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I swing with my feelings on this - sometimes I feel like Mitt is a loser who has no balls because he went crawling back on his knees after being so steadfast in standing up against Trumps candidacy, and then I feel like, well heck - maybe it's the first step toward getting someone with some education, experience and balls into an important role in this administration.

 

 

And yet he'd be 10x better than Rudy, who said things even more batsh#t crazy during the campaign than did Trump.

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I swing with my feelings on this - sometimes I feel like Mitt is a loser who has no balls because he went crawling back on his knees after being so steadfast in standing up against Trumps candidacy, and then I feel like, well heck - maybe it's the first step toward getting someone with some education, experience and balls into an important role in this administration.

 

And yet he'd be 10x better than Rudy, who said things even more batsh#t crazy during the campaign than did Trump.

Ummmm.....no.

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I swing with my feelings on this - sometimes I feel like Mitt is a loser who has no balls because he went crawling back on his knees after being so steadfast in standing up against Trumps candidacy, and then I feel like, well heck - maybe it's the first step toward getting someone with some education, experience and balls into an important role in this administration.

And yet he'd be 10x better than Rudy, who said things even more batsh#t crazy during the campaign than did Trump.

Ummmm.....no.

 

No Romney wouldn't be better or no Rudy didn't say crazier things than Trump?

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OK, I get the feeling you haven't been tuned into Rudy lately.

 

Although I don't think this is the most meaningful distinction to make, we could argue about who is crazier, the guy who starts with it or the determined supporter who unfailingly endorses him at every turn with gusto.

 

I'd make the argument that neither is really "crazy", per se:

 

Maybe Giuliani can help Trump figure out how to win, and if he can, I suppose there will be still another second act for him, too, perhaps a stint as secretary of homeland security, or all-around eminence grise to l’orange. If that day comes, both Rudy and The Donald can go on saying how they saved us from a city and a nation they insisted were on fire, even if they had to strike the match to get it going. Rudy was never crazy, no more than Trump is himself. He was simply a restless spirit, feeding on anger, searching for another body to use.

The day has come, I suppose. Perhaps we should be thankful to now have people who were "brought up like your or I [Rudy]" to "love America", as opposed to Obama, running the next administration.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-has-chosen-retired-marine-gen-james-mattis-for-secretary-of-defense/2016/12/01/6c6b3b74-aff9-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html?utm_term=.0e298eaf92f0

 

Retired Military General.

 

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, according to people familiar with the decision, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform.

 

To take the job, Mattis will need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law stating that defense secretaries must not have been on active duty in the previous seven years. Congress has granted a similar exception just once, when Gen. George C. Marshall was appointed to the job in 1950.

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Wow....so.....we have a president and all his surrogates and followers saying...."all that stuff he promised and said he would do in the election was BS...because we had to say awful outrageous stuff to get deplorable people to vote for him "

 

 

This is just golden.

I don't think it's a stretch that most candidates say things they really don't mean. I think I could see through the rhetoric, that's why I wasn't having a coniption when he was elected.

 

The use of the word deplorables.....I hope that you're better than that.

Do you think the KKK members that are holding celebrations because they voted him are deplorable?

I don't pay attention to the klan.

 

Do you think that everyone who voted for Trump is a klan member?

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I think the right question is not, "How many of Trump's supporters are klan members."

 

The right question is why Klan members feel Trump's election is an epochal victory for their cause.

That's a great question. It doesn't make sense to me, certainly can't answer the question.

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I think they expect their cause, wittingly or (most likely) unwittingly, to be advanced. Or at least to be normalized to a degree that they believe they can finally pick up a head of a steam.

 

One can only hope that there is enough committed, determined opposition to ensure their hopes fail. It's a curious alliance, and time will tell how much they can actually succeed in asserting themselves.

 

That part, I think, does get back to how much of society at large (left, right, whatever) is either on board with that or basically okay with it. And I don't have an answer to that question, either, except that I can't take previous assumptions for granted anymore.

 

It's a particularly scary time for some people, watching this happen. Again, I think if we all work together we can ensure it doesn't go anywhere, but we shouldn't assume this is automatic. Past generations didn't "do the work", so to speak, so that we never have to make the effort again.

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It's interesting that you bring this up, what are you referring to as a curious alliance?

 

Im not going to speculate on their agenda, but I can't imagine much comes out of it. These kooks have the rights to their opinion and to peaceably assemble, but I'd find it extremely hard to think that much more than them making asses out of themselves publicly will be the result.

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The alliance that is coalescing into the "alt-right", and has latched onto the GOP. Here's the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez on the term.

 

It would be simpler if it were merely the KKK.

 

In the weird soup of ideas being marketed under the brand name “alt-right,” we find a dark reflection of this: There are unreconstructed white nationalists in the mix, but you’ll also find pseudo-intellectuals spouting bastardized evolutionary psychology cribbed from “pickup artist” websites, college students looking for a way to thumb their noses at campus pieties and a whole variegated galaxy of other fringe ideologies looking for a bigger tent to call home. Deciding in advance to view this Frankenstein coalition through a single lens — “it’s just white nationalism with a new coat of paint!” — is ultimately a way of ensuring you’ll be baffled as the movement’s ideas and agenda are shaped over time by the interplay of these different factions. It also makes it more difficult to understand how the alt-right is appealing to a broader audience than those traditional white supremacist groups — which may conceivably involve factors more complex than a snappy new name.

I guess there's two alliances to refer to; both within the movement being cobbled together, and the existing political machinery they're making use of in the U.S. to try and vault into the mainstream.

 

As for their prospects, I mean, they at least feel they've won the U.S. election. They're making a serious run at the French presidency, came very close to the Austrian presidency, and they either effected or at least are celebrating Brexit with euphoria. "Atavism" is a good word, but it's on the rise again, globally.

 

This graphic is incredibly sobering:

 

image-2-1024x685.png

 

And they have a familiar state sponsor.

 

It's hard to speculate about where the possibilities stop, should they gather enough momentum and legitimacy. I believe the U.S. is probably the best equipped country in the world to face off this threat, but it's looking like the fight of our generation. Hopefully, as you say, it's easily dispatched and won't amount to much.

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The alliance that is coalescing into the "alt-right", and has latched onto the GOP. Here's the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez on the term.

 

It would be simpler if it were merely the KKK.

 

 

In the weird soup of ideas being marketed under the brand name alt-right, we find a dark reflection of this: There are unreconstructed white nationalists in the mix, but youll also find pseudo-intellectuals spouting bastardized evolutionary psychology cribbed from pickup artist websites, college students looking for a way to thumb their noses at campus pieties and a whole variegated galaxy of other fringe ideologies looking for a bigger tent to call home. Deciding in advance to view this Frankenstein coalition through a single lens its just white nationalism with a new coat of paint! is ultimately a way of ensuring youll be baffled as the movements ideas and agenda are shaped over time by the interplay of these different factions. It also makes it more difficult to understand how the alt-right is appealing to a broader audience than those traditional white supremacist groups which may conceivably involve factors more complex than a snappy new name.

I guess there's two alliances to refer to; both within the movement being cobbled together, and the existing political machinery they're making use of in the U.S. to try and vault into the mainstream.

Assuming these "alliances" have political clout, what do you think will come of their influence or lack thereof?

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I added some to that post, but my understanding is that their political clout is considerable and fast-growing, with the caveat that the U.S. has as good a hope as any nation of restraining them entirely.

 

I mean, we assume these kinds of forces have been defeated already, but an analogy I find particularly compelling is Sisyphus. Some of these impulses are the most native, endemic aspects of humanity. We can roll that rock up the hill, but we'll only have to keep doing it time and time again.

 

If the alt-right in the U.S. comes to nothing and their European movement shorts out, I'll be very happy -- but in some form or another, it'll rear its head again for future generations to fight.

 

If they succeed, I think the entrenchment of race-based privilege and the demolition of all norms and institutions in their way would be the first-order result. What the next-order consequences of tearing down the post-WW2 order would be, I find hard to imagine. Times will be good for some. Values will be lost that are not so easy to regain.

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