America isn't immune to disaster

[Danny Bateman]

JJ, thanks for explaining your thoughts. A couple of points I take issue with, though:

 

For one, with regards to radical terrorists, we already have a system in place. Landlord has posted that gigantic chart laying it out-- I think it's something like a 13 step process people have to go through when they get vetted to enter our country. It's been remarkably effective. No system is perfect, and unfortunately an extremely small people are going to slip through the cracks of the systems. There's really no remedy for this, unless you really want to crank up the system and start giving NSA free reign to invade people's lives again. The risk of overreach and infringing on people's right to privacy is real. I think it's an important discussion and everyone probably has their own opinion of what level of security is needed. But I've always felt like Trump was greatly exaggerating the problem in a very fear-mongery type of way. For him to say we don't vet people is just a boldfaced lie.

 

Secondly, I'm glad your skeptical of the GOP's ability to govern. We all should be. I obviously have zero faith in any of them because they've shown their MO of "screw what's best for the country, I'm for my team and I'm going to obstruct" for over half a decade now. Needless to say, we have very different valuations of the inherent virtue of current GOP.

 

But here's the important bit-- things are ALREADY going wrong. Beyond the obvious issue with his entire cabinet being friends, generals, and corporations, there's been a very real uptick of hate crimes since the election. People are breaking into homes and vandalizing them with swastikas and Trump's name. Kids in public schools chanting "build that wall!" at their Hispanic classmates. I read about a girl who took a cab and had the cabbie proceed to try to rip her hijab off and tell her Uncle Donnie was coming to get rid of her. That same girl was shortly thereafter reported missing. Thankfully she was found. And of course, a nutjob with a rifle wound up inside a pizza joint trying to investigate a secret child sex slavery ring he found out about with some help from Wikileaks and insane conspiracy theorists. He actually fired shots.

 

All this crap is going on, right under our nose. Imagine how terrified that poor girl was, or the people inside that pizzeria. Try to understand the shame those schoolchildren must feel, just for the color of their skin. Civil rights activists are losing their minds. And where is the GOP on all of this? Where is our venerable PEOTUS? Have they addressed it ONCE in any meaningful way?

 

Of course not. Congressional GOP is busy trying to make it seem like Democrats are irrationally whining about Russia. And Donnie himself? Well, he doesn't have time to ask us to curb this atrocious behavior, because he's busy ripping off tweets, attending victory rallies, or skipping intelligence briefing because, you now, he's like, a smart person. Radio silence on these hateful acts by the lot of them.

 

His election has emboldened all those who would act like this. Him and his team choose to ignore it. Absolutely disgraceful leadership, IMO.

[Moiraine]

Had another thought and decided not to make a new topic because it's sort of related.

 

 

I don't think we can function long term when things like what's happening with the conversation about Russian hacking, the CIA, FBI and the two political parties. We have people on the right (the Trump-righters) saying the FBI and CIA disagree with each other. We have people from the CIA and FBI both saying they agree with each other. I believe the latter. We have Trump basically saying the CIA is not to be trusted. He's the MF president-elect and he's saying this.

 

If we have a partisan CIA/FBI or we have a large number of politicians/public thinking the CIA/FBI are partisan, they will both cease to function well/have the respect they need to serve their purpose. Nothing they say will be taken for anything but a partisan opinion on anything. It will be ignored if it doesn't align with the "correct" party's beliefs. Other countries can easily just pit the two U.S. political parties against each other. It won't matter what the CIA/FBI discovers. While we're busy fighting each other, countries like Russia can do things that are worse than they'be already done.

[zoogs]

All of this internal turmoil is extremely useful to our international rivals and adversaries.

 

Especially Russia.

[RedDenver]

Had another thought and decided not to make a new topic because it's sort of related.

 

 

I don't think we can function long term when things like what's happening with the conversation about Russian hacking, the CIA, FBI and the two political parties. We have people on the right (the Trump-righters) saying the FBI and CIA disagree with each other. We have people from the CIA and FBI both saying they agree with each other. I believe the latter. We have Trump basically saying the CIA is not to be trusted. He's the MF president-elect and he's saying this.

 

If we have a partisan CIA/FBI or we have a large number of politicians/public thinking the CIA/FBI are partisan, they will both cease to function well/have the respect they need to serve their purpose. Nothing they say will be taken for anything but a partisan opinion on anything. It will be ignored if it doesn't align with the "correct" party's beliefs. Other countries can easily just pit the two U.S. political parties against each other. It won't matter what the CIA/FBI discovers. While we're busy fighting each other, countries like Russia can do things that are worse than they'be already done.

Unfortunately, in this case Trump has a point. Nobody should believe a word the CIA says without some hard evidence backing that claim. And in this case, if the CIA has real evidence, they need to show it before the electors vote on Dec 19th. I suspect the CIA knows jack and $h!t about who hacked what because they'd have already shown the evidence.

[Danny Bateman]

Obama made a valid counterpoint today. You can't just release the evidence without compromising the sources that got it to you. Should we push for transparency at the risk of weakening our own intelligence capabilities?

[Danny Bateman]

Thought this was an appropriate place to place this, with Moiraine talking about people putting on the blinders and not thinking for themselves:

 

WaPo: A new poll shows an astounding 52% of Republicans incorrectly think Trump won the popular vote

 

That's compared to 7% of Democrats and 24% of Independents. The number actually ticks UP for college educated Repubs (60%) vs. 37% for those who actually earned a degree.

 

I mean, come on. I try my best to not paint the GOP as the party of the ill-informed, because I know plenty of smart Republicans, but sometimes they make it too easy. I would imagine this number being a direct reflection of the large number of Republicans that rely solely on the suckhole that is Fox News to provide them with their information. I can't imagine Fox News bringing up the fact that Trump lost by almost 3 million votes very often.

 

These are the same people who are going to be gauging how successful his administration has been in four years. Are they still going to have their heads too buried in sand to realize if he sold them out?

 

As Obama has said, we need to have a common set of basic facts. Can you even have a real dialogue between two sides without it?

[HuskerNBigD]

Thought this was an appropriate place to place this, with Moiraine talking about people putting on the blinders and not thinking for themselves:

 

WaPo: A new poll shows an astounding 52% of Republicans incorrectly think Trump won the popular vote

 

That's compared to 7% of Democrats and 24% of Independents. The number actually ticks UP for college educated Repubs (60%) vs. 37% for those who actually earned a degree.

 

I mean, come on. I try my best to not paint the GOP as the party of the ill-informed, because I know plenty of smart Republicans, but sometimes they make it too easy. I would imagine this number being a direct reflection of the large number of Republicans that rely solely on the suckhole that is Fox News to provide them with their information. I can't imagine Fox News bringing up the fact that Trump lost by almost 3 million votes very often.

 

These are the same people who are going to be gauging how successful his administration has been in four years. Are they still going to have their heads too buried in sand to realize if he sold them out?

 

As Obama has said, we need to have a common set of basic facts. Can you even have a real dialogue between two sides without it?

 

While this (the fact that people don't know the difference between the electoral college and popular vote) is pathetic, I also would caution that this is a fairly small sample size. Looks like ~1,000 people were interviewed and they didn't break down how many of that 1,000 were Republicans.

 

What I'm curious to see over the next few weeks is if those that are tasked with the official voting for the electoral college actually vote Trump. I saw on the local Dallas NBC station this morning that a elector college member already quit and they mentioned that 3 other states have had representatives challenge the voting process.

[RedDenver]

Obama made a valid counterpoint today. You can't just release the evidence without compromising the sources that got it to you. Should we push for transparency at the risk of weakening our own intelligence capabilities?

This the excuse the gov rolls out whenever the citizens want evidence about secret gov stuff. First, do we really believe they can't tell us what they know without compromising the source? Second, what source could we possible have that is worth more than our elections?

 

We can have a debate about how much transparency we need vs needed intelligence capabilities, but this case clearly trumps (pun intended) whatever they're protecting. The CIA doesn't have a good track record of telling the truth to the public, so they've got no one to blame for the mistrust they get but themselves.

[TGHusker]

The discussion reminds me of a quote from my favorite President:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. Ronald Reagan
40th president of US (1911 - 2004)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDouNtnR_IA

Regarding the original post, back in 2015 before the primaries, I posted my concern about Trump's language and nationalistic over tones. It reminded me of one earlier period of history - The 1930s in Germany:

fascism [( fash -iz-uhm)] ( I've added the bold to the font in certain places that concern me about Trump)
A system of government that flourished in Europe from the 1920s to the end of World War II. Germany under Adolf Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, and Spain under Franco were all fascist states. As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform(TG: Does his hair qualify? ) , and rallies his followers by mass parades (TG: no mass parades yet, but his mass meetings, tweeting, tearing into the press at every opportunity??); appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany. Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality. In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader (the “ cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism. Whereas communists are considered left-wing, fascists are usually described as right-wing.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fascism

Note

:

Today,

the

term

fascist

is

used

loosely

to

refer

to

military

dictatorships

,

as

well

as

governments

or

individuals

that

profess

racism

and

that

act

in

an

arbitrary,

high-handed

manner

[Moiraine]

Considering what the Republicans are letting Trump get away with so far, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that Trump could refuse to give up power in the name of saving us from the awful media and corrupt Washington insiders.

[Danny Bateman]

Day 2:

 

[zoogs]

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

This was in Trump's inauguration speech. Unbelievable.

[mrandyk]

 

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

This was in Trump's inauguration speech. Unbelievable.

 

Does this mean I can be racist and defend myself by saying I'm being patriotic now? America is finally great again!

[Danny Bateman]

Dan the Man sharing some sage advice:

 

[cornstar]

Dan the Man sharing some sage advice:

 

https://twitter.com/MsSarahPaulson/status/823409823056334849

Isn't Rather the guy who "retired " in disgrace due to his diligent reporting of W's college or military record? I forget.

 

Great source.