Let’s conduct a thought experiment. Ask yourself: What if Donald Trump, all things being equal, was a black (or Latino or First Nations or Muslim or Asian) man? Trump brags about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their “pussies.” He has been divorced twice and is a serial adulterer. Trump is belligerent and hostile to women having called them “pigs, dogs, and slobs.” He has declared bankruptcy four times and refused to pay his employees and contractors. Trump has not paid federal income tax in (at least) ten years. He encourages violence at his political rallies and other events. Trump has also made veiled threats that his political rival, Hillary Clinton, should be shot or put in prison. During their second presidential debate, Trump hovered over Clinton in a menacing way, lurking about the stage like an abuser, one ready to wallop or otherwise assault his wife or partner. Trump wallows in his ignorance yet considers himself genius and expert — “he appears not to read.”Trump is an overt bigot and racist whose political campaign has numerous connections to hate groups. During the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump has been graded on a curve by the corporate news media where “doing better than expected” is elevated to the level of success and competency.
The paranoid crazies are now central to the Trump campaign
QuoteTrump has also bought into every tired Whitewater and Benghazi theory, even recently dredging up the old story that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had her friend Vince Foster murdered. He has flogged ancient Bill Clinton scandals that have been fully investigated and litigated by Congress, state and federal investigators and independent prosecutors with unlimited budgets and boundless mandates.But now it’s really getting weird. As the campaign melts down over Trump’s bad performances, revelations of sexual misconduct, ongoing exposés about his business failures and cratering poll numbers, the GOP nominee and his supporters are diving headfirst into new conspiracies.
NYT responds to Trump’s libel threat: We can’t ruin your reputation, you already did
Link“You want to sue us?” they paper essentially asked. “Bring it.”
So You Want to Live in an All-White Utopia?
LinkDepending on how good you are at avoiding some of the grimier parts of the internet, you may have heard the term “white genocide.” It’s a favorite of the alt-right, but like most alt-right terms the actual words here have different meanings other than what Merriam-Webster and I are using.
The genocide they refer to is an erasure of white culture to be supplanted with a non-white one. The culture being erased that they apply this term to includes; feminists speaking out against Islamophobia, the last Star Wars film having a black male and white female protagonist, non-white people attending Harvard, and… Jews ruining The Legend of Zelda, apparently (content warning: may cause day drinking).
The U.S. Map Redrawn as 50 States With Equal Population
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Building the Jesus Movement
QuoteThe Christians of the first three centuries had a consistent ethic of life – they spoke out against all killing, without exception, including war, abortion, and the death penalty. They asked: Why do we call it murder when one person kills another in private life, but call it killing if it’s done in war or through execution? Two thousand years ago they were already naming these contradictions.An overwhelming majority of Americans actually know this. In a recent Pew poll that asked people whether Jesus would support the death penalty, only 5 percent said yes.
Bob Dylan Is a Genius of Almost Unparalleled Influence, but He Shouldn’t Have Gotten the Nobel
LinkEveryone cares about the Nobel Prize in Literature, even though no one, in the long run, can take it seriously—not for how often it is awarded awkwardly, politically, or with nothing more apparent than one committee’s high-minded obscurantism in mind. Bob Dylan is a genius, and for his genius, he’s been rewarded in every way; with fame, money, acclaim. He deserves all of it, but he doesn’t deserve the Nobel. It may be that Dylan’s claim to posterity will be larger than Murakami’s or Roth’s (or Wilbur’s or Didion’s), but that isn’t what is at issue in awarding the highest prize in literature to a pop musician. The objection here hinges in the definition of the word literature. You wouldn’t give the literary prize to an economist or a political saint. You shouldn’t give it to Bob Dylan.
In the Abuser’s House #2
QuoteOnce again we have a day that knocks into pieces everything we think is within the realm of the possibly normal or conceivable in our politics. Republicans half cut Trump loose over the weekend, only to see a rapid and brutal backlash from Trump’s supporters who make up the bulk of the base of the Republican party. That they didn’t anticipate this is a measure of how much, at this late date, they still don’t quite grasp the nature of the person they are dealing with or the moment they are operating in. By Monday, the few Republicans who had explicitly jumped ship were starting to jump back on the ship. Now over the course of a single evening we have as many as a dozen new accusers – women from various walks of life, different parts of the country, different historical eras. By any remotely reasonable political, moral logic, Trump’s whole party would now desert him en masse. But it’s less than four weeks before the election. And the process of endorsing, de-endorsing, re-endorsing and more has become too much of a dark comedy to go through yet again. As I noted earlier this week, Trump is now at war with Hillary, the media and the GOP. But the GOP is the only one of those three he’s in a position to hurt. And bullies prey on the weak.
Rush Limbaugh complains about nonconsensual sex being called rape
QuoteYou know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.
Rush Limbaugh complains about nonconsensual sex being called rape
Team Because vs. Team Despite
LinkMy framework for viewing Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2016 general election involves seeing his supporters in two distinct groups: Despite and Because.
Some people are still supporting Trump despite all the awful things he has said and done. Despite his “grab them by the pussy” boasts of sexual assault, despite his fantasies about Mexican rapists pouring over the border, despite his enthusiasm for torture, despite his calls for unconstitutional religious bans, despite his wanting to build a ridiculous wall, despite his awkwardly transparent attempts to pander to religious audiences, despite his sleazy track-record of litigiousness and stiffing contractors, despite his bankruptcies, despite his long history of vile racism and misogyny, despite his evident ignorance and his constant flip-flop-flipping and vacillating that makes it impossible to know what policies he really supports or opposes. They don’t like any of that and find it all embarrassing and unfortunate, but despite it all they’re still leaning Trump because of abortion, or because they hate Hillary Clinton, or because of the Supreme Court, or just because they’re Republicans and Trump these days carries an “R” by his name.
The Despite voters didn’t support Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, but their vote in those contests was scattered among the 16 other candidates in that contest. Now, after all those other options are off the table, these folks will, they guess, be forced to support their party’s nominee, despite everything.
Trump won those primaries without the help of Team Despite because he had the unwavering allegiance of Team Because. These are the folks who look at that whole long list above and love every bit of it. They love and support Donald Trump because of his crude language, because of his anti-immigrant slurs, because of his enthusiasm for torture, because he has promised (and un-promised, and re-promised, endlessly) to ban Muslims, because he wants to build a ridiculous wall, because of his sleazy business history, because of his racism and misogyny, because of his puffed-up ignorance, because of his disdain for constitutional restrictions and his disdain for basic mores, manners and fundamental decency.
Grabbing Fascism by the Pussy
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NBC Helped Create Trump—Now It Owes The American Public
QuoteThe network is partly to blame for the rise of a candidate who threatens democracy.