Scalzi puts in place quite well, IMHO.

" I think it’s self-evident that Bannon’s a racist piece of shit who shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House, but I also thought it was a self-evident Donald Trump was a racist piece of shit who shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House, too, and look where that got us."

GOLDEN!

They proved that when they let Sarah Palin be nominated. Then Romney. And now Trump. None of these events happened at someone's direction. They just happened.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]

...when the secret of their success was just shameless, baldfaced brazenness?

They get away with so much because no one expects them to keep going lower. I would not have believed there was anything lower than Sarah Palin until Donald Trump came to town. Sweet Jesus!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]

Not that he might not get the votes, but the fact is, they did not know he needed then in the first place.
Read that today.

for highly targeted marketing, voter suppression and using dark money and dirty tricks.

Last edited Wed Feb 1, 2017, 05:04 PM - Edit history (1)

They've been cheating since Nixon and Reagan (Vietnam and iran October surprise treason events), W Bush both terms (Rove, Katherine Harris and Jeb in '00, Rove, Ken Blackwell in '04), Rove in '08 and '12, (unseccessfully), and trump (Comey and Putin and Crosscheck and POC voter suppression in '16).

They fucking cheat and then don't know how to govern. What have they done when they're in power? Start wars and economic crashes, from Hoover Great Depression to Nixon's recession to Reagan's hugestock crash to Papa Bush's (it's the economy, stupid) to W Bush's two wars and and Great Depression to not doing anything but obstruct and not govern during Obama's terms to chaos in the 12 days they've been in power now.

Where's the new health plan they were going to replace the ACA with? Nowhere, and they've had six years to come up with something. All they did during that time was vote 50 some times to repeal the ACA instead of working on their own plan.

They are the no accomplishments obstruction party.

Let 'em demonstrate that they can win on the merits and not cheat and can actually govern and pass bills that help us then we'll talk.

..one of my favs

I don’t think this is sustainable, and I don’t mean in terms of people’s ability to protest, which I think is capacious. I mean that, while it is prudent to plan for four years of Trump, I’m going to be surprised if he lasts that long. I mean, this is the goddamn honeymoon for his administration. It is protests and chaos and possibly even Democrats in Congress locating (or at least borrowing) spines, and a subterranean approval rating. Even worse, Trump just isn’t enjoying himself. He’s been fucking miserable for two straight weeks and it’s not getting better from here. I suspect that not too long in the future he’ll find a way to declare victory and bug out.

Did Donald Trump really, really want to be president with all that that entails, and if so, why? Did he actually want to do all the work that goes with the job? Right now, he's just like a child playing with a new toy, but it will get old very quickly. Four years of this is absolutely not sustainable for him.

I don't think Trump gives a sh!t about 2020- "Running for President" was just #17 on his Cheeto Hitler "bucket list"... I cannott believe he thought he'd win- and he probably will get bored in a year- but who can imagine the damage he'll do...

which he is allowed to do now that he's filed for re-election.

I believe you're correct, he does like being a dictator, but to me this just seemed like a crass way to solicit more bribes.

donations now that he's filed.. he does want to milk the US and her people as much as possible while he's rigged in.

But this should scare the hell out of everyone who cares about our Planet.. 8 years of blotus?! Assholes have big plans to steal our country.

Discernment without the panic and ultimately hopeful.

That's what's going on here: Dominance. They (*/Bannon) have no ethics, no moral compass to tell them when they need to step back. They will bully until they win, period.

The President of the United States is mentally ill.

the critic in me is shouting, "Expect the worst!"

But it's really easy to fall into despair and apathy if the majority of the voices we hear are the ones telling us that our opposition is more powerful than we are, more intelligent than we are, more effective than we can hope to be.

None of those three clauses are true. There are 65 million of us, and another 65 million who are fellow travelers but for whatever reason did not vote. We have most of the brains, most of the technological ability, most of the creativity, most of the most of the medical skill. We know how to organize.

They want us thinking they're far more powerful than they are. They're not worthy of our fear. They're only worthy of our contempt.

who can’t find their asses with GPS and an Eagle Scout! They must be smarter than that! Well, no, they’re really not, and yes, we really did.

Statisticians will tell you that of 350M people, that's a rounding error.

The point is to not cede to the opposition unwarranted power.

in how not to develop and implement policy.

Will they learn anything from it? I'm not holding my breath.

Because "mistakes were made, but not by me". It's never their own fault, and if one can't admit fault, one can't learn.

That's okay. We are learning.

I don't think this is a nefarious well-planned bout of Machivellian brilliance masquerading as gross incompetence, I think this is the genuine article.

Uncategorized

A Fortnight of Trump John Scalzi

They got almost half of our population to go along with them to the point that it is cult like. And they are creating the Chaos they want. We need to stop underestimating them. That is why we are in the predicament we are in.

The tribalism that enabled this has been in play in the Thugs and right-wind media for decades. But it's not primarily a reasoned or intellectual reaction and behavior. It works on the basis of emotional manipulation. Cult entrancement takes time, and they used the last two decades well.

But they're not spending that cult-capital well at all. They're losing support every day. Approval is dropping like a stone.

It's not underestimating to name what we're dealing with. Incompetence is actually harder to defend against, because intentional malice has goals and plans and can be somewhat predicted. Incompetence has no controls.

What if they are predicting this? You're making the assumption that this wasn't planned. On the 1 hand you say it was 20 yrs in the making and then you say they are incompetent. Yet, they are getting what they want. You think they planned it for 20 years without having some end game? I have a hard time believing that.

They clearly could give 2 shits about approval ratings. Fascism doesn't care. They will just stealt it again. What will prevent them from doing that?

Bannon has told us what he was going to do. And he is doing it. He is creating the anarchy he wanted. This is very planned.

This is not a Republican thing. This is a neo nazi, white nationalist thing.

Underestimating them has led to a trump presidency. No more. I am not going to use old metrics to guide future predictions.

That doesn't mean they won't get things done, but it will only be easy things--failings that are so easy to indulge in that we had rules and laws in place to prevent this.