One step above Alyssa Milano posting here, y'all, I know you're all better than that.
counterpoint: The media doesn't have to push the narrative because that's what is going to happen. Your decision to vote or not should be up to you and not what the media says.
you don't think Trump is going to do an election coup? In the country that welcomed the 21st century with Bush v. Gore?
Woof. Long answer, here we go.
Bush v Gore, while a dumbass miscarriage of justice, ultimately wouldn't have won Gore the election. By most recounts, Gore would have lost by a very thin margin. And that reflects polling at the time, Gore and Bush ran within a percentage point of each other. Now, did Jeb fuck with ballots to confuse voters? Sure, and that kind of tampering can impact the vote, but not by huge margins. And unfortunately that's not the legal challenge that Gore mounted anyway, they just wanted to recount the ballots which I maintain should have happened but the end result is that Gore would have lost anyway so I don't truly in my heart care also because the entire American electoral system is a fucking mess anyway.
So what's Trump going to do? He's a spoiled rich kid who hates being president, who hates being bossed around and going to meetings and shit. He wants out of this. He'll put up a token resistance but anytime anyone has stood up to him he's backed down instantly. Why wouldn't that happen now?
Probably, but the media clearly still wants to make sure EVERYONE shows up to vote. I don't think it was ever true that Trump's going to try anything. He's a coward and he just talks a lot. I don't take him at his word because he's rarely followed through on anything he's said.
i mean.. hes actually pretty consistently given away the game about actions the administration plans to take by just blabbing them like its no big deal.
im more inclined to think the coup is something hes been ked to believe is totally normal by the people around him that want to maintain power and thats why hes saying it than that he has any kind of conniving motives around voter enthusiasm manipulation.
theyve literally got like a dozen different vote suppression, fraud, and otherwise schemes in the works, so... meh.
It's interesting to me because when you look at what he actually says, you can see it's a dumbass rambling reply like everything he says. There seems to be no thought put in it. It sounded like he was trying to say, well, I'm not worried about transition of power because I'm not going to lose, but his pudding brain can't articulate that clearly.
taaapiooocaaaa we just love our gelatin dont we folks the biggest beautiful puddins
my worry is more that the military industrial complex views him as a useful idiot that allows them to do the imperialism at home, while continuing the forever wars that they love so dearly
He's shit on them a lot and a lot of them fucking hate him, plus he hasn't kicked off a war in four whole years. The military definitely doesn't like him.
ohh nooo, hes so mean to us while also letting us do exactly what we want, and drone striking an iranian general that was acting as a diplomatic envoy at our request, oh nooooo hes sooo bad for us
Heh apparently he was advised NOT to do that and the advisers were mad about it
heh apparently we dont actually want to do all these warcrimes we keep doing, we are just so mad about these warcrimes that just keep happening, we keep telling folks "nono dont do the warcrimes" but it just keeps happening heh
Oh I mean trust me I know they want to commit some, just not THAT PARTICULAR one at THAT PARTICULAR time.
yeah okay. given that they convinced hum that bombing assad would be a bad whoopsy, im pretty sure they couldve convinced him not to do that one too.
they didnt
Can we just engage with each other? This feels unnecessarily hostile and I'm having a hard time talking to you.
... i havent even called you a lib once.
the issue youre having is that you want to convince me of something, and im not being convinced or even entertaining the idea of being convinced.
you can feel free to believe whatever you want bud, but im going to shitpost when you say shit like "no achktuchally the military industrial complex haaates that we murdered an iranian! they havent wanted to go to war in iran lately at all!"
I'm really not trying to convince you, but it is hard to feel like you're being heard when someone sarcastically shoots down things you say. I didn't even say what you paraphrased, so why'd you get that?
you literally said that trumps military advisors were mad about us bombing soleimani. an iranian general. who was acting as a diplomat. which is a warcrime.
"Heh ... the advisers were mad about it"
?? where would i get that idea ??
Do you think that we're engaging in a way that would make me feel like you want to talk to me? When you sarcastically refer to things I said and rephrase them to positions I don't hold? Saying things like "achktuchally"? Would you want to keep talking to someone who talked to you like that?
oh, im sorry, you think civility is important. i didnt realize. how dare i be vaguely rude about your opinion on the internet by doing a meme.
:LIB:
I actually don't give a fuck about civility, I just thought I could talk to someone else on the left without feeling like I'm trying to talk to an AI bot whose neural net was CTH and 9gag.
and now youre calling me a bot because i dared call your shit take about the military hating trump over bombing an iranian that they wanted to bomb a shit take... oh how the turns table
You didn't even call it a shit take because you were too busy passive-aggressively meming. And that's why this sucks because it's all disingenuous shit.
dude... this is literally a forum that is all about passive aggressive meming.
yes, i could probably be nicer, but youre getting all bent out of shape because im not writing a big long sincere effort about why exactly it is that thinking trump is hated by the warhawks is absolute nonsense. the simple fact that he bombed a diplomat should clarify that for you
yes, i could probably be nicer
Let's pretend that's all you said and start over in terms of talking to each other.
no, because that takes it out of the context in which it was said.
the context being that you really need to stop expecting people to conform to your expectations of conduct
I don't expect people to conform to shit. I'd hope that I can talk to another leftist without him being a cock. But you're pretty clear on where you stand there, so just stop talking to me.
"you wont let me take your sincere statements out of context so that i can ignore the meaning behind them? never talk to me or my posts again!"
oh fuck off
That's literally what you were doing with my statements, don't get butthurt now.
buddy pal friendo, when you say "the warhawks hate trump!" and i say "trump bombed am iranian general acting as a diplomat" thats not removing context, its adding it.
when you respond "no but they couldnt stop him his advisers hated that!" and i say "they literally stopped him from attempting the same thing to the syrian president" thats not removing context, its adding it.
when you say "imma pretend you only said this one part that i like and ignore entirely why you said it!" thats removing context.
can you really not see the difference?
When I say that the military dislikes Trump and you say that he bombed someone, that doesn't mean the military doesn't still fucking hate Trump. And when he went against their advisement one time and didn't go against their advisement the next time, that doesn't mean they didn't want him to drone strike Soleimani. So then when you admit you'd been acting like an asshole but that you felt justified, I thought it would be nice to just overlook your dumbass justification.
Anyway! Are we gonna keep doing this? This is tiresome.
"when you admit youd been acting like an asshole"
no.
anyways fuck off
I'd still be happy to talk, but you'd need to stop being so hostile. Feel free to message me if you want.
I don't think it's a coordination, I think you've got libs who work in media and they worry this will happen, and their only response, as always, is VOTE. So they think publishing this will scare people into voting because that's what everyone thought Bush was going to do in 2004 and in 2008, which is still something I remember.
I actually don't think Trump would, because he seems to fucking hate being president. He doesn't get to do whatever he wants and he gets criticized a lot, both painful things for a narcissist like him. He didn't want to win anyway. He's looking for an out so he can go Roger Ailes himself at OANN.
I mean, when? Even in 2016, Hillary ate shit. Trump didn't somehow deftly outflank her. The dude's a complete dipshit and just openly says all the stupid shit he's going to do. It's caught him with his pants down a million times. Any remotely competent opposition would have had him drinking milk from a saucer by now.
Yeah but I mean what exists for him to seize power? If he loses, there's not really anything keeping him in, informal norms or no. In fact the transition from administration to administration is probably one of the only godforsaken American institutions that actually HAS formal norms.
Honestly our biggest fear should be whatever dumb shit he does on his way out as a lame duck because yeah he can tear a lot of shit out on his way.
I get the sense Trump is playing up the "I miiiiiiiiight not leave" thing as showmanship, and to fuck with liberals
Going for a third might actually endanger him personally, I think he's smart enough to see that
Exactly. He plays it up because he knows it triggers the libs and makes his supporters laugh and cheer. There's zero fuckin chance he resists leaving office
He's a business dork. They never say yes or no to anything. Plus like you said on showmanship, I think he's going to pretend to his base that he was forced out or whatever.
I don't think we lose anything by considering it a possibility. It's not like anyone is getting this out of nowhere. He was just asked about it this week and then responded that he might have to throw out ballots to not hand over power. That could be him being offended that anyone would think he'd lose a fair election or it could be him announcing his intent to cheat. I don't see any reason to not think about it at all. Either way there's a good chance of there being unrest following the election.
