Then what did I buy all these cheese platters for???

If there's one thing I learned from living in Wisconsin is that you can never have too many cheese platters.

About that ancient Chinese curse which says “May you live in interesting times”: Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do want to live in interesting times! Bring it on! My reaction while watching the election on Tuesday night was: I don't like what I am seeing, so it's time to either get to work and do something about it, or STFU. What can I, personally, do to make a difference in the governance of my country? Probably next to nothing, but I would rather be active than passive.

Yes! It's really aggravating to hear “my voice doesn't matter, why bother” if those same people didn't bother to try using it at all.

One thing that worries me is this attitude of “oh, it seems bad but it'll be ok because of this and this…”

That's not true. Things can ALWAYS get worse. If something seems bad, then it can actually really BE bad. You guys live in a little bit of a complacent bubble in some ways (I'm not trying to be insulting here).

Look at how politics have gone in other countries- people find themselves pulled out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken away and shot in a ditch en masse.
Admittedly that's an extreme example, but the point is it can happen in ANY country, no one is immune.

For certain people in the USA that HAS happened in the past, and for certain people now (illegal Mexican immigrants, Muslims…) they really do have to worry about that in the near future- not being shot, hopefully, but being pulled from their beds at midnight and imprisoned, certainly. That is not an unrealistic fear.

To reiterate- these things do happen in the world, and the USA is not a child safe, padded little bubble were bad things are impossible.

————–

The thing is, crazy right wing nuts worry about that happening to them with Obama- which it never did because they were white, enfranchised, they're the majority, and no one cares about oppressing them.
This sort of thing DOES happen to minorities though.

@Kimluster - For sure! A larger perspective is what we need sometimes. ‘social media wimpification’! xDDD I love it!

@El Cid - I agree with your first paragraph totally!

I don't see the Democrats as taking on a Socialist bent at all, though. I've seen Republican voters calling Obama and Clinton Socialists but that's comically off the mark from what I can tell. They're super corporate-friendly.

If Bernie was there, that label could have some validity. Though a touch of Socialism isn't so bad in my opinion…it's about a society that's more generous to the lower earners and working/middle class, with higher taxes. That's a position that could be argued for or against, but I haven't seen the Dems moving that way at all. Maybe they will after this defeat; who knows?

From what I can see, the parties have both been moving to the right for years. Not the people - the parties.

And does Trump's working class, anti-trade deal rhetoric match up with anything he'll actually do? No idea. It's certainly against everything the Republican machine stands for. It's hard to imagine Trump turning down the big cash from those big interests.

He's an unknown quantity…we'll have to see what happens I guess…

@ozone - I hear you. But a Clinton victory would continue the “complacent bubble” more than a Trump victory does. The media colluded with Hillary as the Democrats drifted further to the right, leaving most of America's citizens struggling more and more.

A racist pumpkin as President will outrage people. It already has. Things will HAVE to change.

That's maybe the best way to look at this. A shakeup of any stripe at least gets us off the path we were on. Of course there's always the risk we'll end up even worse off when all's said and done; change isn't always for the better. But it's a risk the American people seem resolved to take.

@Ozone: It's true, those things do happen, but they don't *just* happen. The conditions in America today aren't anywhere near what they were in, say, Colombia during La Violencia or any of Africa's countless ethnic killing fields.

The one good thing to come out Trump's election is that we won't end up with a completely out-of-balance Supreme Court, and one of the key ingredients in the large scale social strife you're worried about is a public that feels disenfranchised by their government. So crazy as it sounds, that actually helps, a little bit.

I'm actually more worried about what the public does right now than anything Trump may do. I can understand people being upset that their side lost (not just the Presidency, but Congress as well), but the protests going on are pointless and uncalled for. You need to at least give the new coalition a chance to govern, otherwise nationwide dysfunction is a foregone conclusion. It's sort of disingenuous to vote if you're only going to accept the outcome when your candidate wins.

El Cid wrote:
If you want to set a good example for your children, then instead of vilifying people you disagree with, you should at least make some attempt to understand where they're coming from – if for no other reason than because you just may end up having to work with them… like, maybe for the next four years at least.

I think you just summed up the biggest lesson to learn in this election. Over the past year there has been so much exaggerated hate flung from both sides that it has distorted our view of each other. Now the people who lost think they're being ruled over by vampire Hitlers.

Are our opponents vampire Hitlers? No. They're regular everyday people who have different opinions because events in their lives led them to think slightly differently from us. This applies to both sides. Certainly a side can be right or wrong, but both sides deserve to be humanized and understood.

Agree about the protest being pointless, and also quite ironic. To say, with Trump's victory, you are fearful for your personal welfare and then go out, protest and cause civil disruption (let's just hope it doesn't get too violent) is almost the definition of hypocrisy. It's like Fundie Muslims and Christians insisting theirs is a religion of peace but getting violently angry when someone pokes fun at their God, Saints, and Prophets…

And trust me, I live in Trump Country, and Trump supporters do not necessarily feel safe either… especially should they go to a bigger city wearing anything indicating they supported him (both prior to election and after).
example.

Some say, if Clinton had won, that there'd be mass protest from the Trump Supporters (not sure that's true, maybe only for reason that it's not as easy to mass protest outside the bigger cities, we just don't know…).

Regardless, we know who is protesting, acting scary, and have people fearful of full scale riots breaking out…

Wow, that video's pretty scary. I remember the video of that woman who got pelted with projectiles from an angry mob because she wore a Trump t-shirt in public. I don't think I ever got over my disgust from that moment on.

But hey, a Trump supporter punched one of those Black Lives Matter people, so I guess it's all even, right!

fallopiancrusader wrote:
What's really terrifying to me is imagining how Trump is going to re-decorate the white house! I imagine it will soon become the gold house… XD

Boob Hill.

One fascinating aspect of this election is the way that both parties showed a serious disconnect between the party establishment's agenda and the will of their respective electorates. The directorship both the Democratic and Republican parties expended prodigious effort to squash the nominations of Trump and Sanders. I wonder if this portends the fragmentation of the two-party system into a number of smaller boutique entities. Probably not, but it's an intriguing scenario.

More likely the parties adjust their platforms to reflect the new political atmosphere. Splitting up the parties would be the ultimate game of chicken; whoever splits first is basically consigning themselves to years of political irrelevancy.

I really think the way forward for the Democrats is going the Bernie Sanders route. If the Republicans consolidate their hold over blue collar working class voters, the Democrats can't survive as a coalition of middle-of-the-road bureaucrats and niche special interests. What else can they do?!

El Cid wrote:

I really think the way forward for the Democrats is going the Bernie Sanders route. If the Republicans consolidate their hold over blue collar working class voters, the Democrats can't survive as a coalition of middle-of-the-road bureaucrats and niche special interests. What else can they do?!

Absolutely agree. Bernie himself is still around, though he might be too old to run next time around. But there are other politicians out there who could step up. Nina Turner comes to mind. She's terrific.

Even if the Republicans don't hold the working class (it's hard to imagine they will. That would be a complete turnaround of the party), the Democrats need to go back there. Otherwise what's the point of them?

They've got to reject that corporate money and do what Bernie showed could be done. This will free them from this ridiculous double talk they need to do to pretend to be for the people while getting all their funding from special interests with agendas that run counter to the people.

And “coalition of middle-of-the-road bureaucrats” as a party identity gave me the biggest laugh I've had in awhile. Picturing that as a stated identity or campaign slogan. Beautiful. hahaha!

We should never ever, EVAR!, vote for someone based on physical stuff like gender or race, but… (non-logical part of me peeks in…) I really do hope we have a female POTUS someyear soon!!

ozoneocean wrote:
I doubt it man, enemas are one of the biggest pseudo quack health scams of the modern age and tend to do more harm than good.
So that's probably an apt comparison XD

Logically, it's better for a president to be elected by a popular vote, people already have senators to represent them directly. That's a very silly, outdated system- but I'm only talking theory here because that's not going to change in the US

My point precisely. Though there are certain real medical problems that require an enema. But you're better off just making sure you have enough fiber in your diet. (In a political context: Get rid of incumbent politicians or GRIP a regular turn over of office holders like a regular bowel movement;)

The American electoral system was developed as a compromise. Therefore it will not please everyone but it is the best that could be achieved under the circumstances. And whenever a “law and order” candidate is elected, there are civil disturbances and protest and vice versa. It's a cycle that feeds on itself because in a system with free speech, public dissent and protest is a good thing. Let's those in charge know that there's work to be done. And change does come … eventually. Freaking takes forever but it does come.

By the way, there is a way to change the Constitution without going through the amendment system we are accustomed to; a convention of the states. If two thirds of the states send representatives to a convention they can change the Constitution. This was tried a number of times in the 19th century but it never got enough states to come so it always degenerated into talk of secession.

The more I read about the Founders of the American Republic the more I can understand their wisdom. They anticipated much of what goes on even today. Sure things go faster and people are informed faster (or told what opinions to form) but they anticipated it and created a system to deal with it. It isn't perfect but it does provide means of redress. Just got to give it time.

Every debate I ever saw or participated in about the Constitution, the person advocating junking this or that usually didn't understand the Constitution. Not read it or the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers or the processes of government or the historical precedents used and understood by the Founders. Usually they just dismiss them without knowing anything about them, let alone attempt to understand them. They foresaw populist demagogues and protest and riots. It's to be expected in a government. A little revolution is a good thing. But the legislative process is slow to make sure decisions are made wisely. Or not made or a compromise reached that addresses the problem. No one ever gets everything they want in compromise but at least you get something rather than a boot in your face.

KimLuster wrote:
We should never ever, EVAR!, vote for someone based on physical stuff like gender or race, but… (non-logical part of me peeks in…) I really do hope we have a female POTUS someyear soon!!

But what about the “glass ceiling?”

Male penises will never stand for that!

It would be pretty cool to see a female President - totally on board with that! A lot of the most impressive politicians I see are women!

Banes wrote:
It would be pretty cool to see a female President - totally on board with that! A lot of the most impressive politicians I see are women!

My sister would be perfect, but she's had a career as a lobbyist and her one brother does pornagraphic comics with dolls.

My supervisor is running in eight years on the angry black single mom platform.

My sister would be perfect, but she's had a career as a lobbyist and her one brother does pornagraphic comics with dolls….

Hehe would you be her Billy Carter? :D

Her George Clinton xD

Banes wrote:
Her George Clinton xD

Well he DID lead Parliament! :D
Funkmaster.

———

What do you think of all the racial and anti-homosexual attacks that have been caused by the Trump election.
It's worrying.
Obviously those criminals are in the minority, but the fact that they feel emboldened to gloat about the Trump victory in THAT way is really disturbing- a teacher telling immigrant children their parents will all be deported now, numerous incidents of people harassing Mexicans and Muslims (and even Asian people), saying they're not welcome in the country after the election…

The normal, non-crazy Trump voters need to stamp on those people.

A pile of years ago there was a book Backlash detailing the anti-feminist backlash during the Reagan and Bush and even into the Clinton years. We're seeing the same kind of backlash now with all kinds of anti-Political correctness types emerging from the woodwork. They're feeling empowered because “their” candidate won.

All the divisive rhetoric of the campaign has disappeared with call to all come together. We've seen Obama meet with Trump, we've seen the magnanimous victory and concession speeches. Just have to wait for the hate mongers to be soundly repudiated by the guy they thought was going to lead them back to the glory days of Andrew Jackson.

And of course we conveniently forget teachers telling students that the government was coming to take all their parents' guns away in 2008. The governmental schemes to get all children to tell the schools all about their parents guns ownership? In 2008 it came from the other direction. Destruction of traditional values? Humanist multi-culturalism coming to destroy a way of life? But of course since all enlightened liberals agree with that oppression and label traditional values as “-isms” that was okay and this is an evil “-ism.” We're labeling and engaging in the same kind of behavior we find so repulsive.

Got to sit back, understand where they are coming from and then pull them kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Not through labeling and PC but education and a steady stream of information to erase the ignorance that these “-isms” are based upon.

But man it can be so satisfying at the end of a hard day dealing with recalcitrant kiddies to threaten them with nasty things because the gov'ment is different now. The boogeymen Trump and his ICE Gestapo are coming to deport all of you! (insert maniacal laughter here)

I know you like to construct things to show an equivalence, but these things will never be equivalent:
“2008 it came from the other direction. Destruction of traditional values? Humanist multi-culturalism coming to destroy a way of life?”
Sorry, but taking religion out of schools and telling children about lesbians is not the same as threatening their parents with deportation or alienating and bulling gay people.

Things in cultures and societies do not have natural opposites that are equal. You're falling into the trap of false pattern recognition. An understandable fault, but a fault nonetheless.

I agree. It is not equal. But to people trapped in that belief system it is equivalent. Before we start labeling and dismissing we must understand their viewpoint rather than merely vilifying them.

In a right wing country the left becomes very defensive and insulting and that further entrenches the right who see their way of life at risk. So both sides dig in deeper and the left becomes really great at name calling and the media repeats and supports this view point, further entrenching the right who see this as a threat to what they have cherished their entire lives.

The most hated group in America are humanists. We're viewed as evil immoral monsters. The alternative media pushes that again and again. Even the regular US media outside of the East or West coast markets push that. There was a backlash against the reboot of Cosmos. Even mention evolution as a subject to be taught in biology class and face a firestorm as virulent as the nasty, intolerance some of us were exposed to on a certain other webcomic hosting site. The left is as intolerant as the right. Both are wrong about being intolerant. The left is correct with their viewpoints but that doesn't excuse labeling someone else a monster.

Everyone knows progressive people want rampant hedonistic humanism in our schools, teaching sex and evolution. We all knows that leads to a degenerate culture as in Europe with no guns, no religion and naked breasts on beaches! Remember I spend all day talking to truck drivers and refinery workers. I wasted ten years in the military. Two thirds of my FB friends are plastic model builders and army buddies. I can roll my eyes and yell and denounce and screech or I can sit them down and explain stuff and get them around to a more enlightened viewpoint. But you want to know what is impossible?


Trying to get a progressive left person trumpeting their agenda to the universe to be more tolerant.

I just want to walk around with a baseball bat and hit people of all intolerant groups over the head screaming “WRONG! WRONG!” “TOL-ER-ANCE!”

And put the guillotine in the pick-up and drive around cutting off heads.

I think if one wants to grasp for a bigger picture, history is a good place to start. It took at least 50 years for American policy/society to arrive at this state. For example, Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid was a disaster, because the electorate despised his views, which today would be labeled neo-conservative. Today, he wouldn't get onto any Republican ticket anywhere, because he would be labeled a far-left liberal. What happened in those 50 years? I don't know, but it's time to start looking. This polarization is killing us.

Put on a shelf for a second what you think about Trump personally… Why has it become villainous for a U.S. citizen to be opposed to illegal immigration? Is there a country on earth that is totally okay with millions of illegal immigrants coming in, for whatever reason…? Doesn't take much googling to see that certain countries are not exactly the welcoming bastions of freedom they claim to be…

fallopiancrusader wrote:
I think if one wants to grasp for a bigger picture, history is a good place to start. It took at least 50 years for American policy/society to arrive at this state. For example, Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid was a disaster, because the electorate despised his views, which today would be labeled neo-conservative. Today, he wouldn't get onto any Republican ticket anywhere, because he would be labeled a far-left liberal. What happened in those 50 years? I don't know, but it's time to start looking. This polarization is killing us.

And then was the election of 1968. The assassination of RFK, the nomination of Humphrey and the silent majority overruling the protests and electing that most paranoid enemy of all that was liberal and left; Richard Nixon. Then came 1972 and the Democrats went hard, hard left to George McGovern and Nixon won the greatest landslide ever despite everything the media did. The voters were with Nixon not the progressive enlightened left. That polarization really took shape as the media could dig it's claws into Nixon over Watergate and trumpet that their views were vindicated. Generations of journalists have been raised on that.

Democrats have been going further and further left ever since alienating the so called “Reagan ” Democrats and even forcing them out of their party and into becoming Republicans. There is no room for aNY conservative idea in the national Democratic party. Even at the state level it's getting harder. So in 2016 a Democrat who favors the policies of JFK has no home in the Democratic party.

Oliver Stone's silly revisionism aside JFK by modern standards was a conservative. A 1960 Liberal would be too conservative to be in the Democratic party of 2016. A 1960 conservative is now considered a moderate.

And in the greatest irony of all.the party that tried.to get.the voting rights acts and anti lynching laws passed for a century had to wait until a Southern Democrat president came along who could push it through the filibusters of Democrats to make it a law. Lbj's great voting rights laws had been written in the 1920s by Republicans. And yet who now is tarred and feathered as the party of racism? Rueful laughter.

As Soviet Russia and the Facists proved, you go far enough in one direction politically and you come back to the other side. Fascists were socialists and Communists were totalitarians. More Rueful laughter. It's like the snake biting its own tail.

And in order to get that Republican support for the Great Society, the Democrats couldn't appear weak on defense and communism. That led to the nuclear arms race and Vietnam. That's the irony of the Best and the Brightest. In order to be social liberals, tbey.had.to be what today we would call neo-cons. The Democrats who served Kennedy and Johnson made the same decisions that the Republicans under Bush junior made a generation later.

Nobody learns their lessons.

bravo1102 wrote:

fallopiancrusader wrote:
I think if one wants to grasp for a bigger picture, history is a good place to start. It took at least 50 years for American policy/society to arrive at this state. For example, Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid was a disaster, because the electorate despised his views, which today would be labeled neo-conservative. Today, he wouldn't get onto any Republican ticket anywhere, because he would be labeled a far-left liberal. What happened in those 50 years? I don't know, but it's time to start looking. This polarization is killing us.

And then was the election of 1968. The assassination of RFK, the nomination of Humphrey and the silent majority overruling the protests and electing that most paranoid enemy of all that was liberal and left; Richard Nixon. Then came 1972 and the Democrats went hard, hard left to George McGovern and Nixon won the greatest landslide ever despite everything the media did. The voters were with Nixon not the progressive enlightened left. That polarization really took shape as the media could dig it's claws into Nixon over Watergate and trumpet that their views were vindicated.

But wait, there was a backlash. During the Carter years of malaise there was a growing movement swinging to the right. Nixon had been too liberal domestically and too soft on communism as well as corrupt. One leader of this was Ronald Resgan. The foot soldiers were a hitherto untapped group; the evangelical Christians. Both had been around awhile but they finally found their voice (and scared the pants off of a young liberal me. Look up the book The New Right: we are ready to lead.) So the Democrats had swung left under McGovern in reaction to the 1960s. The Republicans swung right to fight it and led another landslide election for Ronald Reagan.

Reagan got rid of the ridiculous fairness doctrine for the public airwaves opening the door for political talk radio. According to who you ask that further polarized opinion because for some strange reason liberals made for bad ratings so the airwaves are dominated by central right to crazy WTF right.

Stuff that no other nations would tolerate was on the radio everyday because of that horrible Freedom of Speech. Don't you wish the US was as enlightened as Australia where you can be imprisoned for Holocaust denial or Canada where you get finef for protesting female rights in Saudi Arabia? Freedom of speech means everybody has their say, offensive or not, wagreeable or not. That discourse is necessary for a truly free Republic whether we like it or not. Damn those dead White guys in knee pants strike again…

And after 8 years of the left the pendulum swings to the right once more and the Republic is still here. The Bill of Rights won't be going away any time soon because the right defends it longer and harder and many on the American left would love to make a few of those pesky amendments go away.

You can almost tell that I taught this on both the middle school and high school level. Now if we could get police officers to be color blind and better able to tell cell phones and wallets from hand guns,

And that's enough out me. I wish the far extremes of both sides would realize how small a minority they are. They may yell the loudest, but shut up. Let's steer a steady course not leaning too far in either direction as we do not want the ship of state to capsize. But please let him govern before we condemn him. Words are so much air. What will he end up doing? Then we can tear him to pieces revelling in the wonder of the Freedom of Speech.