-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Serious US Election Thread (read post #2014)
- Thread starter Bughouse
- Start date
- Status
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...o-lead-epa-transition/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share
This is probably more depressing. Putting an extremely under qualified climate change skeptic in charge of the EPA (cause someone with degrees in Philosophy and Political Theory and 0 scientific background is definitely qualified to set environmental policy in the United States) probably doesn't bode well for the rest of his cabinet choices.
Ok, so while debating whether Trump or Hillary's policies is worse isn't the most productive thing to do anymore, I think people are justifiably unsettled, myself included. Throughout Trump's campaign, the debates, the media coverage, I haven't felt like I had a whole lot of clarity on his plan. You get a lot of "This establishment policy is so bad and we're gonna replace it", but with what? I hear a lot of "Muslims and Immigrants are dangerous and I'm going to keep us safe" without understanding how even if we sacrifice in the short term how it helps us become a more stable multicultural society in the long term. "We're gonna renegotiate all our trade deals/NATO/destroy Obamacare". What are we replacing them with and what are our goals?
I look around and I don't really have an idea of what's being proposed and of that, what's realistic even in a Republican-dominated Congress. Leaving aside my issues with Trump's temperment (particularly his very consistent trend of pursuing revenge at any cost to protect his ego and the reputation of those he represents), the issue of climate change, and his plan for the Supreme Court, this is the other big thing causing me unease. Does anyone more in the know have a better idea of what we could be facing, with reasonable sources to back it up?
I look around and I don't really have an idea of what's being proposed and of that, what's realistic even in a Republican-dominated Congress. Leaving aside my issues with Trump's temperment (particularly his very consistent trend of pursuing revenge at any cost to protect his ego and the reputation of those he represents), the issue of climate change, and his plan for the Supreme Court, this is the other big thing causing me unease. Does anyone more in the know have a better idea of what we could be facing, with reasonable sources to back it up?
fun fact, trump won fewer popular votes than Romney in 2012 and on par with McCain 2008. Hillary lost 10 million voters from Obama in 2008. Tell me again how she wasn't a terrible candidate
Ash Borer
I've heard they're short of room in hell
Good observation. Another contributing factor to Trump's victory is the backlash against a perceived anti-white political correctness. Let me show you what I mean. https://twitter.com/lenadunham/status/793929098926166016 That is a tweet from Lena Dunham advocating the extinction of white men. Lena Dunham was a Hillary surrogate, look at all her tweets, she campaigned for Hillary. She is very mainstream, she was on SNL, she's been in The Simpsons. She has the approval of the mainstream media. And yet, she is clearly very contemptuous towards white men. Can you see that whites and men might find that threatening? For a mainstream Hillary supporter to celebrate your extinction? It's not a large leap in logic to get the feeling that as a whole, what Hillary Clinton and "the establishment" stands for is hostile to you, because of your skin and sex.
Can you have some sympathy for a percentage of whites, and males that might see that video and simply be compelled to vote for Trump, no matter how bad he is, because the alternative is an establishment, a cultural norm, that is openly hostile towards you? Lena Dunham did not receive any disapproval from the Hilllary campaign or the establishment at large (all of the publishers and media executives that continue to give her work). This is a microcosm that some of Donald Trump's support was predicated on.
I echo cookie's sentiments that Trump is a fool, that his policies and ignorance are destructive. But, I also see why it happened.
Well it's never been a better time for me to be a (cis, straight) white male but that still makes me no more at ease.
I'm sure you probably realized this personally but that's a major problem with Trump and his campaign: he doesn't have (m)any concrete policy plans in place. Most of what we know is general ideas of what he wants to do. What we know the most about, his tax proposals, are ever-changing and also universally panned by every economist and political think tank on both sides of the aisle for drastically ballooning the would-be national debt by literally $10+ TRILLION even by most conservative estimates.
TheValkyries
proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
If you genuinely think that America rolling out IN FORCE having turnouts hitherto unseen in predominantly white areas in a campaign where people simply would not cop to voting for Trump and then did so with historic might isn't vastly disconcerting to minority people then you simply do not. Get. It.
There is a very real harkening back to the anonymity of the Klan here where white supremacy is now the face of the government and minorities do not know which person close to them is secretly harboring ideals that directly harm us. To be going into this railing against how ABYSSMALLY bad he is, how supremely blatant his white supremacy is to then have the nation respond resoundingly in his favor still hurts. Even if we expected it, it still fucking hurts.
There is no other message from yesterday outside of "you as a person who is not white or straight or male do not. And should not. Matter."
If you think people being suicidal is a fucking overreaction to shit that will demonstrably MAKE THEIR LIVES WORSE. That will actively HARM them?! Man fuck that. Fuck that.
Seeing those numbers last night legitimately helped me. I have been struggling with suicidal thoughts for a long time especially lately given what had happened in this campaign. To know that all the fear pain and anguish minority people are facing in the face of these results knowing that if they speak up all that faces them is criticism of overreaction and fucking gaslighting it almost sent me over the edge. Seeing people send those numbers knowing the pain knowing the fear knowing that people like me or others need to just see them some might even need to use them that was a fucking blessing man.
God fuck this whole shit I'm so god damned disgusted with everything. Entirely unsurprised but fucking disgusted.
And it's never been a worse time for me to only be one of these.
I don't know which one is you but considering minorities were being enslaved/forced into dangerous labor, women and minorities not allowed to vote, and non-het people unable to be public about being together without fear of being freely stoned/attacked and truly nobody would care...
There are centuries in this country's own history and millennia in the world's where it's been a worse time to be any and all of these things, heck it's sucked to be a white male dying to the Plague or forced into military service in the past.
Trump isn't going to bring back slavery or legalize stoning or stop minorities from being able to vote. Who knows what he'll actually do, or what'll be revised by Democrats in 2020 when they stop choking on their nomination process.
Ease off the hyperbole and don't invalidate the many people who ACTUALLY had it worse that came before.
e: I am female and 100 years ago I couldn't have voted in this country. Even if Trump/Repubs start to repeal abortion-related laws I will still be way ahead of where I was a century ago, or even 50 years when domestic violence against women had almost no consequences since women working and getting educated wasn't as acceptable and they had few avenues to leave abusive situations. Trump isn't going to somehow make things worse than that.
Last edited:
Ash Borer
I've heard they're short of room in hell
Democracy is an expression of the opinion of the people. Assuming Trump and his supporters are white supremacists, they obviously never would have voted for Obama, and all of the democratic senators, and congressmen that have been now replaced with republicans. So, what in these past 8 years has changed to make more of America turn to, what you perceive to be white supremacy?
Shaka Brah
Banned deucer.
It certainly can't be the diminishing white vote or larger minority population.
Well, those people probably didn't vote for Obama and downticket Democrats. Obama won because he mobilized and consolidated the Black vote at unprecedented numbers (as the first would-be Black president). Obama didn't have the baggage Hillary does and his message was about HOPE AND CHANGE, not himself, scaring off moderates and anti-establishment people. Romney didn't rile up his potential base of alleged white supremacists as much as Trump did with his blatantly bigoted words, Romney was a typical wealthy Republican elite. Etc.
Like, we know it's socially unacceptable to a big fucking asshole racist, we've progressed as a society enough to keep those attitudes out of the mainstream. But plenty enough people still have those feelings deep down (increasing likely the older and more rural you go), they just won't vocalize them publicly for fear of backlash. Trump has given their old ideals legitimacy and a mouthpiece from which to spew them again. I'm personally not convinced that the "white supremacy vote" is what put Trump over the top, I think it was just anger at the political establishment as-is and the populace was going to latch onto any outsider candidate no matter how grossly incompetent and socially unacceptable his or her demeanor and actions were, but I understand what TheValkyries is talking about.
Like myself when I said what I did, ARN probably meant "in my lifetime." None of us lived hundreds of years ago and falsely equivalating modern socioeconomics to long-gone history does us about as much good as invoking the status of starving African children to tell people to stop bitching about the relative comfort poor people in the U.S. still live in (relative to the absolute and not the average citizen of prosperous Western socities).
Like, we know it's socially unacceptable to a big fucking asshole racist, we've progressed as a society enough to keep those attitudes out of the mainstream. But plenty enough people still have those feelings deep down (increasing likely the older and more rural you go), they just won't vocalize them publicly for fear of backlash. Trump has given their old ideals legitimacy and a mouthpiece from which to spew them again. I'm personally not convinced that the "white supremacy vote" is what put Trump over the top, I think it was just anger at the political establishment as-is and the populace was going to latch onto any outsider candidate no matter how grossly incompetent and socially unacceptable his or her demeanor and actions were, but I understand what TheValkyries is talking about.
Like myself when I said what I did, ARN probably meant "in my lifetime." None of us lived hundreds of years ago and falsely equivalating modern socioeconomics to long-gone history does us about as much good as invoking the status of starving African children to tell people to stop bitching about the relative comfort poor people in the U.S. still live in (relative to the absolute and not the average citizen of prosperous Western socities).
To those afraid that he's all four horsemen of the apocalypse:
Don't make the same mistake the MSM made. They took his campaign literally, but not seriously. But the people who got him elected--they took him seriously, not literally. NOW that he's pres-elect, he's already behaving so much more presidential. Just look at his first speech. Now he's started making actual, concrete policy decisions: he wants to stimulate the economy with infrastructure jobs. He's going to have a much more concrete agenda before January 20th, and will leave congress to figure out the precise legal details.
To those of you in hysteria: you are WAAAY overreacting. Having the first amendment restored, and "suffering" maybe from "hate speech" is a FAR cry from lynch mobs and Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, doubling-down in your assault on freedom of speech--justifying thought police because "we can't allow a culture of hate"--only further galvanizes Trumpsters against you.
Don't make the same mistake the MSM made. They took his campaign literally, but not seriously. But the people who got him elected--they took him seriously, not literally. NOW that he's pres-elect, he's already behaving so much more presidential. Just look at his first speech. Now he's started making actual, concrete policy decisions: he wants to stimulate the economy with infrastructure jobs. He's going to have a much more concrete agenda before January 20th, and will leave congress to figure out the precise legal details.
To those of you in hysteria: you are WAAAY overreacting. Having the first amendment restored, and "suffering" maybe from "hate speech" is a FAR cry from lynch mobs and Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, doubling-down in your assault on freedom of speech--justifying thought police because "we can't allow a culture of hate"--only further galvanizes Trumpsters against you.
Last edited:
2 separate posts, basically...
1:
Reflecting on last night, the outcome doesn't necessarily "shock" me. Don't get me wrong, I expected a Clinton win and a pretty big one electorally-speaking. But popular vote wise, she was probably only going to win by 3 in my mind. So the polls missed by around 2.5, which isn't that bad historically speaking. It was always possible that national polls had herded themselves into a corner and were mis-weighting turnout. But the state polls were very variable. Clinton outperformed her polls in areas with large latino populations like Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, and pretty seriously underperformed most everywhere else. It was always possible that a key variable like this was getting mismeasured and could lead to a cascade. While polls showed her leading most every swing state, they were always close leads and many of them are pretty well correlated. If Ohio falls by a lot, you know Wisconsin and Michigan are going to be way closer than Democrats can comfortably handle. If Ohio falls by like 8+, you're probably losing Wisconsin, maybe even Michigan. And possibly Pennsylvania too. And that's what happened. Florida and NC were always going to be close and her losses there were unfortunate, but ultimately irrelevant so long as the Ohio +8 and correlated occurred. That's what happens when you have narrow leads in a group of states and then underperform your national poll by 2.5 on the back of demographics that are overrepresented in the swing states you were narrowly leading. The perfect storm happened. Trump won a lot of swing states by even more narrow margins (just a point or so) than Clinton was expected to. The early signs of this were pretty obvious as Virginia was filling up. Although high turnout in metro-DC eventually brought it up to around +5 Clinton, the early votes showing Trump's large gains in the rest of the state scared me. Still, I held out hope because Florida looked untouchable. Then panhandle results came in... I knew that the night was probably over before many based on those Ohio results. There was a narrow path, but it needed PA and MI, which was unlikely given the Ohio results. In the end, both narrowly fell. Finally, it is horrifying that we have now had our second popular vote wins but loses election in five elections. There's no easy path to get past this, but we really must. The great irony is that the original purpose of the electoral college was to prevent a populist demagogue from rising to power. But now that we've bounded electors to state results and also relinquished control of the primary system to the people, there's little stopping popular opinion from tsunami-ing every intended constitutional protection of the republic.
The second major reflection is that we truly live in 2 Americas. Sitting down and thinking through a list, I realized I knew at most 3 or 4 trump voters under the age of 50, and I knew none of them well. I knew this would be the case, whether Trump or Clinton won, but it really struck me after the fact, especially given how the vote ultimately broke down. Liberals have self-segregated themselves into cities and, unless they came from a small town originally, know next to no one from rural America. This was a oft-repeated idea in Brexit between "big britain" and "little britain." It appears to be even worse here. I, unfortunately, see no easy solution to this major problem. It would only appear to get worse in the future. Even as demographics will likely continue to change in Democrats favor long-term, it's no more reassuring. I would not be happy with a society where Democrats win with a reverse situation to what has just happened. It is a dangerous degree of geographic and demographic polarization whichever side wins.
2:
I am incredibly uncomfortable with what I'm doing with my life right now. I don't know for sure if I will change, but I'm going to be thinking pretty hard about it in the next week or so.
I've seen many friends express the feeling that they didn't do enough. And I was thinking about it and I realized, there was nothing I could have really done. 99% of my friends who could vote voted. My state went blue, my district very blue. I wasn't going to canvas in a different state, so what really could I have done?
Still, I feel that my job, which btw is going to be hit pretty hard by the inevitable obamacare repeal, is so inconsequential. I've never been one of those "dreamer" millennials. I wanted a practical degree. I didn't want to need an advanced degree. I wanted 4 years of college and being ready to contribute to society. And so I went to business school at Wharton (yes, really... hi Donald). I now work at a government contractor that deals with health care and human services. What I've seen in over a year there is that my work is challenging and important, but only to a very small point. The health care innovation being tested around the country only marginally reduces costs and even more marginally improves outcomes. I have a hard time believing that once you subtract out the costs of doing business with a company like mine that any money is being saved at all. We do great, of course, but I'm not sure the ultimate outcome is significantly positive on society. So I haven't been one of those dreamers. But I feel I may want to be one.
I truly feel there is a significant amount of bad that's about to be unleashed - Not necessarily by the government. I reserve my judgment on how Trump will interact with Pence and with congressional republicans until we see it in action. There is a chance it is not as bad as I fear. A bipartisan effort on infrastructure rebuilding is something we can all agree on and is a good place for Trump to begin. Putting that front and center gives me a sliver of hope that he himself will not be as bad as advertised.
No, what I'm existentially threatened by are the supporters and what is to come at the state government level with limited federal restriction on them.
On a personal note, the demographic group that I selfishly fear most for are LGBT people. Just about a week ago, two friends of mine were gaybashed while leaving a house party in one of the gayest parts of DC. We've now just elected a VP who believes if you electrocute a homo enough, he'll turn straight. I am not particularly concerned about marriage equality, partly because it's not at all the highest priority for me, but mostly because I don't think the Supreme Court, even with a new 9th justice would overturn it. The 5 who granted the right are all still there and Roberts would likely respect the precedent too. I'm instead concerned with far worse. I live in a bubble in the DC area. When someone gets gaybashed here, it's major, shocking news. But that is not the case in many parts of the country. I know a college student who was bullied for being gay within his fraternity and committed suicide. I know a trans woman who had her parents die when she was young, then was cast away by her older sister when she came out as gay at 13 (came out again later on as trans). I myself tortured my parents with threats of suicide when I was closeted to them and being severely bullied in school. I know how hard this is for young LGBT people and we have just signaled to them that hatred (read: Pence's, not necessarily Trump's) is an accepted part of the US government. I am scared for resources being taken away for those who are HIV positive. Eliminating fair coverage for those with pre-existing conditions hurts many, like my cousins, among whom there's genetic diabetes, crohn's disease, and lupus, or among many women in my family with breast cancer. But it especially hurts many LGBT people who have HIV. I'm concerned public health resources for STD and HIV testing will be more difficult to attain, especially in my city, where congress sets much of local law for DC because they can. I am largely not concerned that my day to day ability to live and work freely will be damaged because I am in such a blue area. But I fear for kids who grow up like I did and the poor, typically minority LGBT folk with higher rates of HIV and little access to resources.
I have Muslim friends whose local community centers were literally blown up. I have a Muslim friend who had his windshield smashed in with a brick. These happened in Northern Florida and Georgia, respectively.
I have multiple female friends who have been raped. My mother was raped. We have just elected a man who, regardless of whether these newer allegations are true or exaggerated or even fabricated, we know is uncomfortably misogynistic. I know women who would ordinarily be taking birth control now planning on getting an IUD implanted within the next few months because they can last up to 10 or 15 years and will keep their contraception safe in the future.
I have quite a lot of non-citizen friends living in the US entirely legally on visas. Many of them are terrified that they will be made to leave in the course of trade agreements blowing up. One is brilliant. She works here on a visa that's easily attainable by virtue of our trade agreement with Singapore. Trump recently attacked this trade agreement. She wants to live and work here, but fears she will lose that privilege.
I have quite a lot of non-citizen friends who have at one point or another been here illegally. Some who were brought here as children, some who came on a visa and overstayed, some who came illegally as adults. One who came legally as a provisional asylum-grantee, waited years for his asylum application to be processed, be denied, try to apply for a visa he really should have applied for in the first place rather than asylum since he qualified, be told he can only apply for that type of visa from outside of the country, be forced to return home to a country he was not safe in, and wait 2 years for that new visa application to be processed, even with him paying a rush fee. He was a model citizen and a small business owner employing a handful of people. I have already seen the impact on their quality of life when either the federal government went after them or when Georgia passed laws second only to Arizona. While I am quite confident a literal wall will not be built, I fear what Republican policies will do to immigrant families, especially those of mixed status.
My hopes for much of what I consider to be American values, which are clearly shared by only about half of the country, now rest on the conviction of the more moderate house republicans to not rubberstamp an agenda and on senate republicans to not invoke the nuclear option on every little thing. It also rests on the health of an elderly woman named Ginsberg and the spines of two men named Kennedy and Roberts. There's not much for me to cling to. 2018 will likely only get worse, as it's an off-presidential year and the Democrats are defending many more senate seats.
And so with all this being said, I feel I am somewhat wasting away my passions and potential in a boring office job. I haven't yet decided if I will make a change. My personal passion lies in immigration. Maybe I will finally suck it up and go to law school to aid them. Lord knows the process is only about to get harder.
1:
Reflecting on last night, the outcome doesn't necessarily "shock" me. Don't get me wrong, I expected a Clinton win and a pretty big one electorally-speaking. But popular vote wise, she was probably only going to win by 3 in my mind. So the polls missed by around 2.5, which isn't that bad historically speaking. It was always possible that national polls had herded themselves into a corner and were mis-weighting turnout. But the state polls were very variable. Clinton outperformed her polls in areas with large latino populations like Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, and pretty seriously underperformed most everywhere else. It was always possible that a key variable like this was getting mismeasured and could lead to a cascade. While polls showed her leading most every swing state, they were always close leads and many of them are pretty well correlated. If Ohio falls by a lot, you know Wisconsin and Michigan are going to be way closer than Democrats can comfortably handle. If Ohio falls by like 8+, you're probably losing Wisconsin, maybe even Michigan. And possibly Pennsylvania too. And that's what happened. Florida and NC were always going to be close and her losses there were unfortunate, but ultimately irrelevant so long as the Ohio +8 and correlated occurred. That's what happens when you have narrow leads in a group of states and then underperform your national poll by 2.5 on the back of demographics that are overrepresented in the swing states you were narrowly leading. The perfect storm happened. Trump won a lot of swing states by even more narrow margins (just a point or so) than Clinton was expected to. The early signs of this were pretty obvious as Virginia was filling up. Although high turnout in metro-DC eventually brought it up to around +5 Clinton, the early votes showing Trump's large gains in the rest of the state scared me. Still, I held out hope because Florida looked untouchable. Then panhandle results came in... I knew that the night was probably over before many based on those Ohio results. There was a narrow path, but it needed PA and MI, which was unlikely given the Ohio results. In the end, both narrowly fell. Finally, it is horrifying that we have now had our second popular vote wins but loses election in five elections. There's no easy path to get past this, but we really must. The great irony is that the original purpose of the electoral college was to prevent a populist demagogue from rising to power. But now that we've bounded electors to state results and also relinquished control of the primary system to the people, there's little stopping popular opinion from tsunami-ing every intended constitutional protection of the republic.
The second major reflection is that we truly live in 2 Americas. Sitting down and thinking through a list, I realized I knew at most 3 or 4 trump voters under the age of 50, and I knew none of them well. I knew this would be the case, whether Trump or Clinton won, but it really struck me after the fact, especially given how the vote ultimately broke down. Liberals have self-segregated themselves into cities and, unless they came from a small town originally, know next to no one from rural America. This was a oft-repeated idea in Brexit between "big britain" and "little britain." It appears to be even worse here. I, unfortunately, see no easy solution to this major problem. It would only appear to get worse in the future. Even as demographics will likely continue to change in Democrats favor long-term, it's no more reassuring. I would not be happy with a society where Democrats win with a reverse situation to what has just happened. It is a dangerous degree of geographic and demographic polarization whichever side wins.
2:
I am incredibly uncomfortable with what I'm doing with my life right now. I don't know for sure if I will change, but I'm going to be thinking pretty hard about it in the next week or so.
I've seen many friends express the feeling that they didn't do enough. And I was thinking about it and I realized, there was nothing I could have really done. 99% of my friends who could vote voted. My state went blue, my district very blue. I wasn't going to canvas in a different state, so what really could I have done?
Still, I feel that my job, which btw is going to be hit pretty hard by the inevitable obamacare repeal, is so inconsequential. I've never been one of those "dreamer" millennials. I wanted a practical degree. I didn't want to need an advanced degree. I wanted 4 years of college and being ready to contribute to society. And so I went to business school at Wharton (yes, really... hi Donald). I now work at a government contractor that deals with health care and human services. What I've seen in over a year there is that my work is challenging and important, but only to a very small point. The health care innovation being tested around the country only marginally reduces costs and even more marginally improves outcomes. I have a hard time believing that once you subtract out the costs of doing business with a company like mine that any money is being saved at all. We do great, of course, but I'm not sure the ultimate outcome is significantly positive on society. So I haven't been one of those dreamers. But I feel I may want to be one.
I truly feel there is a significant amount of bad that's about to be unleashed - Not necessarily by the government. I reserve my judgment on how Trump will interact with Pence and with congressional republicans until we see it in action. There is a chance it is not as bad as I fear. A bipartisan effort on infrastructure rebuilding is something we can all agree on and is a good place for Trump to begin. Putting that front and center gives me a sliver of hope that he himself will not be as bad as advertised.
No, what I'm existentially threatened by are the supporters and what is to come at the state government level with limited federal restriction on them.
On a personal note, the demographic group that I selfishly fear most for are LGBT people. Just about a week ago, two friends of mine were gaybashed while leaving a house party in one of the gayest parts of DC. We've now just elected a VP who believes if you electrocute a homo enough, he'll turn straight. I am not particularly concerned about marriage equality, partly because it's not at all the highest priority for me, but mostly because I don't think the Supreme Court, even with a new 9th justice would overturn it. The 5 who granted the right are all still there and Roberts would likely respect the precedent too. I'm instead concerned with far worse. I live in a bubble in the DC area. When someone gets gaybashed here, it's major, shocking news. But that is not the case in many parts of the country. I know a college student who was bullied for being gay within his fraternity and committed suicide. I know a trans woman who had her parents die when she was young, then was cast away by her older sister when she came out as gay at 13 (came out again later on as trans). I myself tortured my parents with threats of suicide when I was closeted to them and being severely bullied in school. I know how hard this is for young LGBT people and we have just signaled to them that hatred (read: Pence's, not necessarily Trump's) is an accepted part of the US government. I am scared for resources being taken away for those who are HIV positive. Eliminating fair coverage for those with pre-existing conditions hurts many, like my cousins, among whom there's genetic diabetes, crohn's disease, and lupus, or among many women in my family with breast cancer. But it especially hurts many LGBT people who have HIV. I'm concerned public health resources for STD and HIV testing will be more difficult to attain, especially in my city, where congress sets much of local law for DC because they can. I am largely not concerned that my day to day ability to live and work freely will be damaged because I am in such a blue area. But I fear for kids who grow up like I did and the poor, typically minority LGBT folk with higher rates of HIV and little access to resources.
I have Muslim friends whose local community centers were literally blown up. I have a Muslim friend who had his windshield smashed in with a brick. These happened in Northern Florida and Georgia, respectively.
I have multiple female friends who have been raped. My mother was raped. We have just elected a man who, regardless of whether these newer allegations are true or exaggerated or even fabricated, we know is uncomfortably misogynistic. I know women who would ordinarily be taking birth control now planning on getting an IUD implanted within the next few months because they can last up to 10 or 15 years and will keep their contraception safe in the future.
I have quite a lot of non-citizen friends living in the US entirely legally on visas. Many of them are terrified that they will be made to leave in the course of trade agreements blowing up. One is brilliant. She works here on a visa that's easily attainable by virtue of our trade agreement with Singapore. Trump recently attacked this trade agreement. She wants to live and work here, but fears she will lose that privilege.
I have quite a lot of non-citizen friends who have at one point or another been here illegally. Some who were brought here as children, some who came on a visa and overstayed, some who came illegally as adults. One who came legally as a provisional asylum-grantee, waited years for his asylum application to be processed, be denied, try to apply for a visa he really should have applied for in the first place rather than asylum since he qualified, be told he can only apply for that type of visa from outside of the country, be forced to return home to a country he was not safe in, and wait 2 years for that new visa application to be processed, even with him paying a rush fee. He was a model citizen and a small business owner employing a handful of people. I have already seen the impact on their quality of life when either the federal government went after them or when Georgia passed laws second only to Arizona. While I am quite confident a literal wall will not be built, I fear what Republican policies will do to immigrant families, especially those of mixed status.
My hopes for much of what I consider to be American values, which are clearly shared by only about half of the country, now rest on the conviction of the more moderate house republicans to not rubberstamp an agenda and on senate republicans to not invoke the nuclear option on every little thing. It also rests on the health of an elderly woman named Ginsberg and the spines of two men named Kennedy and Roberts. There's not much for me to cling to. 2018 will likely only get worse, as it's an off-presidential year and the Democrats are defending many more senate seats.
And so with all this being said, I feel I am somewhat wasting away my passions and potential in a boring office job. I haven't yet decided if I will make a change. My personal passion lies in immigration. Maybe I will finally suck it up and go to law school to aid them. Lord knows the process is only about to get harder.
More power to you, my man! If you could become an advocate for streamlined, legal immigration that welcomes the best the world has to offer, you would have my support. Lord knows that [THE WALL] only addresses one part of a massive immigration mess.
I mean I'm less in hysteria about Trump himself than the fact that he has an entire red legislature behind him. Red as in the party who has literally had some of its membership threaten to shoot people like me in bathrooms. I'm not hysteric over Jim Crow Laws, their abolishing is too far ingrained into society. It's the more recent stuff that applies directly to me I'm in a tizzy about.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
so chilling now isnt it?
an interesting hypothetical: if the democrats nominated kanye west - not so far-fetched given his every statement is political - and he won the electoral college but not the popular vote on a strategy of suppressing turnout while encouraging every black and latino person to vote out of direct and irrational hatred for whites, would the current news take be "the noble rise of the black racist class" as it currently is? Before you argue the terms of the hypothetical, let me remind you of just who trump is: just as vulgar as west (grab her by the pussy being closer to sexual assault than the rather graphic content of kanye songs), just as ill-informed (what is the nuclear triad), just as unpredictable and easy to provoke (check out sex tape). the only difference is kanye has a knack for making statements that seem insane at the time but turn out to capture the history of the moment better than anything else - gw bush doesnt care about black people, taking the mic from taylor swift. as an answer to the hypothetical: no, it wouldnt be the tone of the coverage. it would be wailing endlessly about the electoral college, talking about the ignorance and racism of the black base that supported him so aggressively, and talking about how The System Needs to Change. they probably still would be fundamentally misunderstanding polling tho. Dont let a media attempting to prove so hard it isnt biased in a limbaugh way (it's not) or biased in a coastal way (it is) to have em sell you the faux class consciousness narrative vis a vis the white working class vote and TRADE. the senate repubs ran even with trump in a lot of places, those noble lot of trade protectionists and union righters. you know what they have in common? they dont like the people who dont look like them; this being a motivating factor is born out in studies.
yo
It's because of the electoral college basically Hillary ha dthe majority
of total votes but they count the votes based on the population of
the state that they come from so certain states count for more
and others count (...)
You don't know anything about history if you don't know anything
about the Electoral College it's happened before with Roosevelt
and it was destined to happen again. Hillary is a Fling Crimina;
anyway.
How is it[USA] supposed to be a democracy when the peoples
say means nothing?
.
To anyone saying that the electoral college is what's wrong with the country:
without the electoral college the countries leaders would essentially be decided
by the major cities. For one, this isn't fair, as the majority of major cities vote democrat.
However, in a theoretical world where popular vote wins elections the United States would
cease to be a democracy and become an obligarchy of major cities. The people living outside
of major citites would essentially have no say. If you remember from history class, the class system
in Middle Ages Europe, was a similar system, certain people were important and made decisions, and
certain people's voice did not matter. While I am not saying that if we used the popular vote alone, we
would come to a country with a caste system, I am not simply using it as a metaphor to prove a point.
.
The reason that Trump won is that he converted enough democratic countries in rust belt states to win the entier state. In united States elections the winner is the first candidate to win 270 electoral votes. If you look at the map of the election by individual country you'll see states that are massively red but have one ore two blue countries. Those are typically bigger cities and in Pennsylvania for example, from the big cities massive numbers wasn't quite enough to win over the other red countries. The system actually isn't broken, Hillary simply did not win any people who wouldn't be voting for her anyways. There was no surprises for the states that went for her anyways. There was no surprises for the states that went for Hillary. That is because a lot of major cities such as Chicago, LA, Philly, and is often enough to win. But not in the case of 2016 election because Trump went out and campaigned to the rust belt of the country (factory states and coal states) because he knew that he could get all the working class people to hear his voice. Its not rigged, its politics.
e: thats what I think.
Okay then, I still think we're screwed if he gets the nuclear codes. As for whether Clinton is ant-Russia enough to start a nuclear war, that is another discussion. Then again, does it matter? She'll never get to be President. If she couldn't beat Trump, she can kiss that dream on her bucket list goodbye.
The electoral college exists so that the small town folks actually matter. Otherwise you might just dismantle your form of democracy and call it dictatorial, because Democrats more or less control the big cities. Its auite simple and understandable.
I agree with that. I do not hold that worry at all anymore. I did however have it just a week back.
If there's any misspelling here, sorry. cold fingers and hones are not a good combo.
Well, he gets them. And I've seen his wish to keep good relationships with those that seeks it back (his victory speech), as well as having talked about working together with Russia instead of against it. Again, what will happen is hard to predict.
I agree with that. I do not hold that worry at all anymore. I did however have it just a week back.
If there's any misspelling here, sorry. cold fingers and hones are not a good combo.
As a foreign viewer the electoral college system really looks like some people's votes are worth more than others'.
The fact that one party "controls" cities shouldn't be a parameter, because votes should be independent.
It's not because a city's mayor is X that it should be taken into account when electing the president. If people are happy with the way X deals with the city + X's candidate they'll vote for X, if not they'll vote for Y. I don't know if i'm being clear
I'm not saying Trump election should be cancelled, what's done is done. But the system seems to exist just for low-populated areas weight more than they actually do, and i personnaly couldn't stand it if there were those kind of difference of treatment.
- Status