It's today then ... (Trump thread)

[herbie747]

Caroline Lucas has it spot on:

 

https://twitter.com/CarolineLucas/status/826122082689941510

 

Edited January 31, 2017 by herbie747

[Sergio Mendacious]

[Keith Houchen]

You have a gif for every occasion!

[Sergio Mendacious]

I should have, I've made thousands of them at this point.

 

This one is still my favourite, though.

 

[Onyx2]

I've been trying hard to understand Trump supporters, to get a feeling for why after all the illiberal, illogical and downright evil things he's legislating they still stand by him.

 

The easiest place I thought to comprehend this was the subreddit The_Donald so I've been subscribed to it all year. I'm on the verge of deleting it from my feed because I've never seen such a collection of bile in one place (and I used to browse a lot of newsgroups). There's a genuine condescension about every poster there, spitting on any protests and mocking the outrage from non-Trump supporters.

 

Here's a few quotes I grabbed at random from the front page:

 

No, the liberals mostly lack critical thinking skills and the resolve to do an honest self examination of their failures and adjust accordingly. This is because of their habit of acting out on their emotions, rather than logic and facts. They get angry whenever they receive constructive critique, so they end up doubling down on failed strategies.

 

I wonder what kids are taught to believe in now when an islamic terrorist shoots up a gay bar or plows into crowds with their peace trucks. Certainly not our country like my generation has so succinctly shown me.

 

Austin suffers from liberal mental illsness and is a sanctuary city. Time to drain the swamp!

 

Maybe even worse, there seems to be a large UK presence there. The moment Farage is mentioned the cheer goes up. On Siddiq Khan: "This guy literally got elected because he's a Muslim."

 

After Brexit and Trump, I want to understand the other side. But the frothing anger is so upsetting. It's like looking into a volcano.

 

If you fancy a taste of it for yourself: http://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald

[Astro Hollywood]

That forum is horrendous. The types that inhabit it are all part of the radicalised frustrated white guys group that's grown exponentially in the last few years, making up the ranks of gamergate, Pick Up Artist forums, Men's Right Activists, Twitter egg/anime avatar accounts sending rape threats, and the pages of newspapers where they star as "lone wolf shooters" (but not terrorists, because they're white). These echochambers breed millions of Elliot Rogers who're shitting up everything right now, and they're more of a danger than any country on the ban list.

 

If you want an even worse look at that mindset, check out r/incels, where all women are black-loving sluts who deserved to be raped and killed for not wanting to sleep with them, all "normie" men are alpha Chads who cuck them at every turn, and Trump is the one who's gonna turn things around for these most marginalised of minorities, the single white man.

 

edit: as scary as it is, this 30 second Trump video from today's news is perhaps the best comedy sketch I've ever seen. What a reveal!

 

https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/status/826521935987298304/video/1

Edited February 1, 2017 by Astro Hollywood

[Sergio Mendacious]

I hadn't heard of r/incel or r/MGTOW (think that's right) till this week, but my mate trolls those forums all the time, and he pointed them out to me. I couldn't get past the description on google.

[Chest Rockwell]

Incels is a crazy place.

 

On Astro's point, the Quebec shooting has marked the very first time ever that I've seen the word terrorist used to describe a lone white gunman. Thank you, Canada. News agencies still hate to do it, but when the government's official statement uses it they kinda have no choice but to quote it.

Edited February 1, 2017 by Chest Rockwell

[Mr.E]

From the Independant:

 

 

Donald Trump's closest adviser, Steve Bannon,  thinks that the US will be at war with China in the next few years.

 

The far-right figure, who has been given unprecedented power in the White House and has suggested in the past that he supports white supremacy, suggested that the two countries are headed towards war over the South China Sea.

 

“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren’t we?” Mr Bannon said on his radio show in March 2016. “There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face — and you understand how important face is — and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”

[Carbomb]

Well, the Chinese are right, if we're talking in terms of context the US government understands. The Chinese as a civilisation were laying claim to that sea back when Bannon's ancestors hadn't even evolved to cavorting druids and dung for dinner.

[PunkStep]

Fucking hell, the Fallout game series is being realised. I best grab a Pip-Boy and head underground if we're going to get USA going to war with China.

 

He's talking bollocks anyway. Even America aren't as stupid as to prod the sleeping giant superpower...are they?

[Mr.E]

 Even America aren't as stupid as to prod the sleeping giant superpower...are they?

America as a whole? No. A bunch a idiots making all the decisions? maybe.

 

If that were to come true, America going at it with China, would the UK have to get involved? Personally I'd like to think we wouldn't but with the 'special relationship' garbage, you can't help but wonder.

 

Are China still pally with Russia? I imagine it'd escalate very quickly.

[Carbomb]

That's the thing; if there is a war between the US and China, it's not going to be just them. China's overlooked the horrendous shit North Korea's committed mainly because it maintains their alliance; NK has the world's fourth-largest army, and has ballistic missile capability (of a sort).

 

I'd reckon Russia may not be in it much, mainly because of Trump. Maybe that's one of the things Trump's been gearing up for; by getting all chummy with Putin, he splits Russia off from China, so the big Eurasian super-power bloc isn't as coherent as it could be.

 

That said, it may not be so easy to divide them. China and Russia have spent the past decade or so preparing for economic warfare, building links with the rest of the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa), and creating institutions like the Asian Development Bank. China's also put a lot of resources into developing the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. These are all measures designed to counter Western institutions like the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank.

 

Actually, here's an article that provides another important perspective to the situation:

 

 

JAN 25, 2017

China’s Big Sticks

by Stephen S. Roach

 

NEW HAVEN – US President Donald Trump’s administration is making a major miscalculation by going after China. It appears to be contemplating a wide range of economic and political sanctions – from imposing punitive tariffs and designating China as a “currency manipulator” to embracing Taiwan and casting aside some 40 years of diplomacy framed around the so-called One-China policy.

 

This strategy will backfire. It is based on the mistaken belief that a newly muscular United States has all the leverage in dealing with its presumed adversary, and that any Chinese response is hardly worth considering. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Yes, the US is one of China’s largest export markets – and thus a central pillar of its spectacular 35-year development trajectory. Closing off the US market would certainly crimp Chinese economic growth.

 

But the US has also become heavily dependent on China, which is now America’s third largest and fastest-growing export market. And, as the owner of over $1.25 trillion in Treasuries and other dollar-based assets, China has played a vital role in funding America’s chronic budget deficits – in effect, lending much of its surplus saving to a US that has been woefully derelict in saving enough to support its own economy.

 

This two-way dependency – the economic equivalent of what psychologists call codependency – has deep roots. Back in the early 1980s, in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, which left its economy in shambles, China was desperate for a new source of economic growth. Coming out of a destructive bout of stagflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the US also needed a new economic recipe. The hard-pressed American consumer solved both problems, by becoming a powerful source of external support for Chinese growth and by benefiting from the lower prices of products made in China.

 

The two countries thus entered into an awkward marriage of convenience that served each other’s needs. China built an increasingly powerful economy as the Ultimate Producer while the US embraced the ethos of Ultimate Consumer.

 

As mirror images of each other, interactions between the two economies became increasingly comfortable and ultimately addictive – so much so that these codependent partners were keen to enable each other’s economic identities. The US opened the door to China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 – a milestone in China’s ascendancy as the Ultimate Producer. And China’s voracious appetite for Treasuries in the early 2000s helped keep US interest rates low, sustaining the froth in asset markets that allowed the Ultimate Consumer to live well beyond its means – until the music stopped in 2008.

 

As in the case of humans, economic codependency is ultimately a very destructive relationship. Blinded by the gratification phase of codependency, both the US and China lost their way. Each became so caught up in its role of serving the other that both effectively repressed their economic sense of self. Therein lies the ultimate twist of codependency: one partner invariably looks inward and turns on the other, in order to recapture that missing piece of its identity.

 

That’s where Trump enters the equation, by targeting China as the villain that purportedly prevents America from being great. Trump has assembled a team of like-minded senior trade advisers to plan the attack. From Peter Navarro as Director of the National Trade Council, to Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary, Robert Lighthizer as US Trade Representative, and Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, the new administration’s anti-China biases are without modern precedent.

 

Yet their battle plan overlooks a critical risk: codependency is a highly reactive relationship. When one partner changes the terms of engagement, the other, feeling scorned, usually responds in kind. In the aftermath of the provocative December 2 phone call between Trump and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, stunned Chinese officials said little at first. But as Trump’s China-bashing strategy started to crystalize around the advisers he appointed and the issues he raised, China’s official media finally warned that “big sticks” would be used in defense, if need be.

 

This is very much in keeping with what could be expected from the reactive phase of a destabilized codependency. The scorned partner, China, is threatening to hit back. And now America will have to face the consequences.

 

Smugly confident that the US has nothing to fear, the Trump administration could quickly feel the full wrath of Chinese retaliation. If it follows through with its threats, expect China to reciprocate with sanctions on US companies operating there, and ultimately with tariffs on US imports – hardly trivial considerations for a growth-starved US economy. Also expect China to be far less interested in buying Treasury debt – a potentially serious problem, given the expanded federal budget deficits that are likely under Trumponomics.

 

But the greatest tragedy for the US may well be the toll all of this takes on the American consumer. “America first” – whether it comes at the expense of China or via the so-called border-tax equalization that appears to be a central feature of proposed corporate tax reforms – will unwind many of the efficiencies of global supply chains that hold down consumer-goods prices in the US (think Wal-Mart).

 

With their incomes and jobs under long and sustained pressure, American consumers count on low prices for their economic survival. If Trump’s China policy causes those prices to rise, the middle class will be the biggest loser of all.

 

Sino-American codependency poses a formidable challenge to Trump’s strategy of China bashing. It frames the ominous prospect of a rupture in the world’s most important economic relationship, with potentially devastating spillovers on the rest of the world.

 

Stephen S. Roach, former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, is a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale's School of Management. He is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.

Edited February 1, 2017 by Carbomb

[Dead Mike]

That forum is horrendous. The types that inhabit it are all part of the radicalised frustrated white guys group that's grown exponentially in the last few years, making up the ranks of gamergate, Pick Up Artist forums, Men's Right Activists, Twitter egg/anime avatar accounts sending rape threats, and the pages of newspapers where they star as "lone wolf shooters" (but not terrorists, because they're white). These echochambers breed millions of Elliot Rogers who're shitting up everything right now, and they're more of a danger than any country on the ban list.

 

If you want an even worse look at that mindset, check out r/incels, where all women are black-loving sluts who deserved to be raped and killed for not wanting to sleep with them, all "normie" men are alpha Chads who cuck them at every turn, and Trump is the one who's gonna turn things around for these most marginalised of minorities, the single white man.

 

I'm not sure where this attitude comes from but the prevailing trait in this 'alt-right' movement, whether Brexit here or Trump in the USA is this odd persecution complex. It's not even a case of someone thinking they're hard done by, being shown they're not & then them being happy about it. It's a wilful thing, they want to feel like they're persecuted. It's apparent in the language used 'You're not allowed to say that anymore'....'PC has stopped us from doing things'......'You're not allowed to talk about immigration' yet all of these things are provably bollocks.

 

It's a very odd situation to be in & I'm not sure where it's come from?

[herbie747]

It's a very odd situation to be in & I'm not sure where it's come from?

 

 

I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the transgender toilet thing. This overly PC stuff was coming to a boiling point for years - especially in the US with safe spaces & trigger warnings on college campuses - but for most people, that was too far and a lot of them just said "NO! FUCK. OFF!". And Trump didn't give a fuck about PC and they found it refreshing.

 

A friend of mine was in the Trafford Centre in Manchester, she came out of the cubicle to wash her hands, and beside her was a guy wearing a wig & fixing his lipstick in the mirror. Clearly a dude - but in a dress, wig, handbag, make-up, and a stuffed bra. That's a cross dresser -  but what can you say or do? She did or said nothing, but it was certainly a bit weird.