2020 US Election (Part Two)

[Lexicus]

ACB just (in the last half-hour) refused to answer whether Trump has the legal power to delay the election.

 

[Lexicus]

A very convenient malfunction(?) causes Virginia's voter registration system to go down:
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/...hLMINpFZ198rVj2XpdappgYB24QEc0khZHmjfGh2fz3Og

 

[Kyriakos]

It's ok, Biden can always fall back to the enthusiasm he causes young people to go vote, no need to just rely on the ancient folk.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm not quite sure where to post this, but over the weekend I watched the season 2 finale of The Boys, in which the character 'Stormfront' says, (mild spoiler for episode 6)

Spoiler :

"People like what I have to say. They just don't like the word 'Nazi.'"

It's a throwaway line that gave me a chuckle, but I didn't think about it a lot, events in the finale episode quickly overtook it, and I pretty much forgot about it. Until this morning.

The Washington Post, 13 Oct 2020 - "New research explores authoritarian mind-set of Trump’s core supporters"

A new book by a psychology professor and a former lawyer in the Nixon White House argues that Trump has tapped into a current of authoritarianism in the American electorate, one that’s bubbled just below the surface for years. In “Authoritarian Nightmare,” Bob Altemeyer and John W. Dean marshal data from a previously unpublished nationwide survey showing a striking desire for strong authoritarian leadership among Republican voters.

Roughly half of Trump supporters, for instance, agreed with the statement: “Once our government leaders and the authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within,” which Altemeyer and Dean characterize as “practically a Nazi cheer.”

I would guess that some Trump supporters would get mad about characterizing that statement as 'practically a Nazi cheer', even as they agree with it. How many Trump supporters would get a kick out of all of their buddies putting on light brown shirts and black pants and marching in unison, until you told them who the Brown Shirts were? A lot of the same people who (claimed they) didn't know what the slogan "Blood and Soil" meant, I'd wager.

I've said it before, and I'm obviously not the first person to say it, but Trump is an expression of what's happening in this country, as much as or more than, a cause of it. We can see from his pivoting on issues and backtracking on pledges that he's mainly just looking for whatever he can say that will get people to like him and vote for him and give him money. (If you're thinking, "If that were true, if he were just a mercurial chameleon who'll say anything, why didn't he run as a Democrat?" The answer is, he would have. I bet he wanted to. The Democratic Party is where the power base lies in some of the cities and social circles where he would like to be powerful, New York and Los Angeles. If he could've won office running as a Democrat, he'd have done it, but they wouldn't have him. ~20 years ago, some people actually looked at him as a potential candidate for the Democrats - Woody Harrelson was one of them - but when they met with him in person, they realized he was a narcissistic, dimwitted windbag and couldn't leave the room fast enough.)

So, yeah, I think Stormfront was probably right and this article makes me worried about what kind of charismatic thug Trump supporters will vote for next. British actor Stephen Fry wrote a comedic novel in the '90s, Making History, in which someone invents a type of time machine and uses it to prevent Adolph Hitler from ever being born. The result is a disaster that they spend the rest of the novel desperately trying to undo. Fry's premise was that Hitler was a buffoon who failed to fully leverage German nationalism and industry, and that a competent National Socialist could have achieved the party's goals where Hitler could not. Perhaps Trump's racist, nationalist, anti-democratic supporters ought to be, if they ever stopped to think about it, disappointed by what a doofus their champion turned out to be. One wonders what cunning, authoritarian, political mind might be lurking out there, just waiting for this goober to get out of the way. I guess a more optimistic view would be that being a racist, nationalist, anti-democratic authoritarian and being a cunning political mind are mutually-exclusive. I certainly hope that's true. With so much of the groundwork already laid, though, I worry it might only take one. I suspect a lot of people who succumb to authoritarianism don't know how close to the edge they are until they go over it.

Anyway, this article really brightened my day.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I'm not quite sure where to post this, but over the weekend I watched the season 2 finale of The Boys, in which the character 'Stormfront' says, (mild spoiler for episode 6)

Spoiler :

"People like what I have to say. They just don't like the word 'Nazi.'"

It's a throwaway line that gave me a chuckle, but I didn't think about it a lot, events in the finale episode quickly overtook it, and I pretty much forgot about it. Until this morning.

FTR that's not a mild spoiler its MAJOR... that's a "Vader is Luke's father" level spoiler Although... in retrospect, the foreshadowing is so on-the-nose for various reasons that the reveal, while still pretty crazy, left me saying "Oh yeah of course!

Spoiler Major spoiler :

Her name is freaking "Stormfront" Duh

Anyway, I just finished The Boys this weekend as well with my wife and she and I had a long discussion about exactly that line and how absolutely true it was. So I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed it. The character was absolutely spot on with that line. It was a great line that completely captures the moment we are in politically... maybe not just in the US but all around the world. So I didn't see it as a throwaway line at all. I think that the line was actually the moral of the whole season.

I've observed many times on these threads that people who are racist, or saying/doing/thinking racist, and/or racially prejudiced/insensitive things almost never think of themselves as "a racist" or believe that what they are saying, doing, or advocating is racist. They think their own conduct is perfectly normal and they define "racist" in a self-serving, increasingly narrow way that places they themselves outside of the category. That great line the character delivers in the show, was expressing that there are still some hard limits that all the cognitive dissonance in the world can't cross...

Spoiler MAJOR spoiler :

Like she wasn't just a garden variety alt-right racist, or even a "white nationalist", or even a Klan apologist, or even a member of a Neo nazi group like Golden Dawn... she was a straight up, born in Berlin, in photos having lunch with Adolf Hitler, getting married with a swastika flag banner over the altar, 1940's Germany National Socialist Party member. Not "a nazi", but "THE Nazis"

Even some stone cold self-identifying racists can't mentally cross that line... at least not yet.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I think if Trump loses, America will be done with its experiment in electing buffoons for a while. A semblance of normalcy will be welcomed. If Trump wins, we are all up Schitt's Creek without a paddle.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Another follow-up, Egon, might be "How Democracies Die." I haven't read it, but I saw the authors for an hour on Booknotes. One of their points is that there is always about a third of the populace in a given democratic society that would actually prefer autocratic rule by a strongman. It is just a psychological predisposition that some people have.

 

[EgonSpengler]

FTR that's not a mild spoiler its MAJOR... that's a "Vader is Luke's father" level spoiler Although... in retrospect, the foreshadowing is so on-the-nose for various reasons that the reveal, while still pretty crazy, left me saying "Oh yeah of course!

Spoiler Major spoiler :

Her name is freaking "Stormfront" Duh

Right, I guess it was the foreshadowing I was thinking of, but you're right, it's a major part of an important character.

Anyway, I just finished The Boys this weekend as well with my wife and she and I had a long discussion about exactly that line and how absolutely true it was. So I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed it. The character was absolutely spot on with that line. It was a great line that completely captures the moment we are in politically... maybe not just in the US but all around the world. So I didn't see it as a throwaway line at all. I think that the line was actually the moral of the whole season.

I've observed many times on these threads that people who are racist, or saying/doing/thinking racist, and/or racially prejudiced/insensitive things almost never think of themselves as "a racist" or believe that what they are saying, doing, or advocating is racist. They think their own conduct is perfectly normal and they define "racist" in a self-serving, increasingly narrow way that places they themselves outside of the category. That great line the character delivers in the show, was expressing that there are still some hard limits that all the cognitive dissonance in the world can't cross...

Spoiler MAJOR spoiler :

Like she wasn't just a garden variety alt-right racist, or even a "white nationalist", or even a Klan apologist, or even a member of a Neo nazi group like Golden Dawn... she was a straight up, born in Berlin, in photos having lunch with Adolf Hitler, getting married with a swastika flag banner over the altar, 1940's Germany National Socialist Party member. Not "a nazi", but "THE Nazis"

Even some stone cold self-identifying racists can't mentally cross that line... at least not yet.

Yeah, right. A lot of (White) people choose to define racism as being something deliberate, premeditated, a motivation rather than an outcome. Which is very convenient for them.

Of course, being self-serving like that isn't a trait of White people alone. I once had a Black friend tell me that "racism" was bias against Black people, while bias against other types of people was just a bias. There were no Latino, Asian or Arab people at the table right then, but I would hazard a guess that they might beg to differ..? To be fair, I think I had an idea what the person was getting at, and they were just articulating it clumsily. Maybe a year ago, there was a radio program about the unrest following police violence (Ferguson seems like 20 years ago, now), and at the very end of the program one of the panel asked, "Is the important distinction today still 'White and not-White', or is it 'Black and 'not-Black'?" Everybody at the table kind of sat back and took a deep breath, and then the program ended.

I think if Trump loses, America will be done with its experiment in electing buffoons for a while. A semblance of normalcy will be welcomed. If Trump wins, we are all up Schitt's Creek without a paddle.

You could be right, but the danger I see is that the "normalcy" people want to return to is what generated Trump in the first place. That's partly why I'm not enthusiastic about Biden; I think he's a "reset." I mean, sure, fine. With everything gone completely off the rails, a reset is probably in order, but I hope no one is telling themselves it's progress. I mean, I think there are people who view the debacle in Iraq as a lesson we can learn from and then avoid repeating, but it wasn't. It was an expression of the fact that we don't learn lessons. (The Vietnam War was the lesson in that case, if anybody's wondering. The war with Spain too, maybe, and I just don't want to know how many Americans are saying, "We fought a war with Spain?" *facepalm*)

Another follow-up, Egon, might be "How Democracies Die." I haven't read it, but I saw the authors for an hour on Booknotes. One of their points is that there is always about a third of the populace in a given democratic society that would actually prefer autocratic rule by a strongman. It is just a psychological predisposition that some people have.

The title rings a bell. I'm sure I haven't read it, though. I'll look for the video. I did pick up a copy of Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism a while ago, but I didn't get far into it. I found the writing style a bit of an uphill run, and of course the subject matter is depressing, pertinent as it is, rather than merely of historical, academic interest. Might be worth trying again, since I've already bought it.

 

[Lexicus]

I think if Trump loses, America will be done with its experiment in electing buffoons for a while. A semblance of
normalcy will be welcomed. If Trump wins, we are all up Schitt's Creek without a paddle.

Depending on how exactly you define buffoon, I agree with you. Having had its buffoonish champion fail, the right will turn to someone who is not a buffoon to execute its program. And the results of that will likely be tragic.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Depending on how exactly you define buffoon, I agree with you. Having had its buffoonish champion fail, the right will turn to someone who is not a buffoon to execute its program. And the results of that will likely be tragic.

In this case buffoon = a lying, narcissist, corrupt, selfish, predator who knows nothing about anything nor cares about anyone but himself.

 

[Lexicus]

In this case buffoon = a lying, narcissist, corrupt, selfish, predator who knows nothing about anything nor cares about anyone but himself.

In my view the primary problem with Trump is right-wing ideology, not his buffoonery.

 

[Ajidica]

The title rings a bell. I'm sure I haven't read it, though. I'll look for the video. I did pick up a copy of Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism a while ago, but I didn't get far into it. I found the writing style a bit of an uphill run, and of course the subject matter is depressing, pertinent as it is, rather than merely of historical, academic interest. Might be worth trying again, since I've already bought it.

I've long had a pet peeve against the idea of "totalitarianism", which has its roots in trying to carve out a special type of dictatorship to stick the "unholy trinity" of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao into; drawing an ideological link between Nazism and Soviet Communism for the Cold War.
Plus, it created a sort of "safe zone" for sordid little dictators and El Presidentes - as long as you were vaguely pro-west, talking about remaking society, rooting out saboteurs and infiltrators, and dissapearing people was treated as a local eccentricity and not as a sign of "totalitarianism".

 

[Yeekim]

I've observed many times on these threads that people who are racist, or saying/doing/thinking racist, and/or racially prejudiced/insensitive things almost never think of themselves as "a racist" or believe that what they are saying, doing, or advocating is racist. They think their own conduct is perfectly normal and they define "racist" in a self-serving, increasingly narrow way that places they themselves outside of the category.

Sorry for potential derailment, but tbh, I'm not even entirely sure what "racist" means these days any more.
I used to understand racism as a belief predicated on two basic tenets: 1) that all people belong to one of several races and 2) some races are superior to others. The latter was then usually used to justify practices like slavery or miscegenation. A racist was someone who shared these beliefs. Crucially, they knew they were racist, they self-identified as racist, and if they denied it, they were lying.
On the other hand, disagreement with these tenets (such as "colorblindness") meant that a person was an anti-racist, or at least not a racist.
In progressive circles, this certainly does not appear to be true any more; in fact it seems that the concept has performed a near complete 180-degree turn, with "colorblindness" explicitly decried as racism. Essentially, the going assumption seems to be that everyone - including dedicated anti-racists - are regardless still racist in a number of potentially unlimited ways, most of which they themselves are completely oblivious about.
I wonder if there is another sociological concept that has shifted its meaning so totally and rapidly...

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sorry for potential derailment, but tbh, I'm not even entirely sure what "racist" means these days any more.
I used to understand racism as a belief predicated on two basic tenets: 1) that all people belong to one of several races and 2) some races are superior to others. The latter was then usually used to justify practices like slavery or miscegenation. A racist was someone who shared these beliefs. Crucially, they knew they were racist, they self-identified as racist, and if they denied it, they were lying.
On the other hand, disagreement with these tenets (such as "colorblindness") meant that a person was an anti-racist, or at least not a racist.
In progressive circles, this certainly does not appear to be true any more; in fact it seems that the concept has performed a near complete 180-degree turn, with "colorblindness" explicitly decried as racism. Essentially, the going assumption seems to be that everyone - including dedicated anti-racists - are regardless still racist in a number of potentially unlimited ways, most of which they themselves are completely oblivious about.
I wonder if there is another sociological concept that has shifted its meaning so totally and rapidly...

Start a new thread to discuss/explore your "confusion" about the meaning of racism. No need to worry about derailing, because I'm not going off the rails after that bait.

 

[aelf]

Sorry for potential derailment, but tbh, I'm not even entirely sure what "racist" means these days any more.

You live in a predominantly white monocultural country (that was historically a willing participant in Nazi pogroms, AFAIK). It's hardly surprising.

 

[Sommerswerd]

270 to Win is currently projecting 48 to 48 for the Senate with 4 seats as toss ups. In the POTUS election they are showing 7 states still polling as toss ups, including Texas, Iowa, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Ohio. If any one of those went for Biden on election night I think the networks might start calling it for Biden.

 

[Lexicus]

270 to Win is currently projecting 48 to 48 for the Senate with 4 seats as toss ups. In the POTUS election they are showing 7 states still polling as toss ups, including Texas, Iowa, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Ohio. If any one of those went for Biden on election night I think the networks might start calling it for Biden.

Biden has a consistent if small lead in Florida. Fingers crossed. I honestly can't imagine him winning the state. It seems even less likely he win any of the others.

 

[Ajidica]

Biden has a consistent if small lead in Florida. Fingers crossed. I honestly can't imagine him winning the state. It seems even less likely he win any of the others.

I dunno, Politico has been running some articles showing rumblings of a meaningful turn away from Trump among the elderly. Anecdotally, my uncle, who voted GOP in all presidential elections until 2016 (which he left blank) put out a Biden sign this year.
I'm also not sure what Biden-harming October surprise can yet rear its head. The Senate GOP already released their Hunter Biden report, and the best they could say what that Hunter's presence in Ukraine was awkward - but could find no evidence of wrongdoing. Barr already said the 'Durham Report' won't be released before the election - either because there is nothing there or because the GOP realized Trump relitigating conspiracy theories at best leaves people confused and more often actively turns them off. We already had the sexual harrasment allegations against Biden and they went nowhere after the accuser shower herself to be wildly inconsistent on several key claims. Maybe something will come out about Harris having some dodgy finances?

 

[Yeekim]

Start a new thread to discuss/explore your "confusion" about the meaning of racism. No need to worry about derailing, because I'm not going off the rails after that bait.

You live in a predominantly white monocultural country (that was historically a willing participant in Nazi pogroms, AFAIK). It's hardly surprising.

Would a moderator be kind enough to split this discussion into another thread? @Arakhor?

 

[Gori the Grey]

If any one of those went for Biden on election night I think the networks might start calling it for Biden.

Please remember, I predicted 2-3 weeks back that Fox will call the election for Biden by 1 am Nov 4.

And yes, let's pick up some of these delicious Senate seats. Frankly, that (loss of the Senate) is the only way to make the GOP feel that supporting Trump was a mistake.