Jump to content

Can someone explain this to me?


Ms. Spam
 Share

Recommended Posts

Funny, I don't recall Obama quoting or retweeting racist rants from black supremacists like Trump did with white supremacists during the 2016 campaign, or whipping up his base with unrestricted open borders the same way Trump proclaimed the border is shut down and essentially ran on the mantra that he would build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

If Obama held black supremacist views, which I doubt, he was smart enough to hide them. That was Obama's strength. He was smart, articulate and diplomatic. It fooled a lot of people.

 

The problem we have nowadays isn't due to Obama per-se. It's a broader so called progressive or liberal machine that really does whip up its base with unrestricted borders - a ghastly idea - and seems to peddle this message that we were all one big happy multicultural cornucopia - even under Republican presidents who until recently were despised on the so called left - until orange Hitler came along and started Hitlering. This "Trump is a Nazi" meme is no more true than the tea baggers screaming about Obama's alleged fascism. Not only is it not true, it's deeply offensive, IMO. It trivializes the unparalleled evil that went on in eastern Europe in the early 40s. I don't say this because I carry a torch for Trump. Not at all. He's been a typical trickle down conservative. The beneficiaries of his rule have not been the idiots who proudly display their MAGA hats and respond "4-d chess" to every gaffe and inconsistency, which have been too numerous to even bother trying to keep track of. Unemployed Appalachian coal miners and heartland steel workers weren't in much position to benefit from share buybacks, let's just put it that way.

 

But Trump is no Hitler, and while I don't condone what's gone on at the Mexican border on more than one instance, neither do I favor simply allowing illegal immigration, since it's the Donald Trumps of the world who primarily benefit from that too. You know, cheap undocumented labor and all, which is what this is really all about, after all. But the grandstanding going on in the "resistance" that seems to like to ignore the fact that both democrats and pre-Trump Republicans weren't exactly welcoming illegals and refugees with rounding renditions of Kumbaya either. Hillary acknowledges having voted in favor of a wa .. I mean a "barrier" back in W's presidency. She and Obama certainly voted for it back in '06. Obama deported no small number of inadmissables, a fact you don't seem to hear all of that often, and a fact that gets you called a Nazi, a racist and an Islamophobe if you bring it up because America's first black president. So it doesn't count when he does it. Power plus prejudice and all that. And perhaps he was justified in doing so. If Trump's right about anything, it's that you should come legally.

 

The accusation that Trump targeted white sumpremacists always cracks me up. Like those people were ever gonna vote Democrat anyway.

 

If any of those folks vote they vote Republican. If he “targeted” them by pointing out that illegal immigration is illegal that’s even funnier.

 

Those buffoons were never shy about expressing their support for Trump, mind you. I don't know what they thought they were going to get out of him. Some ridiculous, untenable and mean spirited idea of an exclusively white homeland in the US? Do those morons have any idea of the logistics involved in something like that?

 

Believe me, I saw first hand the hopes that a lot of your "Cult of Kek" types had of Trump. I just shook my head. To think he gives a rat's ass about any of them is to live in utter and complete denial of reality. But they are white nationalists, so ... yeah. Utter and complete denial of reality is their specialty.

 

Are you guys looking forward to Christmas as much as I am?

 

Hope all of you and you and your families are doing well.

 

Kind of you to say, Tex, and I hope you and your family are doing well also. Am I looking forward to Christmas? Not really. Not a good time of year for me. Thanks for asking, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

 

Funny, I don't recall Obama quoting or retweeting racist rants from black supremacists like Trump did with white supremacists during the 2016 campaign, or whipping up his base with unrestricted open borders the same way Trump proclaimed the border is shut down and essentially ran on the mantra that he would build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

If Obama held black supremacist views, which I doubt, he was smart enough to hide them. That was Obama's strength. He was smart, articulate and diplomatic. It fooled a lot of people.

 

 

You have to remember Obama is half-white, too. There is no evidence he had any such views, so he didn't "fool" anyone.

 

 

 

 

 

The problem we have nowadays isn't due to Obama per-se. It's a broader so called progressive or liberal machine that really does whip up its base with unrestricted borders - a ghastly idea - and seems to peddle this message that we were all one big happy multicultural cornucopia - even under Republican presidents who until recently were despised on the so called left - until orange Hitler came along and started Hitlering. This "Trump is a Nazi" meme is no more true than the tea baggers screaming about Obama's alleged fascism. Not only is it not true, it's deeply offensive, IMO. It trivializes the unparalleled evil that went on in eastern Europe in the early 40s. I don't say this because I carry a torch for Trump. Not at all. He's been a typical trickle down conservative. The beneficiaries of his rule have not been the idiots who proudly display their MAGA hats and respond "4-d chess" to every gaffe and inconsistency, which have been too numerous to even bother trying to keep track of. Unemployed Appalachian coal miners and heartland steel workers weren't in much position to benefit from share buybacks, let's just put it that way.

 

But Trump is no Hitler, and while I don't condone what's gone on at the Mexican border on more than one instance, neither do I favor simply allowing illegal immigration, since it's the Donald Trumps of the world who primarily benefit from that too. You know, cheap undocumented labor and all, which is what this is really all about, after all. But the grandstanding going on in the "resistance" that seems to like to ignore the fact that both democrats and pre-Trump Republicans weren't exactly welcoming illegals and refugees with rounding renditions of Kumbaya either. Hillary acknowledges having voted in favor of a wa .. I mean a "barrier" back in W's presidency. She and Obama certainly voted for it back in '06. Obama deported no small number of inadmissables, a fact you don't seem to hear all of that often, and a fact that gets you called a Nazi, a racist and an Islamophobe if you bring it up because America's first black president. So it doesn't count when he does it. Power plus prejudice and all that. And perhaps he was justified in doing so. If Trump's right about anything, it's that you should come legally.

 

 

What you are describing is not so much a liberal problem, but a problem with modern politics in general. Both sides are getting radicalized, or in some ways, high jacked by radicals. I don't see Obama having kicked that off on the left, though. I think Trump has simultaneously whipped up his uber crazy alt right base, as well as caused those on the far left to go batsh*t crazy and pushed them further to the far left. But even Trump isn't sole cause, or even primary cause, for that matter. Politics in general has become so nasty and made people on both side so unwilling to even hear out the other side, let alone let the other side talk, that it has caused this huge divide in US, and dare I say, international politics. It's become such a zero sum game, neither side wants to compromise, now. It's just that Trump is the first sitting president (at least in modern times) to participate in that nastiness, and does it in such a way that is crass and uncivil.

 

I don't think anyone here is arguing Trump is Hitler, and anyone who does say he is only cheapens those who suffered at his hands. That leads to yet another issue with modern politics: hyperbole. Hyperbole has been used so much in 21st century politics that when someone is called a racist or sexist or what have you, that those labels now are almost meaningless and have little to no impact. That said, again pointing to Trump, he exploits both the alt right base that ARE racists, rather than disavowing them, as well as engages in hyperbolic attacks. So from that perspective, I do agree with you somewhat there.

 

Finally, when it comes to the border, the only talk about open borders I have even seen or heard, is online. It mostly comes from right leaning people who use that as a fear tactic and accuse leftists of wanting to advocate for open borders. While there probably are far leftists who do want that, they are in the vast, vast minority. Most people on the left are not advocating for unfettered border access, but rather immigration reform. I am not sure how immigration is handled in Canada, but in the US, it is very bureaucratic, and has a lot of red tape that has built up over the years. Laws have been passed on top of other laws, and becoming a citizen legally costs a small fortune, which is very prohibitive to those who come from poor nations, and makes it all but impossible to gain citizenship, or even just a green card, in many cases.

 

I live in Arizona, which is a state that is one of the most affected by illegal immigration, as well as drug smuggling. There are entire swaths of land in Arizona (Organ Pipe National Park is but one example) that have been so over run by drug smugglers that local and federal law enforcement acknowledged they don't have those areas under control and advised US citizens to not even camp or travel in certain areas, out of fear that drug smugglers would harm them. There is also the national security angle that has been talked about ad nauseam and there is disease control to consider as well. Most people on both sides of the political debate acknowledge these are serious concerns and agree that unrestricted borders would be a bad idea. So I have to call BS on those on the right who state that is the end goal of liberals, because really, it's not. For those on the left of the border and immigration debate, it is more about saying to the right, and the rest of the world for that matter, that the US has been historically a nation that is built on who we include, not exclude, and that those on the right, like Trump, are using that debate as a means to whip up their own base.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/15/opinion/thernstrom-trayvon-martin-obama/index.html

 

I found this article from back in '13.

 

I always thought that Obama did harm by latching on to these incidents. Trayvon Martin, Ferguson MO, Baltimore. These are incidents that helped ramp up racial tensions, and there Obama was on the wrong side of these arguments.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/15/opinion/thernstrom-trayvon-martin-obama/index.html

 

I found this article from back in '13.

 

I always thought that Obama did harm by latching on to these incidents. Trayvon Martin, Ferguson MO, Baltimore. These are incidents that helped ramp up racial tensions, and there Obama was on the wrong side of these arguments.

I did find it awkward when he commented publicly on those incidents, and that regardless of who is in the White House, those were examples where the president probably should refrain from commenting until all the facts are in. However, Obama putting his foot in his mouth is a far cry from Trump.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Part of that far cry is how it's handled in the media. Take Obama it if the Ferguson issue. The NFL allows the Rams to come onto the friend field doing their Hands up don't shoot routine. It was issued at the time, yet the same people praising them didn't utter so much as an oops when it was found out to be a lie. Yet they get slammed for not wanting players not to kneel during the anthem.

 

Trump does suffer from foot in mouth disease. The media suffers from jump on Trump's nuts syndrome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Part of that far cry is how it's handled in the media. Take Obama it if the Ferguson issue. The NFL allows the Rams to come onto the friend field doing their Hands up don't shoot routine. It was issued at the time, yet the same people praising them didn't utter so much as an oops when it was found out to be a lie. Yet they get slammed for not wanting players not to kneel during the anthem.

 

Trump does suffer from foot in mouth disease. The media suffers from jump on Trump's nuts syndrome.

Not buying it. Like I said, Trump retweeted stuff directly lifted from white supremacists and pops off on twitter every 5 minutes ranting something crazy. Trump often puts himself in those situations. The media is antagonistic towards Trump at times, i'll agree there, but he is such an ass about EVERYTHING, most of that could be avoided if he would act like a civil human being.

 

Obama may have spoke too soon at the time about the Trayvon Martin case, but after the trial and acquittal, George Zimmerman showed his true colors and is a proven psycho and abusive prick. Obama was not far off the mark on that, and if there was anything to criticize, I think that case was beneath the presidency to comment on. But because it did involve race, I think at the time Obama felt compelled to speak about it. Had he not, that same media some like to cite is out to get Trump likely would have at the very least publicly questioned why Obama didn't speak out, if he hadn't.

 

Final thought on that here: the press and news media is NOT supposed to be in the tank for any president. The 4th estate is SUPPOSED to question government, and where necessary, point out where they are wrong. Are they out to get Trump? I am sure some love it when he stomps his foot in the proverbial sh*t pile, but largely Trump brings it all on himself. There is no Trump derangement syndrome, other than Trump's own derangement and diarrhea of the mouth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obama may have spoke too soon at the time about the Trayvon Martin case, but after the trial and acquittal, George Zimmerman showed his true colors and is a proven psycho and abusive prick. Obama was not far off the mark on that, and if there was anything to criticize, I think that case was beneath the presidency to comment on. But because it did involve race, I think at the time Obama felt compelled to speak about it. Had he not, that same media some like to cite is out to get Trump likely would have at the very least publicly questioned why Obama didn't speak out, if he hadn't.

The Trayvon Martin case is a study in media manipulation. From misrepresenting Martin with pictures of his younger self to attacking a law that was never even used in the case to begin with.

 

No one ever argued Zimmerman being in the wrong. People didn't appreciate the Halo the media tried placing on Martin's head.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

So, let me get this straight. Your defending Trump based on the fact that the press didn't readily show pictures of Martin hip-hopped out? A case that happened long before Trump was president. A case where since acquittal, Zimmerman has proven time and again he is a violent and abusive scum bag who got away with murder on a technicality. A case where if it were some blonde haired, blue eyed boy the same age would likely not have been killed in the same situation. Ridiculous.

 

It really does disappoint me that it seems you are EXACTLY the type of person who I was talking about who defends Trump blindly, and is convinced it is the press that is at fault, not Trump's idiotic comments and actions. Dude, I know you are intelligent. Just exactly what is your skin in the game about Trump, anyway?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where am I defending Trump? I said he has foot in mouth disease. Granted I also said the media it's always on his nuts. Don't know how that equates to defending everything he does.

 

I was talking about the subject at hand and how the media played a role in shaping the narrative. The media portrayed Martin as this baby faced angel. Could have been Obama's son. That's before it comes out that he was a little thugged out. Suspended from school for drug possession. Sent to his aunt and uncle's to live because the parents couldn't deal with him. None of that had anything to do with what happened. It does have to do with the story. If that image of Martin is portrayed, the story doesn't become national news. The ACLU doesn't get involved when they hear black kid shot by Hispanic guy. The coverage of the incident turned what happened from unfortunate situation into a battle between two sides. Black and White(yet no white person was involved), not left and right. It somehow started an argument about police brutality. Zimmerman wasn't a cop.

 

Once again, I'm talking about the issue. NOT Trump.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Fair enough. Kurgan and I did get off on a tangent. However, when you posted the link about Zimmerman/Martin directly after my latest response to Kurgan, and then later followed up by stating Trump was being attacked, it seemed to me at the time you were defending Trump by stating it was the media that is going after him. Trump has a long track record, indeed even ran for president by attacking the press. When Trump throws out accusations and name calls specific journalists publicly on almost a daily basis, why wouldn't one expect the press to respond in kind, and stomp his nuts as you put it?

 

Not to mention, Trump is the epicenter of racial debate currently. It seemed to me at the time you were trying to connect Obama commenting on the Martin case with how the press is handling coverage of Trump.

 

Now that you have explained, I can see where you are coming from. I don't necessarily completely agree with you on Martin, because even if he was a punk and trouble maker, there is no evidence he deserved to be shot over it. Nor do I agree Obama was in the wrong. People are allowed to have opinions, even presidents. However, as I stated earlier, I think if there was something Obama could have done differently, is he probably should have waited until more facts were in.

 

That all said, even if Obama did jump the gun, it still doesn't even compare with Trump, who has made a political career out of posting or saying racially insensitive comments, and even reposting statements by white supremacists. SO in that sense, Trump and discussing race do go hand in hand. YOu can't talk about how race relations have worsened in recent years, without discussing Trump, because honestly, he has caused a lot of it. Not Obama. Or the press for that matter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never said Martin deserved to get shot. He wasn't without fault though. He engaged with Zimmerman when he should have just kept walking. He wasn't that far from his aunt and uncle's place.

 

Obama made his comment about the Martin case before we knew about Trayvon. Obama came out and said, before the truth about Michael Brown came out, that his death "Stained the heart of black children". That's the stuff that puts people at odds with each other.

 

When I go to lunch I'll get into what I think Trump is "responsible" for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Kurgan at the top of this page. Honestly some reporters have even admitted that Trump is not so much an openly racist guy but it is his tacitness in calling out bad behavior or not saying something about it right away that calls the open racism out. He let's it go. He called the shooter of the PA Synagogue shooter out right away but then when the guy drove into the crowd of protestors in Charleston Trump has never said anything against the original white supremacists that originally came to protest.

 

I see Trump more as a puppet who's too dumb to realize he's being manipulated or a joke while Obama is savvy and knows how to turn a phrase and be a part of the process to make a gain for himself. What motivates them is what sets them apart.

 

II only get a little bit to post on this because I have to go back to classes and the real world but I want to say I really like where this topic ran and have some things to think on! Thanks, guys!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see Trump more as a puppet who's too dumb to realize he's being manipulated or a joke while Obama is savvy and knows how to turn a phrase and be a part of the process to make a gain for himself. What motivates them is what sets them apart.

Trump stepped into a leadership and ideological vacuum. That's how he succeeded. First in the Republican party, then in the nation as a whole. Not many people that I see seem to get this. But from the outside looking in, it seems obvious to me. The establishment refuses to come to terms with this because they're the ones who are ultimately responsible for it.

 

We can start with the Republican Party. With Lyin' Ted and Little Marco and Low Energy Jeb. Say what you will about the Donald, he really wasn't lying in these cases. He stepped into a party that was morally, ideologically and philosophically exhausted and everybody knew it. The same old Reagan era trickle down talking points. The same old neocon obsessions with middle east power projection. The same old evangelical grandstanding serving as a thin mask for untold corruption. It was dead as a national political force. Rightism was reduced to a protest vote against something or other that Obama did and a rag-tag of paleoconservative conspiracism. Not something relevant to most people.

 

Truth is, they were the ones who killed American democracy. Not Trump. They killed it with deregulation, with outsourcing, with Reaganomics and enabling the largest wealth and income gap in history. They killed it with pseudo libertarianism - a replacement or at least very serious nerfing of institutions of democratic oversight with a quasi religious faith that "free markets" can do anything and everything far better than human agency ever could. F**k, what a farce. How could anybody be so stupid? They killed it with the inauguration of an international economic order that enabled the super rich to dictate policy while holding the club of capital flight and investment strike over the polity's head. They killed it by abolishing the fairness doctrine and allowance of media conglomeration. They killed it through the manufacture of a state of perpetual national emergency and the passage of the Patriot Act.

 

Then the GOP establishment have the gall to display such shock and awe with the emergence of Trump and Bannon. What the hell did they think was going to happen? When you create a social order based on cut throat competition, don't be surprised if one such as Trump can actually make callousness into a sort of political asset.

 

As for Hillary and the democrats, they largely dug their own graves in their own ways. For all the crying we heard about Russia, about Wikileaks, about the Bernie Bro's, about deplorables, it was Hillary's own record that doomed her. That and a bad campaign. But it went back farther than that. As far back as Bill Clinton, the thinking was much more how to accommodate themselves to the order that Reagan brought in than to push back against that order, or at least the less savory aspects of it. While too many Trump supporters really did fit the profile of the basket of deplorables, a surprising number of people who rejected Hillary were rejecting her own hypocritical support for mid-east wars, for the Patriot act, for demonizing "super predators" and her husband's repeal of Glass-Steagall, among other things. Most of all, they rejected the democratic party's stab in the back of the one candidate in 2016 who really did understand what was wrong with the country and what was needed to fix it. And they continue to reject the jaw dropping sense of entitlement that many democrats and the so called "resistance" continue to display, acting as if they were simply entitled to the political support of the country as though it were their due.

 

The left, for its part, made its own Faustian bargains through all of this. Beginning in the colleges and universities, they acceded to the demands of the standpoint theorists in the women's studies and critical race theory departments for total and complete deference. As if possessing one or some "intersecting" combination of intersecting marginalized identities somehow made one morally and intellectually infallible. Especially since these people were not usually that marginalized, having had the privilege of attending elite colleges and all. Thus the most rank nonsense was given free reign so long as it was at the behest of some marginalized or oppressed group or anther. This was first normalized in certain branches of academia, then in areas where liberal/progressive dominance was the norm. So we end up with "progressives" who are perfectly willing to accede to the worst elements of neo-robber baron rule but get all up in arms over cultural appropriation and microaggressions. Imagine their surprise when they found the broader culture wasn't having any of this. Since then, the response has been a whole grab bag of defense mechanisms, projections and rationalizations so as to keep up the illusion of unimpeachable integrity of their particular ideological systems, regardless of how obviously flawed they are.

 

This is the milieu into which Trump emerged. The mistake is to see Trump as himself being the problem. We just get rid of orange Cheeto-man Hitler and then everything can go back to being all hunky-dory. It's a breathtakingly naive and self congratulatory way of seeing things but one I encounter frequently. Indeed the moral panic they're perpetually engineering over Trump simply adds fuel to the fire. There's an obvious thirst for a populism that cuts to the heart of the problem - that gets Wall Street, the military industrial complex, national security apparatus, academia and media back on a leash and working for the benefit of all again, but the Democrats are having none of it. Could it be because they too are bought and paid for?

 

Trump couldn't have succeeded in a polity that had not previously compromised itself in so many other ways.

 

To close, I cite present day France as perhaps a better example of what can be done in the face of establishment complacency and entitlement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obama may have spoke too soon at the time about the Trayvon Martin case, but after the trial and acquittal, George Zimmerman showed his true colors and is a proven psycho and abusive prick.

 

I'm not sure that's the case. Zimmerman is ultimately responsible for his actions and I doubt he was a squeaky clean individual in the first place, however, watching from afar (and with the usual caveats about armchair psychology), I've thought that he's been showing signs of PTSD from his experience and needs psychological help before he really does end up in prison.

 

It really wouldn't be surprising. I mean, the guy 1. Suffered the trauma of a violent attack. 2. Suffered the trauma of taking a life. 3. Suffered the trauma of being crucified as the poster boy for hunting down black people up to and including the president while his attacker was held up as a martyr while being unable to publicly defend himself because: 4. Suffered the trauma of a trial that put his freedom in danger from the state, a case with so much exculpatory evidence that it should never have gone to trial in the first place. 5. Continues to suffer the trauma of being hounded by the myth that he tracked down and murdered a teenage boy because he was black.

 

There was evidence as early as the trial itself to back it up as well when he gained all that weight.

 

Again, Zimmerman is ultimately responsible for his own actions and it wouldn't surprise me, given his instability, if we heard about him being charged with a serious crime in the next few years. I certainly wouldn't want him as a neighbor right now. However, I'm not sure "true colors" is the right word.

 

But if he is suffering from PTSD, then the people, including President Obama, who helped create the trauma that triggered into a psychological disorder that often results in violent impulse control, domestic abuse, black and white thinking, etc. can hardly claim vindication from the results. It's a reminder of how wrong and destructive their behavior was in the first place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's times like this I thank God I'm an anarchist.

I'd love for you to start a thread about political anarchy and talk more about it, and what the world would be like. I'm truly curious. I am relatively certain sometime in the next century the American political system is going to implode, and I am curious what the realistic outcome may be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a great idea, actually. You should know that we are not utopians. Many people incorrectly think we believe in a perfect world without any problems; we are well aware that there will be many problems without government, but we also believe that the pros outweigh the cons.

I don't think a stable anarchy can emerge from a collapsed government, as has been demonstrated countless times in the past. Rather, I think there needs to be a revolution in thought, where instead of believing government needs to be the solution to every problem, human beings go in the opposite direction and start to solve problems for themselves, resulting in a slow, steady, healthy dismantling of the state. To be honest, it could take thousands of years, and I think it's a stretch to believe I will even see the change of thought in my lifetime to set us in the opposite direction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.