A Futile and Stupid Gesture: The History of the First Trump Presidency & Q-Anon

I'm setting up a GoFundMe for the families of the Bowling Green Massacre victims.
 
Trump would be a lot more dangerous if he wasn't so inept.


 
doghouse said:
You'd also be wise to remember I didn't say fuck the working classes until they decided to have a temper tantrum and try and wreck my country. But fear not, this movement you believe is ascendant is a mere passing fancy once the weight of what that have done comes crushing down on them. I'll enjoy my tax break in the meantime.

It would help your argument immensely if you wouldn't say thing like civilization is ending btw. It's merely changing, and that is ok.
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But it wasn't only the working classes (and indeed, men) who put Trump into power. The same as with Brexit in the UK and now with the popularity of Wilders here in The Netherlands. They blame the white working class, when the middle class are also responsible for the result(s).

On the basis of what is going on in some of our universities, in the US and also over here, I do believe the western tradition is at risk of falling. Yes, civilization as we know it. But we are more at the front line here in Europe, with the EU that unfortunately increasingly takes the USSR as its blue print.

I have no problem with change and globalized business issues including workers, but it is the sinister riding of tigers and massive demographic change from the third world that strikes me as foolish. This is a high risk strategy and is at best an experiment when imposed continent wide as it is in Europe. For me Trump has merely said the Emperor has no clothes. The alternative, as here, is suck it up, isn't it great?!
 
Lord Buckley said:
But it wasn't only the working classes (and indeed, men) who put Trump into power. The same as with Brexit in the UK and now with the popularity of Wilders here in The Netherlands. They blame the white working class, when the middle class are also responsible for the result(s).

On the basis of what is going on in some of our universities, in the US and also over here, I do believe the western tradition is at risk of falling. Yes, civilization as we know it. But we are more at the front line here in Europe, with the EU that unfortunately increasingly takes the USSR as its blue print.

I have no problem with change and globalized business issues including workers, but it is the sinister riding of tigers and massive demographic change from the third world that strikes me as foolish. This is a high risk strategy and is at best an experiment when imposed continent wide as it is in Europe. For me Trump has merely said the Emperor has no clothes. The alternative, as here, is suck it up, isn't it great?!
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Western civilisation is at risk of failing? Quite the drama queen, aren't we? It's not like we're so civilised anyways.
 
Monkeyface said:
Western civilisation is at risk of failing? Quite the drama queen, aren't we? It's not like we're so civilised anyways.
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I am, I admit, a world citizen and that is why I can categorically tell you that if we are not careful we will repeat, at least here in Europe, Gibbon's Decline And Fall....

But yes, "It's not like we're so civilized anyways...", perchance you are posting from Venezuela, a narco state, Brooklyn or the Sudan?
 
Lord Buckley said:
I am, I admit, a world citizen and that is why I can categorically tell you that if we are not careful we will repeat, at least here in Europe, a repeat of Gibbon's Decline And Fall....

But yes, "It's not like we're so civilized anyways...", perchance you are posting from Venezuela, a narco state or the Sudan?
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I'm posting from the UK, soon to be the most monitored civilisation in the world.
 
So what? Is that a good or bad thing? What are the circumstances that have made that necessary?

I agree the details you chaps will now have to fill in before accessing porn is not so good for kinksters.
 
Lord Buckley said:
So what? Is that a good or bad thing? What are the circumstances that have made that necessary?

I agree the details you chaps will now have to fill in before accessing porn is not so good for kinksters.
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Keeping too much information in an organisation that is too incompetent to even get a proper working software system to track immigration after spending a billion quid is very dangerous. Instead of having to hack 60 million individuals, one can simply hack the least secure government agency. Everyone's private browsing habits will be for the whole world to see, along with all of the email addresses, passwords, credit card numbers, etc. South Park had a very poignant episode on the aftermath of such an event.

Even if they can protect the data adequately, they'll have "kompromat" on everybody.

That you cannot see the danger of the government keeping lists on everybody baffles me. Those lists can and will be used against the people, and this time you can't simply burn the records like in WWII.
 
Lord Buckley said:
But it wasn't only the working classes (and indeed, men) who put Trump into power. The same as with Brexit in the UK and now with the popularity of Wilders here in The Netherlands. They blame the white working class, when the middle class are also responsible for the result(s).

On the basis of what is going on in some of our universities, in the US and also over here, I do believe the western tradition is at risk of falling. Yes, civilization as we know it. But we are more at the front line here in Europe, with the EU that unfortunately increasingly takes the USSR as its blue print.

I have no problem with change and globalized business issues including workers, but it is the sinister riding of tigers and massive demographic change from the third world that strikes me as foolish. This is a high risk strategy and is at best an experiment when imposed continent wide as it is in Europe. For me Trump has merely said the Emperor has no clothes. The alternative, as here, is suck it up, isn't it great?!
Click to expand...


Well you know me well enough I think to know that my real vitriol is reserved for the middling classes. There is genuine hate there. I don't really have any animus to the working stiffs, I just hope they get their just fucking desserts for being so stupid. If there is one overweening principle I stand for, is that cause and effect should be unimpeded. The best part of human existence has been trying to avoid this phenomenon, otherwise known as 'reality', and it's to this day an absurd quest. We were tantalizingly close to the world becoming a reasonable facsimile of a meritocracy, but alas, now we back slide.

One thing that makes it hard for a Euro to really understand what is happening here is that American is not a race, creed, color or class. The American Dream is literally that anyone can be American. That's it. It doesn't matter where you came from, it only matters what you do. That's why Trump is so offensive to a huge swath of the American electorate in a way he never could be to a foreigner. And the opposite is true as well. I can have an opinion on Breitling, but it won't be from the same perspective as you.

We can agree there is a risk to civilization though, your dear Trump is leading the assault. His end game is the dark ages. He is going for Rousseau-ian irrational animalism versus a Voltairian rationality which is the ultimate state of being for a human. We are literally going in reverse and actively devolving now.
 
doghouse said:
Well you know me well enough I think to know that my real vitriol is reserved for the middling classes. There is genuine hate there. I don't really have any animus to the working stiffs, I just hope they get their just fucking desserts for being so stupid. If there is one overweening principle I stand for, is that cause and effect should be unimpeded. The best part of human existence has been trying to avoid this phenomenon, otherwise known as 'reality', and it's to this day an absurd quest. We were tantalizingly close to the world becoming a reasonable facsimile of a meritocracy, but alas, now we back slide.

One thing that makes it hard for a Euro to really understand what is happening here is that American is not a race, creed, color or class. The American Dream is literally that anyone can be American. That's it. It doesn't matter where you came from, it only matters what you do. That's why Trump is so offensive to a huge swath of the American electorate in a way he never could be to a foreigner. And the opposite is true as well. I can have an opinion on Breitling, but it won't be from the same perspective as you.

We can agree there is a risk to civilization though, your dear Trump is leading the assault. His end game is the dark ages. He is going for Rousseau-ian irrational animalism versus a Voltairian rationality which is the ultimate state of being for a human. We are literally going in reverse and actively devolving now.
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"The American Dream is literally that anyone can be American. That's it. It doesn't matter where you came from, it only matters what you do."

This has been false for a very long time, bud. It's almost impossible to immigrate legally, unless you have a million bucks lying around and don't particularly care whether you'll ever see it back.
 
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Monkeyface said:
"The American Dream is literally that anyone can be American. That's it. It doesn't matter where you came from, it only matters what you do."

This has been false for a very long time, bud. It's almost impossible to immigrate legally, unless you have a million bucks lying around and don't particularly care whether you'll ever see it back.
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You are confusing the American Dream with the American reality.
 
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/liberals-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown-214727

Liberals On the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown

by Bill Scher · February 1, 2017
90

Getty

Dissecting the latest viral Trump conspiracy theories.

By Sam Kriss

Trial Balloon for a Coup?,” is by Yonatan Zunger; the second, more forceful piece, comes from Jake Fuentes, and is titled “The Immigration Ban is a Headfake, and We’re Falling For It.” Both tread largely the same ground: They argue that the chaos and indeterminacy surrounding Trump’s ban on travel to the United States by anyone from seven Muslim-majority nations is actually a devious ploy. This is done through some very familiar techniques. Which positions are still unfilled at the State Department? Why did Trump’s statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day not make any mention of Jews? And why, of all people, was it Reince Priebus who defended that decision, when it’s not part of his usual job? And, like with the old Russia-watchers, these questions lead us to the idea that nothing is irrelevant, but that something monstrous is afoot.

Some of these conclusions are straightforwardly true. Zunger tells us that “the aims of crushing various groups—Muslims, Latinos, the black and trans communities, academics, the press—are very much primary aims of the regime”—but you don’t need a sophisticated analysis of bureaucratic sub-departments to know that; just basic reading comprehension. Others are a little more suspect. Trump and his cronies want people to protest, Zunger writes. “The goal is to create resistance fatigue.” They want judges to issue court orders demanding that people detained at airports are allowed to see a lawyer; it’s all part of their game, “testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government.” What looks like the beginnings of a breakdown in effective government, or an opportunity, is nothing of the sort. They planned everything, and everything fell into place.

The left is no stranger to this kind of defeatism, and it’s not hard to see why. Capitalism is omnivorous and polymorphously perverse; today’s revolutionary slogans are found on tomorrow’s Coke cans. Radical demands—the emancipation of women, the liberation of sexuality, the expression of cultural difference—have a tendency to end up being shallowly incorporated into an existing order, suckered up by a vast and shapeless amoeba that keeps squelching disastrously across the world as if nothing had happened. Right-wing politicians and right-ish editorial boards now honor Martin Luther King Jr., a small-c communist and big-h Hegelian, and try to claim him as one of their own: a preacher of hard work, personal responsibility and subservience to the all-conquering devil-god. If you look backward from the state of the world today at all the heroic resistance movements that have failed throughout history, it’s easy to think that this was all part of the plan.

Much of this is true, but its effects can be paralyzing. We’ve fucked up so much that it’s made us afraid of victory; faced with an enormous and implacable enemy, there are people who are now convinced that its power is infinite. Whenever it looks like the reactionaries have massively over-reached themselves it’s just part of a larger plan, one that we can’t see. If Steve Bannon’s pants fell down tomorrow and he tottered crying into a muddy pond, there would be someone ready to announce that actually, this made him even more omnipotent than he was before.

But the pathology that’s animating these viral conspiracy theories is different. It’s a determinism of a far more granular sort: It assumes, quite improbably, that the Trump team knew exactly what sort of thing would happen after their every move, that they were only testing out the details. As if Jared Kushner could see through time, as if Stephen Miller could read our thoughts. Its universe is one that’s programmable. To adopt their own hermeneutic stance: What’s really going on, underneath all the layered lies, and what little puncta might give it away? The most notable clue here is that neither Zunger nor Fuentes are political analysts or journalists or academics or even civil servants. Instead, both come from the tech industry.

Zunger is on the privacy team at Google; Fuentes was behind LevelMoney, an app since acquired by Capital One. They belong to a particular class, with a particular way of looking at the world. Silicon Valley doesn’t really approach politics as a sphere of competing social interests, a space in which people have the ability to make collective demands and collectively alter the conditions of their existences, but as a system—something with an input, an output and reams of complex programming in between. Whenever the tech world turns its attention to politics, there’s always the hint of this nerdish fascination for system: an inattention to what politics actually is or does, but a fetishization of efficiency, the latent notion that all these 18th-century structures really should just be replaced with something you can download on your phone.

Often, this can lead to fascism: Take Curtis Yarvin, a startup founder (backed by Peter Thiel) who proposed replacing all government with a repressive corporate dictatorship, and who—despite his almost total ignorance of political and social theory—ended up providing the pseudo-intellectual underpinnings of what went on to become the neo-Nazi alt-right. The Bay Area might not like the current president, but it’s not intrinsically opposed to racism and repression either. After all, many of its luminaries came out to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the subcontinent’s very own Donald Trump, a man fairly recently banned from traveling to the U.S. or Britain for his role in deadly anti-Muslim pogroms. But in the hands of stalwart liberals like Zunger and Fuentes, the baseline tech-ideology gives you this: a society in which people are users or consumers, in which democracy is a series of in-app purchases, in which all power belongs to the programmers.

“Popular attention,” Fuentes writes, “must focus less on whether we agree with what the government is doing, and more on whether the system of checks and balances we have in place is working.” (Never mind that every American president in living memory has managed to trample on the law with all checks and balances apparently in place.) It’s impossible for him to imagine that the Muslim ban really is directed against Muslims. Anything happening within the system can only really concern the system itself. We shouldn’t be fighting for our rights and our dignity, but to make sure that nobody tampers with the source code. Never mind the danger Trump poses to so many lives: What about our abstract institutions?

This isn’t to say that we should ignore any potential power grab within the political system, or hope that by protesting in airports we will bring down the government. But it’s worth keeping in mind that politics is about more than clashing personalities and chthonic power-plays. These clever little games do happen, but there’s a clinamen that tends to screw with the results—Hillary Clinton’s campaign, for instance, energetically promoted Trump during the primaries, under the impression that he’d be a far easier opponent; we all know how that turned out. It’s almost comforting, in a way, to imagine yourself as a pawn. There’s no moral duty involved: The evil plan is grand and inscrutable; it gives a sense of order in what looks like disintegration, and tells you what your place is in it. But there is a moral duty, and we need to face up to it. And maybe, just maybe, sometimes the people in charge are just as blinkered as we are.






Politico · by Bill Scher · February 1, 2017
 
Rambo said:
that's why they call it the american dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

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Now I'm just depressed that Carlin isn't alive because there would be some funny ass shit right about now.
 
The travel ban has been lifted. I still have my Nexus/GOES - hurray. Why are people still protesting?
 
I'm all for making fun, but shouldn't it be actually funny?

This is actually funny:

 
The Dutch one is indeed actually funny, except for the disabled MP bit.

Full-on anti-Trump on the BBC this morning, how "humiliating" that May had visited him and even invited him over for a state visit. They were kind of hoping that there will be a coup between now and then, which will leave May backing the wrong side. Then there was the usual crap about how we'll lose a generation of moderate Muslims to the extremists because of Trump. Which if true, should worry us at the fickle nature of moderate Muslims.
 
Lord Buckley said:
The Dutch one is indeed actually funny, except for the disabled MP bit.

Full-on anti-Trump on the BBC this morning, how "humiliating" that May had visited him and even invited him over for a state visit. They were kind of hoping that there will be a coup between now and then, which will leave May backing the wrong side. Then there was the usual crap about how we'll lose a generation of moderate Muslims to the extremists because of Trump. Which if true, should worry us at the fickle nature of moderate Muslims.
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The state visit invitation the was a bit presumptuous, but it all fits with the bigger plan of getting a free trade agreement with US, which of course means privatising the by then woefully underfunded NHS and have US pharma and healthcare move in. I used to think this was some lefty conspiracy theory, but there might just be some truth to it.
 
I'm not under the NHS, the Dutch system.

But yes, you can get all of that, as in the UK, seemingly for free. If you want it. But not breast augmentation and facial surgery, the rest, yes. At least I think. But not the extensive cosmetic surgery you can get in the US.

From my experience, and I've had three ops here, the Dutch system is better. Easier to get an appointment with your doctor, easier to get access to pain relief, but in saying that, the maternity stuff for child birth is, or was better in the UK in the 1990s, based on my view of my sisters experience. The midwife care after birth at home is better here in The Netherlands compared to the UK.

The thought of NHS treatment gives me the shivers.
 
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I was trying to be gender neutral there too. What can you say, if you want to change sex here, it's covered by your standard insurance. And if in the UK, it's free on the NHS, but then again, the NHS is not really free.
 
Lord Buckley said:
I was trying to be gender neutral there too. What can you say, if you want to change sex here, it's covered by your standard insurance. And if in the UK, it's free on the NHS, but then again, the NHS is not really free.
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It is if you don't work...!

One of the problems with the NHS is it excessive bureaucracy...
...and that it is politicised...
...and...
 
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Lord Buckley said:
I was trying to be gender neutral there too. What can you say, if you want to change sex here, it's covered by your standard insurance. And if in the UK, it's free on the NHS, but then again, the NHS is not really free.
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I think on my next passport update I'm going to switch genders.
 
formby said:
this is your drink
It is if you don't work...!

One of the problems with the NHS is it excessive bureaucracy...
...and that it is politicised...
...and...
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Not only that, it is put on a pedestal that protects the common purpose type agenda, which was, as good as it was, was revealed all too clearly during the Olympics opening ceremony.
 
Lord Buckley said:
Not only that, it is put on a pedestal that protects the common purpose type agenda, which was, as good as it was, was revealed all too clearly during the Olympics opening ceremony.
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...another problem is one of psychology, and that is: if you get something for free, you don't tend to value it.

How many people routinely miss their GP appointments? How many people turn up to A&E with minor ailments that could be treated at home...?

...and so on.
 
I just realized Steve Bannon also worked at Goldman Sachs. I always thought he was just a media guy with a loud mouth. Is there any Western country in the world that hasn't been infiltrated by ex Goldman Sachs people?
 
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