2016 Election Day Night

[82_28]

It always has, chief. Republicans are everywhere. Look at the map dude and move on over to Oklahoma, not a blue county to be found there. All the other states had blue counties and yes it was the cities. In fact Vermont was completely blue, where our good moderator hails from. Just go to Oklahoma and you'll be fine.

[seemslikeadream]

Oklahoma the earth quake capital of the world...way to go frackers!

[Wombaticus Rex]

In fact Vermont was completely blue

Your spurious allegations are deeply wounding. Essex County knows better than to vote Democrat.

We also had the collective wherewithal to install Phil Scott (R) as Governor; his Lt. Gov is a Progressive farmer.

Edit: Still got the laxest gun laws in the game, still don't have legal marijuana. And the most everything per capita.

[Freitag]

The electoral college is fair when Democrats win, racist when Republicans win.

Slate 2012: In Defense of the Electoral College

Slate 2016: The Electoral College Is an Instrument of White Supremacy—and Sexism

[82_28]

Racist when you run a racist. How can you defend a racist, homie? This has nothing to do with D or R. Your guy is a racist sack of shit. Enjoy what no one else will. Explain your feelings to your kids, if they are young enough to not know.

[Luther Blissett]

I think Massachusetts was totally blue.

I was a Stein 2012 voter as a protest against the targeted extrajudicial murder of a 16-year old American child, so from my point of view, the Electoral College is always unethical.

[mentalgongfu2]

82, Freitag was merely pointing out the hypocrisy. And I think it is a valid point.

[82_28]

Well, I suppose and if so, I apologize. I am just taking this very serious. Believe me, all I do is joke around and can get jokes. I just cannot muster any of my second nature with this. I will grant the irony. Either/or the USA has a fucking racist nationalist charlatan as its next president.

[slomo]

Well, I suppose and if so, I apologize. I am just taking this very serious. Believe me, all I do is joke around and can get jokes. I just cannot muster any of my second nature with this. I will grant the irony. Either/or the USA has a fucking racist nationalist charlatan as its next president.

Yes, but...

I like Ran Prieur's recent take (he doesn't keep hard links to his individual blog posts, so I'm going to cut+paste the whole thing again):

November 14. Over on the subreddit there's an interesting discussion of why I have so many alt-right readers. Sometimes they annoy me and I want them to go away, but where there's annoyance, there's always an opportunity for learning.

Anyway I have more to say about the election. If you watch UFC, you know that everyone talks trash before the fight, and during the fight they hit each other, and then after the fight they embrace. Donald Trump understands better than I do that politics works the same way. For the general election I thought he would reinvent himself as a lovable moderate, and instead he doubled down on being dark and divisive -- and it worked! Then, the moment he was declared the winner, he suddenly pivoted to making peace and bringing America together. So I'm wondering, how much of Evil Trump was a performance? What's under that scary clown mask?

I barely considered the possibility that Trump would turn out to be basically the same as every other president. I said he'd be a great ceremonial president, but I might have underestimated how much the presidency is already ceremonial. When the whole Bush family endorsed Hillary, I was sure the oligarchy feared Trump. Now I think we all fell for a deep con.

Imagine you're the secret ruler of an America that's been hollowed out. All the power is in the cities now, and the peasants want a revolution. But there's nothing you can do for them. The manufacturing jobs are lost forever to automation, the immigrants will keep coming in, old-time white culture is dying -- but you still need those people to work at Walmart and maintain the infrastructure, and they have a lot of guns.

So you let them have their messiah, a big city billionaire who talks the language of the rural working class, and he pulls a shocking upset. Urban liberals are genuinely horrified -- they don't even know they're part of the show. A guy waves a confederate flag over a sign saying "Accept it, you lost," and he doesn't even see the irony. And Trump does his best. He gets eight years, because the charismatic ones always do, and he gets a few symbolic victories. But on a deeper level the world continues on its inscrutable path, and Trump serves to pacify the right just as Obama pacified the left.

I don't really believe in sinister rulers who consciously planned exactly whatever happens, and that we make a better world by overthrowing them. I really believe the weirder thing I said last week: that our subconscious minds go deep, and they're connected down there on a scale we haven't imagined. And if you want to get out of the audience and join the circus, the locked door is inside you.

I know Bannon is a problem, but do you think he'll last? Latest news, even establishment conservatives are coming out against him.

[slomo]

And I agree with Freitag. The whole sudden hand-wringing about the EC strikes me as very hypocritical. I do think the EC is overly biased towards rural states (some bias is necessary), but it's very self-serving to come out against it at this exact point in time.

[82_28]

Believe it or not, I know Ran. He is a little annoying because he is a know it all. As for myself I know basically nothing but have similar interests. But shhhhhhhhhhhh. He is kind of a flake.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Believe it or not, I know Ran. He is a little annoying because he is a know it all. As for myself I know basically nothing but have similar interests. But shhhhhhhhhhhh. He is kind of a flake.

C'mon. Our personal issues are inevitable -- our perspectives should be weighed on their own merits.

[semper occultus]

Latest news, even establishment conservatives are coming out against him.

...hardly a great surprise though...there is a full on collision between the establishment right & insurgent right that I'm not sure anyone can predict the outcome of at this stage of total flux...( see the amusing jockeying between UKIP's Farage & the Tory Treeza May for dibs on the Trumpster )

...in normal times of course you'd back the smothering blanket of the system to dump soggy leaves on the bonfire but the flames of that campaign are still running pretty hot to allow them to totally row back on "the revolution" at this stage I'da think ....

[82_28]

Believe it or not, I know Ran. He is a little annoying because he is a know it all. As for myself I know basically nothing but have similar interests. But shhhhhhhhhhhh. He is kind of a flake.

C'mon. Our personal issues are inevitable -- our perspectives should be weighed on their own merits.

No, he just changes his mind constantly. He gets a perspective and then says he no longer believes in that said perspective. It goes on and on. Believe me, I understand but that is what I meant by that. The dude basically can't make up his mind. Nice guy but yeah, that. .

[slomo]

Believe it or not, I know Ran. He is a little annoying because he is a know it all. As for myself I know basically nothing but have similar interests. But shhhhhhhhhhhh. He is kind of a flake.

C'mon. Our personal issues are inevitable -- our perspectives should be weighed on their own merits.

No, he just changes his mind constantly. He gets a perspective and then says he no longer believes in that said perspective. It goes on and on. Believe me, I understand but that is what I meant by that. The dude basically can't make up his mind. Nice guy but yeah, that. .

At least that's honest. And I admire people who can change their mind after exposure to additional data (even internally generated data). Ran seems pretty self-aware of his tendency to alter his views. Maybe that's why he doesn't hard-link his posts?

Anyway, I'm copypasta'ing one or two single comments, not his entire lifetime body of work.