Trump by name......

True dat. Sigh. Everything about these actions seems hateful and small. Cowardly.

 

Been quiet in here lately. Trump mustn't have removed anything from a government website in a day or two.

 

I also contacted my MP requesting that he make his (undoubted) objection to this policy loud and unequivocal. I also sent emails to the general chair of two academic conferences scheduled to take place in the US in 2017 and demanded that they relocate to a different country. I also spoke to several members of faculty at my institution and collaborators at other universities and sounded out the potential for a 'wont publish, wont review, no attend' boycott at all events taking place in the US until this ban is lifted.

Then I got around to whining and being petty.

Oh, and I must have signed 10 different petitions related to this absurdity.

 

How long till we can legitimately make comparisons to the Nazis?



Also, if waterboarding isn't torture, does that mean Trump will be posthumously pardoning the Japanese soldiers who were convicted of doing it to American POW's?

I really hope the American judiciary will not lose their momentum on this.

 

Wow, that really took me a while to get. Needed to speak it out loud in my head.

You know how everything is bad when it happens to you, but you are allowed to do it to others, because it's nothing bad?

 

Tonight we saw the firing of the Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, when she said the Department of Justice would not defend Trump's ban.

You take a step back here, look at the firings of State Department employees, the addition of Bannon to the National Security Council, Trump's attack on the media, and the legitimacy of the election and I think it becomes pretty clear that he's intent upon dismantling any checks on executive power and the democratic norms that function in this capacity.

I think the comparisons to Nazis are valid, but also comparisons to despots worldwide.

"Certain newspapers and news agencies have yet to improve themselves. There continues to be false information reported in the news."

[The media is] "condemning and providing false information again, with some truths omitted, some issues exaggerated, and some news reported without scrutiny".

These are not lines written by Kellyanne Conway, but by General Prayuth Chan-ocha.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...ng-a-lot-of-their-tactics?utm_source=vicefbus

Lotsa scary stuff happening.

 

It's way more terrifying than I imagined.

Chomsky gave a good reply when asked about comparisons between Trump and Hitler; he said that Hitler was a sincere and committed ideologue, and that is the big difference.

Like I said before, good luck getting rid of that guy. You might be glad of all those guns after all.

 

With regard to the guns, I'm afraid they'd do more harm than good honestly. I think Bannon would like nothing more than to go Kent State on some protestors. I'm not saying that based on any facts, more just a feel from the guy.

Meanwhile I'm pretty convinced that Trump is seeking a holy war with Islam and hoping to provoke a terrorist attack. I feel resigned to thinking that that will be inevitable, at least in some capacity and some magnitude and that this will be used to justify a war in the Middle East.

But I think there's some reason to hope, speaking of Chomsky. When I think about the people that other protest movements overcame and the political climates in which they occurred, things have gotten a lot better. White privilege and institutional racism are discussed openly and frequently among the general populace. Feminism is a commonplace ideology. You even have Trump supporters who cite his departure from anti-homosexual ideology as a good thing (despite his failure to live up to that departure). Protests have been organized nearly overnight to speak out against the Muslim ban. And a democratic socialist got the majority of the youth vote.

By no means are these features a guarantee of victory, or that backsliding towards fascism is impossible, but I feel hopeful.

 

agreed.

 

It’s funny. I go to forums who lean heavily on the right and I get called a leftist. I come to forums who lean heavily on the left and I get called a bigot. Trump is a narcissist and a megalomaniac. That much is clear, for example from his refusal to admit or even consider that his inauguration crowd was less than the largest ever, or from his desire for his towers to be the tallest in every town he builds them like in Chicago (where they didn't let him). That said, people really need to dial down the Nazi rhetoric. Trump might be swift with the firings. He might rush into changes too fast and ones you do not agree with. You might not agree with his policies on, well, anything and everything. But to compare that with what was done in Germany and Europe circa 1930s / 40s just cheapens history and creates more spin which we already have entirely too much of. A temporary ban on 7 Muslim majority countries is as much a “Muslim ban” as France banning Spaniards, Italians and Germans would be a Christian ban. I am aware that Trump proposed an outright Muslim ban during his campaign, and this first measure might even be a first step toward that, but as is it is not. It is a terrorism-linked ban. I am aware that major “players” like Egypt, Turkey, the Emirates or Saudi Arabia are bafflingly absent from the list and I don’t doubt that there are conflicts of interests, national AND personal, at play here. I am not saying it is an exhaustive, logical-within-its-own-frame-of-reference list, but again just that - as is - it is a not a Muslim ban. I think that the election of Trump was an abomination to moral decency and all the qualities a leader should embody. I also think that Trump is reaping what he sowed during his campaign. You can’t be a bully upfront and expect fairness and objective critiques thereafter. Even milquetoast presidents face spin and partisanship, so he more than made his bed. That said, in the end arguments generated from hysteria aren’t helping anybody. Go to a Trump supporter and call him a Nazi will yield the same type of response you give them when they call Obama a Muslim or a socialist.

 

Trump gon' leave the LGBT work place protections Obama put in place alone.

Damn nazi.

The disconnect of people who think in the terms of globalization to people who think in terms of nations is kinda' funny.

The attitude of urbanites towards the rural is also funny, given that urban pops. produce very little in terms of sustaining the nation with the means to survive over rural populations. They also don't deal with all those cool social issues urban people go all SJW on, hence why they don't care. The realities are so different xD.

I don't like Trump, I think he's deplorable, but I really think the left should take a half step off their high horse and stop seeing only their world view. I'm tired of having to sift through 50 articles just to find information that hasn't been cherry picked to try and shame repubs and trump. You don't even have to cherry pick the info. to make people look bad half the time. Just write it as it is without your own spin xD

 

the attitude you're supposedly decrying is on display right here.

basically, you're writing people that lives in cities completely off. and you're completely wrong on the attitudes of city folk to rural dwellers. you're just straw manning so you can make a ridiculous point.

why is it that some rural americans have a belittling attitude to urban dwellers. i grew up in rural america, and it's always been on full display, the total dismissal of people (by some) that choose to live and work in the city. as somehow we don't produce anything. or that because i may fight for gay rights for my friends and family, that somehow that's a urban versus rural issue.

and the whole "the left lives in cities" and "the right lives in rural america". seriously, how ridiculous is that.

kudos for pointing out exactly what you're railing against....in your own post.

 

I'm not sure how much credit he deserves for not dismantling his predecessor's work here; he leaves open the possibility for passing the FADA and placing a conservative justice in the SC.

The comparisons to Nazis are due to his authoritarianism, his slogans seemingly lifted directly from Nazi prop, his calls to violence during the campaign, his hatred of the press and media, his affection for other violent dictators, and his placement of white nationalists into positions of power.

And the Nazis outright celebrating his election. That ain't good optics.

Last I checked cities are economic drivers while rural areas are economic sinks. Why privilege food over that economic productivity? Seems like it's not the full story. I think rural populations do deal with the social issues that urban people deal with, they just deal with them differently; Matt Shepard was out in Laramie Wyoming. It's less 'not caring' and more 'outright open hostility to movement towards equality.'

 

Exactly.

I'm not saying he's Hitler, he doesn't have the charisma and committed ideology for that, but there are comparisons to be made between 1930's Germany and Trump-as-authoritarian-demagogue.

 

to back to the point about globalization....

i find protectionist policies quite wrong-headed also. we've spent decades eliminating barriers to trade, so that american goods can be sold in other places, expanding the bottom-lines of american companies. in order to do that, we have to give other countries the ability sell into our country.

to say, that because of "globalization" americans are out of jobs is actually completely false, bordering on stupidity.

unemployment is below 5%, that indicates a healthy economy. salaries are going up, that indicates a healthy economy. we want more productivity, we want more automation. that means we can produce more stuff to sell. we don't want more coal miners, we want less coal miners and more automation, because we get more coal that way--just an example, forget the warming argument for a moment.

it's ridiculous the executive is threatening leaving nafta. we're turning our backs on 200 million consumers. it's ridiculous we got out of tpp. we're turning out back from another few hundred million consumers.

 

It’s a lazy rhetoric that does nothing provoke a pavlovian emotional response on both sides. There’s nothing to gain from that. Absolutely nothing. Actually that’s one of the first fallacies in the book. If all A does X and B does X then B = A. Just no. Friends don’t let friends waste time with syllogistic fallacies.

 

...and hyperboles.

 

Likewise, I think you're missing the lessons from history. In any event, I'm glad we can find common ground in saying that the Trump administration represents an abandonment of American ideals.

 

The human brain seeks patterns.