I’ve lost faith in the US voters after 2016. We held our nose knowing Clinton was a neoconservative recognizing that Trump would be much much worse (and was pretty terrible!). Trump lost the majority but won the EC, and the EC failed to do what it was supposed to do (conspire to elect someone other than the obvious tyrant) so, well, we got Trump in his pajamas obeying Leonard Leo and Steve Miller while Mattis kept him from nuking North Korea.
It reminded me of George W. Bush, who also lost the popular vote to Gore, but won the EC with a little help from friends in SCOTUS (and Leonard Leo), which was far worse than we imagined it would be after Bush’s compassionate conservative thing. I believed Republicans couldn’t actually get a president elected again, because there was no way we were going to forget the $3 trillion price-tag of Iraq, the torture, the open-ended war on terror, Halliburton’s war profiteering and so on. It was such a shit show I expected it to be seared into the minds of Americans. Heck, Bush crawled away as the subprime mortgage crisis hit, so we were all feeling bummed.
The world gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize just for not being Bush.
Nope, it turns out eight years later (with, granted, the War on Terror and mass surveillance getting worse) we forgot the ones who got us into it in the first place. And as much as Trump looked like a rabid monster, having freshly stolen the GOP from all the other cookie-cutter prospects, ready to bring fascism on like The Producers, Clinton was so hated that they just couldn’t see Trump for what he was. (To be fair, millions of Protestant Evangelist Christians were being told from the pulpit Jesus wanted them to vote for Trump – something they’re not supposed to do while remaining a tax-free church. White Evangelists voted for him at a rate around 80%)
So now we’re here, and I’m reminded of LBJ’s lowest white man comment (attributed), If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. Apparently some Americans really do go all in for that kind of ideology, even as the nation world burns down around them.
There’s also the imminent possibility of civil war. Trump will try to organize a coup d’etat if he loses the election, and it is a matter if it can be adequately detected and repelled (or squelched before it gets started).
I’ve lost faith in the US voters after 2016. We held our nose knowing Clinton was a neoconservative recognizing that Trump would be much much worse (and was pretty terrible!). Trump lost the majority but won the EC, and the EC failed to do what it was supposed to do (conspire to elect someone other than the obvious tyrant) so, well, we got Trump in his pajamas obeying Leonard Leo and Steve Miller while Mattis kept him from nuking North Korea.
It reminded me of George W. Bush, who also lost the popular vote to Gore, but won the EC with a little help from friends in SCOTUS (and Leonard Leo), which was far worse than we imagined it would be after Bush’s compassionate conservative thing. I believed Republicans couldn’t actually get a president elected again, because there was no way we were going to forget the $3 trillion price-tag of Iraq, the torture, the open-ended war on terror, Halliburton’s war profiteering and so on. It was such a shit show I expected it to be seared into the minds of Americans. Heck, Bush crawled away as the subprime mortgage crisis hit, so we were all feeling bummed.
The world gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize just for not being Bush.
Nope, it turns out eight years later (with, granted, the War on Terror and mass surveillance getting worse) we forgot the ones who got us into it in the first place. And as much as Trump looked like a rabid monster, having freshly stolen the GOP from all the other cookie-cutter prospects, ready to bring fascism on like The Producers, Clinton was so hated that they just couldn’t see Trump for what he was. (To be fair, millions of Protestant Evangelist Christians were being told from the pulpit Jesus wanted them to vote for Trump – something they’re not supposed to do while remaining a tax-free church. White Evangelists voted for him at a rate around 80%)
So now we’re here, and I’m reminded of LBJ’s lowest white man comment (attributed), If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. Apparently some Americans really do go all in for that kind of ideology, even as the
nationworld burns down around them.There’s also the imminent possibility of civil war. Trump will try to organize a coup d’etat if he loses the election, and it is a matter if it can be adequately detected and repelled (or squelched before it gets started).