Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

[chenGOD]

38 minutes ago, Squee said:

Well, the windmills kill all the birds.

Yeah but birds aren’t real. 

[Squee]

Jesus. 

[ignatius]

[zero]

^ translation = the plan is there is no plan. just go with your fucking gut, everything will work out just fine. it always does. believe me, I totally know. people believe anything. besides, it's all just a big fucking joke. where's my cheeseburger.

[ignatius]

3 hours ago, zero said:

^ translation = the plan is there is no plan. just go with your fucking gut, everything will work out just fine. it always does. believe me, I totally know. people believe anything. besides, it's all just a big fucking joke. where's my cheeseburger.

 

[zlemflolia]

this isnt just some speedbump that america will recover from, it's the end of america as it was before. i welcome the death of america

Edited October 26, 2020 by cyanobacteria

[zero]

^ what does "death of america" mean exactly?

[chenGOD]

13 hours ago, ignatius said:

 

LOL I've been watching a lot of Parks & Rec while I work from home, I thought this was an outtake from an episode I hadn't seen or something.

 

[caze]

21 minutes ago, zero said:

^ what does "death of america" mean exactly?

I guess it's similar to 'late stage capitalism', a coping mechanism for socialists. They're similar to those Christian Millennialists who are always expecting the apocalypse any time now. 

[ignatius]

46 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

this isnt just some speedbump that america will recover from, it's the end of america as it was before. i welcome the death of america

 

11 minutes ago, zero said:

^ what does "death of america" mean exactly?

america will be forever changed. i guess. i mean.. at least forever meaning for a generation and then beyond that who knows wtf will happen due to climate change, AI and general acceleration of technology and widening gap of rich and poor etc. 

the disinformation campaigns, conspiracy wackos who deep dive every damn thing and act on it, the breaking of america as in destruction of the middle class which is more or less gone now compared to 20 years ago..

if this election doesn't go right, if all the bad things happen (affordable care act gone, no movement on environmental issues, further descent into corruption, influence of industry on politics, religion blah blah)

i think the death of america means that the idea of america as a thing, meaning it's promise (even when that's bullshit to a lot of people), the idea that america is a leader in the world and does the right thing, and domestically is still kind of united in a common culture or osmething.. that goes away.. the permanent fracturing of america is the result of all this division. the inability for americans to recognize other americans as being part of the same idea or place or whatever.. that goes away.. 

america will have to reinvent what it means to be american because right now a lot of people don't know what that is i think.. and reinvention takes a long time. 

there's a lot of people who would love to just straight kill people on the other side of their argument. 

that's some rambling bullshit i wrote up there and it's hard to put into words but some articles did it pretty well.. 

https://spectator.us/end-american-empire-dominion/

Quote

A partial answer to the first question is this: for too long, ruling elites allowed the purported obligations of global leadership to take precedence over tending to the collective wellbeing of the American people. This was a conscious choice made by leaders of both political parties. We are now living with the consequences of that choice, with the persistence of racism offering just one example of what neglect has produced. Yet it deserves to be emphasized: the neglect was not Trump’s doing; he was merely its ironic beneficiary. We are its victims.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/8/19/the-end-of-american-history-begins-in-america/

Quote

 

As a cogent critic of American imperialism, Bacevich’s surgically precise and honest conclusion is now corroborated by the massive uprising against structural poverty and endemic racism setting the streets of major urban areas on fire from coast to coast.    

“The era of US dominion has now passed,” Bacevich observes, “So Americans can no longer afford to indulge in the fiction of their indispensability, cherished in elite circles […] Subordinating the wellbeing of the American people to ostensible imperatives of global leadership – thereby allowing racism, inequality and other problems to fester at home – has become intolerable.”  

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/america-image-power-trump/613228/

Even in previous moments of American vulnerability, Washington reigned supreme. Whatever moral or strategic challenge it faced, there was a sense that its political vibrancy matched its economic and military might, that its system and its democratic culture were so deeply rooted that it could always regenerate itself. It was as if the very idea of America mattered, an engine driving it on, whatever other glitches existed under the hood. Now something appears to be changing. America seems mired, its very ability to rebound in question. A new power has emerged on the world stage to challenge American supremacy—China—with a weapon the Soviet Union never possessed: mutually assured economic destruction.

 

[zero]

@ignatius that's a very coherent response to a question I was expecting to be answered with a diatribe closer to what @caze hinted at. 

 

[caze]

There's a difference between America getting used to no longer being the top dog in a monopolar world and it dying. I don't think what zeph was going for was the same as the reasonable take from ignatius, the basic economic and social structure of America isn't going to change overnight any time soon.

[psn]

Johan Galtung turned 90 two days ago, SPEAKING OF...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Galtung

[Nebraska]

big T keeps it pushing. now the government will stop those libtards from having abortions

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[zlemflolia]

5 hours ago, zero said:

^ what does "death of america" mean exactly?

that was just me being over optimistic for a moment.  unfortunately america will clearly not die any time soon.  death of america means death of the american empire and all of its exploitation.

[ignatius]

6 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

that was just me being over optimistic for a moment.  unfortunately america will clearly not die any time soon.  death of america means death of the american empire and all of its exploitation.

this came to mind.. it's an interview w/author of the book "how to hide an empire".  pretty interesting historical look  

 

[ignatius]

really thought he'd done this already but i guess not. 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/donald-trump-civil-servants-schedule-f

Quote

TRUMP JUST SIGNED AN EXECUTIVE ORDER LETTING HIM PURGE THOUSANDS OF FEDERAL WORKERS FOR DISLOYALTY

 

[zero]

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

that was just me being over optimistic for a moment.  unfortunately america will clearly not die any time soon.  death of america means death of the american empire and all of its exploitation.

some of your sentiments remind me of a samples in a track, by a once great DJ:

Quote

The average American, when you simply say the word overthrow
May see this as something very, very bad...
I know you're not responsible for his feelings
But, when you say these things, are you threatening someone?
Right now... People's power, People's power... People's... power
Detroit in '42... New York in '64...
Blinding by a hundred watts... The naked, black, white truth...
Destroy the establishment
Tear down the face of stupidity and corruption
And put up in it's place, an edifice of truth...
Unite in struggle for people's power... Unite, unite, unite, truth...
Unite in struggle for people's power...

 

[ignatius]

wawawewa - narrative is gonna run strong for a while. 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/political-violence-inequality-us-election?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

Quote

 

“The tendency is to blame Trump, but I don’t really agree with that,” Peter Turchin, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Connecticut who studies the forces that drive political instability, told BuzzFeed News. “Trump is really not the deep structural cause.”

The most dangerous element in the mix, argue Turchin and George Mason University sociologist Jack Goldstone, is the corrosive effect of inequality on society. They believe they have a model that explains how inequality escalates and leads to political instability: Worsened by elites who monopolize economic gains, narrow the path to social mobility, and resist taxation, inequality ends up undermining state institutions while fomenting distrust and resentment.

 

 

[Braintree]

From the same article:

Quote

One hopeful sign is that the US has pulled back from the brink of chaos before through similar reforms, within the lifetime of its oldest citizens. In the 1930s, as parts of Europe slid into fascism, the US went in a different direction, electing Franklin D. Roosevelt to drag the nation out of the Great Depression by ushering in the New Deal.

At least some social scientists think the US could pull off a similar feat again. “You can reform your way out of dramatically polarized societies,” said George Lawson of the Australian National University in Canberra, who has studied societal transformations including the peaceful transition to majority rule in South Africa.

Even given Trump’s flouting of democratic norms and the current upsurge in civil unrest, Lawson believes the US, by and large, has withstood a political “stress test.”

“I would err on the side that the system has shown to be more robust than fragile,” Lawson said. “One thing to come out of the past few years is an energization of political engagement that is healthy.”

 

[kakapo]

America isn't dead.  America is a rattlesnake constantly shedding its own skin.

[dingformung]

No, America is a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America.

[ignatius]

11 hours ago, Braintree said:

From the same article:

 

i think a lot of people are hoping this is true and a lot of other people are pessimistic about our chances considering all the other things that need to happen beyond just righting the ship to meet the challenges of climate change, wealth inequality, systemic racism etc. 

it does feel like we're in new territory because not that many people know how to use the long lens of history to look back and put things in context. it is hard to guess if america is more or less stupid at this time than at any time in its past. 

[caze]

2 hours ago, ignatius said:

it is hard to guess if america is more or less stupid at this time than at any time in its past. 

we'll find out soon enough

[EdamAnchorman]

5 hours ago, ignatius said:

i think a lot of people are hoping this is true and a lot of other people are pessimistic about our chances considering all the other things that need to happen beyond just righting the ship to meet the challenges of climate change, wealth inequality, systemic racism etc. 

it does feel like we're in new territory because not that many people know how to use the long lens of history to look back and put things in context. it is hard to guess if america is more or less stupid at this time than at any time in its past. 

I think we're just as stupid as we've always been, but the internet has facilitated easy assembly of stupids, weaponizing our collective stupidity.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by randomsummer