I predict a political discussion hangover silence soon

Chew Toy McCoy

Pleb
Site Donor
Posts
7,515
Reaction score
11,720
It's been exhausting. We're still kind of sputtering through Trump election denial and legal action topics like a drunk with one eye closed still insisting they aren't tired. I predict once he leaves the white house we'll (meaning most sane people) take a well deserved political discussion nap and hopefully wake to a world of political concerns that are more diverse than just the actions of one man and those who worship him.
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
a well deserved political discussion nap

Not that I would really rate Twitter threads as conversations, but I predict a massive culling of Twitter follows by people like me who only start following a lot of accounts during the run-ups to American elections. I've already started that sorting-out process and plan to pare it back down to just newspapers and a few individual accounts I'll want to follow.
 

Eric

Mama's lil stinker
Posts
11,294
Reaction score
21,744
Location
California
Instagram
Main Camera
Sony
It's been exhausting. We're still kind of sputtering through Trump election denial and legal action topics like a drunk with one eye closed still insisting they aren't tired. I predict once he leaves the white house we'll (meaning most sane people) take a well deserved political discussion nap and hopefully wake to a world of political concerns that are more diverse than just the actions of one man and those who worship him.
It's a nap we can all use that's for sure. I have a feeling Republicans will give us plenty of fodder going forward though so enjoy the timeout while we got it.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

Pleb
Site Donor
Posts
7,515
Reaction score
11,720
It's a nap we can all use that's for sure. I have a feeling Republicans will give us plenty of fodder going forward though so enjoy the timeout while we got it.
God willing some genius is already compiling a video of all the predictable things they will rage about that will show they are complete and utter hypocrites that should shut the fuck up. That should cover at least 75% of appropriate political discourse responses. So much time and data saved.
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
God willing some genius is already compiling a video of all the predictable things they will rage about that will show they are complete and utter hypocrites that should shut the fuck up. That should cover at least 75% of appropriate political discourse responses. So much time and data saved.

They'll need a menu format something akin to those broadsheet flyers at food takeout shops.

Two Spring Rolls and a side of Lo Mein.jpg
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
Interesting piece in NY Review of Books by Fintan O'Toole, "Democracy's Afterlife". O'Toole is a columnist for the Irish Times and a lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. The piece is a long read about wha' hoppen here w/ Trump and the Republicans...


From near the wrap:

"This is zombie politics—the life-after-death of a former conservative party. And as Gothic stories tell us, it is very hard to kill the undead. One half of a two-party system has passed over into a post-democratic state. This reality has to be recognized, and a crucial aspect of that recognition is to accept that the claim Ford could make in 1974—“Our Constitution works”—no longer applies. After the long national nightmare of Watergate, America could rub its eyes and awaken to a renewed confidence in its system of checks and balances.​

But the Trump presidency has been no nightmare. It has been daylight delinquency, its transgressions of democratic values on lurid display in all their corruption and cruelty and deadly incompetence. There may be much we do not yet know, but what is known (and in most cases openly flaunted) is more than enough: the Mueller report, the Ukraine scandal, the flagrant self-dealing, the tax evasion, the children stolen from their parents, the encouragement of neo-Nazis, Trump’s admission that he deliberately played down the seriousness of the coronavirus. There can be no awakening because the Republicans did not sleep through all of this. They saw it all and let it happen. In electoral terms, moreover, it turns out that they were broadly right. There was no revulsion among the party base. The faithful not only witnessed his behavior, they heard Trump say, repeatedly, that he would not accept the result of the vote. They embraced that authoritarianism with renewed enthusiasm. The assault on democracy now has a genuine, highly engaged, democratic movement behind it."​
 
Last edited:

Scepticalscribe

Cancelled
Posts
6,644
Reaction score
9,457
Interesting piece in NY Review of Books by Fintan O'Toole, "Democracy's Afterlife". O'Toole is a columnist for the Irish Times and a lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. The piece is a long read about wha' hoppen here w/ Trump and the Republicans...


From near the wrap:

"This is zombie politics—the life-after-death of a former conservative party. And as Gothic stories tell us, it is very hard to kill the undead. One half of a two-party system has passed over into a post-democratic state. This reality has to be recognized, and a crucial aspect of that recognition is to accept that the claim Ford could make in 1974—“Our Constitution works”—no longer applies. After the long national nightmare of Watergate, America could rub its eyes and awaken to a renewed confidence in its system of checks and balances.​

But the Trump presidency has been no nightmare. It has been daylight delinquency, its transgressions of democratic values on lurid display in all their corruption and cruelty and deadly incompetence. There may be much we do not yet know, but what is known (and in most cases openly flaunted) is more than enough: the Mueller report, the Ukraine scandal, the flagrant self-dealing, the tax evasion, the children stolen from their parents, the encouragement of neo-Nazis, Trump’s admission that he deliberately played down the seriousness of the coronavirus. There can be no awakening because the Republicans did not sleep through all of this. They saw it all and let it happen. In electoral terms, moreover, it turns out that they were broadly right. There was no revulsion among the party base. The faithful not only witnessed his behavior, they heard Trump say, repeatedly, that he would not accept the result of the vote. They embraced that authoritarianism with renewed enthusiasm. The assault on democracy now has a genuine, highly engaged, democratic movement behind it."​

At the moment, I would regard Fintan O'Toole as probably the best newspaper columnist and commentator in Ireland; always thoughtful, and often thought-provoking, he is invariably well worth reading.
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
At the moment, I would regard Fintan O'Toole as probably the best newspaper columnist and commentator in Ireland; always thoughtful, and often thought-provoking, he is invariably well worth reading.

Well he was certainly on the mark with that piece, I must say. We should "borrow" him more often stateside...

Meanwhile the slash and burn efforts of Trump on his way out continue, no matter who writes what or catalogs Trump's and the GOP's already long list of unhelpful-to-America moves during the past four years. The most recent agency-level and largely under-radar move cannot be meant to do more than just tie up Biden era administrators with paperwork and backwards glances, which is just so reprehensible. But failure to do the proposed work will result in falling-away of currently available health care options in the USA... surely Trump's point...

 

SuperMatt

Site Master
Posts
7,862
Reaction score
15,004
Well he was certainly on the mark with that piece, I must say. We should "borrow" him more often stateside...

Meanwhile the slash and burn efforts of Trump on his way out continue, no matter who writes what or catalogs Trump's and the GOP's already long list of unhelpful-to-America moves during the past four years. The most recent agency-level and largely under-radar move cannot be meant to do more than just tie up Biden era administrators with paperwork and backwards glances, which is just so reprehensible. But failure to do the proposed work will result in falling-away of currently available health care options in the USA... surely Trump's point...

Win in Georgia, and pass universal healthcare. Don’t even do the slightest thing ever to appease a single Republican politician. As for the voters, when they realize their lives are better off with Biden in control, hopefully they vote for their self-interests in 2024 too.
 

Mark

Site Champ
Site Donor
Posts
289
Reaction score
627
Location
Hokkaido
@lizkat
i wanted to let you know that i have re-read the Fintan O'Toole piece about 3 times now.
its been an especially meaningful article to me.
thanks for posting it.
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
Win in Georgia, and pass universal healthcare. Don’t even do the slightest thing ever to appease a single Republican politician. As for the voters, when they realize their lives are better off with Biden in control, hopefully they vote for their self-interests in 2024 too.

From your lips to the voters of Georgia at the moment... and I sure hope they turn out to flip those two seats blue.

Also there's a chance that that insanely proposed rule from within Health and Human Services will not manage to take effect. Trump's agency chiefs are rushing to avoid a 60-day cutoff after which I think even rules without public comment period requirements can simply be ditched by EO of the new prez. That one was November 4th though, so it could take some work to get rid of it. They'll have to take the trouble to ditch the rule proposal, though... otherwise as that Georgetown piece points out, reviewing their own rules and keeping pieces of American health care from sudden expiration is all HHS will be doing for decades, with time out for lunch breaks.

As for 2024, yeah I sure hope Biden can turn off some of this unproductive self-hatred in America. We really are in one boat together, might as well learn how to help Biden help the oarsmen in Congress go someplace besides the Sargasso Sea of our getting-stale discontent. What good does it do to hate a neighbor down the road apiece, while Trump tweets threats randomly in impulsive rage at the elected officials to whom we delegated our powers of governance?

Trump doesn't even spare people in his own party when he throws a temper tantrum over not being able to wrap up some grifting move he's trying to get done on his own behalf. And what he does without fanfare, the small print, hurts all of us. This is a thing that a lot of the followers of Trump apparently don't notice or don't yet realize affects them as badly as it does people who vote blue. I'm hoping Biden can talk to everyone and that some who did not vote for him will hear what he's saying... and realize a difference betwen that reality and the threats the GOP always insist a Democrat in the White House represents.
 

Huntn

Whatwerewe talk'n about?
Site Donor
Posts
5,254
Reaction score
5,189
Location
The Misty Mountains
Not that I would really rate Twitter threads as conversations, but I predict a massive culling of Twitter follows by people like me who only start following a lot of accounts during the run-ups to American elections. I've already started that sorting-out process and plan to pare it back down to just newspapers and a few individual accounts I'll want to follow.
I see the draw to Twitter, the ability to communicate with a wide spectrum of famous, well known personalities. But I don’t do Twitter because just being exposed daily to one rabid Twitter account has turned my stomach. You know whose. I can imagine that if you follow a large number of tweets, it might be insightful, but would be a huge time sink to participate.
 

Huntn

Whatwerewe talk'n about?
Site Donor
Posts
5,254
Reaction score
5,189
Location
The Misty Mountains
Interesting piece in NY Review of Books by Fintan O'Toole, "Democracy's Afterlife". O'Toole is a columnist for the Irish Times and a lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. The piece is a long read about wha' hoppen here w/ Trump and the Republicans...


From near the wrap:

"This is zombie politics—the life-after-death of a former conservative party. And as Gothic stories tell us, it is very hard to kill the undead. One half of a two-party system has passed over into a post-democratic state. This reality has to be recognized, and a crucial aspect of that recognition is to accept that the claim Ford could make in 1974—“Our Constitution works”—no longer applies. After the long national nightmare of Watergate, America could rub its eyes and awaken to a renewed confidence in its system of checks and balances.​

But the Trump presidency has been no nightmare. It has been daylight delinquency, its transgressions of democratic values on lurid display in all their corruption and cruelty and deadly incompetence. There may be much we do not yet know, but what is known (and in most cases openly flaunted) is more than enough: the Mueller report, the Ukraine scandal, the flagrant self-dealing, the tax evasion, the children stolen from their parents, the encouragement of neo-Nazis, Trump’s admission that he deliberately played down the seriousness of the coronavirus. There can be no awakening because the Republicans did not sleep through all of this. They saw it all and let it happen. In electoral terms, moreover, it turns out that they were broadly right. There was no revulsion among the party base. The faithful not only witnessed his behavior, they heard Trump say, repeatedly, that he would not accept the result of the vote. They embraced that authoritarianism with renewed enthusiasm. The assault on democracy now has a genuine, highly engaged, democratic movement behind it."​
After 4 years of Trump Bull Shit, I imagined that his base has dwindled, but by vote tally’s he has surged. And even though you can say the forces of good surged more to defeat him, it’s hard to write these people off as some small group of crack pots and imbeciles.

The country could be in real jeopardy, the foundations upon which it was created are cracked and could be swept away and many of us are slow to recognize or acknowledge this danger. I sincerely believe that the Trump Shits are more than willing to sacrifice the foundations if it means a win for their beloved POS. This threat must be recognized and it increases the odds that liberalism will fail, but ironically from the Trump forces this is not a fight for law abiding conservatism, it’s a fight for corruption, dictatorship, death, and destruction at the hands of a immoral, self serving, sociopath.

With the aftermath of this election we will see, even with Biden as President, if this deterioration of our democracy can be reversed or if we continue to slide to the breaking point . And remember this condition is a direct reflection of a majority of citizens who hold sway to guide us forward to success or rack and ruin. And i’m concerned that even as a minority, the Cult of Trump could still destroy us.
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
With the aftermath of this election we will see, even with Biden as President, if this deterioration of our democracy can be reversed or if we continue to slide to the breaking point . And remember this condition is a direct reflection of a majority of citizens who hold sway to guide us forward to success or rack and ruin. And i’m concerned that even as a minority, the Cult of Trump could still destroy us.

It's hard not to get ahead of where we are, when information (and misinformation) can traverse the planet in the blink of an eye... But it's pretty clear that time must be given Biden to demonstrate --not just declare-- that a president with a different way of being will have a de-escalating effect on our polarization in the USA.

Trump's constant lying has changed us somewhat even if we never bought any of his lies. Just the fact that he lies dozens of times a day has reduced us to wearily thinking "is this true, no, wow, must get out there and say so"... we are transformed into an excessively reactive population.

That level of reactivity is an extension of the annoying habit we've adopted in the past 50 years somehow of thinking that if something is said in the public square, it has somehow acquired substance and must be defended to the death or opposed as if it were the plague. It's part of why we long since came to think some political issues are "third rail" items and so cannot be addressed in a national dialogue.

These days we cannot agree on what is a fact, never mind what impact it might have on local policy. And national policy? "Sez who?"

People are tiring of being caught in the middle of bullshit "red v blue" politics when just doing what used to be pretty ordinary jobs here: election workers showing up to prepare voting machines in polling places, or to count the resulting ballots... county health clerks tabulating cases of contagious diseases and issuing related public health notices... county coroners and town clerks recording causes of death.... town councils ruling on whether a store can post this or that kind of sign on its premises... people like this are getting DEATH THREATS based on assumptions about the intersection of their jobs, the rule of law and their own or the politics of the locale. Death threats phoned to spouses, kids... whoever picks up the phone...

Social media are not so much focused on this stuff and so neither are traditional media, but grassroots people for the most part voted, took note of who won the less "controversial" contests and have moved on... but they've moved on to noticing the agony their peers are in, whether it's people caught up in the political aftermath of a contested election AND political takes on the coronavirus, or just people caught up as all of us are in the upsweep now of covid-19 as cold weather moves us indoors and threatens our businesses, our access to goods and services, etc. all over again.

Social media hammers on red and blue and idiot alike about "how can you be such an ass-hat?" and meanwhile more and more of us see ourselves or neighbors in real life falling short on daily necessities PLUS deprived of emotional support and leadership from the very top down.

So easy to skim past reports of children going hungry (and the GOP leaps to asking hey isn't that an exaggeration.. there are food pantries... food stamps.. we pay too much in taxes for that shit already.... why don't they get a grip or not have kids if they can't afford them).

Yeah. Well what is, is. How about these days people having three hungry kids in the house, with a deferred rent overhang on it, and a pair of [temporarily?] vanished middle-income jobs.... and no more stimulus check "in the mail"... and meanwhile you should oversee their remote learning in three different virtual classrooms.

What are we to think of an incumbent President who by just about all credible accounts now has lost an election, will not concede, does not make more than pro forma public appearances except for golf outings, tweets lies nonstop and refuses to cooperate with an incoming administration in any way.

I'll tell you what they think around here in the boondocks. Nothing. Winter's coming. There's people don't have firewood in yet. People who don't have a winter rat car yet. No money for ammo for deer season. And those three kids fighting in the living room over the one iPad and one PC. And unpaid utility bills. People aren't thinking about Trump or Biden. They're thinking there's not enough in the cupboard. A pox on pols.

The cult of Trump could destroy us, sure, depending on how much Fox bends back around to pick them up after Biden is sworn in, or how much Newsmax and OANN and whatever Trump might do if he's got free time to play Kibitzer in Chief. But it's more likely that we'll all be focused on Biden and McConnell and Pelosi scrambling up another stimulus program to get some cash into the hands of Americans before the snow flies in earnest and we're dealing with the overrunning of hospitals again and the closure of stores and busting of supply chains with zero personal resources.

Trump's leaving us some bottom to come up from, gotta say that. Maybe later for seeing his former followers blaming him... but the blame will land where it should, just might take awhile.
 

Eric

Mama's lil stinker
Posts
11,294
Reaction score
21,744
Location
California
Instagram
Main Camera
Sony
This has already started for me, I'm watching far less cable news and since the transition is in place it's just now a matter of waiting for Trump to pack his shit as we start to move onward and upward without him. I'll continue to watch the evening news on ABC and follow the typical social media stuff but it's sort of a relief to be done with it.
 

Alli

Perfection
Staff Member
Site Donor
Posts
5,887
Reaction score
11,792
Location
Alabackwards
This has already started for me, I'm watching far less cable news and since the transition is in place it's just now a matter of waiting for Trump to pack his shit as we start to move onward and upward without him. I'll continue to watch the evening news on ABC and follow the typical social media stuff but it's sort of a relief to be done with it.
I’m still watching the same amount, but I’d already cut back. I’m a lot less agitated now though.
 

Scepticalscribe

Cancelled
Posts
6,644
Reaction score
9,457
I’m still watching the same amount, but I’d already cut back. I’m a lot less agitated now though.

Likewise.

The certain knowledge that this moral monster will actually leave office in January is bizarrely reassuring, whereas, needless to say, it should simply be something that happens automatically as a matter of course, as, indeed, it has done until now.
 

lizkat

Watching March roll out real winter
Posts
7,341
Reaction score
15,163
Location
Catskill Mountains
Likewise.

The certain knowledge that this moral monster will actually leave office in January is bizarrely reassuring, whereas, needless to say, it should simply be something that happens automatically as a matter of course, as, indeed, it has done until now.

I find it quite refreshing to have seen glimpses via election recount requests and the certification process that there are in fact elected Republicans out there who --even under pressure from the benighted RNC honchos and Trump-- have gone about what they always do when there's an election to be counted up or recounted... do the work and report the results and hang the "optics" of it from anyone else's more partisan point of view.

Doesn't mean I'm going to vote for a Republican running for so much as town council in the future though.

Meanwhile I like exploring non-political parts of some papers I subbed to for their local politics during the runup to the vote. So not backing away from media, just broadening my horizons in places here and there around the USA.... til the promo rates expire!
 
Top Bottom
1 2