Want to know exactly how stupid American voters are? For months, especially since he secured the Republican nomination, the media has been urging Donald Trump to stop saying nasty things and to start acting more presidential, like a normal presidential candidate. What if he agrees to do so? Should we forget all the nasty stuff that he said before? No matter what he does, everyone hears what they want to hear.
This is How Stupid Americans Are
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
45 Comments. Leave new
So, what are all the Bernie supporters gonna do now? Who are y’all going to vote for?
Same as always: not HRC.
I have seen something like 35 years of “incrementalism” and we’re now at the end of it.
I see a world where the climate is changing — and all we hear is lip service.
I see a world where epipens (and don’t get me started on how much of the “need” for those is manufactured by manipulating hysterical parents) are sold for $500 and the CEOs of these companies (the epipen isn’t the only case of this) are paid millions.
I see a country that is the only first-world nation without universal medical care and one of the “most liberal” politicians in the country makes some noise about doing something about it so that she can trick the gullible into supporting her. And now she’s backpedaled on that, and, somehow, I’m supposed to vote for her.
I see college tuitions that render the whole process of attending as a “dog whistle” to make sure that only the rich can go.
I see a world where the 401(k)s are gonna start popping soon because the market will not be able to handle the constant sell-off of all those boomers because there aren’t enough Gen Xers and milliennials to buffer the math and too many of the boomers simply are not fiscally smart enough to have prepped carefully in the first place.
I see HRC’s daughter getting $600K for nine garbage pieces over at NBC while millions are unemployed and the media simply lets that go right on by.
In cases of extreme starvation, the person will actually cross a point at which EVEN IF THEY BEGIN EATING, they will die because the body has simply gone too far. We’re already at that point. Let’s just jump to the end already. I don’t need HRC’s brand of helping Wall Street steal a little more of the few crumbs that are still left. Let Trump firebomb the whole picnic.
Let it end.
We aare nowhere close to that point, and the reason we are as bad as we are is in large part because “progressives” don’t actually understand incrementalism and how to make it work for them, instead they keep incrementalism ffrom working and then try to claim the bullshit they’ve foisted on us for four plus decades is the same thing, when it clearly is not.
But also because they lack the paatience and frustration tolerance for the real work. There’s a greek proverb that says “A soceityy grows great when old men plant trees who’s shade they will never sit in”.
Unfortunantley, the “progressive” probverb is “A soceity grows great when old men won’t plant trees precisely because they know the trees will produce shade they’ll never sit in”. Biggest problem with moden liberalism. Sad, but not surprising.
Whimsy, if you’d been around in revolutionary times, we’d still be a British colony. Dedicated to not punishing Queen Elizabeth and waiting (without hope) for incremental changes to the stamp tax.
“I have not yet begun to wait.”
John Paul Whimsy
“Damn the torpedoes, full stop ahead.”
David Whimsygutt
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for the DNC.”
John F. Whimseddy.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so little been waited on by so many”
Winston Whimhill
“For true patriots to be noisy, is dangerous.” Samuel Whims
““The price of freedom is eternal patience.”
Thomas Whimerson
“Shut the fuck up and vote for who we tell you to vote for”
@ CrazyH
↑
Good job!
😀
Terrific CH,
This is great even in summer reruns.
Bravo, CrazyH!
* curtsy *
Whimsical,
1. Incrementalism has been at work for about 40 years now.
2. All the studies agree: home ownership AND safe retirement are becoming harder and harder.
3. Salaries for the middle class have been declining since the 1980s.
4. Collective bargaining (unions) have been declining as well.
5. The earnings gap between the richest and the poorest has been rising steadily.
I can go on and on about this. But the inescapable point is this: By all the measurements that are objective — things like savings, home ownership, raises and so forth — incrementalism has not worked. It has not even come close to working.
If incrementalism works, why is everyone working harder and harder for less and less success? I realize we disagree on a lot of things, but I think this is one of the times where objective numbers can be brought in to settle the issue.
If incrementalism works, where’s the evidence?
>1. Incrementalism has been at work for about 40 years now.
Let me stop you here. This is false, and thus renders your entire argument irrelevant. Incrementalism hasn’t been seen in this country for nearly 50 years- ever since “progressives” were tricked by the right into beliving the “magical thinking” that if they undermined perfectly acceptable Democratic candidates for not fulfilling unreasonable expectations it would send the message “Go left” to the Democratic party (When, as is painfully obvious to any dispassionate observer of history, it sends the complete opposite message).
Until “progressives” become able/willling to accept the fact that their “punishment” election philosphy (which is what has ACTUALLY been at work for the past 40 years- you made a brilliant case proving it doesn’t work, btw) is the problem and change their attitude and actions accordingly, there will be litttle to no progress on the issues that “progressives” pay lip service to.
But, of course, that is “progressives” dirty little secret- they don’t want progress (hence the quotes). They don’t want to be reasoanble- they want to piss all over perfectly acceptable Democrats and then moan about the lack of attention paid to them, and the lack of progress they cause. To a “progressive”, expressing their emotion trumps everything -up to aand including the good of the country.
And no amount of (admittedly amusing) mangled historical quotes will change that.
Reason is shallow and transient; emotion is deep and persistent.
People will find reasons to believe that which they find comforting and tranquilizing.
So we (as a species) are seduced into tribal faith in priests, politicians, and every illusion possible in our extended collective nervous system of electronic media.
Homo sapiens was named in a fit of hubris; we are Homo incendiarius, the fire starter.
We would not willingly consent to burn ourselves so often with fire of our own making if we were sapient.
Be realistic, demand the impossible.
“Progressives” already do. That’s why they fail.
No.
Progressives always fail because they never make a demand, but cave in and give their votes to regressive Democrats, and so support their own downward spiral into irrelevance.
Progressives voted for Obama and got lip service for it, because they promise their votes unconditionally, no matter how completely they have been betrayed.
Right wing warmongering Democrats will never leave the Democratic Party if people keep on voting for them.
Bull.
“Progressives” do nothing BUT make demands. Their demands are not reasonable, rational, or realistic, so of course they never get fulfilled.
And, of course when they are not fulfilled, progressives go- “Fine! Don’t move left enough, quick enough for me. I’ll put the people who make things worse, and roll back what progress we made in charge! That will send the message to the Democrats to go left” (When the reality is it sends the complete opposite message, of course)
“Progressives” dirty little secret is that they don’t actually want to make progress on the causes they pay lip service to. They just want to whine and complain and not do the neccessary hard work to make progress, because that would damage their precious “purity” my making them vote for people they don’t consider “pure enough”; which is why they get the quotes.
Until “progressives” stop sandbagging perfectly acceptable candidates because they can’t deliver on ureasonable expectations (not that anyone could) there will continue to be little to no progress on the issues “progressives” claim to care about
http://www.carlbeijer.com/2016/08/the-false-realism-of-lesser-evil-voting.html
The impact of third parties on American politics extends far beyond their capacity to attract votes. Minor parties, historically, have been a source of important policy innovations. Women’s suffrage, the graduated income tax, and the direct election of senators, to name a few, were all issues that third parties espoused first.
It’s as predictable as sunrise. During the primaries, the candidates make radical noises to distinguish themselves from others in their party. Once the nominations are clinched, they move to the center in order to attract the swing voters.
And as predictable as sunset, the voters will forget, realign, and insist their candidate hasn’t changed course one bit. Hillary gave lip service to Bernie’s philosophy, then moved right back to the “center” once he was no longer a threat.
I notice that when HRC (and if anyone knows about a good marriage and its sacredness, it would be ol’ Hill) “evolved” from her stance about marriage being one man/one woman, everyone applauded. “Oh, see! She’s sublime!” Even Dan Savage, who usually sees things pretty clearly, drank that Kool-Aid.
If Trump changes his mind, it can only be because of nakedly cynical manipulation. “He only says what people want to hear,” snarl his opponents.
This election is going to boil down to one thing: believability. Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, is a known quantity. HRC is not. If she wins, and if the midterms look rocky and her advisers say that bad-mouthing teh gays will give her the win, you can bet everything she hasn’t helped her owners on Wall Street steal from you that her speeches will denounce gays. “We need to bring those atrocious homosexuals to heel,” she will say. And her (new) supporters will eat it up.
> This election is going to boil down to one thing: believability.
That reminds me of an old (non-PC) joke. “Chicks dig honesty and sincerity – once you can fake those, you’ve got it made”
So we’ve got the snake oil salesman vs. the snake in the grass in a contest to determine who can fool more of the people more of the time. Only one will win, but the other three hundred million of us will lose. (along with the other seven billion who don’t even get to vote)
Luckily, Democrats are working feverishly to give the vote to foreigners!
@ Jack Heart –
How would that be accomplished?
@derlehrer
Well, I’m pretty sure the first step involves a crack pipe…
@ CrazyH –
Didn’t you mean “crackpot”?
😀
A crackpot with a crack pipe?
@ CrazyH –
😀 😀 😀
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
The current mass immigration.
Amnesty.
The more third world brown people the Dems give the vote to, the more votes the Dems receive. Quid pro quo…
If they are immigrants, then they are no longer ‘foreigners,’ they are ‘Americans’ and have just as much right to vote as you do.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
@ CrazyH –
Exactly right!
Living in Mexico, I’ve encountered a number of families, the father of which has been deported as an illegal immigrant in spite of the fact that the mother and all the offspring are legally U.S. citizens.
A few whom I have encountered have asked for my assistance in legalizing Dad, so that the family can move to the United States and live together as legal residents/citizens.
I have managed to help two families obtain legal status, and I am working on a third.
They are not “foreigners” As a matter of fact, I have been encouraging the family members who are eligible to vote in this election to obtain their absentee ballots and vote. This is perfectly legal. I vote as a resident of Arkansas even though I reside in Mexico.
🙂
Not all Americans, Ted — just SOME Americans.
Hell, I still argue on Facebook with idiots from my hometown in Texas who believe that Obama’s birth certificate was faked and that he isn’t even an American citizen.
You can’t get any stupider than THAT!
Yeah. I mean there’s no way the elite would ever lie to us. They never conspire or collude–and certainly not to protect one of their own! The very notion smacks of the most fantastical absurdity!
@ Jack Heart –
What’s your point?
What was yours? That it’s impossible to have a document faked? That presidents don’t break the law?
@ Jack Heart –
Not at all. Just this:
Reliable sources have documented the authenticity of the birth certificate, and a newspaper announcement of birth supported the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to fabricate such evidence retroactively.
Only a fool would persist in denying that he is a natural-born citizen.
This cartoon is what Scott Adams has been posting on the Dilbert blog: Trump gave a speech in Mexico that was aimed at the general election voter, and right afterwards, gave a speech in Arizona that was aimed at the people who voted for him in the primaries.
Mr Adams says, as does this cartoon, that the mainstream voters will figure Trump was telling the truth in Mexico, and was lying to his primary voters in Arizona, while the primary voters will figure Trump was telling the truth in Arizona and the Mexico speech was a lie for the benefit of of mainstream voters.
Of course, the Clinton campaign is running ads aimed at Republican primary voters, that Trump was telling the truth in Mexico and lying to them in Arizona, and ads aimed at general election voters that
Trump was telling the truth in Arizona and lying to them in Mexico.
So I look at 538. They say Secretary Clinton has her smallest leads in Florida and Ohio, so Trump has less than a 25% chance of winning both, and even if he did, he’d still lose the election.
So it looks like the Clinton campaign is currently more convincing that the Trump campaign.
After all, the New York Times posted an article that a vote for Trump is a vote for a nuclear holocaust. Not an editorial endorsement saying, in their opinion Secretary Clinton is the better choice, but a ‘factual’ article reporting on ‘actual events’ and quoting Trump’s statements that he intends to start a nuclear war (statements he never actually made). Trump will have a hard time beating that.
***
Whimsical says if Democrats had held their noses and voted for Humphrey and the truth that the Vietnam war could not be won and nor could it be abandoned, instead of voting for Nixon’s ‘Secret Plan for Unconditional Victory,’ it would have moved the US incrementally to the left, but voting for Nixon gave us Reagan and the two Bushes. As a hypothetical, there is no way to ascertain if this is correct or not. (But I figure, probably not.)
After Johnson’s escalated bombing of Vietnam in 1965, Dwight Macdonald “wondered if a vote for Goldwater might have been a shrewder tactic.”
“The Democrats would have forced [Goldwater] to go slower, but they offered no challenge of any consequence to their own party’s leader.”— Michael Wreszin, Macdonald biographer
Democrats might vote against a Republican’s war, but never against a Democrats war. And Republicans never vote against war.
@ Glenn –
I remember the political hacks at the time told me: “If you vote for Goldwater, there will be escalation in Vietnam.”
It was my first year to vote.
I voted for Goldwater.
They were right.
derlehrer,
But it was Johnson who won and escalated the bombing, so the Macdonald premise was never tested.
If more people voted (as you did) for Goldwater, Johnson would never have had the opportunity to escalate.
Of course, eggs cannot be unscrambled.
@ Glenn –
Are you serious? Johnson won the election?
Regardless, it was solely my vote for Goldwater that caused the escalation.
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
I’m sure it’s not worth much, but I thoroughly enjoyed that, der lehrer.
CH points out an important truth with, “So we’ve got the snake oil salesman vs. the snake in the grass in a contest to determine who can fool more of the people more of the time.” Either way, it’s the imaginatively super-human Global Corporate Welfare Cabal that has developed, over the last one hundred years or so, the dominant winning strategy over the rest of Earth’s mortally non-incorporated chess-board pieces.
So what will we choose? The T-rump Don’s Bozo Reality Show of Irradiation, or Billary’s Cabaret Extravaganza of Warporn Incest and Nuclear Annihilation? The Corporate Institutions of Media Expedience that owns us all absolutely allows for no other broadcast choices.
But we still have permission to kvetch about the corporately defined, “less-evil” paradigm given to us. Meanwhile, most of us will still get fucked over beyond all recognition.
DanD
On that, Dan, we can agree.
Me, I’ve been playing Fallout in preparation. Bring on da Super Mutants!
I really have just one question left at this point. If Trump is as bad as so many commentators are saying — and, really, there is not one person in the mainstream media who is even close to sounding neutral about Donald Trump — what does it say that HRC is only 81%-19% ahead of Trump in the projections (and Trump’s numbers have been improving)?
I mean, is there ANYONE out there — even the most fanatically devoted supporter of HRC — who thinks she will accomplish ANYTHING with a rapidly hostile Republican-controlled House and Senate?
Hillary will be the same as Obama and deliver 85%-90% of what can reasonably be expected of her. Of course “progressives” haven’t been able to see “reasonable” through a satellite telescope for decades, which is the biggest reason the country is in the mess its in. . .
Well, well, well, for once we agree 100%. I haven’t seen ‘reasonable’ in quite some time.
I still think Trump is running as a favour to his BFF Bill to get Bill back into the White House Intern Room.
Trump has said the wars (of course, CrazyH pointed out they were NOT wars) in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were BIG mistakes, mistakes he would not repeat, then on Wednesday, he said he’ll double the size of the US military (why? one might ask, if wars are all big mistakes). Trump continues to make absolutely no sense.
St Redbeard, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. She’s promised, her first day in office, to remove the evil dictators of Syria and Russia. And Wednesday, she promised no American boots on the ground, and no deaths at all (we don’t count any deaths that are not brave, American heroes, of course).
As I recall, a Frenchman and a German tried to remove the evil Czars/dictators of USSR, and both failed miserably. On the other hand, the Japanese succeeded (until the US made them return everything they had taken, plus interest, to the USSR).
So if Secretary Redbeard just pinches her eyes, she’ll succeed where the Frenchman and the German failed???
Racisssss