rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

ok i guess i should kinda say why it's hard for me to talk about politics

i do have some pretty strong wonky tendencies. i'm not proud of them but it is how i think about politics.

the thing is that ideologically, i'm not really a radical at all. people talk about, like, pol pot or stalin or whatever and yeah i think they're awful. totalitarian single-party rule is bad. the thing is, i'm wonky in a way that makes it kinda impossible to talk about politics. because one of the really strong conclusions I've come to is that the united states of america doesn't _work_ politically

basically if Trump gets to replace Thomas, Alito (and perhaps Sotomayor) with judges in their 40s, we can expect conservative domination of the court for at least another 30 years.

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Friday, June 28, 2024 7:40 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

like i genuinely don't see an america 30 years down the line that doesn't have some serious structural changes

moving from indiana to portland, i was struck by how _different_ the two states are

america is one country, though, not so much because of, like... a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, but because of the _money_. i guess that's my worry, and that's a very wonky worry, worrying about the _economic impact_ of a trump presidency

the states _don't_ run independently, all that stuff the states do relies on getting money from the federal government

there's kind of this desperate scramble every time the government shuts down, which is more and more frequently, to try and prevent shit from falling apart completely

a lot of heavily armed, racist, homophobic, transphobic, woman-hating nasty people who have been hiding a bit since 1/6/2021 are going to feel empowered to pop back out and I worry about that more than what Trump accomplishes legislatively.

― perpetually awkward, perennially unhappy (Neanderthal)

...i don't get the impression they've been hiding, haha.

the threat of violence is a reality i'm always aware of. there are a lot of people with guns. there have been mass shootings. if somebody decides they want to... reduce the number of trans people in the world by a double or triple digit number, there's nothing stopping them from coming here. the cops sure as hell aren't going to stop them.

we're aware of it. everything we do, particularly in groups, risk mitigation is part of the equation. that risk, honestly, doesn't change if trump gets a second term

yeah talking through this the immediate threat of violence with someone like trump seems strong but i guess my bigger concern is... the federal government is supposed to _do_ things, and republicans are just not very good at making sure those things get done. they see that as leverage to get their way... which only works to a certain extent.

that was what i saw most from the trump administration. every week there was a new permanently acting undersecretary of this or that, every week there was a new bunch of...

i am, basically, like anyone else, which means that i am inclined to go along to get along. 2016 was the point where i was no longer able to go along. trump? i can't go for that. no can do. even people who _support_ trump... when someone asks for the impossible, "going along to get along" isn't an option. trump and the republicans just absolutely have no idea about what is and isn't actually possible. like if you want to "eradicate transgenderism", you... you can do _a lot_ of damage by denying people access to care, you can hurt a lot of people, cause a lot of pain, but strategically, you're just not gonna get rid of trans people by making it illegal to get hormones. i don't want to talk directly about what would actually be necessary, but i will say, even though i worry about it, even though all of us worry about it, i think we're a long fucking way off from that point. to do that, you'd need everybody to go along with it. and i don't believe everybody _would_ go along with what would be necessary. i don't think enough people would go along with it to make it possible.

-

it's weird. if some liberal white guy said "well, the greatest risk of a trump presidency is that he'll wreck the world economy by defaulting on america's debts" i'd... well, i'd nothing, because i don't read those threads lol

i generally do think that's the most immediate risk of a trump presidency, though, and that's not... that's not an abstract thing, that's gonna be a profoundly destabilizing event when it happens. i'm personally waiting for _that_ shoe to drop.

in the long term though it doesn't make a difference. the democrats are just... unable to ensure that america can make the interest payments on its debt. and i do think that's a bigger problem than who gets elected president in 2024.

is that weird of me to say? am i being too punditpilled here?

wriggle wriggle wriggle

No consequences.

Kate, that's a great post, I honestly think it's just a mature viewpoint -- like, you begin by saying Pol Pot and Stalin are awful, totally obviously true -- but it's actually less mature thinkers who do their own punditry about this, ignoring or explaining away or what-abouting Pol Pot's awfulness, Stalin's brutality toward his own people. You are thinking about the stuff that matters most, imo, in a way that gets you clarity instead of venting your spleen.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/07/18/agreeing-to-our-harm-marilynne-robinson/

Immediately before my partner checked her phone and saw the Supreme Court ruling, we had been reading this long and thoughtful piece by Marilynne Robinson. I found it bracing, in the sense that it literally braced me for another fucking piece being jackhammered loose from the foundations of American democracy.

Marilynne Robinson is probably the only living American author who deserves the Nobel

hard disagree but i am in the minority there, i find her work totally unreadable

How do you feel about Emerson?

i haven’t read him since i was in high school so uncertain. it also has been more than a decade since i tried Robinson so maybe i ought to give her another go

I don’t know which American author i would choose for the Nobel.

I prefer her essays. She wrote one on Calvin twenty years ago that made me reconsider the received wisdom.

i loved housekeeping but i could never get through any of the later stuff or the essays. my eyes glaze over. its like homework. like wallace stegner. zzzzzz......

Next American Nobel winner has to be one of the "New Dylans"

Maybe Steve Fobert?

Forbert

i can't read john mcphee either. i read about 100 pages of the bible during the pandemic. never do that again, lemmetellya.

Immediately before my partner checked her phone and saw the Supreme Court ruling, we had been reading this long and thoughtful piece by Marilynne Robinson. I found it bracing, in the sense that it literally braced me for another fucking piece being jackhammered loose from the foundations of American democracy.

― The king of the demo (bernard snowy)

i'm intrigued but i'm also not a subscriber so i guess i can't read it.

it's the idea of the foundations of american democracy, i think. they aren't really what i was taught they were. i don't know. i read "democracy in america", or at least a chunk of it, some years back and the country it described was... i mean i think we're more like tocqueville's france than the america tocqueville observed. there's a lot to like about today's america, but there was a lot to like about the concert of europe too, you know?

i guess the thing that gets me about america is... i mean, the roman republic wasn't what i was taught it was, either. it was kind of crap, honestly. patriarchy, oligarchy, constant aggressive militarism... built on invading and looting the countries around it. one of their favorite "comedy" stories was "the rape of the sabine women". all of today's fash who idolize rome... i feel like they're living up to the _spirit_ of rome, both republic and empire.

i don't think america's foundations, either in its historical models or in its initial principles, were ever strong. i think america's people are stronger than its foundation. i could be wrong on that.

i say next american nobel winner should be jakob dylan

during the pandemic i read emerson's and carlyle's correspondence to each other and was enjoying them and then i made the mistake of reading more about carlyle and ewwww he was one of those insane gross race-theory racists with extra hate and disgust for jews and black people and i was like fuck your genius and why the fuck was emerson such a fanboy but maybe they just never talked about that stuff. emerson just dug his books. i mean i know everyone was racist back then but some of those genius-types were just pathologically yuck.

i can't read john mcphee either. i read about 100 pages of the bible during the pandemic. never do that again, lemmetellya.

I still think Murnane should win the gd Nobel, but now we are way off thread.

"i mean i think we're more like tocqueville's france than the america tocqueville observed"

i highly recommend the documentary America As Seen By A Frenchman if you haven't seen it. from 1960. its really good.

xp this is a safe space <3

yeah i'm not a big nature writer lover anyway so mcphee with the endless descriptions...ugh. i liked annie dillard when i used to read her decades ago. bruce chatwin? i think i liked bruce chatwin also decades ago. he was entertaining. i liked how he wrote.

Something I think about in terms of civil liability is how (before Monday anyway) the country should’ve filed a class action suit against Trump for emotional distress and probably shortening of life by a few years

thats something that doesn't get talked about enough, not to imply we need to talk MORE about Trump but what he's done to the mental health of this country has been a real travesty, everyone's pissed off and combative and terrified, possibly even more so if you're a Trump voter than someone who merely hates his guts

thats something that doesn't get talked about enough, not to imply we need to talk MORE about Trump but what he's done to the mental health of this country has been a real travesty, everyone's pissed off and combative and terrified, possibly even more so if you're a Trump voter than someone who merely hates his guts

― frogbs

it's complicated! it's like... i actually like neando's allegory of the lake. cuz it's not just that the car is heading towards the lake, but there's two people in the front seat fighting, one of them keeps trying to step on the brake, and one of them keeps trying to step on the gas, and like. it's great that someone is trying to step on the brake but the car is still going towards the fucking lake, right?

that's, i think, how trump has affected my mental health - like, it's not personal, he doesn't personally have that kind of power, but him getting elected... if you remember my posts in 2016, it fucked me up something fierce. like yeah. it did. and the _atmosphere_, whether or not he's actually _president_, the _atmosphere_ is fucking up everybody. in ways that don't get acknowledged. i see it every day.

and we just... you know. fucked up or no, people make choices, and if you support trump, you know, whether or not someone is a "good person" doesn't matter. that's a choice. and me, trump got elected and i moved out to pdx and i transitioned, and that was, i guess. like sometimes i joke that trump "transed my gender", and it's not _true_, a lot of things went into my gender stuff. part of it, though, is me trying to come to grips with trump's election, the way i chose to handle that. and that to me will always be more interesting - not whether or not trump gets elected again, but how people who _aren't_ in a position of power deal with that... difficult reality.

I haven't read Carlyle since grad school, and, wow, his style is near impenetrable. I guess this atheist has more tolerance for prose infused with King James rhythms than the average ILXer, but, boy, Carlyle is garbled AND an elitist -- the garble is to make him intelligible TO elitists.

I love Emerson, though. He's plainspoken with lightning flashes of poetry. "Circles" and "Self-Reliance" I still read.

xp

whenever "Trump Derangement Syndrome" comes up (especially when someone goes "TDS - I'M TALKING TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME!" and then an audience wildly applauds), one of the many reasons i want to let out a blood curdling scream is that it's actually real! i think i have TDS! i hate that motherfucker! i don't understand how pathetic people have to be in order to kiss his ring! i don't understand it despite having lots of people in my family and upbringing who love him! i know all about them and their unique hyper evangelical fundamentalist christian backgrounds and it STILL doesn't make any fucking sense! if you even skim the gospels it's completely impossible to think any christian, ever, would ever support trump. it's like an eating competition level of hypocrisy piled on top of hypocrisy, paired with people who are so ready to be beyond help that they get persuaded by the likes of fucking charlie kirk.

as an aside i want to say fuck bose, because fuck paul harvey

i had a horrible moment (one of many) with my dad near the end because i confronted him on how horrible it felt for him to never listen to me or trust any opinion i had on anything, ever, while simultaneously he gobbled up every single word of fuckers like this

https://i.imgur.com/sKOz7ug.png

i've mentioned it before, but somehow when you get your ass kicked, you want it to be kicked by really smart clever asskickers. getting your ass kicked by fucking paul harvey gives you TDS in the mouth, and i'm talking total dissolved solids

so yeah, i expect that anyone who is paying any attention at all has suffered mental health consequences because it's damaging to mental health to observe people doing the wrong thing, over and over, on purpose, because they're so fucking hateful and selfish

I love you, zach

love you too alfred!

It was more bearable between 2016 - 2020 because we were clinging onto hope. There were positive developments that lead us to believe we could emerge from his Presidency and reverse the damage.

I think everybody expected the Roberts court to be insane and just hoped it would be on the lesser side of crazy but as soon as we saw they'd flipped the dial to 11, it was obvious that it didn't matter anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if I've been in a coma for eight years.

I feel that Zach! And Neando

i had a horrible moment (one of many) with my dad near the end because i confronted him on how horrible it felt for him to never listen to me or trust any opinion i had on anything, ever, while simultaneously he gobbled up every single word of fuckers like this

― z_tbd

it's such a brainfuck with parents, i'm thinking "look you LITERALLY TAUGHT ME RIGHT FROM WRONG i'm pretty sure this isn't what you taught me was 'right'

so i went back and checked and boy howdy _wow_ that childhood was _not_ the normal childhood i thought it was, whew, wow, that was all kinds of messed up

but _also_ i literally did learn some really good values about right and wrong from my parents and i'm putting those values into practice and they're not... well, i mean, i guess somebody's getting some use out of those values, you know?

the fact that we're dismantling our empire for Donald fucking Trump is what really gets me about this, in fact it gives me a weird hope somehow knowing how Trump's world does not extend beyond himself. his main goal in life is to be on TV more. wild to think if he was like 3 inches shorter none of this would've happened

cos of Presidential height limit

i had a horrible moment (one of many) with my dad near the end because i confronted him on how horrible it felt for him to never listen to me or trust any opinion i had on anything, ever, while simultaneously he gobbled up every single word of fuckers like this

Was he always like this or was it something that developed over time. My dad is this way but always has been, he's never asked my opinion on anything. He either has 100% certainty about something, or 0% and has to go and check what the guru's opinion is before he'll say anything at all. In his case the guru is George Galloway, but the names are irrelevant it's the mechanism. He is transfixed by the oracle Galloway, hypnotized

People sometimes say its gullibility, that they are easily taken in. But I don't think thats it, my mother is pretty gullible but hasn't gone down this path once inch. She doesn't have or seek this resolute certainty, and she asks my opinion. There is bi-directional communication.

I don't think either have them have changed with age

With my dad I guess all conversations are hierarchical, there is a transmitter and a receiver, he receives from youtube and then transmits.

In a different scenario he would have killed thousands of people the same way people deliver leaflets. It wouldn't have been done with joy or malice or sadism, if that was the task that was required then that was the task that was required, same as the leaflets

My mom watches network and local news every day, 60 Minutes, is on Nextdoor and local Facebook groups but has somehow evaded brain worms and if anything has gotten more liberal as time went on.

My dad died in mid-2017 - I don't think I could describe his beliefs as liberal exactly but he didn't like Republicans by default and hated Trump for being a celebrity conman. I'd like to think that would have stuck over the last seven years, he'd probably be the ideal Biden Democrat but I don't know that I'd have wanted to hear him talk about trans people.

She got on Instagram and TikTok a couple of years ago so maybe a steady diet of funny animal videos has built a firewall to Youtube and Twitter punditry.

My dad says he doesn't like Trump but there's no energy in the dislike, I know he is drawn to him secretly because he tells people what to do and he likes being told what to do, He hates uncertainty. He can't remember anything and never could so the simpler the better.

He's always liked Xi, and has warmed to Putin since watching Galloway more intensively, was on the fence before that. But while this does have some political aspects to it, its more that he is transfixed and hypnotized by anyone that talks authoritatively and charismatically (or appears to do so). Bold and definitive acts definitely help but are definitely secondary.

This doesn't necessarily need to be a political figure, a person calling the phone and professing to be a person of importance also works, regardless of whether they are or not, which makes him a good target for any kind of scam

Did he like Blair?

No, as a devotee of Galloway that would be impossible.