Hell, I hear about toddlers getting access to them from time to time. Just get kids a gun-shaped teddy bear so they understand trigger discipline.
My loose plan is to close this thread as of Tuesday morning next week, given that we’ll have completed an election cycle.
Get Sacha Baron Cohen to roll up in here, with an overt Who is America joint, before you do, please.
Or at least do an improv cover of it.
His exposing certain Republicans’ favorable view on toddlers with concealed carry in day care is one of the very few times I have roared with laughter whilst it never touched the salt coursing down my cheeks.
No. The left was forced to reckon with the fact that they lived in a thought bubble because they lost even after being assured by all their soothsayers that they had a 99% chance of victory… However the fact is, after all the talk about reassessing their thought bubble, nothing changed. Hillary losing to Trump could’ve been a moment to realise certain truths:
An international system where the US pays all the bills while China is fast becoming the next super power is unsustainable;
The time for talking about America’s broken immigration system is over and voters want to see some action;
Regulations, no matter how well intentioned, can stifle an economy, and lifting unnecessary regulations will (has) allow(ed) the U.S. economy to go from “those jobs are never coming back” to Bankai.
But no instead, let’s go with Trump supporters are racist, the US should use world opinion as the lodestone for it’s international policy, Trump is killing the climate and the booming economy is really to Obama’s credit.
The fact is that most liberals never took the L properly. Clinton only lost because the electoral college is broken and because Trump was aided by Russians. All the excuses in the world one could come up with instead of actually reassessing the policy bits where they were out of sync with the majority of America.
I think Trump supporters will be forced to reckon with their own bubble, when something they were so sure about turns out to be horribly horribly wrong, but truth be told, that hasn’t happened.
Yet.
This seems to be the only disqualifying portion of that statement, though. If you don’t strawman it, it’s actually a fair statement.
… except Hillary won the popular vote by a wide margin, so I’m unclear what you mean by “majority”.
People already knew about #1 in your list. Kinda what the TPP was about.
I’m unclear what #2 is supposed to be beyond the debate that’s been going on for decades now. The ball keeps moving forward slowly on a hyper-complicated issue. Pretending it’s simple and has simple solutions is counter factual.
Regulations also keep things fair and safer, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. “You” should identify unnecessary regulations and target those. I would suggest strongly that that’s just mostly (delicious) right-wing propaganda, much like Cut the Fat and Drain the Swamp and every other catchphrase that we’ve gone through over the years.
Vilifying taxes and regulations are two of the biggest conservative victories in the past … while. Maybe reflect back on why those were put into place in the first place.
I agree, running on the fear of brown people taking jobs was a pretty bold move that appears to have paid off, if only barely. Trump didn’t win the popular vote and a very slight amount of voters were able to give him the electoral college, but even then, it probably stands to reason that running a blatantly racist campaign spoke true to his base, and those who wouldn’t consider themselves his base but still voted for him seem to believe that’s not as big an issue as international policy.
This isn’t me being extreme, btw, all his policy has basically been “run out the browns,” so it’s tough to say that this wouldn’t be under the “certain truths” up there.
Firstly, you are arguing with me by way of agreeing with me. “The left was forced to recon with the fact that they lived in a thought bubble because they lost…” If the “right” won, you are basically agreeing with me that they felt no need to examine their thought bubble, which I would argue is built upon the idea that only bubble-based information can be trusted.
But thank you for proving me wrong by listing generic conservative talking points and going on about how you hate “the left”. Really showed me.
But, since I haven’t argued with people on SRK for no reason in a while:
These to are difficult to really get into, because they are so vague (the thing we’ve been doing for 70 years is “not sustainable”?). But they both fail the test of “I don’t like A, so B must be better”. That is, there is no evidence that the current approach (ie. hostility towards the allies which have helped stabilize large parts of the globe, while cozying up to dictators because they said nice things about DJT or stuff money in his pocket) is a better alternative.
As it relates to immigration policy, it is based on using hostile rhetoric to manipulate voters; you are overstating how rational the people moved by this bellicosity are. It is performative cruelty in order to make people feel defended and validated.
The first line of defense of terrible Trumpist ideas is “Obama did the same thing”, which generally turns out to be a bunch of bullshit. But even when the Obama administration did crack down on illegal immigration (many would argue too much or irresponsibly so), there was not wild applause from the political right about how great he was, because actual policy isn’t the point. People are into the right-wing virtue signaling that you describe. They want someone who represents people like them going after other people, who they blame for XYZ problems.
See above. But also, since you seem to be referencing the economy-
If you look at these charts, you won’t be able to see a difference based on when Trump took office- because it doesn’t fucking matter. The desire to give Trump credit for not fucking up a decade of steady economic growth since the recession is not really supported by the most common economic numbers that people use (jobs, unemployment etc). There are a handful of positive changes you could associate with this administration, and it remains to be seen how long they will hold.
What did skyrocket right after the election, was consumer confidence among Republicans and conservatives; not based on anything Trump actually did, but because they feel like they have one of their guys in office. It is, again, about optics.
And I suppose this is a positive for the economy overall because high consumer confidence is a good thing, but it’s based on the pitch and not the product.
These are all separate ideas which would require their own responses. But:
Yes, many of them are (Trump certainly thinks so, which is why he says and does the things he does);
That’s a characterization of the concept of international cooperation;
You can’t really “kill” the climate, but given that he said climate change was a Chinese hoax (always important to blame nonwhite foreigners for the sake of his base), it’s hard to defend him on this point;
This is also true, as outlined above.
I mean literally Clinton won the popular vote by several million and lost due to a moderately small electoral vote defeat (of the last 58 elections, Trump’s victory ranks 48th). So you are assuming a mandate where one does not exist.
But we are again almost agreeing here. I come to a different conclusion and would phrase it differently, but we would probably agree that there’s a large section of the political left who don’t understand what the political right thinks or how it operates, and this can hurt them when they’re trying to do things like win elections.
This is, of course, a matter of perspective. I could name about 20 terrible things that have happened since Trump took office and are related (top of mind: babies in cages, Charlottesville, Helsinki etc).
But here’s something- There was a guy named Mitt Romney, who ran for POTUS back in 2012. He lost to Obama, and the Republican party did an “autopsy” of their loss; it wasn’t a matter of breaking their bubble, but they decided one of the things they needed to do to win was to engage more voters and chill out with the hostility towards ethnic and religious minorities. To actually be inclusive, instead of just denying that they’re racist.
What happened in 2016, is that Republicans elected literally the world’s most famous birther, who demonstrated that xenophobia and racism could be used as a feature and not a bug, so long as there were useful idiots along to deny what he said was racist or xenophobic (Mexican rapists, banning all Muslims, etc etc). Bonus: he chose a famous homophobe as his VP. So the “conservatives will do some soul-searching” line doesn’t really work, because they did, and this is actually what they came up with. I guess there wasn’t that much to search.
I’m happy to agree with this.
Honestly, you, Hippo and Preppy raise points that pretty much affirm what I was getting at.
The Left is going to fail to flip the Senate and, increasingly, it looks like they may even fail to flip the house. Because it refused to learn real lessons from 2018.
Just like fighting games, when you lose in politics you can blame the stick, the tournament organisers, the shitty cast balance, or yourself.
Quite naively, I thought there might be some actual introspection after Hillary lost, but clearly that doesn’t seem to be the case. Liberals would rather go screaming into the night about the game, until Trump has completed eight years, than try to win it.
Call me a concern troll, whatever. I think there was a more effective road to choose that wouldn’t have involved sacrificing progressive principles. But the first thing that would have required was to call a spade a spade and stop with the ridiculous demonising of Trump that has become de rigueur in Democrat politics.
Or OR they could run on a more progressive and less centrist based platform ala Bernie Sanders that people actually care about while STILL pointing out the horrible human rights and ethical missteps of the Trump administration.
The ideas of what to do to win a presidential election for Democrats is still in flux. Not liking Trump is a point of consensus, but there’s an ongoing discussion of what kind of person should run against him and how.
I regret to inform you, adopting Trump’s ideas about policy isn’t something being advocated, and I would say for good reason. (Despite this, Democrats in the senate were willing to compromise on “the wall” by trading it for protecting DACA recipients, but Trump blew up this and other deals).
But, for example, nobody who’s name is being floated for a presidential run (it’s too early why are we talking about this) is bashing Trump all day. Sanders, Warren, Booker, less so Harris etc are mostly on the economic populism angle- get people better-paying jobs and fix the healthcare system so they don’t go bankrupt, etc. A lot of people in the world of politics are actually quite generous to Trump and his fan base, because they don’t think they can win by alienating them.
But, it’s a matter of diagnosing the problem; are people really interested in better economic numbers, or is the Trumpism part of Trump- the hostility, the sabre-rattling, the willingness to go over the line and be terrible- the part that people actually like? In politics there is always a difference between what people say they want and what they will actually turn out for.
Happy voting day boys and squirrels! You ready to ride the “Red Wave”?
Voted last week…fuck the lines.
Early voting is the only voting
Or because this is the most slanted election in our lifetimes, but don’t let facts get in the way of your narrative.
Trump just torched Hillary in a lot of these races that are now competitive. Even just getting that far is pretty damned good. Let’s see what happens today.
I voted. Even the absentee ballot box had a bunch of people waiting. I like it. I like when people vote. Thankfully I’m white and also not in Georgia and thus it is easy for me to vote.
I voted by mail.
I dont ride the red wave today; I just ask for a bj that day.
Seriously Trump deserves the credit for voting enthusiasm on both sides.
He has made the youth get to the polls and people who otherwise didn’t care about politics in record breaking numbers.
This is Trumps only win in 2 years and he should own it.
Well he gave billionaires tax breaks and nominated 2 Justices (one stolen and one who loves beer and titties)
By bj he means bot job
Because of his love of microbots
I really don’t have high hopes for lazy disenfranchised millenials
The racist old white people vote is too strong
Basically.
I been saying this for a good long while now.
'Murika IS Mr. Heart[land].
U.N. needs to work on its Hokuto Juha Zan.
It’s important to note that this is the most slanted election map in your lifetime. If this is not a red wave, then Trumpism is fucking up. But I hope people have realized that funding healthcare via GoFundMe is not where we want to be as a country.
Jesus the GOP is doing everything possible to suppress the vote to not get massacred. All of these target minority areas ONLY…
The Kemp situation in GA is truly sad, even if he is on your side. He has cheated and done everything to steal his election.
Watching America vote is like watching a toddler assemble a BBQ.
