Trump's Card

[anton pulisov]

For a few minutes, at least.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It's very clear that their strategy is to essentially stay out of jail by ending democracy as we know it. This is a very dangerous point to reach. This is roughly the position that Xi found himself in, and Erdogan probably knew that if he lost power, he'd die in jail. Even if Trump loses in 2020, a good third of the US voting population is going to be basically full blown fascist, and seriously fucking angry. This is very grim. I don't think that there's any real sense in the US, that Trump's strategy, is to go over the heads of the organs of state, and end everything, by making the population insane.

[ursus arctos]

Stop voicing my deepest fears (though they do sound marginally less terrifying in an Irish accent).

But yeah, that is a very genuine concern.

[ursus arctos]

I’m focused more on what happens if a Democratic House actually starts to exercise some oversight starting in 2019.

We’ve already had heavily armed wackos show up at pizza parlors, dams, and abandoned camp sites in response to massively outlandish conspiracy theories. If they believe that their guy is actually facing a real risk of going down . . .

[San Bernardhinault]

I think there are two different classes of fascists in these posts. There are the nutters, the fruitcakes, the ones who believe the 4Chan conspiracies, who will try and stop invasions of Texas. They're dangerous in their own right to the minorities who interact with them, but can be written off basically as a tiny minority. That they number a few thousand is basically a drop in the ocean of the US.

More worryingly are the ones who've learned to believe that the media is against them, that anything they are told should be ignored, that there needs to be no oversight of government, and that government should do what it wants. These people are going to believe that a Democratic Congress and President has cheated and lied its way to power and are still lying. That there is no legitimacy of a non-Trumpist government in the US. I hope that they number at 10% of the population and can be sidelined, but fear that Berba's 30% might be more accurate. Because something like 30% of the US population is now fully on board with the Trumpist agenda, at least to the point that they don't wish to resist and they don't wish to hear any alternative.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I thought they distrusted government on principle. That's surely opposite of letting it do what it wants.

[NHH]

Indeed - in the same way as the Prussian Junker ideology was a basis for nazism, the US has been slowly developing the proto-fascist ideology - in a bi-partisan manner - for decades which has primed a large swathe of the population. It's this that the idiot centrist Dems fail to grasp, seeing Trump as an aberration, rather than a development.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think there are two different classes of fascists in these posts. There are the nutters, the fruitcakes, the ones who believe the 4Chan conspiracies, who will try and stop invasions of Texas. They're dangerous in their own right to the minorities who interact with them, but can be written off basically as a tiny minority. That they number a few thousand is basically a drop in the ocean of the US.

More worryingly are the ones who've learned to believe that the media is against them, that anything they are told should be ignored, that there needs to be no oversight of government, and that government should do what it wants. These people are going to believe that a Democratic Congress and President has cheated and lied its way to power and are still lying. That there is no legitimacy of a non-Trumpist government in the US. I hope that they number at 10% of the population and can be sidelined, but fear that Berba's 30% might be more accurate. Because something like 30% of the US population is now fully on board with the Trumpist agenda, at least to the point that they don't wish to resist and they don't wish to hear any alternative.

I think "no oversight of the Leader/Fuehrer" would be more accurate, whereas government = Congress/Reichstag and should be burned down, metaphorically at least. Trump's goal is to make The Executive a charismatic free pass disconnected from "the [perceived] government" despite wielding huge powers.

But speculating on a Trump loss in the midterms or 2020 is the same hubris that burned us in 2016. I would rather assume he's there until 2024 so that any departure before then is a pleasant surprise rather than my (to be cruelly dashed) expectation. OTOH we are all fucked if he lasts to 2024.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

But they think it's government that is going to do what they want. Frankie Boyle was making the point that Trump arrived at his platform by going out and making a lot of speeches, and they noted what "the base" liked, and what they didn't like, and made their platform out of that, like stand up comedians road testing a new tour. That's why Trump ran on a campaign of pure undiluted lunacy. He went out and basically asked these people what they wanted their president to be. He's still doing this. Everytime he advances something really stupid and awful, and sounds uncertain, and says "a lot of people are saying", these are all trial balloons that he can walk away from, but if any of them gain traction with his crazies, then he runs with that.

The worry here is that you had to have severe doubts about anyone who was a republican in the 21st century anyway, but the terrifying thing is that most republicans are now perfectly fine with trump. 70% of republicans believe he did well in his meeting with Putin, when literally everyone else in the world could see that he is a stooge. Two thirds of republican supporters don't believe that Russia interfered with the 2016 election, even though virtually all of the leadership of the republican party do. That's about 30% of the population who only believe the leader on this topic, which is unfortunate.

Still I suppose it's easier to stomach than the realization that the Russians view their route back to world importance is by harnessing the incredible greed of the members of the republican party, and the incredible stupidity of their base.

[Satchmo Distel]

TAB, that is brilliant; genius by Boyle, I must say. The Nazis were not dissimilar to this; Hitler road-tested the Holocaust before he did it (via Kristallnacht).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The first bit is boyle. That last episode of his series, with Lucy Prebble covers it. (I think it's that episode) It's something that I'd read elsewhere before though. It's part of any indepth analysis of his style. It's essentially the thing that makes him so tiring. The thing you don't fight against is the thing he gets to define as reality. I'm beginning to suspect that this is the sort of thing that democracy is ill suited to dealing with.

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1029329583672307712

[ursus arctos]

He's completely obsessed with her

[Tubby Isaacs]

Dare I hope that "suburban" women might be encouraged to turn out by the president calling a woman "a dog"?

[ursus arctos]

You are so cute

[WOM]

Normally, yes. Omarosa is a known quantity and is....special.

[Tubby Isaacs]

You are so cute

I don't know, feels like it crosses a certain type of line in a certain type of way.

The "suburban" problem is genuine, isn't it?

[ad hoc]

Does "dog" carry the same highly sexist connotation in the US?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

He's completely obsessed with her

His phonecall to her was hilarious. What's going on there I wonder? Little outside his mind I suspect, because otherwise we'd have heard about it by now.

[ursus arctos]

I would say that "dog" is worse in the UK than it is here. It's in unfortunately wide use among the misogynist multitudes.

She was very important to the success of his television show and made a significant amount of money to him. She's also completely without scruples, so they have a lot in common.

Tubbs, the suburban problem is very real, but this won't move the needle at all for the reasons WOM alludes to.

It's also worth noting that "dog" is one of his favourite insults, and that he uses it for both men and women.

[WOM]

In the 1990s, Omarosa worked in the office of Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. She later stated the job had been "a very difficult environment, because they don't believe in training. They just kind of throw you in the fire." Gore's former office administrator, Mary Margaret Overbey, has said Omarosa "was the worst hire we ever made". She was later transferred to the Commerce Department via the White House personnel office. Cheryl Shavers, who then served as the department's under secretary for technology administration, said that at the time, Omarosa was "unqualified and disruptive," adding, "I had her removed."

Wiki

[Tubby Isaacs]

Tubbs, the suburban problem is very real, but this won't move the needle at all for the reasons WOM alludes to.

It's impossible to keep up with the shit, but what specific stuff would you pick out as having moved the needle this far, with suburban women? Not that I'm a communications expert, but this is a very snappy bit of scumbaggery, not the sort of "He said, they said" stuff.

[ursus arctos]

In no particular order

Health Care, Corruption, Income Inequality (particularly it being exacerbated by tax cuts), and Family Separation (and the other extremely nasty and gratuitous bits of the war on immigrants).

The complete lack of civility also bothers many of them.

And finally, the fact that they no longer have HRC to run against, who was widely hated among parts of that demographic as much as she was idolised by other parts of it.

What one hears a lot from suburban, female Trump voters is that they "knew he was like this", but had hoped/expected that he would be tamed by the office. Many of them began to regret their choice before his inaugural address was over.

As to "dog", he said that Sally Yates "choked like a dog" without anyone really giving it much thought, and Yates is close to the polar opposite of Manigault Newman.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is pretty egregiously in the civility bracket.

[ursus arctos]

Stop trying to make this happen, Tubbs, you are making yourself look bad.

This is one of literally thousands of things in the civility bracket and not even in the top quartile of the most egregious.