Trump Thread

[Don Corleone]

From what I can tell, it seems that the United Kingdom is about to join us on the path to destruction. Bring Boris Johnson in and I all but guarantee you'll be joining us in the surreal world of WTAF... I would have thought Trump's support to be the kiss of death for his campaign, but sadly, Johnson appears poised to win out and destroy the UK to boot. Putin must be laughing his ass off.

[rory_20_uk]

Our only hope is that Johnson realises that flattering Trump is the way forward and for 2-6 years that is the way it has to be; whether this changes with the next President - that's going to be the determinant. Small powers have to play nice. And the UK is at best a middle power and if the UK is not prepared to pay protection money to be part of one cartel then one cost is a more pliable external face.

[Montmorency]

The world is endlessly funny.

At a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas, an agent told a Honduran family that one parent would be sent to Mexico while the other parent and their three children could stay in the United States, according to the family. The agent turned to the couple's youngest daughter — 3-year-old Sofia, whom they call Sofi — and asked her to make a choice.

"The agent asked her who she wanted to go with, mom or dad," her mother, Tania, told NPR through an interpreter. "And the girl, because she is more attached to me, she said mom. But when they started to take [my husband] away, the girl started to cry. The officer said, 'You said [you want to go] with mom.' "

So, the armed G-men had little Sofi... make a little choice?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sophie’s Choice is the title of a 1979 novel by William Styron, about a Polish woman in a Nazi concentration camp who is forced to decide which of her two children will live and which will die. (Meryl Streep nabbed an Oscar for her starring role in the 1982 film version.)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

From what I can tell, it seems that the United Kingdom is about to join us on the path to destruction. Bring Boris Johnson in and I all but guarantee you'll be joining us in the surreal world of WTAF... I would have thought Trump's support to be the kiss of death for his campaign, but sadly, Johnson appears poised to win out and destroy the UK to boot. Putin must be laughing his ass off.

Boris is not an existential threat - Corbyn on the other hand...

In regards to gerrymandering, we've been gerrymandered for a decade and it's Labour who are refusing the necessary re-drawing.

Not to highjack this American thread - but remember, danger comes from both Left AND Right.

[Pannonian]

Boris is not an existential threat - Corbyn on the other hand...

In regards to gerrymandering, we've been gerrymandered for a decade and it's Labour who are refusing the necessary re-drawing.

Not to highjack this American thread - but remember, danger comes from both Left AND Right.

Steve Bannon is the existential threat. Corbyn may become a threat, but his support for Brexit means he won't reach power. Bannon and his acolytes, OTOH, combines all the worst aspects of Corbyn and amplifies them. As much as I despise Corbyn, Farage and Johnson and all the rest of the Brexit bunch abuse democracy far more in pursuit of far right goals, and they are trying their hand in other countries as well. Brexit by itself is disastrous for Britain, but it's the gang who are pushing it who are the real danger. Trump and Brexit are just two arms of Bannon's far right international project.

[Montmorency]

Boris is not an existential threat - Corbyn on the other hand...

Brexit isn't an existential threat, but public ownership of railways is?

In regards to gerrymandering, we've been gerrymandered for a decade and it's Labour who are refusing the necessary re-drawing.

What has Labour done, what power has it used to do it, and what are they preventing from being done now?

From a quick search, UK politicians are not directly responsible for districting in the first place, and:

2001 paper on UK apportionment having always been biased in connection to the political geography, Tories benefiting from "cracked" districts with small majorities, and Labour from "stacked" districts with large majorities (the paper argues Labour triumphed in 1997 because factors like targeted campaigning and strategic voting broke the ceiling of safe majorities in cracked Tory districts)
More recent article on Conservative gerrymandering policies (though I would understand this as closer to voter suppression, not gerrymandering)

Sounds like UK districting committees haven't heard of the "efficiency gap", but it's not clear to me that there is actually any active political gerrymandering going on in the UK as opposed to other techniques of electoral advantage-seeking. Also, FPTP is always a wrecker. A system where this can happen:

In 1979, the Conservative
party won 43.9 per cent of the votes cast and 53.4 per cent of the seats. Four years
later, it won 42.4 per cent of the votes but 61.1 per cent of the seats. In 1987, its
shares of the votes and seats were 43.4 and 57.8 per cent respectively, and then in
1992 its vote share fell slightly, to 42.3 per cent, but its share of the seats fell more
sharply – to 51.6 per cent. Labour won in 1997, with 43.3 per cent of the votes and
63.6 per cent of the seats. Thus over five elections, whereas the leading party’s share
of the votes only ranged between 42.3 and 43.9 per cent its share of the seats varied
more, from 51.6 to 63.6 per cent. With virtually the same share of the votes at four
successive elections the Conservatives won very different shares of the seats, and then
when Labour won with the same vote percentage its share of the seats was larger than
the Conservatives ever achieved.

is real dumb.

Can you give your sources on UK gerrymandering?

Not to highjack this American thread - but remember, danger comes from both Left AND Right.

It's really the Right.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I don't know how you can walk away from the policies presented by the two sides and think that the 'left' is just as bad as the right.

[Montmorency]

I don't know how you can walk away from the policies presented by the two sides and think that the 'left' is just as bad as the right.

You know, pro-Republican media bias here has asserted itself into my awareness many times over the past couple years, but DAMN - here's Jake Tapper justifying CNN bringing on Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer to talk about Trump's 'racially-sauteed/marinated' tweets and how Trump doesn't go far enough in securing the white homeland or whatever.

[a completely inoffensive name]

You know, pro-Republican media bias here has asserted itself into my awareness many times over the past couple years, but DAMN - here's Jake Tapper justifying CNN bringing on Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer to talk about Trump's 'racially-sauteed/marinated' tweets and how Trump doesn't go far enough in securing the white homeland or whatever.

It's not pro-Republican, it's 'enlightened centrist'.

[Strike For The South]

Imagine telling someone who was born here to go back where the came from lmao. My 4d chess take on this is that Epstien represents a real and palpable threat to Trump in a way his Russian financiers do not.

Of course, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[CrossLOPER]

It's not pro-Republican, it's 'enlightened centrist'.

"I'm not a Nazi; I'm an enlightened, cultured tribalist."

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Brexit isn't an existential threat, but public ownership of railways is?



What has Labour done, what power has it used to do it, and what are they preventing from being done now?

From a quick search, UK politicians are not directly responsible for districting in the first place, and:

2001 paper on UK apportionment having always been biased in connection to the political geography, Tories benefiting from "cracked" districts with small majorities, and Labour from "stacked" districts with large majorities (the paper argues Labour triumphed in 1997 because factors like targeted campaigning and strategic voting broke the ceiling of safe majorities in cracked Tory districts)
More recent article on Conservative gerrymandering policies (though I would understand this as closer to voter suppression, not gerrymandering)

Sounds like UK districting committees haven't heard of the "efficiency gap", but it's not clear to me that there is actually any active political gerrymandering going on in the UK as opposed to other techniques of electoral advantage-seeking. Also, FPTP is always a wrecker. A system where this can happen:



is real dumb.

Can you give your sources on UK gerrymandering?



It's really the Right.

I don't know how you can walk away from the policies presented by the two sides and think that the 'left' is just as bad as the right.

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

[Tuuvi]

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

Are they really antisemitic though or did they just have the audacity to criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?

[Pannonian]

Are they really antisemitic though or did they just have the audacity to criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?

Watch the first episode of West Wing. Right at the end you see Toby get riled when a right wing fundie references something that he recognises as a Jewish trope. The current Labour party are far further along that road than what that right winger says. And, this is important, the party institutionally reinforces this. Supposedly independent bodies that are supposed to deal impartially with these things are beholden to the political wing, and there is evidence of the political wing interfering in these processes.

[Pannonian]

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

And if you want to see what dangers the Right present, see the Bannon-directed Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK. Trump, Brexit, Corbyn: all present the same antithesis to moderate politics that used to be the accepted norm. All of them see rules not as guidelines for what they should do and how they should conduct themselves, but as legal boundaries where they see if they will be materially punished for what they want to do. I'd also recommend reading on how classical tyrannies came about.

[Montmorency]

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

If one were to accept the wildest accusations against the Corbynite leadership of the Labour Party with regard to anti-Semtisim, the "existential threat" would still not appear to be within the same order of magnitude as that posed by Brexit alone.

[Pannonian]

If one were to accept the wildest accusations against the Corbynite leadership of the Labour Party with regard to anti-Semtisim, the "existential threat" would still not appear to be within the same order of magnitude as that posed by Brexit alone.

The worst aspects of Corbynism are shared with the standard modus operandi of Brexit.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

If one were to accept the wildest accusations against the Corbynite leadership of the Labour Party with regard to anti-Semtisim, the "existential threat" would still not appear to be within the same order of magnitude as that posed by Brexit alone.

I'm sorry, no. Brexit itself is a political inevitability - at some point the UK was going to leave the EU when certain members opted for a real political union. We could have left earlier to later, but it was going to happen. Brexit will (note I say will) damage the UK economy, how much remains to be seen. Brexit will also likely hasten the inevitable breakup of the United Kingdom which began a century ago with Southern Ireland.

None of these things represent an existential threat to our democracy. A Party which entrenches Antisemitism and conflates it with what has become known as "banker bashing" whilst lending tacit support to domestic and foreign terrorists with a leader who is convinced of his own moral goodness... That is a greater threat.

Coybyn reminds me of the Ayatollah of Iran when he lived in exile. Everyone said how piously, how simply, he lived and that therefore he would make a better ruler than the Shah. Likewise, Corbyn has one of the smallest expenses claims of any MP - yet he makes undeclared trips to countries ruled by dictators in order to meet with groups actively supporting terrorism.

The man said that "Zionists" "don't understand English irony" "despite probably having lived her all their lives" (emphasis added)! Before that he wrote a new forward to Imperialism: A Study in which he described the book as "basically right". Well, that book is quite literally part of the academic milieu used to justify the Holocaust.

So, you know what, he's a darn sight more dangerous than Boris - even if Boris has flirted with Bannonism (something he now vehemently denies).

My take on that, btw, is that Boris met Bannon as a political operator when Boris was sort of "in the wilderness" (i.e. not about to become PM) and this is now something he regrets. That speaks to Boris' poor judgement but not, I think, to his actual beliefs. Farage is a different matter, whilst I would describe his as "far right" he's about as close as you can get without actually tripping over into that definition.