Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[Madiel]

Beware of triumphalism. 

HA!

Democrat tears are delicious.

[Todd]

HA!

Looks like you missed the point of my post, or you cannot contextualize.  (Actually, your last several posts demonstrate a possible inability to contextualize.)  My statement about Democrat tears tasting delicious is a partisan joke - and one that may well offend some delicate sensibilities - but I hold no illusion that the Dems are done for, or that they will not regroup, or that there has been some massive realignment of politics.  Triumphalism leads to laziness and sloppiness.  Now is the time for Dems to regroup, and it is the time for Republicans to redouble their efforts to defeat Dems in all upcoming elections, with a special focus on holding statehouses under Republican control while gaining new ones for the even more important election coming in 2020. 

[Tritone]

Beware of triumphalism.  The Dems will regroup and come back with a redesigned message and new messengers.  (New at the national level.)  Rove once talked of permanent majorities and Clinton was thought inevitable.  "[T]he dream shall never die", and all that.

Don't get me wrong:  I don't like or admire Trump.  But, as a man wrote in today's national paper letters section, "I used to have an ideology once but I couldn't afford it;  now I'm working for $20 an hour as a cab driver."

People aren't going to go back to pc propaganda.  The game's up.

[Madiel]

Looks like you missed the point of my post, or you cannot contextualize.  (Actually, your last several posts demonstrate a possible inability to contextualize.)  My statement about Democrat tears tasting delicious is a partisan joke - and one that may well offend some delicate sensibilities - but I hold no illusion that the Dems are done for, or that they will not regroup, or that there has been some massive realignment of politics.  Triumphalism leads to laziness and sloppiness.  Now is the time for Dems to regroup, and it is the time for Republicans to redouble their efforts to defeat Dems in all upcoming elections, with a special focus on holding statehouses under Republican control while gaining new ones for the even more important election coming in 2020.

Well, no argument there. The ability to gerrymander congressional districts is undoubtedly important. And one of the most astonishing things about the American version of democracy.

[Pat B]

As I posted on the other thread Donald Trump could be the first real post-partisan president we've ever had.  He is not beholden to either party and some of his policies cross party lines.  He and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren agree on some policies and I am hoping that the Democrats can transcend their own partisanship and work with him to gain passage on policies the Republican leadership currently opposes.

Non-partisan leadership is what most people want.  That is why many voters overlooked his rhetoric because they saw him opposing both parties on things that are percieved as better for the country.

I am confident that Sanders and Warren will support any measures that match their goals, but it is difficult for minority-party Senators and Representatives to pass bills that are opposed by the majority leadership. That's just how Congress works.

What we are likely to get over the next 2-4 years are all of the things Trump, McConnell, and Ryan agree on. It may bear little resemblance to Trump's campaign promises.

[Todd]

It may bear little resemblance to Trump's campaign promises.

The hell you say!

[Parsifal]

What we are likely to get over the next 2-4 years are all of the things Trump, McConnell, and Ryan agree on. It may bear little resemblance to Trump's campaign promises.

Why do you think that Trump's spiteful temperament won't apply to Ryan and McConnell? We may well have bitter personal conflict and gridlock in Washington once more.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Don't get me wrong:  I don't like or admire Trump.  But, as a man wrote in today's national paper letters section, "I used to have an ideology once but I couldn't afford it;  now I'm working for $20 an hour as a cab driver."

The point is what?

[Tritone]

The point is what?

That it's mostly the affluent and comfortable middle class which can afford Ideologies like political correctness and identity politics.  The rest of us have been just too hard at work supporting our families to worry about peoples' hurt feelings, safe spaces, trigger warnings, minority interests and the rest of that bullshit.

What has really got up my nose in the last decade or so is this notion of so-called "white privilege".  We've been told, especially men, to "check your privilege".  Well, you know what?  This demographic is one and the same who died in its millions in two world wars (and then some more) to preserve the freedoms.  That was almost entirely their PRIVILEGE.  And the people who've grown up (or have they?) to enjoy those catastrophically hard-won freedoms to then sling accusations of 'white privilege' back in their faces and try to shut them down whenever they tried to express an opinion which wasn't in line with the left wing orthodoxy and its Thought Police is just cheap.  And it's rubbish and, of course anti-democratic because it robs people of their freedom to speak.

They're such hypocrites too!!  Sarah Palin was never defended against misogyny and sexism when mercilessly ridiculed on TV some years back.  The  feminists fell silent because they choose their victims very carefully, along partisan lines.  And nobody bawled for Hillary that she lost the nomination 8 years ago "because she was a woman".  Why?  Because a precious minority member became president and Hillary's concerns were sidelined.  Not so now:  we hear the shrill and cheap cries of "she was robbed because she was a woman".  Infantile.

The game's up.  You just don't hear this drivel coming from the Right of politics.  And before you smirk, Trump is not now nor ever belonged to the traditional political parties.

[Madiel]

Well, you know what?  This demographic is one and the same who died in its millions in two world wars (and then some more) to preserve the freedoms.  That was almost entirely their PRIVILEGE. 

...you think there's something significant in the fact that most of the people who died in wars in Europe were European?

[Tritone]

...you think there's something significant in the fact that most of the people who died in wars in Europe were European?

Correct.  And these 'white' privileged people enlisted and went to war, dying in their many millions, to save your bony hide.  Your comments are not only insulting to relatives of mine who died but deeply offensive, arrogant and condescending. 

But I can see the extent of your cultural relativist indoctrination that you think there's nothing significant about that.  Enter Donald Trump.

[Madiel]

Correct.  And these 'white' privileged people enlisted and went to war, dying in their many millions, to save your bony hide.  Your comments are not only insulting to relatives of mine who died but deeply offensive, arrogant and condescending. 

But I can see the extent of your cultural relativist indoctrination that you think there's nothing significant about that.  Enter Donald Trump.

I can't see what's insulting about my question. It's merely trying to get you to think about possible reasons why most of the people who would die in a European war were Europeans. The people they were fighting against, to save "my bony hide", were also Europeans. More on that later.

I don't know why it's all about your relatives and not about mine, or about anyone else's. I also don't know why you're ignoring the reality that the British colonies, for example, supplied plenty of soldiers according to whichever race existed in that particular colony.

But most of all I don't know why you think that what is most important about the many many people who fought is not what they did, but the colour of their skin.  Especially not when what many of them were fighting against in WWII was a regime that placed a great deal of importance on skin colour. That freedom you say they were fighting for? To me part of it was the freedom to not be morally classified according to ethnic origin. They weren't fighting for the glory of the Aryan race, they were fighting against it.

You appear to have a great deal of anger bubbling inside you that anyone should be ungrateful about what white people did. The problem is that you don't emphasise what they did, you emphasise that they were white while doing it.

You also seem to have turned up on this forum for the express purpose of celebrating how great it will be to be free to look down on everyone who is different from you.

By the way, I have a classic English complexion and my family is so pale that it wasn't immediately noticed that my cousin was albino. So I sure as hell don't have any beef with white people.  But I also live in one of the most multicultural countries on earth (the proportion of foreign-born people here is over twice the proportion in the United States) and so I'm completely used to living and working amongst a wide variety of people. It's not that I dislike white people, it's that I dislike the idea that Anglo-Saxons such as myself somehow have ownership of the place and everyone else is just a visitor. The precise date that someone's ancestors might have arrived in a location isn't a very good indicator of belonging to a nation, and around here practically everyone's ancestors turned up pretty recently anyway.

[Madiel]

As for "cultural relativism", it's simply that I understand enough about how cultures work to know that most things that people treat as having existed since time immemorial don't date much further back than their grandparents' childhoods.

The fact that the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada are all so significantly different to each other makes it very hard for me to believe that there's an inherent white British culture which has been faithfully preserved and which must continue to be passed down unaltered. We've diverged over the space of only a couple of centuries. We will keep developing and changing. There's plenty to discuss about how exactly we will change, but the one thing we won't do is stand still. People born a century after me in Australia won't live like me no matter what happens. On recent evidence, for example, they'll probably all celebrate Halloween which during my childhood was unthinkable.

[zamyrabyrd]

That it's mostly the affluent and comfortable middle class which can afford Ideologies like political correctness and identity politics.  The rest of us have been just too hard at work supporting our families to worry about peoples' hurt feelings, safe spaces, trigger warnings, minority interests and the rest of that bullshit.
What has really got up my nose in the last decade or so is this notion of so-called "white privilege".  We've been told, especially men, to "check your privilege".  Well, you know what?  This demographic is one and the same who died in its millions in two world wars (and then some more) to preserve the freedoms.  That was almost entirely their PRIVILEGE.  And the people who've grown up (or have they?) to enjoy those catastrophically hard-won freedoms to then sling accusations of 'white privilege' back in their faces and try to shut them down whenever they tried to express an opinion which wasn't in line with the left wing orthodoxy and its Thought Police is just cheap.  And it's rubbish and, of course anti-democratic because it robs people of their freedom to speak.
They're such hypocrites too!!  Sarah Palin was never defended against misogyny and sexism when mercilessly ridiculed on TV some years back.  The  feminists fell silent because they choose their victims very carefully, along partisan lines.  And nobody bawled for Hillary that she lost the nomination 8 years ago "because she was a woman".  Why?  Because a precious minority member became president and Hillary's concerns were sidelined.  Not so now:  we hear the shrill and cheap cries of "she was robbed because she was a woman".  Infantile.
The game's up.  You just don't hear this drivel coming from the Right of politics.  And before you smirk, Trump is not now nor ever belonged to the traditional political parties.

For some reason (it would be interesting to study this phenomenon in our culture)* the underdog status is very appealing. Larry Nichols pointed out that Hillary's fatal mistake vis-a-vis Obama was she was projecting herself as the "anointed one". Obama of course cashed in his victim class chips to his great advantage twice.

Oddly enough, a billionaire who espoused the voiceless, the true underdogs, those who have been systematically been crushed by the system, who have to die in their wars, who have been rendered unsafe in their own streets and houses, and whose moral and religious values have been bulldozed by political correctness, actually prevailed over contrived and often fake victims.

*David vs. Goliath may have been an archetype.

[Madiel]

Oddly enough, a billionaire who espoused the voiceless, the true underdogs, those who have been systematically been crushed by the system, who have to die in their wars, who have been rendered unsafe in their own streets and houses, and whose moral and religious values have been bulldozed by political correctness, actually prevailed over contrived and often fake victims.

It is exactly because it's a billionaire that I find it odd. I've got no problem with the notion that the voiceless need a voice. What I still can't fathom is that they couldn't find a more suitable mouthpiece.

EDIT: Nor does he make the slightest sense as a conveyor of traditional moral and religious values.

[Herman]

That it's mostly the affluent and comfortable middle class which can afford Ideologies like political correctness and identity politics.  The rest of us have been just too hard at work supporting our families to worry about peoples' hurt feelings, safe spaces, trigger warnings, minority interests and the rest of that bullshit.

you seem to have plenty of time to search for a classical music group and post your alt-right bile all the time.

one of the tiresome things of the alt-right trolls is they always preface their posts with masks like "I have voted D all my life", or: "I'm just a hard-working stiff, but I need to tell you this..."

[Turner]

It is exactly because it's a billionaire that I find it odd. I've got no problem with the notion that the voiceless need a voice. What I still can't fathom is that they couldn't find a more suitable mouthpiece.

EDIT: Nor does he make the slightest sense as a conveyor of traditional moral and religious values.

+1

[Madiel]

I'd be quite interested to know, actually, which traditional moral and religious values Trump is supposed to embody.

Because I tend to see a guy who would think the Beatitudes are the kind of thing a Loser would say.

[Tritone]

I'd be quite interested to know, actually, which traditional moral and religious values Trump is supposed to embody.

Because I tend to see a guy who would think the Beatitudes are the kind of thing a Loser would say.

Yes, I'd be ashamed to hector people as "privileged white" when millions of them died defending freedoms.  But it's the contemptuous tone of 'generation snowflake' and their safe spaces which has created the arrogance to make assumptions about 'the greatest generation' which (and you obviously do not know, so listen up!) is how those who fought and died for your bony hide in WW2 are now regarded.

The sneering and contemptuous Left doesn't care a damn about that.  They're too busy being, well, privileged.  Their endless little victim groups and cadres of minorities are conveniently herded together to form a flank of sad losers.  Trouble is, they're just not intelligent enough to know that not all people in all groups think the same.  Just because people are gay doesn't mean they all think the same - politically or otherwise.  Ask Milo Yiannopoulous!! 

And if you don't get the Trump phenomenon and why people voted the way they did you need to fasten your seatbelts.  Perhaps it would be easier for you to go onto the streets, like your fellow jaded Lefties, and burn the flag and effigies.  Your progressive project is running out of steam, so stand aside.  You're either part of the problem or part of the solution.

[Madiel]

Yes, I'd be ashamed to hector people as "privileged white" when millions of them died defending freedoms.  But it's the contemptuous tone of 'generation snowflake' and their safe spaces which has created the arrogance to make assumptions about 'the greatest generation' which (and you obviously do not know, so listen up!) is how those who fought and died for your bony hide in WW2 are now regarded.

The sneering and contemptuous Left doesn't care a damn about that.  They're too busy being, well, privileged.  Their endless little victim groups and cadres of minorities are conveniently herded together to form a flank of sad losers.  Trouble is, they're just not intelligent enough to know that not all people in all groups think the same.  Just because people are gay doesn't mean they all think the same - politically or otherwise.  Ask Milo Yiannopoulous!! 

And if you don't get the Trump phenomenon and why people voted the way they did you need to fasten your seatbelts.  Perhaps it would be easier for you to go onto the streets, like your fellow jaded Lefties, and burn the flag and effigies.  Your progressive project is running out of steam, so stand aside.  You're either part of the problem or part of the solution.

None of this tirade responds to what I asked. Bye.