you tend to get carried away by the hot flaming gas of your THOUGHTS

they literally take you over and you can't detach from them or observe them from a place of calm

i mentioned ages ago you could try to learn to meditate, but horse/water/drink

"10% happier" is a plenty mainstream introduction. told by some tv anchor that started with a panic attack on national tv.

best luck dude.

I know what I'm doing! I'm going to be Courtney Love's butler in 5 years.

You need a virtuous sweetheart to fight for Severian. That's what I do! Chivalry mang, get with it. Trump is anti chivalry.

She Needs Me from Punch Drunk Love (originally from Popeye)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVcuinfZ4c

outbreaks of racist and homophobic violence, and trump delivers on his anti-elites stance... by naming old guard repulicans in his cabinet. I wonder if any of his supporters have the brain cells to see they already got played

wtf. he hasn't named his cabinet yet!

i hate rumors

anyway here an interesting read from a muslim immigrant woman who voted for trumpet:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

it's pretty clear who got Trump over the top. it's not the 'dumb white trash rednecks' like you like to think. Trump got the conservative redneck vote like duh but, it was the ones in between. the ignored ones that weren't disenfranchised but, who were sorely underestimated by Dems that were convinced that 'they' were on 'their' side. Hillary spent too much time being a light Sanders and completely distancing herself from the reg Dem voters. add that with the lib media that took control while being condescending to the hopeful undecided and you have yourself a self inflictive massacre.

Dems played very very nasty this year. Fox News nasty and well, it showed. Hillary voters got what they deserved. their own shit thrown back in their fucking face!

I feel you man.

You voted for Hillary.

and yet, 2 things to note

a) he's posting sober! hello pepparz

b) he's right, actually

the democrats lost middle america. it wasn't a "kkk victory" -- the kkk just bandwagonned.

i gotta get a hike in before dark but yeah

dems had no interest in the proletariat this season.

WARREN 2020

I voted Johnson! *ducks and covers*

I just feel we should give the best wishes to our next president. the more we hate and protest the more we throw this bastard off. he needs the upmost support. he's a bullshitter but, at least he's not a Bush. a contender as a moderate is what im guessing.

I don't know that this is entirely accurate. Yes, the Dems opted for a neoliberal approach and counted on their working class appeal to stay in tact. They chose a wealthy aristocratic candidate who didn't speak to the true needs of the people as much as a democratic candidate facing a ridiculous an inexplicably strong opponent should do. This is true.

BUT... for one thing, the odds were against ANY Democrat winning. For a Dem to win after two-terms of Dem? Almost without precedent. Trying to recall my elementary history, and failing, but it's happened... what, once? In the history of the country?

ALSO... The media failed to provide the right kind of coverage. There are economic reasons for this that I can soeak to from having real world experience in news media. One of them is that all but a handful of newspapers are having a god awful time financially. They're transitioning -- even small town publications -- to online hybrid formats, and that means they need clicks to sell ads.
So instead of getting news about candidate platforms, we got the same "emails v. tax returns" stories over and over and over again, pockmarked by slanted editorials that demonized Trump and only served to piss off those of his supporters who can, y'know, read.

The big story of the cycle should have been "What EXACTLY will you do about the Affordable Care Act?" Trump's lack of a plan should have been highlighted and broadcast across all platforms, and Hillary's expansion programs and plans for continuation and improvement of ACA should have as well.

For what it's worth, ACA is the meat of this election. Hospital's and care providers across the nation have undergone exhaustive re-jiggerings and in some cases brick-by-brick reconstructions of billing and service practices. BILLIONS have gone into this. I've spoken with and interviewed hospital administrators from multiple states about this, and the consensus is... they don't want to have to do that again. Nobody wants repeal/replace except for the population of people who don't want to be fined for not buying insurance (which they don't buy because they don't have the money). Hillary was invested in ACA, and should have used this fact -- that the change has been made and people don't want to/can't afford to go back -- and so should my fellow journalists.

The republicans knew this was the case, which is why you'd e hard pressed to find a single congressional Repo candidate who supported repeal/replace but would actually tell you what s/he wanted to replace it with.

Health care accounts for so many jobs. It's such an important issue. ACA is flawed, and if the focus had been placed on what the candidates planned to do about it, the narrative would have had substance. Instead, all the average person knew about was "emails and tax returns." So all those people who cant afford health care or the fine for not having health care (more people fall into this category than most would believe), voted with the information they had and one candidate wanted to do that. Emails was a nice distraction scandal for people to focus on when they should have been asking themselves, "How exactly is a program that is the law of the land in 50 states going to be repealed/replaced and am I sure I WANT it to be repealed/replaced if I have no idea what anyone wants to repeal/replace it with?"

When I was unemployed, I received free Medicaid through ACA. Millions did. Yes it was a hassle, yes it took time, yes I had to go a few months without insurance when I was awaiting redetermination, but t saved me THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. It may have saved my Fucking life during that year. If ACA is actually repealed (and it will take time for this to happen, but with bodies in every branch, it eventually will) all those people who are either unemployed or work at McDonald's but only make $13,000 a year -- those people who receive free State benefits will have NOTHING.

Those people ... the McDonald's workers and the lower class rural Americans with families ... turned out and voted for "Repeal/replace ACA" over "that crook with the two email account" in DROVES.

My profession FAILED. We failed because of a fucked market. We failed because we're desperate too. We failed because we were all too busy delivering snarky editorials on HuffPo and talking down to the little man about why the emails didn't matter and we looked arrogant and decidedly anti-Trump.

Trump USED his own hatability against us. Notice, only ONE nationally distributed news outlet recommended Trump. He took that and ran with it, told everyone the media was the bad guy and deliberately baited the media into smearing him for his racist/sexist/xenophobic antics and we bought into it and ended up looking crooked.

We also failed as people. All of us. The Dems were so divided from the start, and shots were fired in the primaries that aren't usually fired until the general. Bernie Sander played a huge role in this (no, sorry Facebook meme-generator, he wasn't the holy fucking spirit, and he did great harm to his adoptive party.)

Hillary won the pop vote. So it wasn't like she got crushed.

All we had to do was grow up a bit, and this could have happened differently.

I'd take H.W. over Trump in a heartbeat. I might even take W. over Trump. Actually, yes, I would take W. over Trump. Maybe not W. and Cheney, but in a straight W. vs. Trump showdown I'd suck that Texan's little dick if it would get us out of this.

naw. I was drunk ass hell, blunted out and i still am.

I keep going through the stages of grief, in no particular order it seems.

At some point in the day, I accept the results. Then I grow angry. I bargain. I deny. At my worst, I think I'm dreaming/hallucinating. Then I accept, etc.

I can't settle and I think I'm going a little nuts.

must have caught you early in the process cuz you were still coherent

congrats

Opinions
I said Clinton was in trouble with the voters I represent. Democrats didn’t listen.

Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, represents Michigan’s 12th Congressional District in the House.

I was the crazy one. I predicted that Hillary Clinton was in trouble in Michigan during the Democratic primary. I observed that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination for president. And at Rotary clubs, local chambers of commerce, union halls and mosques, I noted that we could see a Trump presidency. “That’s Debbie, it’s hyperbole, she is nuts.”

It’s now our reality , and as Americans we need to understand why...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...mepage%2Fstory

This is the chaotic cycle I've been going through too.

It's actually good to know I'm not the only one who feels like they might be cracking from time to time.

well, college kids educated professionals are real people too, but otherwise i agree with you. too much identity politics and not enough class issues.

part of the problem though is that at least in america a lot of the working class don't think they're actually working class-- they're think they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires waiting for the big time- so-- don't tax the rich! i'll be one soon! and people vote against their own interests.

it would take some sort of... political reeducation for people to start to see the light again. but then the republicans would call it-- class warfare, an attack on job creators, communist indoctrination, etc. and they could be half-right.

it's a tricky situation. has to be done right or it will explode in people's faces.

IDEALLY you'd have business, government and labor working together, but the anglo-american model seems to be based on confrontation rather than cooperation.

There are some interesting statistics here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37922587
(sorry if similar has already been posted, I've not read all pages in the last few days)

And here's a comparison between the US Election compared to the Brexit votes in the UK a couple months earlier:
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37943072

The fear of socialism and communism that the right has reliably rallied behind since the dawn of man is kind of hilarious in this instance, since we now have a president championed by Putin and a political oligarchy across branches. Big Government has never been bigger than it is (or will soon be), at least in theory.

But if you know a single Trump voter who has thought of that, then congratulations you've found Waldo.

But then again, a lot of Trumpists have been subtly implying that I don't know what I'm talking about of late. I know I'm not a political scholar, but maybe I'm actually just really fucking pitifully stupid and nothing I say makes any sense.

nothing wrong with feeling like this, perfectly normal.

you cant blame yourself, you can only hope to cooperate peacefully with others in a democratic process because there's no good alternative. if they won't be reasonable and want to give in to their aggressive and violent instincts, which many people in the west are doing right now, then you aren't responsible. you did what you could

it's a tragedy




Do you guys ever say "look at the bright side"? It doesn't mean that everything is peachy (it never was, never will) it just means that whatever the shit going down you look at the fucking bright side. Which does not mean passive acceptance nor does it mean oblivion, it just means choosing survival over despair.

some of us prefer measured despair to mandatory positivity which is imo the cause of a lot of mental illness and suffering these days

False choice, symbols. People (myself included) need to work on acceptance of the situation. But things are about to get bad and it's reasonable to express the emotions this evokes. Yeah, the elections in the next few years should be a hoot. But things can suck til then. You sorta sound fake-zen. I'm not entirely buying your mellow tone. Defense mechanism?

why is it taking you so long though? i accepted it tuesday night, spent it sleepless, crashed on wednesday, slept 16 hours, woke up refreshed.

notice that i'm not asking you to suppress your emotions. im asking you to reconsider your choice of thought. which is: yes, this is reality now.

i don't understand daydreaming. i mean, what is is. thinking that it could be that way or it could have been that way is pointless. again, thoughts not emotions.

now if you want to analyze a new strategy for the future and consider "what ifs," sure, but that computational process doesn't require emotional involvement. might require a lot of dreaming though.


fact is we don't know what's going to happen. maybe things get great. maybe things go worse than we imagined. doesn't matter. of course there's fear and hope always pulling in each direction. i want neither.

what we need to survive is to look at what is actually in front of our eyes, our senses, our mental perceptions, and do what is best at that time.

the difference between life and a game of chess is that chess has hard rules (you play within the rules) whereas in life new rules can at all times be re/invented. so outcomes are not as predictable.

i'm not talking about changing the laws of physics by willpower (duh), i'm talking about looking for opportunities to advance our cause (your cause, his cause their cause) at every turn. that is all. do you want to deal, or do you want to get trapped in the fear/hope russian roulette of the mind.

the only reasonable choice (the one that preserves reason) is of course to deal. and the greater the danger, the greater the imperative to face it--and quickly.

if you find yourself in a burning building-- you don't sit down and bemoan your luck, do you? You look for an exit and get the fuck out. If the danger is real, anyway, you are forced to snap out of self-pity and deal with your emergency. So snap out of it and do something about your impending charred crust.

ETA: Defense mechanisms can be healthy. see: level IV: http://www.delawaretoday.com/Blogs/T...d-and-the-Bad/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms

man, christie got fired quickly

also:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...mepage%2Fstory

ASTON, Pa. — Donald Trump, in softer tones than he normally uses, on Tuesday unveiled several policy proposals for lowering child-care costs that were crafted in part by his eldest daughter, Ivanka, including a plan to guarantee six weeks of paid maternity leave that marks a striking departure from GOP orthodoxy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...cy/?tid=pm_pop

^^ updated from a September article

prediction professor says trump will be impeached (to make room for pence)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-be-impeached/

It would be an efficient strategy for a unvoted-on Final Christian reassertion of Dominion.

you just reminded me of DS9!

anything can happen. the new cult of trump reminds me of peronismo in argentina. still today there's a party with his name there. his first wife became an object of worship and his second wife succeeded him-- so, st. melania of the poor, and president ivanka. but anyway, he could say fuck you i'm starting my own party right now. not sure 2-3 years from now when his popularity wears out that would be an option. but i mean, he could start picking supreme court candidates that are loyal to him, right now.

things are always shifting and the rules are open. unlike computer chess, the final result is not predetermined by the first move-- at least for our small minds in a hypercomplex world.

I have a very thoughtful (but sadly off the record) response to the question "How did we get here?" by a professor emeritus of Political Science and Sociology from a certain rainy PAC-12 university that I REALLY wish I could share with you guys.

In short, it touches on the Democrats' "party elites" appeal and the role of the "whites without college degrees" demographic in this election, as well as a tendency among liberals to jump the gun with overestimations of the power of minority votes. How are these disenfranchised, under-educated white working class voters supposed to respond to the almost joyful suggestion that minorities are becoming the majority (which they hear as "hey, you're gonna be powerless!") when they're already feeling victimized and forgotten?

You can imagine how this might breed hate.

Again, really wish I could share it.

the demographics that play into all this are all wrong! but someone has to be the scape goat right? pointing fingers at statistics that are totally out of place is wrong just like everyone else did in with polls.

"hey you, you feel leftout?...well guess what...yr to blame. dumb asshole!!"

you know what happened? people voted. sad but true.

the cultural war has been going on for some time now but it's boiling. has yet to boil over. that'll be later.

no. he seems to have the right mature attitude about all this. you did yr expressing through yr vote. I hope.

now, im tired of being yr daddy so go grow up.

heads up to Rob too. another in the best way, trying to make sense of all this.

I also like to add that im glad the racial tensions aren't that high where I live. I visited my friend joe tonight who was having a fish fry and we had a good talk over the outcome of the elections. said our peace and opinions/drank some beer, smoked some dank. then he sent me off with a big ol plate of fried fish and fries. we've all had enough of the yelling and screaming in each others face.

I read an article today, about how the non college educated whites are angry because there are less jobs for them. And talk of how machines in factories are replacing people. Which I don't doubt. But it made me think of my father, who in the 80's worked for Xerox, and in the 1990's even owned his small business building copier machines. Obama didn't take their jobs, technology did. The price of modern advancement. Just as my father doesn't repair copier machines anymore because they went obsolete. I can understand that frustration, but Trump isn't going to give those people jobs because many of those jobs don't exist.

I don't believe so much as the fact that these people that voted for Trump agreed with him or totally supported his ideals but, for the fact that they just didn't like Hillary. at all. she and they could not relate to each other. Hillary didn't speak for these people and it made Trump a mirage. nothing to do with hate or racism.

they saw two options. right or left. I would bet 50% of Trump voters are libertarian and do not even know it and that goes for most americans.

if the 'uneducated white person' ever felt downtrodden before then, they definitely feel that way now by the protests and the hate of the democracy system. denied their voice turned into a vote.

I've also read some sick weirdo untrue shit in this thread. there's trash in all races and you damn well fucking know that. not only is the country sad but this whole thread is sad.

poor Such spoke up but didn't survive but I did. I've read every bullshit thing I posted and still stand by it.

One Hundred Million People did not vote. That's what happened.
My assumption is that a large part of those thought that they didn't have to because Clinton would win it anyway.

Big mistake

(says one who hasn't voted in any recent elections ;) )

Voter turnout at 20-year low in 2016



I Don't understand this, how can the turnout be so low if there's a choice to vote AGAINST Trump.


Y'all should not be protesting against Trump, but against those that didn't vote. You should send all of them to Mexico or something, then build that giant wall