2016 POTUS Election Thread

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Cowboysrock55

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Man you are reaching here.

If you thinking calling Hispanics rapist or correlating all of Islam with terrorist is the same as calling him by his original family name is the same, well you are being willfully naieve to say the least.

Calling other people names is way down the list of reasons people do not like Trump.
John Oliver’s ‘Donald Drumpf’ jokes play on the same ugly xenophobia Trump does
Beating Trump shouldn't mean joining him.


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By S.I. Rosenbaum March 3
S.I. Rosenbaum is a freelance journalist who has worked at Boston magazine, the Boston Phoenix and the Tampa Bay Times.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s family name hasn’t been Drumpf for centuries. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)
“Make Donald Drumpf Again,” John Oliver declared on his show Sunday night, and America — or at least, liberal America — was happy to take him up on it. By the afternoon of Super Tuesday, “Donald Drumpf” was being searched more frequently on Google than any Republican candidate’s actual name besides Trump’s. On Twitter, “Drumpf” quickly became the epithet of choice for our national political trash fire. “Drumpf is the orange [expletive’s] real name,” as one Twitizen explained it to me.

Drumpf, of course, isn’t Trump’s real name, nor has it been the real name of anyone in his family since the 1600s. But it’s fun to call a bully names, especially when that bully is on the verge of winning the GOP presidential nomination. Names have power; by renaming something, you take control of it, quarantine it in a defined box. This is some George Orwell/Sapir-Whorf stuff. The names we use to talk about a thing determine how we think about it, too.

“Drumpf” feels so satisfying to critics of the Republican front-runner partly because it sounds funny and foreign; it sounds funny BECAUSE it is foreign. Specifically, Drumpf sounds funny because it sounds German. Drumpf, to an American ear, conjures up a dough-faced Bavarian Nazi on his stumpy way to murder all the Jews in his village. (At least, that’s what I think of, as a progressive Jew who opposes Trump.) In the face of a campaign that’s drawing support from white supremacists by a candidate who promises that he would ban Muslims and build a “beautiful wall” to keep out Mexicans, it’s nice to think of Trump that way — as an interloper, a false face that conceals a creeping foreign influence. As not one of us.

But it’s not really funny if you think about it much: The “#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain” concept traffics in the very xenophobia that is Trump’s sick stock in trade. Trump has already dragged our politics down, and he threatens to do worse if he’s elected. Opposing him shouldn’t mean joining him in a contest to see who can better plumb the ugliest nativist impulses.


Warning: The video above contains adult themes and language.

We have a long history of this sort of thing in this country of immigrants — bestowing foreign-sounding names to imply that the target isn’t really an American. In the 1930s and ’40s, partisans who opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt called him Franklin D. Rosenfeld, to imply that he was an agent of The Jews. (Some white supremacists still call him that.) More recently, birthers such as Trump insisted on using Barack Obama’s real middle name, Hussein, as a dog whistle to show how truly foreign he allegedly was. Trump also pointedly asked Jon Stewart why he doesn’t use his birth name (which is Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz).


Turnabout, in this case, is not fair play. This stuff is ugly. It’s tacky. And it’s bigoted. Yes, even Germans don’t deserve to be tarred as shifty-eyed Nazi foreigners. Plenty of German Americans were so slandered during World War II; it wasn’t cricket then, and it’s not now. (That’s not to say that associating Trump with Hitler is always wrong: They’re both verifiably xenophobic, racist, fascist demagogues with terrible hair.)

And for a comic genius such as Oliver, “Drumpf” is kind of weak sauce considering the target Trump offers. There’s his business record. Or his hair. Or the way he keeps making jokes insinuating that he’d like to have sex with his daughter. If we really need to call names, you can’t do better than Spy magazine’s classic “short-fingered vulgarian,” a charge that rankled so much that Trump not only threatened to sue the magazine and beat up its editors, he actually tried to send them photographic proof that it wasn’t true — his fingers weren’t that short.


[Are Donald Trump’s fingers weirdly short? An investigation.]

Late-night laughs: Super Tuesday and the GOP debate
Play Video3:27
Comedians Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien, Larry Wilmore and others reflect on voting results after Super Tuesday and the GOP debate. (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)
To imply, though, that Trump is some secret Drumpf, that he’s not actually just Trump is to deny the truth. In reality, Trump is as American as slavery and apple pie.

He’s a domestic product. Remember when he went around calling himself “The Donald” and putting his name on everything? Is there anything more crassly American than that? He’s simultaneously the belch that lingers after the binge-consumption of the Greed Decade and the gruesome specter of the GOP’s Southern Strategy finally shambling home to roost. Trump is the worst of what we are, and he was inevitable from the moment Thomas Jefferson wrote “All men are created equal,” then knocked off for the day and went home to impregnate one of his slaves. Trump is commerce and racism all rolled up in a bilious, Cheeto-colored ball.

Oliver’s argument is that the word “Trump” has too many positive connotations in English. But in fact, “Trump” is perfect; to trump someone is to beat them in the kind of zero-sum game that Trump and his followers believe the American enterprise to be. “Not everyone believes that we can all win,” the Black Lives Matter activist and organizer DeRay McKesson tweeted, long before he declared his candidacy for mayor of Baltimore. “Some cling to this idea that someone must lose in every fight. … I’m not sure when everything became a competition. But I don’t like it. We can all win, y’all. We can all get free.”

Trump stands for the opposite of this: In the game he’s playing, there will be a winner and a lot of losers. The best way to beat him in that kind of game is not to play at all.

______________________________________________

Called out by your own Liberal Media friends.
 

Jiggyfly

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And I just want to say I don't think all republicans should be painted with the same brush as Trump.

There is a large majority that have real issues with him as well.
 

townsend

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People can be upset all they want but there is an awful lot of hypocrisy I have noticed when it comes to Donald Trump. People that hate him for calling others names while in the process calling him Drumpf or some other name that they intend as derogatory. He is certainly a polarizing figure that seems to be bringing out the worst in many of his non supporters.
He's a school yard bully, and he drags everyone down to his level, watch the debates if you doubt that. High brow critiques are routinely ignored, so people lower the IQ of the conversation by sinking to his level. It's not right, but seriously fuck Trump. The guy can call people pigs and losers all day, and it doesn't hurt his momentum. Judging him by his own standards is as fair of a criticism as any.
 

Jiggyfly

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John Oliver’s ‘Donald Drumpf’ jokes play on the same ugly xenophobia Trump does
Beating Trump shouldn't mean joining him.


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By S.I. Rosenbaum March 3
S.I. Rosenbaum is a freelance journalist who has worked at Boston magazine, the Boston Phoenix and the Tampa Bay Times.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s family name hasn’t been Drumpf for centuries. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)
“Make Donald Drumpf Again,” John Oliver declared on his show Sunday night, and America — or at least, liberal America — was happy to take him up on it. By the afternoon of Super Tuesday, “Donald Drumpf” was being searched more frequently on Google than any Republican candidate’s actual name besides Trump’s. On Twitter, “Drumpf” quickly became the epithet of choice for our national political trash fire. “Drumpf is the orange [expletive’s] real name,” as one Twitizen explained it to me.

Drumpf, of course, isn’t Trump’s real name, nor has it been the real name of anyone in his family since the 1600s. But it’s fun to call a bully names, especially when that bully is on the verge of winning the GOP presidential nomination. Names have power; by renaming something, you take control of it, quarantine it in a defined box. This is some George Orwell/Sapir-Whorf stuff. The names we use to talk about a thing determine how we think about it, too.

“Drumpf” feels so satisfying to critics of the Republican front-runner partly because it sounds funny and foreign; it sounds funny BECAUSE it is foreign. Specifically, Drumpf sounds funny because it sounds German. Drumpf, to an American ear, conjures up a dough-faced Bavarian Nazi on his stumpy way to murder all the Jews in his village. (At least, that’s what I think of, as a progressive Jew who opposes Trump.) In the face of a campaign that’s drawing support from white supremacists by a candidate who promises that he would ban Muslims and build a “beautiful wall” to keep out Mexicans, it’s nice to think of Trump that way — as an interloper, a false face that conceals a creeping foreign influence. As not one of us.

But it’s not really funny if you think about it much: The “#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain” concept traffics in the very xenophobia that is Trump’s sick stock in trade. Trump has already dragged our politics down, and he threatens to do worse if he’s elected. Opposing him shouldn’t mean joining him in a contest to see who can better plumb the ugliest nativist impulses.


Warning: The video above contains adult themes and language.

We have a long history of this sort of thing in this country of immigrants — bestowing foreign-sounding names to imply that the target isn’t really an American. In the 1930s and ’40s, partisans who opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt called him Franklin D. Rosenfeld, to imply that he was an agent of The Jews. (Some white supremacists still call him that.) More recently, birthers such as Trump insisted on using Barack Obama’s real middle name, Hussein, as a dog whistle to show how truly foreign he allegedly was. Trump also pointedly asked Jon Stewart why he doesn’t use his birth name (which is Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz).


Turnabout, in this case, is not fair play. This stuff is ugly. It’s tacky. And it’s bigoted. Yes, even Germans don’t deserve to be tarred as shifty-eyed Nazi foreigners. Plenty of German Americans were so slandered during World War II; it wasn’t cricket then, and it’s not now. (That’s not to say that associating Trump with Hitler is always wrong: They’re both verifiably xenophobic, racist, fascist demagogues with terrible hair.)

And for a comic genius such as Oliver, “Drumpf” is kind of weak sauce considering the target Trump offers. There’s his business record. Or his hair. Or the way he keeps making jokes insinuating that he’d like to have sex with his daughter. If we really need to call names, you can’t do better than Spy magazine’s classic “short-fingered vulgarian,” a charge that rankled so much that Trump not only threatened to sue the magazine and beat up its editors, he actually tried to send them photographic proof that it wasn’t true — his fingers weren’t that short.


[Are Donald Trump’s fingers weirdly short? An investigation.]

Late-night laughs: Super Tuesday and the GOP debate
Play Video3:27
Comedians Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien, Larry Wilmore and others reflect on voting results after Super Tuesday and the GOP debate. (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)
To imply, though, that Trump is some secret Drumpf, that he’s not actually just Trump is to deny the truth. In reality, Trump is as American as slavery and apple pie.

He’s a domestic product. Remember when he went around calling himself “The Donald” and putting his name on everything? Is there anything more crassly American than that? He’s simultaneously the belch that lingers after the binge-consumption of the Greed Decade and the gruesome specter of the GOP’s Southern Strategy finally shambling home to roost. Trump is the worst of what we are, and he was inevitable from the moment Thomas Jefferson wrote “All men are created equal,” then knocked off for the day and went home to impregnate one of his slaves. Trump is commerce and racism all rolled up in a bilious, Cheeto-colored ball.

Oliver’s argument is that the word “Trump” has too many positive connotations in English. But in fact, “Trump” is perfect; to trump someone is to beat them in the kind of zero-sum game that Trump and his followers believe the American enterprise to be. “Not everyone believes that we can all win,” the Black Lives Matter activist and organizer DeRay McKesson tweeted, long before he declared his candidacy for mayor of Baltimore. “Some cling to this idea that someone must lose in every fight. … I’m not sure when everything became a competition. But I don’t like it. We can all win, y’all. We can all get free.”

Trump stands for the opposite of this: In the game he’s playing, there will be a winner and a lot of losers. The best way to beat him in that kind of game is not to play at all.

______________________________________________

Called out by your own Liberal Media friends.
What does any of that have to do with what I said?

It's still not equivilent to the things he has said IMO.

Since when is S.I. Rosenbaum a person who holds so much wieght?

And I just thought Drumpf was funny sounding I never equated it to any nationality.
 
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boozeman

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The real cause of Trump isn't Obama



By John McWhorter




Editor's Note: John McWhorter teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy and music history at Columbia University and is the author of "The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.


(CNN) — Is it true that what has Trump supporters so riled up is, at heart, that a black man has been running the country since 2008?

According to this idea, so much for the post-racial society Obama's election was supposed to herald. Instead, America's race discussion is more heated than it was before 2008, more whites feel they are discriminated against because they are white and at the root of this must be that such people just can't get used to the idea the President is black. They sense this as an upending of the old "order."

Smart people had a similar analysis of why the tea party emerged, and now this view is set to be a standard summation of what President Obama's impact on America's race discussion has been. In seeming support, Trump kicked off his new "political" guise by insistently questioning whether Obama was born in the United States, and now both Trump and his supporters are even given to saying Obama has been racially "divisive." Recently Trump intoned in Orlando, "We have a terrible President who happens to be African-American -- there has never been a greater division ... than what we have right now."

So obviously, Obama at the helm is central to why this modestly educated white cohort is so angry. When they say, "I want my country back," they mean a country where a black man isn't running it. But is it that obvious? Something becomes true neither because it just feels right, nor because one senses oneself as Doing the Right Thing to proclaim it.

Certainly this crowd are angry about their economic misery in a post-industrial economy, about the coddling of big banks, and even about race-related issues such as immigration. And just as certainly their sentiments often include the venting of old-fashioned Archie Bunker racism of a kind we might like to think of as in retreat. But is the particular fact that the President is black really so irritating to them that it plays a significant role in getting them out into stadiums with placards snarling into the cameras?

Something Else Happened in 2008

A prime argument for assuming so is that, of course, it was after Obama's election in 2008 that the race conversation took on a newly acrid tone. It's hardly crazy to suppose that this proves that Obama himself was the cause of what ails us. However, there is something else that happened to change radically at exactly the time Obama was elected, for reasons unconnected to him. I refer to social media.


Namely, 2008 and 2009 were when Twitter and especially Facebook became default platforms of ordinary Americans' communication. Facebook users doubled from 2007 to 2008, and then more than tripled in 2009. The figures correspond with casual memory: if you think about it, 2008 was the year it became default to assume someone was on Facebook, such that even your parents were on it and so on. Meanwhile, in 2007, there were only 400,000 tweets per quarter, but 100 million per quarter a year later, and by early 2010, 50 million tweets per day!



Those two platforms alone have revolutionized the American conversation about, well, everything. And it barely requires argument at this point that personal postings into the ether 24/7, often targeted to groups of like mind riling one another up in their respective echo chambers, has made sociopolitical talk meaner. When people can gab at one another unceasingly, a lot of the chatter is going to spring from the lesser aspects of our natures.

This means that Obama's election wasn't the only thing that happened in 2008 that could have kicked off populist, xenophobic fury. That year it also became possible to vent in wider forums beefs you once largely kept to yourself and your friends.

All accept that Twitter and Facebook have been central to forging indignity about cop killings of black people into a national movement, such that even a pop singer like Beyoncé channels the concerns of Black Lives Matter into a Super Bowl performance. The same media have focused white populist fury in the same way. In the logical sense, there is no need to think Obama was the spark.


Note that this counteranalysis questions not just the liberal but the Trumpian take on Obama. To the extent that the TeaTrumpians think of Obama as having been racially divisive, they, too, are missing the role of technology in shaping and tincturing public discussion. So, liberal writers might use such people as proof that Obama was the cause when they say that Obama has roiled up the race discussion.

You might shake your head that such commenters see a "divider" in a President who has been so timid on race that black commentators themselves dogpile on him regularly. But they are making the same mistake liberals are: assuming it was all about a person because technology is quieter, more abstract, and even less viscerally compelling. Note also: Being angry (and mistaken) that Obama is a divider is different from being angry to have seen him sworn in.

Even Trump's pushing the birther business fits under this explanation. Like many of his flock he saw an angry race conversation around him -- and it was angry indeed even before Obama was actually elected, and more so by 2009 -- and found it easier to imagine a person responsible for the changes around him than social history and technology.


A thought experiment


It could be, then, that our race discussion would be the same as it is now even if the President weren't black. Hold on -- that's not as crazy as it may sound. Let's try a thought experiment.

Imagine that a John Edwards, as in a hypothetical version of the former senator who didn't get mired in a scandal, becomes President in 2008. The same kinds of race-related things happen under his administration that have happened under Obama's. A black teenager gets killed by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman, another black teen gets shot by a police officer after an altercation through the cop car window, and new social media technology assure that the whole nation knows about these incidents and what happens in their wake, whereas just a few years before they could have remained local events barely discussed beyond where they happened. Note: Obama had nothing to do with those events happening, and so it's quite plausible the same kinds of things would have happened under Edwards.

A national social movement called Black Lives Matter emerges in response to killings like these, and makes their positions known quite loudly at various events featuring liberal and leftist speakers. Then meanwhile, writers like Michelle Alexander and Ta-Nehisi Coates write hard-charging books read by millions about law enforcement and black people. A black academic like Melissa Harris-Perry has a national talk show on a network which, at least for a spell, highlights leftist political positions.

Now: Under these circumstances, would Donald Trump have fewer supporters because the President was white?

For most readers the answer here will not seem easy. This, and only this, is why it may be that what mainly animates this racist rage is how America can talk to itself.

Of course there are whites who wish the President weren't black. But treating that as the wind beneath Trump's wings, despite its nyah-nyah appeal, is a hasty take on something perhaps less dramatic, if no less unpleasant.
 

L.T. Fan

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Why, specifically, do you support trump? I'm just curious.
I don't support Trump. I simply think the commentaries and depictions of those who do support him is completely ridiculous. They are described by some as essentially being out of their minds. That seems so pious to me.
 

Genghis Khan

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And I just want to say I don't think all republicans should be painted with the same brush as Trump.

There is a large majority that have real issues with him as well.
Thank you. I've been a conservative republican my whole adult life. I don't think I would ever vote for trump.

In fact, if trump becomes president I'm considering being done with the republican party.
 

Genghis Khan

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I don't support Trump. I simply think the commentaries and depictions of those who do support him is completely ridiculous. They are described by some as essentially being out of their minds. That seems so pious to me.
Interesting.
 

Smitty

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He's a school yard bully, and he drags everyone down to his level, watch the debates if you doubt that. High brow critiques are routinely ignored, so people lower the IQ of the conversation by sinking to his level. It's not right, but seriously fuck Trump. The guy can call people pigs and losers all day, and it doesn't hurt his momentum. Judging him by his own standards is as fair of a criticism as any.
I think this is fair but where legit (non policy) criticism of Trump ends.

Comparing him to Hitler is dumb on all levels, starting with the fact that he's always been a moderate.
 

Smitty

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Thank you. I've been a conservative republican my whole adult life. I don't think I would ever vote for trump.

In fact, if trump becomes president I'm considering being done with the republican party.
Describe your ideal candidate and important policy points for the next 8 years.
 

Kbrown

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I should say that I don't think Trump supporters themselves, aside from his white supremacist following, are inherently worse than other modern political group. As a social media society, people seem to have grown less thoughtful and more vulgar. That's why criticism both in favor of and against him has reflected that.

I also don't think he is Hitler politically. But loyalty oaths and indulging supporters' desire to punch out protestors are still mob tactics.
 

skidadl

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I think this is fair but where legit (non policy) criticism of Trump ends.

Comparing him to Hitler is dumb on all levels, starting with the fact that he's always been a moderate.
2016 moderate, yes?
 

skidadl

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Thank you. I've been a conservative republican my whole adult life. I don't think I would ever vote for trump.

In fact, if trump becomes president I'm considering being done with the republican party.
Come on, man...it feels good. Dump that trashy party.

And I'm a white, evangelical, business owner, gun supporter (honestly don't even own guns myself)...I pretty much check most of the boxes, yet I can't be fully be placed in a box. If I can leave the party so can you. :art

I honestly don't know what I am. I often call myself a recovering Republican. I suppose Libertarian fits me the best.
 

townsend

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I think this is fair but where legit (non policy) criticism of Trump ends.

Comparing him to Hitler is dumb on all levels, starting with the fact that he's always been a moderate.
I don't think any of his insanity on this trail could be described as moderate. He's been extremist and self contradictory. Now I haven't studied Hitlers political campaign enough to know how his pre election temperament compares to Trump's.

But you can't tell me his gold plated, brash, compulsively deceptive, shamelessness doesn't have the capacity of a dictator. You see how he runs his rallies, the man has a stated admiration for Putin. Could you imagine him in charge of a 3rd world country, dressed in military uniform and 2 dozen (gold) medals? I sure could.
 
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Jiggyfly

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I don't support Trump. I simply think the commentaries and depictions of those who do support him is completely ridiculous. They are described by some as essentially being out of their minds. That seems so pious to me.
But yet you would vote for him over Hillary.
 

Smitty

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I don't think any of his insanity on this trail could be described as moderate. He's been extremist and self contradictory. Now I haven't studied Hitlers political campaign enough to know how his pre election temperament compares to Trump's.
I'd say it's pretty significant.

But you can't tell me his gold plated, brash, compulsively deceptive, shamelessness doesn't have the capacity of a dictator. You see how he runs his rallies, the man has a stated admiration for Putin. Could you imagine him in charge of a 3rd world country, dressed in military uniform and 2 dozen (gold) medals? I sure could.
No, I can tell you that. It's silly.

Trump is a lot of things but he doesn't have the fortitude to be a dictator.
 

Jiggyfly

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I don't think any of his insanity on this trail could be described as moderate. He's been extremist and self contradictory. Now I haven't studied Hitlers political campaign enough to know how his pre election temperament compares to Trump's.

But you can't tell me his gold plated, brash, compulsively deceptive, shamelessness doesn't have the capacity of a dictator. You see how he runs his rallies, the man has a stated admiration for Putin. Could you imagine him in charge of a 3rd world country, dressed in military uniform and 2 dozen (gold) medals? I sure could.
 

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