The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition

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**ScootyPuffJunior**

Tannhauser42 wrote:
reds8n wrote:

... one assumes that the "idea" has not been well received overall then ?

I would hope so, but the truly frightening thing is, when I heard the audio clips of Trump's statements this morning on the radio news, I could hear the applause and cheers from those attending the event. That Americans, in significant numbers, would support this is disturbing.

Well, if watching The Man in the High Castle has taught me anything, it's that Americans are more willing to latch on to fascism that most people believe.

**Frazzled**

I think this says a lot about the underpinnings of Trump's popularity.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/12/07/obamas-terror-speech-perfectly-highlights-reasons-for-trumps-rise/

Obama’s terror speech perfectly highlights reasons for Trump’s rise
By Bill Schneider
December 7, 2015

Tags: Barack Obama | class warfare | counterterrorism | donald trump
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about counter-terrorism and the United States fight against Islamic State during an address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, December 6, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTX1XH8S

President Barack Obama speaks about counter-terrorism and the United States fight against Islamic State during an address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, December 6, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Here’s President Barack Obama on the war against Islamic State: “Our success won’t depend on tough talk or abandoning or values or giving into fear. . . . We will prevail by being strong and smart.”

Here’s Donald Trump: “Every time things get worse, I do better. Because people have confidence in me.” He promised, “We’re going to be so tough and so mean and so nasty.”

What we’re seeing right now in American politics is class warfare. But not the kind of class warfare Bernie Sanders would understand. It’s not the working class versus the 1 percent. It’s the working class versus the educated elite. In fact, one of the richest men in the world is leading the revolt: Trump.

Trump’s support for the Republican nomination is not defined by ideology or age or gender. It’s defined by education. Among GOP voters with a college degree in the latest CNN poll, Trump comes in fourth with just 18 percent. But he has a huge lead among non-college voters — 46 percent. No other candidate comes close.

Today, in the United States, the richer you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. The better educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic. We saw it in the last presidential race. It was Mitt Romney, the prince of wealth, versus Obama, the prince of education.

Romney lost because of his elitist economic values. He was Mr. 1 Percent, disdainful of the “47 percent” who, he argued, are dependent on government. Trump, on the other hand, is rallying white working class voters. Not around their economic interests. Around their values.

Trump is the anti-Obama. He was the first Republican candidate to challenge Obama on the “birther” issue. To Trump supporters, Obama is the ultimate educated snob — the candidate who, in 2012, was disdainful of hard-pressed small-town voters who “cling to guns and religion . . . or anti-immigrant sentiment.”

Obama insists on facts. “We need to know all the facts,” he said immediately after the San Bernadino killings. Trump doesn’t deal in facts. The New York Times just completed a comprehensive analysis of every public statement by Trump over the past week. The conclusion? “Mr. Trump uses rhetoric to erode people’s trust in facts, numbers, nuance, government and the news media.” He still claims he saw “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering and celebrating after the 9/11 attacks, even though there is no factual basis for the claim.

Trump does not hide his contempt for Obama. “There is something going on with him that we don’t know about,” Trump said at a recent campaign rally. He doesn’t think Obama’s smart: “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Unlike himself: “When you’re really, really smart like I am . . . ” Trump said. Trump spent his first two college years at Fordham University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School. The two men exhibit two different kinds of intelligence — book smarts versus money smarts. Guess which one Americans admire more.

Obama is thoughtful, knowledgeable and progressive: the professor-in-chief. He’s always had trouble connecting with white working-class voters. He lost them to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Given the anger and fear that has seized the country, a lot of voters are looking for an altogether different kind of leader than Obama. “The nation needs a wartime president,” Senator Ted Cruz said. Someone who can be trusted to keep them safe. Trump pledges to keep out immigrants who might be recruited to the terrorist cause. Obama calls for gun control. “As if somehow terrorists care about what our gun laws are,” presidential aspirant Senator Marco Rubio said.

Resentment of education has always been stronger than resentment of wealth in the United States. Especially since the educated elite has come to embrace liberal cultural values — values that conservatives denounce as “political correctness.”

No one is less politically correct than Trump. He claimed that some people failed to report suspicions about the California killers because of concerns about racial profiling. “We have become so politically correct that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing,” Trump said.

Trump’s appeal to Republicans isn’t based on conservative ideology. It’s because many Republicans share his hatred of Obama. Republicans are rallying to Trump’s cause and may even nominate him. But white working class voters are a shrinking part of the electorate. Most Americans will be uneasy at the prospect of electing a hater to be their president. In fact, a new NBC News-Telemundo poll shows Hillary Clinton beating him by 12 points.

**agnosto**

Frazzled wrote:

agnosto wrote:
Not to mention the country wasn't founded on your right own a gun, which is why that took an amendment. It's not in the declaration of independence, the articles of federation, or in the original constitution. It's fairer to say the nation was founded on the right of rich people to object to being taxed without being able to buy votes...

Actually it was. Without said guns, the rightful owners would still be owning it. If only the Iroquois had proper immigration control...

Smallpox killed more Native Americans than guns did in those early years; when someone offers you a free blanket, you say "no". The sad, historical, truth is that the scattered tribes around the eastern seaboard weren't properly prepared for the duplicitous nature of the colonial "settlers"; had they been organized, no amount of period guns could have saved the white people who decided this land would be theirs. Bows and hatchets were much more efficient killing tools and more suitable to the terrain than muskets. I took about 15 seconds for a trained person not being shot with arrows or stabbed to death to load a musket during the revolutionary war. The revolutionaries also would have lost the war if not for picking up some of the strategies that that the tribes implemented in their warfare (i.e. guerrilla tactics). If confederacies of tribes had formulated earlier in a concerted push to oust the settlers, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Frazzled wrote:
Careful, your main candidate is getting a run for her money from a beaten down socialist. If the Trump Train comes at her, it might go through her like Bill through a closet of interns...

Agreed. This election season is going to be one where we're faced with picking the lesser of evils and hoping that the country survives the following 4 years.

**reds8n**

.... people have been saying the Republicans are stupid for years though right ?

**LordofHats**

I'm just saying. The Native Americans kicked the Viking's buts so hard they ended up remembered as Demons in Nordic folklore

Also, please not that small pox blankets myth. That was debunked so long ago

**djones520**

I didn't see anyone say small pox blankets. It is a fact though that Small Pox wiped out about 90% of the Native American population in New England before the first real settlement was established

Automatically Appended Next Post:

agnosto wrote:
Frazzled wrote:

agnosto wrote:
Not to mention the country wasn't founded on your right own a gun, which is why that took an amendment. It's not in the declaration of independence, the articles of federation, or in the original constitution. It's fairer to say the nation was founded on the right of rich people to object to being taxed without being able to buy votes...

Actually it was. Without said guns, the rightful owners would still be owning it. If only the Iroquois had proper immigration control...

Smallpox killed more Native Americans than guns did in those early years; when someone offers you a free blanket, you say "no". The sad, historical, truth is that the scattered tribes around the eastern seaboard weren't properly prepared for the duplicitous nature of the colonial "settlers"; had they been organized, no amount of period guns could have saved the white people who decided this land would be theirs. Bows and hatchets were much more efficient killing tools and more suitable to the terrain than muskets. I took about 15 seconds for a trained person not being shot with arrows or stabbed to death to load a musket during the revolutionary war. The revolutionaries also would have lost the war if not for picking up some of the strategies that that the tribes implemented in their warfare (i.e. guerrilla tactics). If confederacies of tribes had formulated earlier in a concerted push to oust the settlers, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Don't act like the natives weren't duplicitous in their actions either. The relations between Native Americans and Colonials were insanely complex, and just saying "white guys screwed not white guys" is a ridiculous simplification of matters that does an injustice to true history.

**Co'tor Shas**

Yeah, they took advantage of the white-guy to distraction to get an edge over their own internal conflicts. I'd really recommend Mayflower, as it has quite a bit about that.

**LordofHats**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
Yeah, they took advantage of the white-guy to distraction to get an edge over their own internal conflicts. I'd really recommend Mayflower, as it has quite a bit about that.

What? The Iroquois nation would never be so dishonest!

**Frazzled**

LordofHats wrote:
I'm just saying. The Native Americans kicked the Viking's buts so hard they ended up remembered as Demons in Nordic folklore

Also, please not that small pox blankets myth. That was debunked so long ago

Blankets not needed, diseases spread via normal means hammered native populations.

However bows were fast but relatively short range. Kentucky rifles were prized on the frontier. It wasn't until horses were married to good bowmen that we reproduced the Mongols in the US.

**CptJake**

djones520 wrote:
I didn't see anyone say small pox blankets. It is a fact though that Small Pox wiped out about 90% of the Native American population in New England before the first real settlement was established

agnosto wrote:

Smallpox killed more Native Americans than guns did in those early years; when someone offers you a free blanket, you say "no".

.

Someone sure did imply smallpox blankets.

**d-usa**

If you think about it, Trump's rise mirrors the rise of the various nationalist and radical right parties in the different European countries.

**djones520**

Ahh, I missed that part. Still though, Small Pox, amongst other diseases endemic to Europeans were just devastating to the native populations. Innocent circumstances that no one at the time could have foreseen have more to do with the "fall" of the Native American powers in the America's then any overt hostile action that was taken.

**LordofHats**

Frazzled wrote:
Blankets not needed, diseases spread via normal means hammered native populations.

I don't disagree with that, though I will say I often find the population guesstimating to be a pointless endeavor. There's insufficient information to determine how many people really lived on the NA continent prior to the Colonial era. Numbers get tossed around plenty, but they're almost always empty, based more in opinion revolving around maximizing.minimizing the demonization those mean Europeans for not having discovered germs yet. Not to mention the issue of disease is often misstated. The more prosperous civilizations in North America (Aztecs, Inca, Mississippi Rive People for example), all collapsed within years of Columbian contact. They have developed roads and trade networks that facilitated a rapid spread of disease. More isolated groups with less advanced cultures endured; The Maya, because they were actually still around, became a thorn in the side of Spain's colonial interests for nearly a century, precisely because they were dispersed and lacked at the time developed networks (insulating them from the rapid spread of disease).

Many of the native groups later encountered by Colonial settlers survived for the precise reason they were not as far along the civilization curve as the native groups who were wiped out over the course of a few years. Many of them were nomadic prior to colonization or semi-Nomadic.

Not to mention Europeans themselves ended up on the receiving end of this same trend in some parts of Central America and the Caribbean (Several Spanish and French colonies had to be completely replaced every decade or so, because Malaria wiped everyone out).

**agnosto**

CptJake wrote:
djones520 wrote:
I didn't see anyone say small pox blankets. It is a fact though that Small Pox wiped out about 90% of the Native American population in New England before the first real settlement was established

agnosto wrote:

Smallpox killed more Native Americans than guns did in those early years; when someone offers you a free blanket, you say "no".

.

Someone sure did imply smallpox blankets.

While the historic accuracy of the blankets is questioned by some historians and pundits, some of whom I would argue have ulterior motives to whitewash history, surviving communication from military commanders mentioned "inoculating" the native population through the use of pox-ridden blankets from Ft. Pitt during the French and Indian War . Also, the Trent Diary discusses the use of smallpox blankets to thin the native populations.

The fact stands, however the disease was transmitted, that the pox killed more native americans than guns ever did.

**LordofHats**

agnosto wrote:

While the historic accuracy of the blankets is questioned by some historians and pundits, some of whom I would argue have ulterior motives to whitewash history, surviving communication from military commanders mentioned "inoculating" the native population through the use of pox-ridden blankets from Ft. Pitt during the French and Indian War . Also, the Trent Diary discusses the use of smallpox blankets to thin the native populations.

The man who suggested it was prompty brow beaten by his commanding officer for suggesting something obscene and later removed from his command just for suggesting the idea

**Frazzled**

d-usa wrote:
If you think about it, Trump's rise mirrors the rise of the various nationalist and radical right parties in the different European countries.

Its almost like the world has been in the midst of a decade long recession, and people are turning to new leadership to get them out of the mess. Does this new leadership have an affinity for brown and cool marches?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

djones520 wrote:
Ahh, I missed that part. Still though, Small Pox, amongst other diseases endemic to Europeans were just devastating to the native populations. Innocent circumstances that no one at the time could have foreseen have more to do with the "fall" of the Native American powers in the America's then any overt hostile action that was taken.

Indeed. It would have been the same if the Chinese, Indians, or Ottomans had landed instead.

**whembly**

Peregrine wrote:
whembly wrote:
Eh... I feel Rubio is a great candidate.

He can't even out-poll Trump, a raving lunatic who has no hope of winning the election. You might like him but he's an incredibly weak candidate.

Hermain Cain was leading the poll at this point in '12.

Polls are useful now (ie, anyone polling <5% ought to think about dropping out)... but, I think it's a mistake to put too much weight on these polls at the moment.

**Ensis Ferrae**

agnosto wrote:

While the historic accuracy of the blankets is questioned by some historians and pundits, some of whom I would argue have ulterior motives to whitewash history, surviving communication from military commanders mentioned "inoculating" the native population through the use of pox-ridden blankets from Ft. Pitt during the French and Indian War . Also, the Trent Diary discusses the use of smallpox blankets to thin the native populations.

The fact stands, however the disease was transmitted, that the pox killed more native americans than guns ever did.

IIRC, there's been some debate as to whether Columbus did this as well.... Though I once had a (terrible) history teacher attempt to defend the Europeans saying flat out that "they didn't know" the blankets were small pox ridden

Also, the groups that Columbus met somehow or another

exposed Europeans to things like Syphillis which apparently had never been encountered before.

**LordofHats**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Also, the groups that Columbus met somehow or another exposed Europeans to things like Syphillis which apparently had never been encountered before.

There's a European Ghost somewhere who is extremely embarrassed about that matter

**djones520**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
agnosto wrote:

While the historic accuracy of the blankets is questioned by some historians and pundits, some of whom I would argue have ulterior motives to whitewash history, surviving communication from military commanders mentioned "inoculating" the native population through the use of pox-ridden blankets from Ft. Pitt during the French and Indian War . Also, the Trent Diary discusses the use of smallpox blankets to thin the native populations.

The fact stands, however the disease was transmitted, that the pox killed more native americans than guns ever did.

IIRC, there's been some debate as to whether Columbus did this as well.... Though I once had a (terrible) history teacher attempt to defend the Europeans saying flat out that "they didn't know" the blankets were small pox ridden

Also, the groups that Columbus met somehow or another exposed Europeans to things like Syphillis which apparently had never been encountered before.

Yeah, the disease street was two way. Much to Henry VIII's lament.

**Ensis Ferrae**

LordofHats wrote:
Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Also, the groups that Columbus met somehow or another exposed Europeans to things like Syphillis which apparently had never been encountered before.

There's a European Ghost somewhere who is extremely embarrassed about that matter

Certainly not the remaining nobility just prior to the French Revolution

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

I've always said that the worst thing that America ever did was win the revolution.

You guys would have gotten your freedom eventually, but most IMPORTANTLY:

You would have been a bigger version of Canada

Too bad you killed that dream, because I know that most Americans on this site would love to be Canadian

**djones520**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I've always said that the worst thing that America ever did was win the revolution.

You guys would have gotten your freedom eventually, but most IMPORTANTLY:

You would have been a bigger version of Canada

Too bad you killed that dream, because I know that most Americans on this site would love to be Canadian

Right... they can't even win a Stanley Cup. Why would I want to be that?

**Spetulhu**

One part of Trump's raving that got a few lines over here was his assertion (based on some poll or the other) that as many as 25% of American muslims might find it acceptable to use violence against other Americans. Ofc, no info on how the question was phrased or anything.

But it's a pretty odd thing to mention - how many Americans are absolutely AGAINST sometimes using violence vs their countrymen?

**LordofHats**

Spetulhu wrote:
But it's a pretty odd thing to mention - how many Americans are absolutely AGAINST sometimes using violence vs their countrymen?

Not as many as I'd prefer

**Frazzled**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I've always said that the worst thing that America ever did was win the revolution.

You guys would have gotten your freedom eventually, but most IMPORTANTLY:

You would have been a bigger version of Canada

Too bad you killed that dream, because I know that most Americans on this site would love to be Canadian

Thats so wrong its not funny. You would now all be Texan, or at worst Mexican, after we kicked your milquetoast butts from here to Gloster, just because we're bored.

Destino manifiesto Mexicana!

**hotsauceman1**

Im paraphrasing what someone told me, and its pretty chilling.
Pretty much that hitler didnt campaign on killing jewish, but on nationalism and "Germany for germany" and how it doesnt start out as hatred for others, but love for the country, that overzealish nationalism is what lead to the rise of hitler, not overt hatred.
Not the complete story obviously, but not that different from Trump huh?

**Grey Templar**

Except Hitler's desire to exterminate the Jews was never a secret. I don't recall Trump writing a book about how the Muslims are to blame for all problems and should be exterminated. He's just an idiot who spouts whatever comes immediately to mind.

**hotsauceman1**

Wasnt tht book after his rise to power though?
Its been awhile sense I read up on WWII history and The history channel only shows pawnstars, so im out of the loop on WWII history.

**Grey Templar**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Wasnt tht book after his rise to power though?
Its been awhile sense I read up on WWII history and The history channel only shows pawnstars, so im out of the loop on WWII history.

No. Volume 1 was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926, and he wrote it while in prison. Almost 10 years before he was elected. The book had shocking popularity as well. Which makes some of the shock post-WW2 at the atrocities he committed a little baffling. He was not hiding his desire for genocide, it was people willfully ignoring the warning signs.