Disgusting IMO, but possibly correct

[Lexicus]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ting-us-president-jeff-sessions-a7572001.html

Donald Trump has signed three executive orders to deal with “public safety”, including handing more authority to the police.

At the formal ceremony to appoint Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, the President outlined the new mandate that Mr Sessions would have, including tackling crime, drug cartels and terrorism.

He insisted that the US faced the “threat of rising crime” and that “things will get better very soon”.

Mr Sessions, a longtime Senator from Alabama who was once deemed too racist to serve as a federal judge, told reporters that the US “has a crime problem”.

“I wish the rise that we're seeing in crime in America today were some sort of aberration or a blip,” he said.

“My best judgement, having been involved in criminal law enforcement for many years, is that this is a dangerous, permanent trend that puts the health and safety of America at risk,” he added.

Words cannot express my contempt for these sacks of excrement.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ting-us-president-jeff-sessions-a7572001.html


Words cannot express my contempt for these sacks of excrement.

Mine either. Just for the record, crime is at such low levels that for people to let concerns about it drive them to anything beyond maintaining a reasonable awareness of their surroundings is foolish. Unfortunately, the same people who will applaud Trump and Sessions generally think that a reasonable awareness of their surroundings means "talk on your phone and never make eye contact."

 

[Gori the Grey]

He insisted that the US faced the “threat of rising crime” and that “things will get better very soon”.

You know, this raises an interesting side question that's been starting to nag at me. Maybe I'll make a thread.

When will Trump have to switch from everything being a total disaster to America having been made to be great again?

Two years in? Just prior to the next election? (He's trademarked the slogan "Keep America Great," evidently.)

(Don't mean to hijack this interesting thread.)

 

[Berzerker]

depends on 1 or 2 terms (or he does a Palin and quit early declaring true greatness has been achieved)

 

[Hygro]

If, in the average, everyone since 1945 had lost 1 hour per year dealing with this crap

Long tailing toward the actual fascists and barely affecting most of us, probably a worthwhile tax of time spent reflecting on what not to be, since our system is so big and powerful and leveraging that we could death camp millions at any time on short notice.

Hinging on "if" of course.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Mine either. Just for the record, crime is at such low levels that for people to let concerns about it drive them to anything beyond maintaining a reasonable awareness of their surroundings is foolish. Unfortunately, the same people who will applaud Trump and Sessions generally think that a reasonable awareness of their surroundings means "talk on your phone and never make eye contact."

Nothing says "You'll get my wallet at the cost of your freedom, an eye and maybe one of your testicles"... like eye contact... Nothing says "please, please, please rob me, I promise to stay completely passive and silent, paralyzed with fear"... like avoiding eye contact.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Nothing says "You'll get my wallet at the cost of your freedom, an eye and maybe one of your testicles"... like eye contact... Nothing says "please, please, please rob me, I promise to stay completely passive and silent, paralyzed with fear"... like avoiding eye contact.

I was thinking more along the lines of nothing says "you can pull out whatever you want to hit me with and I won't see it coming" like avoiding eye contact, but yeah, that too.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Rachel Maddow just cited a poll that I think bears on Tim's opening concern about the appeal to people of, if not fascist, at least autocratic rule.

51% of Trump supporters voters think Trump should be able to overturn judicial decisions of which he does not approve. Slightly more than half of Trump's voters were voting for a dictator.

EDIT: I initially said "supporters," but the proper word should have been "voters." This matters because, one can at least imagine a lot of Trump voters holding their nose when they voted for him and not really considering themselves "supporters," just people who were never going to vote for a Democrat. I keep trying to get a fix on the number of die-hards versus the number of nose-holders, and this grim poll result suggests that fully half of his voters are full-on supporters. Sad! (as a certain someone might remark)

 

[Timsup2nothin]

"I don't favor this 'autocratic rule.' I just think Trump should be able to do whatever he needs to do to keep us safe and the courts shouldn't be allowed to get in his way." - Average Trump Supporter

 

[Zelig]

Mine either. Just for the record, crime is at such low levels

Well that depends if you count things like breaking anti-trust laws.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well that depends if you count things like breaking anti-trust laws.

Well, yeah. I was thinking more of the usual "there's a murderer hiding behind every bush with a rapist in his pocket, so vote for me and I'll hire a jillion more cops" type of overstated crime.

 

[Lexicus]

It's a good point. I wonder what the crime statistics would look like if elite crime was reflected accurately in them. I'd guess they've been increasing steadily since the Carter administration.

 

[Commodore]

One thing that I think can be attributed to the rise of the alt-right in Western civilization is our natural tendency to rebel against the establishment. For a long time, the left was considered to be the "counter-culture", and therefore cool, because the right held all the political power. For the last few decades though, the left has come to totally dominate pop culture and has also dominated politics as well. In essence, the left has become the establishment, which means they are no longer seen as "cool" or as being the counter-culture. That has now passed to the right. Conservatives are becoming the new counter-culture.

This is evidenced by one study I saw that said the generation born after the year 2000 (in other words, the teens and youth of today) are the most conservative people in their age group have been since WWII. I think it's because teens naturally want to rebel against the establishment and be edgy, and the left is the establishment right now while the right are the edgy rebels on the fringes of society right now. That makes them very attractive to youth.

 

[Lexicus]

One thing that I think can be attributed to the rise of the alt-right in Western civilization is our natural tendency to rebel against the establishment.

Oh my god

 

[Commodore]

Oh my god

Are you disagreeing that Westerners have a tendency to rebel against the establishment?

 

[Berzerker]

all hail, the king is dead...long live the king

 

[timtofly]

One thing that I think can be attributed to the rise of the alt-right in Western civilization is our natural tendency to rebel against the establishment. For a long time, the left was considered to be the "counter-culture", and therefore cool, because the right held all the political power. For the last few decades though, the left has come to totally dominate pop culture and has also dominated politics as well. In essence, the left has become the establishment, which means they are no longer seen as "cool" or as being the counter-culture. That has now passed to the right. Conservatives are becoming the new counter-culture.

This is evidenced by one study I saw that said the generation born after the year 2000 (in other words, the teens and youth of today) are the most conservative people in their age group have been since WWII. I think it's because teens naturally want to rebel against the establishment and be edgy, and the left is the establishment right now while the right are the edgy rebels on the fringes of society right now. That makes them very attractive to youth.

I think it sounds like an alt. universe a longtime ago in a galaxy far far away. But sometimes the truth can be stranger than fiction, and reality is projected via the fiction we come up with.

 

[bernie14]

I think it sounds like an alt. universe a longtime ago in a galaxy far far away. But sometimes the truth can be stranger than fiction, and reality is projected via the fiction we come up with.

almost posted this yesterday....seems much more appropriate now

 

[Traitorfish]

One thing that I think can be attributed to the rise of the alt-right in Western civilization is our natural tendency to rebel against the establishment. For a long time, the left was considered to be the "counter-culture", and therefore cool, because the right held all the political power. For the last few decades though, the left has come to totally dominate pop culture and has also dominated politics as well. In essence, the left has become the establishment, which means they are no longer seen as "cool" or as being the counter-culture. That has now passed to the right. Conservatives are becoming the new counter-culture.

Most conservatives are over fifty, and over-fifties are, almost by definition, not-cool, so that's your first stumbling block.

I think that you may be conflating subculture with counter-culture; conservatives in the United States are definitely coming to form a distinct subculture, but to call it a subculture gives it an imminence which it really doesn't possess. The counter-culture of the 1960s, suitably moderated, become the culture of the 1990s. That is not going to happen to the conservative subculture of the 2010s, in part because most of its participants will not survive to see the 2040s, but more fundamentally because it's a rear-guard action for a set of values and beliefs that are falling away from the mainstream, rather than a new set of values in belief that has risen in opposition to the mainstream.

The alt-right could arguably be considered counter-cultural, because they are presenting something- well, not new, it was all said in the 1930s, but at least things that were previously unsaid and even unsayable. Richard Spencer would make your granny uncomfortable in a way which Bill O'Reilly would not. But that that movement strikes me as more of a generational challenge within the conservative subculture than a challenge to the culture at large, a counter-culture within a subculture. The allure of the alt-right is severely limited among the youthful population at large, who know a weirdo Nazi memelord when they see one.

 

[Bootstoots]

What about Trump and his authoritarianism would justify the label "fascist" rather than just garden-variety electoral authoritarianism? I think Trump's just a US version of Putin, Erdogan, Chavez, Orban, Kaczynski, et al. The specific ideologies are different for all of these people, but the general idea - winning elections with a bunch of populist and nationalist rhetoric, and then using the resulting power to chip away at everything that makes a regime democratic - are obviously similar. This is of course extremely worrying: this sort of thing was not supposed to happen in the US, and we're confronted with the fact that liberal democracy is in decline worldwide, being slowly rolled back and replaced with a type of electoral authoritarianism. But I don't known that it has more than superficial similarities to fascism Mussolini-style.