World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

[BogusMeatFactory]

I'm sorry, but for people to be petitioning to have the result changed is kinda shitty, IMO.

Plus, with recent events and tensions, the electorate would almost be coerced to in order to calm things down. That's if they would even consider it.

Yeah I don't agree with petitioning. The results are the results even though I am not happy about it. I just want people to treat others with love and respect and stop the endless cycle of hate.

+1, as much as I would love to see it happen...we have to accept the election results as they are.

Considering his lingering legal woes I'm not fully opposed to impeachment if the circumstances call for it.

Agreed and I am for protesting when he does something that we feel infringes on our rights as human beings. All we should be doing now is pointing out the injustices and working to fix them and be better people.

[Ack]

Author and historian Stephanie Coontz has an op-ed on CNN today. It offers an examination about why so many white working class voters in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania chose to vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton and how Clinton's message failed to resonate with them. It also offers warnings of caution to the Republican Party about how the results should be interpreted. I believe the article is very much worth reading:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/opinions/ ... index.html

[Sarge]

Of course, it's certainly not acceptable.

There are a few things that I'm tempted to respond to, but it's probably not very productive. So I'll roll with what BMF said. Hopefully we can get to the point where everyone, on both sides, just calms down. We're going to get through this.

[J T]

Considering his lingering legal woes I'm not fully opposed to impeachment if the circumstances call for it.

The girl that Trump allegedly raped when she was 13 at one of Joseph Epstein's pedophile parties had a court date set, but she dropped it amid death threats. We'll never know if her claims were real or just an attempt at political sabotage (or both).

The Trump University fraud case is set for November 28. I'm not expecting much to amount from this case. He might get a slap on the wrist for operating without the proper licenses for running an educational institution, but I don't expect him to be held to fire for not delivering on the promises the university made to people.

[dsheinem]

Dear Trump voter,

Black kids getting spit on by their white classmates at a vo-tech in PA. LGBT people calling suicide hotlines, others not even bothering to do that en route to taking their own life. Muslim women having their hijabs knocked off in public. Virulent men catcalling to women about grabbing their pussy. Students getting verbal and texted threats about rape. These are all stories of people I PERSONALLY KNOW from just the last few days.

By voting for someone who always has been and still is unquestionably a racist/sexist/homophobe, who has recently done and still says racist/sexist/homophobic things, and who often embraced and encouraged his most openly racist/sexist supporters, YOU have ENABLED and EMBOLDENED the hateful acts and hateful groups that are proliferating and intensifying this week in the wake of his election. This is on YOU.

I DON'T CARE if you consider yourself a racist/sexist/homophobic person or not. That conversation is irrelevant. I am sure you consider yourself a good person who cast an ethical and practical vote. Maybe you decided voting for a vaguely "pro-life" candidate was a more moral choice than voting for the candidate who doesn't stoke violence and abusive language towards people who aren't white men. Maybe you thought vague promises of "bringing jobs back" was more important than insuring the 25 million Americans who gained access to healthcare since 2010 could keep it. Maybe you just vote for whatever has an "R" next to it. Maybe you are super-informed or maybe you are uninformed. Whatever, I don't care right now what your reasons were: you made your ethical and/or political choices and I don't have to agree with them. We can argue later. The problem is all this other shit.

For now, you need to sit down for a minute and recognize that, intentionally or not, one result of your voting decision was the ENABLING and TACIT ENCOURAGEMENT of those racist, sexist, homophobic, and other hateful voices that believe Trump's America will be a return to white supremacy, the end of LGBTQ rights, and/or the validation of their abusive misogyny.

You own that shit. I hope knowing that YOU have culpability makes you feel like a bad person, that it introduces doubt and introspection, that it makes you feel worse than maybe you already did about picking some "lesser evil". I hope it eats at you with a constant gnaw..but at the same time I know the tinges of guilt that might be settling in for you pale in comparison to the intense fear that people who have been and are being targeted this week are facing. They are afraid they will be killed, that their voices will be silenced in society, that they will lose any and all institutional support that exists for them, that took forever to build, and that is always already fragile.

WE can, of course, come together and try and fix this, but right now the impetus is solely on YOU. You must figure out how to correct this. YOU must be the loudest and most powerful voices in denouncing and condemning violence and hate. YOU must radically transform yourself from a Trump voter into a Trump protestor, from a voice that quietly condones to a voice that loudly objects. You must use the power you have - in whatever walk of life you lead - to tell people that, yes, you voted for Trump, that now you see that this is all wrong, that you somehow (??) must have missed it, and that you regret it all and want to work to change things. Then you need to actually do that work.

And then maybe we can have a conversation, and then maybe we can figure out a new path forward. Until then, I am going to try and keep talking my most vulnerable friends out of killing themselves out of total despair and fear. The personal stories like those above and the news stories coming in this week all make their fears completely justifiable, and as much as I may say to them, it will take YOU to DO THINGS to really convince them that things won't be palpably dangerous for them for the foreseeable future.

Sincerely,
Someone who used to try and see the good in you, but no longer can

[J T]

Author and historian Stephanie Coontz has an op-ed on CNN today. It offers an examination about why so many white working class voters in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania chose to vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton and how Clinton's message failed to resonate with them. It also offers warnings of caution to the Republican Party about how the results should be interpreted. I believe the article is very much worth reading:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/opinions/ ... index.html

This had so many ads, I couldn't read it all (even with an adblocker) and it eventually crashed my browser.

What I gathered was that they think Clinton didn't focus enough on creating jobs, particularly low entry level jobs. I think there is a lot of truth to that, and I can certainly see where Trump's messages resonated with people who didn't want to see their jobs go to Mexico following NAFTA or to illegal immigrants here in the states. (Yes, despite Tanooki's unfounded belief that I can only see the world through my left eye, I did in fact watch many Trump speeches, red conservative news like the Drudge Report and Breitbart, and I have even voted for republicans before despite being a registered democrat).

I hope the left doesn't fail to see this. Trump gained support from racists, but he also gained support from people looking for specific kinds of jobs. When democrats talk about job creation, they often fail to talk about what kind of jobs are created. A lot of times we are talking tech jobs and white collar jobs, not necessarily blue collar jobs or jobs you can get without a college degree.

These are very complicated issues though, which extend beyond the reach of a president. In my home area here, Seattle is congratulating itself on having a booming economy largely driven by a massive increase in jobs from Amazon specifically, but also Boeing, Microsoft, Google, and other tech companies. There are, of course related jobs created too, like lots of construction work to build buildings for these empires and apartments. Apartments are important because as all of the new tech workers move here, the housing market is going crazy. I have seen the value of my home increase an additional 25% in the last 2-3 years, and I've seen my property tax consequently skyrocket too, since property tax is determined on the estimated value of your home. As property taxes increase, people are finding it more difficult to afford their Seattle homes. They sell and move farther away from the city or into apartments. Meanwhile, residential neighborhoods are being rezoned so that giant apartment complexes can legally be built in these areas that were previously just single family homes. There are fewer homes, with higher demand, so the homes cost more and more as time goes by. The middle class is being effectively shoveled into apartments. Consequently, apartment rates are spiking. To accommodate the housing need, they shrink the legal requirements for how big a studio apartment needs to be. People here are paying well over $1000 per month to live in something that is literally the size of 1-2 jail cells. As the middle class moves to apartments, the rent raises, and the former occupants can no longer afford the apartmets, so they have to move outside the city center. It's a massive process of gentrification, and it's shoving out anyone from the city who isn't highly educated. There are a lot less African American families here, because their neighborhoods have been gentrified and they've been priced out. Liberala Seattle is a champion for diversity, but its becoming less diverse. With this much condensed wealth, the cost of everything goes up. Not just housing, but also groceries, restaurants, services, you name it. Add to this the fact that these same burgeoning tech companies are creating automation to replace many of the blue collar workers to save themselves money, and you start to see that if you're going to work in this area, then you better be really good at math and computers. And a lot of Americans aren't, so the companies are hiring really smart people from India, China, Japan, etc. to help make up their work force. I'm not against immigrants and I enjoy having different kinds of people around, but all of this process I have detailed is shoving out old Seattle and bringing in new. Our artists can't really afford to be here. The city's character is changing. It's not the same place it was even 5 years ago.

We are kind of an extreme example, but I know this same kind of process is happening in Utah, in Colorado, in New York, and in Texas. It happened in San Francisco awhile ago. This is why South Park did their whole SodoSopa episode that so accurately depicted what has been happening throughout the country.

Something needs to be done to protect the people losing their jobs and homes in all of this. I don't know what the best answers are yet, but economic disparity and class divide should be high on everyone's mind, left or right.

[J T]

Before people start a defensive flame war over what Dsh just wrote, please stop and reflect and consider that both parties need to do a lot of soul searching and self policing right now.

On the right, yes, speak out against the violence, hate, and racism in your own party. Get yourselves in check before there is a civil war.

On the left, don't assume that everyone is an ignorant hillbilly who doesn't agree with you. Make sure you ideals of love extend to those that didn't vote your way. Hillary had immense sexism to contend with that made her the subject of moral scrutiny while Donald got a free pass, but even with sexism we should have been able to win this. We have to self examine and figure out why that was so this doesn't happen again. Let's not degrade into calls for secession of the coasts, assassination, or civil war (yes, where I live, I've heard from people that want all of these things and I talk them down as bad ideas).

[BogusMeatFactory]

Before people start a defensive flame war over what Dsh just wrote, please stop and reflect and consider that both parties need to do a lot of soul searching and self policing right now.

On the right, yes, speak out against the violence, hate, and racism in your own party. Get yourselves in check before there is a civil war.

On the left, don't assume that everyone is an ignorant hillbilly who doesn't agree with you. Make sure you ideals of love extend to those that didn't vote your way. Hillary had immense sexism to contend with that made her the subject of moral scrutiny while Donald got a free pass, but even with sexism we should have been able to win this. We have to self examine and figure out why that was so this doesn't happen again. Let's not degrade into calls for secession of the coasts, assassination, or civil war (yes, where I live, I've heard from people that want all of these things and I talk them down as bad ideas).

You nailed it.

[ElkinFencer10]

As I said on my Twitter on Wednesday morning, the DNC has no one to blame but themselves. They had a candidate who could have beaten Trump easily, and they chose to nominate one of the most hated people in politics instead (whether or not the animosity towards her is irrelevant). It's why I changed my registration from Democrat to Unaffiliated.

I don't think the hatemongering is just a Republican issue. Yes, it's their candidate the opened the Pandora's box and (at least in my opinion) hasn't done enough to strongly discourage and condemn that kind of rhetoric, but the people who say and think such things - the ACTUAL deplorable part of our country no matter whose name they bubble on a ballot - haven't been shown that the good, accepting majority in this country isn't going to put up with their shit. We - everyone one of us - have a responsibility to stand up in opposition to that kind of hate speech. It doesn't matter if you voted Trump or Clinton, Johnson or Stein; silence is complicity. When it comes to the level of hate that we've seen directed towards our Muslim neighbors, our Hispanic neighbors, our black neighbors, etc., you're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution; there is no middle ground.

[dsheinem]

On the left, don't assume that everyone is an ignorant hillbilly who doesn't agree with you.

I don't think this is the case (nor is that suggested in what I posted above). I think people who aren't themselves hateful of historically oppressed peoples have unwittingly (??) caused that hate to be condoned and encouraged by their choice of candidate.

That said, one of the most troublesome things in this election for me is the relatively high percentage of educated people who voted for Trump. These people might hold degrees, but clearly must never have received any kind of meaningful education. That fact is an indictment of my institution, and we have work to do where I am too.

But right now many of us on the left are too busy trying to literally talk friends down from ledges. We don't have the time or energy at present to soul search and organize towards viable solutions. That means you right-leaning people who claim not to be hateful (racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.) must be the ones out there fighting it. Show us the supposed courage of your convictions...or just confirm our suspicion that you really don't care at all, you just don't want people to think something bad about you.