Like it did for Clinton.

"it's fuck all annoying to be, say, liberal across the board on policy issues and get berated for not being left enough"

After the past week or so, does anyone still want to say that Trump isn't a significantly worse choice for president than Hillary? Of course some of you stupid stupid motherfuckers still WANT to say it, you just know you're wrong and getting wronger by the day.

Bort, but the emails.

>>Of course some of you stupid stupid motherfuckers still WANT to say it, you just know you're wrong and getting wronger by the day.

How the fuck do you come up with this from Simmon's comment?

Also: Benghazi!

If Democrats cared more about job creation than transgender restrooms, a lunatic wouldn't be in the White House.

Seriously though, Shrillary would have kicked off a war with Russia & TPP would be kicking in.

We'll live through Trump. The aftermath will be unpleasant, but we'll live.

Oh don't be coy Pillager, you would have found a reason not to vote for Hillary no matter what.

Yeah, I don't think the disenfranchised poor really give half of two shits about whether or not its illegal to not bake a cake for gay people, yet these are the news stories which dominate headlines.

Remember when Hostess declared bankruptcy when union officials refused to take their THIRD pay cut in ten years, then sold the company off to a buyout firm who, existing as a new entity, were no longer tied to the union? A firm who reduced a workforce of 19,000 down to 1,500, all of which lost any union protection?

If you know less about that story than gay cakes and tranny bathrooms, you are the reason we lost the election.

It's not an either/or with Democrats: they try to help white people who are down on their luck AS WELL AS the minorities given an extra shitty deal by white people.

You know what the difference between liberals and you guys is? Liberals want everyone in need to be helped, especially people who have it worse than they do. You larval Teabaggers say "why aren't politicians helping people in need? And by that I mean me. Not those people over there, ME." As soon as you're making enough money that you hit higher tax brackets, you'll flip to Republicans without betraying a single principle.

Hey Bort, you might do better if you were not to essentialize people into political identities for which you feel contempt. Why are you calling endlesschris a larval teabagger? It's so completely a strawman.

But let me offer a reasoned defence of why someone might argue for working class protections over police reform: working class protections might be more salient and pressing within the cultural context in which one is embedded. People reasonably and rightly are concerned with the problems most salient to their experience first. This is not a blameworthy position.

And to anticipate your rejoinder, I'm not making any implicit or explicit moral claims about which issues in our society warrant the marshaling of resources and to what degree. That's a debate for another day. I am simple noting that people are generally more aware and thus most concerned with what is salient to their lives and that having the capacity to be concerned more broadly is an intellectual and cultural privilege insofar as one's everyday life affords one that capacity.

Also, apologies to Teenertot.

I'm also curious if Pillager you can conceive of any context in which the TPP might be a reasonable policy position. I can think of one. You?

"But let me offer a reasoned defence of why someone might argue for working class protections over police reform"

I don't believe there are any. They are separate goals that can both be pursued concurrently, like Hillary and the other "establishment Democrats" have done as their numbers permitted.

"Why are you calling endlesschris a larval teabagger?"

Because I genuinely don't believe there's a core difference between Teabaggers and progressives who sneer at "identity politics". They both want their own needs to be served first, at the expense of other people's more pressing needs. You might consider that an unfair perspective, and I can see that, but I nevertheless think I'm on to something. If you're capable of empathizing with out-of-work Twinkie chefs but not people with complicated sexual identities, I say there's something amiss with the empathy lobe in your brain.

>> I am simple noting that people are generally more aware and thus most concerned with what is salient to their lives and that having the capacity to be concerned more broadly is an intellectual and cultural privilege insofar as one's everyday life affords one that capacity.

Excellent, I tried to articulate this in another thread, but fell short. Got called a proto teabagger, of course. I can and do care about people worse off than myself, I'm pretty fortunate. Marginalized people of all walks of life aren't necessarily pieces of shit if they are politically a bit "selfish" or are rubes due to lack of decent education. I have it pretty good, but if I was eating hot pockets exclusively and working in a coal mine, my concerns for people that I havent had personal contact with might be a bit narrow in scope. Just kidding, it's good vs evil.

Gentlemen, gentleman!

Hillary versus Bernie debates can now wait.

Bort, are you against Trump? Then I'm for you. simon666, endlesschris, 15th, are you against Trump? Then I'm for you too.

We can go back to bitching at each other when the fascists are once again decisively defeated.

Pillager, are you against Trump? If you're not, knowing what's been done to innocent people people already, then fuuuuuck yooouuuu. You've been beaten before, you will be again.

Bort, you said: "If you're capable of empathizing with out-of-work Twinkie chefs but not people with complicated sexual identities, I say there's something amiss with the empathy lobe in your brain."

I suppose whether or not one is willing to grant you this claims depends upon what sort of moral psychology one subscribes to. Intuitively it seems to me that we have moral capacities that can be made more or less robust and that sociological features of our environments have a lot to do with how empathetic and to whom we are empathetic towards. On this view, then, one's empathetic capacities are largely the effect brute luck, where one happened to be born and into what kind of culture and how well one's genes made one disposed to empathetic behaviors from the get-go. In the face of this scenario, the moral response is not to vilify and disparage those who lack the empathy you wish to see in them, but to encourage and show them how to have more empathy and do so in ways salient to their own lives--that is empathetic move to make and it is by no means an easy one.

Also, here! here! to Hazelnut.

Also, apologies for my fucked grammar today, shm lol omgz fart

Well argued simon666! My counter-belief is, people often go with what's comfortable, so to prompt change in them, one must render the comfortable uncomfortable. Call them out on their shit, if you will.

Why I think opposition to "identity politics" is inherently shitty. In this culture, the people who overall have the least amount of trouble are straight white Christian men; deviate from any of those conditions and you're going to encounter unfair obstacles. "Identity politics" is an attempt to reduce the obstacles you encounter for being gay rather than straight, black instead of white, etc. Opposition to "identity politics" serves to preserve the obstacles marginalized groups face, and to keep straight white Christian men enshrined as the most privileged group. That's shitty. And I say that as a straight white man who grew up Christian -- yeah I was born a lottery winner, but I think we should try to get rid of the lottery altogether. It won't happen by accident.

>>>Seriously though, Shrillary would have kicked off a war with Russia & TPP would be kicking in.

We'll live through Trump. The aftermath will be unpleasant, but we'll live.

And even if we don't, death would arguably be preferable to four more years of rancid Hillary-based puns.

Cheers, Hazlenut.

Also, thanks Simon. You put my brain words into mouth words. I ain't that sharp.

Shrillager used to say that if Hillary was elected, war with Russia was a "one hundred per cent" certainty.

I repeat: 100 per cent! That's complete certainty. He was very very certain.

Here's the thing, though. Even if Trump is like likely to get us into a war (and I don't think that's a given) He's way more likely to get us into a world war 3, because he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

Also, Trump's idea of peace (get together with Putin and deregulate the oil industry) could easily turn into a catastrophe that leads to more death and suffering than any war to date.

Two-time Obama voter here, look at me teabaggin'

Also, most transsexuals I've met suffer from some of the worst white privilege imaginable. When you're struggling to make ends meet working a minimum wage job at the Wal-Mart, I imagine your gender identity isn't topping the list of concerns.

Cheers, 15th!

"My counter-belief is, people often go with what's comfortable, so to prompt change in them, one must render the comfortable uncomfortable."

Bort, this seems generally right, and I agree with the sentiment, but it still seems like a claim that is too strong. I'd want to qualify it with "it depends on the context". Making people uncomfortable may be sufficient to urge/nudge people toward a just moral end, but not necessary; not necessary in that such nudging may for a confluence of contingent reasons (genetics/social conditioning/low blood sugar/you get the point) put the person into a defensive fight/flight state whereby they cease being open to the nudge.

Is she wants to see how lost the election for HRC, she needs to look in the mirror, instead of playing Blame Roulette.

"Team Hillary blames Obama more than Putin"

https://www.axios.com/team-hillary-still-blames-obama-22277240 04.html

After I settle in from work, I'll address everyones' concerns.

We'll chat soon.

"put the person into a defensive fight/flight state whereby they cease being open to the nudge."

Yeah, it's definitely a damned if you do / damned if you don't situation. Where people are receptive to reason, I try to go for reason -- you and I are having this lovely little discussion. But the people I'm responding to, and I believe are Teabaggers waiting to happen, are starting out with the intellectually dishonest stance that it's all about side issues (bathrooms, gay cakes) while ignoring the parts where people's lives are getting ruined. I'm not seeing reason as much of an avenue here; empathy looks like a dead end too. And silence is tacit agreement and reinforcement.

So, I'm left with being as big an asshole as I think is required to make my point. I freely admit I am being a big jerk. There are worse reasons to be a jerk.

I am a lefty on all important social issues, but I'm also sick of being told by smug rich kids what to like, what to hate, and who the unambiguous good guys and bad guys of any given news story are. It amounts to not just being told what to think, but what's okay to think about.

(I'm not crying "thought police!" here, just outlining some annoying social behaviour.)

Dude on a blog put it well:

---

If you’re siding with Trump, you are on the side of every antagonist in every movie you’ve ever watched where a lone hero dissented against the violent, ignorant will of the masses. Remember when you watched Dances With Wolves and thought you would have treated the Native Americans with kindness and compassion? Well, now you know you were wrong. Remember being moved by Schindler’s actions to save as many Jewish people as he could? Well, now you know you really didn’t give a fuck. Get on the right side of the story. Get on the right side of history.

It's a good thing conservatives are so hard to offend. Unless you happen to be a Muslim, an LGBT person, a non-European immigrant, a black person, or a woman with an opinion. Then you get to offend conservatives 24 hours a day, just by existing.

One of the few upsides to be found in my medical status, yes.

Great blog. It's like ridiculous right wingers have their soldier of fortune/Clint Eastwood self narrative fantasy, while the left has their Christ-ish, if only I was on Rosa Parks' bus hero fantasy. The Left's is a lot nicer and more admirable, but both are weird as fuck.

Apparently, the right uses elections to express theirs, the left - twitter.

Looks like it, yup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31eJZKFO2NQ

Does he also still have a hate-boner for Muslims?

Undoubtedly.

I absolutely do not believe that Bill Mahr has a hate-hardon for Muslims. Muslims are people. Mahr objects to dogma. Personally, I respect your religion until you try to make it my theocracy. lslam without Theocracy is definitely a thing.

And Maher's panic over a 14-year-old Muslim science geek with a NASA t-shirt and an opened-up clock ... ?

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=147972

Can you cite an example of 'Muslim theocracy' changing US laws or imposing itself on you?

How about Christian theocracy?

It's a self-congratulatory tendency among right-leaning (but in denial about that) liberals that lets them feel like they aren't just as much to blame as THE EVIL SJW CABAL/Hillbots for trump's success.

bingo

I think his smug point is some of left has devolved into an impotent value signaling, self congratulatory group of children. I don't agree with his point, entirely, but I'm also not compelled to falsely equate it with "he must mean hate speech 4 whites, 4 ever" as if to prove his point. He's not funny, but he is a comedian, for Christs sake.

There's a middle ground between redneck racist and Berkeley Freshman Sociology student. It's called sanity.

Okay, so more people voted for Hillary than for Trump. A LOT more, actually. okay, fine. But the republicans won everything else? And they're doing things now like refusing to act on Obama's supreme court justice and and draconian abortion law? We're so fucked. They are fucking us.

BECAUSE THEY'RE FUCKERS. The paradox here is that I'm not going to apologize for being too decent. The only choice I have any control out is to not be a scummy piece of shit like Steve Bannon, who just declared being caught in a lie by the press "a badge of honor".

All we really need to do is to show up and vote. Everytime. Like they do.

*****

Did you... listen to his examples? Do you believe Steve Martin was invoking the specter of the N-word by claiming Carrie Fisher was "beautiful" "witty" and "bright"?

We live in a universe of horrors. Nothing and no place is safe.

Wait a minute, are we saying that the left started the bathroom thiing? Republican legistures started this. And then Mike Huckabee said something that made me want to reach into my youtube and pound him like he was a nazi bitch.

Calling it "bathroom rights" is trivializing it. I think that it's got to cruel and traumatzing to designate a class of women who are forced to use the men's room.

"Identity politics" isn't just about transgendered people either; it's about blacks, women, Muslims, atheists, and every group that isn't straight white Christian men. What sort of person tries to trivialize the deportations, the police misconduct, the violence as mere contention about where to go pee-pee?

I would expect it from Alex Jones or Rush Limbaugh. Which is why I keep going back to: if you don't respect "identity politics" you are fundamentally the same as the Right wing shitheels.

And you can't even argue that the Democrats can support either a minimum wage or LGBT rights; it's not an either/or situation. That these people are trying to turn it into an either/or, is telling.

So we might improve upon Maher's general sentiment by saying that public shaming for violations of offense that occur largely on Twitter are not strategically useful to the liberal cause and hurt the ethos of the left in the eyes of those middle of the road swing voters, whose turn out if often necessary to win elections.

This, I take it, would be the most charitable reading of Maher's diatribe and probably the most defensible.

I like Patton Oswalt's take on it: sure there are cases where people take things too far, but that's an inevitable consequence of society finally starting to take the rights of marginalized people seriously. I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, even if that baby has Italian blood.

>>Also, most transsexuals I've met suffer from some of the worst white privilege imaginable. When you're struggling to make ends meet working a minimum wage job at the Wal-Mart, I imagine your gender identity isn't topping the list of concerns.

How many transsexuals have you met?

Equal rights _should be a given_. But if our politicians coded it as such, they could waste less time calling out every ethnic, religious, and sexual/gender minority.

Consider how much time was spent reading out lists of marginalized minorities, and how much time was spent discussing the consequences of unchecked climate change, this election. One of these will have far greater consequences for every ethnic, religious, and LGBTQQIP2SAA minority than whether Southern/Midwestern right wingers are temporarily squicked that they may be seated in a bathroom stall adjacent to someone who isn't like them.

"Trump won white voters by a margin almost identical to that of Mitt Romney, who lost the popular vote to Barack Obama in 2012."

Other demographics did not vote in sufficient numbers to offset this margin. Hillary was not "inspiring" enough to get the voters to the polls; there are probably as many reasons for this as there are non-voters.

Maher is pulling shit out of his ass based on his own prejudices and passing it off as some kind of insight when it's really just the same tired old shit we hear from every other shallow fuck.

President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Maher is just giving you some other group to look down on. It's a different flavor of shit, but it's still shit.

Mahr says brilliant things, and he says stupid things, and that's how he's always done it. Sorting it out is part of the fun. This is definitely column B