They would rather give a strident middle finger to Barack Obama, even at the expense of the air their kids breathe and the schools they attend. They’d prefer to “piss off Liberals,” even if their medical bills bankrupt them and businesses migrate away and natural disasters go ignored. Their white fragility is so tenuous, that they’ll give this President a blank check because he’s reversing any recent advances by marginalized communities whose gains they see as threats to their own. They’ll gladly take the bold type headline of “Trump Wins,” without caring to read the fine print where they are being hit the hardest and getting nothing trickling down.
I'm on spring break this week so I've been hitting the gym more than I usually do and working out. Yesterday morning, I ran in to Pastor Ed and decided to take his temperature on Donald Trump. Recall the last time I spoke with this hard core evangelical conservative he was not a fan.
His first remarks were not about Trump but about Obama and how he gutted the military. Then he launched in to a tirade about Hillary, how she is a crook, and how Comey changed the law to help her out. I asked him again about Trump. More comments about liberals, the debt and Obama's gutting of the military.
But Obama, notwithstanding his own opposition to nuclear weapons, has committed to modernizing the U.S. arsenal. He supports the Air Force's new bomber, a new ballistic missile submarine for the Navy, revitalizing a fleet of nuclear bombs, a potential new nuclear cruise missile and other commitments. Some estimates put the cost for the program Obama supports at around $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
Ed didn't care about the nuance. Obama. Bad. Gutted. Military. Why?
Facts, he said storming off.
I didn't really want to argue with him because I find myself less and less interested in doing Vladimir Putin's work for him. But the whole exchange did reinforce the core value that conservatives have today. They only stand for one thing.
Trolling liberals.
Any sort of criticism or questioning of Trump results in denials, redirects and sentences which contain the following.
A noun, a verb and a liberal.
I suppose that's what happens when Donald Trump is the leader of your party.
It was only a few short months ago that this guy was supposedly all powerful. Look at him now. He’s nothing as the cartoon above so astutely illustrates.
This is a good lesson for liberals, moderates and conservatives who are horrified at what’s been happening with Trump. Just be patient. These people are morons. It’s all going to be over soon.
And all their little troll supporters will crawl back under the rock with Bannon...
I don't need a book to tell me that Donald Trump is mentally unbalanced. I don't need the smug, liberal elite media to tell me. I only need his Twitter feed.
Oh, and doesn't this remind you of the folks who used to post here?
As 2017 comes to a close, it's very clear that we have a president with a deteriorating mental condition. His recent interview with Michael Schmidt of the New York Times betrayed an incoherence that hasn't been seen since Woodrow Wilson had his stroke. This is nothing new to me because his behavior is akin to the mentally ill people that follow him (right wing bloggers and right wing blog commenters). They've completely lost the capacity for rational thought.
In this interview, the president* is only intermittently coherent. He talks in semi-sentences and is always groping for something that sounds familiar, even if it makes no sense whatsoever and even if it blatantly contradicts something he said two minutes earlier. To my ears, anyway, this is more than the president*’s well-known allergy to the truth. This is a classic coping mechanism employed when language skills are coming apart. (My father used to give a thumbs up when someone asked him a question. That was one of the strategies he used to make sense of a world that was becoming quite foreign to him.) My guess? That’s part of the reason why it’s always “the failing New York Times,” and his 2016 opponent is “Crooked Hillary."
Agreed. I saw the same thing in my grandmother. Ezra Klein from Vox had this to say...
Over the course of reporting on the Trump White House, I have spoken to people who brief Trump and people who have been briefed by him. I’ve talked to policy experts who have sat in the Oval Office explaining their ideas to the president and to members of Congress who have listened to the president sell his ideas to them. I’ve talked to both Democrats and Republicans who have occupied these roles. In all cases, their judgment of Trump is identical: He is not just notably uninformed but also notably difficult to inform — his attention span is thin, he hears what he wants to hear, he wanders off topic, he has trouble following complex arguments. Trump has trouble following his briefings or even correctly repeating what he has heard.
Right. Again, this is a sign of mental illness.
At the beginning of December, I wrote about four ways Trump could leave office early. Nikto added in some humorous possibilities. Perhaps both of us were wrong. Given this latest interview, I think it's possible that a mental meltdown could force him from office.
Our president is not well, folks. It's time for him to go.
Right wing bloggers (and really, conservatives in general) have a fixation on our country's education system. They think that it's all one giant, liberal indoctrination. That basically means they want it to be one, giant conservative indoctrination machine. Remember, it's always a safe bet that if the right is bitching about _____________, they are actually trying to do _______________.
Conservatives who whine about the education system should be happy, though. They have successfully undermined both the education system and the liberal elites in the media...with the help of Russia, of course. Students today think that most regular sources of news (CNN, New York Times etc) lie and are all fake news. Yet, they believe what they read on Twitter.
So, Pepto Bismol-colored water pouring from faucets, a tornado spiraling alongside a rainbow and the president of the Philippines urging citizens to kill drug dealers-all declared FAKE by students today. But the gorilla named Harumbe getting 15,000 write in votes, that was all real. Why?
Because they read it on Twitter.
Between the tacit support of treason (Russia's support of Trump) and the continue attacks on sources of information out of juvenile spite, it's clear that these people are an acute and very present threat to our national security.
Meet Melvin Redick. He's from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and he hates liberals, especially that bitch Hillary Clinton. He wants you to go to the #DCLeaks web site and learn more. He has a cute picture of himself with a backwards baseball cap and his face painted daughter. What a model American!
One problem, though.
He doesn't exist.
Melvin Redick is one of thousands of fake social media profiles created by Russian troll farms in order to tip the election to Donald Trump. A few days ago, Facebook disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign. How many more are out there like Melvin Ridick's?
I realize that there are millions of Trump supporters out there who are like pigs in slop right now. Liberals are pissed. Heads are all 'splodey and stuff. Yay, us! But you need to understand something right now and it's very, very important that you do.
If you think all this Russian stuff is liberal elitist claptrap, you are supporting treason. And you are going to pay for it.
The last few days have seen me come to a stark realization about Trump and his supporters. They don't know what to do now that they are governing so they can't govern. How do you lead when your core ideology is to be contrarian?
I base this on two cold and rational facts. First, these are very tribal people. If you are in The Cult, you can do whatever you want. You can stand in the middle of the 5th Avenue and shoot someone and no one will care. Fareed Zakaria explores this in depth in the video below.
Take this information and couple it with this.
So, we have a very tribal people who exist only to troll. Where does that leave us? With this...
If you had told me six years ago that the American Left would be self-destructing as rapidly and violently as they appear to be today, I'd have had you committed. But bear in mind, their "long march through the institutions" has secured their (ever more tenuous) grasp on the reins of power. They own academia, the media, and the entertainment industry almost completely, and that's still a lot of power, power they won't surrender easily.
Before I get back to my original point...hmm...let's see...Donald Trump has been a successful member of the media and entertainment industry for several decades. And he's their champion? Wow, Just wow...talk about being conned...hook, line and sinker...
More importantly (and back to my original point), this proves that they can't fucking govern. It's still all the liberal elite's fault and all they know is plots, secret conspiracies, and being a whiny troll. Never in my life have I seen a group of people so incapable of reflection. They won. They run the entire government. And still, somehow, they take ZERO responsibility for their fuck up after fuck up.
When they lose next year (and it's going to be massive), the cognitive dissonance is going to be nuclear.
Here's a recent post from my local paper about critical thinking. I thought it very appropriate in the Age of Trump and the Right Wing Blogger/Commenter, specifically...
Q: How do you define critical thinking? A: Let’s focus on two ideas: Is your claim supported with evidence? And, are the sources you’re using for your evidence valid? A lot of our debate today is just hurling claims at each other without any effort to support them. It’s claims of fake news and “gotcha” journalism and false balances and the non-reply reply. As for sources, one of the effects of the internet is that it allows you to live in a much narrower world. If I don’t like what someone is saying on Facebook, for example, I’ll unfriend them and I don’t have to think about them anymore. Q: This sounds like confirmation bias. A: The extreme version in academic circles is called “epistemic closure.” That means that your only criteria for deciding what someone is saying is true is if you already believe it to be true. This is dangerous because now you’ve become insulated from any argument that might challenge your point of view.
Right. Today's conservative supports nothing withe evidence, hurls claims, bitches about fake news, espouses false balances, and is a master of the non reply reply. They live in a narrow world and shut out (defriend) the world because facts that they don't believe in hurt their head.
I challenge all of you to find arguments that are supported by evidence and have valid sources that challenge your point of view.
I wonder how all the right wing bloggers and commenters feel now that the truth has come to light regarding how they were microtargeted by members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.
Boom, son!
Also under scrutiny is the question of whether Trump associates or campaign aides had any role in assisting the Russians in publicly releasing thousands of emails, hacked from the accounts of top Democrats, at turning points in the presidential race, mainly through the London-based transparency web site WikiLeaks.
Double boom, son!
I posted this the other day but it's worth repeating. Several times.
Donald Trump is an American who ran for office under a slogan of patriotic pride and love of country. People who love their country do not help rival powers intervene in their country’s elections, even if that intervention might have the lovely side effect of getting them elected.
President Trump is indeed the dear leader of right wing bloggers and commenters. Thank god he shows those smug liberal elites like Mika Brezezinksi whose boss rather than...oh, I don't know...run the country, fix our problems, you know, that minor stuff that gets in the way of baby's twitter time!
I get asked to answer a lot of questions on Quora these days and it's tough to get to them all. I think I'm up to 81 now that I have not answered. I will likely pass on this one because I'm not conservative. Thankfully, however, several of the answers and comments have confirmed what I have asserted many times since the election.
Trump supporters don't really have anything they stand for. They are just against liberals and loving watching them get pissed off. Here are some of the answers and comments from this question..
Not this one. I am loving the way Trump can play the left like an entire orchestra of violins.I'm just waiting for the day when he tweets something that seems like absolute gibberish (like “gerfuffle bdank torg meankforth!” or something like that) and claims he was speaking in tongues. Now THAT is going to make for some interesting television.
Trump is living in their heads rent-free. Glad I loaded up on popcorn, Chris, cuz this is some show!
Some people would say that making liberal heads explode does make the country a better place.
I want to commend these folks on being honest. I’ve suspected that Trump supporters don’t so much support him as they are against liberals and love watching them squirm. Thanks for confirming it.
What does that say when one doesn’t actually support something but is merely against something else? “We hate smug liberal elites” isn’t much of a platform.
As a liberal, I think Donald Trump doesn’t really need liberals to react to anything he does anymore. He seems to be doing a fine job of being his own worst enemy, especially when he tweets. As someone who has raised adolescents and works with them every day as a teacher, the best thing you can do when someone is negatively seeking attention is to ignore them.
So, Mr. President, keep it up! It’s going to make Richard Mueller’s job a lot easier:)
What are the best ways to characterize the Trump voter? It's certainly something that has been up for debate since the Donald won office last November. I think the best place to start is the man himself. He can easily be characterized by two words: childish tantrum.
This characterization can easily be extended to the people who voted for him but they are having their childish tantrums for different reasons. As I have stated previously, the right wing blogger/commenter crowd is always in childish tantrum mode because they can't stand the reality of liberals being right most of the time. All of their envy, insecurity and inferiority comes out in one fell swoop when they foam at the mouth about "smug liberal elites." They failed in life so they are taking it out on the rest of us.
Worse, they apparently think that the rules of being nice and being respectful only apply to liberals. They get to say whatever the fuck they want and no one is more perfect for this than Trump himself. For proof of this, watch what happens when a liberal calls a Trump voter ignorant or uninformed. It's the end of the frikkin' universe or something much like it. Yet, calling liberals "libtards" is just dandy!
A good chunk of Trump voters voted for him merely because they were having a childish tantrum about Hillary Clinton. I'm still trying to figure out what it is about her that makes grown men...particularly grown older men...descend into fits that are worse than a crying four year old at Wal Mart acting out to get his mom's attention. Is it just because she's a woman? A successful liberal who is intelligent? Both? Regardless, these are the voters that propelled him over the top.
And this group includes the mouth foamers on the left who voted for Jill Stein...
I think a majority of people who voted for Trump are merely folks who always pull the lever for the Republican candidate. They would never vote for any Democrat under any circumstances and merely went along. I liken these folks to the German citizens who just went along in the 1930s...
So, it's a mixed bag of angry malcontents, nihilists, and sheep that define the Trump voter. It's a really bad combination and one that is ripe for solidifying a dictatorship assuming their dear leader was competent enough. He's not at all. Given this fact, he's had to rely on more conventional folks like James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, and HR McMaster. And the GOP Congress isn't competent either. For years, they bitched and bitched about the Affordable Care Act only to fall completely flat in their efforts to repeal it.
All of this makes me realize that there is another way beyond "childish tantrum" to characterize the Trump voter.
So Right Wing Blogger/Commenter President 8 Year Old was supposed to sign another one of his imperial declarations (which actually mean nothing) but some person with a fat face asked him a poopy question so he stomped off down the hallway without doing nuthin!
