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tenderfoot

(8,426 posts)
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 03:19 PM Jun 2018

GQ: This Is Why Trump Won

On Wednesday, MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff got to tour a former Walmart turned detention facility—a prison, really—for immigrant children, many of whom have been forcibly separated from their parents by U.S. officials. There, he found a Soviet-style mural of President Trump alongside a quote from The Art of the Deal. According to Soboroff, the kids only get two hours outside a day. The prison is growing overcrowded and is only getting worse, thanks to the Trump administration’s zeal for prosecuting immigrants, some of whom were already living here legally. And these are just the kids who are accounted for. There are also, of course, over a thousand immigrant children who are now UNACCOUNTED for.

In other news, Robert De Niro said a bad word in public.

This was apparently an egregious enough offense that it merited two separate op-eds in The Washington Post, and another op-ed in The New York Times from Frank Bruni, who was once a wonderful restaurant critic and is now one of the most singularly inane political columnists working today, which is saying a lot! His column about De Niro came in the form of an open letter, because Bruni is apparently an 8th grader. It’s also full of the same tepid, tut-tutting “Take the high road” hogwash that helped get us into this mess in the first place. Worst of all, Bruni posits all of his pathetic complacency as a grand, overarching form of political strategy.

When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with tantrums, you’re not resisting [Trump]. You’re mirroring him. You’re not diminishing him. You’re demeaning yourselves. Many voters don’t hear your arguments or the facts, which are on your side. They just wince at the din.


<snip>

Bruni is far from alone in smarmily crying out THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON! every time a liberal gets angry about something they ought to be angry about. It is the laziest, stupidest theory, one that posits that the only possible way to take down Trump from his evildoing is to keep your voice so quiet that everyone else can opt out of hearing it. It’s also a clear case of naked pandering from newspapers that skew liberal but still yearn—whether for financial reasons or out of sheer vanity—to appear fair to both sides. This is how you end up with two sets of rules for each party. Republicans can be openly racist, nationalist, corrupt, and horny. Democrats have to be GOOD, because Americans apparently crave goodness even though 60 million of them voted for Donald Trump.

Would you like to know why Trump REALLY won? Cool. Donald Trump got elected because the electoral college is outdated and worthless. He got elected because of voter suppression. He got elected because of the fear and the racism of some white voters—whether that racism is out in the open, or kept in a closet in the suburbs somewhere. He got elected because his opponent had a poor election strategy. He got elected because of the great ocean patch of horseshit news that floats into every corner of the Internet, and the willingness of bad actors (Fox News, Infowars, Russia) to add to that patch. And he got elected because of the platforms of people like Frank Bruni, who continually preach adherence to norms and believe any deviation from them is a losing strategy.

Enough with “idiot” and “moron” (unless you’re directly quoting an administration official). They’re schoolyard and splenetic. Enough with Hitler, too. Has Trump shown fascistic tendencies? Yes. Is he the second coming of the Third Reich? No. Nor are the spineless Republicans who have enabled him Nazi collaborators, not on the evidence of what has and hasn’t happened so far.


There are many people to blame for Trump, but celebrities who vocally oppose him are probably the last people you should target. That fabled high road that Bruni is preaching? Well, he can rest assured that the Democratic Party also has an enormous hard-on for it. Chuck Schumer has openly praised Trump and courted him. A bunch of Democrats voted for a toxic bank-deregulation vote and have confirmed nearly every crooked nominee that Trump pulled out of the sewer to further rip off the American people. They’ve also pretty much dropped cries for gun control. They’re being MORE than civil, and the result is Republicans running roughshod over our most vulnerable citizens.

Wanna know how Trump wins re-election? This is how. It’s the same goddamn reason he won in 2016. He’ll win again because both the establishment media and the Democratic kingmakers are thin-skinned dipshits who will blame literally ANYONE for Trump but themselves. They will also recognize the Republican Party as legitimate and deserving of its power, when it has long since been exposed as a wholly criminal enterprise that needs to be destroyed. I guess that’s strong language, but strong language is needed when the supposed guardians of democracy are willing to yuk it up with Sarah Sanders at a dinner and concoct 900 synonyms for the word lie, all in the name of politesse.

https://www.gq.com/story/this-is-why-trump-won
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rainin

(3,011 posts)
2. Yes! All that. Except, I still don't believe he won. I think there is a story, yet untold,
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 03:25 PM
Jun 2018

that votes were electronically flipped. Maybe, we will someday know for sure.

I believe, Secretary Clinton won, by the landslide that was predicted in the polls.

Remember when we used to trust polls? They were far more "accurate" before republicans got so good at stealing elections.

Freddie

(9,265 posts)
3. I agree
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 03:34 PM
Jun 2018

Votes were flipped in just the right states. They played the EC like a fiddle and will again.

rainin

(3,011 posts)
7. Surprisingly few counties need to be manipulated to turn an election.
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 04:06 PM
Jun 2018

Targeted manipulation is virtually undetectable, especially when no one wants to look.

Plus, we won't find what we don't look for.

progressoid

(49,988 posts)
4. While I understand the sentiment, I don't think this is entirely accurate.
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 03:48 PM
Jun 2018
Democratic kingmakers are thin-skinned dipshits who will blame literally ANYONE for Trump but themselves.


In Hillary's book she blamed herself, the DNC, Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.

brush

(53,776 posts)
5. All of this and no mention of Comey's last minute machinations...
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 03:54 PM
Jun 2018

to help trump "win" kind of renders this OP invalid.

Especially after the report yesterday that laid much blame on Comey.

gratuitous

(82,849 posts)
6. I got in an titanic argument about Bruni's stupid column yesterday
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 03:56 PM
Jun 2018

A Facebook friend I generally agree with was citing Bruni's column as "J'Accuse" redux. I disagreed, and we were off. When it devolved into baseless assumptions and a personal attack (I likened Bruni to a schoolmarm, as I would any adult feigning indignance over a swear; he riposted that maybe I was homophobic because Bruni is apparently gay, which I did not know - or care about), I ghosted on the thread. Maybe I should have compared Bruni to Maude Flanders? Or would I run into the same problem with that?

mountain grammy

(26,620 posts)
9. K & R
Fri Jun 15, 2018, 04:16 PM
Jun 2018

I don't agree with everything he says, but he makes some good points and it's very well written.

That last paragraph.. wow. Like a punch in the gut.

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