Octopus Overlords

Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

I may disagree with a lot of what conservatives say, but only Cruz and Trump have my complete and utter disdain as human beings. Trump even more so than Cruz...and that's saying something about how much I detest that braggart.

hepcat wrote:I may disagree with a lot of what conservatives say, but only Cruz and Trump have my complete and utter disdain as human beings. Trump even more so than Cruz...and that's saying something about how much I detest that braggart.

I could live with most of the GOP candidates (although I don't think any of them will make good Presidents), but Trump/Carson/Cruz? Hell no. Put up anybody else and I will vote for them over Hillary. But not those three clowns.

So you want a President that is going to take all our water? That's just great.

RunningMn9 wrote:Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

Keep on thinking that.

em2nought wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

Keep on thinking that.

Sorry, 8 people.

RunningMn9 wrote:

em2nought wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

Keep on thinking that.

Sorry, 8 people.

I'm not sure he's a people. It's hard to tell. Have you read some of those generated spam emails? They have sentence structure and grammar and seem to be on topic at first, but upon closer inspection...

Well. Let's just say that South Park might be on to something this past season.

YellowKing wrote:I'm just really disappointed that after eight years of Obama, the best candidates the Republicans could put up was this bunch of buffoons. It just shows how off the rails the party has become, and this is a natural outcome of the self-implosion I've seen coming for a long time. We are in desperate need of a third party for people out there who have common sense and know the world isn't divided into two extremes.

I mean we're just a little less than a year out from the election and the American people have already lost. There's nobody up on either of those debate stages that should be President.

/truth

Instead of comparing Trump to the Godwinian Bogeyman, how about comparing him to Marine Le Pen?

With Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen surging in the polls in the US and France, comparisons between the two politicians have been popping up all over the place. "Donald Trump is now America's Marine Le Pen," declared a headline in the New Yorker this week. "Europe has plenty of its own Donald Trumps," responded Marc Champion in BloombergView, noting that Le Pen may have a better chance of becoming president in France than Trump in the US. When it came to Donald Trump's call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US" Ms Le Pen asked a television interviewer: "Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?"

One answer could be that it depends on the definition of "like".

Trump: Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. We have no choice. We have no choice. We have no choice. (December 2015)

Le Pen: Marine le Pen calls for an immediate end to all reception of migrants in France and an immediate end to their dispersal in the municipalities of France, both villages and towns. The security of the French people renders this precaution pressing. (November 2015 )

(Trump was speaking after the San Bernardino shootings, and Le Pen after news that one of the Paris attackers entered Europe as a migrant.)

Well, if nothing else, they both refer to themselves in the third person. That can't be a good thing...

RunningMn9 wrote:

em2nought wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

Keep on thinking that.

Sorry, 8 people.

No, it's many millions.

Not that they care about Benghazi, the attack that cost four lives in a dangerous world where such attacks occur. They care about "Benghazi!!," the treasonous scheme to emasculate our military, empower our enemies, and cover up The Truth that the Obama administration hates America and every red-blooded patriot that ever fought for her by tuning in to conservative media.

tru1cy wrote:

YellowKing wrote:I'm just really disappointed that after eight years of Obama, the best candidates the Republicans could put up was this bunch of buffoons. It just shows how off the rails the party has become, and this is a natural outcome of the self-implosion I've seen coming for a long time. We are in desperate need of a third party for people out there who have common sense and know the world isn't divided into two extremes.

I mean we're just a little less than a year out from the election and the American people have already lost. There's nobody up on either of those debate stages that should be President.

/truth

Considering how well the GOP undermined the Obama administration over it's time in power, I would have thought they would be prepared for this next step.

This election cycle GOP crop makes Romney look positively liberal and presidential. That's not an easy thing to do.

They are also making me nostalgic for Bush, which is an absolutely amazing feat.

Holman wrote: every red-blooded patriot that ever fought for her by tuning in to conservative media.

Ok, I lol'd.

Max Peck wrote:Instead of comparing Trump to the Godwinian Bogeyman, how about comparing him to Marine Le Pen?

During our fascism talk the UKip came up during my reading. The US isn't the only nation going through something like this. They do some to have a knack for going through it "bigger" than everyone else though.

Fortunately, Le Pen's National Front just got stomped in run-off elections where it had performed well a few weeks ago.

GreenGoo wrote:

Max Peck wrote:Instead of comparing Trump to the Godwinian Bogeyman, how about comparing him to Marine Le Pen?

During our fascism talk the UKip came up. The US isn't the only nation going through something like this. They do some to have a knack for going through it "bigger" than everyone else though.

I mostly just wanted to type the phrase "Godwinian Bogeyman."

People are afraid all over the world, and the easiest thing to be afraid of is the other, and fear of the other is always the easiest leverage available to populist demagogues.

For the record (and I know I'm late to the party and risking kicking it back to life, but whatevs...), I think populist demagogue is a much better label for Trump and his ilk than fascist. Fascist has been so over-used that it no longer conveys any real meaning other than "someone whose ideas I dislike, who (I believe) wants to impose those ideas on me" at best. For example, I've seen both Donald Trump and Barack Obama referred to as fascists, but for the life of me I can't see even a remote similarity in their political ideologies. In either case, you could typically take those references and replace fascist with stinkypants without losing any actual content.

Holman wrote:Fortunately, Le Pen's National Front just got stomped in run-off elections where it had performed well a few weeks ago.

That's one way of looking at it. The FN didn't get stomped per se, they were just forestalled by strategic voting when the Socialists withdrew in key districts and urged their supporters to vote for the Republicans in order to block the FN. That worked, for now, but the FN is already using it to fire up their base by portraying the elections as stolen. It will be interesting to see what happens come the 2017 presidential/parliamentary elections.

RunningMn9 wrote:

em2nought wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

Keep on thinking that.

Sorry, 8 people.

Max Peck wrote:

Holman wrote:Fortunately, Le Pen's National Front just got stomped in run-off elections where it had performed well a few weeks ago.

That's one way of looking at it. The FN didn't get stomped per se, they were just forestalled by strategic voting when the Socialists withdrew in key districts and urged their supporters to vote for the Republicans in order to block the FN. That worked, for now, but the FN is already using it to fire up their base by portraying the elections as stolen. It will be interesting to see what happens come the 2017 presidential/parliamentary elections.

Are they saying that they were stabbed in the back?

Max Peck wrote: For the record (and I know I'm late to the party and risking kicking it back to life, but whatevs...), I think populist demagogue is a much better label for Trump and his ilk than fascist.

And that's fine, Rip is right, in that most of the tenets of Fascism don't apply to Trump, and some are the exact opposite of Trump, so I get the pushback over the term. Personally I think his use of Nationalism (Make America Great Again) and targeting minorities lines up quite nicely, but the rest falls down and so I admit Trump is not a fascist and that the term not correct.

Populist Demagogue is appropriate, but most people don't even understand what that is or why it's a bad thing. Accurate labels are great, but in this case it's kind of useless.

For example, I don't speak latin. If you tell me a "Ursus arctos horribilis" is approaching, I'm not sure if I should run screaming or if I should get my cuddle mittens ready. You could argue that that's my fault, but when your goal is to warn me of the dangers of being eaten by a Grizzly Bear, being exactly right is less important than making sure I know bad things are coming my way.

Obviously it depends on what your goals are. If your (not you Max or anyone here specifically) goals are to ensure accurate nomenclature, then I guess a "well done" is in order. None of that results in Trump's progress being halted however.

Which is not to say that I think propaganda is the right approach or that I don't value accuracy. I don't and I do, respectively. I just don't want to watch the media circle jerk itself over the word Fascism or Hitler while Trump moves closer to the Oval Office.

Isgrimnur wrote:

Max Peck wrote:

Holman wrote:Fortunately, Le Pen's National Front just got stomped in run-off elections where it had performed well a few weeks ago.

That's one way of looking at it. The FN didn't get stomped per se, they were just forestalled by strategic voting when the Socialists withdrew in key districts and urged their supporters to vote for the Republicans in order to block the FN. That worked, for now, but the FN is already using it to fire up their base by portraying the elections as stolen. It will be interesting to see what happens come the 2017 presidential/parliamentary elections.

Are they saying that they were stabbed in the back?

Not quite, but it's possible that they are sufficiently self-aware to avoid that particular turn of phrase.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's National Front (FN), has condemned opponents for colluding to prevent it winning a single region in elections. Her voters had been "disenfranchised by a campaign of lies", she said. The FN won 6.8 million votes - its largest ever - but lost in two target regions after the Socialists pulled out and urged supporters to back the conservatives of Nicolas Sarkozy. Overall, the conservatives took 40.2%, the Socialists 28.9% and the FN 27.1%.

Speaking to supporters after the result became clear, Ms Le Pen said: "You have been disenfranchised in the most indecent of ways by a campaign of lies and disinformation decided in the golden palaces of the Republic and executed in a servile way by those who live off this system and often prosper off the backs of the French people." But she vowed she would continue the fight, hailing the proportion of votes won. "Nothing can stop us now," she said. "In its northern and southern bastions, we've eradicated the evil-doing Socialist Party. By tripling our number of councillors, we will be the main opposition force in most of the regions of France."

I particularly like how she simultaneously accuses the evil Socialists of handing victory to the Republicans while taking credit for eradicating them (in the districts which they decided to not contest in the second round). That latter point is some good mental gymnastics.

How could he? It seems consensus here he can't possibly win.

Rip wrote:How could he? It seems consensus here he can't possibly win.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Rip wrote:How could he? It seems consensus here he can't possibly win.

He can win if he sways enough independents and keep a healthy portion of the Moderate GOP.

GreenGoo wrote:

Max Peck wrote: For the record (and I know I'm late to the party and risking kicking it back to life, but whatevs...), I think populist demagogue is a much better label for Trump and his ilk than fascist.

And that's fine, Rip is right, in that most of the tenets of Fascism don't apply to Trump, and some are the exact opposite of Trump, so I get the pushback over the term.

The problem is that words and their meanings matter if you actually want to communicate content to anyone who doesn't think exactly like yourself. For example, when you refer to the "tenets of Fascism", what do you actually mean? There are so many definitions for the word that I literally get nothing from it other than "doubleplus ungood" (which is funny if you're familar with Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism", btw. If you haven't read it, you should. The joke references the last of his enumerated features of fascism.).

tru1cy wrote:

Rip wrote:How could he? It seems consensus here he can't possibly win.

He can win if he sways enough independents and keep a healthy portion of the Moderate GOP.

Unless the GOP is hopelessly broken and the extremists like the tea party are now considered a part of the moderate GOP group, I don't see how that will happen.

But stranger things have happened. I never thought Trump would make it past the first few weeks, like he did the last time he announced an attempt to run for POTUS. But this time around, his dangerously narcissistic personality is being viewed as "refreshing' and "honest" by a large portion of Americans who are angry, frightened and irrationally paranoid. Trump isn't a genius (hint: anyone who has to repeatedly tell you that they are a genius is usually not a genius). He's just riding the coat tails of extremism in this country and echoing their words back to them. Cruz has been trying to do the same thing for a while, but he lacked a background in television to bolster his brand name. His recent attempts to promise nuclear destruction is just the kind of angry rhetoric that the extremists in this country want to hear though, so I predict he'll continue to ramp up the anger. Making the GOP race a shouting match between jingoistic demagogues who eschew logic.

Hillary is just corrupt. I never thought I'd justify voting for someone using those words.

Max Peck wrote:The problem is that words and their meanings matter if you actually want to communicate content to anyone who doesn't think exactly like yourself. For example, when you refer to the "tenets of Fascism", what do you actually mean? There are so many definitions for the word that I literally get nothing from it other than "doubleplus ungood" (which is funny if you're familar with Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism", btw. If you haven't read it, you should. The joke references the last of his enumerated features of fascism.).

I almost linked that Umberto Eco piece yesterday. It's a great read, but it also shows how very European fascism actually is. Fascism's anti-aristocratic call for sacrifice and blood-renewal comes from a weird 19th-century European Romanticism that doesn't make much sense in an American context.

The American version needs a different term, something that captures our history of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, ignorance, isolation, and paranoia. Something that captures the way our demagogues promise the disempowered that greatness comes from oppressing those more disempowered than themselves.

Meanwhile, Trump hits 41%:

According to the results of the latest Monmouth University poll surveying voters identifying as Republican or independents leaning toward the GOP, Trump earned 41 percent, nearly tripling the support of his closest rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who took 14 percent.

...

The numbers represent a boost for Trump after a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register survey of likely Iowa Republican caucus participants on Saturday found that Cruz held a 10-point advantage over Trump. A Fox News poll gave Cruz a 28 percent-to-26 percent edge. In still another Iowa survey released Monday from Quinnipiac University, likely caucus-goers again indicated an essentially knotted race, with Trump at 28 percent and Cruz at 27 percent, virtually doubling Rubio's 14 percent.

On Sunday, Trump took the gloves off on Cruz, days after The New York Times reported Cruz had told donors that the judgment of all candidates, including Trump's, should be evaluated. "I don't think he's qualified to be president," Trump said on "Fox News Sunday," remarking that Cruz has been "frankly like a little bit of a maniac" as a senator.

tru1cy wrote:

Rip wrote:How could he? It seems consensus here he can't possibly win.

He can win if he sways enough independents and keep a healthy portion of the Moderate GOP.

I don't see it. I do see the potential for a Hillary run turning off enough people from the system that they don't vote at all. I also see the potential for enough people to see Sanders as "too socialist" with the same result.

I know while I won't vote for Trump, it's a pretty hard sell for me to allow the democrats to walk over me again trying to keep him out of office without giving me a candidate I would vote for anyway. I'd be more inclined to vote for an independent republican to further fracture the party and hope for a republican party I can stomach later.

Man, is our process busted. I sit and think "It's always been this way, it's just more glaring because now is now" but then we've never it's only been since the rise of Palin that this shit has been this bad in my lifetime.

As much as I don't like Hilary and I'm not a fan of Bernie's socialism leaning but I would cast my ballot for either of them before I vote for Trump, Cruz and Carson, but that's me speaking as a moderate Dem that believes that this country works best when we compromise

Max Peck wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Max Peck wrote: For the record (and I know I'm late to the party and risking kicking it back to life, but whatevs...), I think populist demagogue is a much better label for Trump and his ilk than fascist.

And that's fine, Rip is right, in that most of the tenets of Fascism don't apply to Trump, and some are the exact opposite of Trump, so I get the pushback over the term.

The problem is that words and their meanings matter if you actually want to communicate content to anyone who doesn't think exactly like yourself. For example, when you refer to the "tenets of Fascism", what do you actually mean? There are so many definitions for the word that I literally get nothing from it other than "doubleplus ungood" (which is funny if you're familar with Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism", btw. If you haven't read it, you should. The joke references the last of his enumerated features of fascism.).

I get it and admitted Rip was right. What more do you want from me?

I said Nationalism (this is the third time). It's right there in the wiki article you linked.

GreenGoo wrote:

Max Peck wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Max Peck wrote: For the record (and I know I'm late to the party and risking kicking it back to life, but whatevs...), I think populist demagogue is a much better label for Trump and his ilk than fascist.

And that's fine, Rip is right, in that most of the tenets of Fascism don't apply to Trump, and some are the exact opposite of Trump, so I get the pushback over the term.

The problem is that words and their meanings matter if you actually want to communicate content to anyone who doesn't think exactly like yourself. For example, when you refer to the "tenets of Fascism", what do you actually mean? There are so many definitions for the word that I literally get nothing from it other than "doubleplus ungood" (which is funny if you're familar with Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism", btw. If you haven't read it, you should. The joke references the last of his enumerated features of fascism.).

I get it and admitted Rip was right. What more do you want from me?

I said Nationalism (this is the third time). It's right there in the wiki article you linked.

I'm just explaining why I don't like the F-word. It's my opinion, and not one with which you need to conform (I'm not trying to be a word fascist ).

GreenGoo wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:

em2nought wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Rip is one of like 7 people that still really cares about Benghazi. I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want to vote for Clinton, but I would vote for in an instant over the Holy Trinity of Stupid.

Keep on thinking that.

Sorry, 8 people.

I'm not sure he's a people. It's hard to tell. Have you read some of those generated spam emails? They have sentence structure and grammar and seem to be on topic at first, but upon closer inspection...

Well. Let's just say that South Park might be on to something this past season.

I plead lack of sleep for my sentence structure, but I never have felt like I was one of the "sheeple".

Holman wrote:

Max Peck wrote:The problem is that words and their meanings matter if you actually want to communicate content to anyone who doesn't think exactly like yourself. For example, when you refer to the "tenets of Fascism", what do you actually mean? There are so many definitions for the word that I literally get nothing from it other than "doubleplus ungood" (which is funny if you're familar with Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism", btw. If you haven't read it, you should. The joke references the last of his enumerated features of fascism.).

I almost linked that Umberto Eco piece yesterday. It's a great read, but it also shows how very European fascism actually is. Fascism's anti-aristocratic call for sacrifice and blood-renewal comes from a weird 19th-century European Romanticism that doesn't make much sense in an American context.

The American version needs a different term, something that captures our history of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, ignorance, isolation, and paranoia. Something that captures the way our demagogues promise the disempowered that greatness comes from oppressing those more disempowered than themselves.

Just to add to the confusion, Scott Adams (the Dilbert one, not the Adventure International guy) recently used the Umberto Eco criteria to craft a somewhat facile refutation of the idea that Trump is a fascist. I think Adams comes across as a bit of a disingenuous loon, but he entertains me.

Trump’s critics like to label him a fascist. I didn’t know what that word meant, so I made the mistake of looking it up.

It turns out that no one agrees what the word means. So if you use the word, you’re literally acting like an idiot, because the word has no definition except for the one in your mind. It is sort of like talking in tongues and wondering why no one else is nodding in agreement.

A writer for SLATE, Jamelle Bouie, recently referenced the Umberto Eco 14-element definition of fascism to analyze Trump (and decided it didn’t quite fit.) I will do the same, below.

Generally speaking, if your word has a fourteen-element definition with a “pick any” quality to it, you don’t have a word. You have a list. So I would say that “fascism” is – first and foremost – not an actual word with meaning (agreed meaning) in the English language. So if you use the word as a label, you are literally talking nonsense.

But just for fun, let’s see how well the Umberto Eco definition fits Trump. I’ll do the points one-at-a-time.

hepcat wrote:
Hillary is just corrupt. I never thought I'd justify voting for someone using those words.

I still haven't abandoned all hope that Bernie is going to blow her out of the water when the actual voting starts. Clinton has sewn up all the endorsements and big donors and party machinery and media coverage; she's spent a lifetime building her resume and dotting and crossing all of the conventional political I's and T's. But there's an outside chance that voters will see that as a liability.

My main concern with Bernie at this point is that nothing I have seen from him makes him sound all that smart or sophisticated. I appreciate that he's hammering income inequality and other important issues that are being under-addressed, but most of his schtick wouldn't be out of place from the random schmucks in my political econ 101 class in college.

Like, his answer in an interview to "how will you get your agenda through a Republican House" was just "I'll mobilize my movement." Oh yeah, that will get Speaker Ryan to pass highly progressive legislation.

El Guapo wrote:"I'll mobilize my movement."

That's a sophisticated way of saying, "I'll start throwing my feces."

I just don't believe the America that exists outside of urban centers and college towns and internet startups is prepared to vote for an atheist Jewish socialist. A Sanders run would win only deep blue states, and that's an instant loss.

Hillary has obviously looked out for #1, but I can't think of times that she has betrayed basic liberal principles enough to disqualify her. (Or altered them more than has anyone else who has seen decades of changing standards, e.g. gay rights.) She's a political operative, but that's what's needed to navigate the system as it exists today. She knows how to get her back scratched and how to scratch the other backs. That's politics. She's also tougher than Obama and probably tougher than any potential nominee since Bill.

Sanders is admirable but idiosyncratic. I have trouble seeing him work the various factions of his own party, let alone the system as a whole.

MTP Panel: Trump Bringing In New GOP Voters, Not Winning With Hard Right

No if you look at who is supporting Trump though, no, in the polls, I mean, Trump is getting most of his support from Republicans who consider themselves moderates or liberals. It is not the hard right that is supporting Trump

Trump's doctor: "Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

As a number of pundits have pointed out, that's very good news for a guy whose medical problems kept him out of the Vietnam War.

Holman wrote:Trump's doctor: "Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

As a number of pundits have pointed out, that's very good news for a guy whose medical problems kept him out of the Vietnam War.

Physically healthiest, anyway.