Topic: Trumpmageddon

[Danvzare]

I still can't believe he even got elected, not with how the US voting system works and how much everyone seemed to prefer Hillary.

If the Illuminati truly exists, they've definitely screwed this one up.

[Blondbraid]

Atelier,
While I think that a lot about Trump have been exaggerated and taken out of context,
one of the most important parts of any democracy is allowing people to criticize their government,
and even receiving a majority of the votes does not put anyone beyond critique.

Another one of the great problems with American politics is that their system has split everything into two opposing teams with the "If you're not with us you are against us" mentality with little to no room for middle ground.
It's all so polarized, and makes people vote on which group they identify with rater than which policies they agree with.

[Cassiebsg]

Don't know why, but since yesterday I just can't take this song out of my head...
R.E.M. - It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Trumps to do list:
- Build wall
- Export all Mexicans and Musilims out of the land (and maybe a few other groups too)
- Put Hillary behind bars
- Not accept the election result... oh wait! Scratch that..

Danvzare, precisely cause of our the USA voting system works, he works. Cause last I heard she had more votes than Trump... just not where it mattered... First was the Bush disaster, now this... Not even Bush voted for him!

[Atelier]

Andail, no I'm not saying any of that. To be fair I'm ranting off topic about SJWs in general. The Trump thing has just brought it to the fore.

people shouldn't protest because... because you have friends that also are annoyed with how Disney appropriates Polynesian culture?

No, but people that swap from one cause to another when it comes up in the news are so tedious. I know people who certainly don't hate Trump because he is Trump, but because it's a new fun thing that they can sink their teeth into. The real people who should be legitimately worried are US citizens, who can and should mobilise to do something about his election if they want to. But I cannot ever see how attending a rally outside the embassy in London makes one iota of difference other than the personal satisfaction of feeling that you are meaningful. But you're not. The US isn't going to de-elect Trump because Greg from Milton Keynes isn't happy.

We shouldn't be upset because we have only seen his past and not his future? So you can never judge a man until... you've travelled to the future and back and also know what he will do?

The 'time travelling' thing overcomplicates the question with paradox. Yes, naturally you can't judge someone on their future acts until they've happened. Judgments on past behaviour are a separate thing not contingent on knowing what he will do. Now the difference is important here because Trump strikes me as a man full of bluster and big statements to win votes. Which is why I think it's wrong to necessarily extrapolate his past behaviour and statements into a dystopian future, WW3, homosexuality becoming illegal, whatever. People do do this. Things will be shitter for certain, but I just don't see any of that happening.

We can never criticise someone that others also criticise because then we're just jumping onto a band wagon?

We can never criticise someone if we also criticise something else because then we're probably just social justice warriors?

Again this pertains to the SJW thing. An SJW's criticism of [insert topic] is irrelevant because they parrot opinions on absolutely every topic that doesn't fit into their worldview, and they are deeply hypocritical. The criticism is ephemeral and not directed at the object but towards their own satisfaction. For some prime examples look up Kate Smurthwaite and Laurie Penny.

[Radiant]

Don't know why, but since yesterday I just can't take this song out of my head...
R.E.M. - It's The End Of The World As We Know It

I think trumpocalypse sounds better than trumpageddom, really.

[RickJ]

One of the biggest mass shootings this year was entirely to murder queer latinx people, an intersection of two groups of
people Trump has been rallying people against all year.

Interesting example.  Let's see if I understand correctly.  A second generation Muslim man, whose religion teaches that gays
should be imprisoned or killed goes into a gay night club and starts shooting "queer latinx people" all the while claiming
he is doing it because his religion says so.  Trump is a bigot because he says Muslims from Muslim countries where they kill
and imprison gay people as well as others who aren't Muslim or as Muslim as they are shouldn't be allowed into our country.

Trump has an extensive track record of gaffes, failures, shortcomings, hateful rhetoric, childish vendettas, ill informed
statements, etc, and is basically the epitome of a racist, homophobic, islamophobic bully

Can you give a specific example of something you actually heard him say rather than what other people said that he said?  There is no question that he speaks his mind in a blunt and straight forward manner but that does not a racist make.  Some may consider this rude and boorish but it's refreshing to hear a politician say what he thinks rather than saying what he thinks everyone wants to hear.

Maybe we should talk about what pres elect Trump he says he will do rather than regurgitate the losing side's campaign?
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contract/

Cleanup Corruption
1. Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress
2. Hiring freeze on federal employees to reduce the workforce through attrition
3. Requirement to eliminate two federal regulations for every new one
4. Five-year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists
5. Lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for foreign governments
6. Complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections

Jobs and Trade
1. Renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from it
2. Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
3. Order the secretary of the treasury to label China a 'currency manipulator'
4. Use U.S. and international laws to end foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers
5. Lift restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of U.S. energy reserves including shale, oil, natural gas and coal
6. Approve the Keystone XL pipeline project and other 'vital energy infrastructure projects'
7. Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to improve U.S. water and environmental infrastructure

Restore Security and Constitutional Law
1. Cancel Obama's 'unconstitutional' executive actions, memoranda and orders
2. Pick a conservative replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
3. Cancel all federal funding to 'sanctuary cities' that harbor illegal immigrants
4. Begin removing the 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the U.S., and cancel visas to countries that won't repatriate them
5. Suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where incoming people can't be properly vetted.

[DBoyWheeler]

*Gets Flame Shield up*

I'm actually glad (and relieved) Trump won.

[Snarky]

Cleanup Corruption
1. Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress

This is actually a terrible idea for reducing corruption, because it means politicians won't be thinking of their political careers, but about securing a job for after their term limit expires. Hence they'll be even more inclined to suck up to industry and do their bidding.

2. Hiring freeze on federal employees to reduce the workforce through attrition
3. Requirement to eliminate two federal regulations for every new one

These are also terrible ideas. Republicans have already forced the federal government through deep cuts that have severely reduced its ability to do its job. And the problem with regulation in the US is not federal regulation, but inconsistent state regulation that makes it very difficult to do business across multiple states. (Incidentally one of the problems the EU helps solve in Europe.)

4. Five-year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists
5. Lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for foreign governments
6. Complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections

These may be good ideas in some form or another, but I note that Trump shamelessly and illegally tried to raise campaign funds from foreign donors, in one of the many scandals that got ignored because "OH NOES EMAILS!"

Jobs and Trade
1. Renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from it
2. Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
3. Order the secretary of the treasury to label China a 'currency manipulator'

... which will damage the economy.

5. Lift restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of U.S. energy reserves including shale, oil, natural gas and coal
6. Approve the Keystone XL pipeline project and other 'vital energy infrastructure projects'
7. Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to improve U.S. water and environmental infrastructure

Which will cause untold damage to the environment, bringing upon us the curses of future generations.

Also, the sum given by the US to UN climate change programs so far is only about $500 million.

4. Begin removing the 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the U.S., and cancel visas to countries that won't repatriate them

Most of these people are not "criminal" in any sense other than being in the country illegally, and there's already a big ongoing program of deportations. Trying to deport them en masse would be a logistical nightmare, require squads of police or agents going house-to-house to round people up, Gestapo-style, and would come at a great cost to the economy.

Also, there has been no net illegal immigration to the US since 2007.

5. Suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where incoming people can't be properly vetted.

Refugees from e.g. Syria already go through a vetting process that is ridiculously thorough, even if they are elderly or children. There is of course no way to be 100% sure, but you know what? Most US terrorists are home-grown.

....

Anyway, to contemplate some possible positives:

For the last eight years, the Republican party has been sabotaging anything that smacks of good government or that could possibly be perceived as an Obama accomplishment, because they hate him more than they love their country. (Evidence: Obamacare, which started out as a Republican program.) If they can get out of the habit, maybe they can pass a few common-sense things that should have bipartisan support in any sane world.

Trump has talked of infrastructure investment, which the country badly needs. (As a European, the biggest shock on coming to the US for the first time is how run-down the whole country is. It honestly can feel like a third-world nation.) This money should be spent on maintenance and safety upkeep (things like roads, bridges, railroads, dams, water pipes, the electricity grid, etc.), as well as on increased security for vulnerable systems (particularly against hacking).

I also don't think that gay rights will be rolled back to the extent that some fear (e.g. a constitutional amendment to abolish gay marriage). Trump doesn't seem to really care about people's sexuality, and although Pence does, I think the GOP realizes that this is not a culture war they want. There will likely be some ludicrous "religious freedom" exceptions to equal protection laws, but those can be reverted once this embarrassing interlude is over.

[Andail]

Can you give a specific example of something you actually heard him say rather than what other people said that he said?  There is no question that he speaks his mind in a blunt and straight forward manner but that does not a racist make.

Are we actually doing this? I mean, it's one thing if you support Trump, but are we going to pretend that he hasn't said the things he's said?

Here's a list of unsorted stupidity:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/the-absolute-trumpest-121328

Here's a list with only racist stuff:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-examples_us_56d47177e4b03260bf777e83

Are you going to say that those are just hearsay? Or taken out of context?

If you think that Trump is a person who speaks his mind and not just what people want to hear, here's a list of instances where he contradicts himself, presumably because it was the most populist thing to say at the time:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-contradictions-213869

When he admitted that he likes to grope women - grab their vaginas more precisely, it was when he didn't think there was a camera nearby, so that was propbably himself talking. Refreshing to hear?

[Scavenger]

Interesting example.  Let's see if I understand correctly.  A second generation Muslim man, whose religion teaches that gays
should be imprisoned or killed goes into a gay night club and starts shooting "queer latinx people" all the while claiming
he is doing it because his religion says so.  Trump is a bigot because he says Muslims from Muslim countries where they kill
and imprison gay people as well as others who aren't Muslim or as Muslim as they are shouldn't be allowed into our country.

1) He was an American born citizen growing up in a society that hates and fears homosexuality.
2) He wasn't a practicing Muslim, according to family.
3) Islam no more teaches that gay people should be killed than Christianity does.
4) Don't put people's identities in quote marks like that. Queer = LBGT, Latinx = Latino/Latina with the x standing for people who don't fall under either -o or -a. They're legitimate.

Being a Muslim is just like being a Christian - except you have different rituals and observances. If you actually talked to Muslims, you'd see an entirely different thing to your preconceptions - they run the full gamut like everyone else, nothing about being Muslim is inherently better or worse than any other religion. You realise that Muslims are just people, just like everyone else, right? You can't use the deaths of queer people to attack Islam, using us as a prop for your Islamaphobia. I mean, fuck sake. What are you doing to protect LGBT people? Voting for Trump?

Oh wait, Mike Pence announced that he would repeal the protections LGBT people gained under Obama. Whoops! He's all about religious freedom to discriminate, too! And he wanted to remove HIV prevention funding so he could torture gay kids! So I guess that religious hate and terror is okay when ~white people~ do it!

[Snarky]

To just take one example of his racism, Trump ended his campaign with an ad that was blatantly antisemitic, stopping just short of saying "It's the Jews!" while clearly implying it:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/06/is_donald_trump_s_closing_campaign_ad_anti_semitic.html

[Jack]

But that wasn't even the most offensive thing Trump told his Jewish audience. He implied that he had little chance of earning the Jewish Republican group's support, because his fealty could not be bought with campaign donations.

“You're not going to support me, because I don't want your money,” he said. “You want to control your own politician.”

No wonder the internet loves him.

2016 will be remembered as the year 4chan put a man in the white house

[RickJ]

Here's a list of unsorted stupidity:

A couple made me laugh but really?  Going back 30 years, the Howard Stern show, etc.  In his own words “Sometimes they write positively, and sometimes they write negatively. But from a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks.”

Here's a list with only racist stuff:

1. "I don't know who David Duke is. I don't want to disavow someone who I know nothing about."
David Duke, white supremacist, who made an unsuccessful run for office 15+ years ago but has not
been seen or heard of since. Trump had disavowed support of white supremacists on the previous day
and disavowed David Duke the day  after he made the above statement.  Of course the article makes no
mention of Hillary Clinton's association with a Ku Klux Klan Exalted Cyclops

"In 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fondly eulogized Sen. Robert Byrd, a former member
and recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. Clinton called Byrd “my friend and mentor” in a video message
to commemorate his passing."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_members_in_United_States_politics#Robert_Byrd

2. "I am the least racist person that you have ever met.”

3. "I don't have a racist bone in my body."

4. "If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me,”
when
5. “We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he [Judge Cruiel] is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can't even believe.”
In an interview, Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation given that he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino lawyers' association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. “I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said.
Here is a link to the National Latino Lawyer Association an advocacy group to be sure: websitehttp://www.nltla.org/victim-resources/  judges are not supposed to even have the appearance of any conflict of interest.  Trump has a valid point that the judge's rulings appear to be unfair whether one agrees with him or not.

I stopped reading when when they started talking about his father's company in 1973.  My wife and I volunteer as fair housing tester's so I know about that kind of thing.  A group of politically connected people form a non-profit and get a government grant to conduct testing.  They send volunteers to inquire about rentals who write a narrative of their experience.  If the narratives don't match they file suit and get settlements.  Presumably a third of the settlements go to the lawyers and the rest to the non-profit (not certain).  They have to show results to continue getting the grants and authority to file suits.   It's easy for a rental agent to get tripped up by varying their sales pitch or forgetting something.  Sometimes they just sense the prospect is just not interested in renting a unit, testers not interested in actually renting.

When he admitted that he likes to grope women - grab their vaginas more precisely, it was when he didn't think there was a camera nearby, so that was propbably himself talking. Refreshing to hear?

Actually he admitted that he was attracted to beautiful women and that sometimes he kisses them without waiting.  He then said that if you are a star they let you do it and that they would let you do anything, even grab them in the putty.  When I was much younger I would have found kind of talk disgusting, in third grade I would have said "Ooooo kiss a girl ... yuck!" but that was a long time ago.   So yes, in fact I did find it refreshing that the guy talks like a normal human being.

[Scavenger]

Actually he admitted that he was attracted to beautiful women and that sometimes he kisses them without waiting.  He then said that if you are a star they let you do it and that they would let you do anything, even grab them in the putty.  When I was much younger I would have found kind of talk disgusting, in third grade I would have said "Ooooo kiss a girl ... yuck!" but that was a long time ago.   So yes, in fact I did find it refreshing that the guy talks like a normal human being.

If you kiss someone or grab someone without their consent, that's sexual assault. People will often let powerful people do whatever they want to them because they are afraid. Rich and powerful people can afford rich and powerful lawyers. They are often above consequence, because they have the power to absolutely destroy anyone below them. Why do you think women only stepped forward after Jimmy Saville's death? And even then, they were derided.

And if that's what you think a normal human being talks like, who the heck have you been talking to? Who are you?



As a bonus, here are some things Trump has said about David Duke:

• Duke ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991 as a Republican, and Trump said at the time that President George H.W. Bush was right “to come out against” Duke's campaign. Duke lost but he won a majority of the white vote — which Trump found troubling. “I hate seeing what it represents,” Trump said, referring to what he called the “anger vote.”
• In 2000, Trump considered running for the Reform Party presidential nomination but did not run because he said he did not want to be associated with Pat Buchanan, who had left the Republican Party to seek the Reform Party nomination, and David Duke, who supported Buchanan. Trump at the time called Duke “a bigot, a racist, a problem.”

And suddenly he doesn't know enough about Duke to comment? Or he's become more sympathetic to him and wanted the racist votes?

[Snarky]

A-fucking-men, Scavenger!

And let's not forget the women who have come forward to state that Trump did in fact assault them, kissing and groping them without their consent, just as he said.

"Normal human beings" do not talk like this. "Normal human beings" do not act like this. If you think this is at all acceptable, your value system is out of whack.

Rather than go over all the other stuff, I'll just take the first point:

1. "I don't know who David Duke is. I don't want to disavow someone who I know nothing about."
David Duke, white supremacist, who made an unsuccessful run for office 15+ years ago but has not
been seen or heard of since. Trump had disavowed support of white supremacists on the previous day
and disavowed David Duke the day  after he made the above statement.

Everyone of Trump's generation knows who David Duke is (and Trump in particular, whose daddy was once arrested at a Klan rally), and in fact Trump has discussed him in the past. This is also typical of how Trump dealt with controversy: he'd say or do something outrageous, then squeeze it for media attention until eventually half-heartedly walking it back ("OK. All right. I disavow, OK?"). By doing so he'd delight the racists and bigots, who understood that he couldn't openly embrace them and saw this as a wink and a nod. This is why he got the support of the KKK.

He picked a campaign manager with links to the alt-right. Both he, his son and highly placed campaign staffers regularly picked up memes and retweeted stuff from explicitly racist accounts. That doesn't happen innocently, it happens because you frequent those circles and corners of the internet.

[Gurok]

2016 will be remembered as the year 4chan put a man in the white house

Gotta quote this. If anyone here follows /pol/ at all, they'll know that this is all the doing of an elder Egyptian chaos god named Kek who willed it into existence.

Snarky, don't do this. It's not "It's the Jews". There are plenty of people featured in that ad campaign who aren't Jewish, Slate just framed it as though there weren't. If someone in a position of power is corrupt, and they happen to be Jewish, that shouldn't exclude them from criticism. If someone says it's because they're Jewish, then we can talk. Trump's daughter married a Jewish real estate developer. The prime minister of Israel just posted a video praising Donald Trump's support of Israel. I think if an anti-Semitic person were to vote for Trump, he'd be very conflicted.

[LimpingFish]

Part of me is angry, part of me is laughing like a loon.

Trump won because a significant part of the American populace (Older/White/Male/Straight/Conservative) are tired of being labeled the "WRONG" America, by, let's face it, the vocal minority (Young/Non-White/Female/LGBT/Liberal). They yearn for a return to (mythical) America where the white man was in charge, women knew their place, gender was a binary state, and being the most powerful country in the world meant having the most bombs.

The reality is, by voting Trump to power, all they've done is highlight that in 2016 America racism against black people is just as widespread as it was in the 1960s, the LGBT community is something to fear and demonize, world peace is achieved through the destruction of your enemies, and that the American political system is inherently broken.

To the Americans who believe that Donald Trump isn't the racist, misogynist, moronic, hateful sack of crap that he actually is, well...I guess he's the man for you. A man who never had to go without, a (terrible) businessman who made his money by exploiting your tax system and your blue-collar workforce, a man who cares about what's best for your country about as much as he cares for a realistic hair piece.

A man who, in his own words, hates Mexicans and Muslims, bases his opinion of women on how fuckable they are, and wondered (out loud!) why America, in matters of global unrest, just didn't nuke the troublemakers. This man now speaks for you, America.

Have fun.

To everyone else, who thinks this is the end of days, Trump will be a Republican president in name only. Most of his own party are wary of what he will try to do once in office, and the chance of any of his more dangerous (see: moronic) suggested policies making it past congress are highly unlikely. Republicans may be close-minded racists, but they're not about to let their country go down the toilet on the say-so of a sentient croissant who's best pals with the Ruskies.

[Ryan Timothy B]

And if that's what you think a normal human being talks like, who the heck have you been talking to? Who are you?

Clearly a typical American likely born into adhering to racist and sexist values instilled to him by family/town/state, and worse: a Trump supporter. There's no question why Trump got elected with responses like that. "I used to think women had cooties, but now I am a grown man who fondles them without their consent - like ALL normal human beings do"

[selmiak]

So how long until the first scandal happens? 1 week? 6 days?
When will Hillary fight back and make him the JFK of our time and then rush in to take over?

[Baron]

Meh.  Sixteen years ago I thought George Dubya would blow up the world.  One could make the case that he did a pretty good number on Iraq/Syria by unleashing a power vacuum, but factors before (radical Islam...) and after his tenure (Arab Spring...) have had arguably more impact.  The fact is the American system is pretty good at neutering itself.  While Trump's words and example set an embarrassingly low-brow tone, I doubt he will mess things up irreparably.  In the fullness of time, the worst of his exploits will galvanize the opposition, just as the Democrats did in the landslide of 2008 due to Republican ineptitude (and indeed, as someone holding the opposite political views that I do would think, just as the Republicans have now done due to Democrat ineptitude in 2016).

The really sad thing here is the swathes of society who genuinely should have been outraged by what Trump said on the campaign trail not turning out to vote.  About 51% of the US population is female, which alone should have lost Trump the election.  But it is an indisputable fact that many of those women just didn't seem bothered enough to vote against him.  Indeed, over 50% of white women supposedly voted for him (source).  Although not as large a segment of the population, the same could be said for target minorities (same article).  I don't want to be the guy that blames the victim, but if someone treats you worse than dirt and then you vote for him, then you're kinda the author of your own misfortune.