Welcome to McFuckistan.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
146 Comments
Just as he began his speech, it began to rain.
Do you think this means that the gods are somehow allied against him?
If so…why did they let him win?
It’s just the weather, Lucidamente.
Just the weather…
AG
Monotheist.
That I am, Booman.
That I am.
AG
I would have gone with humorless pedant, but that’s just me.
No accounting for tastes…
AG
I agree!
Wow,
You managed to find something I have been seeking for years..a brief and concise definition of a libertarian/Rand acolyte. ‘Humorless Pedant’ is perfect..and only two words. Without pictures!
.
Who’s working on those “We are so fucked !!” T-shirts? Do I have to do everything around here myself?
Plus … formula for serenity: Herbal tea of your choice; dry whole wheat toast; old Gilmore Girls reruns. Try it.
don’t forget your daily walk around the neighborhood. See the neighbors’ doggies … all the same. People walking, jogging, riding bicycles … all the same. Grocery store is still open, with relatively inexpensive food. Lots of rain … more to come … the 5-6 year California drought is over? Is this a great year or what?
William Henry Harrison caught a chill at his inauguration as I recall….
My first thought. And his VP went on to become one of the four or five worst presidents to date.
This is my consolation. Oldest president ever inaugurated. 70 is not the new 50.
Pence would be pretty grim. Even worse, probably, policy-wise (Trump may balk at some of the most extreme stuff.) The only advantage would be that I’d be less worried about hard fascism and canoodling with the Russian. Neo-fascism, by which I mean fascist economic policies but power achieved with electoral rigging rather than concentration camps, would still be a strong possibility – maybe stronger.
Oh totally. 360 degrees of suck no matter what, but with less propensity for radiation poisoning and mass death.
As the American Madman shovels out the piles of horseshit about “all Americans”, we know that actions speak louder than words and Crackpot Cabinet reveals all.
I should be getting paid in about a week, and will renew some memberships, like the ACLU, and make donations to our local women’s shelter and Planned Parenthood. Down the road, if it still exists, I’ll donate to Public Broadcasting. We have to back up our beliefs in every way we can. My small donations won’t move the earth, but a lot of small ones can make a difference.
ACLU January 19,2017 In First of Many, ACLU FOIA Request Seeks Information About the New President’s Conflicts of Interests
At least one group is doing something constructive about the darkness to come.
One of the first orders of business for the Trump Admin is to completely privatize NPR/PBS. So I’d hold off on that donation for a while to see how it pans out.
Already some commentators on NPR – for example Mara Liason – are from Fox, and NPR, imo, has become more and more Fox Lite. I can’t wait for Murdoch to take it over and make it a Fox clone.
FYI.
Welcome bigly
I am confused. Reading many of the comments the past 8 months, didn’t we all already enter McFuckistan under Bill Clinton or Obama? Didn’t we avoid re entering by dodging the Hillary bullet?
Did everyone remember to turn their clocks back one century or 60 years last night depending on time zone and what region of the country you live?
Not 60 years, and not 100 either.
Just back to 1981.
36 years.
Only…Trump is 100 times smarter than was Reagan, even before Ronnie lost most of his marbles to senility.
100 times more dangerous, too.
Bet on it.
AG
Contempt and hatred lead to a mindset of misunderstimation. He’s a smart guy. Just not like people think. He’s also a cheat, and doesn’t pay his bills.
Yes. He is a smart guy. And…he is also as crooked as a snake with a broken back. A dangerous combination. “Misunderstimation” is the perfect word for what the so-called opposition has done so far. Thank you for the word.
And here is the inevitable result:
Bill and Hillary Clinton unhappily watching Donald Trump being inaugurated.
The people here who earned the same kind of 1000 yard stare by consistently misunderestimating Trump’s intelligence and drive to succeed have no one to blame but themselves. A little mea culpa action would do wonders for their future opposition. But NOOOoooo…almost all of we are getting is more self-serving name calling and further support for the devolved DNC that made the whole fiasco possible.
Unbelievable.
Y’all think that Schumer and Pelosi won’t sidle right up to Trump in the back rooms…Kissinger-style…and trade favor for favor?
Please!!!
That’s how they got where they are now. They are undoubtedly at this very moment plotting how they can maintain their position by any means necessary, including selling you right down the river.
Bet on it.
AG
Photos like that generally lie. There were probably many moments during the inauguration when anyone with a somber, stone-face, or glum facial expression could have been captured on film. But it was the Clintons, who everybody knows aren’t, nor should they be, pleased to see Trump installed that a photographer sought to get in that moment.
It was a cheap stunt. One that decent people would recognize it for what it was and not plaster on blogs, etc. It’s bad enough that we have to deal with the Trumpster boors that have no sense of decency or decorum.
All true, but the fact that these things spread speaks to what lies behind fake news. Almost everybody, including me, expects Hillary’s feeling pretty down right now, and when something “confirms” that people jump on it – even when the actual evidence, as you point out, proves nothing. And indeed, TPM had a photo of Hillary looking pretty chipper as she greeted somebody at the inaugural, which doesn’t prove anything either. I’ll bet that one ends up in a lot fewer social media posts, though.
Bet you all the money in my pocket, versus all the money in yours that the “Happy” picture pops up in a fair share of social media posts to show $hillary is just a Trump loving neoliberal sellout like we always knew.
I have zero in my pocket and wouldn’t take that bet. Why would anyone use such a photo (a nearly mandatory public appearance with an expectation that one behave graciously, cordially, or at least wear a game-face) to make that claim?
Plus, the Clinton-Trump relationship was well established in photos before 2016.
People will use the photo, because people are assholes. Sometimes the easiest answer, is the correct answer.
At the inaugural lunch — not exactly happy faces. (Although non-expression is a way of preserving a high-end make-up job. (Never claimed that I can’t be as catty as others. Speaking of which, a few in the Trump family neglected to touch up their roots.)
Cause they couldn’t get a freebie.
Maybe they had to economize after buying their new duds. Melania in Ralph Lauren (as was Hillary) and Ivanka in Oscar de la Renta (third new outfit from that fashion house in two days). (Tiffany’s allowance appears to limit her to the budget rack.)
Heh.
Did they really have to go to this? Is that protocol or something?
Health permitting and airplane travel available, it is standard protocol for all former presidents and their spouses to attend. (GHWB and Barbara were excused.)
I disagree, Marie. One reason that I use so many images is that the old saw “A picture is worth a thousand words” resonates very clearly to me. If you have some idea of the circumstances under which a picture was taken and a further idea about who that person really is…an idea that HRC tried to hide from the cameras during both of her runs for the preznitcy but failed miserably in both attempts… images can be very easily read. We all know HRC’s false smile…here it is as she shakes hands w/Pence at the inaguration.
It’s the diplomacy smile.
Bill seems to have lost those chops…he looks like he’s about to throw a left cross on the guy…and the bald SS agent looks like a bouncer who smells trouble in a bad bar but doesn’t exactly know yet where it’s going to start.
An interesting picture….alla those 5 star guys in the background and all…
Anyway…back to work.
Gotta save up fer them rainy days a’comin’ and all…
Later…
AG
Smart like a fox, as my mother used to say. I don’t think he’s all that smart. I think you can accomplish a lot if you don’t play by the rules and others try to. Even in business. He wasn’t a smart businessman. He hired people who figured out how he could pay not takes and leave his investors holding the bag when he went bankrupt.
Let’s be clear, if the next moves coming from Trump’s administration are a consolidation of internal security among loyalists and a Reichstag fire then we’re officially past the fork in the road leading to fascism. The media has folded, the Democratic party, with one or two notable exceptions, seems oblivious to the threat, our fellow citizens are either exultant with white entitlement, not engaged or freaking out, to little effect, on social media. Prognosis?
Prognosis?
Business as usual, sounds like to me.
Same hustle, different hospital.
ASG
But we’re no longer treating pre-existing conditions.
My thought? America was a second-rate power when lynching was a national pastime. Other colonial powers dominated the world economy by transactional white supremacy, just like the South with slavery and Jim Crow; the colonial powers mustered great pools of indentured labour which they housed, fed, bossed and transported to where needed in their global economies. This is where modern white supremacism finds its civic history but it was always a very unsavoury arrangement.
The great innovation of the United States and its businessmen, overlooking for the moment United Fruit and others, was to let the dollar do the work. Instead of labour camps under colonial administration American businessman ‘outsourced’ exploitation to indigenous local governments which their internationalism had conveniently enabled. As the British, French and Dutch colonial empires collapsed after the Second World War Roosevelt insisted the on the liberation of many former colonial possessions; a notable thing. Of course in the next moment US businesses moved in and made favourable deals at the expense of the former colonial powers.
My point, however, is that as long ago as 1940s we outsmarted the white supremacists; we said ‘all men are created equal; lets make a deal’ while they couldn’t bring themselves to grant autonomy to the locals because their silly ideology forbade them from accepting that former servants populations could or should self-govern. Stupid, right? Yet this was the fundamental driver which gave the US global economy its initial big push and it was a hum-dinger.
So now we are throwing that all over to join the ranks of the unreconstructed colonialists that missed out on the sweetest business model of the 20th century? Turning our backs on the earlier age of innovation and American ingenuity?
Adopt the world-view that was crippling colonial economies by 1920? Why would we do that? Our first reaction to neoliberalism takes us back to before Wilson. Not a happy global place.
Yes. The Civil War is over, and we lost.
For once I don’t believe your joking. It’s sobering.
I’ve always said that the north won the war, but the south has won all the pr battles since.
Did they? Or is this all just one long, unpleasant assisted suicide? History rolls on.
You write:
We’re not?
How so?
Explain, please.
Also…as evil as it was, “lynching” was never a “national pastime,” it was largely confined to the ex-Confederate states, lasted until well after the U.S. became not only an international power but pretty much the international power, and was not confined entirely to racial lynchings.
An interesting list:
You also write:
The U.S.didn’t “outsmart” them, Shaun. It simply out-powered them, especially after they were seriously weakened by WW II. And the U.S. business end was just as “white supremacist” in those countries as had been the case in the previous colonies, witness the many covert regime changes in brownish countries that were thoroughly brokered by U.S. intelligence every time some regime began to try to stand up the ongoing, U.S.-led, economic imperialist ripoff of their countries.
More:
Actually, the Trump mindset is much closer to Mussolini’s than anyone else’s. One of the originally successful expressions of the “fascist” idea was Italian.
Kinda high-minded rhetoric compared to Trump’s but still…doesn’t it sound familiar in its general outline?
I think so.
AG
I meant the condition of our ‘original sin’.
Wow, that’s a lot of lynchings. I’m sticking with ‘pastime’.
You get my point, we didn’t administer, with previous caveats, indentured service global labour resources in occupied colonies such as Great Britain, France et al. We let the dollars do it.
Totally agree about Mussolini vis Trump; hence Il Douche. Difference being I have come to see Trump as an arch white supremacist whether he realises it or not. Not sure what Mussolini’s evil shadow was beyond narcissism, bullying and vanity.
In 1886 there we about 58 million people n the U.S.; in 1986 there were 200 million. Assuming steady growth, the average population during that time was say 120 million people. Since population growth is a geometric progression of sorts…the more people, the more babies…that 120 million people average is probably pretty low, but let’s take it as a reasonable estimate.
If there was an average of 120 million people in the U.S. during that time and there were 4,473 lynchings during that time, then every citizen bore about .000037275% of of the guilt for those lynchings. Not exactly a “national pastime,” Shaun. Considering the number of deaths and maimings on both sides of the various conflicts in which the U.S. was involved during those years…the larger ones being the Spanish-American War, WW I, WW II, Korea and Vietnam…it would be more accurate to call the national pastime of the U.S. international murder and injury in the pursuit of wealth. I’d accept that one. But lynchings? Mostly the national pastime of the real deplorables of those times, not the average American.
These gene-sunk fucks.
Not my grandparents, great-grandparents or parents, and probably not yours either.
AG
P.S. In certain areas, it was indeed a terrible time. But most Americans were not involved in it, and would have opposed it if they had the power to do so.
Billie Holiday-Strange Fruit:
The Ron Paul acolyte and nonstop opponent of Hillary from August to November asks us to understand that lynching in the U.S. wasn’t really that big a deal. Our families probably didn’t string the rope up, so whatevs.
Thanks for the Billie recording, though; it helps wash the mathematical and rhetorical filth away.
Lady Day’s performance also helps wash away the filth of the imagery shared by the Ron Paul acolyte and nonstop opponent of Hillary from August to November. The Paulite doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt for the motivations behind his decision to use that horrifying photograph as bizarre “evidence” for his questionable proposal. No benefit of the doubt at all.
I neither welcome nor need your “benefit of the doubt,” centristfield. The many thousands of screaming victims of your preferred politicians disqualify you from any moral consideration whatsoever.
AG
The new President’s team is certain to conduct the foreign and domestic policies Arthur is calling for. Can’t we smell the moral clarity? Which nominee is AG’s favorite, Secretary of State EXXON or Attorney General Beauregard??
Maybe it was when Trump said he wanted to fill up Guantanamo Bay, torture the families of people he calls terrorists, and use nuclear weapons. Maybe it was when Trump spewed out hateful rhetoric when people with Middle Eastern heritage conducted non-deadly attacks while ignoring people like the dirtbag who conducted mass murder in an African-American church for the stated purpose of trying to spark a race war. Maybe it was when the KKK endorsed Trump’s campaign. Those oh-so-moral moments during the campaign must have collectively convinced Arthur that his anti-Hillary work product must be increased.
Arthur thinks he’s going to roll out his vile, bullying, racist-enabling rhetoric on this community free of charge today of all days? No.
Your “charges” are actually contributions, centristfield. Thank you. Every downrating from you and your allies, every lame-headed accusation is another recommendation for what I am…and have been..saying here for years.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Your DNC people are…perhaps…a tinch less wrong than are the Trumpistas. The jury of history is still out on that case, and it will be for at least a decade. Meanwhile you grump and slump through your own two-dimensional view of the world as if there is some sort of objective “right” and “wrong” going on As if a crooked cop hustling crooked drug dealers is a valid choice for those of us who want something better. I do not argue with you for any reason other than the possibility of reaching other people who may not have yet figured out what is going on in this Scylla and Charybdis set of choices we have been offered by the controllers. You have proven yourself beyond reach, whjch is perfectly OK with me. If there were not other people on this see-saw trying to figure out right from wrong I’d just walk away from you the way I walk away from other fools on the street….with an eye on you and a stick in my hand just in case you lose it.
Best of luck in the future.
You’re gonna need it.
ASG
For fuck’s sake Booman, I understand you aren’t into banning toxic posters but can we at least get some editorial intervention on this post please?
“sure lynching was bad but it didn’t happen that much and war is bad too and it’s surely nobody’s fault but the lynchers themselves and also here’s a photo of a lynching har har har”
Just despicable.
You just have a problem comprehending stuff, which is why you troll rate everything. Nothing wrong with AG’s post.
Add up all the western states, let alone in the “north,” and you have quite a few.
What in your comment could provoke a down-rating? Puzzled.
“by Arthur Gilroy” That’s all the mad troll rater needs to see. Several of us have been complaining about this for some time, and of late it has lightened up but is still too prevalent.
The one person on the whole site who picked Trump eighteen months ago? And warned us the while? I reckon Arthur should get an automatic, free “4-Excellent” on each comment for the next year.
Unfortunately the DNC clones…both among us and out in what we laughingly call the “real” world…are too busy trying to find scapegoats to excuse their failure.
So it goes.
They’re like gnats, Shaun.
Ignore them.
AG
Blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
A shame AG was the only “blind squirrel” that found a nut and weighed in here while all but a couple others laughed and mocked Trump from June 2015 through election day November 2016.
Those the get it completely wrong and then proceed to mock those that got it right are demonstrating that they have learned nothing and acting like jackasses.
Sadly, Marie…they are not “acting.”
It’s a lifework and a curse.
AG
Truly, truly a shame. #notreallyashame I’ll take the complaint about jackassery with a grain of salt as I’ve been a target of unprovoked downratings my own self.
From my July 22, 2015 diary review of the polls:
That was in reference to both the Democratic nomination and general election.
WARNING!!
“Clinton gets markedly negative favorability ratings in each state, 35 – 56 percent in Colorado, 33 – 56 percent in Iowa and 41 – 50 percent in Virginia. “
In July of 2015, when no one knew who the hell Bernie was. So much for blaming Bernie.
I remember everytime Q would come out in 2015 and early 2016 people would rush to denounce the numbers.,
I tracked Rubio and Walker in trial heats and ran Monte Carlo simulations.
On July 22nd here are the simulations:
Clinton wins 53% of the Simulations against Walker, 48% against Rubio 48% and 52% against Bush.
On October 19th she won only 19% of the simulations against Rubio, but 53% of them against Trump.
There were warning signs all over the place in 2015.
But we were running against Trump – so we thought it was a piece of cake.
I was concerned because I looked at WI, MI, and OH, saw who they chose for their governors, what those governors did once elected, and those governors success or failure at re-election. The people of Wisconsin want Scot Walker, don’t want Russ Feingold, and are cool with punching unions in the face. Same with MI. I had slim faith in the American people but I should have known better. After all, Nixon, Reagan and Bush jr. all won twice.
Did you go out on a limb in real time and document your “concern” in writing for others to see as AG, Fladem, and I did?
Props for AG aren’t because he called the outcome, he shied away from directly making that call. What he did do that was spot on was pooh-pooed that Hillary would win by a comfortable margin, but his better call was directly attention to more rural areas in PA that he personally had some familiarity with.
For months fladem was concerned about CO. We disagreed on that. My take was that Bennet in the Senate race was strong enough to win and Johnson would peel off enough rightward leaning votes. I was more concerned about NV, and Clinton did do worse and Trump better there than in CO, but it wasn’t a squeaker for Clinton.
I only got as far as recognizing that Trump needed to carry MI, PA, or WI to win but was never able to wrap my mind around the possibility he could pull it off in one of those three states. A lesson to give more weight to leaching from a bordering state that was swinging far away from where it had been in the last election. Clinton was off 7.5 points in OH and 10 points in IA and that was evident before the primary cycle had concluded.
I did underestimate the Trump vote in NH, but Hillary still won there.
I was mostly a lurker until recently, so no, I didn’t “go out on a limb.” a I don’t really consider sharing comments on a blog “going out on a limb”. I did work the fuck out of the phone banks. I didn’t really pay attention to the polls too much, just looked at what the voters in those states actually supported and said, “we’re fucked.”
They planned to make it by pitting her against an opponent that got even more net negative favorability ratings.
Fascinating to look back as what we should have known then.
Here’s that Q July 2015 poll of CO, IA, and VA. The “haven’t heard of” are interesting. In CO, surprising that it was only 39% for Sanders and Rubio. At 11%, seems low for a sitting VP (political junkies tend to over-rate the name ID of a sitting VP).
Wasn’t it shortly after this polling that some began pushing for Biden to get in the race. He was only a few points less known that Clinton and his unfavorables were less than Clinton’s. Still net negative in CO and IA, but Clinton’s were net negative in all three.
The only match-ups they polled were Bush, Walker, and Rubio against Clinton, Biden, and Sanders. Odd since Cruz and Paul had been in the race for months and Trump was in almost a month before Walker. Still, other than Biden, Clinton, Trump, and the a much lesser extent Bush, the other candidates were too unknown for these opinions to reflect more than a rough impression of fav/unfav. Walker was sitting up there with Carson and yet, he was out within weeks.
However, the match-up for Biden and Clinton v. Bush did reveal that “mood” I mentioned and which the DP and Clinton campaign seemed to dismiss. Yet, in the early going, such a “mood” (favoring the out-party after eight years) is probably always present, but not predictive. How to over-ride for the in-party and how to capitalize on it for the out-party is always the question.
The killer for Hillary was “not honest and trustworthy” and “doesn’t care about people like me” and that’s exactly where Trump went. And Hillary never found a way to throw that back at him to get better than a draw.
I was pretty pessimistic for most of 2015 (I even said that in your diary).
The honest and trust worthy numbers just were never good, and people were in denial.
You didn’t listen to yourself. Granted it wasn’t easy to do considering the GOP candidates and the completely improbable Trump candidacy.
I didn’t get there either even as I tried to factor in how unqualified GWB had been and being a Californian recognized in 1980 that Reagan had become mentally dull and was relying on his acting skills by hitting his marks and reciting his lines. (Too many forgot that four years earlier the dull Ford had bested Reagan for the nomination.) By ’84 Reagan really was out-to-lunch.
Even from the early polls it was evident that “generic Republican” was favored over “generic Democrat,” but there weren’t any “generic” party candidates in the race. The one that came closest to that seemed to be Kasich, but like Jeb?, he was so low energy and so dull that IMO he fell short of “generic Republican.” A rather remarkable situation considering that there were sixteen candidates. Their bench was thin. Bob Corker, who declined and didn’t have any political set-backs, big black marks, or ethics issues, would have have been the closest they could get to that. (Portman is a duller version of Romney.)
The Democratic bench was wiped (with a big cloth) that left Hillary and the pretend opponent MOM. But even without the bench wiping those some viewed as on on the bench were a weak lot for various reasons.
But blind nuts never can figure out when the squirrels are coming.
AG
“picked” is the problem and in this instance too descriptive. That’s different from an objective evaluation and forewarning as I offered on September 1, 2015 (These guys are between a rock and prayer rug for the implosion of Trump. Then things will get even crazier.) and September 6, 2015 (wherein I objectively considered “MAGA.” Conclusion/opinion: While I’m far from ready to conclude that team Trump has consciously put together a winner of a slogan, have to recognize it for what it is and it does make the task for all the other candidates that much more difficult.)
Yea – don’t agree with AG much (though the Lynching numbers were pretty interesting).
But he surely saw Trump as a real threat well before most did here.
When someone turns out to be right about something that most everyone was wrong about, I tend to want to listen to them after.
My name.
AG
marduk is just 2 tacos short of a full combo platter in the comprehension dept. Not a real sharp cookie. Anything more sophisticated than 3rd grade level gets a troll rating.
Gee, how odd that marduk and nalbar, both short in the comprehension department, troll-rated me. Gee, I’m intimidated.
“if”
I have always been one to say “cross that bridge when we come to it”. We haven’t come to that bridge.
What I do expect to happen in the next few days is a bunch of executive orders cancelling Obama’s executive orders. Live by the executive order, die by the same. DACA is gone, DAPA is gone. Hopefully the mangling and extreme torturing of Title IX are gone.
That’s what I think will happen by Jan 31.
No we haven’t but I know where my next markers stand; and for the first time since 1968 they’re directly in line-of-sight.
Tomorrow is the Women’s March in D.C. It’s mind boggling. After the most thorough and humiliating defeat of the Democratic Party since anyone knows when, the organizers of this march seem to be encouraging everyone to keep wandering in the wilderness of identity politics for the foreseeable future. But wasn’t exactly that the mindset that poisoned the Democratic well: one old woman telling young women they are being influenced by their attraction to boys in treehouses and another one condemning women in general to a special place in hell if they didn’t toe the Party line. This old, boring news is unfortunately applicable as ever as the failed mindset keeps its grip. Why not a People’s March? Might that not be a bit more inclusive and energizing. I’d think so, but then I’m an old, crotchety man, a lot like Bernie Sanders in fact.
Even the name. “Women’s march”. I’m not a woman. I wouldn’t dream of going.
I’m enough of a man that I’m comfortable joining a ‘Women’s March,’ and I will.
well said.
.
Yes YOU, but it’s not about YOU. Don’t you people get it yet? Of course, join. But the mindset that is being projected into the future will be the downfall of not only women but also men. All the power has been lost in this election to reactionary forces. ALL. Ruminate on it. The organizers of the Women’s March have no clue as to how they can bundle political power to influence the future, no matter how praiseworthy their intentions. This will just go the way of Occupy.
What the hell does this all have to do with being a man anyway?
They are who organized it and the core of issues around why it was organized.
Some men do understand the issues that women must contend with that men don’t and some are so gender insecure that they have to keep proving they are a real man by separating themselves from everything culturally tagged as “feminine”. Some men are capable of empathy for their wives, daughters, mothers, aunts, and sisters, indeed women as a class in American society, and some are ignorant of those issues because they themselves never experience them.
Then there are the men who actively work to create the issues in women’s lives. Trump is among these.
It’s not about ‘the issues’ women have to contend with. It’s about the issues we ALL have to contend with. The Democrat’s common denominator needs to be financial equality. Rich women hardly have to contend with the same issues as poor ones. Class struggle is the table of neoliberalism and it’s most successful red herring. We are all middle class at heart, even Donald Trump. No one is going to give anyone a break anymore. I’ve just come back from Davos have seen the light.
When you pick a name, you include some, and you exclude others.
“Women’s march” excludes men.
Black lives matter” excludes non-blacks.
This is Identity Politics 101. If you pick a name, be inclusive. I’m not a woman. If you want me on your march, call it the “People’s March” or the “Freedom March”.
If you want your little snowflake group, use a snowflake name.
Sounds like you’re the snowflake. Me, I hear “Women’s March” I say “Sign me up.”
I think you need remedial high school Identity Politics if this is your understanding of “Identity Politics 101.”
I’m white and, not being totally nonsentient, have never felt remotely “excluded” by the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” That’s the province of frightened reactionaries who, being conservatives, don’t understand compensatory measures in even the most rudimentary way.
OK, goody for you.
A signal moment in that last election occurred in Portland, where Bernie Sanders had his microphone stolen by the BLM thugs, and he couldn’t get it back.
Every time BLM says, does, or acts, Democrats lose.
Period. Because BLM is a thoroughly racist organization. And it pisses off a huge proportion of the populace.
That’s what identity politics is. You take an organization. You identify with it, even though you know that a huge proportion of the populace finds it abhorrent.
The longer Dems associate with BLM, the worse it will be for them.
Saying one’s life matters in the face of police brutality and state plunder is racist.
“Because BLM is a thoroughly racist organization.”
I strongly recommend refreshing our collective memory of this moment in American history.
“…I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative…”.
Read on. I implore you, read on.
There are all kinds of issues out there affecting POC, LGBTQ, even white people. At a time when everything is in some danger of loss it seems a little odd we would march for one group. It is about empathy for the people who may lose health care, and see SSMM cut and taking back the white vote lost to trade and just fucking dumb shit. And whatever happened to the minimum wage and inequality that keeps on going Jamie Dimon just got a 4% raise to $38 million. Fuck you say? But sure I can support the march as freaking silly it is in face of fascism.
Ain’t nobody stopping you. Women took the initiative, wonder why?
That attitude won’t fix it. You are staring at a party with near zero leadership.
Identity politics is what won this election for Trump, brah. White identity.
Good point, and one that is so often overlooked.
Maureen Dowd, You’re just as goofy as your namesake. Who cares how Trump won or might have lost? It’s about taking back power and that will not happen with the fractious identity politics the Democrats practice to divide and dominate. If you’re right about Trump’s identity politics, you might agree at least that white includes men and women of all social and economic categories and classes. Quite a few blacks and hispanics kicked in to increase his numbers. So what are you talking about. It’s either all the people or none: sell that to the classy, glitzy, arrogant Democrats.
Balls. Women have probably the most to lose under the “pussy grabber” in chief. They want to march as women, let them. Trump made a direct appeal to white supremacy, and that’s what won the day.
And thats the double truth, Ruth.
I think you are not understanding what he is saying. To me he is saying this is not about women but about all of us. It would be better to have a general march than one that singles out one group, albeit a very important one but not greater than say POC or white people in general. The party has a long way to go to fix this mess, if they even can.
And what precisely is stopping this better, more inclusive march, except the failure of anybody who cares enough — in a better, more inclusive way, of course — to organize it?
Are you suggesting we don’t have leaders anymore, just cheerleaders?
Given enough followers, the leaders will eventually turn up.
Yes, it is their destiny.
You are not understanding what MDL is saying and you didn’t understand the march or the masses of people around the globe that took time out of their busy lives to make a statement.
Though what you say has merit. I humbly suggest you stop your mansplaining and take yesterday for what is was.
You want a more inclusive organization? The best organization we came up with to achieve our country’s goals for the common good is our United States Government. Demonized by Reagan and his GOP/Trump descendants, our American heritage is under attack by monied interests as it has been throughout history. You want a better message start with your local government.
“Who cares how Trump won or might have lost?”
L
O
L
and
W
T
F
.
No, Trump and Republicans don’t practice fractious identity politics crystal-clearly meant to divide and dominate. Not at all.
I’ll also point out that the Women’s Marches are not being organized thru the Democratic Party at all. Also, too, women banding together with men like me (yes, men are invited to marches meant to support women’s rights, so weird!) to defend themselves against the horrible policy proposals and statements of the pussy-grabber-in-chief and his retrograde Congressional majorities is a completely defensible strategy. So this “classy, glitzy, arrogant” critique seems inappropriate as well, at many levels.
In other news, a writer who should know better made a similar flawed assumption.
Elections in America are won by who shows up.
If people who voted for Obama voted for Clinton in the same numbers in some of those purple states, Trump would have lost and lost resoundingly.
So for all you Democrats who stayed home because Hillary was so evil and was just as bad as a republican, you will soon learn how wrong you were – Arthur Gilroy…
And yet the people who voted for Bernie overwhelmingly (the young) revel in this kind of politics the same way they do with Black Lives Matter.
They do?
That is why young women overwhelming voted for Sanders over Clinton?
I seem to remember Gloria Steinham and Madeline Albright being mad because young women WEREN”T voting for their identity. From the Times:
I am confused Seabe.
What’s confusing? The people most comfortable with “identity politics” is the younger generation, who were Sanders largest supporters, and you’d also see it in polling on issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Reducing identity politics to just voting for Clinton because she is a woman as Steinem and Albright did is reactionary thinking, as Jordan Orlando commented above.
I think you are dead wrong about that.
It was the Clinton campaign that was about identity politics, not the Sanders campaign.
Something you could absolutely see at the Convention in Philadelphia.
And after the election it was Sanders who said we had to move beyond identity politics, and he was attacked by the Clinton wing of the party.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democrats-identity-politics-231710
It depends how you define identity politics. Am I going to be cheering if Cheryl Sanberg is elevated to a position of power? No. But she’s not elevated on ID politics but her adherence to neoliberal ideology.
Sanders didn’t say that, that is how the media framed it, although his wording was poor.
Trump won on the greatest, most bigly identity politics campaign in the history of the United States. The very first major policy statement Orange Mussolini made in his campaign launch speech was the most famous identity politics issue of the entire year.
He won the Electoral College.
Let me know when you put the website up. I’ll go to that one too.
Fucking exactly. Jesus these assholes.
Like it or not this is our great struggle. A republic if we can keep it.
38,000 feet above Kansas right now and it seems like a universe away from the world I am going to be stepping into in about 2 hours. Reading some of the comments here convinces me that this is going to be a weekend spent outdoors and away from just about anything or anyone who wishes to jerk me back into reality right now. Two days respite is probably all that is left for my mind. Jesus, I am still so fucking unable to wrap it around the fact that this is real and I live in time and place where we could bring something like this on ourselves.
. . . like this on” all of us.
Just to be precise.
McFuckistan deserves a McCliche inaugural speech, and that is what we got.
Campaign lines, not statement of principals other than lines culled from previous inauguration speeches and tossed out in 140-character units.
A normalizing speech, not a call to arms, despite some martial rhetoric.
If you dare read it, tell me the tag line that history will remember. The equivalent of the “Ask not….” copulet of JFK’s inaugral in 1961.
Donal Trump’s Inaugural Address — Full Text As Prepared for Delivery
“…tell me the tag line that history will remember.”
Oh.
He didn’t say that?
He shoulda.
It’s going to be closer to the truth.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
1) Fashion questions:
Do all the Trumpkin men wear ridiculously long ties with the godfather’s always being the longest?
Is this a coming fashion statement for men? Or one that Trumpsters will adopt? That would greatly simplify identifying the Trumpster rubes from the those with more sense.
2) The Intercept – Donald Trump Preaches Angry Nationalism While Practicing Goldman Sachs Capitalism
Did Trump crib anything from either of Obama’s inaugural addresses? (It’s not like his gang didn’t copy the ’09 “We are One” free concert and there was that lifting from Michelle Obama’s speech; although the neither were anywhere near as good as what they stole from.)
I thought the ’12 speech echoed Kennedy’s ’60 speech when I heard it.
I well remember this:
As is true in any liberal gathering the attendees were to the left of Obama, as indeed most Democratic gatherings are in my experience, and there were a lot of gay people around me. The mention of Stonewall placed in that historic context actually drew tears.
The speech in ’12 was trying to put the liberal project in historical perspective as did, I think, the ’60 address.
What is remarkable about Trump’s speech its lack of historical connection to the American Experience.
Actually, Marie…people with real sense simply don’t wear ties.
Street sense
They are simply too handy a tool for someone to grab.
Plus they no longer serve any real purpose since the advent of buttons and zippers. They’re just a class marking, now.
White collar and all that.
Real style?
Miles Davis
Stylin’!!!
AG
Body adornments or decorations have rarely served any purpose. Including all the stuff being worn by the guy you approve of.
Soupy Sales wore ridiculous ties for comic effect. Trump wears ridiculously long ties because he has crappy taste, right along with his penchant for living in a gilded apartment.
Actually Miles used his sense of style to become a star in the jazz world. Not that he couldn’t play…he was a master melodist among other things, plus he was the best contractor…chooser of sidemen…who ever lived except for maybe Count Basie and Duke Ellington. He was also a great hustler. His clothes were part of the hustle.
AG
I think the Trump lads are trying to emulate their hero, Patrick Bateman.
I sat out in the cold and listened to a very good speech from Obama. Such a happy day. We got there 4 hours early because of the nightmare that was 2008 (where the crowd just over whelmed security) and we never did get to our seats.
I remember comparing the applause for Biden and Clinton to see if it said anything about 2016 (not much of a difference).
Such a happy memory now destroyed.
this cuz they’re tough, especially about the future . . . thx, Yogi):
“Jobs, jobs, jobs” will be the (invalid) excuse/rationalization for zealous gutting/elimination/rolling back of government regulations.
(Schoolhouse-Rock moment: regulations are simply how the government implements the express wishes of Congress. If Congress hasn’t passed, and the Prez hasn’t signed enabling legislation, implementing regulations can’t happen. Regulations are how government puts Congress’ express will into action. Rightwingnuts, of course, will never acknowledge or tell you these basic facts. Instead they’ll just attack evil big gubmint.)
Most federal regulations implement legislation enacted for very good reasons, to address very real and important problems/exploitation/abuses. (This is why they’re so hated by those who profit or want to profit from such exploitation/abuse.)
Certainly there are sometimes regulations that aren’t working as intended, are more burdensome than is really needed to address the problem they address, prove counter-productive in practice, etc., and so need fixing.
But rightwing ideologues have no interest in such rational governance. Anti-regulatory zeal is simply religious dogma to them, driven by selfish greed.
And, as I keep suggesting should be Dems’ Johnny-One-Note message, repeating on 24/7 loop, “PEOPLE WILL DIE!!!” when they otherwise would not have if/when GOPers are able to do what they’ve promised, including widespread rollbacks of needed regulations, or repeal of Obamacare, especially Medicaid expansion.
People will die in the quite short term due to loss of healthcare. People will die in the mid-/long-term due to ecological degradation/catastrophes.
People will die.
Likely lots of them(/us).
2 glasses in. time for #3
Too on the nose?
Maybe.
But I laughed, at least. That counts for something today.
Those stolen emails, tho…they RAISE QUESTIONS.
The Emperor has already signed an executive order putting all of his cabinet members in, regardless of what happens in the Senate? That would be sooooo cool.
I think you have a poor understanding of the process. The President appoints them. Then the Senate confirms the appointment. He merely formalized the appointment step. The confirmation step is taking place as we speak.
OK. Thank you. From what I read (where?) his signature meant they were in and all detractors could go fuck themselves.
Mad Dog Mattis – Confirmed – 98-1 Kirsten Gillibrand was the 1.
Already sworn in by Pence. (Prime minister already at work while the @TrumpDonaldI parties.)
Seems that a lot of Democrats adopted the tickle-me-Donald position.
Symbolic protest votes are no longer enough to convince people that the donkey might be resusicitated.
Mattis is probably the least bad of the whole lot. Might even be able to inject some sanity into the administration, till he’s fired or quits in frustrated disgust.
Let’s wait and see how the others are treated.
I neither welcome nor need your “benefit of the doubt,” centristfield. The many thousands of screaming victims of your preferred politicians disqualify you from any moral consideration whatsoever.
AG
About all I can say is:
Baghdad Bob lives: CBS News – Sean Spicer slams media over inauguration crowd coverage
Trump can’t handle the fact that the black man drew a much larger audience for his first inauguration (and his pre-inauguration concert) and a larger one for his second one as well. As he won the EC vote, it doesn’t get under his skin that Hillary got more votes. However, Obama received 6.5 million more votes in ’08 and 4 million more votes in ’12 and 61 more EC vots in ’08 and 28 more EC votes in ’12 than Trump did. That hurts his pride.
(And the ten year old Malia comported herself very well at her father’s ’08 inauguration.)
Oh, I missed this which is further confirmation of my read:
CNN:
If the media had reported the actual size of the crowds that he was drawing early in the campaign (and shown all the empty seats and bleachers), we might not have had Trump to kick around as he would have struggled to make it through IA. (Recall his fury when over his second place finish there.) There was probably a reason why such accurate reporting (crowd estimates and photos) on Trump wasn’t done.
Neglected to include that the video (above link) must be watched to see the full measure of his thin-skin and the lengths he’ll go to deny reality.
Someone technically proficient needs to put together a montage of the images from the live broadcasts of Obama’s and Trump’s inaugurations to graphically prove that there weren’t huge crowds all the way back to the Washington monument on 1/20/17 as Trump claims. Also from the photos of the wet ponchos at the inauguration, his claim that there were only a couple of drops of rain as he began his speech and then “god made it stop” and the sun came out appears to be another lie.
(I watched the first few minutes of his MAGA concert and there were hardly any people along the reflecting pool. And it sure looked like the crowds in the seats were much thinner than that of ’08.