General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 384

She spoke at my college 10 years ago. There was a ton of protests leading up to her appearance. After 10 minutes, she stopped her speech and invited students to come up to the mic for Q&A. She knew she was facing a majority of liberal students. She didn't care. She's in her own world where she believes she's always in the right.

 

Finally.

 

She was supposed to visit my university about ten years ago as well, however protests on campus and some death threats led to the event being cancelled.

 

I'm done trying to rationalize what Coulter is, whether she's genuine or simply a shameless and hard-skinned capitalist, etc.

That's actually very cool of her, though, imo. Political figures are famous for disallowing or censoring questions in those type of arenas, and I'm sure she got a great deal of heat, and more importantly, it was probably very politically engaging for the students.

 

I might be missing something with Trump's contribution scandals, but this quote is why I think Trump's contributions won't affect his campaign no matter how much coverage it gets:
During a Republican debate last summer, Mr. Trump responded about his ability to curry favor with public officials when he was confronted with one of his own statements: “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”

“You’d better believe it,” Mr. Trump responded. He added: “When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.”

He's been touting he was involved in the "pay to play" system all along. In fact, he's claiming he paid Hillary for exactly this type of thing. Its obviously not right, and he bought his way out of a criminal investigation, but this getting coverage could just come back to bite Hillary. She takes an enormous amount of contributions from people like Trump, and even Trump himself.

 

I can't handle the mental gymnastics people go through to attack this woman and make everything somehow reflect bad on her. It's gross to watch.

 

Well... the speech made national headlines and at some point, someone hijacked the sound system in the theater and played "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat B****" from South Park to drown her out. Thus, she became a martyr by being censored. This I didn't agree with and just made a mess of the whole ordeal.

 

And the filibuster remains unbeatable.

 

I'm probably the only person here that cares about LV screens in polls, but this was fantastic on the subject:

About Likely Voter Samples

 

The point I'm making is this: first, I don't care about the Clinton foundation. Second, if we are going to use a comparison, why aren't you and others in this thread posting things about Clinton's racism, along with Trump's? Why is no one speaking of the for-profit colleges the Clintons are involved in, which are under investigation. There is an ideology at work in the coverage and it underwrites the silences in our discourse, whilst seeking out that which is sure to get eyes on their outlets. You participate in this process. For every stupid fucking tweet that gets posted here, which is meant to point out Trump's racism and idiocy, you are aiding and abetting a narrative that is being driven by the media. In exchange for this superfluous commentary, you get coverage of Clinton scandals, such as they are, that have no substance and assist in not actually dealing with the fundmental issues at play in this election.

 

Holy shit, Jeff Ross was vicious against her, although it was a bit misogynistic.

I also forget that Jeff Ross is far-left.

 

With his supporters, I agree. With the undecideds, were they watching the republican primary debates?

 

Yeah, fair. I guess I reason that if someone is rational enough to be undecided they're not trying to decide whether to vote for Trump. I'm almost surely giving people too much credit there though.

 

fucking love this song and it just feels so relevant

 

PMQs: Theresa May's progressive rhetoric has already disappeared

 

Speaking of cable news bias

Indians Staged One of the Largest Strikes in History, But No One on U.S. Cable News Covered It

 

Can I please punch Trump? Please?

 

So are you saying that the negative attention on the Clinton foundation is actually not meant to be anti Clinton because it's not a substantive narrative?

We've discussed her problematic views. Just see a few posts back I brought it up. You're fully aware of this. More attention is justifiably given to Trump's brand of racism. You yourself have pointed out that he actively empowered the alt right which won't go away even if he loses and that liberals and Dems have done nothing to actively counter this (though voting and protesting against trump counts for something). But do I really need to point out that Democrat liberals are equally as bad because they silently tolerate racist policy? Sorry, my narrative is anti Trump.

If I were using similar logic I would argue that any time you harp against Hillary you kind of want Trump to win. That's not true. So don't apply the same logic to the anti Trump crowd. We want Trump to lose.

 

And you absolutely should not support a candidate you don't agree with, I can't change that and I'm not a fascist. You're not wrong about any of the things in Hillary's past, and no Hillary voter should even try to convince you otherwise.

My point is this: if you're going to compare past actions of Hillary and Trump then it must be comparable. Hillary enabled violent coups, that is a fact. But Trump was never in a position to do that. It's apples and oranges to even bring it up.

 

This election is pure spectacle. The media has established narratives, rooted in truth, but unattached to the actual social grounding from which those truths have arisen and move within broader society. As such, we have someone for whom corruption is a means of conducting business and an outright racist. This is what I meant when I referred to the exchange. Trump clearly is a racist and so his campaign is dealt with in the context of that, along with the alt-right and narratives of working-class racism (even though the majority of his constituents are upper middle class). In exchange for that narrative, we have the corruption narratives when it comes to Clinton. That, however, does not imply a bias for any particular candidate, though the ruling class and their ideological outlets seem to despise Trump. What the coverage represents is a slavish media, intent upon gaining ratings or readership, but also have the function of trying to constitute some sort of consensus on which to further the status quo.

As for your narrative, it is irrelevant. As in, it does not matter because it has been entirely subsumed within the ideological complex of American media. I don't particularly care either way, but if you're looking for something substantive in terms of what is going on in this election, its cultural touchstones, its history, the sort of projects each candidates aim for, then the American media is not the place to look. You can have some sort of nostalgia for a past where it mattered, but it never existed and never will exist, precisely because the determinative parameters of discourse lie outside of our control; hence, the silences within mainstream media, as well as their duplication in discourse that we have here. You can be anti-Trump. I'm anti-Trump as well, but you're missing the actual argument in my comparison, namely that the silences on both ends of the spectrum accumulate and congeal to give us the worst of all possible worlds.