Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 733

I don’t actually see this as much of a realignment. It’s just the endgame of the Southern Strategy, coming to a head. Today’s Red America and Blue America isn’t really all that different than yesterday’s Gray America and Blue America. If White Identity Politics loses for a third time, if they’re no longer popular enough to be at the center of a national coalition, we can certainly hope for a more productive political realignment in the future, along, say, policy lines.

As for anti-reality, there’s a method to the madness: You call President Obama certain bad words, and you get pilloried, but you suggest maybe he has exotic origins that make him unlike the rest of us real Americans, and you get elected. Repeating patently and provably untrue things is often just a smokescreen, a way to assert group membership without betraying anything more malignant than stupidity. Trump made liberals laugh by denying reality, but he made white supremacists vote – and that was the goal.

NeverarGreat said:

Does anyone else get the feeling that America is in the midst of a political party realignment?

Now that everything that the (largely Republican) FBI does is labeled by the right as the ‘Deep State’, and the Republican congress and Executive branch has largely abandoned the traditions of those offices, it feels like Republicans have become deeply anti-traditional governance. Now Democrats are rushing to its defense, invoking the Constitution, giving governmental institutions the benefit of the doubt.

Similarly, the Democratic party is now more firmly the party of the educated elites, whereas the Republican party is courting more people who would otherwise be politically uninvolved.

Yes. The dusty old paradigms are being swept away (i.e. I disagree with CatBus). The religious and moral identities are being shaken up too.

CatBus said:

I don’t actually see this as much of a realignment. It’s just the endgame of the Southern Strategy, coming to a head. Today’s Red America and Blue America isn’t really all that different than yesterday’s Gray America and Blue America. If White Identity Politics loses for a third time, if they’re no longer popular enough to be at the center of a national coalition, we can certainly hope for a more productive political realignment in the future, along, say, policy lines.

As for anti-reality, there’s a method to the madness: You call President Obama certain bad words, and you get pilloried, but you suggest maybe he has exotic origins that make him unlike the rest of us real Americans, and you get elected. Repeating patently and provably untrue things is often just a smokescreen, a way to assert group membership without betraying anything more malignant than stupidity. Trump made liberals laugh by denying reality, but he made white supremacists vote – and that was the goal.

I agree with that. Though, don’t underestimate the fact that he lost the popular vote by a lot. He’s not representing the majority of this country or even the majority of voters in this country.

moviefreakedmind said:

CatBus said:

I don’t actually see this as much of a realignment. It’s just the endgame of the Southern Strategy, coming to a head. Today’s Red America and Blue America isn’t really all that different than yesterday’s Gray America and Blue America. If White Identity Politics loses for a third time, if they’re no longer popular enough to be at the center of a national coalition, we can certainly hope for a more productive political realignment in the future, along, say, policy lines.

As for anti-reality, there’s a method to the madness: You call President Obama certain bad words, and you get pilloried, but you suggest maybe he has exotic origins that make him unlike the rest of us real Americans, and you get elected. Repeating patently and provably untrue things is often just a smokescreen, a way to assert group membership without betraying anything more malignant than stupidity. Trump made liberals laugh by denying reality, but he made white supremacists vote – and that was the goal.

I agree with that. Though, don’t underestimate the fact that he lost the popular vote by a lot. He’s not representing the majority of this country or even the majority of voters in this country.

You always have to be the optimist, don’t you? 😉

Just a realist 😉

Now it appears there are Nazi links to the Russian payments to Trump’s lawyer. Quelle surprise.

GOP: The Party of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/09/gina-haspels-lack-of-clear-answers-on-torture-frustrate-senate-democrats

In other news, Avenetti is a showboat and a slippery eel (can’t say I like him one bit), but a smart slippery showboat, I’ll hand him that (and smart beyond simply knowing what makes other showboats tick, which he also does in spades). The numbers he reported on Cohen’s payments from various sources were all wrong, and much lower than the actual values. Some of the American companies stepped in to correct the numbers since the story was already out there anyway (if you think you might be headed to court, it’s a good idea to be on the record stating the truth from the get-go). I’d like to have been the AT&T or Novartis rep who said “This story is incorrect – our bribe was triple the reported value.”

There’s some speculation about why he might have done this. It gave the story some extra legs on the news cycle, a second round with increased numbers. But I think it was more likely spycraft. If you get handed a sensitive leaked document, you do not post an image of that document (bad move, Reality Winner). You carefully paraphrase everything, re-using none of the original text. And unless the numbers are publicly available elsewhere, you change all the numbers too, so long as it doesn’t change the overall thrust of the story. Any verbatim text or even close numbers could potentially point back to the source. And now some of the correct numbers are available to the public, and Avenetti wasn’t the one who put them out there. Smooth.

An interesting ‘Fact Check’ video on Trump’s recent speech on the Iran deal…

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/994080271170461698

TV’s Frink said:

oojason said:

An interesting ‘Fact Check’ video on Trump’s recent speech on the Iran deal…

There’s no point in fact checking anything he says anymore though.

Yeah, no point anymore.

Today in cop news:

http://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2018/05/10/cmpd-officer-charged-with-shoplifting

So many evil cops I can’t even keep track!

https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police-practices/police-command-and-control-culture-often-lethal

#JailAllCops

I think all abusive cops should be executed for treason.

That last one wasn’t hyperbole. I think that a cop using his power to beat the shit out of someone warrants the death penalty.

Abusive cops promised and accepted money to use their power to protect their subjects and instead they used their near-absolute authority and power to harass and abuse their subjects.

Lol! This kid is awesome:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/10/david-hogg-mocks-oliver-north-over-iran-contra/

I had to do a presentation in Gov class on some presidents and I made fun of Reagan and Iran-Contra and in the weeks following I have heard the same kid tell me “BUT BILL CLINTON DID IRAN-CONTRA TOO!” or something and it’s tiresome.

Because I’m a dumb lib’ral I guess so I have to be epically owned by being informed by Rational Free-Thinker Conservatives like himself that actually the Clintons are evil. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯