I’ve used “they don’t even think we’re people” as shorthand for disrespect for a long time. As in, misogynists don’t think women are people, racists don’t see the humanity in people of color, that sort of thing.
Eric Trump fucking said it. Out loud. In so many words.
I don’t respect the trumps, because I think they are not good for the county, but I don’t want to strip them of their basic humanity. The worst person the history of the world (not an individual, I mean as a placeholder variable) was still A PERSON.
Dehumanizing the opposition is a necessary step in justifying the purge. Can’t wait to see what happens next. I really feel like we’re a country in the balance, and especially with the comments by our allies that we aren’t the “leader of the free world” any more, and hats unfortunately probably true. Can we turn it around or are we on the way to a Handsmaid Tale future? Only time will tell, and I reckon it’s a short timeline.
I’m actually OK with the US not being the “leader of the world”. I don’t care if we are a second rate country, as long as we have a functional democracy that doesn’t abuse the people who live here. That feels so utopian, these days, like a child wishing to someday get married and live with a spouse who doesn’t beat the shit out of them every day.
Id be fine with it too, if I thought we were headed for a nice middling position like Sweden, for instance. But I suspect the fall will be great and hard. And for my son, I am disappointed in that.
A better way to think of it is that Trump is a backlash against the way things are already going, and will continue to go even as he’s president. The ACA, for example, has never been more popular than it is now. Nevada is even floating a “Medicare for all” bill. Mayors are taking their own action on climate change and immigration. He can’t dial the clock back to 1955—he can only remind us why 1955 sucked to begin with, and that, in itself, is making a kind of progress.
The reality is that the culture has already moved past Donald Trump and the losing minority whom he represents. The trends and forces they’re resisting are far more powerful than Congress and the White House. And, what’s more, they’re failing. Conspicuously. Spectacularly.
He’s going to be remembered as an object lesson in civics, like Nixon and McCarthy.
I’m starting to wonder whether trump sent out his kid to distract us from the Comey hearing and the general mess in Washington, with this extraordinarily callous statement. I’m not saying he doesn’t believe his own words, just that he was sent out specifically to take some heat off the old man.
More than once it has occurred to me that it’d be swell to be like Canada, or perhaps one of the fine Scandinavian nations, only with the balmy Southern California climate that I so adore.
When I first moved from southern California to the midwest, the weather was the toughest thing. Hell, the first 5-10 years, the worst thing was the weather.
At this point, gonna be 20 years this summer, I’m OK with the weather but the regressive politics really sticks in my craw. Of course, because of the cost of living / wages, I couldn’t afford to move back even if I wanted to. I’d be going from middle class (perceived, as in I have a savings account and own a home) to broke and sleeping on someone’s couch.
There’s a joke around here that you can sell your house in California and buy a nice farm out here. If you sell your house here, you can buy a car in California, so get a nice one because you’ll be living in it.
Yeah, I couldn’t live east of the Rockies just because of the humidity. But having lived all my life in Southern California, to me the Midwest is a trip. Look what I could buy in, say, Fort Dodge, Iowa, for about $140k less than I paid for my house last year:
Yeah, that’s a former Carnegie Library, converted into nine 2-bedroom apartments, each with its own parking garage. Even if that’s the nicest building in Fort Dodge, that’s a screaming deal.
But once I left here, I’d never be able to come back. Sorry, Fort Dodge. No thanks.
My comment was pretending to accept the premise that some people aren’t people, and pointing out that by any reasonable standard (like, say, being unable to empathise with others), pricks like Trump Junior here are first on the list.
I think this is the primary reason the right-wing media keeps referring to undocumented immigrants as “i******.”
It’s reached the point where newspapers refuse to follow their stated hate-speech rules, because the slurs are too common, and because following their stated hate-speech rules would be seen as “censorship.”
