The American Politics Thread

you know though...  I could get used to this silver linings with Trump election sh*t.  Perhaps it wasn't the change the yokels and ignorants thought.. who thought he cared one iota about them or their well-being.. but perhaps the regime change motif of the article is quite elegant and effective.  Dovetailing with earlier posts I've made...  America is changing... and Trump is not going to stop it... only merely accelerate it.

I spent many years researching my book... crawling through county historical societies all over the south.  I still have dreams of finishing it.  Anhow I'll put my knowledge of that era of our history against anyone's.  Agreed there are a lot of common misconceptions and misunderstandings today about that period of our history.

True on both fronts. Lincoln was indeed quite racist personally, and the focus of the war did shift from preservation of the union, to anti slavery in the North. I believe part of it was also morale....the North was starting to grow wary of this bloody conflict, including the draft, and since many were racist as well ya know easier to make a moral argument to help keep people on board. Spurred on by real stories about the horrors making their way up.

Oh yes, there sure as hell is racism all over. In a twisted way, the openness of it in the South is almost, I can't think of the right word but least it's not hidden? In the northeast, I had to deal with the shock of having my eyes ripped open: virulent racism was there and not insignificant, it just was kept under wraps. 

Not sure if I posted the pic here, but read a great book that (among other things) looked at racist Google searches, and found a vast amount in the North. OH, IN, MI, parts of WI and PA but also upstate NY, parts of New England. All were quite high on the scale of racist searches. The author noted these areas happened to strongly correlate with Trump's strongest support in the GOP primary, and I noticed many of these areas either flipped from blue (sometimes for decades) to red, or greatly lost Dem support. In other areas they went from red to blood red, sometimes the highest support for a Repub since the 80s or even 1972. It's crazy. 

While I still think econ and other factors are involved, seems hard to dispute. 

Personally I was disturbed at the amount of people around me posting openly comments like "Black just are naturally prone to be criminals" "If minorities would just stop being criminals there'd be no problems with the police" posting (false) stats about how likely a white is to be killed by a black, all these phony Trump/Sessions stats about our cities etc etc and I won't even start on the anti Muslim sentiments pouring out the woodwork. In good ol liberal, quite diverse, central NJ...

It's like somebody waved a red flag to signal people to pour out long suppressed resentments.  What the media calls the ugly underbelly but at this rate, it's fast graduating from underbelly to facade.  Trump reminds me of angry, well educated defenders of cow vigilantes...in my office (holding fairly senior positions, I may add). I agree with David.  Best to just switch off from the politics, as fatalistic as it sounds.  And I am not being delusional; rather I fear the worst.  And I don't think there's much that can be done.  Plenty of blood is going to spill before this resentment finds an outlet to completely get out of the system.  Well, ok, at least you Americans can keep hoping for some more time to get him impeached; we don't even have that choice.  Very difficult to oust the head of state in a Parliamentary system and just not happening when said head of state's position is well nigh unassailable.

It seems that in June Trump's DHS cut near $1.3 million in funding dedicated to combating white supremacist ideology. 

Overall the "Countering Violent Extremism" program has been under fire by Sebastian Gorka (one our European Trumpers complete with ties to questionable organizations) and the focus has been shifted from domestic extremism to Islamic extremism and law enforcement. 

This is despite the fact the DHS itself put out a report in May that white supremacist violence has been on the rise, with violence "expected to continue" and that they have been responsible for more attacks than any other domestic extremist group. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-dhs-may-report-warned-of-threat-posed-by-white-supremacists/

All this sh*t from Trump isn't just rhetoric, it's real policy

hahahha....  good thing. Take away all of our entertainment and fun...  bad Scott.. bad.

heading that way!!  Always curious as to what you think Scott.. shame you don't post more from your particular perspective.  I think we were very much of the same mind going into the election...more centrist..  I don't know about you but the last 9 months have really pushed me hard to the left.