Congratulations, Stupid.

[MacCruiskeen]

(a response to this post in the "I Hate Liberals Thread," or whatever it's called)

oh ffs, jack

To clarify: My annoyance is as much with that incessant "I'm not going to talk to you awful, stupid people over there" carry-on as it is with the SNL-funny (fnar, fnar) renaming of the thread it links to. Please stop doing that, Jack. It's not worthy of you.

[JackRiddler]

To clarify: My annoyance is as much with that incessant "I'm not going to talk to you awful, stupid people over there" carry-on as it is with the SNL-funny (fnar, fnar) renaming of the thread it links to.

I get it. I never have problems with you. You are enabling some long-running bullshit, however. It's an American specialty to slag on a category called "liberals" that goes undefined, and is a field of projection that might tightly mean neoliberal technocrats and their media allies, as you roughly mean it, or at another extreme might mean everyone who isn't a rightist anger case. I see a lot of that over on your thread. I've seen a lot of it since the eighties. Long before "political correctness" became a right-wing attack word, liberal was it. George Bush (the real one) on Dukakis, rough quote: "He's a - I won't even say the L-word!" The current liberal culture of mockery very much arose in reaction to the incessant bombing of everyone to the left of the Bush son as "liberals." I remember holding some sign that said investigate 9/11 near the WTC site a million years ago and the heckling from insulted passersby was not that I was a "conspiracy theorist" (specialty term) but... a liberal! I remember one guy screaming about how I was for Clinton. The Clinton of that time. Cos he just knew. Etc. etc. I'm highly allergic to this rhetoric. I get what it means in relatively reasonable company, its specific history, what a Liberal party is in Australia etc. Of course I do.

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[slomo]

Jack, let me ask you a hypothetical question: had a Democrat (Clinton or Sanders or whoever) won the election because of an EC technicality, would you still agree that the EC should be abolished? Or would you exhort the Trump supporters to "accept the outcome of our political process"? Because to me it seems like people use whatever convenient excuse exists to argue for getting their way.

I'd be relieved, to an extent. An illegitimate Clinton (but preferably not both houses Republican, because that's exactly what she wanted) would have been a pretty good scenario. But I certainly wouldn't be exhorting anything of the sort. I've always thought the EC should be abolished, of course, and also that it's not enough, it's a partial solution to a problem that should not exist. If I got my fantasy wish list, it would be the presidency and the Senate that are abolished, to the favor of pretty much the German parliamentary arrangement with proportional representation, which makes eminent sense for a big country of 80 million (or 330 million), remarkably stable, people vote for the representation they want and get it, coalitions for 69 years out of 70 or something, remarkably informed political culture no matter how right or left. (Relatively speaking!) Legislature and executive in one, and yet you don't get an extreme power monopoly without even a majority of people actually backing it, like you now have here (again).

However, your scenario is basically science fiction under present circumstances, because so many low-vote states are one-party monopolies of the Republicans. Some mineowners and big ranchers in Wyoming get two senators, it's hilarious. The EC (not that it works as originally intended) swings to the Republicans. 55 votes and 2 senators for CA, 94 votes and 44 senators for the 22 states whose population equals California. Without a doubt greater diversity in all categories in California by far, if that's an argument: huge agriculture and city-suburb, full spread of social class and ethnicity/culture. The EC is specifically designed to reduce the influence of cities.

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Fair enough, I understand which way the EC skews things in practice. But I wanted to hear your perspective. At least you are honest that the problems with the EC would be less of a priority for you under a Clinton win (science fiction notwithstanding). I mean, I prioritize things in a similarly self-serving way, it's a human trait, but I respect it when people are honest with themselves about it.

[slomo]

Yup, my experience also. The divisions need to stop.

My goodness slomo, we're agreeing with each other, what is happening with this world?

We need a high five smilie.

Honestly, I bet if we read each other carefully, even the stuff posted last year, we would find that we agree more than we disagree. I think we disagree mostly on semantic issues, and some of the logical consequences that follow from those disagreements, but I think we agree completely on substantive human issues.

[bks]

(a response to this post in the "I Hate Liberals Thread," or whatever it's called)

Jonathan Pie has his caricature of "the left." He's funny and he has his fun with it. At the climactic point in his post election rant, what is the lesson? "Insulting people doesn't work any more!" Ah. And right after that? "Because Trump won the White House."

Excuse me?



That's some mental gymnastics by Pie!

Insulting seems to work fabulously well. I guess what Pie does not realize he is saying is that some people are privileged to insult, and still be treated like delicate flowers lest they be insulted in return. Long as they are this fictional image of Joe Bluecollar who wouldn't have voted for Trump except for Samantha Bee, whom he's never heard of, being so mean to him. (Or just plain racist fucks angry because they think the Liberal Stasi will disappear them if they call people niggers.)

.

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Anyway, as with most of the posts on that thread, it is predicated on uncritical acceptance of a lie. Trump didn't win the White House. He lost the vote by what's currently a margin of 400,000. Some slaveholders in 1787 who devised a system that would allow them to nullify the results of popular elections won the White House, as they have many times before.

.

Think you're missing an important aspect of what's going on. It doesn't matter whether Joe Bluecollar knows Samantha Bee or Trevor Noah or Jon Stuart or whatever character Stephen Colbert is playing on TV or (fill in blank). It's got nothing much to do with individuals and everything to do with a feeling of being dominated by a class, 'professional' in character, that purports to know what's best for you but which in practice really doesn't care if you live or die. You think that 'gut' feeling is wrong? It's not wrong, even if it's analysis of who's or what is truly to blame is ridiculously off base and often dangerous. And it's not a question of one side having the facts and the other resorting to emotional appeals. Like their right-wing foils, liberals are also prone to clouded thinking bc of the subjective investment they have in their own mythology.

Second: I don't see why it matters much what the official final vote totals are, except perhaps for reasons of historical comparisons around turnout. Two things matter most: they each basically got about the same number of votes, but a roughly equal number of voting-age people didn't or couldn't vote. If they had or would have been permitted to, or even better, if they lived in a society where everything possible was done to enable their ability to vote instead of suppressing it, then Trump and his toxic politics would have lost by a much larger margin.

EDIT: I didn't watch the video and am not defending Jonathan Pie, whoever he is.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Anyway, as with most of the posts on that thread, it is predicated on uncritical acceptance of a lie. Trump didn't win the White House.

We need to get that out there quick, because damn, 100% of the coverage I've seen indicated that he won the White House.

[JackRiddler]

It's got nothing much to do with individuals and everything to do with a feeling of being dominated by a class, 'professional' in character, that purports to know what's best for you but which in practice really doesn't care if you live or die.

I could say, welcome to the world of the black underclass as treated by institutions of poor relief and workfare, public education and health, housing authorities, and the carceral state.

But it's more to the point to say that this feeling of being dominated by a class is successfully misdirected towards hating the likes of school teachers, trade unionists, precarious adjuncts, petty state management, career women, artists, urban "hipsters" and "yuppies," modes of dress and expression, an image of "social justice warriors," etc. And the angry embrace the upper classes in whose interests the system of domination actually works, and many of them now seek salvation from a pirate billionaire and his pirate crew who are a kind of farcical pustule at the top of a one-party right-wing state. Hating on "smart" is poison.

At least you are honest that the problems with the EC would be less of a priority for you under a Clinton win

But what I described was not a Clinton "win," but a loss. Wrong is being installed either way, my relief would be not that "she" was installed but about the comparative battlespace for achieving positive change or blunting the worst under that scenario, as opposed to what we have now.

In any case, I would absolutely be saying the EC should be abolished, as I have always thought, as well as saying that we still wouldn't have representative democracy, as I told you. For whatever either would be worth.

And under the science-fiction scenario of the EC magically skewing to over-representation of the cities (again, the opposite of its design), so that Clinton lost the actual vote but won the EC count, I submit it would be THE issue in the news every day. Everyone would know that Trump got more votes. There would have been no simple concession. The outcome would still be considered in dispute. The blowhards who talk about the wisdom of 1787 would finally be admitting it might be the product of no longer relevant circumstances (uniting 13 independent countries).

There is a difference after all: Democrats capitulate, Republicans always fight on, and it works to the benefit of PTB either way. Disagree?

.

[JackRiddler]

Anyway, as with most of the posts on that thread, it is predicated on uncritical acceptance of a lie. Trump didn't win the White House.

We need to get that out there quick, because damn, 100% of the coverage I've seen indicated that he won the White House.

You are stripping what I said to make a joke, however:

Anyway, as with most of the posts on that thread, it is predicated on uncritical acceptance of a lie. Trump didn't win the White House. He lost the vote by what's currently a margin of 400,000. Some slaveholders in 1787 who devised a system that would allow them to nullify the results of popular elections won the White House, as they have many times before.

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[Wombaticus Rex]

I'm stripping what you said to make a joke; you're saying that winning by the rules isn't winning.

I have to concede, you're probably making me laugh harder than I am.

[JackRiddler]

The "rules" won, not the players. The game never ends, however.

[brekin]

The "rules" won, not the players. The game never ends, however.

Jack, it is what it is. If Clinton won the electoral as overwhelmingly as Trump did, but lost the popular vote by only 400,000 then people would have just written that off as the prophecy of underwhelmed democrats giving their consent and not their blessing to her. And Trump supporters would be undermining and disparaging the electoral college process. The rules were agreed on before. Just as, Bernie wouldn't have won if he got the nomination, because he didn't. Hilary wouldn't have won if the popular vote overrode the electoral college, because it doesn't.

[JackRiddler]

brekin, I wasn't playing horseshoes. No one asked me if I want to live in a continent-sized game of horseshoes. Or you. Or anyone alive today, whether they like it or not. We did not enter this social contract.

Some facts matter. The "winner" of the 2016 presidential election got fewer human votes than the "loser" who you supported. That should be something you want to repeat a great deal. Because the game goes on, and no, the rules are not eternal.

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[slomo]

brekin, I wasn't playing horseshoes. No one asked me if I want to live in a continent-sized game of horseshoes. Or you. Or anyone alive today, whether they like it or not. We did not enter this social contract.

Some facts matter. The "winner" of the 2016 presidential election got fewer human votes than the "loser" who you supported. That should be something you want to repeat a great deal. Because the game goes on, and no, the rules are not eternal.

.

I get the point that Trump doesn't have a true "mandate". But, whatever. He'll act like he does.

[brekin]

brekin, I wasn't playing horseshoes. No one asked me if I want to live in a continent-sized game of horseshoes. Or you. Or anyone alive today, whether they like it or not. We did not enter this social contract.
Some facts matter. The "winner" of the 2016 presidential election got fewer human votes than the "loser" who you supported. That should be something you want to repeat a great deal. Because the game goes on, and no, the rules are not eternal.
.

Oh, I agree the system is antiquidated, hardly fair, even more than a little ridiculous. But no one seems to care all that much until it pops out a Trump doll. W didn't get the pop vote and stole the electoral vote, but Gore himself turns around and shuts down the fight against that. So if changes weren't made after that, why would it now post 9/11, Iraq war, etc.? I think it's the Greek in you that makes you passionate about making the democracy more democratic, and it's probably the Irish in me that says this may be as good as it gets.

[PufPuf93]

brekin, I wasn't playing horseshoes. No one asked me if I want to live in a continent-sized game of horseshoes. Or you. Or anyone alive today, whether they like it or not. We did not enter this social contract.

Some facts matter. The "winner" of the 2016 presidential election got fewer human votes than the "loser" who you supported. That should be something you want to repeat a great deal. Because the game goes on, and no, the rules are not eternal.

.

I get the point that Trump doesn't have a true "mandate". But, whatever. He'll act like he does.

Trump does have GOP majorities in the Senate and House and may have a near future majority on the USSC.

I predict that Trump may well turn out to be a follower of Congress leadership as far as the nuts and bolts of GOP themed laws and policies.

Trump has already in days turned more towards DC insiders for the POTUS transition.

The course of Trump's time as POTUS may well turn out to be similar to that of Reagan with detail set by career right wing ideologues and those in the shadows.

Trump is crass narcissistic for a POTUS, akin to a third world despot with new found wealth.

Many of the folks that voted Trump into office like the in your face fuck you system of it all even though they likely will not get anything to their benefit save for bragging rights and socially acceptable hippie, gay, and foreigner bashing and misogyny.

edit to add "and misogyny".