US Election 2016

[Rigwyn]

Sooo... I'm surprised this hasn't really come up on the forum yet.. What do you folks think about the 2016 US Election? Here in the states, it's being talked about everywhere you go, and so much that many folks just can't wait for it to be over and done with. I've heard that on facebook (which I don't use), talk of politics have cause a lot of misery and unfriending.

This is by far, the nastiest US presidential election that I can recall, yet also, the most interesting given the angles in play. We have one candidate accused of grabbing women, one being investigated by the FBI ( a criminal investigation ) , 1 Democratic National Comittee member forced to resign, her replacement fired by CNN, a shit storm of rather damning hacked email to chew on, evidence of election fraud (DNC colluded with Hillary against Bernie Sanders), lampooning of a disabled reporter, fainting spells, the spitting up of wads of snot before an audience, a VP candidate skidding off the runway in a private plane, and more.

[MishkaL1138]

[Illysia]

+1 

[Dilihin]

This gets my vote. 

[Rigwyn]

Not for the light hearted, I suppose....

Hmm... that's odd. Why is my mic on?

o.O

[LigH]

What do you mean, there are other animals besides donkeys and elephants in this world?! 

[MishkaL1138]

[Thoss]

Anybody read the Archdruid Report?

I've been following that for years. This years election is no big surprise... the people are starting to feel the pressures and are stomping about trying to figure out what to do... drastic times lead to drastic measures... and the consequences of that is not going to be enjoyable no matter what.

Interestingly, the author of the blog... who one might stereotype as very liberal... seems to think that Clinton will be the worse option... as it will perpetuate the environment and feelings that caused a large swath of the electorate to put up someone like Trump. His fears seem to circle around... who will fill Trumps shoes when Clinton get's in, and the electorate are even more pissed in 4 years... and will those shoes be jackboots.

Any political sounding posts from 2016 archives are worth checking out, if only for a different perspective.

Here is a recent one...

 http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-coming-of-postliberal-era.html

Most likely voting Johnson here... simply because I don't want to vote for either of the other two.

[LigH]

The FBI blames Russia. And the Iron Curtain gains weight. Propaganda is the battlefield of WW3.

[MishkaL1138]

Do you know when in history books maps start getting all flaggy and arrowy? Just a few pages before those is a paragraph called "Factors leading up to..."

We're currently in that paragraph.

[Thoss]

from the above link... i think this sums up how we got to where we are:

American liberalism, as already mentioned, was a movement of the educated elite; it focused on helping the downtrodden rather than including them; and that approach increasingly ran into trouble as the downtrodden turned out to have ideas of their own that didn’t necessarily square with what liberals wanted to do for them. [/quote}

[Thoss]

from the above link... i think this sums up how we got to where we are:

American liberalism, as already mentioned, was a movement of the educated elite; it focused on helping the downtrodden rather than including them; and that approach increasingly ran into trouble as the downtrodden turned out to have ideas of their own that didn’t necessarily square with what liberals wanted to do for them.

[edit] hmmmm... wrong button... sorry for the dup

[Rigwyn]

The FBI blames Russia. And the Iron Curtain gains weight. Propaganda is the battlefield of WW3.

Didn't read the article, but destroying people's reputations by claiming that they are working with the Russians goes back to the days of McCarthy. ( Colloquially known in the US as McCarthyism )

In the US, accusing someone of being in league with "the Russians" is more damaging than accusing someone of being a Nazi ( among those who were around for the cold war). It's ironic how Hillary Clinton has been using this tactic along with her insinuation that Trump cannot be trusted with the "nuclear codes". This is fear mongering and hypocrisy at it's finest. ( I suspect that Hillary is projecting her own inner evil self onto Donald, but I'll leave that for another thread if we ever get into armchair analysis of candidates )

As for what got us in this mess, I agree with Thoss's point to a degree, but I think some of it is the result of technology, communication over the Internet, cross-pollination of ideas and the non-physical boundaries that now divide people. Ie. It used to be that one's acquaintances were people who were geographically close. That changed as transportation advanced ( ie. Boats and Planes ), and again when the Internet was born. Today we have cell phones and tablets that make people half way around the world closer to us than the person next door. I think this results in stronger grouping of people with similar interests, and alliances that are not limited to geography.

[Thoss]

but I think some of it is the result of technology, communication over the Internet, cross-pollination of ideas and the non-physical boundaries that now divide people. Ie. It used to be that one's acquaintances were people who were geographically close. That changed as transportation advanced ( ie. Boats and Planes ), and again when the Internet was born. Today we have cell phones and tablets that make people half way around the world closer to us than the person next door. I think this results in stronger grouping of people with similar interests, and alliances that are not limited to geography.

lot of truth there, our abilities to communicate as well as rile each other up is huge... plus... all this hoopla with trump and clinton... nothing new, we just have access to the  information now... kind of like me with my parents when I got older and became a parent myself... realized they didn't know what the hell they were doing now that I can see behind the curtain... (and neither do I, but I act like it to my kid!)

[Rigwyn]

So true.

One of the problems that I see now is that there's a steep curve to understanding politics, and an even steeper one once you realize that there's no single source of information that is *correct*. Learning to research, question, and piece together biased information and to reorganize it into a coherent story that you *think* makes sense is a skill in itself.

This is why I got into electronics and programming when I was younger. Computers don't lie. They're comparatively easy to understand once you realize that 99% of the time, you are the one who is wrong :p