The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, the only lesson of note here is that by deliberately going out of your way to appear crazier and more disgusting than you are, you can succeed in convincing people that you are crazier and more disgusting than you are.

[Q99]

Basically, the only lesson of note here is that by deliberately going out of your way to appear crazier and more disgusting than you are, you can succeed in convincing people that you are crazier and more disgusting than you are.

Pretty much.

Especially since passing around racist memes 'for irony' or to edgelord it up is still doing so. No one really cares if someone is saying 'I'm just pretending to be racist.'

[Grumman]

Basically, the only lesson of note here is that by deliberately going out of your way to appear crazier and more disgusting than you are, you can succeed in convincing people that you are crazier and more disgusting than you are.

No, the lesson that should be learned here is that guilt by association is a weapon that must be used carefully, or you'll reveal yourself to be a fucking idiot. That two people use variations on the same meme does not make them friends.

[Flagg]

Basically, the only lesson of note here is that by deliberately going out of your way to appear crazier and more disgusting than you are, you can succeed in convincing people that you are crazier and more disgusting than you are.

Pretty much.

Especially since passing around racist memes 'for irony' or to edgelord it up is still doing so. No one really cares if someone is saying 'I'm just pretending to be racist.'

Exactly. It's "I'm not racist, now look at how dumb these n***ers are!"

[Q99]

Basically, the only lesson of note here is that by deliberately going out of your way to appear crazier and more disgusting than you are, you can succeed in convincing people that you are crazier and more disgusting than you are.

No, the lesson that should be learned here is that guilt by association is a weapon that must be used carefully, or you'll reveal yourself to be a fucking idiot. That two people use variations on the same meme does not make them friends.

No, but if someone keeps on getting their memes from the same place ('sheriff star' anyone?), and they seem fine with David Duke's favorable response to them, and they just keep doing this stuff, the ones who look like idiots are *not* the ones drawing the connection.

Once or twice is an honest mistake. Repeatedly, combined with wishy washy responses, "I don't think David Duke is deplorable," (-Pence) and seeing people who actually are racist clearly come out in support? That's much less of a mistake.

The people who say there's nothing there... don't exactly come out looking great.

[Wild Zontargs]

Basically, the only lesson of note here is that by deliberately going out of your way to appear crazier and more disgusting than you are, you can succeed in convincing people that you are crazier and more disgusting than you are.

Pretty much.

Especially since passing around racist memes 'for irony' or to edgelord it up is still doing so. No one really cares if someone is saying 'I'm just pretending to be racist.'

Hang on.

Group A ('channers) post memes that are occasionally racist.
Group B (the Trump campaign) posts non-racist memes of the same character.
Therefore, Group B is racist.

Count the number of logical leaps there.

Group B is not identical to Group A.
Some members of Group A being racist is not the same as Group A being racist.
Posting racist memes is not the same thing as being a racist.

Call the Trump campaign racist if you want, but Pepe the Frog isn't evidence of that. Hell, if this is the best "evidence" the Clinton campaign can come up with, it's time to pack up and go home. If it isn't their best evidence, then they should have bloody well posted that, instead of this stupidity.

('sheriff star' anyone?)

The excuse was almost as stupid as the nontroversy was in the first place. It's a clip-art star. I'm pretty sure it's built into MS Word, Photoshop, and every other damned thing.

OMG, My Little Pony is either anti-Semitic or a secret Jewish conspiracy! Look at this horse's butt tattoo! Seven six-pointed stars!



It's totally a reference to the fact that her voice actress is Jewish! Or not, because we're not fucking morons looking for shit to fling at one another.

[cosmicalstorm]

There is something wrong with HRC talking about the frogs. She really climbs into the cesspool when doing that. The next days will be crucial for her, she might be at a point where her campaign could implode. Will the Pneunomia story turn out to be bogus in two days? Will there be another terror attack on US soil before the election?

This election is at least very exciting, the last one was a real sleeping pill, Iron Sky was the most memorable part.

[Q99]

Hang on.

Group A ('channers) post memes that are occasionally racist.
Group B (the Trump campaign) posts non-racist memes of the same character.
Therefore, Group B is racist.

Mm, more 'group B repeatedly posts memes, some of which are racist in themselves, which are favored by the racist parts of group A, and this particular one group A's racist parts have been working to claim recently,and group B specifically chose it when called racist.'

Can't leave out the context of a statement when talking about the context of a statement.

The excuse was almost as stupid as the nontroversy was in the first place. It's a clip-art star. I'm pretty sure it's built into MS Word, Photoshop, and every other damned thing.

OMG, My Little Pony is either anti-Semitic or a secret Jewish conspiracy! Look at this horse's butt tattoo! Seven six-pointed stars!

Ah ha, this is a wonderful case in point!

It is a flat-out Star of David (which is different than just any six-pointed star- a Twilight Sparkle star is not a star of David), regularly used *in the exact same manner* as a way to attack Jewish people, as it was being used to attack Hillary.

The view boils down to, in short, "As long as you can say there's some plausible deniability, then it's not racist." Which is a nice way to really give free reign on racist messages, and really says more about you than it does those calling out out!

A bunch of race-coded posts get sent out- some pretty blatant- racists can go, "Oooh," and nod understandingly, people who are really used to seeing racist attacks go, "Oh, that racist signal, yea I've seen that one," and people like you go, "You're just making up that it's a racist attack, that makes you the idiot."

This is very much why Donald Trump is running fourth place among black voters, and is doing worse with hispanics and other minorities than they were in prior elections. Some of the signaling is just 'let's use stuff popular with racist groups,' others... well, the Star thing was *not* so coded.

This is someone who overtly uses racism against several groups (Mexican 'murderers and rapists,' the attacks on the judge and the Khans), who's campaign is, on a number of occasions, using iconography picked up from other racist groups, and notably, in a way other campaigns, Republican or otherwise, don't (and retract if done by accident). You may write that off, but not only don't I, the groups in question don't either.


If Pepe was a *free standing incident*, I'd be fine with writing it off, calling it no big deal or a flub. But it's not. It's one of many many signs showing, at the least, emphatic winking in the direction of racists.

[Q99]

There is something wrong with HRC talking about the frogs. She really climbs into the cesspool when doing that. The next days will be crucial for her, she might be at a point where her campaign could implode. Will the Pneunomia story turn out to be bogus in two days? Will there be another terror attack on US soil before the election?

Campaigns seem to not really implode nowadays, possibly due to all the polarization. I can't remember the last time one did in the main season. And so far this campaign, people have waited for Donald's to implode forever, and similarly a lot on the right (and some on the left!) have kept on expecting this or that to make Hillary's campaign implode, be it e-mails or what have you.

Events make gains and losses, but it takes something truly massive to kill a campaign on it's own, or alternatively a whole series of good-sized events piled on each other. Then again, this is an atypical campaign seasons so I could be wrong, but I wouldn't bet on an implosion.

Also, Hillary herself hasn't made comment, just a lot of other people.

This election is at least very exciting, the last one was a real sleeping pill, Iron Sky was the most memorable part.

Now there's a statement that'll get no objection- the exciting one at least. I'm not sure I'd call the last one boring, but this one is a class in it's own.

[The Romulan Republic]

Kentucky governor suggests violence if Clinton wins:

www.vox.com/2016/9/13/12901134/matt-bevin-blood

Speaking at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin alluded to Thomas Jefferson’s famous aphorism about the need to periodically water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Except in Bevin’s telling, the tyrant is Hillary Clinton:

Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview, and they said, “Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation?”

And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots.

Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away.

Daniel Desrochers of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports that Bevin later tried to clean up those remarks by saying we should construe them as being about military service in the war on terrorism.

“Today we have thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas and they need our full backing,” Bevin said in a statement. “We cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms.”

The text of his actual speech, however, is completely at odds with that — he is very clearly talking about patriots winning back liberty from the tyranny of Democratic Party governance.

The specific political context is that Kentucky is a state where the national Democratic Party has become deeply unpopular (Mitt Romney won more than 60 percent of the vote) but that has one of the strongest state-level Democratic parties of any red state. Bevin succeeded a popular two-term Democratic governor, and even after the Democrats’ nationally disastrous 2014 midterms the party still holds a majority in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and two of the three down-ballot statewide elected officials are Democrats.

Consequently, basically anything that raises the salience of national partisan conflict in state-level Kentucky politics is a win for the Kentucky Republican Party.

The larger political context is the overall rise of what Alan Abramowitz calls “negative partisanship,” in which voters are feeling decreasing affection for the party they usually vote for but increasing alarm and dismay about the party they usually vote against. Bevin is arguing not that Clinton will implement some policies that he disagrees with and hopes will be reversed in a future election, but that Clinton will fundamentally imperil the viability of the American republic.

Of course, raising the specter of violent resistance to the Clinton regime only servers to further demonize the Republican Party and its supporters in the eyes of non-conservatives — further entrenching the cycle.

[Wild Zontargs]

Mm, more 'group B repeatedly posts memes, some of which are racist in themselves, which are favored by the racist parts of group A, and this particular one group A's racist parts have been working to claim recently,and group B specifically chose it when called racist.'

Can't leave out the context of a statement when talking about the context of a statement.

That's a lot of word-salad for "guilt by association". Pepe isn't a racist meme. A few fuckwits have made racist Pepes, but then again, people have made Nazi Hello Kitty and Nazi My Little Ponies. That doesn't make swastika-free Hello Kitty or MLP neo-Nazi memes. The 'chans have successfully trolled the media yet again, and they've repeated a line of bullshit on national TV. I don't see you providing any evidence that the meme is racist, just repeating over and over "yes it is".

Ah ha, this is a wonderful case in point!

It is a flat-out Star of David (which is different than just any six-pointed star- a Twilight Sparkle star is not a star of David), regularly used *in the exact same manner* as a way to attack Jewish people, as it was being used to attack Hillary.

Here, let me show you a magic trick.

See those stars in the results? The solid ones? Those aren't automatically the star of David. Hell, let's ask Wikipedia about the star of David:

Its shape is that of a hexagram, the compound of two equilateral triangles. Unlike the menorah, the Lion of Judah, the shofar and the lulav, the Star of David was never a uniquely Jewish symbol.

Got that? It's not a special fucking snowflake, it's two superimposed triangles, and it isn't "owned" by the Jews. Never has been. Hell, I used to get stickers just like the "most corrupt candidate" label on my school work way the hell back in elementary school, with shit like "good work" printed on them.

So, we've got an anthropomorphic frog that isn't racist, and a geometric shape that isn't racist. You're 0 for 2 here. Hell, I'm not even arguing that Trump doesn't have racist supporters, but for fuck's sake, stop pointing at innocuous shit and screaming RACISSSS! All you're doing is crying wolf, and we all know how that works out when the real wolves show up.

[Wild Zontargs]

Yes, Pepe the Frog is tied to white supremecists, article from four months ago so not related to the current stuff, about how there was a deliberate movement to tie him to the alt-right.

Oh my fucking god. Apparently, The Daily Beast can't do the most basic of fact-checking. Their source:

@JaredTSwift is an anonymous white nationalist who claims to be 19 years old and in school someplace on the West Coast. He told me there is “an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies.”

Let's go to his fucking Twitter account, shall we? Read the bio.

Prominent white supremacist. Bad memes. *PARODY ACCOUNT*

*PARODY ACCOUNT*

Even Jared doesn't know what the fuck to do at this point. Even better, he's a Marxist and a Jew.

You Have Been Trolled. You Have Lost. Have A Nice Day.

[Patroklos]

Campaigns seem to not really implode nowadays, possibly due to all the polarization. I can't remember the last time one did in the main season. And so far this campaign, people have waited for Donald's to implode forever, and similarly a lot on the right (and some on the left!) have kept on expecting this or that to make Hillary's campaign implode, be it e-mails or what have you.

Dean.

Edwards.

[Mr Bean]

Campaigns seem to not really implode nowadays, possibly due to all the polarization. I can't remember the last time one did in the main season. And so far this campaign, people have waited for Donald's to implode forever, and similarly a lot on the right (and some on the left!) have kept on expecting this or that to make Hillary's campaign implode, be it e-mails or what have you.

Dean.

Edwards.

Those are primaries not the main election. We have not had a full campaign collapse since the 70s with George McGovern.

[Mr Bean]

Rare bit of Buzzfeed news but it posted as first with the story
Gary Johnson will be on ballot in all US states

Libertarian Gary Johnson on Tuesday announced that he will be the first third-party presidential candidate to appear on the ballot in all 50 states, plus Washington DC, since 1996.

“With a majority of Americans wanting a choice other than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, today we now know for certain that on Election Day, every voter in America will have that alternative option,” Johnson said in a statement, referring himself and his running mate, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld.

Gaining ballot access in all 50 states and DC is a “monumental task,” he added, noting that the only other tickets to do so are the two main political parties.

Ballot access laws are a major hurdle for third-party candidates. Jill Stein is running for the Green Party, but has not gained ballot access in all 50 states.

The Libertarian party last achieved the nationwide feat in 1996 with candidate Harry Browne. Also on the ballot in all 50 states that year was Reform Party candidate Ross Perot.

For the Reform Party in the 2000 election, Patrick Buchanan appeared on all 50 state ballots, but not in D.C. The Libertarian Party also secured nationwide ballot access in 2000 with Browne running again, but Arizona’s Libertarian Party opted to instead run L. Neil Smith.

Once again Johnson will distort the voting pattern. The chance of him wining are right up there with Trump and Clinton suffering simultaneous heart attacks via the death note but it's a non-zero possibility.

The important bit is that there a large contingent on both sides ("Moderate" Republicans and Bernie or Bust Democrats) who might give the third party a serious look. The thing is those factions tend not to matter because either they end up falling in line come election day (Republicans) or don't show up at all (Democrats) but 2016 is a year of once in a life times so lets see if Gary Johnson can break 10% or flip a Trump state to Clinton.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Got that? It's not a special fucking snowflake, it's two superimposed triangles, and it isn't "owned" by the Jews. Never has been. Hell, I used to get stickers just like the "most corrupt candidate" label on my school work way the hell back in elementary school, with shit like "good work" printed on them.

So, we've got an anthropomorphic frog that isn't racist, and a geometric shape that isn't racist. You're 0 for 2 here. Hell, I'm not even arguing that Trump doesn't have racist supporters, but for fuck's sake, stop pointing at innocuous shit and screaming RACISSSS! All you're doing is crying wolf, and we all know how that works out when the real wolves show up.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not commenting on the frog thing specifically, because I know literally nothing about that meme's history or how it was used by the campaign. So I don't care about that. I only want to respond specifically to the quoted piece here. Which is to say, you DO realize that your line of logic could be used without any distortion to say that people should never be offended or raise an eyebrow by someone using a swastika, after all it is just a geometric shape that it's "owned" by the Nazis? Yes, I mean, congratulations Einstein, you are aware that the swastika predates the Nazis and is in fact used in a lot of parts of the world for reasons that have nothing to do with the Nazis; that said, in the Western world that swastika DOES carry very strong connotations, and especially for use in a political campaign ad, HAS to at least merit some questions. Saying the shape itself isn't racist is hugely missing the point, at the very least. Even if it is malicious, it still shows pretty poor judgment to use a symbol that can potentially carry such connotations (and these aren't super obscure connotations that you wouldn't expect a reasonably socially aware person to not know, like a symbol that offends Zoroastrians, here - even if you don't think the arguments have any merit, you can't possibly be so naive as to not predict a response in that vein to something so loaded).

[Patroklos]

The swastika is a bit more specific (ie drastically so) in construction geometrically and while it does have a history predations Nazism it is no where near a prolific. Nor is it a common component of atistry before or after. The fact is the swastika, as you stated yourself, has been reduced to mean exactly one think in western civilization. The same cannot be said for a hexagram. It's literally everywhere in thousands of contexts.

Try again.

[Q99]

"Geometric shapes can't be racist," ignoring all context and cultural history of a message, has got to be one of the best bad arguments I've seen in months.

In this season, that's saying something!

Saying 'Nothing is racist!' doesn't actually make stuff not-racist, and pretending nothing is racist in order to try and claim others are looking bad for noting blatant racism is pretty funny ^^

I mean, you can make an argument on Pepe, it's pre-existing- Though I will note the picture also includes a person recently banned on twitter for harassing a black woman and who's not part of Trump's campaign or anything they just tossed him in there, there's more context in the photo than the frog alone- but the Star of David pic? Heh.

I don't think there's really anywhere to go with the argument, because when you get to the point where you're putting the word 'corrupt' inside the literal symbol of Judaism and claiming it's not an anti-semitic symbol, you're also clearly at the point where no evidence will convince you anything is racist.

[Grumman]

...Though I will note the picture also includes a person recently banned on twitter for harassing a black woman...

Leslie Jones is a racist asshole. She didn't deserve to have her iCloud account hacked, but she's not some innocent victim of the big, mean gay man.

[Wild Zontargs]

I mean, you can make an argument on Pepe

Enough with Pepe. You, CNN, the Clinton campaign, The Daily Beast, EVERYBODY got trolled. It happens. I've been trolled and posted stupid shit before. Just admit it and move on. For fuck's sake, the hoaxer is begging Le Monde to stop spreading the stupid.

the Star of David pic? Heh.

I don't think there's really anywhere to go with the argument, because when you get to the point where you're putting the word 'corrupt' inside the literal symbol of Judaism and claiming it's not an anti-semitic symbol, you're also clearly at the point where no evidence will convince you anything is racist.

You have yet to prove that this star was "the Star of David" and not just any old fucking hexagram. Stop affirming the consequent.

-If they used the Star of David as an attack, it's anti-Semitic
-Q99 has decided that the image was anti-Semitic
-Therefore, the star must be the Star of David!

No. You fail Logic 101. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Not all hexagrams are the Star of David. Other people use the same symbol.

[Q99]

Mike Pence tries to rally Republican leaders against 'Deplorable' comment- is rebuked by both House and Senate Republicans, who are also annoyed at Trump and Pence's support of Putin.


Colin Powell's e-mails reveal he thinks Donald Trump is racist

I like how much of the Republican party is not only noticing, but standing up on these issues.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, looks like we're seeing the effects of Clinton getting sick:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 ... ecast/#now

fivethirtyeight's Now-cast (i.e., projection if the election is held today) has Nevada, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and NC now leaning Republican, putting Trump only five electoral votes short of victory if my calculations are correct. Thankfully, no other state appears close to flipping, but still... way too close.

Of course, not so long ago, the Now-cast had Arizona and Georgia in the leaning Dem. column as I recall.

Polls-plus forecast is a little better, with Nevada leaning Democrat slightly, and Polls-only forecast gives them better odds in Nevada and Florida.

The model based on national polls puts Clinton a little over two points ahead.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 ... olls/#plus

Edit: I will add that Trump being (if current numbers hold) five electoral college votes from victory means that he only need a) five electors to go against the results of the vote (that has apparently actually happened before), or successful fraud in one state.

[The Romulan Republic]

Jesus, its nice to know so many voters find "she fainted" a more compelling reason not to vote for someone than "he wants to undermine the foundations of our democracy".

[Elheru Aran]

It seems to bear reiterating, so I'll reiterate:

This election has been a COLOSSAL mess of back-and-forth. Given especially the volatility of Donald Trump's campaign, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that attempting to make certain predictions at this point is a fool's game.

Before with Obama and Romney, Obama and McCain, etc, it was easier because those elections were *conventional* apart from the novelty of Barack Obama-- but he's still a male politician, albeit black and fairly new to the political scene when he started out. But apart from those two factors-- which did have some relevance-- they were still fairly standard elections, D versus R.

This time around? We have a woman running for office, and a Clinton at that, so she's packing 30+ years' worth of political experience and baggage around. We have a businessman running for office, and it's Donald fucking Trump, and he's managed to piss off half the party that he's supposedly running for. And before Trump was confirmed, nobody could have called it.

Wait until after the debates. Wait until the damn week before the election. Wait until Election Day, if you can. Because make no bones, this isn't going to be something you can call three months before the ballot boxes are closed.

[Crown]

Jesus, its nice to know so many voters find "she fainted" a more compelling reason not to vote for someone than "he wants to undermine the foundations of our democracy".

You're not that obtuse, you know there's more to it than that.