ilovefuzz.com

Only to down ballot was a bit of a surprise but when you look at the polarization that has been happening mainly due to a overly prolonged coddlement of religious fanatics that have been allowed an over influence politics and economics of this country creating the ideological landscape that we are seeing. If you want you can take the root all the way back to the compromises made by our founding fathers… Not taking care of these things has lead to things like the civil war, utah, segregation, Thanksgiving as a holiday, prohibition and the 700th club Also you have to take in to account the influence that big business has ALLWAYS had on our country, we never had a chance to start a real culture that did not envelop extreme capitalism which has always had a uge part to play on how people conceive this country and themselves and the all ever present get rich quick idea which is what always fuels ideas that keeping taxes low for the rich will help the poor… or at least trickling down upon them like a fine piss raining down from heaven. This also feeds into the me/mine first mindset.

The Appeal of trump as a person is pretty predictable if you have ever worked blue collar jobs, EVERY fucking job I worked and every FUCKING crew always had one of them, that said all the same shit tump says, trump from what I can tell just took all the bullshit dumbfuckasshatreichwingers say and fed it back to them. THAT is why conservatives were offend by him, HE SAID ALL THE SHIT THEY SAY WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING! Dude knows how to sell golden turds, that's all he has ever done with his life.

The TPP was the big issue for a lot of people that voted for him, Obama supports it and none believed Hillary didn't at any point. if you don't know what that is, spend some time and do some research…

What went down with the primaries: we all saw it [or pretended not to living in the same fantasy world that liberals think people that don't believe in global warming do. congrats! you are both the same lump heads!] is caused people to not just not vote but vote FOR trump in protest

The signs were there… Michael Moore tried to tell you, many did, but I guess we'll just have to keep wear our foil hats.

More of the same: saying things are doing swell and awesome is a dumb lie, the economy isn't that great, we have been at war solid for 15 years, the homeless are everywhere on the west cost, people think reality TV is entertainment and Lemmy fucking died!


And the last time the GOP had this kind of power was 1928..

Invisible Man wrote:(Only tangentially related, but I kinda think he'll be awesome. Not because there's any evidence to suggest that, but because we're clearly in fucking bizarro world. My compass is obviously broken, and nothing makes a fucking lick of sense. So by that logic, Trump could be Christ on Earth. Waiting with baited breath.)

I've been trying to convince myself of this all day, and he did say he would repeal the Common Core.

A request for an explanation is certainly not an attack.

A lot of it is just brainwashing, to be honest. The end of the Cold War coincided with the rise of talk radio conservatism in this country, with its vile propaganda that everyone on the Left was "...out to DESTROY AMERICA". So Democrats, progressives, and liberals have been labeled as The Enemy Within by conservatives for almost a quarter of a century now, and must be stopped at all costs so that 'murica can return to some mythological Golden Age of conservatism when everything was grand and wonderful, even though that Golden Age never really existed.

But closer to reality, people do remember the age before NAFTA led to the de-industrialization of America. Back then, working people (mostly white) could actually earn a good living and support their families. NAFTA put an end to that, and before anyone blames Bill Clinton exclusively, the original negotiations were begun by Bush Sr., and it received bipartisan ratification by Congress. So the working class jobs went bye-bye, and the people who lost their jobs have never recovered. Trump's supporters are desperately dreaming of getting their old jobs at the steel mills and factories back so they can earn a living again. Ironically, most of these people were Democrats and belonged to unions back then.

Also, Obama never prosecuted or really even investigated anyone following the housing crisis. He said we would take over any banks we had to bail out, but when Republicans started yelling "Socialist! Socialist! Socialist!" he chickened out. So there is lingering resentment over that, and there is resentment over Obamacare forcing people into private contracts with insurance companies, which some see as having been a corporate giveaway to the insurance industry.

The economic recovery has been anemic, and many people (myself included) feel left behind. The divide between the 1% and the 99% has grown wider. I guess it was just time for all of this simmering resentment to boil over. I could get into populism, but I would much prefer a sane, intelligent leader for the cause. It's also wrapped up in national identity, obviously, and our schizophrenic conviction that we are the chosen people, the shining city on the hill, etc., so why should the rest of the world prosper at out expense etc.

Bernie couldn't beat Hilary because she is a rock star in the Democratic Party, and he was a relative newcomer on the national scene. So she was a household name and had the Democratic Party's machinery on her side, including lots of big-money donors. Older Democrats loved her because they remembered Bill's presidency with nostalgic fondness. But many other people see her more cynically as corrupt and just another scheming politician who will say anything to get elected. Then there is her email scandal, which was a self-inflicted sucking chest wound.

So yeah, I think I started meandering, but it really does seem like the New Left is the Old Right. The Democrats have become the party of the college educated, and the Republicans have become the part of the working class as much as the country club types. Also, the Democrats let themselves be defined by the Republicans for decades as being soft on national defense and soft on crime, so now they are hawkish and harder on crime just to show us that they aren't really what the Republicans claim.

Long story short, people are sick of being ignored by both parties, want their jobs back, want their cherished national identity back, and yeah, they decided

Fluffy wrote: Nihilism is the best -ism

.

Edit: so yeah, all that babbling and I guess I didn't actually answer the question 'Why Trump?', but I guess he just had the combination of celebrity charisma, financial success, and tough talking demagogue to pour gasoline all over the simmering fires of resentment. BOOM!

we got legal weed here atleast!

Wow, protests breaking out around the country. This could really turn into a mess quickly.

Sometimes protesters don't know what they're talking about though.

One protester just said he's scared of his family being deported back to Guam.

How can they possibly deport anyone "back to Guam"?

(Some woman just said "extremely doomed".)

Chankgeez wrote:(Some woman just said "extremely doomed".)

I love extreme doom!

Lurker13 wrote:Wow, protests breaking out around the country. This could really turn into a mess quickly.

d just think if they had put all that energy into this BEFORE!

Mudfuzz wrote:

Lurker13 wrote:Wow, protests breaking out around the country. This could really turn into a mess quickly.

d just think if they had put all that energy into this BEFORE!

Mudfuzz wrote:

Lurker13 wrote:Wow, protests breaking out around the country. This could really turn into a mess quickly.

d just think if they had put all that energy into this BEFORE!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.

Invisible Man wrote:

D.o.S. wrote:It may, however, be a fact.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
FUCKING POSTMODERNISM
[hissing intensifies]

Keep that bullshit tf outta STEM

Protests are a result of the fear mongering campaign Clinton ran.

So. Many. Words.

morange wrote:Protests are a result of the fear mongering campaign Clinton ran.

No, they're the result of all of Trump's bigoted rants while campaigning.

Invisible Man wrote:I don't know either, but it feels like some weird outgrowth of tribalism. Like we're all regressing to a really 'primitive' place...you can look at the form or the substance of these political movements, but either way it's super base. Like lizard-brained.

Short answer is that reason is hard, hate is effective. Look at the results we ('we') get from that approach, and how quickly. There are two kind of utopists, and the two types have nothing to do with their politics: revolutionary/radical utopists and incremental ones. There's an ebb and flow to which types are privileged, but there's also a 'risk management' element embedded in each. Civil Rights brewed for decades before reaching a tipping point that was sort of amorphous and inchoate; revolutions that result in genocide also have long backstories, but result in events that 'peak' with much more force. Helps me to think about it like weather patterns...a long, slow rain can yield as much precipitation as a hurricane but with waaaaay less damage. So we do have safeguards against crazy bullshit, and that's why incrementalists have a better rep.

But we're impatient, and, even though we know there'll be damage, we seem to be generally OK with occasional hurricanes because the structures set in place are perceived to be shit by a frustrated demographic. I don't have any ideas about the hate, though, beyond some kind of dark base assumptions about furriners. Seems dumb to make sweeping assumptions about the brokenness of democracy...it works pretty perfectly, as far as I can see. I think Trump is exactly what we deserve. Isn't he a perfect caricature of Americans?

(Only tangentially related, but I kinda think he'll be awesome. Not because there's any evidence to suggest that, but because we're clearly in fucking bizarro world. My compass is obviously broken, and nothing makes a fucking lick of sense. So by that logic, Trump could be Christ on Earth. Waiting with baited breath.)

In all seriousness, the regression to tribalism and dogma is, in my estimation, the desire to fill the void left by society moving away from rigid religious orthodoxy. People tend to treat personal decisions as extensions and projections of their very being, so any contradiction or disagreement is received as a personal attack.

Individuals who are trying to understand themselves and the world, longing to belong to something meaningful and a purpose worth believing in go all-in, drinking the kool aid of feminism, marxism, capitalism, socialism etc and use them as a cornerstone in constructing their identity, walling themselves off from the stones refused. The internet has given us the ability to find and mingle with other likeminded individuals and group together. Unfortunately, the tendency is to form homogenous tribes where cliques emerge and keep everyone more divided than unified. Diversity of ideas and the ability to contrast them without parsing words, sentiment or intent has become rare.

What I like most about ILF is how the diversity aint just superficial or superimposed. Everyone influences each other, melting a bit yes but one can remain distinctly individualistic without being exiled or deemed persona non grata.....providing they make an honest effort to champion Rule #1.

rustywire wrote:

Invisible Man wrote:

D.o.S. wrote:It may, however, be a fact.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
FUCKING POSTMODERNISM
[hissing intensifies]

Keep that bullshit tf outta STEM

Direct quote from Nietzsche, sorry dude.

rustywire wrote:In all seriousness, the regression to tribalism and dogma is, in my estimation, the desire to fill the void left by society moving away from rigid religious orthodoxy. People tend to treat personal decisions as extensions and projections of their very being, so any contradiction or disagreement is received as a personal attack.

Individuals who are trying to understand themselves and the world, longing to belong to something meaningful and a purpose worth believing in go all-in, drinking the kool aid of feminism, marxism, capitalism, socialism etc and use them as a cornerstone in constructing their identity, walling themselves off from the stones refused. The internet has given us the ability to find and mingle with other likeminded individuals and group together. Unfortunately, the tendency is to form homogenous tribes where cliques emerge and keep everyone more divided than unified. Diversity of ideas and the ability to contrast them without parsing words, sentiment or intent has become rare.

What I like most about ILF is how the diversity aint just superficial or superimposed. Everyone influences each other, melting a bit yes but one can remain distinctly individualistic without being exiled or deemed persona non grata.....providing they make an honest effort to champion Rule #1.

So basically postmodernity.