Found, while cleaning out directories
25"I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys.
I listened as they said he wasn’t born here.
I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could.
I saw the pictures of him as Hitler.
I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice.
I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog.
I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was.
I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn.
I watched as they did just that.
I listened.
I watched.
I paid attention.
Now, I’m being called on to be tolerant.
To move forward.
To denounce protesters.
To "Get over it.“
To accept this…
I will not.
I will do my part to make sure this great American mistake becomes the embarrassing footnote of our history that it deserves to be.
I will do this as quickly as possible every chance I get.
I will do my part to limit the damage that this man can do to my country.
I will watch his every move and point out every single mistake and misdeed in a loud and proud voice.
I will let you know in a loud voice every time this man backs away from a promise he made to them.
Them. The people who voted for him.
The ones who sold their souls and prayed for him to win.
I will do this so that they never forget.
And they will hear me.
They will see it in my eyes when I look at them.
They will hear it in my voice when I talk to them.
They will know that I know who they are.
They will know that I know what they are.
Do not call for my tolerance. I’ve tolerated all I can.
Now it’s their turn to tolerate ridicule.
Be aware, make no mistake about it, every single thing that goes wrong in our country from this day forward is now Trump’s fault just as much as they thought it was Obama’s.
I find it unreasonable for them to expect from me what they were entirely unwilling to give.”
Author unknown. (Copy and Paste Everywhere)
- 16 comments, 25 replies
- Comment
Yeah, you’ve probably seen it before. Don’t care. It just seems to fit the day (for me).
@Shrdlu - omg. I hadn’t seen it, but it made me cry.
The hypocrisy is beyond disgraceful, the hate and greed unspeakable.
I’m doing what I can.
Thanks for sharing.
@KDemo Here’s some more tears for us all: He’s finally free of the fading of intellect, and gone on from us all.
@KDemo @Shrdlu I hadn’t seen it either. I’ll share everywhere. Thank you. Now I’ll go tell Alexa to play Glen’s music.
@Shrdlu
/giphy I agree
@cranky1950 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
So much for the high road, huh? Lol, classy. Class acts.
@gilar1ja There is no high road in American Politics, if you think so you are simply ignorant and have never examined American history further than your 8th grade history book. This shits been going on since the beginning. Most of you won’t know what “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine the continental liar from the state of Maine” refers to; and that’s one of the more popular slogans. Its always the affected intellectual who puts on the I’ll take the high road bull shit in an attempt to frame the the discourse to their ends. It’s always fun to see such a person squeal like a pig when the tables are turned, kinda like Buckley when Vidal called him a Nazi on national TV.
Does anyone here actually believe that it was an accident that a Democratic President sold the American lower middle class down the river? That a Republican President wants to sell out Eastern Europe to the Russians? The ultra rich get to play chess on a very grand scale. Most of us can’t comprehend Burkian rhetoric let alone get to dabble in it.
nevermind
@cranky1950
Cheerful today huh?
Buckley and Vidal were a hoot to watch.
@cranky1950i just think it’s funny how it all went from “love trumps hate” to revenge and spite overnight.
Somebody needs to grab him by his pussy.
I thought this thread was going to be about Tigers slugger Al Kaline
@matthew - Bait & pitch.
@matthew I remember Al Kaline.
There is no comparison of these two men.
I watched all that stuff too and I saw a gentleman handle his business as a president should.
I see another acting like a spoiled, petulant child spouting lies and inappropriate garbage.
It was a sad November and continues.
I do not sit back and do nothing. I resist in all ways I can.
Sign petitions, make calls to congressmen, donate, at least you know you fought the good fight.
I am tired of the two parties not working together.
In school, you learn to get along and work problems out together.
I just want them to stop being namecallers, grow up and do their damn job for WE THE PEOPLE.
I told my congressperson, this country is for the people,by the people, of the people now take care of our people.
I just come here looking for a deal and occasionally a laugh. Sigh- can’t escape people thinking I’m entitled to their opinion no matter where I go.
@Cooky Thanks for your opinion.
@Cooky You do have a choice not to read a thread. I frequently exercise that choice.
Ok.
The Republicans have been disgusting in their tactics, philosophy, intentions, false arguments, willingness to kowtow to ultra-right billionaires, and in their total intellectual sophistry, even since Gingrich. So well more than 2 decades.
The Republicans found a gullible, beleaguered middle-American population suspicious of the “elites”, and, with the help of Roger Ailes and company, somehow sold these people on the idea that “extreme conservatism = virtue = patriotism = cheering ideas of rosy illogical dishonesty = truth”.
It is precisely the “movement conservatives” and the “Freedom Caucus” types and Congressional Obstructionists who created the hunger for a Trump-like lying, master-slogan-tosser, accomplished phony-issue exploiter, whose words mean less than his volume and his willingness to to anything, exploit and lie about and distort anything, to be the center of attention. Being the center of attention in his own world-stage fictional-but-scripted reality show seems to be his major goal.
Any delusionally confident, or utterly cynical master of the lowest forms of entertainment/persuasion would have done for this audience: if only that person were willing to insult and lie loudly, constantly, and with confidence; and to hang an American flag on it.
They won’t react or see things that way. Many of them now know they were wrong. Quite a few of them now know or suspect just how terribly and deeply wrong they were.
Don’t expect them to see it through our eyes though, ever. They won’t. Perhaps they shouldn’t. The Republicans betrayed them, and Tempo us betraying and trying to destroy us all in his madness, but it wasn’t only the Republicans who let them down.
So what and who are they?
They are many of the people I live around and talk with frequently. They are mostly quite decent humans, but unsophisticated. Not deep or careful or complex thinkers.
And almost all of them ask to have bought into the idea that the Clintons are utterly corrupt.
They are many or most of my extended step-family. They are a large % of the Muslims, Hispanics, and African-Americans I’ve spoken with, which astonishes me. They are most of the non-college people I’ve spoken with, esp those over age 40.
They are frustrated, lied-to, deceived, and angry. In part they are angry that simple solutions and rah-rah slogans and false promises don’t work. They resent that the world is a complex place. They resent that the Republican party sold them out in order to help a bunch of billionaires get richer.
They were persuaded that Bernie was a near communist and that Hillary was evil incarnate. Some of them believe that Breitbart-type stuff is factual. Some of them belief that no news source other than Fox ever told the truth.
They deeply know and feel and resent that more educated and sophisticated people appear to look down on them.
They don’t want economics to be complicated. They don’t want to believe that all those Republican “solutions” basically left them to be the ones facing a long downhill slide.
“At least he’s different”.
“How can he be worse that what we’ve already had?”
So he can be worse. Way way way so much worse. He is worse every day. Every word that comes out of his mouth is either self-promoting, cheap-attacking, bullying, or dishonest. Usually his words are combos of more than one of these.
He has no respect for anyone except those who do deals with him, those who praise him to these point of total ass-kissery (Pence), those who completely kowtow to him, and an assortment of dictators, mafia-types, strongmen, delusional and loud conspiracy theorists, billionaires and near-billionaires, bullies, showmen, and successful slick criminals. And the extremely gullible.
He wouldn’t be able to recognize reality or truth or accuracy if they all French-kissed him every morning. He is destroying what good there is of our national and international standing and trying to destroy the best of our national character and traditions.
He had no idea he is doing any of this. He understands nothing about what he faces or what his responsibilities are. He only understand self-promotion.
201 days down, I think. If he makes it through his Presidential term, we are about 1/7 if the way.
This is what we must survive, as we try to preserve and extend the best of what we as a nation can be.
We or our forbears have faced darkness before. Sometimes they had to face it in themselves. We have been resilient and determined before. I believe this capacity is still there in our
American character (whatever that is),
I’ve spent a good part of the last few weeks listening to or reading commentary from last spring, summer, and fall. (2016).
As wide a variety of “sane sources” as I’ve had time for.
And I can hear and see the arrogance from what I call “my side”. The incredulity about his success. The pratfalls and special effects. trumo uses, and the sophisticated putdowns. from the talking classes. The echo chambers we all
These are the media elite voices, whose political philosophies I usually share (or have some sympathy with or respect for), didn’t seem to go out very often to talk to theb sort ifpeople who voted Trump into office. And when they did, one can hear the intellectual class-awareness.
The thoughts or those who supported Trump, or leaned toward him, or thought he was better than the alternative, were rarely sought, and were so often treated with very polite “interested disdain”.
It makes me cringe to hear the subtext now, in retrospect, because I suspect I am among those who, unaware of myself, carried visible disdain (and visible superiority.) I probably communicated the same unconscious sense that he was so vile that the thoughts of those who might vote for him were not worth my time and energy.
I regret much. But here we are. On the platform for the transit to the next day and the day after that.
Let’s not forget that the democrats blocked every move Bush attempted to make as well. Some of the actions needed to be blocked, others were only blocked only to oppose. I don’t agree with Trump but I didn’t like Hillary any more. They’re both despicable people. Neither should have been on the ballot.
I have no part affiliation, nor do I prefer to share my political views because this really isn’t the place for it. However, if we’re going to insist that we remember the past, let’s remember all of it.
Both parties are to blame. Neither speaks for the people or what’s best for us. They’re only out to line their own pockets and feed the interest groups they have affiliations with. Corporations aren’t people and they shouldn’t be allowed to lobby for laws that favor their bottom lines. We need to ban lobbyists and place term caps on all elected positions.
I was appalled at our selection in November. Neither person was a good choice and we were fucked from the get-go. This is what happens when corporations have their hands in our political system.
United we stand, and divided we fall. Until we can stop looking at one another as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, etc, and see one another as Americans, we can’t change anything. We’re better than that.
@capguncowboy I agree. As a “Republican” (generally but I have voted for other parties’ and independent candidates based on platform and record) I was very upset at the Republican Congress’s actions over the last 2 yrs of Obama’s presidency (govt shutdown threats, supreme court non-action) but I do remember the same with Democrats in Bush years. It’s hard to stomach the juvenile antics some of our “leaders” do because they lose sight of their true role and forget the beauty of compromise and looking for win-win. Not sure I could do better under the same pressures, but that’s why I don’t run for office.
I’m sorry, but that screed is garbage. It’s a lazy try at justifying childish behavior from “the left” that is getting more annoying and counterproductive by the day. At best, it’s unearned comfort, and at worst, it’s yet more fodder for people who see “liberals” as intellectually dishonest hypocrites.
Every time somebody calls Trump a “Cheeto”, and then dusts off their hands and congratulates themselves, a devil gets its wings.
Watching politically oriented news for the past while has been watching practically everybody in America, left, right, or center, fail utterly to step up and even attempt honesty, maturity, bravery, tolerance, or the kind of critical thought required to not be the same as the “enemy”. It’s just lazy, easily manipulated suckers all round.
Voters don’t seem to have the internal fortitude to keep their “own team” in check, or to avoid being manipulated by some bad stew of propaganda and their own worst impulses. So politicians “play hardball”, or whatever, voters eat it up, and then politicians complain that America is divided, preferably while blaming the other party for the division. And that’s how the quest for the presidency turns into the nation’s stupidest popularity contest while “opposition” slides toward synonymity with “obstruction”.
Anyways, there are some nice replies in this thread. Helps me hang onto the last shreds of my faith in humanity.
f00l’s reply in particular describes right-oriented types that I’ve interacted with to a T, though I have spoken to, well, exactly one, that is open minded enough and non-defensive enough that only the Fox News (I’m guessing) and Clinton-equals-Satan (primarily this, I think) really applies.
My actual memory of politics, going back only as far as the late '60s since I wasn’t REALLY paying attention even then, goes something like this:
1968-current : Nixon bashing (though actually goes back to 1950’s or earlier)
1974-'76 : Ford ridicule
1976-'92 : Carter ridicule
1976-1977 : Reagan ridicule
1980-'89 : Reagan bashing
1988-'92 : GHW Bush ridicule
1992-'97 : Clinton ridicule
1997-2000 : Clinton bashing
2000-'03 : GW Bush ridicule (probably predates in Texas)
2003-current : GW Bush bashing
2009-'16 : Obama bashing
2016-current : Trump bashing
Hem! I must VERY CAUTIOUSLY put forward the idea that anti-Trumpism is a kind of mental disease that MAY be deliberately crafted, since ridiculous bombast is the whole POINT of Trump, and seems to function like a tarbaby to people who would otherwise be congratulating themselves on enlightenment and tolerance and whatnot, but instead get irresistibly drawn into these embarrassing screeds of hatred against Trump or Republicans or whichever of their fellow citizens sees things differently. Not that I see things differently, not at all!
@InnocuousFarmer Bernie Sanders is, I think, the person for whom you are looking.
@aetris I’m new here, but people who are older than me seem to think that it’s been getting worse. It certainly seems to me like the popular representation of presidential politics has been getting more polarized and less substantive, based on what I can remember. (I’m only 30ish, have only gradually started paying more attention since W.)
That gel with what you remember? (Let’s leave Trump out of it, since he really is different, at least in degree, from his forebears. I think. Or do you see a line from George W. Bush?)
@gregormehndel I don’t know about that. I enjoyed Bernie a lot initially, but once he got into campaigning, I think his famous forthright honesty took some damage, and I was deeply suspicious of a lot of his answers being too easy and too one-sided.
@InnocuousFarmer - I do think think things have gotten worse, though it goes back a ways.
Supposedly there was some pretty nasty stuff if you go back to the 19th century but it just sounds funny to me. I was pretty young when Nixon was in office and a lot of the stuff thrown at him was sort of - political obviously, but kind of anti-pig-Amerika or whatever, not so personal. The ridicule of Ford and Carter seemed pretty good-natured from what I remember of it. Some of the Reagan stuff I would (now) say was pretty mean-spirited, as was some of the Clinton stuff and a LOT of the GWB stuff. But you know realistically, people are sensitive about all kinds of things and if you gore someone’s ox they’re going to want to gore yours. Not sure what can realistically be done about it, though, and people do need to vent sometimes. It seems to me, though, that here we should TRY to do it in a funny way…
@InnocuousFarmer It used to be that political parties had their fights during the election but then managed to put most of their differences aside enough to actually run this country. Much more recently it seems the goal is to obstruct the party “in charge” regardless of whether or not what they are trying to do made/makes sense; putting aside differences be damned.
@Kidsandliz I’ve heard several times that that is a function of the congressional “base” (bases, I would think) being unwilling to settle for anything less than absolute “victory”, because that’s what the political media (propaganda, really) has told them to expect.
If you buy into the notion that the congressional creatures are acting in accordance with what most of their constituents think they want, that’s where it gets difficult, IMO.
Then you… what, fight propaganda with honest, earnest information? That tends to get tedious and nuanced. People mostly seem to get turned off by that kind of thing.
@InnocuousFarmer
@aetris
I think it’s getting much worse.
Partly, civility has obviously declined in public discourse, and many public and financial rewards can flow to articulate trolls (Limbaugh, Coulter etc; I’m sure there are those on the left as well).
/
The political Congressional traditions of “country first” that were a clear priority from WWII until the mid-nineties were born of several factors.
Social decency was simply more common and required in public conduct (much bad stuff went on in private that no one saw).
The “Greatest Generation” and their parents had shared first the Great Depression, then WWII. This bonded them. They had all fought and suffered together. They had lost friends and family members together.
Next up: the Cold War with nukes, the numerous proxy-wars and expansionist-wars which involved West vs Communism.
And ongoing moment-by-moment risk of nuclear annihilation.
“imminent death concentrates the mind …”
And imminent threat of nuclear destruction concentrated the minds in Washington. Mutual survival was at risk, so these people who had been poor together in the '30’s and had fought together in the '40’s often cooperated, for better or for worse.
Dignity was expected in public officials. So they performed accordingly.
We were all to a degree beneficiaries of a great economic and technological rising tide:
At the end of WWII much of the Old World was in rubble. Many other countries had no capital, littler industry, little education.
In the areas that had not been destroyed or at least has their economies crushed, I think only the US, Canada, NZ, and Australia would have been considered 1st world countries. And of those, only the US had the industry, education, capital, population, traditions, and resources to be the dominant economic and military power. The other countries in the list didn’t have the population concentrations necessary.
Europe was devastated and in rubble. All those countries were deeply in debt to us. The rest of there world had to develop from wherever they were at the moment. Economic progress in the USSR was subject to the massive destruction of WWII, a lack of capitalist and educational traditions, and the paranoia and destructions of communism.
The UK economy was in pieces. And much of their traditional wealth came from the relationship between the UK and the then Empire. And the Empire was dissolving.
So the US, as always ambitious, creative, industrious, willing to risk, had about a half a century’s ride at the top of the world’s in terms in national wealth, tech, prosperity, influence, knowledge capital. .
But globalism was inevitable, as trade and markets expanded (regardless of arguments about how best to handle these issues). And it was inevitable that other countries would play catch up on the economy and on technical knowledge. And inevitable that it would be cheaper to export factories to areas of cheap labor and import goods.
It’s far easier for people in DC to cooperate with their philosophical and political opponents when on a rising tide and everyone is looking up.
The export of factories and increasing robotization and machine reach in the economy meant that suddenly, the capital and knowledge classes could get richer, and yet the working classes face serious declines in opportunity.
And employers discovered that when opportunities seem bounded, one way to get more in profit is to squeeze employees as hard as possible, and treat them as disposable.
Every President from FDR to GHW Bush had lived through the Depression and WWII. And tho many of the values if that generation can be faulted (racism, sexism, other intolerances, viewing things in black and white), they all carried certain common values about the survival of the nation, and about civility at least in public.
Then came the era of Pres Clinton and Speaker Gingrich and their generational peers in power; roughly at the same time globalization became a big deal (and therefore the working classes and middle classes faced the liklihoods of slow, inevitable losses of opportunities and wealth unless they also became capitalist owners or knowledge workers.
And those happened in the same decade that our #1 global adversary, the USSR, fell apart and nuclear annihilation no longer seemed to be on the menu every day, so less incentive in DC to cooperate.
It’s easier to be gracious and cooperative about working together when it looks like every class in the nation will probably get richer, but we might also all die at any moment if we are not wise and careful and patriotic and willing to work together for the greater good.
With those incentives gone or declining; and with a new generation in power that never experienced long years of horrendous shared sacrifice; is it terribly surprising that a significant # along the powerful will game the system at any cost To the greater good for incremental advantages to their side?
And increasing levels of education and media saturation also made differences. Once, people in DC could negotiate and make compromises and not be instantly punished over social media by activist groups who demand total purity. Many Republican don’t stand a chance of re-election if they deviate even slightly from the approved line of ideological perfection.
(In the 1960’s, positions re social rights, feminist issues, environmental issues, economics, etc, were quite varied in both parties. No more.)
Then, political types were rewarded for being effective. Now they are rewarded for being pure. For being obstructionists. For being trolls. So they act accordingly.
And then we get rhetoric and gridlockfrom DC. And phone media-pitchy tier platforms. And then normal people get angry, and either start voting purist, or voting for bombastic sloganeering self-promoting “Fuck You” candidates like Trump.
Well, here we are. Trump may hardly be a typical baby boomer (among the powerful: the Clintons, Obama, Gore, McCain, Kerry, Romney, and GW Bush seem far more what we would normally expect)
But Trump is surely recognizable as being in public a certain type of personality that’s not uncommon among the current ruling generation.
It’s all about him.
@f00l - @Shrdlu kicks off the thread by saying that his President was disrespected in ways that make HIM feel disrespected and angry. I feel for him - disrespectful stuff has been said about other people in ways that make ME feel really angry. And I know lots of people who feel exactly the same way as Shrdlu, although their Presidents were Bush, Clinton - even Nixon. My father-in-law was a Goldwater supporter who STILL fumes at the way Goldwater was treated in '64! But the anger drove him into civic engagement, and he got involved in campaigning for numerous candidates right through the '80s.
Sure, anger isn’t the best energy, and can certainly drive people well past reasonable behaviour - to say nothing of civility - but unfortunately without it I think too many people are inclined to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone ELSE to do things.
The history stuff you talk about interests me for reasons we’ve discussed before - people get complacent, they think that because it’s happening now it’ll just go on happening forever, then some thing that’s been sitting in plain sight but being ignored out of complacency comes to it’s inevitable conclusion and WHOOPS! The apple cart gets upset, if not destroyed. So it’s really important to get people out there engaged with the issues. It’s too bad rage is so effective in doing that - if only niceness and civility were! And it has to be said that single issue politics can produce things like the Missouri Compromise, Prohibition, and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee…
ANYway… I feel that I have a bad tendency to be boring and discursive, and I actually come to Meh to connect to a fun, zany anarchy that I feel the whole WORLD needs more of - so to cut to what chase there is, this thread is feeding the wrong wolf for me, and I discovered when I checked my profile that I’ve gone from “not shy about piping up” to “usually up for a chin-wag,” plus my altruism ratio has declined - in other words I’m doing WAY too much talking. So I will leave you all to enjoy the thread, but I have to ask - Am I the only one who thinks it needs a little more humour?
@aetris I’ve got some tedious, half-baked opinions about using comedy in politics and media, if that’s what you mean. (Really though, I would look at a different thread, you know?)
I know, here. Hopefully this is not a metaphor for shooting nukes:
Funny, right? (I can’t believe it is not the canonical representation of the last election. It was all I could think of since Trump was Republican #2.)
@aetris
Some Meh threads are more serious. Others more down to earth. Others more insane.
Few trolls. Mostly civility and decency and kindness here
Pick your poison du jour according to your own needs. Don’t let this topic or this set of issues mess with your own sense of personally being in balance.
Might I suggest you take a break and look at the “Giphy” topic?
https://meh.com/forum/topics/giphy-4
/giphy giphy
The Anne Frank Center suggested in a tweet Wednesday that there has been an escalation in “alarming parallels” between the present and pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany.
Bulleted List
Back when the primaries on the red side were narrowing their field, I said to a friend, “Bernie can’t win unless Trump gets the nomination and that will never happen. But if it does, Hillary will loose. No matter who else the Republican’s nominate can beat Bernie with ease, but Hillary will take them all.”
Ultimate worst case scenario for that election IMHO.
And if you don’t like my politics,
Toward the end, but I won’t put my fingers in my ears.
@mfladd
Who knows?
Yesterday …
72 years.
The Daily is a M-F daily (obviously) NYT early morning podcast.
Most days it covers the day’s upcoming hot issues and events, similar to the content of many other podcasts. Some days it concentrates on a single issue in greater depth. (recently, fentanyl)
Today’s cast (Thursday Aug 10) is a longer form interview with William Peery, former Sec of Defense from 1994-1999, and Pres Clinton’s principle N Korea negotiator in 1999; and he discusses his perspective is on the situation now. It’s pretty interesting.
Of course, his perspective is only his own, tho he is well informed. No one has a crystal ball here.
Episode link
The Daily: Thursday, Aug 10, 2017 https://overcast.fm/+H9d45ciKs