TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[Nordic]

I think the real reason people are so freaked out about Trump is not that his policies (whatever they are other than "we're gonna build a wall and kill people") are so awful, but that he's EMBARRASSING.

Obama is by far the more effective Repub, warmonger, and fascist, but by God he looks good, he's well educated, his family seems first-class, he lets us feel peogressive because of the color of his skin and we don't mind showing him off to people.

I'm serious.

[82_28]

I started this thread because of his appalling racism. Whether or not he would come this far was anyone's guess back then. I didn't think it could happen, honestly. I was just scared at the time for migrants and continue to remain so. I thought it is setting a helluva precedent for people to let their subliminal racism come forth and be comfortable with it. The amount of lives he would destroy by dint of his intractable ego is unacceptable. Plus he is physically ugly. So ugly that he should for all time be the portrait of evil.

But, evil is cool to so many. In a country/society that has successfully normalized war. Normalized acceptance of torture. On demand photos of death (remember if you wanted to see people die in horrible ways you had to hunt down a copy of Phases of Death/Faces of Death -- I can never remember because I didn't want to see it just heard it talked about). Trump is a catalyst to this embryonic universally accepted hatred and morbidness. He will never ever answer a question why he is the sewer of hate because he doesn't have to.

Something in all fields of thought and behavior is seriously wrong for a great many. It is seeping into normal people's lives whether they like it or not. If Trump even wins the presidency fair and square I expect huge protests. If someone else wins, I expect to see even more right wing violence, inexplicable mass murders, etc.

We're in a pickle.

[backtoiam]

Nordic said:

Obama has been trying to start war with Russia since 2014. Where is the freak - out over that?

There is none, because he's Obama. He's a democrat. He's somehow "cool". And if Wolf Blitzer isn't screaming about how dangerous he is, well then, he must be sorta ok.

This country is LITERALLY in-fucking-sane.

Thank you sir. I consider that a fairly sane analysis...

[brekin]

I think the real reason people are so freaked out about Trump is not that his policies (whatever they are other than "we're gonna build a wall and kill people") are so awful, but that he's EMBARRASSING.
Obama is by far the more effective Repub, warmonger, and fascist, but by God he looks good, he's well educated, his family seems first-class, he lets us feel peogressive because of the color of his skin and we don't mind showing him off to people.
I'm serious.

Yes, Trump is basically what a lot of politicians I imagine sound like when their microphones are left on or what they sound like when they are in the Country Club sauna. That being said, there is a lot to say for keeping up appearances. The whole "if gold should rust what than should iron do?". If we have such a brazen, ugly spewing demagogue tyrant for commander in chief than that will breed millions more, or at least embolden the existing petty tyrants. So yeah, I guess my vote is for Dr. Jekyl and not Mr. Hyde even if the two are ultimately the same in fact, if not form.

And Trumps success I think stems more from the the reality tv mythos which now seems like nothing but a long pre-campaign. Before that he seemed to be a pretty marginal figure in comparison to other business icons. I imagine those who elect him would all be too eager to have his presidency televised as a mutation of his reality show. I really don't want to see that or even know such a thing will come into existence.

[82_28]

I think the real reason people are so freaked out about Trump is not that his policies (whatever they are other than "we're gonna build a wall and kill people") are so awful, but that he's EMBARRASSING.

Obama is by far the more effective Repub, warmonger, and fascist, but by God he looks good, he's well educated, his family seems first-class, he lets us feel peogressive because of the color of his skin and we don't mind showing him off to people.

I'm serious.

He controls the tone because he is a despot. He is making the term despot seem tame and no longer of value for the yearning souls to find something of existential value. I think he is doing this because he doesn't want to lead but wants to fuck shit up because he can. I will never understand this proclivity.

Trump has handlers. He is not working alone. I do think that the existence of the Internet will defeat him at least in some way. He is a figurehead. Perhaps his ugliness is to his advantage and that is why Cruz (perhaps uglier) and Rubio (cute-ish) exist. Bear in mind I come from a long line of never trusting a republican no matter what. He is essentially recreating the republican party for some larger purpose and I believe that to be (off the cuff) to be population control. There is nothing sane about any of this. But there has to be something that is captaining this. There has to be.

Same with I thought of "micro-dicked" hitler from a young age. He was only a drama queen. Nothing more and nothing less. A fucking actor working in service for an overarching evil that has existed for forever -- for some reason. Hitler was only the one they chose with telegraphs and snail mail being the way it was. What would hitler have tweeted back then? Exactly.

That is the point. There are I think a cadre of controllers (not in a paranoid way) that manipulate this shit and have some sort of programming to follow a basically ancient "script" that has revulsion for anyone who are not they. I am not going to whip out the alien this that or the other, but there are clearly forces who think way different than us.

Think of it. We got a motherfucking country that can attack anywhere, any time on Earth with no concern for the souls that inhabit it.

It is a sad state of affairs and is no longer entertaining.

[Nordic]

But all that people fear that Trump would bring to this country?

It's already here.

People just haven't figured it out yet. Because they've been lied to and don't even know they've been lied to.

I was on FB this morning on a friend's thread about Trump and mentioned the many obvious crimes of Obama and people thought I was insane. They were saying "but Obama hasn't done any of what you say". These are professional Westside LA people with good educations who THINK they are informed!

Trump is the clownish face of the US as it already exists.

People just do NOT want to accept that.

It's like the well-meaning NPR listener driving his Prius. Looking in the rear view mirror and seeing Dick Cheney snarling back at him.

[IanEye]

eye meant to start this thread on President's Day, but the wæk got away from me.

*****

*****

.

*

*

2005

Ev'rybody - walking 'round,
Ev'rybody - trying to step on their creator
don't matter where you are

*

*

2010

ev'rybody
ev'rybody - gon’ need
some kind of ventilator - some kind of ventilator

*

i started this thread back in February because i thought it might be interesting to parallel the '72 election with the '12 election.

Life is rarely that neat and tidy though.

.

.

[seemslikeadream]

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Donald Trump: 'I'm not going to pay for that fucking wall'

[kool maudit]

In the long run, Trump is an avatar of what Oswald Spengler called "the age of Caesars", and what has been called "big man politics" in sub-Saharan Africa. What happens is that this or that resentful character from the fringe of the oligarchical sphere sees an opening in the form of a disconnect between the wishes of the political and voting classes and steps in. It winds up being bad for democracy.

On the other hand: as a non-American, I tend to watch US elections through a foreign policy lens and through this lens I see Trump as less bad than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio, particularly in light of his lack of commitment to a thoroughly insane set of policies concerning Russia and the Middle East. Both Clinton and Rubio are entirely on board with the grotesque "moderate rebels" fiction that has levelled Iraq, Libva and Syria and remains the single most... psychopathic aspect of our era.

What people do is more important than what they say, even in an age of soundbites. While never lambasted as "the Islamophobic candidate", Clinton's policies as Secretary of State have killed thousands of Muslims, have starved them and maimed them and left them sweltering in the basements of ruined cities.

The US political mainstream, while polite and ostensibly non-discriminatory on the home front, is ringed by a halo of blood.

[Harvey]

Western global capitalism only works because the real costs are deferred, (environment, ecology, ill health, social cost etc., that's the only way in which economy can be made to work even on paper)

In the same fashion, western democracy is democracy deferred elsewhere. That is the single biggest fallacy in the model. It doesn't work without non-democracy at the edges and on the outside, for several reasons. Which is why our models of democracy can only lead to tyranny. Democracy as practised is a sum which does not add up.

Edited for emphasis.

[seemslikeadream]

Former CIA Head Explains Why Armed Forces Can't Legally Obey Trump
"If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act."
02/27/2016 02:15 pm ET | Updated 7 hours ago

Sam Levine
Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post

Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA and CIA, thinks some of presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign promises are so unlawful that the U.S. Armed Forces could not follow them as orders.

These include Trump's claim that people deserve to be waterboarded even if it doesn't work and that he would target the families of terrorists. The internationally recognized Geneva Conventions bars such action.

"If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act," Hayden said Friday during an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." "You are required not to follow an unlawful order that would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict."

Hayden added that he would be "incredibly concerned" if Trump followed through with his campaign promises as president.

[Luther Blissett]

Good companion piece to the Michael Hayden blurbs above, and especially after the violence at a recent klan rally:

Trump Won't Condemn KKK, Says He 'Knows Nothing About White Supremacists'

On the Sunday morning talk shows, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump refused to condemn endorsements from a prominent white supremacist and former KKK leader, and said he retweeted a Mussolini quote because "it's a very good quote."

The extended conversation about white supremacists came on CNN's State of the Union, where Jake Tapper asked if Trump would distance himself from an endorsement by David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke has told his radio audience that voting against Trump would be "treason to your heritage."

Trump refused to condemn that endorsement or say he didn't want the support of white supremacists — four times.

"I don't know anything about David Duke. I don't know what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacist. I don't know. I don't know, did he endorse me, or what's going on?" he said. That prompted a back-and-forth that went, in part:

Trump: I don't know what group you're talking about. You wouldn't want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. ... If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow them if I thought there was something wrong.
Tapper: The Ku Klux Klan?
Trump: You may have groups in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I'll let you know.
Tapper: I'm just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here.
Trump: Honestly, I don't know David Duke.

As several people swiftly pointed out on Twitter, Trump hasn't always claimed ignorance of David Duke.

In 2000, when he ended his presidential campaign, Trump cited Duke's participation in the Reform Party as one reason he no longer wanted the party's nomination.

"The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. [Pat][ Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. [Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep," he wrote in his statement.

Also on the Sunday show circuit, on NBC's Meet the Press, Trump declined to distance himself from a Benito Mussolini quote he had retweeted.

Gawker has since posted to announce that the account that first tweeted the quote — unsubtly named "@ilduce2016" — was a bot they designed with the express purpose of tricking Trump into retweeting a line from the fascist Italian dictator.

And the ploy succeeded.

When Chuck Todd pointed out that "it is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep" is, indeed, a famous Mussolini quote, and asked if Trump knew that, Trump said:

"It's OK to know it was Mussolini. Look, Mussolini was Mussolini. ... It's a very good quote. It's a very interesting quote."


When Todd asked if Trump wanted to be associated with a fascist, Trump said, "No, I want to be associated with interesting quotes."

He then pointed out he has millions of followers on social media, and that they appreciate his interesting posts.

"Hey, it got your attention, didn't it?" Trump said.

[JackRiddler]

Cute, the Twitter maneuver "ilduce2016."

They should also phonebank or canvass or do something for Sanders, damn it.

[82_28]

How We Fooled Donald Trump Into Retweeting Benito Mussolini

http://gawker.com/how-we-fooled-donald- ... 1761795039

[JackRiddler]

Sad truth is that the only person I see regularly on the TV whose gestures and character armor combine calculation, self-aggrandizing fakery and involuntary self-revelation (of a shallow abyss where a soul should be) as much as Mussolini-Trump's is named Hillary Clinton. Notwithstanding that socially and politically I like and get along with members of "her" people in real life much better than with those of "his" WWE arena mob, how does either of them get away with so much of this with so many people?! (Okay, it's easier to understand with Trump's mouth-breathers.) Why does it work so especially well with people of my own age and older? What immunized many of the young against this, even though they've grown up in this wraparound media cage? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I'm going to turn into a bitter old Hofstadter with half the wit.