When I told her the news this morning, she thought about it a moment and then asked:
“Am I going to have to worry about boys attacking me?”
Welcome to Trump’s America. Because a lot of boys in her school are Trump supporters, and her first concern was that, emboldened by their hero’s win, they would start acting out by physically assaulting females they knew to be Hillary supporters.
I’ve been involved in elections for over four decades and I have never seen the type of fear generated by a newly elected president as Trump’s win has done. I read an article on Facebook about a teacher who had a young black female student who asked, quite seriously, if a Trump election meant that she would become a slave.
Jesus Christ. What the hëll has this country done?
PAD
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Yeah, until this election cycle I didn’t know the political beliefs on Long Island were equal to that of the Deep South.
What the hëll DO we tell the kids now? The world is full of hateful stupid people, and yes, be afraid? Hëll. I’M afraid now.
I’m in Canada and I am also scared.
My son asked if his mom, who is Hispanic and became a US citizen 7 years ago, was going to be deported.
What has it done? Submitted to racist pandering, xenophobia, hatred, and anger in order to elect an unqualified, thin skinned, bullying, man-child as it’s leader.
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The markets are tanking around the world, I’ve already seen more than one article in the foreign press calling the US things like the Jerry Springer show, and I have friends around the world who think the US has lost its mind and/or soul.
The man the founders were afraid of, the amoral demagogue has been elected. Further he has Republican Congress and Senate, therefore no brakes. I am a retired Lieutenant Colonel and was never, never ashamed to be an American. I have voted in nine presidential elections and can’t remember being heartsick over the results. Until now.
Don’t forget he’ll end up nominating the 9th Supreme Court justice as well. Congress won;t let Obama have his choice on that one
I hate it when our side adopts the Republican-type tactics. If we’re going to claim to be the responsible and adult people in the room we have to live up to that.
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But I really wish the Democrats would do all they could to follow McCain and all the other Republicans who said they would work to prevent Clinton from ever appointing a Justice.
My wife actually asked me this morning if it’s time to move to Canada…
I fear for my daughter’s future in Trump’s “America”.
The only vaguely silver lining is people waking up when they see the evil that he and his followers inflict on this country and they can’t hide behind, “The Dems did it!”
Wanna bet they do? After all they blamed Obama for things that happened prior to 2009 when he took office.
Dude, you’re talking about people who blamed Bill Clinton for most of W’s economic failures and for the terror attacks early in W’s term, blamed the Democrats for the economic failures of W presiding over six years of Republicans holding all the cards (Jan. 2001 to Jan. 2007 with their last budget bill running through most of 2008) in Washington, and then blamed Obama in early 2009 for the economic collapse W shepherded in from late 2007 to the election cycle of 2008.
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Of course they will blame Obama for every Trump failing over the next four years. If there is one thing the Republicans have shown themselves to not be despite their claims, it’s a party that actually believes in personal responsibility.
No I’m talking about Rush Limbaugh telling people, right after election day, “welcome to the Obama recession”, even though it had already been in effect for several months. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=limbaugh+obama+recession
I’m talking about Obama being blamed for the Government’s terrible response to the Katrina Hurricane, even though it happened in 2005, years before Obama was even running for office. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=obama%20katrina%20response
And these are just off the top of my head, without looking for other examples.
Uhm… You read what I wrote, right? I was agreeing with you.
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I know several people who blame Obama for the disastrous response to Kitrina. They (of course) voted Trump in (their words) the hopes that Trump not only locked up Hillary, but locked up the “illegal Muslim immigrant” who has been “illegally President” for the last 8 years.
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We are as a nation filled with too many stupid people for democracy to survive here.
Hëll, a couple of weeks back, the Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper interviewed a Trump supporter at a rally that was demanding to know why Obama was on vacation instead of at the White House when the WTC fell.
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They keep getting stupider, and because they’re against birth control, they’re out-breeding the rest of us.
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I filled out a visa application for New Zealand this morning. I’m not on their ‘highly desired skills’ list, but I might have someone willing to sponsor me lined up.
In a sense, it was. If they’d nominated almost anyone else as their presidential candidate, they’d have had a cakewalk. But, for reasons which defy comprehension, they selected someone with more political baggage than you could fit in a C5-A cargo aircraft and who had shown incredibly poor judgement in the matter of the unsecure home mail thing. She represented ‘politics as usual’ which, clearly, many people are fed up with. Socialist rep or no, Sanders would have walked all over Trump. But the Dems rigged it in Clinton’s favour which also upset some people when they found out. They made [badly] their bed and we now all have to sleep in it. (What? You don’t think this will affect Canada and other countries?)
“Sanders would have walked all over Trump.”
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People need to stop peddling this bovine manure. Really, it’s so much garbage and helps in no way whatsoever other than giving Bernie fans their moment of smug false reality.
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Bernie Sanders would likely have done the same as Hillary. Before you start whipping out polls telling me that Bernie beat Trump in polls back when there was no race between Bernie and Trump; let me point out two facts.
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1) There had been at that point no concentrated effort to undermine Bernie on the national level by the Republicans.
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2) Those polls are many of the same that said Hillary had a 4 point lead going into last night.
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Additionally, we are not a socialist nation. Bernie was too far left for a national leader, and, frankly, only a fool would believe his promises. The problem with Bernie that anyone paying attention could see is that Bernie could promise the moon, but we were voting for President, not King. The President doesn’t write laws, Congress does.
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Bernie Sanders as President gives us two scenarios. He gets nothing done with a Republican Congress or he compromises to the point that his fans call him a traitor and fail to turn out in off year elections- further undercutting his ability.
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Hillary’s promises were more realistic and, like it or not, she probably could have worked out some deals better than Bernie could.
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“But the Dems rigged it in Clinton’s favour which also upset some people when they found out.”
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No they didn’t. They really didn’t. Yeah, Bernie fans loved proving they could be just as disingenuous with their selective editing of the truth and by what “news” sites they suddenly found trustworthy (I laughed my ášš off seeing Bernie fans on Facebook sharing anti-Clinton articles from sites like InfoWars and Breitbart) when flogging that, but the system wasn’t rigged.
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Bernie lost.
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Bernie lost fair and square and legitimately.
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Did the DNC want him to win? Nope. He was a 30+ year independent who switched his status to Democrat (and always planning to switch back to Indie later) in order to use the Democratic Primary to get a higher profile for himself. He wasn’t a Democrat, and many of his followers loudly proclaimed they weren’t Democrats. Gee… The DNC wasn’t keen on someone who still self identified as NOT A DEMOCRAT being the Democratic nominee. That’s not the same as rigging an election.
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They didn’t sneak in and change votes on machines. They didn’t sneak in and throw votes out. They didn’t purge Bernie voters from rolls. They didn’t even change the rules for registering to vote. It wasn’t their fault that Bernie fans couldn’t be bothered to find out basic info like deadlines for registering.
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There was no rigging. Bernie lost to Hillary by every measure and even by the theoretical new rules Bernie fans said the Democratic Primaries should have gone by rather than the ones they used. There was no metric by which Bernie won the primaries, and he lost the primaries without the help of fixing or rigging.
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The only thing the sour grapes Bernie fans pushing this crap are doing is making matters harder to address and fix in the future.
Bernie was the other side to the coin of the American Tantrum. I was one of Martin O’Malley’s advisors on Veterans’ Issues.He is a smart, experienced and genuine person. He could have beaten Trump. Sadly, the two most thoughtful candidate, Kaisch on the right and O’Malley on the left were not selected. Instead the Democrats chose the one candidate that Trump could defeat. And the Republicans chose Trump, and now we have to live with the consequences.
The only thing I am clinging to is yes, half the country that voted signed on for the bill of goods this snake-oil salesman gave them (or, at least, against the opposition). But half did not.
I live in a very Red state, but it only held for Trump by single-digit %, which is crazy. I surrounded by many GOP folks all the time, who were very anti-Obama. And *yet* – they were all equally sickened by Trump, and are grieving with me today.
I have to hope the cooler heads will prevail and the fact that so many people are truly decent and love their neighbors will help get us through this.
Please.
Disappointing to see the Bernie hatred on this site. I can’t let all this Bernie-bashing go unchallenged.
1) Hillary did not beat Bernie “fair and square.” Debbie Wasserman-Schultz deliberately scheduled the debates at times when the fewest people would be watching them. She went on the TV news channels to denounce Bernie’s supporters as violent hoodlums in NV and Bernie as a bad leader who couldn’t control them– total lies. Donna Brazile gave HRC questions in advance of the debates and town halls. The DNC is supposed to be fair and unbiased towards all candidates in the primary. Instead, it did all it could to sabotage Bernie and make Hillary the nominee, and the entire Dem establishment closed ranks around Hillary and tried to bully any dissenters, like Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard. That’s not fair and square, by any measure.
2) The media did everything they could to help Hillary. CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post were especially guilty of marginalizing and belittling Bernie — when they didn’t ignore him completely. At the same time, they ignored stories damaging to Hillary, like election fraud committed in her name, and most recently the hacked Wikileaks emails. The rare times they covered them, they just parroted the HRC party line: “Nothing to see here folks. Plus — Russians!” Worst of all, the AP preemptively declared Hillary the nominee before CA even got a chance to vote. In fact, she wasn’t the nominee until superdelegates voted at the convention in July.
3) This was an election when people wanted a populist to challenge the Establishment and bring about meaningful change. Everyone knew we’d get no change from Hillary. Obama was being honest when he said of her, “She’ll say anything and change nothing.” We could have had change from a real populist, Bernie, but with him out of the race, people had nowhere to turn except to a phony populist, Trump. It was madness for the Dems to nominate a candidate who embodies everything people hate about the Establishment and the status quo. Not to mention that fact that she was under FBI investigation. That alone should have disqualified her.
4) Of course Bernie would have beaten Trump. He beat him in almost every poll, often by double digits. The same voters who liked Trump — white working-class people and independents — loved Bernie and couldn’t stand Hillary. Bernie would have taken those votes from Trump. And, as everyone knows, Bernie attracted young people like neither Hillary nor Trump. He could have locked in a new generation of ardent young Democrats who are probably turned off politics for good by the way HRC dismissed them and ordered them to shut up and vote for her. Sure, that’s the way to motivate young people.
5) If Bernie supporters strike you as smug, we have every right to be. We were right. Everybody gave us a hard time for supporting an “unelectable” candidate. Well, it turns out that Hillary was the unelectable one. And it actually does help for people to acknowledge that we picked the wrong candidate, because we can’t move forward until we accept why we lost and how we have to change as a party. We have to move beyond from the Clinton’s neoliberalism and stop being a center-right corporatist party and become a party responsive to regular people and their concerns again. We have to give voters a real leftist alternative to the right, which Hillary and her ilk did not do. If we go back to Clintonian business as usual as if nothing has happened, we’ll just keep on losing and alienating consituencies that should be ours, like working families in the Rust Belt.
6) Bernie had a message that got people excited and inspired, and everyone knew what it was. Hillary had no message except “I really want to be president” and “I’m not Trump.” That wasn’t enough. Bernie gave people something to vote for; Hillary didn’t.
6) Who cares if Bernie has a D or an I after his name? He’s the best Democrat we’ve got, much truer to traditional Democrat values and ideals than Hillary Clinton and her ilk ever were.
“If Bernie supporters strike you as smug, we have every right to be”
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No, but they do have every right to be embarrassed.
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Again, you cite polls from six months or more before the election and when the RNC was really doing nothing to attack him. Polls that far out are typically meaningless and off every election. That time of year in 2012, Mitt was beating Obama in polls. So, just based on that your claims are meaningless.
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Plus- You mean the same polls that had Hillary winning? Yeah… You keep on pushing that one after this election year.
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Saying Bernie “would have won” based on polls in March and April holds about as much credibility as saying “Hillary is will win” based on polls two weeks out from the election.
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Beyond that…
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“Disappointing to see the Bernie hatred on this site. “
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It’s not Bernie hatred to inject fact into Bernie fans’ statements. Plus, I don’t hate Bernie.
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Now, the Bernie fans that should be embarrassed by their actions but lack the self awareness to do so? That might be another matter.
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If you claim you supported Bernie and that Bernie could have won, then the fact is that Hillary should have won.
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Hillary was far closer to Bernie on many issues than Trump, and Trump was the polar opposite of Bernie on dámņëd near everything. Bernie asked his “supporters” to vote for Hillary.
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But a lot of you didn’t.
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As a matter of fact, a lot of social media groups supporting Bernie were filled with “supporters” who claimed that, nope, now that Bernie sold his soul to the man for 30 pieces of silver he couldn’t be trusted or listened to anymore.
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So Bernie supporters, acting like petulant children who were spiteful that they couldn’t have their way, flipped him and everyone else the bird.
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You wanted Coke, Hillary was Pepsi. Bernie said go with the Pepsi for a while because at least then things might still be moved towards you getting Coke that way.
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Bernie “supporters” said, “Fûçk you, sellout.” And then they helped ensure that everyone drank sewer water for four years.
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So, no, it’s not Bernie I dislike. It’s many of the people who “supported” him who proved to be little more than petulant children by the end of it.
Not that it helps greatly over the next four years of disastrous social and economic policies, but these numbers put a lie to the “movement” talking point and the talking point that says Trump energized the turnout and had record numbers voting last night.
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Vote totals in 2012- 65,446,032 Obama to 60,589,084 Romney
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Vote totals in 2016 – 59,299,381 Hillary to 59,135,740 Trump.
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Her totals may go up a bit more as I’m not sure if all of California has come in, and that’s a heavily populated state that went heavy Democrat in voting.
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So voter turnout was down for both Republicans and Democrats, just more so for Democrats.
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For that matter, Trump underperformed against McCain’s totals in 2008 where the popular vote was 69,498,516 Obama to 59,948,323 McCain.
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Trump brought nothing new to the table based on voter numbers, Democrats simply failed to get out and vote. Whether they simply didn’t bother or they were torqued off Bernie fans happy to cut everyone’s nose of to spite their faces is another debate entirely.
“Whether they simply didn’t bother or they were torqued off Bernie fans happy to cut everyone’s nose of to spite their faces is another debate entirely.”
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One which should have been held long since.
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Maybe things are different in the U.S., but here I talk to far too many people who are fed up with the back-room dealing politicos who, rightly or wrongly, represent for them the corrupt element which permeates the political landscape. It is one of the reasons why voter turnout often hasn’t been what it should be in Canada for quite some time. They feel politicians are all the same and simply can’t be trusted. We need to bring politics back in the open such that voters (and candidate supporters) can feel they can trust the system once again.
Well, the Dems have a long-standing habit of voter apathy, but that’s usually more of a mid-term problem.
IMO, Clinton’s baggage certainly weighed her down a bit, among other things. Being all but anointed as the nominee long ago didn’t help, either, in the eyes of many who never felt enthusiastic about her as the nominee.
But on the whole, the DNC royally screwed the pooch as well.
Well, it’s not like we’ll have to worry about him for long.
After the inauguration, Trump will get the “football” and the codes. Then while on a diplomatic mission to Russia to see his buddy Putin, Trump will disable our nukes and Vlad will fire his and he can live happily ever after ruling half a planet.
And the guy that helped promote “hate” speech on TV (Faux News)? He was Australian, right? Well he’ll be safe on his side of the planet too.
They took us down playing the long game….
It was nice knowing you.
–Ed
You are not the first to bring this up. But, what is Trump? First and foremost he’s into real estate. Hard to manage this when said real estate is radioactive rubble. Even he’s not THAT dim.
He failed to make money on casinos and alcohol. Are you sure about that?
So sorry to hear about the result and so sorry that it has brought so much fear especially for the children. Where do we go from here?
The scariest thing I saw on FB was a woman responding to this subject by saying “Tell your daughters to grow a thicker skin, sexual harassment is a part of life.”
Really?
REALLY???
I guess to her, letting women suffer unwanted manhandling is a small price to pay as long as Hillary’s not in the White House.
Sad thing is I’ve seen men and women- some elected officials -say the same thing the last six weeks.
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I don’t want to hear a single Republican who supported this ticket to say anything about family values, God, Christianity, or law and order in order to back their arguments for the next four years. They’ve proven that these words and more are meaningless garbage to them that they only pull out to bash others over the head with when they have no intelligent argument to fall back on.
I am absolutely with you here. I know that the facts and the record has been completely ignored by many in the GOP for a long time, never moreso than Trump and his epic “goggles,” but I agree.
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In the past, it has not been worth it to me to try to argue past factual inaccuracies into the mire of the moral superiority complexes on the other side.
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I am way too hurt, and way too angry to let that slide anymore.
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-Sexism? Your guy did that.
-Racism? Your guy did that.
-Mocking the disabled? Yup.
-Lewd behavior? Uh-huh.
-Infidelity? Yes again.
-Likely actually criminal sexual behavior? Yes, though I will give you that’s not proven. YET.
-Nationalism/ xenophobia? Indeed.
-Praise dictators? Shall I roll tape?
-Mock other religions and attack your precious religious freedom, directly? YES.
-Attack people for their service (McCain POW) or their deceased child’s service (Khan family)?
No. Leg. To. Stand. On. With. Me. You. Ðámņëd. Hypocrites.
And you know, from one perspective, I get that it is out there. It is a real part of life that women need to be prepared for. Ignoring it as a possibility and pretending it won’t affect *you* is unrealistic.
I am a woman. I get that.
(I am also a 6’2″ woman, so people do seem to think twice about some crap with me that they do not with my more petite friends).
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Just like many minorities tell their children to act excessively submissive in the face of police authority, it is part of arming yourself with expectations and being prepared for reality.
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THAT SAID-
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IT IS NOT RIGHT, NONE OF IT!!
Anyone who is not actively working toward equality is on the wrong side of history.
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We do need to prepare for the reality that *is*, but we should *not* be willing to feel that is all that can be.
Mr. David, I don’t know how I would have responded to that. I am profoundly grateful at this moment that I have no children. I have only myself to look out for in the coming years. So I will try to live up to what I now have to say.
So I say to everyone out there: look to the vulnerable people out there. Help them where you can. I once heard that he who saves one life, saves the whole world. I think that’s from scripture, but I’m not religious and I have no idea which religion it’s from. It doesn’t matter. Truths like that transcend those classifications. There will be hard times ahead. We need to all endeavor to be people future generations will be proud of.
Lovely sentiment. All of my friends (and even my ravening GOP family 😉 ) are the “helping hand” types, and my friends and I have been talking about that a lot in the last ~24 hours.
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This has scared many of us, in part because it feels like we have been abandoned by such a large swath of the population, and if that is how *I* feel, I cannot fully appreciate how terrified immigrants, and Muslims, and LGBTQA+ must feel right now.
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But then, I realize, everyone I know personally is still the same person they were, and they have always worked for helping and supporting others, and they are not going to change. Even if we were ordered to (which is a preposterous exponent, I grant), we wouldn’t stop.
Just in the interest of honesty, I’m letting you all know that I’m tossing Hillary bashing comments in the trash.
PAD
I hope this doesn’t fall under Hillary bashing.
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I want to make it clear, I despise Trump. I’m trying to give him the same cautious optimism I gave Obama, but like Obama, I think he will ruin it before his first SOTU. However, Hillary was bad candidate.
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I’ve always despised Julian Assange, and his decision to take down Hillary didn’t change my mind, but Wikileaks likely took a toll too. When he released the information showing the fix against Bernie, it was going to suppress the young enthusiastic Bernie voters. And the other things released in those leaks showed her to be what her opponents accused her of. What was tragic about it was that most of this was fairly well-known. Democrats nominated the one person who couldn’t beat Trump.
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I’m not trying to bash Hillary right now. I’m trying to say look at how you got here. Learn from this. My former party still hasn’t learned the right lessons from Obama, and we got Trump. That man will likely ruin the Republican brand for at least a decade if not a generation. If progressives learn the right things from this, you’re going to win in a Reaganesque landslide in four years.
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When Obama won his second term, things looked bleak for conservatives. You’re in that spot now. The next four years will be tough, maybe lose some ground, get angry a lot, and worry a lot. Hëll, I’ll be worrying with you on almost everything but SCOTUS appointments, and even that’s more than iffy. But don’t panic. We’ll likely survive, and as long as you don’t rerun Hillary, you’ll likely win, and win with an electoral mandate.
One of the reasons I couldn’t vote for Trump is the exact thing Caroline is worried about. I’m trying to raise my son to be a gentleman. I could never look him in the eye, and say, “But there’s a different standard for President.”
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You guys think you have it bad, but look at this way. You don’t have to spend the next four years defending this guy. Most Republicans will likely fall into that trap. Also next election you’re going to have the choice to vote for someone else. Unless he changes his attitude, I’m going to be stuck trying to find a third party, or figuring out who I’m going to write in… again. It’s bad, but I think in the long run, it’s going to work in your favor. My experience is that when Democrats lose an election, they put on brave airs, and act like they secretly won it. In this case, I think in losing this battle, you likely won the whole dámņ war.*
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I don’t quite believe I’m trying to encourage Democrats right now. I’m usually diametrically opposed to your politics, but after coming here for a few years, it kinda hurts to see you guys so down. While I might wish I could play poker with the news readers at the various cable networks, I have some affection for PAD and the rest of the regulars here.
Peter,
At a time like this, you need to remember the first tenet of Null-A, ‘The map is not the territory.’ The media have built up this map of Donald Trump as a monster that eats children, molests women, and is just short of the anti-Christ. DO NOT BELIEVE IT!!!!!
Does he have his faults, of course he does. Did Hillary have here faults? Of course!But both sides of this contest has done their very best to vilify the opposition. Do not make the mistake of confusing that false model for the actual people they are based on. Neither were monsters (or, both were, but for very different reasons… 😉 and our children need not live in fear any more today than yesterday.
“But both sides of this contest has done their very best to vilify the opposition”
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I’m so sick of hearing this “both sides did it, both sides are just the same” utter crap.
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When one side spends 30 years making up lies and engaging in relentless character assassination IT IS NOT THE SAME as the other side pointing out things their opponent has actually said and done.
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Yes, both sides try to show where the other is unfit. But Trump lying about Clinton and Benghazi/email/Vince Foster fantasies is not the same as Clinton speaking the truth about Trump’s actual bankruptcies, lawsuits and what he’s actually said.
First, let me say I really appreciate what you are saying, and trying to do. We do need to find some common ground, and admitting that televised punditry and talking head-ism is not doing us any favors and arguably is a big contributor to the divided state in which we find ourselves.
Now-
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The concern I have is that the worries I hold are in direct correlation to the things he has *actually* said. From his own mouth. On tapes of entire, un-edited stump speeches and debates, that I have watched with my own eyes. We can get into the subjectivity of perceived reality here, but I am going to go out on a limb that my experiences seem to dove-tail well with many others’ apparent perceptions of What The Hëll They Just Watched.
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I am not trying to be cute; I am trying to bring home that I feel these things that scare me are things that have passed through minimal filtering, and though I have seen some commentary afterward, which may have been inflammatory and attempting to blow it up (sometimes bigger than it needed to be, I will grant you), *I have the empirical evidence* on STACKS of problems on the Trump side. I am objectively armed with enough data to form a reasoned stance of “what the Hëll?” from that.
I feel that the things brought out for Hillary were often cherry-picked bits of complex issues that we did not have all the facts on (and for something like Benghazi, we never will as a lot is classified, but those who did felt like it did not need to go forward). It is not to say that they could not be problems, and possibly big ones, but, again, I feel like I have actual DATA to dissect and form my opinion on Trump. The data which *I can actually observe* on Hillary does not lead me to the same places.
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The things that scare me about Trump are *his self-professed* stances and beliefs. Now, what some of the supporters do with an implicit, explicit nod from above, signalling that such behavior is ok, is where the real action and acting-out will be, and where there is amplification, there will be people who take what could have been rhetoric and hyperbole (“could,” ahem…) and turn it to real, actual ostracizing, bullying, and much more dangerous behavior.
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This is very much a False Equivalency issue. Hillary has policies and positions with which one can agree, or oppose. She has a long record that can be scruitinized (and has been, by political opponents in proceedings, that have declined to indict her for any wrong-doing; but that is slightly beside the point.) She has made some mistakes along the way; everyone in all walks of life do. Particularly when making the kind of life-and-death balancing decisions of real global politics; there are sometimes only bad decisions to be made.
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HOWEVER: Trump *does not behave like he is part of society*.
AT ALL.
There are people and positions for whom that is annoying, or interesting.
The crazy uncle at the family reunion going on about how he thinks all the wait staff are “illegals” and miming your niece’s spastic movements from her cerebral palsy right in front of her are odious. You try to stuff him in a corner to minimize the damage and then brace yourself for the next Thanksgiving. Seeing that play out in your family dinner is awful. As part of a cringey moment in someone else’s story, it *might* be cathartically funny if you’d lived through that in real life and could relate.
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Being the Diplomat-in-Chief and role model and a million other high-profile things is NOT a case in which that is true.
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I saw a journalist recently (I frankly forget which article, or even platform) but they said it well: Hillary Clinton is a Flawed Politician. Donald Trump is a Flaw in our Politics.
Sadly, demonizing the other side to the point of creating irrational fear has been business as usual in elections for a while. Here’s a link to Biden in 2012 explaining how electing Romney will “put y’all back in chains”: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/14/biden-romneys-wall-street-will-put-yall-back-in-chains/
Earlier, my wife heard from people telling her that G.W. Bush wanted to reintroduce slavery.
Civility: It’s not for breakfast any more.
And four years later you still have the faithful misrepresenting what was said there.
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Good job.
Tell you what. Why don’t you read the linked CNN article (assuming for the moment that you haven’t)? Note that he was speaking to a largely black crowd (according to the article, not according to me). Consider the number of statements by right-wing candidates that are referred to as dog-whistles.
Is there some reason that this *isn’t* a dog-whistle to the left-wing? I mean, seriously.
I wouldn’t have bothered linking the article at all or quoting Biden, except that I can’t actually document what my wife was saying about being told that Bush reintroducing slavery, because she’s just a human being, not a website, so you can choose to ignore that as anecdotal evidence, or a lie, or whatever else allows you to believe that Democrats and Republicans are equally capable (and probably equally busy) in spreading lies about the other.
Ah, well. (And the sad thing here is that I’m actually pretty moderate politically, depending — of course — on your definition of moderate.)
Saw the video. Seen it lots of times. Two things. It was a mixed crowd. Black, white, even a few Asian and Indian (as in Hindu, not native) so he was talking to everyone.
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He was talking specifically about a Romney quote referencing deregulation of Wall Street and financial markets in such a manner that would have allowed predatory practices and other issues that helped lead to greater financial issues in the decade earlier.
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There was no reference to slavery, and he was not speaking to a crowd that was majority black. This was a desperate claim by Romney that went hand in hand with him saying no one was even talking about deregulating Wall Street despite that being a central plank of his campaign.
I’m terrified that he’ll launch a nuke over a mean tweet.
I’m equally convinced that he’ll start WWIII by calling Angela Markle a 2.
And yes, I PRAY that that I’m exaggerating.
We have an interesting situation. Those people who voted for this guy because they couldn’t vote for Hilary are praying that he won’t follow through on his disastrous promises; there are those who saw him as a mirror of their discontent and dseries and don’t realize what his policies are or their implications; and then you have the high school educated supporters who also not understanding Trump’s promises will be the first to suffer. AmThen there’s Ryan who was trying to have it both ways is now saying that Trump, who LOST the popular vote, has a mandate.
I think we all need to walk back from the hate and fear mongering otherwise
America is going to be like that YouTube video where young men were brazenly beating up an old guy in broad daylight for the crime of voting Trump.
I see we are enter the “nomralization” phase, where everyone is pretending that everything is normal and it is going to be ok.
Let me share something. Most of my work is divorce. It is not uncommon for a woman to come complaining that her husband takes drugs, lies, cheats and is abusive. When I point out that he did the same before marriage, I invariably get the response: “I thought he’d change after we got married.”
I just married my husband on October 16th in Riverhead Long Island. We waited 17 years for it to be legal for us to wed. Pence is already working on how to take away my rights. This is more than a “your team lost, deal with it ” the Trump Republicans have been Vicious against minorities. Obama never pointed to people and said the reason America sucks is because of them .
I will miss Obama and all he accomplished and I will fight in every way possible against anything Trump plans to accomplish. He is a nazi
At least on a local level the GLB community is safe. We Dems control the assembly with a super majority and despite the Republicans who may still control the Senate with the rebel Dems, the New York marriage equality act is safe. However Trump/Pence can seek to undo federal benefits and protects, which is a great source of concern. It is likely that Trump will appoint between 2 to 3 Supreme Court Justices and that is absolutely terrifying.
You know, a bunch of people have been reacting to the dustup over the Stephen Bannon appointment into a high powered position in the Trump White House by commenting that the label “alt-right” and its definition are inventions of the MSM. They’re not.
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“Alt-Right” was a label coined by Richard Bertrand Spencer as a new name for his movement. It was basically a dressing up of the white power scum to make them seem more palatable to the people they most wanted to ally themselves with to gain greater power and influence. But who is Richard Bertrand Spencer?
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Spencer is one of the most racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, white supremacists in the country. Spencer advocates for a white homeland for a “dispossessed white race” and calls for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” to halt the “deconstruction” of European culture. The term “Alt-Right” is his creation, and it’s a movement made in his own image. It is what he refers to when he preaches nonsense like this.
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“Our dream is a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans. It would be a new society based on very different ideals than, say, the Declaration of Independence.” — Richard Bertrand Spencer, October 2013
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Richard Bertrand Spencer and his Alt-Right movement have been very open about who they are and what they want. They want America to be as white as possible. Stephen Bannon is well aware of these facts, yet he has openly and in his own words embraced the Alt-Right movement. He has declared himself as a part of it and claimed his goal for his Breitbart website to be the “platform for the alt-right.”
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Congratulations, you voted the racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, white supremacist movement into the White House. This was a surprise to no one who was actually paying attention in the last 12 months, but apparently it is to some of you.
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And those people who are surprised by this (or just don’t care) wonder why people who were bothering to pay attention are marching the streets in protest.
And then there are the hardcore Trump supporters who don’t care and won;t hear a bad thing about Trump. I have have a few friends on Facebook who are that kind…
You can go two ways with this. You can tell her that there is nothing to be afraid of, and that people let their emotions run away with them when they lose an election, but that the vast majority of comments are simply people venting, and that Trump isn’t a monster.
Or, you can tell her that Trump is a monster and that he will come for her in the middle of the night, and that she should learn to hate anyone who says otherwise.
Or they can tell the truth.
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They can say that Trump played to the hateful and the stupid, and now they’re full of themselves and feel like it’s their time again. And those people will act on that hate for a while.
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And I’m speaking as someone who has already had to stand between Trump supporters and the Muslim woman they were targeting, so I know where of I speak here.
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And that was before Trump sent a tingle down all of the hate groups’ legs by handing the keys to massive influence and power in his administration to Stephen Bannon, a longtime hate peddler through the trash site Breitbart and a man the white supremacist groups see as one of their own. Not without reason either. Bannon openly declared he wanted Breitbart to be their platform.
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So now they’re going to be really heady and full of themselves.
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So the smart move is to warn some children that there are Trump supporters out there they should be afraid of. Trump may not have created them- they were already here before this election cycle -but he pandered and played to them, and now they think it’s their time again.
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Of course, children like Caroline should also be told that the šhìŧbágš are in the minority, and the rest of us- as some of us are already doing out there -will stand between the šhìŧbágš and their targets.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Have any other words led to such chaos in a nation?
Kids watch and listen to their parents. And if their parents spent 18 months wailing how despicable and evil the opposition is, and how their eventual nominee is Hitler, Genghis Khan and Caligula all rolled into one, is it any wonder they are scared shitless when this horrendous bogeyman is elected president? Two years ago, the guy who had lived, worked and mingled among New Yorkers for nearly seven decades was just another prominent member of the city’s “old money” movers and shakers. A year later, he’s being likened by many liberals to one of the most evil mass murderers in history. And for what? Because he ran as a Republican? Hëll, if you look at his history, he could just as easily run as a Democrat. He may be a šhìŧŧÿ president, and he may not. But I’d wager big dough he will never ever approach the rarified levels of evil that Hitler did. In other words, those of you who opted to scare the šhìŧ out of yourselves and your kids did it for nothing. I saw some conservatives do the exact same thing when Obama was elected. Get a frickin’ grip.
In Peter’s original post and all the comments under it, there are only two references to Hitler.
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Both are yours.
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One person call someone a Nazi.
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So out of 54 comments so far plus the original header, only two people have mentioned Nazis or Hitler, and you were two of the mentions.
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You can say whatever you want about Trump’s past, but t does include lawsuits for racial discrimination. It also involves praising dictator for oppressing their people and calling soviet leaders who started opening Russia up to freedoms weak for taking their heels of the throats of their people.
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Hëll, the man praised the communist Chinese government for their strong actions against the people at Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen fûçkìņg Square…
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Interviewer: “What were your other impressions of the Soviet Union?”
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Trump: “I was very unimpressed. Their system is a disaster. What you will see there soon is a revolution; the signs are all there with the demonstrations and picketing. Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That’s my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand.”
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Interviewer: “You mean firm hand as in China?”
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Trump: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world—”
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Interviewer: “Why is Gorbachev not firm enough?”
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Trump: “I predict he will be overthrown, because he has shown extraordinary weakness. Suddenly, for the first time ever, there are coal-miner strikes and brush fires everywhere- which will all ultimately lead to a violent revolution. Yet Gorbachev is getting credit for being a wonderful leader and we should continue giving him credit, because he’s destroying the Soviet Union. But his giving an inch is going to end up costing him and all his friends what they most cherish-their jobs.”
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~ Trump, 1990 Playboy interview
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This is a man who thinks bullying and cruelty are strength and virtue. He’s a man who has been known for years now as petty, abusive, and vindictive.
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This is a man who spent the last year-plus running a campaign devoid of any true purpose other than making the stupid people very anger and the angry people very enraged. He ran a campaign built on lies, hate, anger, xenophobia, and racism.
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And, yeah, when you’re regularly doing things like retweeting memes created by white supremicist websites and radio hosts that are filled with fake statistics designed to make blacks in America look like murdering thugs while casting whites as angels or constantly talking to cheering white audiences about “the blacks” being people living their lives in poverty and crime… Yeah, you deserve the “racist” label on your campaigning technique.
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When a part of your campaign tactics is making people angry and afraid of Mexicans- claiming dámņëd near every Mexican coming across the border is a rapist or murderer and occasionally adding in that they’re carrying diseases -you deserve the “racist” label on your campaigning technique.
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When you have as a major campaign strategist a man who has openly declared his affiliation to the white supremacist movement in this country and openly declared a desire to be the man who gives them the instrument for greater visibility and a higher profile and then you give that man a high power position in your administration…
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The problem with Trump is he’s a small minded, bullying, man-child with very thin skin. The other problem is he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s totally lost now that he’s looking at the job ahead of him. All he’s got to offer is bluster and- as he tried to pull with the Ford plant news -lies. But in his stupidity and through his campaign he created an environment where the white supremacist groups- the alt-right, the KKK, the old guard skinheads -all think it’s their time again and that they’re free to start taking their slime from out of the shadows and into the public square again.
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And then he appointed someone that all those twisted bášŧárdš see as one of their own to a high position of influence and power…
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It’s not just Trump’s stupidity that people are worried about. His stupidity is going to sink the economy and likely damage our standing in the world, but we can recover from that just as we had to after the Bush administration spent eight years doing that. What people are also worried about- and dámņëd rightly so -is the ignorance, stupidity, anger, and hate he fueled for the last year to get his base to vote for him.
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The really stupid ones are already acting out on their hate. I’ve even had a face to face with it once already less than a week after the election. Guys like David Duke and- even worse -guys like Richard Bertrand Spencer are crawling out of the woodwork because Trump signaled to them all that it was their time again.
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And now Donald Trump has selected Jeff Sessions for the Attorney General slot?
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Jeff Sessions, the man who was all for HB 56, otherwise known as “Papers Please.”
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The man who thought it was a good thing to say that, hey, you have kind of brownish skin and an accent, so that’s probably cause to stop you and make you prove you live here.
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Or, as most sane people call it, racially profiling and illegally harassing people.
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And, frankly, the lass said about Mike Pence’s fanaticism right now the better.
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So, yeah, I think people have a lot of legitimate reasons to worry about what President Fûçkfáçë Von Clownstick is going to do and stir up right now.
Typing on tiny portable devices with touchscreen keyboards and an auto-correct that keeps changing you tenses sucks.
If only you had tiny hands…
I hate you…
I think it says more about the young lady’s upbringing and education that she worries she’ll be attacked after an election than it does about the state of the nation.
Given what was seen and experienced by many in the weeks after the election, it was a question and worry that was far from off base.
I saw and experienced a bunch of temper tantrums and cry-ins on the part of those whose candidate lost. I don’t think that makes her comments on base.
Good for you.
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In the meantime, I and others have literally had to stand between idiots shouting slurs and spouting off about how Trump is going to make America great again and the people they were attacking and harassing.
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This is part of something I wrote on Facebook on November 10th.
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I’m out grabbing groceries. Me and another guy just had to walk a woman to her car. She was Muslim and wearing a head wrap. Not even the full face and/or body bit, just a head scarf. Three jáçkáššëš stepped in front of her and told her she had to remove it. Before the other guy and I stepped up next to her, I’m pretty sure they were about to snatch it off her head. We told them to leave her alone and started walking her to her car. They started walking away but yelled back at her to get ready because when Trump gets in “trash like you” will be illegal again and “sent back where you came from.”
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When we got to her car she was crying. She said two things. She thanked us and she said she was born here.
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When you run on a campaign pandering to hate, stupidity, xenophobia, and bigotry and the dûmbáššëš in this country help you win, you empower and embolden the šhìŧbágš like those three guys.
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I’m not alone in having had to do something like that, and garbage like that is still going on to both greater and lesser degrees as a segment of Trump supporters out there suddenly feel that they have the right to attack the people they think Trump said it’s okay to attack.
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The KKK are planning victory marches to celebrate their “revival” under Trump. White Supremacists are thrilled that Trump has placed a man who has in the past openly embraced them into one of the highest positions in his administration, and they talk about it as if it’s a signal that it’s their tie again.
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So, yeah, anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to Trump and his campaign had every legitimate reason to wonder about such things that week and maybe even now.