#i WILL find ways to hurt trumps presidential term if it kills me

[anexperimentallife]

So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:

First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.

So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.

(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)

And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.

Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?

If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.

I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).

So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.

"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"

That's fucking kindergartner thinking.

Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.

Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.

I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.

So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."

Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.

And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)

"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.

You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.

The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.

[phillipcole]

Post-AGT Appearance 1269: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert October 3

Demon Dress would have finished sixth last weekend with a little less than $3 million at the box office. It would have opened last weekend in most foreign countries it was going to be in, first in Japan, with a worldwide total of $25 million so far.

Man of my Dreams would have held at 6 last weekend. Canadian Wildfires would have fallen to 71 on the pop charts but risen to 75 country. A song from Demon Dress would have hit the top 40 last weekend, but I would have nothing to do with the lyrics or tune.

Colbert would put me on in the last 2 segments, recorded earlier in private.

Colbert: Our final guest tonight recorded his visit earlier. He has a hit song high on the charts, a film called Demon Dress doing very well, an upcoming spoken word album and more projects than most people can count. You can, because I have the smartest audience in late night television. So here's the interview I recorded earlier this evening in an undisclosed location with Phil Cole.

(Tape begins.)

Colbert: Phil, we are recording this in an underground bunker because you fear being killed. Is that true?

PBC: (Holding a stack of mail) Yes, these are death threats.

Colbert: Have you alerted the authorities?

PBC: Some of these are from the authorities.

Colbert: Why do people hate you so much/

PBC: I speak the truth.

Colbert: And the truth hurts a lot of feelings, doesn't it?

PBC: Yes, big feelings sometimes.

Colbert: First of all, you didn't participate in the Screen Actors strike.

PBC: I turned in my membership.

Colbert: That means you might not act in any more movies, except the one you produce yourself.

PBC: No one hired me anyways.

Colbert: Now you're the leader of Phillip and Cole's Variety Team.

PBC: Yes.

Colbert: And the team got a little smaller recently.

PBC: Yes, the Ranting 109-Year-Old Man is no longer ranting.

Colbert: But you have an album coming.

PBC: Yes, The Ranting old Man's best Routines comes out November 15.

Colbert: Now Demon Dress is a big hit, but you have another movie on the way, right?

PBC: Yes, January 12 Miley Cyrus becomes The Toad Woman of Tennessee.

Colbert: What's that about?

PBC: She plays a singer.

Colbert: She should be good at that.

PBC: Yes, after her singing and acting career start to flatline she goes into porno, specializing in tongue work. Hoping to do better she studies toads and slowly a doctor turns her into a toad woman.

Colbert: Ha ha I can't wait to see that.

PBC: Everyone has to wait until January 12.

Colbert: Now the other night on a different show you made a bold statement about the next Presidential election.

PBC: Yes.

Colbert: Would you like to repeat it, or extend it maybe.

PBC: Yes, our country can not survive another Donald Trump administration.

Colbert: He's been accused of 3 serious crimes.

PBC: Yes, and for at least one of them he is definitely guilty and the charge should be treason!

Colbert: So instead of putting him back in...

PBC: Anyone paying attention can see that Joe Biden is not the antidote. So please, Republicans and Democrats, choose one of the good candidates. Voters please also consider the Libertarian candidate. I'm trying hard to find the party a good one this time.

Colbert: So that's why you're recording this in an underground bunker, right?

PBC: Yes.

Colbert: Now, every time you appear on our show you eliminate one of the top 10 suspects about the last name that makes your colleague Phillip sick. Last Friday Senator Diane Feinstein passed away. Was she perhaps the last name?

PBC: No!

Colbert: That's emphatic.

PBC: I told her to retire in 2018, knowing she couldn't finish the term, but as far as I know, no one on the team ever found her particularly offensive.

Colbert: now let's look at the top 10 list of suspects. It starts with Nancy Pelosi, then people like Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin all the way down to tenth place Harvey Weinstein. Which one are you going to eliminate tonight?

PBC: King Charles III.

(Tape ends.)

Colbert: After the break Phillip and Cole's Variety Team tells us what they think of King Charles III. Stay tuned.

[mitigatedchaos]

On Having “Whiteness”

(~2,200 words, 11 minutes)

Summary: A metaphysics of “Whiteness” has overtaken actual sociology in the Democrats’ popular consciousness - blinding them to racial interventions that might actually work and taking them off the table of political discussion.

-★★★-

Donald Moss - On Having Whiteness, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (emphasis mine)

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

So both @arcticdementor [here] and @samueldays have linked me to this allegedly “peer-reviewed” article.  The Federalist has a bit more context, but it doesn��t really make the situation better.

Race Theory Problems

Obviously, this is a work of sloppy thinking.  The categorization of “white supremacy culture” or “whiteness” used by people like this is vague handwaving that describes being bad at management as “white supremacy culture,” and which in general labels universal human problems, like organizations being resource-constrained, or people being impatient, as somehow uniquely “white.” 

But this sort of article is really what I mean when I say that social justice’s approach to “whiteness” is about “spiritual contamination.” 

Samueldays called it “the ‘I’m not touching you’ of inciting race war,” and I may cover more of his response to it later.  Suffice it to say, it has the same general kind of problems as “stolen land” arguments (where an entire present population’s living area becomes undefined), unbounded “reparations” arguments where no amount of transfers by the designated oppressor are considered to clear the debt, and so on.

This is exactly the sort of material that conservatives are seeking to remove government funding for and prohibit from use in employment training.  This is the kind of material that the Trump Anti-CRT executive order prohibiting racial scapegoating was meant to cover.

Race Theory Definitions

This kind of stuff is, of course, not really defensible, so usually at this point people will argue that 1), “that’s not real critical race theory,” and then 2), “it’s just a few weirdos.”  For those, I would say...

1) If it’s not real “Critical Race Theory,” then what is it?

We can’t measure or disprove Moss’s proposed “Whiteness,” and this malevolent psychic entity said to “deform” white people obviously isn’t based on a comparison with other human populations or historical periods.  When it comes to “insatiable” appetites, one study argued that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that it showed up in the carbon record.

At best, it’s sloppy race science as practiced by an amateur, like twitter users idly speculating whether whites have ‘oppressor epigenetics’ - but with the veneer of official status.  And it has similar risks to proposing that there is such a thing as biologically-inherited class enemy status, and other collective intergenerational justice logic.

Presumably, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association is intended as a journal of science, or at least serious scholarship, and not of bad racist poetry with no rhyme or meter.

Moss provides a relatively pure example of whatever-this-is. I need to know what it’s called, so we can get rid of it.

Race Theory Prohibitions

2) If it’s just the product of a few race-obssessed weirdos, then it won’t hurt to get rid of it.  So get rid of it.

The actual text [PDF] of the Trump Anti-CRT order does not ban teaching about the Trail of Tears, or Jim Crow, and so on, and both of those topics were taught in school before this recent wave of whatever-this-is was popularized.

Trump’s order banned teaching that any race is inherently guilty or evil due to the actions of their ancestors, and the level of resistance to this has been bizarre.

These teachings don’t seem to provide gains in relatively objective metrics like underrepresented minority test scores (or at least that’s not something I’ve seen - and the continued opposition to standardized tests suggests proponents do not expect it to), so it’s unclear just what of value is going to be lost here. 

Collateral Damage

Samueldays wrote,

Because right now the conservatives talking about "critical race theory" as they fire in the direction of Moss et al. are very important in preventing another race war and you have a moral duty to help them aim, not throw smoke for Moss.

Right now Conservatives are assessing just how much stuff they’re going to have to rip out to make “standardized tests are racist” and “it’s impossible to be racist to white people” stop.  While this may not be the message that Liberals are intending to send, it is the message that many people are receiving.  (I discuss problems with both, and some alternatives to handle them better, in another post.)

Liberals need to get out in front of this.  Sooner is better.

If Conservatives think that they have to gut hostile work environment law in order to avoid their children being taught that they’re permanently morally contaminated by their race, and Liberals have no means to actually close race gaps within a 4-8 year period (and right now it’s slim pickings on that front), Conservatives are just going to gut hostile work environment law.

Aether

From their perspective, why not? 

Everything in the world is only six degrees of separation from something racist.  Anything in the world can be tied to something racist.  (So can anyone.)

But nowhere in this pervasive atmosphere of tying things to racism are there solutions.  There are guesses based on correlations.  Proposals.  But usually when you reach out to grab them, to really get a grip on whether it’s correlation or causation, they dissolve in your hands.  The few that do have any solidity to them are moderate in their success (such as Heckman’s involvement in the Reach Up & Learn study in Jamaica) - and don’t appear to be based on the same style of thinking as shown by Moss and others.

It isn’t just that trying to turn combating an invisible, non-measurable, unfalsifiable, parasitic psychic force into an actual political program would inevitably be oppressive and totalitarian.  It isn’t just that articles like Moss’s are an in-kind donation to the 2024 DeSantis Presidential campaign for that very reason.

It isn’t just that unfalsifiable Metaphysics of Whiteness content like White Privilege Theory has been found to lower sympathy for the poor, and that present diversity training doesn’t work...

Race Content Crowding

This stuff is crowding out legitimate scholarship.  I don’t just mean in terms of funding, tenure track positions, or high-flying magazine coverage - all limited by their nature.  I mean among the base.  I have been interrogating Democrats on Twitter for months, and not a single one has been able to cite a strongly-demonstrated intervention that’s being held back, or even a past one that was conclusively demonstrated to be effective.  They can often recite a list of racial grievances on cue.

Tucker Carlson could run boomer_update.exe on a list of every educational failure since the 1970s, and they would be reduced to sputtering accusations of racism against people who increasingly don’t care.  He could do this tomorrow.  The only thing that prevents this is Tucker Carlson’s conscience.

I discovered the Reach Up & Learn program through Glenn Loury - described as a ‘conservative.’ Scott Alexander, attacked by the New York Times crew, brought some success with multivitamins to my attention.  When I first heard about the Perry Preschool program, I believe it was from someone well to the right of him.

About the only one brought to my attention by the Democratic establishment constellation proper was lead removal, and the gains on that are probably getting tapped out.  The frame it was proposed in was not Critical Race Theorist, as this was likely in 2012. 

As it stands, I’m more likely to find something that works from someone the New York Times would disapprove of than someone they wouldn’t.  Or, as Wesley Yang wrote,

Reality has been contrarian for a while.

Succeed Early

Even if we suppose that Conservatives are inherently racist, Liberals have a duty to support interventions that work.  In fact, the more that Conservatives are a seething, undifferentiated mass of uniform racial hatred, the more important it is that Liberals stick to racial interventions that work, because nobody else is going to fix the problem if Liberals get it wrong.

It isn’t just a matter of resources per year.  It’s also a matter of time.

From Heckman’s website,

Although Perry did not produce long-run gains in IQ, it did create lasting improvements in character skills [...] which consequently improved a number of labor market outcomes and health behaviors as well as reduced criminal activity.

Even if we propose an unlimited amount of funding (which is not the case), people and politicians only have a limited amount of time and attention each year.  Newspapers only publish so many issues with so many pages each week.  Television programs only cover so many hours for so many viewers each day.  Even the dedicated can only read so many books in a year.

Even though the Perry intervention was imperfect, and the sample size was not as large as desirable, every second Democrat I talked to should have been able to answer the question “can you name an effective intervention?” with “what about Perry Preschool?”

Every year that we have entire cottage industries working on and popularizing contentious, ineffective, and backlash-provoking Metaphysics of Whiteness content, based on oversimplified oppressor/oppressed binaries, or theories in which power is held collectively by races as monolithic blobs (rather than modelling power as a network of relations between individuals, in which an individual of any background might be destroyed by the racialized relations in their environment), is another year we haven’t spent that energy on finding or implementing something that actually works.

This isn’t just an individual failure by Democrat voters, who typically have day jobs to focus on - it is a failure by the institutions who are supposed to inform and guide them.  This institutional failure likely contributed to the popularization of Metaphysics of Whiteness content in the first place.

Okay, now what?

Donald Moss is a crackpot.  Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable.  The idea that there is a psychic parasite of “Whiteness” is not a legitimate field of study; it’s parasociology.  The idea that “a sense of urgency” is “white supremacy culture” isn’t much better. [1]

We already tried isolating this content to obscure corners of academia, where individuals with high racial attachment could write about it.  It leaked out. 

We need to get this stuff out of the popular consciousness to make room for stuff that might actually work.  The best way to do that may be to cut off the source.  Since Donald Moss is a crackpot, perhaps it’s time we started treating him, and everyone else like him, as what they are.

People involved in Metaphysics of Whiteness content, like Donald Moss, need to be (figuratively) grabbed by the shoulder, and firmly, but politely, told to stop.  Society has been recklessly handing out race-colored glasses to the general population since around 2014, resulting in a rise in amateur race science, of which both right-wing Twitter users memeing about Italians and Metaphysics of Whiteness participants like Moss are examples.  If they do not stop, they must be stripped of institutional authority.  Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable and we should not be certifying it.

If institutions refuse to reduce the authority of Metaphysics of Whiteness practitioners, those institutions must have their accreditation penalized, and their government funding reduced or eliminated, just as if they insisted on producing study after study on magic or ESP which failed to yield results.  If they do not comply, they must be replaced.

It’s possible that Metaphysics of Whiteness content might have had some obscure, niche function in terms of the exploration of the idea space. 

However, as it has displaced popular knowledge of interventions that might work, and the attention given to them in the political system, Liberals should seek to surgically remove it, at the very least until some more effective interventions see the political light of day.

If not, Conservatives will attempt to remove it with a bludgeon.  "They described an entire race as ‘voracious, insatiable, and perverse,’ and here’s the citation for the exact page where they did that,” is perfect material with which to abolish entire departments.

-★★★-

[1] If we go a bit farther out, scholars of “Decolonization” argue that the field is wholly unconcerned with “settler futurity,” a phrase not much less ominous than describing “whiteness” as “incurable.”  It seems that their entire job should be to answer the very difficult questions they have decided not to.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome, friends! I hope everyone had a thankful Thanksgiving!

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): I had turkey. I wish I had duck.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): “#sex-misconduct-2020” — what a name for a Slack channel. My god.

micah: Sign of the times.

For discussion today: A wave of sexual misconduct allegations has hit political and media figures. So we’re going to take the long view today and talk about how all this might play out in the context of the 2020 presidential campaign. One much–talked–about 2020 prospect, Al Franken, has already been accused in multiple incidents.

So, first we’ll talk about how sexual harassment and assault allegations could directly affect the 2020 field. Then we’ll discuss how the issue generally could affect the 2020 race.

harry: Sounds good to me.

micah: Let’s start with Franken ��

clare.malone: He can’t run for president.

micah: Cards on the table: I think this is a huge blow for Democrats.

clare.malone: In what sense? As a party, because he can’t run?

micah: Yeah. I thought he would have been a really strong 2020 candidate against President Trump.

harry: You drafted him very high in our potential 2020 Democratic nominees draft.

clare.malone: But there are a lot of other strong candidates too, so I’m not sure it’s a huge loss in terms of Democrats’ chances in 2020.

Now, did how Democrats reacted to the Franken allegations hurt them? Maybe.

micah: Hold that thought!

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Franken himself has not been high on his 2020 chances. He has repeatedly said that he will not run. Maybe he knew that some parts of his comedy career and pre-Senate life would emerge and make it difficult to run.

clare.malone: Or he was just saying that, playing the coy politician game of demurring until …

micah: Are we all in agreement that he can’t run now?

perry: Not fully. No. Politics is a male-dominated field. Even the Democratic primary, the donor class is men.

clare.malone: I think so … Harry?

Should Franken launch a comeback bid??

micah: I mean, there is a loooong time until the 2020 primary heats up.

harry: The allegations will make it very difficult for him to run.

clare.malone: Democrats have enough other competent candidates that Franken is just not a good investment, given other options.

harry: A majority of Democrats think that sexual harassment within their party is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem. I don’t think they’re going to choose someone accused of it.

clare.malone: There are a lot of powerful women’s advocacy groups out there in the Democratic universe, guys …

micah: Is Joe Biden in the same position?

clare.malone: Has he been accused of something I’m unaware of?

harry: Biden’s performance at the the Anita Hill hearing is problematic.

micah: Yeah, I was talking about the Hill thing.

perry: There are videos — and I think it was featured on “The Daily Show” — of times that Biden has touched women in odd ways, like Ash Carter’s wife during Carter’s swearing-in as the defense secretary in 2015. And, yeah, his handling of the Hill hearing.

clare.malone: I mean, I find that stuff not all that convincing if I’m going to be perfectly honest and out there.

It seems very different from what Franken is accused of — forcibly kissing someone, grabbing breasts.

micah: Yeah, that seems right to me.

clare.malone: Now, that’s not to say that if someone said “he grabbed my ass” I wouldn’t believe it.

But I just don’t find the argument that he’s a hugger and maybe too much of a shoulder-rubber to be all that convincing.

perry: Biden is not the same as Franken, of course. But would I want Anita Hill publicly criticizing me during a Democratic primary in which I’m running against Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and/or Amy Klobuchar. No.

clare.malone: Yeah, of course.

micah: Yeah, let’s just take the Hill part of this. How big a problem would that be for him?

harry: I guess I wonder whether the party will nominate an old white guy who has a history of seeming to be non-supportive of a woman accusing a powerful man of sexual harassment at a critical point in his career.

clare.malone: The Hill stuff would be brought up, but here’s the thing: Democrats are going to choose Biden if they think they need a person to cross over to the disaffected Obama-Trump voters. And I think those voters wouldn’t care all that much about Anita Hill.

Now, do I think Biden is going to be the candidate? No way.

micah: But not because of Hill?

clare.malone: Not necessarily, Micah. I just think Democrats want fresh blood.

perry: If there were a Democratic primary debate, say next Wednesday, I think Biden would be on the defensive, big time. But it’s hard to imagine we are in this moment on accusations of sexual harassment two years from now.

micah: Interesting. That’s sorta the big question: How lasting is this moment?

clare.malone: In politics and media, at least, very lasting, I should think.

BUT

It remains to be seen what the American electorate thinks of it and whether they will take this moment to heart. Democratic primary voters are likely to take it seriously.

perry: The specifics of that Hill hearing, how the male senators jumped on Hill, how Biden basically prevented other women from testifying against Clarence Thomas in public, are really damning.

If there was sustained, detailed coverage of that, I think it would matter.

harry: And the “Resistance” is largely led by women, so I expect a lot of power to come from that part of the electorate in the primary. And sexual harassment is a big deal for those voters.

micah: Particularly, as Clare notes, in a Democratic primary.

micah: Before we turn to Trump, are there any other potential 2020 Democratic candidates who have been accused of anything?

clare.malone: Sen. Sherrod Brown’s ex-wife accused him of domestic abuse — hitting and threatening her.

The fact that his ex-wife is now friendly with him might make it easier to handle, though.

But, it’s still a thing that has come up for him in a couple of elections. I wonder how it would play in 2017.

perry: I hadn’t read that full account around Brown.

clare.malone: Yep. It’s not that well known outside Ohio, I don’t think.

perry: Hard to see him running in 2020.

harry: Anything and everything relating to a male candidate’s relations with women will be brought up in a way that perhaps we aren’t used to from the past. We’ll see.

clare.malone: Yeah … I can’t wait to talk about how politically savvy Gillibrand has been in this moment.

perry: I disagree. So I’m eager to discuss this.

micah: DEBATE!

clare.malone: OK, so Gillibrand said that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the scandal involving Monica Lewinsky. That statement brought down the wrath of the likes of Philippe Reines, a Clintonworld person, in a string of truly amusing late-night tweets.

But the idea here is that Gillibrand is trying to capitalize on the current political moment — kill your idols. This is smart, in my book, because frankly: (i) a lot of people hate the Clintons, (ii) it makes Gillibrand seem woke to the moment, (iii) it’s a way to make her seem like a more appealing anti-establishment liberal to the younger folks (uh, she is not).

micah: Ooooh, I had not thought of that last point!

clare.malone: But I also think Obama-Trump voters would like the Clinton slam — and as we know from her early pro-gun record, Gillibrand isn’t afraid to court the center.

perry: Gillibrand, who has flip-flopped on basically every issue from her time as a more conservative member of Congress to a very liberal member of the Senate, has accepted all kinds of support from the Clintons for basically her entire career. There was a way to criticize Bill Clinton’s conduct without becoming, I would argue, a leader of the “Bill Clinton should have resigned movement,” a role she doesn’t have a great deal of credibility for …

But as I was typing the above and reading what Clare wrote … I think I’m convinced. Most people don’t know Gillibrand’s history. Younger people won’t care. The Clintons are done.

I think Clare is right.

micah: That was a fast debate!

perry: Yeah, Gillibrand is very establishment, but this makes her less so. Clare is right.

micah: I now officially give Clare this chat’s debate

clare.malone: Oh, I think it was SO SMART to bite the hand that fed her.

Cleansing fire!

Burn that bridge!

micah:

clare.malone: Anyhow — I think she’s looking like a 2020 front-runner. There. I said it.

micah: BAM!

harry: Clare, of course, picked Gillibrand in the first round in our draft.

perry: Massive flip-flops are generally bad. But Gillibrand is moving in the right direction and taking a stand that will matter. It also fixes what I thought people would see as her biggest problem: She’s Hillary-Clinton-esque, a blond female senator from New York who is tight with Bill Clinton.

micah: OK, so let’s pivot for a sec …

The likely GOP candidate in 2020, of course, has his own problems with allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

clare.malone: Who?

micah: Those problems didn’t prevent him from winning in 2016, but that’s not the same thing as saying they didn’t cost him electorally. So … does Trump’s history take on a different role in 2020 in this new context?

clare.malone: Mmm

micah: Harry, we got polling on this?

clare.malone: I don’t think it does for a lot of people, to be honest.

micah: You think it’s baked in? Or that it will be treated as “old news”?

harry: A majority of people believe Trump is biased against women.

clare.malone: They already elected him knowing a lot of this stuff and made allowances for “Trump being Trump.”

Al Franken is the kind of guy who will read an act of contrition. Trump is not. And the people forgave him (or something) anyhow.

micah: Well, enough people did for him to win.

perry: Is it possible that all of the accusations happening now are, to use a word I hate, “normalizing” what Trump did? If Roy Moore, John Conyers and Franken are in Congress in 2020 — a real possibility — will at least 50 percent of voters be able to look past the allegations against Trump? (46 percent already did.) And all of this stuff on race and gender is part of Trump’s brand.

harry: The big question is whether the Democratic candidate is in a position to capitalize on Trump’s weaknesses. Clinton, who was so unpopular, was apparently unable to.

clare.malone: My esteemed colleagues both make good points.

There is certainly a danger, from the Democrats’ point of view, that many swing voters will just think: “OK, we already knew politicians were rotten. Now we know they’re all a little pervy, too. C’est la vie!”

micah: Couldn’t the allegations against Trump be more damaging in 2020 if they receive more sustained focus — i.e., throughout the campaign?

Remember that in 2016, they broke late and then were overtaken by other news.

In 2020, the Democratic candidate will be able to run ads on it throughout.

perry: It will be hard to cover in a sustained way because it’s not NEW news, assuming that there won’t be any new accusations.

Everyone can re-interview the women from before and publish those stories with more details, but it’s going to be tough to make news with that. Also, I feel like Roy Moore is running “f— the media, vote for me” and that might be appealing to a lot of conservatives. Trump has and can do the same thing.

clare.malone: Yeah, I just don’t think his alleged harassment will be at the fore.

I frankly bet that it will be overshadowed by claims of incompetence.

micah: Won’t Democratic Candidate X mention it in every stump speech?

perry: No. Is Doug Jones mentioning Moore’s stuff in every speech? Not that I’ve seen.

clare.malone: Right.

micah: Well, OK then.

harry: I’m not sure what the top issue will be in 2020. If the economy goes south, it will almost certainly be that. With the economy doing OK, it could just be a mishmash of issues.

clare.malone: Oh god, Harry, tempting fate.

micah: IDK, I feel like you all are underrating the extent to which old news becomes new news because new details emerge, or Trump says something stupid, etc.

clare.malone: Hm.

Do you really think there is a shortage of news these days, Micah?

perry: The details about Trump that we learned in 2016 were kind of, well, detailed. What do you think we can learn, Micah?

The guy explicitly said he would grab women “by the pussy.”

micah: I mean, I don’t know. Maybe there’s a video somewhere. Maybe new accusers come forward. I really don’t know.

perry: A video I guess would be different

clare.malone: I really need to do a lot of yoga before 2020 so I’ll just be blissed out.

micah: That, or the pharmaceutical route.

perry: I think what you are getting, at least from my point of view, is this: Does this new climate around sexual harassment provide voters, particularly women, who maybe regret voting for Trump the first time with a sort of permission structure not to vote for him next time? I.e.: “He wasn’t the president I thought he would be. I didn’t realize how bad the allegations of harassment against him were in 2016,” etc.? I think this is possible. Yes.

harry: My own guess would be that sexual harassment as an issue will move far more voters in the primary than the general election.

clare.malone: For Trump? Or are you talking Democratic primary?

harry: The Democratic primary.

clare.malone: (We haven’t even talked about a GOP primary situation in which a candidate runs, knowing he’ll lose, but to weaken Trump. And that candidate would maybe use the Trump moral failings/harassment charges as ammunition.)

perry: My guess is that the Democratic primary will be clear of any people who have harassed anyone. And I don’t think John Kasich should run against Trump based on sexual harassment.

micah: I guess my point, as Perry noted, is that the bounds of what’s “acceptable” can change. There was a group of people who looked past the allegations against Trump in 2016. Maybe some won’t look past them again in 2020. For example, these Republican women who Clare talked to last year before the election.

perry: I think this is correct.

clare.malone: Tri-bal-ism, people.

micah: Partisanship is a helluva drug.

clare.malone: I also think older women have a different attitude toward harassment, even if they’ve experienced it. I say this from personal and reportorial experience.

Women are no exception to society’s historical leniency toward male harassers.

harry: To Micah’s point: A lot of voters down in Alabama have shifted their votes based on the Moore allegations. (Whether that holds, I don’t know.) So I won’t say it won’t be an issue. It could be, especially if a candidate makes it a focal point of a campaign.

clare.malone: Yeah, I think I want to see whether it holds. I’m genuinely curious.

micah: Yeah, how Alabama plays out may provide clues as to what to expect in 2020.

perry: OK, unless Micah has a question, how about this: Will Bill Clinton speak at the 2020 Democratic National Convention?

micah: Interesting question!

I think … no.

clare.malone: HELL no.

perry: I say yes, but not in prime time.

micah: Oh, that’s a good answer.

clare.malone: Well, as I’ve said often, Democrats are bad at politics, so, sure, they might do that.

harry: I’d block him from entering the state.

perry: Lol.

micah: OK, to wrap, we’ve already hit on this a bit, but let’s talk about sexual misconduct as an issue, rather than how it will affect candidate selection. Will it be part of the mix in 2020?

Will Democratic or Republican candidates have to be for certain policies? Or just “anti-sexual misconduct”?

clare.malone: It strikes me that much of the debate hasn’t actually even involved policies to solve harassment issues — for instance, what the legal definition of sexual harassment is.

micah: 100 percent.

clare.malone: I.e., it’s very difficult to prove in court that you’ve been harassed.

So it will be interesting to me if candidates act on it from a policy point of view and put that out there front and center on their platforms.

perry: Well, this past month, I read lots of articles about what does not work: training. Good thing that is what Congress is literally implementing right now.

clare.malone: yeahhhhhh …

harry: It starts on the Democratic side. If one candidate wants to make an issue out of this, then it is likely that the others will follow. That is just as key as what’s in the zeitgeist. (Granted, an environment in which sexual harassment is still brought up in the news every day makes it more likely that a candidate will bring it to the forefront.)

micah: Final thoughts?

perry: My final thought is that politicians in both parties are struggling with this issue. I was surprised how Nancy Pelosi, a trailblazing woman in politics, struggled to talk about Conyers this weekend. So it’s hard for me to predict what will happen.

harry: I think the chance of a woman being the Democratic nominee in 2020 has gone up over the past few months.

clare.malone: Yes.

[go-redgirl]

Exclusive Excerpt—Charles Hurt: ‘Still Winning: Why America Went All In on Donald Trump—And Why We Must Do It Again’

Exclusive excerpt is from Charles Hurt’s new book, Still Winning: Why America Went All In on Donald Trump—And Why We Must Do It Again.

***

Donald Trump understood from day one that he could never win the presidency talking the way politicians talk. And he could never win by “acting presidential.”

People came to love his hilarious campaign trail shtick where he stands upright behind the podium and woodenly pretends to “act presidential” as he struts around the stage like a toy soldier, muttering meaningless politically correct bromides. It is a still-hilarious shtick that drives crowds wild. But more important, it demonstrates just how utterly useless it would have been for Donald Trump to run as some kind of normal political candidate.

No, this was a man who was out to crash the gates of Washington. And in order to do that, he had to radically upend the way the game of politics is played. He had to start by changing the language.

Such a change would not be easy. And it certainly would not be popular among politicians firmly ensconced in Washington. The royalty of the American political scene— known variously as “the Establishment” or “the elites” or “swamp creatures”—closely guard the language that is spoken in politics. It is a powerful tool in maintaining their grip on power. And the political press slavishly enforces these rules of language. (If you don’t speak the language, you don’t play the game.)

These people have spent decades establishing this vocabulary and hounding from politics anyone who veers outside the proscribed lines. They are forever culling the herd of politicians for saying things that are stupid, thoughtless, strange, or outside the acceptable range of political orthodoxy. The result of this ever-vigilant speech police is a stilted, meaningless political vocabulary that’s poll tested and riddled with preposterous euphemisms that provide for an infinite number of acceptable phrases that Democrats and Republicans yell back and forth—never actually winning any arguments and not accomplishing anything tangible for the voters they claim to represent.

Speech codes are nothing new. They have been popular among tyrants, despots, and demagogues since the beginning of human politics. Such a speech code was made famous, of course, by George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949.

In Orwell’s fictional country of Oceana, the establishment “Inner Party” uses the official language of “Newspeak” to control the lower population of workers. The Inner Party uses all manner of media—two-way telescreens to microphones to spies—to enforce the Newspeak speech codes and report back any “thoughtcrimes” committed by the working proles. […]

The Lexicon of Lunacy

It is chilling to read 1984 today, seven decades after George Orwell published it. His ability to predict how established government authorities would use such “Orwellian” tactics to hold on to power is rivaled only by the ability of America’s Founders to ward off the very same abuses in some of their wisest elements of our Constitution.

In America, obviously, political leaders don’t enforce a “Newspeak” speech code and they certainly do not codify it. They don’t have a name for it at all, because to have a name for it would confirm its very existence. But others—outside the established “Inner Party”—do have terms for it. “Political correctness” is probably the most common description.

I call it the Lexicon of Lunacy.

The list of words, terms, and phrases in the Lexicon of Lunacy runs from the ridiculous to the deadly serious. Take the word “cisgender,” for example. I don’t actually know what it means but I know that we are supposed to use it when we are all tiptoeing around somebody’s severe midlife mental breakdown in which they decide to go under the knife to rearrange the sex organs God gave them.

Come to think of it, this is not at all funny. I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who finds himself, herself, or itself that thoroughly confused and lost in life. The only thing that could be worse would be if politicians decided to take that devastatingly depressing sorrow and weaponize it for political use.

Oh yeah, that has already happened.

So, how about this for an actually funny term from the Lexicon of Lunacy. “Overweight” has become a bad word because we don’t want to “fat shame” or “body shame” anyone. Instead we call the person “under tall.” Or, maybe “height- challenged.” Or “girth-oppressed.”

Those are funny. My children use them against me all the time.

Others are not funny at all.

The fuzzy term “pro-choice,” for instance, is the accepted euphemism for a political stance that favors killing a healthy, live human fetus that is living and developing in its mother’s body. In some cases, the term “pro-choice” can even mean the extermination and dismemberment of a healthy, growing fetus that might even be viable outside the womb. Who on earth hears of such a grisly procedure and thinks of the word “choice”? And, of course, the prefix “pro-”?

Less graphic but devastating in other ways are terms such as “free trade.” “Free trade” has become a mantra for hyperglobalization of the economy in ways that punish American workers, wildly enrich Wall Street and the captains of industry, and obliterate the ideals that have always separated America from the rest of the world.

The only group without a voice in this debate were millions of regular American voters. Until Trump announced his campaign.

Donald Trump saw all of this for exactly what it was. It was a fraud. Whether it was trade, immigration, wars, spending, or taxes—it was all a fraud. The American people were getting taken to the cleaner’s financially, and the American people were getting sold out as losers.

And Trump wasn’t even president yet! He was still just one of sixteen people vying for the Republican nomination. If you polled the media that day, every single reporter in all of politics would have given Trump a zero percent chance of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency.

After the speech was over, I called my office at the Washington Times and told my editor to scrap the column I had filed—that a new one was on the way. I endorsed Donald Trump, something I had never done before in a newspaper column. Because, after all, who gives a crap what I think about anything? But this was clearly something different. The speech was brilliant. It was daring, to be sure, but it also reflected an enormous amount of intentional thought. Trump had been listening very closely to voters. He had also been talking to some very smart people who clearly follow politics closely and understood the political landscape far better than any of the self-anointed geniuses inside the Beltway.

So I picked up the phone and called Steve Bannon, a friend who I knew liked to dabble in the more contrarian world of counterpolitics. We agreed the speech was great and, of course, Bannon told me he had been talking to Trump. A speech had been written. Bannon had seen it as late as the night before, he said. But the speech Trump delivered on live television to the country was entirely different than the one that had been prepared.

“Yeah, he didn’t read the speech,” Bannon marveled. “He got up there and just decided to wing it!”

Even at that point, Trump was not to be handled or scripted or managed or staffed. He was going on nothing but his own raw political instincts. And in the end, voters trusted Donald J. Trump to remain in character more than they trusted any politician to keep his campaign promises.

That turned out to be a pretty smart bet.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Media Politics 2016 election Charles Hurt Donald Trump george orwell Orwell's 1984

[doctrinendonuts-blog]

Yes, Pennsylvania. You are a bigot.

Yes, Pennsylvania: you are a bigot. Dear Progressives: I understand that you’re in shock, because I am too. My Nasty Women Vote sticker is stuffed in my desk; I can’t bring myself to let it go even though I know that Nasty Women are outnumbered. As an American, I want to learn my lesson, so I can stop the internal and national bleeding. As a teacher, I know the difference between learning and making an unsupported argument (note to students—your final exams will reflect this). It feels like progressives are doing the latter. I’m hearing: Democrats focused too much on people of color and LGBT people (who apparently don’t work?) and not enough on the “working class.” “Working-class” anger, not racism and sexism, explains Trump’s win. The Democratic Party should simultaneously tack to the Left and stop focusing on progressive values such as reproductive choice and racial justice. “Identity politics” is dead, except if your identity is white, male, resident of a former manufacturing region. If you’re in mourning for America’s Unclean Coal, the Democratic Party should listen. If you’re concerned about your mom being deported, about becoming a mother against your will, or about being arrested for using a bathroom, then please take a seat. Your needs lost us one too many elections already. Yeah, no. First, can we please stop saying Trump won because steel and coal lost? The death of steel and coal predates NAFTA, according to economists, historians, and Billy Joel’s classic 1982 classic “Allentown.” Second, Trump voters weren’t poor and many voted against their economic interests. Knowing this, we have two choices: we can assume they’re stupid, or you can believe something other than steel motivated them. The road to 11/8/16 isn’t lined with shuttered steel mills, but with closed minds. The sooner progressives get used to saying this out loud, the better. Remember when we elected our first black president and many voters lost their collective minds? Trumpism in the form of birtherism was born of an explosive, racist rage among people who saw Michelle Obama as an ape and Trayvon Martin as a thug. Meanwhile—and this hurts, because we love our President– the Obama Administration allowed Republicans to falsely paint him as a divisive, my-way-or-the-highway partisan even when his compromises were enraging liberals. The stimulus bill was almost 1/3 tax cuts the GOP wanted. Had the White House crowed about this compromise, they could have painted the GOP into a corner and killed their message he was a divisive partisan before it could take root. Instead, like Lucy with the football, the GOP got everything they wanted, rejected the bill on party-line vote in the House (three GOP senators voted for it), and won the message battle. Lucy got the football back with health care. Instead of a single-payer system, we got a compromise bill based on a Heritage Foundation model. Again, the Administration failed to convey that this was a compromise bill or sell its own policy to the people who would benefit—the same Trump voters who are about to lose their health care. This enabled the 2010 electoral “shellacking” for which our President graciously accepted some responsibility, though the Democratic voters who stayed home bear just as much. Obamacare and infrastructure investments benefited the very people whom the pundits now claim the Dems forgot in our misguided insistence on insisting transgender people are human beings. The truth is, Obama did good things for working-class people, including millions of Trump voters who rely on Medicaid expansion and health care exchanges. But white America didn’t believe it, for some reason. When the incumbent president’s signature accomplishment is unpopular, you’re going to pay for it at the polls, and Hillary Clinton probably did. In spite of Obama Derangement Syndrome, Secretary Clinton left office with a 64% approval rating— 14 points higher than the President’s. The GOP resumes its war on Clinton, spending millions of tax dollars to wound her. They find no wrongdoing. Nonetheless, by the time Senator Sanders the presidential race on April 30, 2015, Clinton’s approval is down to about 46%. And that’s when it got really ugly. Any progressive who tangled with the Bernie Bros (and then got called a c--- for using the term Bernie Bros, and then got called a c--- again for calling out sexism) can tell you—that primary damaged her. Do you remember? Sanders, not Trump, introduced the rigged system into the election cycle. Sanders painted Clinton as an establishment hack owned by Goldman Sachs and unaccountable to real people. “Weak” candidate Clinton wins the primary anyway, and not because it was rigged. Sanders refuses to acknowledge the math and then claims that superdelegates he’d previously railed against as part of the rigged system should actually rig the system for him precisely because he was successful in weakening her. By the time AP declared Clinton the presumptive nominee on June 6, she was 17 points underwater. Although it’s true the email investigation remained active during this time, her decline among Democrats points to something else going on. Her trend line and Sanders’ go in opposite directions. Meanwhile, the GOP nominates a candidate who on a wave of racism, harnessing the rage of voters who have been seething since a black president was elected. America clutches its collective pearls. Nate Silver says oopsie but doesn’t mention racism because why mention racism? Thanks to pressure from Sanders and his energized base, the Democratic Party assembles its most progressive platform ever. But like Lucy with the football, his revolutionaries still don’t want to play for their own team. Sanders doesn’t do much to change that. After promising to rally his troops around Clinton and stop the bleeding from the primaries, Sanders retreats to Vermont, where he buys a third home, and tweets about billionaires while his disappointed supporters fall for former Lexington Town Meeting Representative Jill Stein, who claims that Clinton is more dangerous than Trump. Then Russia joins the Trump campaign and the FBI helps out (because why should Hillary be able to waltz into the presidency just by beating the GOP and the left wing of her own party?). Our nation holds the first presidential election since a right-wing Supreme Court gutted the Voting rights Act. North Carolina Republicans brag about suppressing black votes, and the results prove they were right to brag. In spite of Russia, the FBI, recalcitrant left wingers, Obama Derangement Syndrome, and the Roberts Court, Clinton still wins close to 3 million more votes than Trump, yet loses the presidency. (Breathe. I’ll wait). It doesn’t take long for the far left to blame Democrats for failing to see the electorate through a class-driven lens. Bernie Sanders takes a dig at Clinton and her supporters, saying “It is not good enough for someone to say I’m a woman, vote for me.” He does not consider that Clinton’s gender caused anyone not to vote for her. In stating that “The working class of this country is being decimated. That’s why Donald Trump won,” he does not account for all of the working class people of color who voted against Trump. Or that the majority of Trump supporters believe President Obama is a Muslim. Our class-first revolutionary says “Identity politics” is a game for middle-aged women. And look where that got us. But funny thing about identity politics is – white people play too, and Trump’s America is proof positive. We have a rash of hate crimes. White nationalists are celebrating with good reason. David Duke has praised Team Trump, including an attorney general designee who once prosecuted voting rights workers (ominously, Trump claims three million “illegals” voted in 2016, foreshadowing federal voter suppression efforts led by AG Sessions). But pay no attention to the chorus of “heil Trumps” behind the screen. With the threat of a Muslim registry, mass deportations, the end of Roe, and renewed assaults on LGBT rights, it’s astonishing—and frankly embarrassing—that so many Democrats believe it’s time to focus on (a) wooing the free college, anti-Establishment (white) youth voters who just weren’t feeling Clinton and (b) charming the working-class whites who were insufficiently alarmed by the "build the wall" and "lock her up" tendencies of Trumpism to reject them. Yes, we need to have a good long talk with those young progressive voters, nine percent of whom voted third party in the face of the Trump threat to progressive priorities. But let’s not apologize for failing to give them the candidate of their dreams. I’m a college teacher, and it’s my job to tell young people when they’re full of shit. Here’s an idea that’s full of shit: it’s a candidate’s job to earn your very special vote, and if she fails to do so, none of the consequences are on you. This idea is the civic equivalent of standing over a drowning person, dangling a life preserver just out of reach, and saying “you didn’t say please.” Saying Hillary Clinton didn’t deserve your vote misses the point. The point is, America deserved better than Trump, and you knew that, and you didn’t step up. Yes, we need to talk to white Trump voters. But let’s not reassure them we don’t think they’re racists just because they voted for a KKK-endorsed candidate who promised to build a wall, register Muslims, and promote stop-and-frisk. To paraphrase Chris Rock, what does a person have to do to earn the term racist—shoot Medgar Evers? The fact is, many voters are racist. Some who acknowledge Trump is racist support him anyway. We’re not going to make this racism go away by pretending white people have a right to be told it doesn’t exist. And so, my dear progressives: I ask you to remember how comfortable we were with saying (accurately) that many Americans rejected President Obama because of racism. Do you? Good. So do I. Now it’s time to acknowledge that Trump benefitted from racism. Now close your eyes and remember how, when only one third of Americans supported marriage equality, we committed to change voters' minds because the long-shot cause of equality was a moral imperative. Do you? Good. So do I. Well, 62.5 million Americans just voted for a KKK-endorsed presidential candidate. We must again commit to change voters' minds, because the long-shot cause of equality is a moral imperative. So say it with me: Yes, Pennsylvania. You are a bigot. Was that so hard?

[reneeacaseyfl]

The DeanBeat: Would politics make video games better?

As I watched my Facebook feed explode about President Donald Trump’s racist comments this week, I couldn’t help but notice that game developers are political creatures, just like everybody else. But if you looked at their games for political messages, you would think that they’re apolitical, concerned only with near-political game environments that don’t take a stand.

This subject flared up ever since Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president, but his presidential misadventures have not yet inspired a masterful intertwining of art and politics in a video game. Perhaps we should not expect to see that happen because the interests of commerce rule the day. I hope we can overcome those interests because I believe that putting some form of higher meaning into video games is one way to make games as universally recognized as an art as other media.

Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, took a stand against Trump’s Muslim ban in 2016, going so far as making a video expressing his company’s opposition to it. That was admirable. But there wasn’t a ton of contemporary political commentary disguised in a popular game made by Price’s studio, Marvel’s Spider-man.

Spider-man probably wasn’t the right platform for political commentary. We have seen other games come close to dealing with the topics of white nationalism, yet they have fallen short. Ubisoft’s creative leaders say that games like Far Cry 5 (about a religious militia taking over Montana) and The Division 2 (about a secret military organization preventing the fall of Washington, D.C. after a plague) do not make political statements.

Machine Games, the creator of the Wolfenstein series, was surprised to stumble on a political opportunity in its remake of id Software’s classic Wolfenstein games, which take place in an alternate universe where the Nazis won World War II. Much like Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle TV show, the Nazis have overrun America and the Ku Klux Klan is now allied with them to make things worse.

Above: Sophia (left) and Jessica are the daughters of BJ Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

Image Credit: Bethesda

But did this storyline — extended with this month’s pending release of the co-op game Wolfenstein: Youngblood — have anything to do with the rise of the alt. right, Ferguson, Gamergate, Trump, Charlottesville, and this week’s events? Not really, said Jerk Gustafsson, executive producer of Wolfenstein: Youngblood at Sweden’s Machine Games, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“We started work on that story in 2014. It was quite a lot of time before the game actually came out, and a lot of things happened in those years. In that game, we wanted to tell the story of B.J. growing up, his childhood,” Gustafsson said. “It was a very dark story, with his abusive father and dark themes in general. And at the same time we wanted to tell a story about what happened if the Nazis won the war and took over the U.S. Since that happened around that time, especially with Charlottesville, it came to a point where we got a lot of, especially with interviews and talking to media — it led to a lot more discussions around the political aspect of it than we anticipated when we set out to do the game. That took us a bit by surprise.”

In other words, Wolfenstein comes close to being a social commentary on Trump’s presidency and the parallels that many liberals see to the Nazi’s in his apparent comfort with white nationalists. But that’s an accident. The prescient storyline was … accidental. Those of us who really liked the parallels were just giving the writers too much credit for boldness.

The same goes for 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which depicted a world divided between “natural” humans and “augs,” or people augmented with cybernetic technology. Square Enix said that the similarity of the game’s slogan, “Augs Lives Matters,” was simply an “unfortunate coincidence,”  versus the real world slogan Black Lives Matter, as The New Yorker reported.

Once in a while, we get a game that is overtly political. In 2012, Spec-Ops: The Line acknowledged the horrors of war in a way that video games rarely do. Detroit: Become Human was set in Detroit and it clearly showed how bad it would for humans to create human-like androids and enslave them, as African Americans were once enslaved.

“Am I worried about technology in general? Yes. I’m more worried about human beings than about machines, though. It’s not a coincidence that in Detroit, we made the choice that the good guys are the androids and the bad guys are human,” said David Cage, cofounder of Quantic Dream, creator of Detroit, in an interview.

Above: Spec-Ops: The Line

Image Credit: Yager/2K

Such games are often criticized as too political, and not fun. Many fans, particularly those sympathetic to Gamergate, view the critics who want these games as “social justice warriors,” a pejorative term.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will likely be controversial for the level of realistic violence it depicts, as well as the blurring of the line between soldiers and civilians in modern war. Studio director Taylor Kurosaki declared that the game was “ripped from the headlines” and was created to show “the world we are living in today,” Kurosaki said.

And some games introduce politics accidentally.

Amazon recently showed off New World, a game about the colonization of a new continent. But instead of fighting off native Americans, the colonists — who are the good guys — fight zombie-like creatures. Some critics noted that this sanitization of colonialism’s ugly reality was racist in itself, as it dehumanized the native Americans into beings that were easy to kill.

Above: Zombies in the New World!

Image Credit: Amazon

This takes me back to my days as an English major, when my professors posed questions about whether great works of literature had multiple layers of meaning, like The Wasteland (clearly, T.S. Eliot’s famous poem had those layers). But should they have political layers? Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials, was surely inspired by McCarthyism’s Red Scare. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was a condemnation of the capitalist overlords of the meat-packing industry.

Sometimes this added layer of meaning makes us feel like the game is worth studying, and lots of game development programs in colleges are doing just that. That’ probably why The New Yorker and The Guardian wrote about politics in games this year. But does that diminish the fun layer? Or does it hurt the commercial potential of the game?

For sure, publishers are shying away from declaring that games have political intent because they want the game to have the widest potential audience. If only anti-Trump gamers bought Wolfenstein: Youngblood, then that would be a travesty for Bethesda’s bottom line. But this fear ignores another fact: We can outgrow the tropes of video game stories, and some of us want something like HBO. I’ll take a show like Chernobyl over a lot of feel-good television.

Above: Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is the second season in the surveillance game.

Image Credit: Osmotic Studios

I acknowledge that the main object is to make games fun, and I don’t hate video games that are made just to be fun. But I put myself in the camp of social justice warriors. Let those game developers who want to do so express their political views in transparent ways, even if their bosses want to shut them up. I sincerely wish that the crazy politics of Donald Trump would inspire someone to create a beautiful metaphorical treatment that gives us all some clarity about what all of this means.

I wish we could have someone in the game industry emerge, like George Orwell with 1984, or like the antiwar songs that emerged during Vietnam, to show us the way. We have some hope, as one small indie game studio, Osmotic Studios, was inspired to create a PC game called Orwell in 2013 — in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures — about a surveillance society.

But that game hasn’t made as much impact as it might have, and it doesn’t have the kind of big-budget that the largest publishers can throw at a game. I would hate to think that indies are the only ones who can afford to take a stand. But I am grateful that they are there as a counterbalance to the deafening silence from the big game companies.

I believe that I’m raising a lot of questions without many answers here. But I hope to address them in panels that I may be moderating at Devcom in Cologne, Germany, and at Game Daily Connect in Anaheim. I hope you can help me find some answers.

Credit: Source link

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[velmaemyers88]

The DeanBeat: Would politics make video games better?

As I watched my Facebook feed explode about President Donald Trump’s racist comments this week, I couldn’t help but notice that game developers are political creatures, just like everybody else. But if you looked at their games for political messages, you would think that they’re apolitical, concerned only with near-political game environments that don’t take a stand.

This subject flared up ever since Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president, but his presidential misadventures have not yet inspired a masterful intertwining of art and politics in a video game. Perhaps we should not expect to see that happen because the interests of commerce rule the day. I hope we can overcome those interests because I believe that putting some form of higher meaning into video games is one way to make games as universally recognized as an art as other media.

Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, took a stand against Trump’s Muslim ban in 2016, going so far as making a video expressing his company’s opposition to it. That was admirable. But there wasn’t a ton of contemporary political commentary disguised in a popular game made by Price’s studio, Marvel’s Spider-man.

Spider-man probably wasn’t the right platform for political commentary. We have seen other games come close to dealing with the topics of white nationalism, yet they have fallen short. Ubisoft’s creative leaders say that games like Far Cry 5 (about a religious militia taking over Montana) and The Division 2 (about a secret military organization preventing the fall of Washington, D.C. after a plague) do not make political statements.

Machine Games, the creator of the Wolfenstein series, was surprised to stumble on a political opportunity in its remake of id Software’s classic Wolfenstein games, which take place in an alternate universe where the Nazis won World War II. Much like Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle TV show, the Nazis have overrun America and the Ku Klux Klan is now allied with them to make things worse.

Above: Sophia (left) and Jessica are the daughters of BJ Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

Image Credit: Bethesda

But did this storyline — extended with this month’s pending release of the co-op game Wolfenstein: Youngblood — have anything to do with the rise of the alt. right, Ferguson, Gamergate, Trump, Charlottesville, and this week’s events? Not really, said Jerk Gustafsson, executive producer of Wolfenstein: Youngblood at Sweden’s Machine Games, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“We started work on that story in 2014. It was quite a lot of time before the game actually came out, and a lot of things happened in those years. In that game, we wanted to tell the story of B.J. growing up, his childhood,” Gustafsson said. “It was a very dark story, with his abusive father and dark themes in general. And at the same time we wanted to tell a story about what happened if the Nazis won the war and took over the U.S. Since that happened around that time, especially with Charlottesville, it came to a point where we got a lot of, especially with interviews and talking to media — it led to a lot more discussions around the political aspect of it than we anticipated when we set out to do the game. That took us a bit by surprise.”

In other words, Wolfenstein comes close to being a social commentary on Trump’s presidency and the parallels that many liberals see to the Nazi’s in his apparent comfort with white nationalists. But that’s an accident. The prescient storyline was … accidental. Those of us who really liked the parallels were just giving the writers too much credit for boldness.

The same goes for 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which depicted a world divided between “natural” humans and “augs,” or people augmented with cybernetic technology. Square Enix said that the similarity of the game’s slogan, “Augs Lives Matters,” was simply an “unfortunate coincidence,”  versus the real world slogan Black Lives Matter, as The New Yorker reported.

Once in a while, we get a game that is overtly political. In 2012, Spec-Ops: The Line acknowledged the horrors of war in a way that video games rarely do. Detroit: Become Human was set in Detroit and it clearly showed how bad it would for humans to create human-like androids and enslave them, as African Americans were once enslaved.

“Am I worried about technology in general? Yes. I’m more worried about human beings than about machines, though. It’s not a coincidence that in Detroit, we made the choice that the good guys are the androids and the bad guys are human,” said David Cage, cofounder of Quantic Dream, creator of Detroit, in an interview.

Above: Spec-Ops: The Line

Image Credit: Yager/2K

Such games are often criticized as too political, and not fun. Many fans, particularly those sympathetic to Gamergate, view the critics who want these games as “social justice warriors,” a pejorative term.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will likely be controversial for the level of realistic violence it depicts, as well as the blurring of the line between soldiers and civilians in modern war. Studio director Taylor Kurosaki declared that the game was “ripped from the headlines” and was created to show “the world we are living in today,” Kurosaki said.

And some games introduce politics accidentally.

Amazon recently showed off New World, a game about the colonization of a new continent. But instead of fighting off native Americans, the colonists — who are the good guys — fight zombie-like creatures. Some critics noted that this sanitization of colonialism’s ugly reality was racist in itself, as it dehumanized the native Americans into beings that were easy to kill.

Above: Zombies in the New World!

Image Credit: Amazon

This takes me back to my days as an English major, when my professors posed questions about whether great works of literature had multiple layers of meaning, like The Wasteland (clearly, T.S. Eliot’s famous poem had those layers). But should they have political layers? Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials, was surely inspired by McCarthyism’s Red Scare. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was a condemnation of the capitalist overlords of the meat-packing industry.

Sometimes this added layer of meaning makes us feel like the game is worth studying, and lots of game development programs in colleges are doing just that. That’ probably why The New Yorker and The Guardian wrote about politics in games this year. But does that diminish the fun layer? Or does it hurt the commercial potential of the game?

For sure, publishers are shying away from declaring that games have political intent because they want the game to have the widest potential audience. If only anti-Trump gamers bought Wolfenstein: Youngblood, then that would be a travesty for Bethesda’s bottom line. But this fear ignores another fact: We can outgrow the tropes of video game stories, and some of us want something like HBO. I’ll take a show like Chernobyl over a lot of feel-good television.

Above: Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is the second season in the surveillance game.

Image Credit: Osmotic Studios

I acknowledge that the main object is to make games fun, and I don’t hate video games that are made just to be fun. But I put myself in the camp of social justice warriors. Let those game developers who want to do so express their political views in transparent ways, even if their bosses want to shut them up. I sincerely wish that the crazy politics of Donald Trump would inspire someone to create a beautiful metaphorical treatment that gives us all some clarity about what all of this means.

I wish we could have someone in the game industry emerge, like George Orwell with 1984, or like the antiwar songs that emerged during Vietnam, to show us the way. We have some hope, as one small indie game studio, Osmotic Studios, was inspired to create a PC game called Orwell in 2013 — in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures — about a surveillance society.

But that game hasn’t made as much impact as it might have, and it doesn’t have the kind of big-budget that the largest publishers can throw at a game. I would hate to think that indies are the only ones who can afford to take a stand. But I am grateful that they are there as a counterbalance to the deafening silence from the big game companies.

I believe that I’m raising a lot of questions without many answers here. But I hope to address them in panels that I may be moderating at Devcom in Cologne, Germany, and at Game Daily Connect in Anaheim. I hope you can help me find some answers.

Credit: Source link

The post The DeanBeat: Would politics make video games better? appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-deanbeat-would-politics-make-video-games-better/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-deanbeat-would-politics-make-video-games-better from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186420433697

[weeklyreviewer]

The DeanBeat: Would politics make video games better?

As I watched my Facebook feed explode about President Donald Trump’s racist comments this week, I couldn’t help but notice that game developers are political creatures, just like everybody else. But if you looked at their games for political messages, you would think that they’re apolitical, concerned only with near-political game environments that don’t take a stand.

This subject flared up ever since Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president, but his presidential misadventures have not yet inspired a masterful intertwining of art and politics in a video game. Perhaps we should not expect to see that happen because the interests of commerce rule the day. I hope we can overcome those interests because I believe that putting some form of higher meaning into video games is one way to make games as universally recognized as an art as other media.

Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, took a stand against Trump’s Muslim ban in 2016, going so far as making a video expressing his company’s opposition to it. That was admirable. But there wasn’t a ton of contemporary political commentary disguised in a popular game made by Price’s studio, Marvel’s Spider-man.

Spider-man probably wasn’t the right platform for political commentary. We have seen other games come close to dealing with the topics of white nationalism, yet they have fallen short. Ubisoft’s creative leaders say that games like Far Cry 5 (about a religious militia taking over Montana) and The Division 2 (about a secret military organization preventing the fall of Washington, D.C. after a plague) do not make political statements.

Machine Games, the creator of the Wolfenstein series, was surprised to stumble on a political opportunity in its remake of id Software’s classic Wolfenstein games, which take place in an alternate universe where the Nazis won World War II. Much like Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle TV show, the Nazis have overrun America and the Ku Klux Klan is now allied with them to make things worse.

Above: Sophia (left) and Jessica are the daughters of BJ Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

Image Credit: Bethesda

But did this storyline — extended with this month’s pending release of the co-op game Wolfenstein: Youngblood — have anything to do with the rise of the alt. right, Ferguson, Gamergate, Trump, Charlottesville, and this week’s events? Not really, said Jerk Gustafsson, executive producer of Wolfenstein: Youngblood at Sweden’s Machine Games, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“We started work on that story in 2014. It was quite a lot of time before the game actually came out, and a lot of things happened in those years. In that game, we wanted to tell the story of B.J. growing up, his childhood,” Gustafsson said. “It was a very dark story, with his abusive father and dark themes in general. And at the same time we wanted to tell a story about what happened if the Nazis won the war and took over the U.S. Since that happened around that time, especially with Charlottesville, it came to a point where we got a lot of, especially with interviews and talking to media — it led to a lot more discussions around the political aspect of it than we anticipated when we set out to do the game. That took us a bit by surprise.”

In other words, Wolfenstein comes close to being a social commentary on Trump’s presidency and the parallels that many liberals see to the Nazi’s in his apparent comfort with white nationalists. But that’s an accident. The prescient storyline was … accidental. Those of us who really liked the parallels were just giving the writers too much credit for boldness.

The same goes for 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which depicted a world divided between “natural” humans and “augs,” or people augmented with cybernetic technology. Square Enix said that the similarity of the game’s slogan, “Augs Lives Matters,” was simply an “unfortunate coincidence,”  versus the real world slogan Black Lives Matter, as The New Yorker reported.

Once in a while, we get a game that is overtly political. In 2012, Spec-Ops: The Line acknowledged the horrors of war in a way that video games rarely do. Detroit: Become Human was set in Detroit and it clearly showed how bad it would for humans to create human-like androids and enslave them, as African Americans were once enslaved.

“Am I worried about technology in general? Yes. I’m more worried about human beings than about machines, though. It’s not a coincidence that in Detroit, we made the choice that the good guys are the androids and the bad guys are human,” said David Cage, cofounder of Quantic Dream, creator of Detroit, in an interview.

Above: Spec-Ops: The Line

Image Credit: Yager/2K

Such games are often criticized as too political, and not fun. Many fans, particularly those sympathetic to Gamergate, view the critics who want these games as “social justice warriors,” a pejorative term.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will likely be controversial for the level of realistic violence it depicts, as well as the blurring of the line between soldiers and civilians in modern war. Studio director Taylor Kurosaki declared that the game was “ripped from the headlines” and was created to show “the world we are living in today,” Kurosaki said.

And some games introduce politics accidentally.

Amazon recently showed off New World, a game about the colonization of a new continent. But instead of fighting off native Americans, the colonists — who are the good guys — fight zombie-like creatures. Some critics noted that this sanitization of colonialism’s ugly reality was racist in itself, as it dehumanized the native Americans into beings that were easy to kill.

Above: Zombies in the New World!

Image Credit: Amazon

This takes me back to my days as an English major, when my professors posed questions about whether great works of literature had multiple layers of meaning, like The Wasteland (clearly, T.S. Eliot’s famous poem had those layers). But should they have political layers? Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials, was surely inspired by McCarthyism’s Red Scare. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was a condemnation of the capitalist overlords of the meat-packing industry.

Sometimes this added layer of meaning makes us feel like the game is worth studying, and lots of game development programs in colleges are doing just that. That’ probably why The New Yorker and The Guardian wrote about politics in games this year. But does that diminish the fun layer? Or does it hurt the commercial potential of the game?

For sure, publishers are shying away from declaring that games have political intent because they want the game to have the widest potential audience. If only anti-Trump gamers bought Wolfenstein: Youngblood, then that would be a travesty for Bethesda’s bottom line. But this fear ignores another fact: We can outgrow the tropes of video game stories, and some of us want something like HBO. I’ll take a show like Chernobyl over a lot of feel-good television.

Above: Orwell: Ignorance is Strength is the second season in the surveillance game.

Image Credit: Osmotic Studios

I acknowledge that the main object is to make games fun, and I don’t hate video games that are made just to be fun. But I put myself in the camp of social justice warriors. Let those game developers who want to do so express their political views in transparent ways, even if their bosses want to shut them up. I sincerely wish that the crazy politics of Donald Trump would inspire someone to create a beautiful metaphorical treatment that gives us all some clarity about what all of this means.

I wish we could have someone in the game industry emerge, like George Orwell with 1984, or like the antiwar songs that emerged during Vietnam, to show us the way. We have some hope, as one small indie game studio, Osmotic Studios, was inspired to create a PC game called Orwell in 2013 — in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures — about a surveillance society.

But that game hasn’t made as much impact as it might have, and it doesn’t have the kind of big-budget that the largest publishers can throw at a game. I would hate to think that indies are the only ones who can afford to take a stand. But I am grateful that they are there as a counterbalance to the deafening silence from the big game companies.

I believe that I’m raising a lot of questions without many answers here. But I hope to address them in panels that I may be moderating at Devcom in Cologne, Germany, and at Game Daily Connect in Anaheim. I hope you can help me find some answers.

Credit: Source link

The post The DeanBeat: Would politics make video games better? appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-deanbeat-would-politics-make-video-games-better/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-deanbeat-would-politics-make-video-games-better

[robgrayofficial]

GOOOOOOD AFTERNOON PATRIOTS!This is your girl u/Ivaginaryfriend here back at it again with your weekly Presidential Recap! It's been such a TREMENDOUS week of winning I was almost started to get tired of it all..... almost. Then I watched GEOTUS at his DRAGON ENERGY style rally and realized we'll NEVER get tired of it!Before we get this recap started, if you happened to miss any past recaps you can catch those at this link here!Sunday, May 6th:SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Giuliani: "I'd rather have the Hillary Clinton Treatment - No under oath, only a Q/A, we get the questions in advance, and they write the report two weeks before."SILENCE IS DEAFENING. The media won't cover Allison Mack TRAFFICKING CHILDREN. The media really is covering for the Elite Pedophiles. PIZZAGATE/PEDOGATE IS REAL.UK: Lauren Southern successfully enters London through refugee method🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Hate SpeechSunday Gunday: Trump .45Tra la la lala lala fuck McCain.I'm just going to leave this here........Monday, May 7th:TODAY'S ACTION:Vice President Pence Delivers Remarks During a Protocolary Meeting at the OASFirst Lady Melania Trump's Initiative LaunchFifteen Nominations Sent to the Senate TodayPresident Donald J. Trump Proclaims May 7, 2018, as Be Best Day🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State...No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists. Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!The Russia Witch Hunt is rapidly losing credibility. House Intelligence Committee found No Collusion, Coordination or anything else with Russia. So now the Probe says OK, what else is there? How about Obstruction for a made up, phony crime.There is no O, it’s called Fighting BackThe 13 Angry Democrats in charge of the Russian Witch Hunt are starting to find out that there is a Court System in place that actually protects people from injustice...and just wait ‘till the Courts get to see your unrevealed Conflicts of Interest!“The Great Revolt” by Salena Zito and Brad Todd does much to tell the story of our great Election victory. The Forgotten Men & Women are forgotten no longer!Good luck to Ric Grenell, our new Ambassador to Germany. A great and talented guy, he will represent our Country well!Lisa Page, who may hold the record for the most Emails in the shortest period of time (to her Lover, Peter S), and attorney Baker, are out at the FBI as part of the Probers getting caught? Why is Peter S still there? What a total mess. Our Country has to get back to Business!Is this Phony Witch Hunt going to go on even longer so it wrongfully impacts the Mid-Term Elections, which is what the Democrats always intended? Republicans better get tough and smart before it is too late!The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!National Prescription Drug #TakeBackDay numbers are in! Another record broken: nearly 1 MILLION pounds of Rx pills disposed! Let’s keep fighting this opioid epidemic, America!I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm.SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Breaking at The New Yorker: Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of Physical AbuseHillary R. Clinton Part 21 of 21 - Detailed analysis of her server accessDHS to push for criminal charges against all border-jumpersBlack Panther on RefugeesPRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Press Beating🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Women's rights movement post 90'sSocial Justice Warriors are reaching levels of hypocrisy not previously thought possibleStay On Top Of The Red Wave!My son said he wanted to be a princess and dress up like his sister, so I explained to him...son, you’re a king. The king rules over all-and then I made him this costume. I did not give him hormones. This is good parenting.Tuesday, May 8th:TODAY'S ACTION:Be Best: First Lady Melania Trump's InitiativePresident Trump Gives Remarks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of ActionCeasing U.S. Participation in the JCPOA and Taking Additional Action to Counter Iran’s Malign Influence and Deny Iran All Paths to a Nuclear Weapon🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Gina Haspel, my highly respected nominee to lead the CIA, is being praised for the fact that she has been, and alway will be, TOUGH ON TERROR! This is a woman who has been a leader wherever she has gone. The CIA wants her to lead them into America’s bright and glorious future!I will be speaking to my friend, President Xi of China, this morning at 8:30. The primary topics will be Trade, where good things will happen, and North Korea, where relationships and trust are building.John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it! Stay away from negotiations John, you are hurting your country!Statement on the Iran Nuclear Deal:(Retweeting The White House) "At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction: that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program. Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie."(Retweeting The White House) "Finally, I want to deliver a message to the long-suffering people of Iran. The people of America stand with you."The Iran Deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know what will happen. In just a short time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons....SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Schneiderman Is A Hardcore 19th Century Democrat: "He called me his ‘brown slave,’ would slap me until I called him ‘Master’" Somebody Forgot To Tell Him the "Democratic Plantation" Is Only Supposed To Be A Metaphor!Jordan Peterson: “People are talking about Trump voters as if they’re a tribe from another planet. Wait a second: This is half of your population. This isn’t some fringe group. Maybe sit and think about it and not just assume they’re all stupid. Because they’re not."Eric Schneiderman, powerful NY Democrat accused of violence against women and drug abuse, RESIGNS AS STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL!President Trump: "I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal."🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:PRESIDENT TRUMP REEEEEEEEEEMOVES THE U.S. FROM THE IRAN DEAL - REDDIT ONCE AGAIN ON SUICIDE WATCHRIP Muh LegacyLet’s get it trending, folksProud of Our First Lady Melania Trump!!!!!!!Wednesday, May 9th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump Holds a Cabinet MeetingVice President Pence Hosts a Working Lunch on U.S. Engagement in the Western HemispherePresident Trump Participates in the Celebration of Military Mothers and Spouses EventExecutive Order Enhancing Noncompetitive Civil Service Appointments of Military Spouses🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:The Republican Party had a great night. Tremendous voter energy and excitement, and all candidates are those who have a great chance of winning in November. The Economy is sooo strong, and with Nancy Pelosi wanting to end the big Tax Cuts and Raise Taxes, why wouldn’t we win?The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?Candace Owens of Turning Point USA is having a big impact on politics in our Country. She represents an ever expanding group of very smart “thinkers,” and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on...so good for our Country!Congratulations to Mike Dewine on his big win in the Great State of Ohio. He will be a great Governor with a heavy focus on HealthCare and Jobs. His Socialist opponent in November should not do well, a big failure in last job!I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting. They seem to be in good health. Also, good meeting with Kim Jong Un. Date & Place set.Secretary Pompeo and his “guests” will be landing at Andrews Air Force Base at 2:00 A.M. in the morning. I will be there to greet them. Very exciting!The Failing New York Times criticized Secretary of State Pompeo for being AWOL (missing), when in fact he was flying to North Korea. Fake News, so bad!Looking forward to greeting the Hostages (no longer) at 2:00 A.M.Gina Haspel did a spectacular job today. There is nobody even close to run the CIA!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Study: Trump's Polls Improve Despite 90% Negative Media CoverageOh the irony: Trump said he will not allow a regime that chants “Death to America” to gain access to nuclear weapons. AFTER the announcement Iranian lawmakers burned a US flag and chanted “Death to America”.John McCain confirms he gave Trump dossier to James Comey in book ‘The Restless Wave’Boy Scouts Lose 425,000 Boys 1 Week After Announcing Name ChangeWhite House Sources: John Kerry’s Stealth Lobbying Backfired, Helped Kill The Iran DealPRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Press Beating🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:It's ok if you make a lil mistake, cuz we'll just dab a lil Muh Legacy Green and fix that right up.Now that Obama’s legacy has been removed, we can focus on making America GREAT again instead of fixing prior mistakes. It is a brand new dawn, pedes. Let’s make the future of America, for all Americans, together.The Obama LegacyOutside of my old office in Tel Aviv, Israel. Roughly translated: You’re the man.BREAKING NOW! 9TH DISTRICT RULES KOREAN PRISONERS MUST BE RETURNED!Thursday, May 10th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump and Vice President Pence Welcome the Secretary of State and Three American ReturneesPresident Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump Welcome the Three American ReturneesPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Fourteenth Wave of Judicial Nominees, Thirteenth Wave of United States Attorney Nominees, and Eighth Wave of United States Marshal NomineesFive Nominations and Two Withdrawals Sent to the Senate TodayPresident Donald J. Trump Proclaims May 11, 2018, as Military Spouse DayPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Personnel to Key Administration Posts🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:On behalf of the American people, WELCOME HOME!Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fought hard against the Bad Iran Deal, even going at it with President Obama, & then Voted AGAINST it! Now he says I should not have terminated the deal - but he doesn’t really believe that! Same with Comey. Thought he was terrible until I fired him!Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured!The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th. We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!Thank you Indiana! #MAGA🇺🇸SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:If you voted for Trump you helped achieve thisReddit liberal edits Wikipedia page to win an argument. The definition of fake news. Sad!Based Ted Cruz on N. Korea Prisoner Release: Trump Ended Obama Policy of 'Weakness and Appeasement'THEY WERE BRIEFED! Dishonest attacks on Trump CIA nominee Haspel over enhanced interrogation techniques. Congress, including Pelosi, knew and was on board. Judicial Watch found the proof.Fake News Network; New York Times!!!!!!!! Busted Again!🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Quick!!! Bring GEOTUS more shit to fix!!!LOL! Obama Got Called Out on Twitter with Deadly AccuracyI’m staying up to see our President greet the very last US prisoners held by North Korea.He had a future. Barack Hussein Obama left him to die. His only legacyFriday, May 11th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump Attends a Roundtable with Automaker CEOsPresident Trump Gives Remarks on Lowering Drug PricesPresident Donald J. Trump Proclaims May 13, 2018, as Mother’s DayPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint Personnel to Key Administration Post🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Today, my Administration is launching the most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American People. We will have tougher negotiation, more competition, and much lower prices at the pharmacy counter!The American people deserve a healthcare system that takes care of them – not one that takes advantage of them. We will work every day to ensure all Americans have access to the quality, affordable medication they need and deserve. We will not rest until the job is done!Big week next week when the American Embassy in Israel will be moved to Jerusalem. Congratulations to all!Why doesn’t the Fake News Media state that the Trump Administration’s Anti-Trust Division has been, and is, opposed to the AT&T purchase of Time Warner in a currently ongoing Trial. Such a disgrace in reporting!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:HE'S BACK BABY! ‘Last Man Standing’ Revived by Fox for Season 7 :: Well Done Pedes!!!The Death of Journalism: ABC and NBC Nightly "News" spent 0 minutes last night covering the capture of 5 ISIS leaders last night. Stay ignorant normies.Trump orders FDA to require PRICES of DRUGS in TV ADSJim Acosta thought he could shame her, but just sold out Pepe on Amazon and made her famous instead! Total failure.Ouch!PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Press Beating🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:DRAGON ENERGY TONIGHT IN ELKHART, INDIANAYou fucking know it!We Be Like... Our President at 2 AM Preparing To Meet The North Korean PrisonersLawn mower boy pitches inWho Killed Seth Rich?Saturday, May 12th:SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Barack Obama worked with heroin traffickers to arm cartels and terrorists. While being the president of the United States.‘Melania’ surges in popularity for baby girl namesEU statement opposing US embassy move to Jerusalem is blocked by Hungary, Romania and Czech RepublicMore Winning! North Korea to dismantle nuclear test site May 23-25🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:AWOOOO!!!! This week was a good week!!! MAGA!!! God bless the USA.Border Wall Upgrades Include New Artwork Inspired By Der SpiegelWords cant describe my love for this photoIt's amazing what a REAL man in the White House can do.If Hillary Was PresidentSOOO MUCH WINNING, STILL NOT TIRED!!!!As always; some tunes to help you go through all of this WINNING:The FreshmenTiny DancerFast CarTalk Is CheapDoses & MimosasDrop The GameMAGA ON PATRIOTS! #robgray

[trendingnewsb]

8 Stories That Show Exactly How The Media Hates Millennials

Somebody has to stop the millennial killing spree before it’s too late and the only thing we’re left with is social media and avocados and- oh god, they’re killing those too. But wait, there doesn’t seem to be any logic to millennial behavior. How can they both be the generation with the worst manners, but also obsessed with political correctness and not offending anyone? Why, it’s almost as if these headlines directly contradict one another, because the whole thing is a crock of artisanal horseshit …

8

Millennials Are Obsessed With Drinking, But Also Drinking Way Less Than Previous Generations

Millennials are heavy drinkers. According to The Tennessean, they make up a disproportionate percentage of alcohol buyers, and they splurge on the good stuff.

And oh boy do millennials love wine. Bustle reports that millennials buy so much of it that they’re changing the industry. Humans have been drinking wine for 8,000 years, but it took women in their 20s posting about it on Facebook to take it to the next level. Why do they love wine so much? USA Today argues that it might be because it’s the healthiest of alcoholic beverages, and the increased heart health quiets the demons after three glasses.

Or wait, actually, millennials aren’t drinking as much as previous generations. This Forbes article (named “Millennials Gone Mild” *fart noise*) tells of bars and nightclubs closing en masse, as millennials prefer to go out to sober events like “juice crawls,” or stay home altogether. The author goes on to say “Over the past few years, Millennials have started identifying as ‘grandmas’ and ‘grandpas’ when they stay in for the night — a lifestyle choice revered by most members of ‘Generation Yawn.'” Somebody revoke this man’s word license.

Oh, and millennials couldn’t afford to drink, even if they wanted to. Business Insider has concluded that they’re also killing the beer industry. Even wine sales have flatlined.

So millennials are obsessed with drinking, particularly high-quality alcohol, to the point where the industry is changing to accommodate them. But at the same time, they’re not drinking as much as previous generations, because they can’t afford it and they’re all doing sober juice crawls wherein they butt-chug ginger shots, causing bars to spontaneously explode. They’re drinking less beer, but record amounts of wine, but also wine consumption hasn’t increased in the past year. Why can’t they drink exactly the right amount?

7

Millennials Don’t Vote, But They’re Voting For All The Wrong People

This Big Think article starts with “Hey, you. Yes, you. Millennials. Stop twerking for a second and listen up.” That’s a sure way to gain the respect of your reader! The piece goes on to argue that millennials don’t vote because politicians don’t represent their interests. They go on to say that millennial voter apathy is because they have “no faith in populism,” a claim so powerfully wrong that many of your eyes have just rejected it outright. But the core of what it’s saying is correct, right? Millennials don’t vote because nobody represents them. Otherwise, they’d be passionate.

The Wall Street Journal thinks millennials are passionate about voting, but that they’re misdirecting their passion. Young people gravitated toward Sanders and Trump in the last presidential election, which was against their own best interests, the paper argues. Both of their economic policies would be bad for long-term growth, which millennials would know if they’d stop asking for “free stuff” long enough to read a goddamn book. So millennials don’t vote because nobody appeals to them, but when they do, it’s because the wrong people are appealing to them. Gotcha.

6

Millennials Are Too Involved In Their Children’s Lives, But Also Not Involved Enough

Millennials are the new “helicopter parents,” hovering over their children and providing exciting aerial footage of all their most precious police chases. According to Elite Daily, millennial parents will supervise all of their children’s interactions, preventing them from developing a sense of creativity. And they’ll fix any problem their child has, depriving them of the chance to fix it themselves. Millennials are smothering their children.

Alternatively, if we check in with ABC, we find that millennials are too focused on “me time.” Their parenting style is vastly different from the helicopter parents of previous generations. Their children lack structure and supervision because they’re too busy Snapchatting their Instagrams. The article also weirdly states that “Millennial Moms are 21 percent less likely to send a thank-you note via postal mail.” And why aren’t these goddamn kids sending singing telegrams anymore?

5

Millennials Don’t Work, But Are Also Poisoning Their Companies With Their Workaholism

Millennials are more stressed out about their jobs than other generations. Glamour reported that they are too occupied with their careers, their only goals being to “get a new job with better benefits, more pay, better hours, and more work-life balance, as well as work that was more intrinsically rewarding.” Truly, this is unheard-of stuff.

Wait a minute, it turns out millennials want material things, but aren’t willing to work for them. The Miami Herald says that millennials won’t take a job that’s too hard, and they refuse to work overtime. “Stay an extra two hours at my job as a mattress nap tester? Who do you think I am, the Wolf of Wall Street?”

But The Herald also claims that millennials are “work martyrs,” the hardest-working people in the workforce. They refuse to take their allotted vacation time because they’re too goddamn addicted to working. If only these job-stressed, lazy work martyrs could take a week off, they’d learn how a real adult handles their job — by drinking schnapps in their car during lunch and writing about millennials twice a week.

4

Millennials Blow Too Much Money, But Are Killing Whole Industries By Not Spending Money

A BankRate study found that millennials are spending way too much going out to eat. They go to Starbucks too often, and have large bar tabs (except when they don’t). All these little expenses add up and eat into the money they should be saving for retirement.

This irresponsibility has spread into other areas. This Is Money reports that in addition to ordering too many meals, millennials are overspending on expensive clothes. It looks like if these millennials don’t learn to go without spending money on frivolous things, they’ll never be able to support themselves.

Or wait, millennials are in fact to blame for the severe sales slump at chain restaurants like Applebee’s and TGI Fridays. This Business Insider article states, “Millennial consumers are more attracted than their elders to cooking at home, ordering delivery from restaurants, and eating quickly, in fast-casual or quick-serve restaurants.” Those monsters!

And it doesn’t stop with dining out. Millennials are also killing the motorcycle and diamond industries. CNBC hypothesizes that the slump in sales is due to millennials’ tendency to value experiences over material goods, that they “seek out experiences, such as vacations and concerts, that they can post about on social media.” Rest assured that it’s not because they’re broke and can’t burn tens of thousands of dollars on a shiny rock and a loud bike; it’s because they’re narcissistic and need to brag about their trip to Argentina on social media. Also, no one’s ever bragged about their diamond ring online, right guys?

3

Millennials Never Leave The House, But Are Also Everywhere (And That’s Awful)

The New York Post is worried about millennials. They spend too much time at home, leading to an upswing in depression. Instead of going out to the bar with their friends or meeting a date for coffee, they stay home and binge-watch TV. The Post warns of the emotional dangers of “Netflix and chill” — which, if you recall, was a euphemism for sex before the olds got to it.

And yet the same New York Post is mad that millennials are going out too much, railing against millennial “brunch culture” — that is, that millennials will go to restaurants to eat brunch. But wait, isn’t that good? Instead of killing restaurants? Not so fast — the problem the article has is that these goddamn kids will hog tables for hours and obnoxiously take pictures of their food instead of silently, angrily nursing a hangover, as God intended.

2

Millennials Hate Capitalism, Except When They Love Capitalism

National Review came out with the hottest take their scientists could engineer, combining every millennial stereotype into a super-take capable of triggering every lib, and perhaps killing male feminists outright. They argue that millennials dislike capitalism because they are ignorant of what it truly is (and that they like socialism for the same reason). They go on to say that capitalism doesn’t care for their puny gender or racial identities, which scares millennials right into Bernie Sanders’ arms.

Meanwhile, The American Spectator is too busy dunking on progressives to buy into the myth that millennials hate capitalism. Capitalism brought them iPhones and Uber, the popularity of which proves millennials love the free market. They also go on to claim that millennials don’t know what socialism is, because that seems to be some sort of journalistic nervous tic.

1

Millennials Want Participation Trophies, But Also Youth Sports Are Way Too Intense Now

The Washington Post calls millennials the “Participation Trophy Generation,” participation trophies being the ultimate symbol of entitlement. We were so afraid of hurting any child’s feelings that we got rid of winners and losers, and now an entire generation is growing up unprepared for the competitive real world.

The Blaze Millennials: “Glenn Beck is ruining our grandparents.”

Glenn Beck’s rag The Blaze agrees, pining for the days when there was only one trophy, handed out to the winner, and those who came in third or lower were summarily executed.

The Federalist

The Federalist claims that millennials’ lust for participation trophies has bled into the workplace. They say that millennials, especially women, want promotions the same way they want trophies: whether they earned them or not. If only they weren’t babied so much at soccer games, maybe millennials would be better human beings. A competitive football game is what made the Greatest Generation great and the Baby Boomers boom, right?

This HuffPo article starts with “Youth sports: a chance to run around, play sports with friends and have fun … At least that’s how it used to be.” But now youth sports culture is so demanding and competitive that kids are emotionally and physically drained, with most dropping out by age 13.

Washington Post “Take it easy, kid. If you don’t get a trophy for losing, then we won’t get to spend a lifetime berating you for it.”

The consequences run even deeper, though. Sports are so intense now that kids are getting injured like never before. That comes from The Washington Post, the same people who coined the term “Participation Trophy Generation.”

Man, it’s almost like these writers just hate the younger generation because they’re trapped in old, failing bodies and growing increasingly irrelevant to society by the day. But that couldn’t be it. That’s too far-fetched. No, it is the avocado’s fault, surely …

David Klesh was born in 1980, but refuses to call himself a millennial. His writing has also appeared on the Faith Hope and Fiction blog. Dan Hopper is an editor for Cracked, previously for CollegeHumor and BestWeekEver.tv. He fires off consistent A-tweets at @DanHopp. Adam Schwallie has a Twitter, where he tweets in between destroying all of the industries that Baby Boomers hold near and dear to their hearts.

You know what Millenials aren’t killing? These dope Caribou Boots that you can use to continue to not kill industries with because that’s an unfair characterization of a generation of fun-loving people.

If you loved this article and want more like it, please support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page.

Also check out This Millennial Rant Deserves A Trophy For Being Most Wrong and 5 Reasons Millennials Should Destroy The Concept Of Marriage.

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from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2fTGgMJ via Viral News HQ

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

Donald Trump’s on-the-job training

Washington (CNN)The Trump White House is finding out that running the world is even more complicated than trying to pass health care reform.

The administration is struggling to frame and explain a coherent foreign policy response to two related crises -- the fallout from chemical weapons attacks in Syria and rapidly deteriorating relations with Russia.

The intractable problems would challenge any new White House. But the Trump team seems to be exacerbating its learning curve by failing to come up with unified approaches and rhetoric among top officials. And it's reeling from a series of missteps, including a Holocaust-related gaffe Tuesday by White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

The confusion is threatening to erode any political benefit for the beleaguered Trump's administration over the President's decision to launch cruise missile attacks in Syria to punish the use of chemical weapons, a move widely welcomed by many US allies and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Various Trump officials for instance struggled to get on the same page Tuesday over the question of whether Russia knew in advance about the chemical weapons attack by its ally President Bashar al-Assad's government that killed more than 80 civilians.

"I think that they knew," US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley told CNN's Jamie Gangel, going further than statements by Spicer and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that there was no such consensus in the intelligence community to support such a conclusion.

The apparent contradictions were symptomatic of the Trump team's failure to agree a public line on its first big national security test. Haley's comments and a string of other seemingly jarring interventions by officials are raising questions about the coordination of the foreign policy process between the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon and may reveal a lack of basic strategic planning and messaging in the still understaffed administration.

The last few days have seen a flurry of gaffes, walk-backs, vague, sometimes conflicting statements and off-the-cuff policy making by President Donald Trump himself, Tillerson, Haley and Spicer.

Only Defense Secretary James Mattis, who offered a seasoned, strategic and coherent briefing about the Syria attacks and the US response on Tuesday, appears to be in position to give a lesson on discrete yet steely diplomacy to his administration colleagues.

In the frenetic, chaotic world of Trump's first 100 days in office, the administration has often appeared to be discovering the complexity of governing for the first time. The President famously declared for instance that no one knew that health care reform would be so complicated even after the years of bitter debate that accompanied the passage of Obamacare.

A similar realization is now becoming evident on foreign policy.

Trump spent months on the campaign trail castigating his predecessors for getting sucked into a Middle East quagmires, and had even attempted to close the door to refugees from Syria in his executive orders imposing a travel ban, which have been stayed by the courts.

Yet his heartfelt response to horrific images of gassed children in Syria, and decision to launch military action, appeared to completely reverse his stated foreign policy intentions. His instinctual move to order his first major military actions of his presidency also raised concerns that he was basing military action on emotion before arriving at a strategic long-term determination of next steps or the consequences of bombing Syria.

Spicer throws White House off-message

Tuesday was yet another dizzying day for America's allies, enemies and analysts as they try to arrive at clarity about Trump's intentions.

Attempts by the administration to explain its strategy on Syria and to shame Russia for its backing of Assad were blown out of the water by a huge blunder by Spicer.

Trump's spokesman reached for an unwise comparison by saying that even Adolf Hitler had never used chemical weapons against civilians during World War II, despite the gassing of millions of Jews and other minorities in death camps.

Spicer appeared on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Tuesday to apologize for the Hitler analogy.

Spicer: Not even Hitler used chemical weapons

Replay

More Videos ...

MUST WATCH

"It was a mistake, I shouldn't have done it. I won't do it again. It was an attempt to do something that should not have been done. There really was no explaining it," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Former Bill Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, who served another Democratic President, Barack Obama, as CIA chief, praised Spicer for apologizing but said his comments were a damaging distraction for the administration.

"When he says the kind of stupid things that he did today, it hurts the administration, it changes the story," Panetta said.

'We are not going into Syria'

Spicer is not alone in muddling the administration's message and fogging perceptions of the Trump administration's Syria policy.

Haley set off a firestorm of speculation after telling CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that "regime change is something that we think is going to happen" when referring to Assad. Days earlier, administration officials had appeared to indicate that they believed that ousting Assad should not be a priority of US policy in Syria.

The President himself also weighed in on Tuesday, blaming the previous Obama administration's failure to enforce a US red line over the use of chemical weapons -- though did not bring much clarity to the situation.

"We are not going into Syria," Trump told Fox Business Network.

It was left to Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, to clarify that America's policy was still primarily geared towards destroying ISIS and not regime change. He said the missile strikes were a separate attempt to outlaw the use of chemical weapons.

"There is a limit, I think, to what we can do. And when you look at what happened with this chemical attack, we knew that we could not stand passive on this," the former general told reporters.

"But it was not a statement that we could enter full-fledged, full-bore into the most complex civil war probably raging on the planet at this time."

Mattis however, in his sober way did make clear to Assad that using chemical weapons again would draw a response, but did so in a way that avoided putting the administration's credibility on the line and highlighted the lack of precision and restraint evident in other administration statements.

A White House tested

But the Syria confusion is not only unfolding example of the administration learning that events have a way of quickly testing an inexperienced White House.

Events of the last few days appear to have completely reshaped the assumptions that Trump brought into office about improving relations with Russia that have pitched to their lowest point since the Cold War.

"If we got along with Russia and Russia went out with us and knocked the hell out of ISIS that is OK with me folks," Trump said at a campaign rally in October. Then-candidate Trump expressed his admiration for President Vladimir Putin many times, including in an NBC interview in September.

"If he says get things about me, I am going to say great things about him," Trump said. Back in August, Trump told supporters: "there is nothing I can think of that I would rather do than have Russia friendly."

But as Tillerson jetted toward Moscow for his first visit as Secretary of State, relations seemed to be worsening by the hour as Putin compared the Syria attacks to the Iraq war, which Moscow vigorously opposed.

Trump's room for maneuver with Russia was already curtailed by allegations that some campaign aides had links with Moscow at a time when it was accused of interfering in the presidential election.

The aftermath of the missile attacks ordered by Trump have appeared to have alerted the administration as never before to the geostrategic factors that make any rapprochement between Moscow and Washington a long shot.

Even members of his own administration appear to be undermining the President's hopes of improving relations with Russia, which sees Syria as a crucial Middle Eastern ally and props up Assad's government to maintain its influence in the region.

Tillerson, who was once branded by critics as too close to Moscow, owing to his business deals in his former job as the head of ExxonMobil, talked tough before arriving.

During a stop in Italy, the top US diplomat blasted the Russian government for supporting Assad and other US enemies.

"Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians and Hezbollah. Is that a long-term alliance that serves Russia's interests?" he said.

Back at the White House, Spicer effectively gave Moscow an ultimatum: choose better relations with Trump administration or its relations with nations that pursue policies contrary to US interests.

"It's no question that Russia is isolated. They have aligned themselves with North Korea, Syria, Iran. That's not exactly a group of countries that you're looking to hang out with," he said.

More From this publisher : HERE

=> *********************************************** See Full Article Here: Donald Trump’s on-the-job training ************************************ =>

Donald Trump’s on-the-job training was originally posted by A 18 MOA Top News from around

[viralhottopics]

Donald Trump’s on-the-job training

Washington (CNN)The Trump White House is finding out that running the world is even more complicated than trying to pass health care reform.

The administration is struggling to frame and explain a coherent foreign policy response to two related crises — the fallout from chemical weapons attacks in Syria and rapidly deteriorating relations with Russia.

The intractable problems would challenge any new White House. But the Trump team seems to be exacerbating its learning curve by failing to come up with unified approaches and rhetoric among top officials. And it’s reeling from a series of missteps, including a Holocaust-related gaffe Tuesday by White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

The confusion is threatening to erode any political benefit for the beleaguered Trump’s administration over the President’s decision to launch cruise missile attacks in Syria to punish the use of chemical weapons, a move widely welcomed by many US allies and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Various Trump officials for instance struggled to get on the same page Tuesday over the question of whether Russia knew in advance about the chemical weapons attack by its ally President Bashar al-Assad’s government that killed more than 80 civilians.

“I think that they knew,” US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley told CNN’s Jamie Gangel, going further than statements by Spicer and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that there was no such consensus in the intelligence community to support such a conclusion.

The apparent contradictions were symptomatic of the Trump team’s failure to agree a public line on its first big national security test. Haley’s comments and a string of other seemingly jarring interventions by officials are raising questions about the coordination of the foreign policy process between the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon and may reveal a lack of basic strategic planning and messaging in the still understaffed administration.

The last few days have seen a flurry of gaffes, walk-backs, vague, sometimes conflicting statements and off-the-cuff policy making by President Donald Trump himself, Tillerson, Haley and Spicer.

Only Defense Secretary James Mattis, who offered a seasoned, strategic and coherent briefing about the Syria attacks and the US response on Tuesday, appears to be in position to give a lesson on discrete yet steely diplomacy to his administration colleagues.

In the frenetic, chaotic world of Trump’s first 100 days in office, the administration has often appeared to be discovering the complexity of governing for the first time. The President famously declared for instance that no one knew that health care reform would be so complicated even after the years of bitter debate that accompanied the passage of Obamacare.

A similar realization is now becoming evident on foreign policy.

Trump spent months on the campaign trail castigating his predecessors for getting sucked into a Middle East quagmires, and had even attempted to close the door to refugees from Syria in his executive orders imposing a travel ban, which have been stayed by the courts.

Yet his heartfelt response to horrific images of gassed children in Syria, and decision to launch military action, appeared to completely reverse his stated foreign policy intentions. His instinctual move to order his first major military actions of his presidency also raised concerns that he was basing military action on emotion before arriving at a strategic long-term determination of next steps or the consequences of bombing Syria.

Spicer throws White House off-message

Tuesday was yet another dizzying day for America’s allies, enemies and analysts as they try to arrive at clarity about Trump’s intentions.

Attempts by the administration to explain its strategy on Syria and to shame Russia for its backing of Assad were blown out of the water by a huge blunder by Spicer.

Trump’s spokesman reached for an unwise comparison by saying that even Adolf Hitler had never used chemical weapons against civilians during World War II, despite the gassing of millions of Jews and other minorities in death camps.

Spicer appeared on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Tuesday to apologize for the Hitler analogy.

Spicer: Not even Hitler used chemical weapons

Replay

More Videos …

MUST WATCH

“It was a mistake, I shouldn’t have done it. I won’t do it again. It was an attempt to do something that should not have been done. There really was no explaining it,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Former Bill Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, who served another Democratic President, Barack Obama, as CIA chief, praised Spicer for apologizing but said his comments were a damaging distraction for the administration.

“When he says the kind of stupid things that he did today, it hurts the administration, it changes the story,” Panetta said.

‘We are not going into Syria’

Spicer is not alone in muddling the administration’s message and fogging perceptions of the Trump administration’s Syria policy.

Haley set off a firestorm of speculation after telling CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that “regime change is something that we think is going to happen” when referring to Assad. Days earlier, administration officials had appeared to indicate that they believed that ousting Assad should not be a priority of US policy in Syria.

The President himself also weighed in on Tuesday, blaming the previous Obama administration’s failure to enforce a US red line over the use of chemical weapons — though did not bring much clarity to the situation.

“We are not going into Syria,” Trump told Fox Business Network.

It was left to Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, to clarify that America’s policy was still primarily geared towards destroying ISIS and not regime change. He said the missile strikes were a separate attempt to outlaw the use of chemical weapons.

“There is a limit, I think, to what we can do. And when you look at what happened with this chemical attack, we knew that we could not stand passive on this,” the former general told reporters.

“But it was not a statement that we could enter full-fledged, full-bore into the most complex civil war probably raging on the planet at this time.”

Mattis however, in his sober way did make clear to Assad that using chemical weapons again would draw a response, but did so in a way that avoided putting the administration’s credibility on the line and highlighted the lack of precision and restraint evident in other administration statements.

A White House tested

But the Syria confusion is not only unfolding example of the administration learning that events have a way of quickly testing an inexperienced White House.

Events of the last few days appear to have completely reshaped the assumptions that Trump brought into office about improving relations with Russia that have pitched to their lowest point since the Cold War.

“If we got along with Russia and Russia went out with us and knocked the hell out of ISIS that is OK with me folks,” Trump said at a campaign rally in October. Then-candidate Trump expressed his admiration for President Vladimir Putin many times, including in an NBC interview in September.

“If he says get things about me, I am going to say great things about him,” Trump said. Back in August, Trump told supporters: “there is nothing I can think of that I would rather do than have Russia friendly.”

But as Tillerson jetted toward Moscow for his first visit as Secretary of State, relations seemed to be worsening by the hour as Putin compared the Syria attacks to the Iraq war, which Moscow vigorously opposed.

Trump’s room for maneuver with Russia was already curtailed by allegations that some campaign aides had links with Moscow at a time when it was accused of interfering in the presidential election.

The aftermath of the missile attacks ordered by Trump have appeared to have alerted the administration as never before to the geostrategic factors that make any rapprochement between Moscow and Washington a long shot.

Even members of his own administration appear to be undermining the President’s hopes of improving relations with Russia, which sees Syria as a crucial Middle Eastern ally and props up Assad’s government to maintain its influence in the region.

Tillerson, who was once branded by critics as too close to Moscow, owing to his business deals in his former job as the head of ExxonMobil, talked tough before arriving.

During a stop in Italy, the top US diplomat blasted the Russian government for supporting Assad and other US enemies.

“Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians and Hezbollah. Is that a long-term alliance that serves Russia’s interests?” he said.

Back at the White House, Spicer effectively gave Moscow an ultimatum: choose better relations with Trump administration or its relations with nations that pursue policies contrary to US interests.

“It’s no question that Russia is isolated. They have aligned themselves with North Korea, Syria, Iran. That’s not exactly a group of countries that you’re looking to hang out with,” he said.

Read more: http://cnn.it/2o4t2id

from Donald Trump’s on-the-job training

[trendingnewsb]

8 Stories That Show Exactly How The Media Hates Millennials

Somebody has to stop the millennial killing spree before it’s too late and the only thing we’re left with is social media and avocados and- oh god, they’re killing those too. But wait, there doesn’t seem to be any logic to millennial behavior. How can they both be the generation with the worst manners, but also obsessed with political correctness and not offending anyone? Why, it’s almost as if these headlines directly contradict one another, because the whole thing is a crock of artisanal horseshit …

8

Millennials Are Obsessed With Drinking, But Also Drinking Way Less Than Previous Generations

Millennials are heavy drinkers. According to The Tennessean, they make up a disproportionate percentage of alcohol buyers, and they splurge on the good stuff.

And oh boy do millennials love wine. Bustle reports that millennials buy so much of it that they’re changing the industry. Humans have been drinking wine for 8,000 years, but it took women in their 20s posting about it on Facebook to take it to the next level. Why do they love wine so much? USA Today argues that it might be because it’s the healthiest of alcoholic beverages, and the increased heart health quiets the demons after three glasses.

Or wait, actually, millennials aren’t drinking as much as previous generations. This Forbes article (named “Millennials Gone Mild” *fart noise*) tells of bars and nightclubs closing en masse, as millennials prefer to go out to sober events like “juice crawls,” or stay home altogether. The author goes on to say “Over the past few years, Millennials have started identifying as ‘grandmas’ and ‘grandpas’ when they stay in for the night — a lifestyle choice revered by most members of ‘Generation Yawn.'” Somebody revoke this man’s word license.

Oh, and millennials couldn’t afford to drink, even if they wanted to. Business Insider has concluded that they’re also killing the beer industry. Even wine sales have flatlined.

So millennials are obsessed with drinking, particularly high-quality alcohol, to the point where the industry is changing to accommodate them. But at the same time, they’re not drinking as much as previous generations, because they can’t afford it and they’re all doing sober juice crawls wherein they butt-chug ginger shots, causing bars to spontaneously explode. They’re drinking less beer, but record amounts of wine, but also wine consumption hasn’t increased in the past year. Why can’t they drink exactly the right amount?

7

Millennials Don’t Vote, But They’re Voting For All The Wrong People

This Big Think article starts with “Hey, you. Yes, you. Millennials. Stop twerking for a second and listen up.” That’s a sure way to gain the respect of your reader! The piece goes on to argue that millennials don’t vote because politicians don’t represent their interests. They go on to say that millennial voter apathy is because they have “no faith in populism,” a claim so powerfully wrong that many of your eyes have just rejected it outright. But the core of what it’s saying is correct, right? Millennials don’t vote because nobody represents them. Otherwise, they’d be passionate.

The Wall Street Journal thinks millennials are passionate about voting, but that they’re misdirecting their passion. Young people gravitated toward Sanders and Trump in the last presidential election, which was against their own best interests, the paper argues. Both of their economic policies would be bad for long-term growth, which millennials would know if they’d stop asking for “free stuff” long enough to read a goddamn book. So millennials don’t vote because nobody appeals to them, but when they do, it’s because the wrong people are appealing to them. Gotcha.

6

Millennials Are Too Involved In Their Children’s Lives, But Also Not Involved Enough

Millennials are the new “helicopter parents,” hovering over their children and providing exciting aerial footage of all their most precious police chases. According to Elite Daily, millennial parents will supervise all of their children’s interactions, preventing them from developing a sense of creativity. And they’ll fix any problem their child has, depriving them of the chance to fix it themselves. Millennials are smothering their children.

Alternatively, if we check in with ABC, we find that millennials are too focused on “me time.” Their parenting style is vastly different from the helicopter parents of previous generations. Their children lack structure and supervision because they’re too busy Snapchatting their Instagrams. The article also weirdly states that “Millennial Moms are 21 percent less likely to send a thank-you note via postal mail.” And why aren’t these goddamn kids sending singing telegrams anymore?

5

Millennials Don’t Work, But Are Also Poisoning Their Companies With Their Workaholism

Millennials are more stressed out about their jobs than other generations. Glamour reported that they are too occupied with their careers, their only goals being to “get a new job with better benefits, more pay, better hours, and more work-life balance, as well as work that was more intrinsically rewarding.” Truly, this is unheard-of stuff.

Wait a minute, it turns out millennials want material things, but aren’t willing to work for them. The Miami Herald says that millennials won’t take a job that’s too hard, and they refuse to work overtime. “Stay an extra two hours at my job as a mattress nap tester? Who do you think I am, the Wolf of Wall Street?”

But The Herald also claims that millennials are “work martyrs,” the hardest-working people in the workforce. They refuse to take their allotted vacation time because they’re too goddamn addicted to working. If only these job-stressed, lazy work martyrs could take a week off, they’d learn how a real adult handles their job — by drinking schnapps in their car during lunch and writing about millennials twice a week.

4

Millennials Blow Too Much Money, But Are Killing Whole Industries By Not Spending Money

A BankRate study found that millennials are spending way too much going out to eat. They go to Starbucks too often, and have large bar tabs (except when they don’t). All these little expenses add up and eat into the money they should be saving for retirement.

This irresponsibility has spread into other areas. This Is Money reports that in addition to ordering too many meals, millennials are overspending on expensive clothes. It looks like if these millennials don’t learn to go without spending money on frivolous things, they’ll never be able to support themselves.

Or wait, millennials are in fact to blame for the severe sales slump at chain restaurants like Applebee’s and TGI Fridays. This Business Insider article states, “Millennial consumers are more attracted than their elders to cooking at home, ordering delivery from restaurants, and eating quickly, in fast-casual or quick-serve restaurants.” Those monsters!

And it doesn’t stop with dining out. Millennials are also killing the motorcycle and diamond industries. CNBC hypothesizes that the slump in sales is due to millennials’ tendency to value experiences over material goods, that they “seek out experiences, such as vacations and concerts, that they can post about on social media.” Rest assured that it’s not because they’re broke and can’t burn tens of thousands of dollars on a shiny rock and a loud bike; it’s because they’re narcissistic and need to brag about their trip to Argentina on social media. Also, no one’s ever bragged about their diamond ring online, right guys?

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Millennials Never Leave The House, But Are Also Everywhere (And That’s Awful)

The New York Post is worried about millennials. They spend too much time at home, leading to an upswing in depression. Instead of going out to the bar with their friends or meeting a date for coffee, they stay home and binge-watch TV. The Post warns of the emotional dangers of “Netflix and chill” — which, if you recall, was a euphemism for sex before the olds got to it.

And yet the same New York Post is mad that millennials are going out too much, railing against millennial “brunch culture” — that is, that millennials will go to restaurants to eat brunch. But wait, isn’t that good? Instead of killing restaurants? Not so fast — the problem the article has is that these goddamn kids will hog tables for hours and obnoxiously take pictures of their food instead of silently, angrily nursing a hangover, as God intended.

2

Millennials Hate Capitalism, Except When They Love Capitalism

National Review came out with the hottest take their scientists could engineer, combining every millennial stereotype into a super-take capable of triggering every lib, and perhaps killing male feminists outright. They argue that millennials dislike capitalism because they are ignorant of what it truly is (and that they like socialism for the same reason). They go on to say that capitalism doesn’t care for their puny gender or racial identities, which scares millennials right into Bernie Sanders’ arms.

Meanwhile, The American Spectator is too busy dunking on progressives to buy into the myth that millennials hate capitalism. Capitalism brought them iPhones and Uber, the popularity of which proves millennials love the free market. They also go on to claim that millennials don’t know what socialism is, because that seems to be some sort of journalistic nervous tic.

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Millennials Want Participation Trophies, But Also Youth Sports Are Way Too Intense Now

The Washington Post calls millennials the “Participation Trophy Generation,” participation trophies being the ultimate symbol of entitlement. We were so afraid of hurting any child’s feelings that we got rid of winners and losers, and now an entire generation is growing up unprepared for the competitive real world.

The Blaze Millennials: “Glenn Beck is ruining our grandparents.”

Glenn Beck’s rag The Blaze agrees, pining for the days when there was only one trophy, handed out to the winner, and those who came in third or lower were summarily executed.

The Federalist

The Federalist claims that millennials’ lust for participation trophies has bled into the workplace. They say that millennials, especially women, want promotions the same way they want trophies: whether they earned them or not. If only they weren’t babied so much at soccer games, maybe millennials would be better human beings. A competitive football game is what made the Greatest Generation great and the Baby Boomers boom, right?

This HuffPo article starts with “Youth sports: a chance to run around, play sports with friends and have fun … At least that’s how it used to be.” But now youth sports culture is so demanding and competitive that kids are emotionally and physically drained, with most dropping out by age 13.

Washington Post “Take it easy, kid. If you don’t get a trophy for losing, then we won’t get to spend a lifetime berating you for it.”

The consequences run even deeper, though. Sports are so intense now that kids are getting injured like never before. That comes from The Washington Post, the same people who coined the term “Participation Trophy Generation.”

Man, it’s almost like these writers just hate the younger generation because they’re trapped in old, failing bodies and growing increasingly irrelevant to society by the day. But that couldn’t be it. That’s too far-fetched. No, it is the avocado’s fault, surely …

David Klesh was born in 1980, but refuses to call himself a millennial. His writing has also appeared on the Faith Hope and Fiction blog. Dan Hopper is an editor for Cracked, previously for CollegeHumor and BestWeekEver.tv. He fires off consistent A-tweets at @DanHopp. Adam Schwallie has a Twitter, where he tweets in between destroying all of the industries that Baby Boomers hold near and dear to their hearts.

You know what Millenials aren’t killing? These dope Caribou Boots that you can use to continue to not kill industries with because that’s an unfair characterization of a generation of fun-loving people.

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