Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Not if that person is the victim.

Quick point, I recall the US government was using this type of logic (Gil's) to deport asylum claimants who attested to fleeing because of such persecution as being enslaved by gangs and watching family members be executed by gang members - because this made the asylum claimants accomplices.

[Gilrandir]

Blablabla, if all the time spent bickering over assumptions had been spent on a proper investigation...

You mean, instead of bickering here WE (I and Montmorency and Rory and others) should form an investigating body, assume some legal status and start our investigation? You might as well offer Pannonian to start his own negotiations with the EU as for Brexit.

And, if you have failed to observe, these boards are all about bickering.

Not if that person is the victim.

I don't believe that ONLY victims knew about the alleged crime and have kept silent for forty years. The witnesses' possible testimony needed as evidence would incriminate them right away. And you will need witnesses in that case, won't you?

[Husar]

You mean, instead of bickering here WE (I and Montmorency and Rory and others) should form an investigating body, assume some legal status and start our investigation? You might as well offer Pannonian to start his own negotiations with the EU as for Brexit.

And, if you have failed to observe, these boards are all about bickering.

Since you appear to know that starting your own investigation is a bit far-fetched, you might have failed to observe that that can't have been my point.
I don't even read your long posts about the woman anymore because I don't care what some manly man dude in medieval Ukraine thinks about her trustworthiness.

[Gilrandir]

I don't even read your long posts about the woman anymore because I don't care what some manly man dude in medieval Ukraine thinks about her trustworthiness.

Now I really see that you don't read my posts. It wasn't her trustworthiness that I questioned.

[Strike For The South]

Elizabeth Warren would have been better off ignoring Trump. This may have single handedly torpedoed her 2020 chances.

So there are many Native nations and varying rules regarding who is or can be a part of them. Some require a blood relative, some require a direct link to a person (think the Dawes roles), others may require something else. No matter what the requirement the core issue at stake is the Tribes sovereignty against the United States government.

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population but the way she uses said ancestry perpetuates a kind of "Native as an aesthetic" that is harmful. In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion.

Warren is essentially trying to force in inclusion where many people want to retain their own exclusion. She has no ties to the Cherokee nation (beyond her "high cheekbones" and "Pow Wow Chow"). The Chrokee nation has asked her to stop claiming them. She has essientaly backtracked and said "Well it's in my blood, I'm not a member of the nation". She fails to realize her blood has nothing to do with it.

It is a breathtaking ignorance. A lot of white families in Oklahoma have some type of Native ancestor story (Delorias book talks about this too). For years she has used this family myth as cudgel against wider white society, while ignoring what Native peoples were actually saying. She isn't Cherokee not because she is "white", She isn't Cherokee because she has no ties to them as a people. (As an aside this is why the reclamation of Native children through adoption is a major issue, but thats another topic.)

It is why the resisters are screaming about elections while Native people are screaming about erasure. Native nations get to decide who is a part of them. Being a Native is not an accessory. Being Native is not about blood. It is insulting to Native peoples to reduce their culture to a small part of a white womans aesthetic

Also if anyone gets a chance, please read that book. It is not an understatement to say that it changed the way I think. Easily one of the top 5 books I have ever read.

[Strike For The South]

as an addendum, this in no way exonerates Trump. He was being racist. There really isn't much to say there, par for the course.

[Csargo]

Elizabeth Warren would have been better off ignoring Trump. This may have single handedly torpedoed her 2020 chances.

So there are many Native nations and varying rules regarding who is or can be a part of them. Some require a blood relative, some require a direct link to a person (think the Dawes roles), others may require something else. No matter what the requirement the core issue at stake is the Tribes sovereignty against the United States government.

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population but the way she uses said ancestry perpetuates a kind of "Native as an aesthetic" that is harmful. In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion.

Warren is essentially trying to force in inclusion where many people want to retain their own exclusion. She has no ties to the Cherokee nation (beyond her "high cheekbones" and "Pow Wow Chow"). The Chrokee nation has asked her to stop claiming them. She has essientaly backtracked and said "Well it's in my blood, I'm not a member of the nation". She fails to realize her blood has nothing to do with it.

It is a breathtaking ignorance. A lot of white families in Oklahoma have some type of Native ancestor story (Delorias book talks about this too). For years she has used this family myth as cudgel against wider white society, while ignoring what Native peoples were actually saying. She isn't Cherokee not because she is "white", She isn't Cherokee because she has no ties to them as a people. (As an aside this is why the reclamation of Native children through adoption is a major issue, but thats another topic.)

It is why the resisters are screaming about elections while Native people are screaming about erasure. Native nations get to decide who is a part of them. Being a Native is not an accessory. Being Native is not about blood. It is insulting to Native peoples to reduce their culture to a small part of a white womans aesthetic

Also if anyone gets a chance, please read that book. It is not an understatement to say that it changed the way I think. Easily one of the top 5 books I have ever read.

I'm not sure when people will learn not to get dragged down in these frivolous debates with Trump.

It's a cultural thing vs genetic thing, no? She genetically has an ancestor 100-200 years?(6-10 generations I'm not sure what the equivalent would be) ago that was a Native American. Culturally, she's a middle class woman from Oklahoma City with no affiliation to any tribe. This is a pretty common American thing to do, or at least I've experienced it with a lot of people, saying I'm part x-nationality on x-parent's side, etc. Could you expand on this: " In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion. "

Is is stripping Native American culture to force them to conform to American society, or was it American society assimilating Native culture? I'd like to understand the argument here if you could expand further on it. Where does the line get drawn then in regards to this? Is it at if you're not a part of a tribe then you have no claim to being Native American?

[rory_20_uk]

There is a massive misconception what these genetic tests do.

They do NOT show what ethnicity you have in the past. They show what percentage similarity you have to their database of what genes certain ethnicities have. And in some cases their database is very small.

So merely having a small percentage that corresponds to an ethnicity in fact means close to nothing.

[Csargo]

There is a massive misconception what these genetic tests do.

They do NOT show what ethnicity you have in the past. They show what percentage similarity you have to their database of what genes certain ethnicities have. And in some cases their database is very small.

So merely having a small percentage that corresponds to an ethnicity in fact means close to nothing.

So they're effectively worthless in this scenario?

[Montmorency]

Elizabeth Warren would have been better off ignoring Trump. This may have single handedly torpedoed her 2020 chances.

So there are many Native nations and varying rules regarding who is or can be a part of them. Some require a blood relative, some require a direct link to a person (think the Dawes roles), others may require something else. No matter what the requirement the core issue at stake is the Tribes sovereignty against the United States government.

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population but the way she uses said ancestry perpetuates a kind of "Native as an aesthetic" that is harmful. In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion.

Warren is essentially trying to force in inclusion where many people want to retain their own exclusion. She has no ties to the Cherokee nation (beyond her "high cheekbones" and "Pow Wow Chow"). The Chrokee nation has asked her to stop claiming them. She has essientaly backtracked and said "Well it's in my blood, I'm not a member of the nation". She fails to realize her blood has nothing to do with it.

It is a breathtaking ignorance. A lot of white families in Oklahoma have some type of Native ancestor story (Delorias book talks about this too). For years she has used this family myth as cudgel against wider white society, while ignoring what Native peoples were actually saying. She isn't Cherokee not because she is "white", She isn't Cherokee because she has no ties to them as a people. (As an aside this is why the reclamation of Native children through adoption is a major issue, but thats another topic.)

It is why the resisters are screaming about elections while Native people are screaming about erasure. Native nations get to decide who is a part of them. Being a Native is not an accessory. Being Native is not about blood. It is insulting to Native peoples to reduce their culture to a small part of a white womans aesthetic

Also if anyone gets a chance, please read that book. It is not an understatement to say that it changed the way I think. Easily one of the top 5 books I have ever read.

Well, it's the technocratic aspect of the party as well.

She "technically" has ancestry that refutes Trump's attacks on her (separate from the question of ethnicity), but that wasn't what Trump was guffawing about in the first place. So it's like fact-checking the bully punching you, "False, I am actually not hitting myself!"

(Separately, I'm not sure how much I value the right of tribes to enforce racial rules. Ethnostates everywhere probably have to be dismantled.)

[Strike For The South]

Is is stripping Native American culture to force them to conform to American society, or was it American society assimilating Native culture? I'd like to understand the argument here if you could expand further on it. Where does the line get drawn then in regards to this? Is it at if you're not a part of a tribe then you have no claim to being Native American?

American society does not so much assimilate Native culture as it abuses it to its own ends. If you are not part of a tribe, you really are not a native, at least in the way Warren positioned herself. Her using a DNA test to prove her "Nativeness" is wrong (as the Cherokee point out). It is erasure of people. Your blood does not necessarily have anything to do with how Native you are.

Elizabeth Warren is a white woman who has lived as white woman, pulling the Native card when it suited her. She has absolutely no connection or lived experience with any Native culture. Her Nativeness is the same "Indian Princess" trope White Americans have been pulling since 1493. It is very insensitive the way this story is being packaged.

Native nations are better to be thought of as somewhere between a state and a country. The sovrigenty of these nations is very important. A blurring of these lines allows for the encroachment of the US and that, historically has not been a good thing. A clear line and identity between the two allows for the nations to more readily bring up the issues that are important tot them. If any white American with Native ancestry (pretty much all of them) could claim to be a Native, it would very much muddle that and drown their voices out.

She "technically" has ancestry that refutes Trump's attacks on her (separate from the question of ethnicity), but that wasn't what Trump was guffawing about in the first place. So it's like fact-checking the bully punching you, "False, I am actually not hitting myself!"

Trumps attack is same kind of racial crap he has doubled down on. Warren is being insensitive though. She literally doesn't hear the voices she claims to be a part of. This is her trying to get out in front of attack ads in 2020. To many Natives this is a lot more than politics. That is what rubs me the wrong way

(Separately, I'm not sure how much I value the right of tribes to enforce racial rules. Ethnostates everywhere probably have to be dismantled.)

I wouldn't call them Ethno-states. The current Cherokee chief has very little "Cherokee" blood. Each Tribe has its own set of rules and frankly I am ignorant on a lot of the finer points of it. I do know I have seen Native people of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

[Montmorency]

I wouldn't call them Ethno-states. The current Cherokee chief has very little "Cherokee" blood. Each Tribe has its own set of rules and frankly I am ignorant on a lot of the finer points of it. I do know I have seen Native people of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Native issues represent a significant gap in my knowledge, but I'm aware of many tribal membership and registration standards being racially or "blood"-based still, and this leading to political problems on reservations with disenrollment (stripping tribal members of status).

[Montmorency]

Oh, and btw here's an expert on the genetic aspect of Warren's claim and the backlash to it: virtually all African and European-Americans have zero Amerindian ancestry, like 95% and 98% of the population, respectively. Almost all Latinx have some. It is wrong to say that the average white American has a similar degree of Amerindian ancestry as Warren.


I bring it up because @Strike said

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population

[Husar]

Latinx

In case you're gendering around, it's "Latinxs", but might as well call them Lynxes then.

[a completely inoffensive name]

No one would have voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primaries anyway. Predictit has Bernie and Kamala as the front runners.

[Shaka_Khan]

[Husar]

Well, they're mostly right, but when they say the press shouldn't spread rumors, perhaps they themselves shouldn't spread the one that "maybe Kushner gave them the 'go ahead'?!".

[Strike For The South]

Oh, and btw here's an expert on the genetic aspect of Warren's claim and the backlash to it: virtually all African and European-Americans have zero Amerindian ancestry, like 95% and 98% of the population, respectively. Almost all Latinx have some. It is wrong to say that the average white American has a similar degree of Amerindian ancestry as Warren.


I bring it up because @Strike said

Getting caught up in percentages is part of the problem. There is many a white person in Oklahoma who claims to have Native ancestry.

Elizabeth Warren is a white woman, who looks like a white woman, who has lived life as a white woman, who society sees as a white woman. She has no connection to Natives peoples beyond her (very white) story about a distant Native relative. For her to claim she is Native is erasure of actual Native peoples. Americans using "Nativeness" as an aesthetic is a huge deal and that is exactly what happened here.

It is simply a bad look and really tone deaf on her part.

[Hooahguy]

No one would have voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primaries anyway. Predictit has Bernie and Kamala as the front runners.

Isnt Biden in there somewhere?

Either way, Warren was dumb to do the ancestry test. Pretty much for the reasons Strike mentioned. I personally think this kinda killed her potential nomination. I would be glad if she doesnt run honestly. The Dems need younger people to run, if Bernie runs it just shows he is in there for the self promotion. Just look at his recent tour around the country. Lots of talking about himself even when in support of other candidates. Hell I would take Biden over Bernie.

[Montmorency]

Getting caught up in percentages is part of the problem. There is many a white person in Oklahoma who claims to have Native ancestry.

Elizabeth Warren is a white woman, who looks like a white woman, who has lived life as a white woman, who society sees as a white woman. She has no connection to Natives peoples beyond her (very white) story about a distant Native relative. For her to claim she is Native is erasure of actual Native peoples. Americans using "Nativeness" as an aesthetic is a huge deal and that is exactly what happened here.

It is simply a bad look and really tone deaf on her part.

I heard you the first time. I'm just being pedantic.

I bring it up because Strike said

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population

@Beskar, I accidentally deleted the post content that Strike is quoting when I was pulling it for my response. Could you please restore it? Thanks.

[Beskar]

Monty, below the post it says "last edited by", you can see the previous version through that, then copy and paste it in a new edit. Just did it now, but letting you know for future reference!

[Montmorency]

Political violence is unavoidable because an increasing number of Americans (on the right) hanker for its catharsis.



To be honest, maybe it would be for the best if some D elites were victimized first. More so than if regular folk get it, the political class might be activated out of self-interest.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Violence is always avoidable. The political violence isn't only because these mentally compromised people are having their fears and destructive thoughts escalated and amplified by an accommodating conservative media bubble.

[Montmorency]

Violence is always avoidable. The political violence isn't only because these mentally compromised people are having their fears and destructive thoughts escalated and amplified by an accommodating conservative media bubble.

There's something important I failed to include above: political violence is never really spontaneous. It is almost always fomented from above. (Every genocide, indeed, is organized. Even one-off pogroms against Jews and Negroes were organized from above.) Donald Trump benefits from political violence, indeed may not be able to survive without recourse to it, and has consciously agitated for violent retribution by his base against his enemies since the beginning. He does it more nakedly and shrilly as time passes. More importantly, Republican politicians and media icons around the country and on both state and federal levels have adopted and amplified this rhetoric.

One reason that extremist terrorist groups in post-war Europe or pre-war United States achieved no significant or lasting results, despite being unimaginably prolific by today's standards, was the unity of the political mainstream against them. And the European groups killed a lot of people during the Cold War, including major politicians and American figures. Today, apocalyptic confrontation is half the mainstream.

Things can only get much worse, and they will, unless you imagine a divine intervention to soften Pharaoh's heart. Time and pressure continue to grind away the layers of impossible > unthinkable > unfeasible > improbable > normal.

Have I mentioned that the only oath in all the depth of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family strong enough to capture the Trump phenomenon is nithing?

[Strike For The South]

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

[Beskar]

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

and the President suggested the democrats did it as a false-flag in a tweet..

Because someone who has their van decorated like this is clearly of a rational mind.

[Montmorency]

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

The escalation of agents of violence moves inward from the fringe of the, uh, mentally-defective and deranged toward the sane who are ideologically and physically committed to violence.

The next step down was illustrated already today by the Neo-Nazi terrorist who lethally shot up a synagogue because Trump was not sufficiently nationalist and was not moving to exterminate the Jews.

There are some steps to go, but a transformative milestone will be reached once there is a symbiotic connection made between Republican political leaders and gangs like Patriot Prayer or the Proud Boys. If Republican figures realize that they can advance their aims by co-opting and deploying the "militias" for the purpose of political suppression and terror in localities where the police forces are congenial, the GOP at large will come to partake out of institutional gravity (just as they did with Trumpism); those who refuse will be the next round to exit the party. At that point, the proto-brownshirts will become the genuine article...

EDIT: Oh, and lookit that, potentially an anti-black terrorist in the mold of Dylann Roof just the other day.

[Beskar]

Montmorency;*two more hate crimes by the right*

In the minds of those people, the Purge is simply the next step, not a horror series...

[a completely inoffensive name]

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

And yet, his approval has been increasing recently.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...roval-ratings/

[Montmorency]

And yet, his approval has been increasing recently.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...roval-ratings/

I find it remarkable how stable his approval ratings have been over the full term (perhaps only Obama is comparable in this regard out of the records of all Presidents as shown on 538). But his base will respond, thus slightly bumping his approval, every time he engages in his bailiwick, which is cultural-symbolic warfare and antagonism. Economics is literally meaningless in registering Trump's base support (as opposed to interest group or financial support).

You must understand - as so many have noted, but as this twitter thread does relatively succinctly - is that Trump's only option to build support is to divide the country (read the whole thing):

Starting from the proposal that Trump’s failure to even try to “unite” the country after the bombs doesn’t only stem from his character but his business model.

Or to put it otherwise, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his continued political success depends upon his not understanding it. Trump’s prospects for political survival don’t depend on uniting country, but on continuing to divide it in ways that are reinforced by the political geography of Senate, the rural-urban divide in House seats etc. Even if (implausibly) he wanted to build unity, he couldn’t stick to it without undermining his only viable political strategy (the people who hate him are going to go on hating him). This seems obvious.

What is maybe less immediately obvious is that the Democratic party faces very similar strictures. The broad aspirational claim that the country could be ‘united’ by a president depended on a very different ecosystem, where TV etc had a highly pronounced centrist bias.

As the historical work of @pastpunditry and the ecosystem mapping of @YBenkler et al. demonstrate, this has been radically transformed. We now have a bifurcated media ecosystem, with Fox News and its satellites radically at odds with the old consensus, which persuades viewers into a version of @normative epistemic closure (see also @drvox passsim). This means that Democratic presidents aren’t ever going to be able to unite the country either – a substantial minority will always believe they are part of a madrassa/benghazi/communist/globalist plot.

It’s notable that the last moment of purported ‘unity’ was GWB and the Iraq war – when the traditional media flocked to Fox’s view of the world, rather than vice versa. But there is a substantial minority that will never, ever be united beneath a president that has the (D).

So this creates a problem for the Democrats. They’re going to be asked to bring unity back to American politics, but they’re not going to be able to. When Clinton complained about the “deplorables” she was absolutely right. They may not be deplorable in the sense that they may be good to their neighbors, do not kick puppy dogs for fun etc, but they are going to be eager consumers of conspiracy theories, and they will be difficult to impossible to persuade given prevailing media structures.

What this means is that “uniting the country” is perhaps plausible as an organizing myth for a coalition that would like to think of itself as the unifying spirit of the country, but “uniting the country” should never be mistaken as a program for practical action. Indeed, that goal is likely to be a continuing problem, insofar as the coalition is likely to get cross pressure from a mainstream media that is still drinking its own home-brewed Kool-Aid, when that coalition takes politically divisive measures that are politically necessary under current circumstances. Justifying these measures in terms of broad political programs that are hard for media to assail because of their urgency – e.g. the need to restore American democracy a la Ezra, or the threat of global warming – is one possible way of responding that is obviously good on its own merits, albeit not always going to be effective in convincing media figures who still think they are in an earlier and very different America that operates according to different rules.

But if my barstool punditizing is right, then Trump’s immediate departure from uniting to dividing does not just represent his personal drive to spite and chaos. It also reflects the real state of a country that is so profoundly divided that Humpty Dumpty ain’t never going to be reassembled properly. While deploring the ways in which Trump uses this state of affairs, Democrats should be under no illusions it can be fixed.

Also, here is a useful article that elaborated on the recent topics of discussion here (re: compromise, extremism, partisanship), and explains why even alignment on economic policy between Democrats and Republicans will never allow for a meaningful coalition. (The TLDR is that the parties used to be similar enough that voters felt cross-pressured between identity groups associated with either party, but now they are more cleanly divided along lines like race, sex, and class)

Let me repeat my belief that this is our best option:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: