2016 US ELECTION: Official Results Thread

[K. A. Pital]

Moore correctly predicted the result and with all the right reasons

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

If Trump does deliver on NAFTA, TTP and TTIP he'd be more efficient than the entire European and American left taken together.

[Simon_Jester]

You do understand that the politics of people change as they age, right?

Are there a lot of people who opposed segregation when they were young, but supported it when they were old?

Are there a lot of people who thought pollution was bad in the '60s, but think it is good today?

Are there a lot of people who today drive up to Latinos and yell at them that they're damn dirty Mexicans who will be deported because Trump's president, who thought that was wrong twenty years ago?

People's politics don't change much. What happens is that they rewrite the narrative to justify new actions, as they are persuaded to do things that contradict the values they had all along.

I would not say, or in this case type with copious amounts of spell check involved, immigration is automatically racist. For some it is no doubt a worry about hordes of darkies coming over and stealing our white wimmen and our white jobs and not even having the decency to use our white english while doing it. For others it is the fact people are coming here using our resources, taking our jobs, bringing crime and drugs, and breaking our laws to arrive here. I don't think its really racist to be worried about that. It nor fear of terrorism is automatically racist just because the people most likely to come here tuking ur jerbs and blowing up our stuff are brown people.

The problem is that this kind of mindset is informed, it is fed by racism. It is a lot easier to deport a racist caricature than to inflict knowing harm on real human beings.

It is easier to want to deport the brown people who are simultaneously a bunch of lazy criminals AND taking your job by working harder than you for less money. It is harder to want to deport a mother with children.

It is easier to want to deport the people who want to impose sharia law on you and secretly plot in the mosque to murder all Americans before imposing sharia on them, than it is to deport someone who got the hell out of Syria because there are rampaging Islamic fundies in Syria.

People who do NOT have these racist brainbugs in their head, who have got their head on straight... They are quite capable of engaging with issues like immigration and terrorism. The thing they do not do is pretend that hurting ten million people who didn't do anything to them is the answer to a problem that may or may not even exist. Hurting ten million people who didn't do anything to you is pretty much the sole province of racists. And going by what Trump, and many of his most vocal supporters, want... that is the province where Trump and his core support live.

The fact that mostly liberals are the ones wetting themselves over mass shootings and the fact people who didn't even like Clinton were willing to vote for her despite scandals and all that bologna because anything is better then Trump makes me think if I took that bet about the rationality of Trump voters I'd probably maybe perhaps win. Maybe, I never win anything like fucking ever, probably should have voted for Trump considering my luck at winning. People just ain't rational when it comes to fear period, don't much matter which side of the political aisle they squat and shit in, fear makes fools of them all.

Put this way. Trump voters looked at this man, this man who has probably raped his interns and will surely rape his country, and decided to trust him. They looked at this man who has been a millionaire all his life and lives in big fancy towers in New York, and decided he's the one who will look out for the interests of poor people in rural America.

Clinton voters looked at Trump and went "Nuh-uh. No way."

Whose set of fear, and willingness to declare allegiance, makes more sense? Which is more rational?

I disagree that the point of failure is the Clinton campaign. The CC failed both because of its own incompetence, it was their race to lose, but also for following the roadmap laid by Democrats in general. For seeming spineless, for focusing too much on bullshit, for seeming anti-white or anti-rural even if they weren't, for generally blundering for I think the better part of a decade and maybe longer, for setting up the country to be ripe enough for Trump to somehow, somehow as in the fact I still cannot believe it, in a haze of wondering if maybe I'm still dreaming some fucked up dream, somehow win despite all odds, despite it should have been unpossible.

Clinton and her campaign's primary failing atleast in my opinion is the fact they did not recognize that the shit they were standing in stunk like shit and not getting some new litter for the litterbox.

Yeah. I don't disagree. The problem is, and has long been, that the people most easily recruited to vote for right-wing candidates think voting is normal. A lot of the people who would be recruited to vote for left-wing candidates (or, hell, anyone who isn't a right-winger) do not think voting is normal, for a variety of reasons.

[aerius]

This happened.



Out of all the mainstream news outlets, CBS is the only one that has any coverage on it.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/ ... -attacked/
If you think this is acceptable in any way, you're just as bad as a KKK shitbag.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think it's acceptable. I DO think it's predictable. Here's what happened.

There are a lot of black people who, with reason, believe that the rise of Trump is going to result in a corresponding rise of hate crimes, maybe even lynchings and so on. Which has, in point of fact, already started happening.

So black people are expecting a return to the worse old days. Some of them are young, stupid manchildren who don't understand numbers well enough to grasp just how outnumbered they are. And those manchildren? Some of them want to get in the first shot. We just caught a few of them on Youtube.

It's going to make things even worse than they would have been. Because now those very same people who were already about to start committing hate crimes get to have all the vindictive sense that they're retaliating for crimes that have happened to 'them.'

And that's how it all just happened, and what will happen as a consequence.

Moore correctly predicted the result and with all the right reasons

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

If Trump does deliver on NAFTA, TTP and TTIP he'd be more efficient than the entire European and American left taken together.

See, this kind of thinking- not this exact mistake, but this category of mistake, has a lot to do with why Marxism is functionally dead as a political movement.

Once you have decided that the Revolution demands A, B, and C, and that it is worthwhile to speak approvingly of a filthy brute so long as he is claims that he is working towards A, B, and C...

...This will, without fail, recoil upon you. It will have consequences that will bounce back and destroy countries, destroy movements. Sooner or later, the movement winds up discredited due to its habit of supporting vile ogres.

---

As an example, Marxist socialism in the English-speaking world did not really survive the Stalin years. It was withering steadily pretty much throughout those years. And that was not just because of redbaiting, but because too many organized socialists wanted to speak approvingly of what Moscow was doing during that time. The problem is that it was obviously wrong to approve of a man who was staging purges and coups in numerous countries, a man who kept trying to edit out of the historical record the numerous allies he'd betrayed, a man who basically set himself up as Czar Joseph I.

If to be a communist meant having to approve of Stalin, very few people in the democratic parts of the developed world wanted to be a communist.

If to be an anti-globalization socialist means having to approve of Trump just because he may veto a particular trade pact... I don't want to be an anti-globalization socialist.

I refuse to claim an ogre as one of my friends.

[Crazedwraith]

This happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djx3T9IEc1

Out of all the mainstream news outlets, CBS is the only one that has any coverage on it.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/ ... -attacked/
If you think this is acceptable in any way, you're just as bad as a KKK shitbag.

Did anyone here on the board in any way say or imply they might think this was acceptable?

Tilting at Windmills.

[K. A. Pital]

If to be an anti-globalization socialist means having to approve of Trump just because he may veto a particular trade pact... I don't want to be an anti-globalization socialist.

I'm not approving of Trump - the whole politician as he is.

But if he wreaks havoc on my enemies, even by something which looks like misguided "friendly fire", because undoubtedly a great many global capitalists may bite the dust if Trump's plans realize in the fullest extent - I see no reason to not approve of that. A US president once said the following:

If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible...

Basically, if capitalists wreak havoc and chaos among themselves - and globalization advocates bite the dust in the process as they failed to sense the winds turning - I don't see a reason for them not to. In the process, we will see where history goes.

See, this kind of thinking- not this exact mistake, but this category of mistake, has a lot to do with why Marxism is functionally dead as a political movement.

Right now I see some other, more recent political movements being very much dead. The so-called "99%" of Occupy failed to change a single thing about how the world economy operates. Just powerless dust below oligarch feet.

And for a final time - the Obama pacts are not "just some pacts". They decide the fate of generations.

[Simon_Jester]

See, this kind of thinking- not this exact mistake, but this category of mistake, has a lot to do with why Marxism is functionally dead as a political movement.

Right now I see some other, more recent political movements being very much dead. The so-called "99%" of Occupy failed to change a single thing about how the world economy operates. Just powerless dust below oligarch feet.

Which is a complete tangent because you are comparing apples to oranges.

Stas, I'm trying to be honest here as someone who is not unsympathetic to the core ideals of socialism, someone who is genuinely willing to listen to and respect socialist arguments including Marxist ones.

Do you know why Marxism evaporated in much of the developed world outside the Soviet bloc? Why nearly every industrialized country had a reasonably active and healthy socialist party that listened to Marxists in 1910, but almost none did in 1980?

Marxism fell apart not only because of its enemies. It was because too many avowed Marxist groups made it a requirement of membership that you approve of brutal actions which a decent person ought not approve of. Because it was hard to remain a communist while watching Hungarian students get crushed in 1956, or while watching the Cultural Revolution rampage in China.

Ultimately, movements that aspire to create good will fall apart if they spend too much time approving of evil. Movements that openly claim their willingness to do evil to others can survive that, by pitting the people against one another, by saying it is a positive good to hurt this or that group of victims. But movements which intend to create a better tomorrow, and then take a stance approving of someone who makes tomorrow worse, endanger themselves through their own internal contradictions.

You never hesitate to remind people of this when they appear to be tolerating or promoting evils. Please remember it yourself.

[K. A. Pital]

I did say that I do not approve of Trump on the whole.

But I also do not approve of Clinton on the whole.

I do approve of destroying globalization. That simply needs to be done.

The comment about modern left is very much spot-on. They have been detached from the working class and tried to create a "movement" based on students, intellectuals, etc. That's admirable, but securing the workers is crucial to winning. And you don't secure their support by telling them that you'll wipe out their jobs.

It simply doesn't work that way. I think that it is hardly something you can blame on us old-school Marxists.

It was an amorphous cosmopolitan "left in name only" movement that lost to Trump. And such movements will lose, I think, in the future as well. Even to brutes, as you say. In fact, I said as much myself earlier in the thread.

[His Divine Shadow]

I dunno simons arguments rings hollow as all fuck to me. Seems to me Obama has drone striked assloads of innocent people and approved extrajudicial murders. How many are dying because of the current administrations approach to foreign policy? Seems to me the people who I believe were supposed to come off as non-brutes have actual lives blood on their hands.

Nevermind the actual people in developing countries dying daily because of globalizations effects. Isn't that brutal beyond the pale? How can anyone support such a systems continued existence and attack anyone else for being a brute? Because they don't have to directly observe these things?

[Patroklos]

This happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djx3T9IEc1

Out of all the mainstream news outlets, CBS is the only one that has any coverage on it.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/ ... -attacked/
If you think this is acceptable in any way, you're just as bad as a KKK shitbag.

Did anyone here on the board in any way say or imply they might think this was acceptable?

Tilting at Windmills.

Maybe, but what they certainly did to was predict this violence from the right. In response to evidence to the contrary Simon posts a picture of name written on a wall and some angry kid yelling racists insults over an insult that he claims was said but isn't in the recording. An imagined insult versus a guy being dragged from a car and savagely beaten (and we don't even know if he is a Trump supporter, he was probably just a random white guy). ITS THE SAME!

Its extremely relevant that so many on this board have been consistently and spectacularly wrong about who commits political violence in this country and for what reasons.

[Q99]

Apparently Bill Clinton had some advice that was ignored that might've saved the day

[Flagg]

I dunno simons arguments rings hollow as all fuck to me. Seems to me Obama has drone striked assloads of innocent people and approved extrajudicial murders. How many are dying because of the current administrations approach to foreign policy? Seems to me the people who I believe were supposed to come off as non-brutes have actual lives blood on their hands.

Nevermind the actual people in developing countries dying daily because of globalizations effects. Isn't that brutal beyond the pale? How can anyone support such a systems continued existence and attack anyone else for being a brute? Because they don't have to directly observe these things?

The American people are largely ignorant of these things. And that is thanks to our media. Obama basically followed Dubya's foreign policy short of lying us into wars, but instead stepped up the use of drones to a huge extent. But if you turn on the nightly news or watch any of the 24 hours news networks you don't hear about drone strikes unless they kill (probably) some "high value" Al Quaeda or Taliban leader.

This is in no way a real defense of the American people as if you do even rudimentary searches for international news sources it's all there in black, white, and red. Because American news doesn't show much if any blood and never gore.
But Trump has flat out said he loves war and loves "bombing the crap out of people" so get ready for more wars of choice. If it's Iran, as I suspect (unless his lover owner Putin tells him not to) it will be a goddamned bloodbath since they aren't exactly pushovers like Iraq was and I suspect Donnie Douchebag will be calling all the shots much like Hitler since in his rotten maggot infested mind he literally believes that he's the best at everything.

And that's not something just for the campaign, you go back decades to interviews he's given for books about him and he flat out believes anything he does he's the absolute best at. For example he played baseball for a military academy he was sent to in 1962 and he says to an interviewer that he was the best at every position. He also claimed that he was the best baseball player ever at that time and said that that was when "there was no Major League Baseball", he was the best in the whole world. I think the 1962 NY Yankees and Mickey Mantle would disagree.

But it's classic narcissistic psychopath thinking. The fucker is dangerous.

[Flagg]

This happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djx3T9IEc1

Out of all the mainstream news outlets, CBS is the only one that has any coverage on it.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/ ... -attacked/
If you think this is acceptable in any way, you're just as bad as a KKK shitbag.

Did anyone here on the board in any way say or imply they might think this was acceptable?

Tilting at Windmills.

Maybe, but what they certainly did to was predict this violence from the right. In response to evidence to the contrary Simon posts a picture of name written on a wall and some angry kid yelling racists insults over an insult that he claims was said but isn't in the recording. An imagined insult versus a guy being dragged from a car and savagely beaten (and we don't even know if he is a Trump supporter, he was probably just a random white guy). ITS THE SAME!

Its extremely relevant that so many on this board have been consistently and spectacularly wrong about who commits political violence in this country and for what reasons.

Yeah, that Native American kid standing on his own tribes land to prevent an oil pipeline totally deserved that rubber bullet to the face, right?

If you weren't a mindless rightwing dipshit you'd realize that rightwing violence is institutional while left wing violence is sporadic.

So go jerk off to pictures of George Zimmerman and Adolph Ghouliani you pissant troll.

[Patroklos]

Again, your impotent anger, SO refreshing! And BTW they are not protesting on their own land.

[Flagg]

Again, your impotent anger, SO refreshing! And BTW they are not protesting on their own land.

The troll is strong with this one.

I love how everyone thinks that I'm all Hulked out with rage. When I insult unpersons like you, I do it with a smile on my face.

[Patroklos]

An impotent smile. But I won't begrudge you the few things that bring you joy in life internet tough guy.

[Crown]

Maybe, but what they certainly did to was predict this violence from the right. In response to evidence to the contrary Simon posts a picture of name written on a wall and some angry kid yelling racists insults over an insult that he claims was said but isn't in the recording. An imagined insult versus a guy being dragged from a car and savagely beaten (and we don't even know if he is a Trump supporter, he was probably just a random white guy). ITS THE SAME!

Its extremely relevant that so many on this board have been consistently and spectacularly wrong about who commits political violence in this country and for what reasons.

Yeah, that Native American kid standing on his own tribes land to prevent an oil pipeline totally deserved that rubber bullet to the face, right?

Deplorable.

If you weren't a mindless rightwing dipshit you'd realize that rightwing violence is institutional while left wing violence is sporadic.

And bused in by the DNC.

So go jerk off to pictures of George Zimmerman and Adolph Ghouliani you pissant troll.

George Zimmerman is part of the institution now is he? And, I'm going to guess you mean Rudi Ghouliani was president of the United States of America when that innocent Native American coped a rubber bullet to the face was he?

Do you just fling shit in any direction imaginable, sit back, see what sticks and then grin like a mindless simpleton at your 'art'?

[Zaune]

The comment about modern left is very much spot-on. They have been detached from the working class and tried to create a "movement" based on students, intellectuals, etc. That's admirable, but securing the workers is crucial to winning. And you don't secure their support by telling them that you'll wipe out their jobs.

Would you prefer it if Clinton had knowingly and deliberately made a bunch of promises she couldn't keep?

The fundamental problem here is that whatever we do, we cannot put things back to exactly how they were. Coal in particular is a dead end; even if you ignore the environmental impact entirely, between better renewables technology and the nuclear industry finally starting to live down Chernobyl, demand for it is never going to be as high as it once was. And even if the US threw hundreds of billions at resuscitating the manufacturing sector it wouldn't provide a fraction as many jobs thanks to advances in automation.

Letting nostalgia for a lost golden age dictate policy is a surefire way to run a country into the ground.

[Simon_Jester]

Maybe, but what they certainly did to was predict this violence from the right. In response to evidence to the contrary Simon posts a picture of name written on a wall and some angry kid yelling racists insults over an insult that he claims was said but isn't in the recording. An imagined insult versus a guy being dragged from a car and savagely beaten (and we don't even know if he is a Trump supporter, he was probably just a random white guy). ITS THE SAME!

Did you even read either what I actually said or what I linked to?

I linked to a huge stack of instances, many of them hate crimes, none of them as serious as a vicious beating like the one aerius referenced, but they did in point of fact happen.

What I said is that many minorities in this country anticipate a return to an atmosphere of lynchings and officially sanctioned brutality and state terrorism directed against them. They have reason to fear that, because a significant number of low and mid-level Trump supporters have been explicitly saying that is what they hope will happen, and they aren't exactly getting corrected from the head office.

What I further said is that if one is a member of a minority, and if one happens to be a vicious idiot manchild, there is a temptation to get in the first shot. And because in that case, one is a vicious idiot manchild, one's "first shot" is apt to be characteristically brutal and thuggish.

This is a causal mechanism. I am trying to explain what happened, and how. I wish it hadn't happened. I am not trying to draw equivalencies. I am not trying to somehow trivialize the experience of a man who was beaten within an inch of his life. I am trying to explain what happened, from a sociological standpoint, because it is NOT as simple as "lol blacks beat up whites and whites aren't beating up blacks."

Which you would know perfectly well, if you were reading either the posts you respond to or the links you refer to, and stopping to think about them clearly.

I dunno simons arguments rings hollow as all fuck to me. Seems to me Obama has drone striked assloads of innocent people and approved extrajudicial murders. How many are dying because of the current administrations approach to foreign policy? Seems to me the people who I believe were supposed to come off as non-brutes have actual lives blood on their hands.

Nevermind the actual people in developing countries dying daily because of globalizations effects. Isn't that brutal beyond the pale? How can anyone support such a systems continued existence and attack anyone else for being a brute? Because they don't have to directly observe these things?

Because I can, and am, pointing to all that is wrong with the world as a result of American policy from 2009-16 and say the following.

This is what it looks like when the person in charge is not an ogre. Is not an actual narcissistic psychopath, is actually willing to sometimes mildly inconvenience themselves to benefit others who aren't in a position to do them a favor. Is actually willing to listen to people that disagree, when a gun is not being held to their head. Actually believes on a gut level that there are some rules they are supposed to follow.

If you thought it was bad before, now it will be worse. Everything that is now bad, will either stay bad, or get worse. You thought it was bad when the president was a guy who sat back and does nothing while people burn as a victim of his actions. How about one who dances around the flames pouring gasoline on while whipping up racist mobs in the US to chant "they deserve it" around bonfires of books written by his critics? You thought King Log was bad, because King Log sits there and does nothing as the people of the pond suffer? Well, how about King Stork?

[Flagg]

Maybe, but what they certainly did to was predict this violence from the right. In response to evidence to the contrary Simon posts a picture of name written on a wall and some angry kid yelling racists insults over an insult that he claims was said but isn't in the recording. An imagined insult versus a guy being dragged from a car and savagely beaten (and we don't even know if he is a Trump supporter, he was probably just a random white guy). ITS THE SAME!

Its extremely relevant that so many on this board have been consistently and spectacularly wrong about who commits political violence in this country and for what reasons.

Yeah, that Native American kid standing on his own tribes land to prevent an oil pipeline totally deserved that rubber bullet to the face, right?

Deplorable.

If you weren't a mindless rightwing dipshit you'd realize that rightwing violence is institutional while left wing violence is sporadic.

And bused in by the DNC.

So go jerk off to pictures of George Zimmerman and Adolph Ghouliani you pissant troll.

George Zimmerman is part of the institution now is he? And, I'm going to guess you mean Rudi Ghouliani was president of the United States of America when that innocent Native American coped a rubber bullet to the face was he?

Do you just fling shit in any direction imaginable, sit back, see what sticks and then grin like a mindless simpleton at your 'art'?

Institutionalize as in "law enforcement" you mindless goon. And the Republican governor was responsible for the standing rock police riot, not Obama. It turns out states have power, you'd know this if you paid attention in elementary school instead of huffing glue and eating paint chips.

Were you born stupid or did the pediatric nurse drop you on you water filled head?

[Crown]

Meanwhile, features writer for the Guardian;



TOLERANCE!

[Crown]

Institutionalize as in "law enforcement" you mindless goon.

In what way is 'institutional' violence 'right wing' by definition?

And the Republican governor was responsible for the standing rock police riot, not Obama. It turns out states have power, you'd know this if you paid attention in elementary school instead of huffing glue and eating paint chips.

So by that logic, the Baltimore rioters protesters were being oppressed by the Baltimore city council who are all Democrats, which means that right wing violence in Baltimore was coming from Democrats?

Fuck me, its worse than I thought.

Were you born stupid or did the pediatric nurse drop you on you water filled head?

You brought up a private citizen and an ex-mayor in your little rant about 'institutional violence' which you now define as being "law enforcement", of which the two aforementioned are neither. Wanna run by who you think was dropped on their head by the nurse again?

[Zaune]

Meanwhile, features writer for the Guardian;



TOLERANCE!

And which candidate made oblique reference to the possibility of "2nd Amendment solutions" if they lost again?

[Iroscato]

Meanwhile, features writer for the Guardian;



TOLERANCE!

And which candidate made oblique reference to the possibility of "2nd Amendment solutions" if they lost again?

And that somehow excuses it?

[K. A. Pital]

This is what it looks like when the person in charge is not an ogre.

Dehumanizing the enemy much?

But let's not forget that looks can be deceiving.

A beast is a stupid creature. A human is a dangerous creature, and I am wary of the Smilers just as I am of the Beasts.

Letting nostalgia for a lost golden age dictate policy is a surefire way to run a country into the ground.

There's no compelling alternative to that narrative in our present day. Besides, the oligarchs tell me daily that there's no way to go back anywhere and the only way is forward - towards a global world under their control. How's what you say any different? Why should I trust you or them?

Would you prefer it if Clinton had knowingly and deliberately made a bunch of promises she couldn't keep?

I don't like Clinton and I have no preferences regarding her. I also don't like Trump. I think he will not follow up on his promises to tear NAFTA apart and thus be just another bourgeois traitor. In any case I'm just a side observer.