet is focused on Trump v Hamilton instead of Trump’s $25m fraud settlement, you are a sad pawn in Trump’s game.”

Trump has agreed to pay $25m to settle lawsuits from thousands of students who alleged they were tricked into paying up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s “real estate secrets” at Trump University. Had the lawsuit continued, attorneys could have forced Trump to become the first sitting president to testify in open court.

He has also immediately violated a promise to separate his business activity from the presidency, prompting suggestions that he will violate the US constitution, which bans public officials from receiving payments from foreign states, the moment he is inaugurated.

Dozens of foreign diplomats were last week invited to a corporate sales pitch at Trump’s new hotel in Washington DC. He allowed his daughter Ivanka, a senior executive in his corporation, to join his meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. And he met Indian business partners in Trump Tower between interviewing potential cabinet appointees.

Trump's Hamilton baiting distracts from transition 'scandals', experts say
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:01 PM on November 20, 2016 [22 favorites]

Trump's Hamilton baiting distracts from transition 'scandals', experts say

I don't honestly believe that fighting about "which is worse" is going to be helpful to anyone. Trump's statements about Hamilton are dangerous and threatening to open artistic expression and the First Amendment. It's not a distraction to also talk about that.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:09 PM on November 20, 2016 [26 favorites]

Maybe we could talk about all these scandals and maybe some media people could talk about how any of them individually is worse than anything Obama ever did (or indeed probably almost every president we've had).
posted by R343L at 1:12 PM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Or maybe some media people could talk about how all the conflicts of interest, political profiteering and outright Constitutional violations are exactly the same as he has always run his own business and life, just with a new, big sandbox to play in. But then, they have pretty much ignored it for over 40 years.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:26 PM on November 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

New normal:
The President-Elect Is Suing Washington, D.C., So His Luxury Hotel Can Pay Less in Taxes

[...] the Trump International was full of empty rooms at that price this fall, even as other five-star hotels in the capital were booked solid. Now that the hotelier is the president-elect of the United States, those rates don’t seem so high. Booking a room at the Trump hotel may prove to be a way of currying favor with the president, his aides, and his allies—and staying at a rival hotel might provoke the opposite effect.

Second, if Eric, Don Jr., and Ivanka can’t make it work, they could find themselves renegotiating that onerous lease across the table from a hand-picked appointee of their father's. The art of the deal!

posted by Joe in Australia at 1:38 PM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

@DavidCornDC
Trump to African Americans: "What do you got to lose?"
Now we know: a Justice Department that cares about civil rights and voting rights.
posted by chris24 at 1:43 PM on November 20, 2016 [27 favorites]

...Asked specifically about the city of Los Angeles, which received about $500 million from Washington last year, Priebus said: “I can’t imagine that too many Americans are watching this and thinking that it’s a good idea for a city to allow for blanket amnesty, ignoring federal law — and then saying now give me $500 million.”

No worries, bro, we'll just hold on to the $300 billion or so we send in federal taxes and see how well you Nazi shitheels manage without us.

Love,
The California Republic
posted by entropicamericana at 1:44 PM on November 20, 2016 [66 favorites]

I've been wondering just how bad things would have to get before California, New York, etc started withholding federal taxes. Or even if such a thing is possible.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:47 PM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's not possible, but it is fun to speculate about.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:51 PM on November 20, 2016

tonycpsu, have you learned nothing from 2016? Anything is possible!
posted by indubitable at 1:53 PM on November 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

@JuddApatow
You are not in show business you dipshit-- you are the President. Stop begging to be a TV star again. Get to work on solving problems.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:54 PM on November 20, 2016 [31 favorites]

Anything is possible!

Fascism is magic!
posted by tonycpsu at 1:55 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

No worries, bro, we'll just hold on to the $300 billion or so we send in federal taxes and see how well you Nazi shitheels manage without us.

Love,
The California Republic

Thanks for answering the question I hadn't asked or went and looked for yet. I knew that 500 million was pocket change compared to the amount of taxes California sends as well as pocket change for one of the world's largest economies and yeah it's pocket change.
posted by Jalliah at 1:55 PM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Federal tax revenue by state.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:58 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Fascism is magic!
WORST. PONY CARTOON. EVER.
posted by comealongpole at 2:01 PM on November 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

That's why I noted above about #CalExit.

For the record, the latest numbers I've seen say that California sends over 300 billion to the Federal Government and gets back about 40 billion less than it contributes (including for the many military bases here).
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:03 PM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Maybe not secession, but I'm wondering if "State's Rights" - now a racist dogwhistle, or, hell, an outright "Here, Fido!" for ex-Confederate states and the right, is going to be taken up by the blue states. We'll see how the "down with big gubmit! Drown the beast!" types feel when the shoe is on the other foot.

I'm digesting nickrussell's post above, wondering if the time is past for the USA as a united country. It's beginning to feel like two divided nations now and neither one really wants anything to do with the other.

And I've said it and said it - Democrats err when they think the presidency and presidential elections are the end-all, be-all. The task is to increase turnout for mid-year elections and local offices.

No matter what happens, I think focusing local is going to be important now. Whether the blue states are going to need to secede, or become part of Canada, or go on a state's-rights platform (what would be the liberal, non-racist way to say this? Local governance, perhaps?) will remain to be seen.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 2:03 PM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

Watch CA secession become more and more of a possibility. We are very serious about climate change. I think that might be what breaks it. I think the rest of the world would support us.
posted by waitangi at 2:09 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Using the 2012 figures from Wikipedia: If the 19 states that voted blue withheld their money, that would total $1,061,258,641,000 or approximately 42% of the total receipts that year. CA, NJ, and NY alone are 57% of the $1,061,258,6410,000 or 24% of the total receipts for all 50 states + DC.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:10 PM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

On the other hand, without California's influence in the electoral college, the House, and the Senate, the rest of the US becomes a right wing bristling-with-nukes authoritarian nightmare on California's eastern border...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 2:11 PM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

> The law in question provides for a congressional waiver, and of course if it didn't, the GOP Congress could just change the law and Trump would sign it.

The only time this has come up before was when Truman appointed George Marshall as Secretary of Defense in 1950. Congress passed a law[pdf] waiving the 10 year separation of service requirement of the National Security Act of 1947. In part it reads:

It is hereby expressed as the intent of the Congress that the authority granted by this Act is not to be construed as approval by the Congress of continuing appointments of military men to the office of Secretary of Defense in the future. It is hereby expressed as the sense of the Congress that after General Marshall leaves the office of Secretary of Defense, no additional appointments of military men to that office shall be approved.

So yeah, the precedent has been set, but there are factors that set Mattis apart from Marshall:

1) At the time we were in an actual shooting war in Korea and the absolute crap state of military readiness was rightfully seen as an emergency and Korea was quickly falling to the communist control. As Chief of Staff in WWII Marshall oversaw a fourtyfold increase in the size of the military, so he was an appropriate choice.

2) After retiring, Marshall served as Secretary of State. Remember the Marshall Plan? He orchestrated the rescue of Western Europe's economy and won a Nobel Peace Price for it. Mattis, meanwhile, has served on the board of a company whose valuation dropped from $9B to pocket change when outed for fraud.

3) Marshall had a record of supporting civilian leadership even when he disagreed. As Secretary of State he opposed Truman's plan to recognize the State of Israel but kept his opposition private and faithfully executed the president's policy. He objected to Roosevelt's priority for rearming Britain before rearming the US, but carried out his orders effectively. Here's a quote from Robert Gates about that:

The significant thing is what did not happen next. There was a powerful domestic constituency for Marshall’s position among a whole host of newspapers and congressmen and lobbies, and yet Marshall did not exploit and use them. There were no overtures to friendly congressional committee chairmen, no leaks to sympathetic reporters, no ghostwritten editorials in newspapers, no coalition-building with advocacy groups. Marshall and his colleagues made the policy work and kept England alive.

I've got nothing against Mattis, but being a good general, a well-read warrior monk, and popular with the troops does not qualify him for Secretary of Defence. In some ways it makes him the perfectly wrong person for the job. Since General Washington resigned his commission to let the country's future be decided by the Continental Congress, civilian leadership of the military has been part of the virtue of American republicanism and the bulwark against tyranny and despotism. And now that might just be one more of our norms to be sacrificed to Trump.
posted by peeedro at 2:13 PM on November 20, 2016 [20 favorites]

Couldn't that lost Federal funding be more than made up for by legalized marijuana tax revenue in many cases, if the affected states pursued that?
posted by jason_steakums at 2:15 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kaleb Horton (previously): "Winter in America", a travelogue along Interstate 40, a week before the election.
posted by progosk at 2:16 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Couldn't that lost Federal funding be more than made up for by legalized marijuana tax revenue in many cases, if the affected states pursued that?

Not if Sessions gets to play AG.
posted by Talez at 2:18 PM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

For the record, the latest numbers I've seen say that California sends over 300 billion to the Federal Government and gets back about 40 billion less than it contributes (including for the many military bases here).

Well, we also get back scorn and derision as coastal elites, so there's that.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:28 PM on November 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

Watch CA secession become more and more of a possibility. We are very serious about climate change. I think that might be what breaks it. I think the rest of the world would support us.

I think it's unlikely in all respects to occur, but I do understand the sentiment.
posted by corb at 2:29 PM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

This is exactly what Trump and his henchmen want us to all be thinking -- that this is so hopeless that we'll take refuge in the same insular, selfish action of secession that was used to protect the institution of slavery. The American left is about a strong federal government that takes care of all Americans, where states rights are secondary to what we all agree to through the democratic process. Just because a vagabond has secured the leadership of the nation doesn't mean we should abandon our principles.

I understand we're all scared -- I certainly am as a resident of a blue state that turned red -- but talking seriously about secession is reckless. No matter how much of a donor state you live in, you're better off as part of the whole than merely a single part on its own.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:40 PM on November 20, 2016 [32 favorites]

As I noted before, I'm only symbolically in support of #CalExit (LOVE the name, Texas' #Texit is lame by comparison) but after a lifetime of rolling my eyes at state government as, at best, a superfluous burden on the Local AND Federal Governments, and most of that lifetime remembering California is the state that elected both Reagan and Schwarzenegger Governor, I am now 100% in favor of using "States' Rights" as a blunt instrument to protect Human Rights in California (even if other stations use it to damage Human Rights in their jurisdictions). So, scared people in America, don't move to Canada, move to California!!
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:40 PM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Kissinger: Trump has no baggage

Henry Kissinger says Donald Trump is the “most unique” president-elect in his lifetime because the billionaire is not obligated to any particular group.

“This president-elect, it’s the most unique that I have experienced in one respect. He has absolutely no baggage,” Kissinger told CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” “He has no obligation to any particular group because he has become president on the basis of his own strategy.”
Kissinger, who served as the secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, met with Trump last Thursday in New York to discuss foreign policy.

He said Trump should not be held to all of his campaign promises if he doesn't insist on keeping them.

“One should not insist on nailing him into positions that he had taken in the campaign, of which he doesn’t insist,” Kissinger said in the interview, which aired Sunday. “If he insists on them, then of course then disagreements will become expressed.”

Kissinger and Trump previously met to discuss foreign policy and international affairs in May.

“I think we should give him an opportunity to develop the positive objectives that he may have and to discuss those,” he said. “And we’ve gone through too many decades of tearing incumbent administrations apart. And it may happen again, but it shouldn’t begin that way.”
posted by futz at 2:43 PM on November 20, 2016

Posted too soon.

Fuck you Kissinger. Go away. Far far away.
posted by futz at 2:45 PM on November 20, 2016 [25 favorites]

1) At the time we were in an actual shooting war in Korea and the absolute crap state of military readiness was rightfully seen as an emergency and Korea was quickly falling to the communist control.

Aren't you listening? WWIII is already in full swing. But only one side is fighting. That is a direct qoute from Pence. (Or was it Bannon?)

As Chief of Staff in WWII Marshall oversaw a fourtyfold increase in the size of the military, so he was an appropriate choice.

And Mattis will be an appropriate choice for the same reason!
posted by sour cream at 2:48 PM on November 20, 2016

How would Kissinger know Trump's baggage? Has he seen Trump's tax returns? It's a stupid ass statement, while none of us know the depths of baggage Trump has, we've seen the tip of the iceberg. He literally has businesses with his name on it all around the world.
posted by airish at 2:52 PM on November 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

I understand we're all scared -- I certainly am as a resident of a blue state that turned red -- but talking seriously about secession is reckless. No matter how much of a donor state you live in, you're better off as part of the whole than merely a single part on its own.

Hell, if people are committed enough to consider seceding, they should move to Wyoming instead, until there are enough lefty voters to flip those disproportionately representative Senate and House seats.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 2:53 PM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

So wait, are you guys telling me that Ecotopia is going to happen?
posted by emjaybee at 2:54 PM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

States Rights was being bandied about in liberal / lefty circles in 2004, in the post-election angst. It never really went anywhere due to the Bush Administration's collapse in 2005 from SS privatization, Katrina, and war fatigue. Though I guess it could be argued states rights did go someplace important with MJ legalization, but no one made a big deal out of the "states rights" aspect of it.

Speaking of Cal secession, I guess it would become much more likely if 2020 is like 2016. If the Democrats again get a majority of the votes for the House, Senate, and White House, and end up with nothing while the Republicans (and media) pretend there is a conservative wave giving them a huge mandate, then blue states will have to reconsider their place in the republic. Minority rule can't stand forever. And I'm saying this as a (semi-reluctant) resident of a red state.

This is one of the things I'm angriest about this election. The Democrats got majorities across the board nationally and have absolutely no seat at the table. And the media pretends this is fine while continuing their obsession with angry white rural people as if this was the majority of votes.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:57 PM on November 20, 2016 [48 favorites]

No matter what happens, I think focusing local is going to be important now. Whether the blue states are going to need to secede, or become part of Canada, or go on a state's-rights platform (what would be the liberal, non-racist way to say this? Local governance, perhaps?) will remain to be seen.

State income tax is deductible from federal taxes, though, right? So if a state increased its income taxes to match or slightly exceed the federal tax rates & bracket structure, taxpayers would basically see a net zero tax liability. They'd just be paying that money to the state rather than to the federal government, and the state could then use the revenues generated to fund things like a basic income (i.e. expanded & improved Social Security fund) and state-level single-payer.

This is basically a fuck-you-got-mine scenario from blue states, which tend to pay in more than they get back from the federal government. The end result would be a hyper-federalized (or de-federalized, if you think about it the other way) system where a fairly cash-poor federal government has to either pare back military spending significantly, cut Medicare & Social Security, or both; and where red states are basically forced to fend for themselves.

I hate the idea of people in red states hurting because of this, particularly low-income black folks in the South who have never supported conservatism and who would really suffer.

But if it turns out that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are going to be a dead letter anyway (and this is by no means inevitable: organize now!), then it's more a matter of states with relatively sane governments noping-out from a federal government bent on eating itself.

There are -- complications to this. Right now the Social Security Administration tracks people's earnings and uses that to calculate benefits for retirees or people on disability as well as eligibility for premium-free Medicare Part A. So SSA would have to share that information with the state(s) that went this route, or if SSA were completely dismantled states would have to come up with some other way to calculate benefit amounts and eligibility. Unless, of course, they instituted a basic income + universal single payer, probably with a waiting period for new residents.

I think at least a few big states could pull this off, CA and NY the most likely candidates, I would say IL as well but god knows our state government doesn't have its shit together. The tricky thing would be the smaller blue states in New England and on the coasts, they might not have the economies of scale needed to make this stuff work and to band together (in some sort of "more perfect union" type framework) they would have to get an okay from Congress for an interstate compact.

Am I... crazy for thinking this is a thing that could potentially be done without the federal government being able to stop it? I mean, at this point the Federal government is basically a free-trade area with a big-ass military, a retirement scheme and a handful of insurance payers. Oh and it owns a bunch of land out west.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:00 PM on November 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

Speaking of Cal secession, I guess it would become much more likely if 2020 is like 2016

Hopefully the biggest federal issue California has to worry about in 2020 is appointing a new Senator to replace President-Elect Kamala Harris!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:00 PM on November 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

We thought Trump couldn't happen, i think everything's on the table at this point

#Calexit :)
posted by waitangi at 3:00 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

We'll see how the "down with big gubmit! Drown the beast!" types feel when the shoe is on the other foot.

On their other foot is a boot of brutal authoritarianism that they will not hesitate to use.

There is no limit to the right's capacity for hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance. Power and selfishness guide them easily through any moral dilemma.

CalExit would result in the destruction of everything good about California.

I'm ending my comment here but imagine another two paragraphs of profanity about what a bad idea it is.
posted by fleacircus at 3:03 PM on November 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

Why would we want to replace Kamala Harris? Honest question
posted by waitangi at 3:04 PM on November 20, 2016

Why would we want to replace Kamala Harris? Honest question

The 2020 President-Elect bit at the end of the sentence!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:06 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sorry, read that wrong. YES to pres-elect Kamala!
posted by waitangi at 3:07 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Personally, I'm staying right here in Georgia and fighting my ass off for what's right, not abandoning my Muslim, Latino, LGBT, black, and disabled people who can't leave here. Yes, it's going to be hard. But I'm not giving up and leaving this state or this country. It's my state, too. It's my country, too.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:08 PM on November 20, 2016 [28 favorites]

State income tax is deductible from federal taxes, though, right?

No, it's deductible from income. So if you're in the 25% federal tax bracket, your state taxes going up by $1000 would decrease your federal taxes by $250 - you'd still be paying $750 more out of pocket. And only if you itemize.
posted by Candleman at 3:14 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

If we are all going to lose our Medicare/Medicaid/ACA/Social Security, then fuck yeah let the blue states secede. Over here in the red states we're already fucked. Everybody's fucked. If there's a way to preserve anything good about the ol' USA by doing it, ya'll go ahead. Maybe someday it will help us build a decent goddamn country again.

Of course then the blue states have to deal with all us Joads trying to move there.

I looked into the smiling, oblivious faces of my old white male relatives this weekend, heard them (still!) complaining about Hillary, and had a tiny evil wish that they wouldn't pop off before they had to suffer for what they did. Good luck finding a nursing home without your medicare, assholes.
posted by emjaybee at 3:23 PM on November 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

Great twitter thread here by Chris Geidner, who went to the November 9 performance of Falsettos on Broadway.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:23 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

No, it's deductible from income. So if you're in the 25% federal tax bracket, your state taxes going up by $1000 would decrease your federal taxes by $250 - you'd still be paying $750 more out of pocket. And only if you itemize.

Ah, I knew I was missing something! That makes more sense.

thus ends my brief foray into accountancy. I'll stick to health policy henceforth.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:30 PM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Love,
The California Republic

You are surrounded, come out with your taxes up or we will be forced to open hire.
posted by clavdivs at 3:30 PM on November 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

How would Kissinger know Trump's baggage? Has he seen Trump's tax returns?

I don't think he uses "baggage" in the sense of skeletons in the closet, but rather that Trump isn't obligated to anyone. So he can implement any policy, because he does not have to pay attention to any interests. And he most certainly acts like the word "obligation" is not part of his vocabulary, so I do think that Kissnger actually does have a point there.

Also, I don't think that there could possibly be anything in his tax returns that would surprise anyone at this point. Or lead to any consequences. He is truly above the law now and is already starting to act like it. This is a different game now and Supreme Court vacancies are going to be the least of our worries.
posted by sour cream at 3:42 PM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz

For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans...
...Cambridge Analytica worked on the “Leave” side of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as clients

One recent advertising product on Facebook is the so-called “dark post”: A newsfeed message seen by no one aside from the users being targeted. With the help of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Trump’s digital team used dark posts to serve different ads to different potential voters, aiming to push the exact right buttons for the exact right people at the exact right times.

Imagine the full capability of this kind of “psychographic” advertising. In future Republican campaigns, a pro-gun voter whose Ocean score ranks him high on neuroticism could see storm clouds and a threat: The Democrat wants to take his guns away. A separate pro-gun voter deemed agreeable and introverted might see an ad emphasizing tradition and community values, a father and son hunting together.

In this election, dark posts were used to try to suppress the African-American vote. According to Bloomberg, the Trump campaign sent ads reminding certain selected black voters of Hillary Clinton’s infamous “super predator” line. It targeted Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with messages about the Clinton Foundation’s troubles in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Federal Election Commission rules are unclear when it comes to Facebook posts, but even if they do apply and the facts are skewed and the dog whistles loud, the already weakening power of social opprobrium is gone when no one else sees the ad you see — and no one else sees “I’m Donald Trump, and I approved this message.
posted by futz at 3:50 PM on November 20, 2016 [46 favorites]

So if a state increased its income taxes to match or slightly exceed the federal tax rates & bracket structure, taxpayers would basically see a net zero tax liability

Well, the AMT does not allow state income tax deduction, so a lot more people would get hit by AMT than now if their state income tax was equal to federal tax. Might work for low income people, but middle-income and above would get their taxes increased thanks to AMT (since they'd be paying 20-30% state and then again in federal since the state deduction would end up getting removed by AMT).
posted by thefoxgod at 3:51 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Josh Marshall elaborates on a point I made in past threads: that the presidency remains a republican take on 18th-century monarchy

Of possible interest: America’s Fragile Constitution: The Founders misread history and established a dysfunctional system of government. A case for a little less reverence.
posted by homunculus at 3:56 PM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

Calexit is fueled by the same sort of Bay Area bubble mindset that led us to discount the appeal of Trump to much of the rest of the country. (Not even beyond this state- this election has made me want to visit the Central Valley more often and to figure out what they're about.) It's trying to pretend we're Scotland or Northern Ireland or something, and both cargo cultish and completely irresponsible. If there ever was some sort of fascist takeover, places like the Bay Area, or Portland, would be the last to fall. To ditch the rest of your countrymen is rank cowardice and hypocrisy.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:56 PM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'm not exactly comforted by better names being floated for Sec Defense and Sec State. I never thought Trump was serious about shaking things up internationally anyways, esp. in military terms.

Like many strongman governments, I think Trump will make grandiose statements about bold international moves when he's speaking at home, but then at the UN or in foreign countries they will take a much more reserved tone (followed by Trumped up propaganda when they come back and tell their fanbase about how strong they were; already displayed this in Mexico).

The other cabinet and staff positions are the ones people should worry about. By looking where the worst and least qualified names are being floated, we can probably see what changes they care about most. Currently those goals seem to be about increasing the wage gap, giving handouts to private corporations, investing in more fossil fuels, presumably all to line the pockets of white stock investors while giving the appearance of creating jobs by deporting and/or locking up non-whites.
posted by p3t3 at 3:57 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump just said re cabinet appointments: "We've made a couple of deals." He didn't elaborate on what he meant by that.

Trump wouldn't be violating 18 U.S. Code Section 599 now would he? No. That fine, upstanding citizen.
posted by Talez at 3:58 PM on November 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

Sharon Jones Had a Stroke While ‘Watching the Election Results’

"I saw her and she told the people that were there that Trump gave her the stroke. She was blaming Trump for the whole thing," said bandmate Gabriel Roth.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:00 PM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jesus, 2016, we get it. You can stop now.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:02 PM on November 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

- this election has made me want to visit the Central Valley more often and to figure out what they're about.

spoiler alert: racism, sexism, and fundamentalism
posted by entropicamericana at 4:02 PM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

To ditch the rest of your countrymen is rank cowardice and hypocrisy.

You know, the rest of our countrymen have been quite clear that they would want to be allowed to show personal responsibility about fixing the shitty predicament that they're in. Coastal liberal elites can't be the solution to all their problems.
posted by Talez at 4:11 PM on November 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

Women chant the call and men chant the response, which makes a protest feel a little bit like a big musical number.
posted by stonepharisee at 4:12 PM on November 20, 2016

Calexit is fueled by the same sort of Bay Area bubble mindset that led us to discount the appeal of Trump to much of the rest of the country. (Not even beyond this state- this election has made me want to visit the Central Valley more often and to figure out what they're about.) It's trying to pretend we're Scotland or Northern Ireland or something, and both cargo cultish and completely irresponsible. If there ever was some sort of fascist takeover, places like the Bay Area, or Portland, would be the last to fall. To ditch the rest of your countrymen is rank cowardice and hypocrisy.

(a) arguably there is 'some sort of fascist takeover' happening. It's not Germany 1933 but it's not not Germany 1933, if that makes sense. I'm pretty comfortable with calling the next president of the United States a neo-fascist, anyway, and I'm not the kind of person that labels everyone to the right of John McCain a fascist. This is not a normal conservative government.

(b) I suspect that the prosperous capitalists of Silicon Valley are... not immune to selling the rest of the nation downstream if the fascists make a deal with them.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:13 PM on November 20, 2016 [15 favorites]

Like many strongman governments, I think Trump will make grandiose statements about bold international moves when he's speaking at home, but then at the UN or in foreign countries they will take a much more reserved tone (followed by Trumped up propaganda when they come back and tell their fanbase about how strong they were; already displayed this in Mexico).

Those other strongman governments didn't have the world's largest economy, military and nuclear arsenal standing behind them. And the US, for all our faults, has historically worked with the other great powers to restrain rogue nations and maintain the Westphalian order of nation-state sovereignty.

Now we may be the rogue nation. This is uncharted territory for the world.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:17 PM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

You know, the rest of our countrymen have been quite clear that they would want to be allowed to show personal responsibility about fixing the shitty predicament that they're in.

Even in the reddest state, that's only 65% of the population. The other 35% would be abandoned.
posted by chris24 at 4:18 PM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

Using the 2012 figures from Wikipedia: If the 19 states that voted blue withheld their money, that would total $1,061,258,641,000 or approximately 42% of the total receipts that year.

So ... the 38% of States that went for the Democrats pay 42% of the Federal receipts? That is a difference, but it's not very much. And since they include the most populous states, the States that went for the Republicans must pay more on a per capita basis, no?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:22 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

In an awful lot of the states, the vote totals were something like 47% Trump, 46% Clinton, some % for Johnson, McMullin, Stein, etc. Those are not percentages worth abandoning your fellow human beings over. If you think it sucks to be black/Latino/Muslim/gay/trans* etc in California right now, imagine what it's like to be in Georgia.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:24 PM on November 20, 2016 [21 favorites]

Even in the reddest state, that's only 65% of the population. The other 35% would be abandoned.

It was facetious.
posted by Talez at 4:26 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yes, it is quite clear that a Trump administration would be very unfriendly to CA policy. CA seems to be on the "let's move now, this is no joke" end of the spectrum in regards to climate change. Many chiefs of police in various cities have said they will not be part of a round-up.

I completely get that, living in Oakland, I am "coastal-elite". But my dad's side of the family hails from the midwest (KS, MO, TN) and the family that i regularly see is from the central valley. I've been so broke I purposefully wrote bad checks at Safeway, hoping I'd have money before they cashed it. I do not want to abandon the US, but as it's going it has abandoned me.
posted by waitangi at 4:26 PM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Vulture: The Hamilton-Pence Incident Was More Than Just a Distraction
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:27 PM on November 20, 2016 [11 favorites]

Now we may be the rogue nation.

Yeah, I think Trump's thin skinned stubborn aggression still makes him really dangerous here. But I think if he can help it, he hopes to keep things relatively stable internationally, simply for his economic interests. Not saying he will be good at this, but the point I wanted to get at is that people should not take comfort in good appointments, but rather use them as a barometer of where Trump is focused. He will put qualified people where he is content to have things run as they always have. He will put unqualified stooges or inappropriate idealogues where he really wants to change things.
posted by p3t3 at 4:28 PM on November 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Now we may be the rogue nation. This is uncharted territory for the world.

Take heart. We may be on the cusp of living in a rogue world.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:29 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't get too cocky about the west coast's ability to break off and still be economically powerful. A lot of their economic strength comes from industries located there, like high tech, which could easily be rebuilt in other states or move and have economic barriers erected to lock out those same industries that did remain from providing the same extent of services to the rest of the former US. The growth in high tech has made many economic problems worse for the country by replacing local businesses with warehouse and shipping, with the profits flowing largely to the coast instead of more staying in the communities themselves. So loss of those industries might not hurt all that much for the US that stayed together.

Good luck too on the water and food issues that would arise, especially with waves of new immigrants hoping to go to California before they'd split off. I suspect the Colorado river might not be providing as much water as it does now since they might find it more useful elsewhere in the west rather than let it flow to a break off countrystate. There'd be all sorts of other problems too, even if Oregon and Washington joined California and Trumpstates didn't attack. The hostility would make business a completely different thing than it is now, and I don't think Canada is going to be picking up the slack since they've got plenty of conservatives who'd have little interest in helping out left coast liberals if it lessened their chances for power or even good relations with Trumpstates.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:30 PM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

It was facetious.

Sorry, I'm beyond fried today and my sensor is off.
posted by chris24 at 4:31 PM on November 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

There's Hamilton, the hit musical and Hamilton, the city. Angry social media users confuse the two

The Twitter account for the theatre company in Hamilton, the city in southern Ontario, was being mistaken for the account for Hamilton, the Broadway musical.

"Dozens of angry Americans tagged the Hamilton theatre company's Twitter account (@HamiltonTheatre) instead of the official Hamilton musical account (@HamiltonMusical)," Leonard told CBC News.

posted by zachlipton at 4:32 PM on November 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

Take that, Loyalists.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:33 PM on November 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

I just read the Chait article that tonycspu linked to. It's actually pretty good and gives me some heart.
posted by R343L at 4:38 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

A lot of their economic strength comes from industries located there, like high tech, which could easily be rebuilt in other states or move

Good luck keeping prices down when your computers have to be shipped from Asia through the Panama Canal. Might be a leading indicator to buy property in Galveston, though, it'll become the distribution hub for the remainder of the US, assuming OR and WA follow CA. Losing the west coast would be devastating for non-CA commerce in general. /strawman
posted by rhizome at 4:39 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Vulture: Alec Baldwin Replies to Donald Trump’s Anti-SNL Tweet: ‘Election Is Over’
posted by ZeusHumms at 4:39 PM on November 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

He will put qualified people where he is content to have things run as they always have. He will put unqualified stooges or inappropriate ideologues where he really wants to change things.

You might be giving Trump too much credit. I am not sure he knows the difference between unqualified stooges, pig-headed ideologues, and qualified, pragmatic people.
posted by orange swan at 4:40 PM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Vulture: Alec Baldwin Replies to Donald Trump’s Anti-SNL Tweet: ‘Election Is Over’

This seems entirely apt towards Trump.
posted by Talez at 4:46 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Washington Examiner: "Bill Clinton's lonely, one-man effort to win white working-class voters"

This is not to say Clinton and her team never addressed economic issues, or that they did not campaign in parts of the Rust Belt.

Many did, especially Obama, whose campaign rallies often included specific nods to his efforts to improve economic conditions following the 2008 financial crisis. In the final days of the election, the president also touted bailing out the auto industry and working to boost the federal minimum wage.

Clinton and Kaine talked often about closing the so-called wage gap. Warren accused Wall Street and special interest groups of taking advantage of "the little guy."

However, though the Democratic nominee and her team campaigned in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, they focused most of their efforts on targeting densely populated urban areas, and gave little thought to the outside rural territories.

Further, there was a major difference between how Bill Clinton and the rest of his wife's team approached discussing the economy. As Hillary Clinton, Obama and others campaigned on the message that economic fortunes have improved greatly since 2008, and that they'll only get better with another Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton was telling voters things have been extremely difficult for working Americans, and that those people need extra encouragement and help.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:49 PM on November 20, 2016

You might be giving Trump too much credit. I am not sure he knows the difference between unqualified stoogies, pig-headed ideologues, and qualified, pragmatic people.

That could be true too. But my "gut" tells me that he and Bannon really want an AG like Sessions, and will appoint whoever their advisors tell them to for other positions to make Congress feel better about the AG or other crazies they are hellbent on.

If they control the justice department they can lock up and deport all their non-whites, continue gaming the voting system so that whites have a much stronger voice in the polls, etc.

Then again a more middle of the road conservative AG would probably give them all this too. Ugh.
posted by p3t3 at 4:49 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was actually rather impressed by Baldwin's tweets. They were very sensible and on point.
posted by orange swan at 4:49 PM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm not prepared to live in a world where the President-elect is sending out tweets attacking people he doesn't like, while Alec Baldwin is the one sending out rational statements on the duties of the office of the Presidency. Life was so much simpler when it was the other way around.
posted by zachlipton at 4:56 PM on November 20, 2016 [58 favorites]

the 38% of States that went for the Democrats pay 42% of the Federal receipts? That is a difference, but it's not very much. And since they include the most populous states, the States that went for the Republicans must pay more on a per capita basis, no?

It's not sufficient to just look at tax dollars flowing from the tax payers to the federal government, because money flows back too. On that account, states which tend Democrat tend to come up with the short end of the stick. California residents have some of the highest state taxes in the country *and* have their federal tax money go to subsidizing states that keep their taxes low. There's some reasonable cause for resentment, especially when those states also wield disproportional power in the Senate (and most likely the electoral college).
posted by Candleman at 4:57 PM on November 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

When you talk about the Democrats potentially putting their own "celebrity candidate" up against Trump in 2020, why not Alec Baldwin? (Kamala Harris for VP, obviously)
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:57 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I rescind the posting of the Washington Examiner article, not realizing that it's a tabloid. I thought the Washington Times was the only D.C. rag that I should watch out for.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:58 PM on November 20, 2016

p3t3: Yeah, I think Trump's thin skinned stubborn aggression still makes him really dangerous here. But I think if he can help it, he hopes to keep things relatively stable internationally, simply for his economic interests.

He's already failed at this. The only thing he was consistent about during the election was praising Putin. Between this, Russia's hack that helped him, and his advisors who have literally been on Russia's payroll to give speeches there, he's already signaled a move to Russia.

This means moving away from NATO, which might collapse without us, which means chaos and uncertainty in Europe, Germany standing alone against further Russian aggression there.

It means standing by idly while Russia finishes bombing rebels and civilians in Syria, which means our word is meaningless to any future groups fighting dictators in their own countries.

In Asia, our influence is diminished, most likely never to return. We've shown ourselves to be mercurial and chaotic. The Philippines will move closer to China. Japan and South Korea will stand alone against Chinese maritime aggression because "maybe we'll honor our treaties, depends on the situation" doesn't fucking work in international relations. Our ability to argue for human rights disappears too. We're already being used in China as an example of why democracy doesn't work.

So I see only chaos from his election, despite his focus on his investments. And that's not even factoring in him having no choice but to deal with North Korea or Iran. What will he do about the Iran agreement? Would he drop a nuke on them when people realize he's not going to deliver on any of his campaign promises and he needs to look tough? What about when North Korea starts to grumble? Their nuclear missiles can't yet reach the US, but there 30k American troops stationed in South Korea.

Yeah, I'd say we're screwed. At this point it's just whether we're "complete chaos" screwed or "radioactive cloud" screwed. But at least he didn't have a private email server.
posted by bluecore at 5:14 PM on November 20, 2016 [33 favorites]

If I were a political cartoonist I would totally draw a couple of old white folks sitting in front of a TV showing Fox News with a mushroom cloud visible out the window, and one turns to the other and says "But at least he didn't have a private email server!".
posted by Justinian at 5:23 PM on November 20, 2016 [33 favorites]

Sorry, this is from two days ago, but I didn't see it linked yet: Ron Rivest, Turing Award winner and co-inventor of the RSA algorithm, has an article in USA Today calling for an audit to verify the legitimacy of the election result. The associated petition has 77 thousand signatures so far.

I guess this came out at the same time as the Rosenfeld article linked by justso above, and which I didn't see any follow-up on. I'm tired too, and if McCrory's desperate raging is any indication the Republicans are never going to let this happen. But... I still want to believe.
posted by a car full of lions at 5:27 PM on November 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

Christie re-emerges after his falling out with Trump. But is he back on the inside?

Trumpworld is a place where there are dueling centers of power, where actual motives are opaque and where only those related by blood or marriage are ever truly trusted and invulnerable.

“Trump’s little black book of people he trusts in politics is two pages long. The way it runs, which isn’t in Trump’s interest, is like court politics for some potentate in the 17th century,” said veteran GOP consultant Mike Murphy, who has been a vocal Trump critic. “It’s a snake pit where people die. But even when people die, they can get resurrected when there’s a vacuum.”

posted by zachlipton at 5:37 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

> assuming OR and WA follow CA. Losing the west coast would be devastating for non-CA commerce in general. /strawman

For reals though, although it is a terrible idea both in theory and in practice, I nevertheless catch myself having fantasies of my region sending the US a breakup letter ending in "We have the honor to be your obedient servants, W. Coast."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:43 PM on November 20, 2016 [12 favorites]

But we have ports and a relationship with China. Specifically in concerns to climate change.

Look, I understand that this idea makes no sense to a lot of people. I just think Trump is 100% an enemy to CA.
posted by waitangi at 5:50 PM on November 20, 2016

Indian Business Partners Hope to Exploit Their Ties to Donald Trump

“It is unprecedented in modern history,” said Andrew D. Herman, a lawyer who has represented more than a dozen members of Congress in ethics cases. “But this is the new normal.”

posted by zachlipton at 5:51 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

This year is so weird.

@kenvogel
Trump's businesses could present "hugely problematic" conflicts, warns 'Clinton Cash' author (!) @peterschweizer.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/19/politics/peter-schweizer-clinton-cash-trump/
posted by chris24 at 6:03 PM on November 20, 2016 [10 favorites]

and I absolutely do not see any way for the two to even coexist, much less ever be reconciled into one united nation ever again.

Well, we could get ourselves into a huge, massive war, and be conquered by two other nations, and spend 45 years divided from each other, until we finally come back together!
posted by dis_integration at 6:03 PM on November 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

As an addendum, the worst part about our headlong fall into fascism isn't that there aren't any communists to fight us, just more fascists.
posted by dis_integration at 6:05 PM on November 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is where we are now

In a year or so, there needs to be a follow-up. The billboard is still in place but weathered and frayed. The field is covered in skeletons and half-eaten sheep carcasses. The wolf is there, in a suit with two Secret Service agents on either side of him. He's looking hungrily at a pair of surviving sheep. One sheep says to the other, "I didn't think he meant it."
posted by honestcoyote at 6:08 PM on November 20, 2016 [32 favorites]

Ron Rivest, Turing Award winner and co-inventor of the RSA algorithm, has an article in USA Today calling for an audit to verify the legitimacy of the election result.

I am tired now so I read that as calling for an adult to verify the legitimacy of the election result.

And then I thought "Seems about right."
posted by dannyboybell at 6:22 PM on November 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

I just watched all six minutes and twenty-six seconds of that angry hateful rant by Jeanine Pirro linked upthread and two things became very clear to me.
1. This is an awful person.
2. There is no bridging this divide. It's already too wide to cross and it's only getting wider. There's Jeanine Pirro's America, and there's the America I believe in, and I absolutely do not see any way for the two to even coexist, much less ever be reconciled into one united nation ever again.

Remember this is the woman that after the Charlie Hebdo shooting started her broadcast with "WE NEED TO KILL THEM!".

I don't think I want to live in that sort of world if it comes to that.
posted by Talez at 6:40 PM on November 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

In a year or so, there needs to be a follow-up. The billboard is still in place but weathered and frayed. The field is covered in skeletons and half-eaten sheep carcasses. The wolf is there, in a suit with two Secret Service agents on either side of him. He's looking hungrily at a pair of surviving sheep. One sheep says to the other, "I didn't think he meant it."
posted by honestcoyote

Eponysterical.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:45 PM on November 20, 2016 [25 favorites]