General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 246

The best fuck you to Trump.

Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice.

 

as if his entire campaign isn't viciously attacking people

 

"Some brief and quick points on issues I've been mulling lately, especially in response to the panic that has arisen with regard to a possible Trump presidency (which I still don't think is possible, but anything could happen between here and now):

I'd say that we are screwed, mightily, regardless of who wins, and the hard work lies ahead of us. I think those who criticise critics of HRC for possibly enabling a Trump victory are over-invested in presidential politics and elections to the extent they don't see how work actually needs to happen in other arenas and levels.

Americans in particular seem over-invested in presidential politics in part because it allows them to think they've done *everything* possible to make the world right again. And then they completely retreat into their own worlds, only to reemerge again after four years, foaming at the mouth about how deeply important THIS election is, etc.

But the work of political change happens at the local level, even in issues like the gentrification of neighbourhoods -- if people were more political about such matters, and saw how connected all of that is to the larger picture, they might realise the Presidency is a blip in comparison. It's not enough to simply worry about who your President is -- worry about what's going on in your neighbourhood, and the fact that you now have a Whole Foods on your corner but that your neighbourhood STILL remains a food desert (Hyde Park, I'm looking right at you).

Whenever we talk about these sorts of connections, we're told that we are too cynical or too complex or too something else -- utopian, leftist, whatever. I'm not sure what to do about moving the general discourse so that we have more complex conversations about all this *all* the time, not just around presidential elections. To be frank, I'm less optimistic than most, at least about the U.S, because I think there's a deep over-investment in symbolic acts. I also think that most people aren't really looking for change: they mostly just get upset when change happens and they're left outside the status quo. This was my sense during the Occupy demonstrations: every time I went to demonstrations, there were all these signs and posters about how people had been screwed over and were not able to keep their homes or their jobs.

Did that mean that a lot/some of them eventually reached a point where they realised, for instance, that a system that only rewards home ownership and doesn't care about housing rights for all is what's broken? Sure. And I'm cautiously optimistic that we can get to a state where we all realise it's the system that's awful, not the fact that it doesn't benefit us.

But then elections come around again, and the blinkers come on, and we are now mired in a lot of nonsense about how Trump is the coming of Satan and all the rest, and we decide it's more important that we remain veddy, veddy quiet about how truly awful Clinton has been, and how terrible a record she actually has -- as opposed to a billionaire who's never occupied a political office in his life.

I don't know what the solution might be. But I will say this to those of you who think Hillary Clinton can be pushed leftwards just because you elect her, despite her proven record of enabling only the wealthiest, of being a hawk, and so much more -- why do you see yourself as so utterly powerless against a Trump presidency?"




On the Current Paranoia about Trump vs. Clinton | Yasmin Nair

 

game set and match.

I'd really like to think there'd be no recovery from Trump after this but given everything else he's gotten away with it'll probably give him a bump in the polls

 

yeah almost everything he says seems like the breaking point, the John McCain comments should have destroyed him since his fanbase is into that support the troops platitude

 

I'm mostly just amazed - and I probably shouldn't be at this point - that he wasn't better coached on how to respond or lacked the restraint to simply pay respect to the Kahns and take this one on the chin.

 

Republicans are into strength, not grace.

 

Cornell West asking Maher to pick between Trump and David Duke and him saying he'd write in Stein was just....surreal

 

Well, he had to say something. The conservative writer, Reihan Salam, argued Trump should have acknowledged their sacrifice, and then made the point that it was a war decided upon by the elites, of which Hillary was a part, that had their son and the sons/daughters of others sent into a conflict that cost them their lives.

 

Take a look at these and tell me which candidate is "bought" and has more obligation to do favors for?

Top Donors data for Donald Trump, 2016 Cycle | OpenSecrets

Top Donors data for Hillary Clinton, 2016 Cycle | OpenSecrets

The argument isn't shit when there are facts that support it. Trump is definitely in this for personal gains, the fact he used his campaign to showcase his resorts and inject campaign money into his resorts, legally, by holding campaign events at them shows his intentions.

 

Trump says these things because it appeals to his electorate. If he didn't say something islamophobic it would've been weird and probably hurt him.

 

You do realize that Trump's greatest financial support is himself, right?

 

yes, which just adds to the idea that he's not being bought.

 

ISIS Joins Donald Trump in Dishonoring Humayun Khan’s Sacrifice

 

And the money invested in Trump himself that he refuses to divulge ... Where's those numbers?

 

Unreal.

 

From what people have managed to gather so far:

Donald Trump's Campaign Has Spent Over $6 Million at Trump Companies - Fortune

 

The situation of Trump and Khazir Khan reminds me of this:

"But white supremacy wants, unendingly, its mastery to be overt. To be rehabilitated under neoliberalism, racial sadisms have to be deployed with a kind of abusive suppleness. Subtler microaggressions are inadequate, whatever the power structure they maintain: they must be obvious and swaggering, conspicuous consumption of the public and psychological wages of white spite; and they must also, just, be plausibly deniable as such, enough to redouble the cruelty with racial gaslighting, huffing that to read race into racist sadism is to play the legendary race card, to be obsessed with race."

On Social Sadism | Salvage

 

Any guesses as to where this 50M came from?

Get Our Jobs Back Independent Expenditures | OpenSecrets

 

This kind of thing is pretty interesting to me. Does anyone have anymore good resources explaining alternative methods of voting?