Our ex-so-called president

Of course we’re on the same side. Doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything, though, yeah? :wink:

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Can anyone tell me, is this real?

The engineer in me always laughs grimly at the idea that any of those fields are blue collar, especially since now I basically work in the wider oil & gas industry. Half of our “blue collar” guys all have BS degrees, and the industries are notoriously the worst run industries in the world that simply have been around so long and/or make so much money it doesn’t matter.

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Can we please stop saying Trump voters are bunch of blue collar hillbillies?

My friends who voted for him:

  • Yoga teacher/ex-hippie whose husband is a steel artist
  • Assistant District Attorney (Tulane graduate, Law degree)
  • Self-employed owner of a company that manufactures coolers used primarily by hunters (Tulane graduate, Masters in Business)
  • Jewish female accountant, mother of two boys
  • A yoga teacher/wife to a very wealthy business owner (she wears a 5 caret diamond ring)

I live in one of the most expensive counties in America; it went for Trump.

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I just say they’re he kind of people who would at least consider buying a Trumpy Bear.

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I’ve been repeatedly ranting on that subject ever since the primary.

The working class is the only economic group that voted majority Democratic. The core of Trump’s support is very solidly in the white middle class. Not impoverished rural yokels; financially comfortable suburban bigots.

It is understandable why upper- and middle-class America wants to blame the poor for Trump. But it’s factually incorrect, hugely destructive and completely fucking infuriating.

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[quote=“jannamark, post:175, topic:499, full:true”]

It would appear that Don Sr signed off on the bogus statement that Don Jr went to talk to somebody Russian about adoptions, which, if true, is Don Sr committing obstruction of justice, one of the charges from Nixon’s articles of impeachment:

If (big if) Don Sr is impeached, he’s effectively out of the pardoning business, and any previously issued pardon likely will be seen as attempted obstruction of justice. Pence is probably not going to come through this smelling like a rose, either. The press already released the Ryan tape. [/quote]

You already have slam-dunk evidence of obstruction of justice from the Comey sacking. And the emoluments clause provided clear justification for impeachment since the day Trump was sworn in.

None of that matters while the GOP holds the House. Impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one.

Nixon had a Democratic legislature and unanimous opposition from the USSC. Trump has McConnell, Ryan and Gorsuch.

The midterms are not going to substantially affect the House, because the red states are no longer under democratic governance.

If America waits to see how the midterms pan out, we’re all dead.

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You’ve been listening to Chico Marx again…one of those “other” Marxists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Sy6oiJbEk

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If I didn’t know we lived in different countries, I’d say we were in the same neighbourhood.

It’s always jarring to me to hear someone gush on about crystals or kale or whatever and then jump into right-wing politics without missing a beat. Then I realise they have more in common with 18c aristocrats than actual save-the-earth types. They’re granola-crunchers the way Marie Antoinette and her friends used to play at being farmers.

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During WW2 a lot of debates took place in the UK and the Soviet Union about how life should be organised after the war. The result was the election of a left wing (ish) government in the UK in 1945. The iron boot of Stalinism delayed the process in the USSR for a long time but the collapse was catastrophic when it came.

The US never really faced a threat to the US mainland, and the percentage of Americans who died in WW2 was much smaller than in the UK or the USSR. The result was, I think, that the US emerged a very much stronger and more confident society due to the increase in economic activity, but it didn’t really challenge its preconceptions as to how society should be organised (despite Eisenhower’s very percipient warning). Even Vietnam wasn’t actually a very big deal in world historic terms.
I suspect Trump is the nadir of this process. But the US may be strong enough to weather Trumpismus without serious change. Perhaps it will just get a bit patched.

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Not just lack of damage; both World Wars were hugely profitable for the USA. The “arsenal of democracy” didn’t work for free.

Paying the WWI French debt to the Americans was the final blow that killed the British Empire.

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For some – the people already in power. The Beats, visible minorities, and other groups had a different picture. It was also a much more conformist society, with those in power leveraging the Allied victory as proof the post-war status quo was the right thing to do – never mind things hadn’t actually been that way during the war.

Susan Faludi pointed out in Backlash that during the 1950s, there was actually an increase in the number of women with out-of-the-home jobs, contrary to the pop culture references of the time, which means they were constantly being told contributing to the household income was wrong. Add to that homophobia and its co-opting by McCarthyism, generally increasing toxic masculinity, and that’s a whole lot of people not getting to share in that strength and confidence.

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Not his, his speechwriters’. Yes, after reading David Halberstam’s “The Fifties”, that’s been made more than clear to me, as well as the old copies of “YANK” that I’ve found (incredibly racist when it comes to speaking of the Japanese, too). And the slicing up of Europe…I just keep learning more and more about that. Dad didn’t speak of his experiences in the Pacific in WWII very deeply, but he was fascinated by the whole war. I suppose being more talkative about the European Theater was a way of dealing with what he went through.

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The speechwriter puts it in but the President gets to decide whether to say it.
(My father despite being British loathed Montgomery and Churchill and is a great fan of Eisenhower, so don’t disillusion me too much.)

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Montgomery was a vicious twit and Churchill was the canonical example of the stopped clock. So he’s at least 2/3rds right.

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I’m just writing some moderately random thoughts on someone else’s blog, not an academic work in which I try seriously to unpick the threads of history. And the only things on which I ever offer advice are my technical specialisations, and fewer and fewer of those as I get older.

However, I note your disappointment in my posts, and will take what I consider to be appropriate action.

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Read David Halberstam’s “The Fifties”; I’ll let that disillusion you instead.

Generals shouldn’t be POTUS. There was only one who did a decent job of it, and he was an anomaly, George Washington. Ike dragged his heels on desegregation in schools because he didn’t want to offend any of his rich, Southern friends. He could’ve halted Gary Powers’ last flight, but didn’t.

Ooops, sorry! But he simply wasn’t a good POTUS. As military organizer, sure! But…again, sorry, he didn’t stop Joe McCarthy from bad-mouthing General George C. Marshall (THE greatest US military man of the 20th century, IMNSHO). Ike wouldn’t’ve been anything in the military without Gen. Marshall.

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Can we agree that thank the Fates MacArthur just faded away?

My dad’s favorite modern General was Stilwell. As for Marshall, I never knew of such things until you just informed him. What I’ve read has him being an coming back as SecState after retired as SecDef. I thought it was Mac whom everyone hated.

Anyhow, things seem to be pretty fucking bad everywhere in the world.

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Yes. But Marshall had overall direction; he must have known MacArthur was obsessed with his own prestige, and it was Marshall’s replacement system that caused a lot of the problems in the Pacific.

However, on reflection I was unfair to him, and I’ve edited the post accordingly.

Your father seems to have excellent taste in generals.

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He didn’t like CKS. Or Patton. Bradley he was okay with. Dad and Mom were FDR/Truman Democrats till the day they died. Does that explain a lot of my views, I wonder, LOLOLOL?

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