Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Strikers1945guy]

Trump should win New York next week in a landslide victory no?

[BryanM]

All the remaining contests on the rep side are primaries now, so the creepy end of the world death cultists can't vote in Cruz.



They're also almost all winner-take-all, which was a scheme designed by the RNC to rig the election for a Mitt Romney style leader so he wouldn't have to put up with the unpredictable kooks of the party. Just happens to be that Trump is this cycle's Mitt Romney.

The situation is such that even if the worst were to happen and he lost California, he still very likely will pass the 1,237 delegate threshold to become the nominee. No convention hijinks. If he wins California, it'd take an act of god to stop him from winning it.

Everyone hyperventilating over the possibility he won't be the nominee is a fear-laden child. Voting for or against him at this point is just helping Hillary Clinton.

[Mischief Maker]

This primary is the latest chapter in the neverending battle between Hippies and Yuppies.

[Mischief Maker]

Along those lines of media bias, what's the best headline for the Washington Post to use for the big news about Bernie this morning?

Bernie Sanders says private meeting with Pope Francis is not an endorsement

[BryanM]

What'll really drive you crazy is if you accept that the media has the power to push percentages roughly 10%. Remember when they pushed Carly Fiorina and she got up to 11% for two weeks? And then dropped like a rock after they stopped pushing her?

If they weren't pushing her, she'd be down nationally 45-55 instead of 49-51 among registered democrats.

[BulletMagnet]

Read an article the other day which notes that support for Trump is really more of a religion than anything else; specifically, the ever-profitable "Power of Positive Thinking"-style secular faith, wherein conventional wisdom doesn't matter, since all you have to do is want something enough, believe in it enough, and it must come to pass.

[Opus131]

Well, when your culture worships nihilism, anyone who comes along speaking in positive terms is bound to become an instant hit. Not that the peddlers of nihilism would ever understand that it is they who made Trump possible.

To think of it, much of the hatred towards Trump stems purely from the fact he doesn't worship the same god as the rest of western society and as such he is seen as an heretic. In truth, he never really said anything that was that controversial. His real and only sin is that he doesn't prostrate to the prevailing sensibilities of our time.

[Mischief Maker]

His real and only sin is that he doesn't prostrate to the prevailing sensibilities of our time.

Well that's a nice way of saying he hates niggers!

[Specineff]

To think of it, much of the hatred towards Trump stems purely from the fact he doesn't worship the same god as the rest of western society and as such he is seen as an heretic. In truth, he never really said anything that was that controversial.

https://youtu.be/C6QEqoYgQxw?t=21s

To be thought of as a rapist and drug trafficker solely because of my ethnicity is just as wrong as me saying that black people are lazy and like to live off welfare to buy crack and rap records, and that all whites are whiskey-swilling, baby-popping bible-thumpers. Hey, I'm just telling it like it is. No need to let political correctness shackle my ideas.

But it's okay, because I guess some of them aren't like that. Right?

[BulletMagnet]

Well, when your culture worships nihilism, anyone who comes along speaking in positive terms is bound to become an instant hit.

You must have a different definition of "nihilism" than I do, seeing as Trump's clarion call is "screw it, who cares?" "Bad guys" in other countries? Kill their families in front of them and then bomb the whole damn region back to the stone age! Peace treaties and trade agreements now thought of as inconvenient? Tear 'em up! Uncooperative states? Give all the surrounding countries nukes, what could go wrong! Nobody seems more eager to damn the proverbial torpedoes, and completely disregard any potential consequences (let alone moral/ethical quandaries) so long as it gives them a nice ego high while it lasts, than Trump and his followers.

Shot version: acknowledging that there's more to existence than "what I happen to want right this second" doesn't make you a nihilist. it means you're not a spoiled elementary schooler.

To think of it, much of the hatred towards Trump stems purely from the fact he doesn't worship the same god as the rest of western society and as such he is seen as an heretic.

He's as devoted a cultist of Mammon as you'll find, which is precisely why he's had so much success among the all-American "screw everyone else, I want my damn money!" crowd.

In truth, he never really said anything that was that controversial.

This frankly says a lot more about you than it does about him.

[Mischief Maker]

https://youtu.be/C6QEqoYgQxw?t=21s

You know what's the most offensive part of that excerpt? "I speak to border guards." Really? Third-generation scion to family fortune silver spoon Donald Trump is hanging out with blue collar dudes at an old bar having a heart to heart?

It's funny all this talk about Trump being a man's man who doesn't worry about stepping on the sensitive feelings of "betas." No person on Earth is a bigger victim of sensitivity about feelings than Donald Trump. If he was hanging out at a blue collar bar with a bunch of buddies, the very first time he walked in with that psychotic comb-over his best friend would have smacked it off his bald dome. Patrick Stewart was saved by just such an intervention. Instead he's been surrounded by yes-men and women his whole life who wanted to get something out of him and were careful to avoid bruising his delicate feelings and gushed over how handsome he looked with his clown hair while popping another Valium.

Not to mention if he actually did hang out at the blue collar bar once upon a time, eventually he'd have mom & pop contractors barging through the door and yelling, "Where the fuck is Donnie?! We installed the windows on his Taj Mahal and ever since he's been dodging us! Where the fuck's our money?!!"

[Xyga]

Lulz

[BryanM]

The cosmically sad thing is he really is going to be the president, and any criticisms you may have are impotent to stop that.

"Donald Trump is going to be the president of the United States."

[Mischief Maker]

The cosmically sad thing is he really is going to be the president, and any criticisms you may have are impotent to stop that.

"Donald Trump is going to be the president of the United States."

Please don't force me to defend voting for Hillary until I absolutely have to.

[Opus131]

His real and only sin is that he doesn't prostrate to the prevailing sensibilities of our time.

Well that's a nice way of saying he hates niggers!

Sort of like disagreeing with feminism is to hate women i guess. "But feminism is about the equality of women. Are you against equality?"

Trump is a "racist" only because he doesn't accept politically correct dogmas and also because he clearly doesn't hate white people (which apparently is the 2016 thing to do, though Trump never got the memo it seems). No more, no less. Hell, he is a "racist" and a "bigot" the same way GamerGate is about the harassment of women.

[Opus131]

To think of it, much of the hatred towards Trump stems purely from the fact he doesn't worship the same god as the rest of western society and as such he is seen as an heretic. In truth, he never really said anything that was that controversial.

https://youtu.be/C6QEqoYgQxw?t=21s

To be thought of as a rapist and drug trafficker solely because of my ethnicity is just as wrong as me saying that black people are lazy and like to live off welfare to buy crack and rap records, and that all whites are whiskey-swilling, baby-popping bible-thumpers. Hey, I'm just telling it like it is. No need to let political correctness shackle my ideas.

But it's okay, because I guess some of them aren't like that. Right?

That's just your interpretation of what he is saying. It is a fact that a great deal of criminals cross the border as much as it is a fact that blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes. It doesn't matter if hearing those things "offends" you, the reality is what it is.

The only problem here is that he is focusing too much on the criminal element of illegal immigrants in order to score emotional points with his audience, when the problem is with immigration as a whole, regardless of whether the people coming in are criminals or not. You cannot have a country without borders. End of story. If committing national suicide is the only way not be racist, than perhaps we ought to be a bit racist, if only out of a sense of self-preservation.

I mean, consider that before Trump, this was the "default" attitude of the average politician:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qVpMwqv7QM

Let's not even talk about the migrant crisis in Europe, which i'm sure is waking up a lot of Americans as well.

[Specineff]

Let's call a spade a spade, dude. There's nothing to interpret here. It doesn't offend; it hurts when people assume (and they have told me so to my face) that I am a rapist or a thief because I'm Mexican. (I may be stealing your SSN as you read this, btw.)

But hey, what could you possibly know or understand? You're surely one of those privileged, entitled, never-knew-strife, white trash rich kids with a six figure-making father who calls all black people "n*ggers". It's a fact there are white people like that, though there are some, I guess, who are okay. Does the food during Thanksgiving taste better with the blood of all the natives that got slaughtered by your ancestors?

(It's only for the sake of rhetoric, mods. Please put down the banhammer. I promise to play nice after this post.)

[Opus131]

Once again, he is not saying that Mexicans are inherently rapists and thieves. He is saying that a disproportionate number of criminals cross the border (shocking that so many people willing to brake the law to come to America would also be criminals), and that is why we need to put a stop to this unchecked mass trafficking of human beings. That is, we need have a border.

To me this is controversial only if you are a left-wing nutjob. It is controversial the same way pointing out to black criminality is controversial. We are at a point where mere facts are seen as "racist".

[BulletMagnet]

It is a fact that a great deal of criminals cross the border

If it's "facts" you truly want to talk about, if memory serves the official numbers on the issue state that 1) Even when you correct for proportions, illegal immigrants are far, far less likely to commit crimes than "native" white people, and 2) Over the past few years the amount of illegal immigrants crossing into the USA has actually gone down; in fact, quite a few who were already here have headed back south. Why? Because our economy, and thus the job market, isn't as good as it used to be. Which brings up the part of the issue that the sort of people who support Trump never, ever acknowledge, namely that it takes two to make an illegal hiring happen, and both of them are breaking the law, but only one of them is ever to blame. (And moreover, if the official figures don't support your preconceived notions, there's obviously an "establishment" conspiracy to hide the truth.)

This is the core of Trump's "appeal", and ironically it's just the sort of thing that his followers have always accused those lefty sissies of embodying: whatever problems we have, it's always 100 percent somebody else's fault (remember, criminals aren't just crossing the Mexican border, the Mexican government is purposely sending "its worst" here, just because it knows we're too wimpy to nuke them in response!). Same goes for all those black criminals; any acknowledgement of the hundreds of years of awful history that brought us to this point is totally verboten, the insinuation (if not outright declaration) being that any assumption other than "they're just innately worse people than us and deserve to be openly treated as such" is "coddling" or "reverse racism".

[Xyga]

Is there a point in arguing with a right-wing nutjob ?

[Opus131]

Even when you correct for proportions, illegal immigrants are far, far less likely to commit crimes than "native" white people

Huh, yeah. Right. Citation needed bro, especially on the "white" people part (are you sure they did not include black or Hispanic american crime in that "native" figure), or the "far, far less" part. Just sounds like one of those "magical" statistics the left loves so much, like the claim that 1 in 5 women are raped in our university campuses.

So is Trump right?

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... ump-right/

Well, as far as i'm concerned it doesn't matters. Illegal immigration isn't a problem because it brings in so many criminals. It is a problem in and of itself. Illegal immigration seems to serve only two purposes: to help the narrow economics interests of a lot of unscrupulous business people who are profiting massively from exploiting what is essentially nothing but cheap third world labor at the expense of the future of the country, and those who like to use illegal immigrants to bolster their own political power (using taxpayers's money to subsidize government aid to Hispanics which is meant to earn their vote). That's why both the left and the right are against Trump. If we are talking about helping Hispanics, stopping illegal immigration would result in a net gain in the standards of living of currently naturalized Mexicans as well as an increase in their wages, but who cares about that, right? We just MUST have this continuous and unchecked flux of third world peasants because... reasons i guess?

[Opus131]

Is there a point in arguing with a right-wing nutjob ?

Certainly not if you are a left-wing nutjob. Muh safe spaces.

[Rob]

unscrupulous business people who are profiting massively from exploiting what is essentially nothing but cheap third world labor at the expense of the future of the country,

If these business people are unscrupulous for exploiting what is "essentially" cheap third world labor, what is Trump for exploiting actual cheap third world labor? And what exactly are you expecting of him? To not be the person he's been for his first 69 years of life - a person only interested in personal gain? Naive, sad.

[Opus131]

Funny that you don't even seem to see the obvious contradiction.

Question: why is Trump running against his own interests? Why didn't he remain on the side of the establishment?

[Rob]

Funny that you don't even seem to see the obvious contradiction.

Does it have to do with math?

Trump isn't running against his own interests, obviously. How many times does it need to be repeated? He's in it for himself.

[Strikers1945guy]

Funny that you don't even seem to see the obvious contradiction.

Does it have to do with math?

Trump isn't running against his own interests, obviously. How many times does it need to be repeated? He's in it for himself.

Who isn't though?

[Mischief Maker]

Funny that you don't even seem to see the obvious contradiction.

Question: why is Trump running against his own interests? Why didn't he remain on the side of the establishment?

I think it's pretty clear that this is the reason he decided to run for president again.

That's the tight-lipped smile of a man you'd want on the red phone during the Cuban missile crisis!

[Opus131]

Funny that you don't even seem to see the obvious contradiction.

Does it have to do with math?

Trump isn't running against his own interests, obviously. How many times does it need to be repeated? He's in it for himself.

I'm talking in relation to the idea that illegal immigration is good for unscrupulous businessmen. Trump has taken advantage of every business opportunity under the book but like he said many times, this is pretty much what you have to do. The question is why do we need to have a system where you have to destroy the country in order to make money, and being that he is the first politician to bring this problem up i think it is obvious he doesn't like this scheme and wants to change it.

[Opus131]

Funny that you don't even seem to see the obvious contradiction.

Does it have to do with math?

Trump isn't running against his own interests, obviously. How many times does it need to be repeated? He's in it for himself.

Who isn't though?

Trump, obviously. Name one thing he has gained from this whole ordeal he put himself through.

If there is a selfish element, it is a psychological one which is interesting in itself, for it means he really wants to fix America and he wants to be the one to do it for his own personal glory.

[Mischief Maker]

Trump, obviously. Name one thing he has gained from this whole ordeal he put himself through.

Okay.

Have you seen the ridiculous tax cuts he's proposing? If there's one lesson we've learned from Scott Walker, it's that an impractical budget proposed by a demonstrably stupid Republican executive will get full rubber stamp treatment from a republican legislature, long-term consequences be damned.

That's millions of dollars back into his pocket and the pockets of his children.