has anyone else noticed

......who do you think hates men? Please elucidate.

Who? Someone who practices misandry.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/misandrist

I've read and reread my original post. "Who" was not a part of it. Do you have an opinion as to a "who", and "who" or what that might be? If so, please elucidate, but remember please, I made no accusations. If you reread the post a warning against making random accusations was the point. It was not about a "who, they, or them".

In general, your opinion of Trump is your opinion. You may share that opinion with a great many others. You and I may share that opinion. No one is denying you that right, or your definitions. My point was a great many random accusations are being freely made. Some may be substantiated, but it is becoming dangerously de rigueur, by some, to accuse anyone who did not support Hillary as being a racist and misogynist. A misogynist, according to the Oxford definition, may also be a woman. I do appreciate your comments concern Trump only, and not those who did not support Hillary.       

I don't recall at all that the student journalist who asked if any Trump supporters would meet with her in London was insulted or ridiculed.  Perhaps you can point to specific posts which ridiculed, chastised, or insulted her.

I'm quite willing to concede that my definitions, based on my beliefs of courteous and helpful conversation, may be different to your definitions. That's OK. You're entitled to your definitions. But please, I'm entitled to mine as well. I'm willing to rephrase my statement in the post to read "In my opinion, the request resulted in that person being chastised, ridiculed, and insulted."

but it is becoming dangerously de rigueur, by some, to accuse anyone who did not support Hillary as being a racist and misogynist.

When Roe v Wade falls and Planned Parenthood is closed and curriculums are altered, questions will arise about how an individual could have aligned themselves with that sort of thing.

In general, your opinion of Trump is your opinion. You may share that opinion with a great many others. You and I may share that opinion. No one is denying you that right, or your definitions. My point was a great many random accusations are being freely made. Some may be substantiated, but it is becoming dangerously de rigueur, by some, to accuse anyone who did not support Hillary as being a racist and misogynist. A misogynist, according to the Oxford definition, may also be a woman. I do appreciate your comments concern Trump only, and not those who did not support Hillary.       

Someone else wrote this and it explains exactly why I am unhappy with people who voted for Trump.

Not all Trump supporters are racist, misogynist, xenophobes. All Trump supporters saw a racist, misogynist, xenophobe and said "this is an acceptable person to lead our country."

You may not have racist, misogynist, xenophobic intent, but you have had racist, misogynist, xenophobic impact.

Impact > intent.

So when you get called racist, misogynist, and xenophobic -- understand that your actions have enabled racism, misogyny, and xenophobia in the highest halls of our federal government, regardless of why you voted for him.

You have to own this. You don't get to escape it because your feelings are hurt that people are calling you names. You may have felt like you had no other choice; you may have felt like he was genuinely the best choice for reasons that had nothing to do with hate.

But you have to own what you have done: you have enabled racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.

Impact > intent. Always.

I'm quite willing to concede that my definitions, based on my beliefs of courteous and helpful conversation, may be different to your definitions. That's OK. You're entitled to your definitions. But please, I'm entitled to mine as well. I'm willing to rephrase my statement in the post to read "In my opinion, the request resulted in that person being chastised, ridiculed, and insulted."

Could you please provide some specific quotes of ridicule and insults?  I participated in that thread and remember it to be a pleasant chat!  She asked a specific question, we gave her some specific answers , then we had a discussion about her assignment, then talked about journalism and her career. Sure , some of the thread was massively off topic to her original request but it was all just part of the discussion.  If that came across to you as insulting then I'd like to know exactly how so I can avoid inadvertently insulting people in the future.

In general, your opinion of Trump is your opinion.

And we really need to have a discussion about this. Because we as sentient beings have determined there are limits on and hierarchies to thought. There are some ideas and opinions so far beyond the pale that they are unacceptable. Too we acknowledge that, for example, superstition holds less value than empiricism. Math works every single time, throwing salt over your shoulder does nothing.

I took university level physics and it became very clear, very early on that I was outgunned intellectually. The people around me were smarter. Their 'opinions' on moving objects were of much greater value than mine. Recently I stated to an economist, "There is plenty of stuff to go around, we just need to divide it out better." When he finished with me, I realised I needed to adjust my thinking.

All of this, Brexit and Trump, really, on a grand scale, raises very uncomfortable questions about democracy. I can't go the other way and suggest any restriction on individual voting rights....that way is abhorrent. But given the nature of our world today...limited resources, nuclear weapons, a large population....I am puzzled, and I mean really stumped, on how we can make progress when the ballot is used as a populist howl.   

 

When Roe v Wade falls and Planned Parenthood is closed and curriculums are altered, questions will arise about how an individual could have aligned themselves with that sort of thing.

I assume this refers to the vacant seat(s?) on SCOTUS and the resulting balance of the court. I share your concern.

I believe both of us made posts to links for the (questionable) Exit Polls. A review of the CNN page shows (out of 25,500 respondents) 26% of all voters self-identified as “White born-again or evangelical Christians”. Of those, 81% voted for Trump. What number of that 81% is anti-planned parenthood is unknown. What influence that support holds within the Republican Party is also unknown, but we must assume some exists. Trump’s view appears uncertain. “the incoming president once called himself “pro-choice in every respect”—and he also said at one point that women who had abortions should face “some form of punishment.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/for-planned-parenthood-trump-era-starts-with-worried-calls-and-defiant-donations

There is a possible hope. I believe (and I could be wrong), nominations for SCOTUS must be approved by the Senate, and 60 Senators must vote yes. The Republicans (at this time) only have 51 seats in the Senate. More gridlock, and a possible dead-locked court for the next two years? Yes, but the Dems in the Senate will be required to hold fast if the nominee has extreme views. Problem: the Dems have more vulnerable seats up for grabs in the mid-terms. Pragmatism vs. being re-elected?  How strong are the ethics of those Dem Senators? I don’t believe an Executive Order issued by the President is allowed when it comes to the Supreme Court.

You also made a post on climate change. The ramification of the Republican Party in power also worries me greatly.

These, among other issues, contributed to my decision not to vote for Trump.

Someone else wrote this and it explains exactly why I am unhappy with people who voted for Trump.

It’s a post with a strong viewpoint, and I certainly agree with your right to be unhappy with people who voted for Trump.

Whilst you’ve been reading this, there is a possibility someone, somewhere in Europe, who is an Accidental American has had an OMG moment when they found, unbeknownst to them, that they should have filed a US tax return. They’ve discovered the current Democratic President of the United States made the statement “There is no reason for any American to have a bank account in a foreign country”.  That President appointed a Democratic Secretary of the Treasury who has stated that “Any American who has a foreign bank account is guilty of being a money launderer and financially supporting terrorism until they can prove otherwise”. (I paraphrase)

It has been verified (documented) that as a result of this OMG discovery some individuals have taken their own life. You voted Democratic? Does this make you an enabler of a Democratic Manifesto that has left people feeling they have no choice but to take their own lives?

Democracy demands that a citizen has the right to vote, or not vote, according to their own beliefs. You and I may not agree with the belief every individual person holds. We may find their belief repulsive. But are you advocating that before any person is allowed to vote, a dictatorial power (a Democratic dictatorial committee?) must determine if that person is voting in accordance with the proper, sanctioned viewpoint held by that power? And, if they don’t vote in the prescribed fashion, they are guilty of automatically enabling racism and xenophobia?

The above may seem an extremely unfair statement, but that is the essence of Democracy. As a supporter of (I assume) the Democratic Party, you have an obligation to understand and support the opposing individual into accepting that your point of view is the better point of view. If you fail, then the vote goes to the opposition. The accepted consensus is that until the votes were being counted, the Hillary Campaign was certain they were going to win. In the late afternoon, they were even suggesting times when the transition team would be announced the following day. Since they were convinced they were going to win, it’s surmised they failed to fully understand and offer support to those who voted for their opposition. The mother in Mid-America saw no relevance to Jay Z and Beyonce as she struggled to put food on the table for her children. FFS, that mother is normally a key part of the Democratic bastions.

 These, among other issues, contributed to my decision not to vote for Hillary.

All of this, Brexit and Trump, really, on a grand scale, raises very uncomfortable questions about democracy. I can't go the other way and suggest any restriction on individual voting rights....that way is abhorrent. But given the nature of our world today...limited resources, nuclear weapons, a large population....I am puzzled, and I mean really stumped, on how we can make progress when the ballot is used as a populist howl.

As you can see from my post above, I’m struggling with this as well. I’m tending to look at the Primaries. Each individual party in each individual State controls the outcome of their Primary. There are open Primaries, restricted Primaries, open Caucuses, restricted Caucuses, and more. The eventual candidates are those that survive the maze. Something needs to change which encourages more participating/voting in balanced primaries to give superior candidates. Available money needs to be restricted. Super Pacs must be abolished. The two year campaign needs to be shortened – drastically, and not only for the President, but for the House and Senate as well. If you can’t get your point across to the constituency in 3 months, are you a serious candidate?

I’ll leave it to you. Did Bernie get a fair shake? Would a better Republican candidate (and not Cruz) have led to a better election contest?

Edit in italics.

It’s a post with a strong viewpoint, and I certainly agree with your right to be unhappy with people who voted for Trump.

Whilst you’ve been reading this, there is a possibility someone, somewhere in Europe, who is an Accidental American has had an OMG moment when they found, unbeknownst to them, that they should have filed a US tax return. They’ve discovered the current Democratic President of the United States made the statement “There is no reason for any American to have a bank account in a foreign country”.  That President appointed a Democratic Secretary of the Treasury who has stated that “Any American who has a foreign bank account is guilty of being a money launderer and financially supporting terrorism until they can prove otherwise”. (I paraphrase)

Obama never said what is bolded. No one has ever said that quote. I googled that exact phrase, because you've said our current president said it, and NOTHING came up from it. Just pages to help people with their taxes as expats.

You can't blame the Democrats for non-resident Americans (including "accidental" ones) owing taxes to the US, you have to go back 150 years to the Civil War era to find someone to blame. Then the 16th amendment being passed in 1908 where our "modern" take on income taxes went into affect for ALL Americans regardless of domicile. It was codified in 1913, then edited in 1916.

It's been over 100 years that all Americans have been required to pay and file their taxes, and the fact that people are willfully ignorant of that fact, especially in this day and age, is their own fault. All it takes now is an internet search. (https://www.taxesforexpats.com/expat-tax-advice/Background-and-History-of-Tax-On-Expatriation.html)

Now the people you are talking about, the "accidental" americans... Those aren't all that accidental. If they never plan on exercising their rights as an American citizen, have no US passport, no social security number... Well they have nothing they need to worry about. The US doesn't even know they exist. But those who have their social security numbers and hold US passports, well. They aren't exactly accidental and they SHOULD have looked into what was required of them as US citizens. If their parent's didn't know they themselves (and their children) should have been filing taxes all along, they allowed themselves to be willfully ignorant of what was required of them. They made assumptions that American tax law was like whatever country they live in. And we all know, much to all of our chagrin, it's not.

It has been verified (documented) that as a result of this OMG discovery some individuals have taken their own life. You voted Democratic? Does this make you an enabler of a Democratic Manifesto that has left people feeling they have no choice but to take their own lives?

Links from trustworthy sources, please.
And honestly, I can't find any kind of Democratic Manifesto anywhere on the internet... There is something in regards to the LibDems... but I don't think that's what you mean.

Democracy demands that a citizen has the right to vote, or not vote, according to their own beliefs. You and I may not agree with the belief every individual person holds. We may find their belief repulsive. But are you advocating that before any person is allowed to vote, a dictatorial power (a Democratic dictatorial committee?) must determine if that person is voting in accordance with the proper, sanctioned viewpoint held by that power? And, if they don’t vote in the prescribed fashion, they are guilty of automatically enabling racism and xenophobia?

Wow. Where did you even get that idea from? 1984?

I, nor the post I quoted, said that. It said that you voted for an outspoken racist, misogynistic, xenophobe. The fact that you voted for him gives your tacit agreement that his actions, up until the day you voted for him, are okay. Everything he has said and done, everything he has told his followers to do, that's okay. I can overlook that because it gets me what I want.

That's not remotely "advocating that before any person is allowed to vote, a dictatorial power must determine if that person is voting in accordance with the proper, sanctioned viewpoint held by that power." The US isn't a dictatorship you know... You said so yourself it's "democratic."

The above may seem an extremely unfair statement, but that is the essence of Democracy. As a supporter of (I assume) the Democratic Party, you have an obligation to understand and support the opposing individual into accepting that your point of view is the better point of view. If you fail, then the vote goes to the opposition. The accepted consensus is that until the votes were being counted, the Hillary Campaign was certain they were going to win. In the late afternoon, they were even suggesting times when the transition team would be announced the following day. Since they were convinced they were going to win, it’s surmised they failed to fully understand and offer support to those who voted for their opposition. The mother in Mid-America saw no relevance to Jay Z and Beyonce as she struggled to put food on the table for her children. FFS, that mother is normally a key part of the Democratic bastions.

 These, among other issues, contributed to my decision not to vote for Hillary.

I do have to compliment you on a well written post. It really is quite good. But you haven't provided any proof for any of your statements. You've simply said that, 'It has been verified (documented)'. And you've quoted things that aren't real, and paraphrased things in an inflammatory fashion. I read what you write and all I can get from it is you're passionate about your beliefs and you think you are in the right. Nothing is going to change what you think. Even providing you definitive proof, isn't going to change your beliefs.

Also... I'm not a Democrat. And don't BOTH sides have an "obligation to understand and support the opposing individual into accepting that your point of view is the better point of view." Because I really don't see any of that coming from Trump supporters. I see a lot of name calling, put downs on entire generations of people, and mostly beating a dead horse in regards to emails. Oh, and Benghazi. But I fail to see how a Republican would have handled that any better. Also, proof that Republican's have handled similar situations worse during the Bush administration. More than 60 dead...
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/12/john-garamendi/prior-benghazi-were-there-13-attacks-embassies-and/

To be honest, I have absolutely nothing in common with Beyonce or Jay-Z either. I don't like either of them, but I do have give them props for getting to where they are in the music business. I'm not a fan of either of them either. What I am a fan of is a women's right to choose. I'm a fan of gay marriage. Or what I simply call marriage, which is now available for every kind of 1 to 1 human relationship that's of consenting adults. I'm a fan of transgendered people being allowed to be who they are. I'm a fan of free speech and I will defend your right to say what you want (as long as it's not a hate crime).

Well, we are at an impasse. Anything you say won't change my mind. Anything I say won't change yours. So. Thanks for playing!

Let's start this where you finished. I agree that we're not going to agree, but you've made some very fair comments that I'm obligated to respond to. As you read, you may understand why.

First, this is a jovial reply. Please believe that. I'm not trying to score points. Since it's jovial, I may say some things which you might take the wrong way. Don't, I respect your beliefs and opinions. I may not agree with them, but this post is not to prove you wrong...........

Obama never said what is bolded. No one has ever said that quote. I googled that exact phrase, because you've said our current president said it, and NOTHING came up from it.

I'm usually the king of links, but to be honest, in this thread, I didn't think anyone would bother with them and I wasn't about to take the time to search them out.

He did say it, but it was in a Press 'type' Conference and was a general comment. I can't remember the exact occasion but it appears (somewhere) on You Tube or C-SPAN. I believe the brief statement was part of comments on offshore tax havens, and it could be where he made the comment about the 10,000 (companies/trusts ?) at one address in the Caymans (and I could be wrong). But for this discussion, I still can't be arsed to search for it. You are right, the above may not be an exact quote (but it's definitely how I remember it). Trust that I'm not making this up, ....or don't.   

Just pages to help people with their taxes as expats.

I'll come back to this.

You can't blame the Democrats for non-resident Americans (including "accidental" ones) owing taxes to the US...........

It's been over 100 years ......

Now the people you are talking about, the "accidental" americans...

....... they allowed themselves to be willfully ignorant of what was required of them. They made assumptions that American tax law was like whatever country they live in. And we all know, much to all of our chagrin, it's not.

Yah, yah, blah, blah, blah.  (  )  Of course, you're 100% correct. I've repeated similar (but less "you deserve it") words many times on expat tax forums.

On Wednesday morning (?) I'm guessing you experienced an OMG moment. You should have known the rules, who passes 270 electoral votes wins. It should not have been a surprise. You backed a horse and it lost. (remember,  ) But let's suppose you didn't know the rules, and since you felt confident of winning (how could anyone vote for that idiot), the thought never occurred to you to check. Hillary wins, what other outcome could there be?  Now, Wednesday morning would have been a real OMG moment.

It's the law, you should have known, it's your fault you're in this situation now. Not really comforting words, are they.

Back to the above "Just pages to help people with their taxes". Tax compliance condors live for the OMG moments! The potential clients are at their most vulnerable.

Links from trustworthy sources, please.
And honestly, I can't find any kind of Democratic Manifesto anywhere on the internet... There is something in regards to the LibDems... but I don't think that's what you mean.

Wow. Where did you even get that idea from? 1984?

http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/

It's become a global site for those who are affected by US tax - in a bad way. In the last two years, it's had somewhere in the region of 10 to 15,000,000 hits. Granted, probably 1/3 of those are the IRS and NSA monitoring the site.

About 18 to 24 months ago, a very distraught father came onto the site. He was trying to understand FATCA/CBT/FBAR. His son, a father of 2 and living in Scandinavia (Norway or Sweden?) had been found by one of the children hanging from a tree in the back garden. The son had been born in the US and educated in the US, but he didn't know about CBT and the consequences. He had attempted to tell his father about his newly discovered situation, but the father had not understood. He left a suicide note.

Like you, the moderators on the site questioned the veracity of post(s). As anyone who has lost a child in such circumstances knows, the last thing you are about to do is post the suicide note of your child on a public forum. News paper clippings were made available. The father did privately Email a copy of the note to the moderators only. I did not see it, but I trust their words that it was authentic.

There is a thread on the site (I don't remember the topic header) concerning the incident, and other threads about other incidents, including those of individuals who were in very dark places. If anyone requires proof, it's there on the site. (But good luck with the site search engine, which is why I'm not spending the time to search. You trust me....or you don't.)

The point of the comment was simply should everyone be labelled as an enabler and whose actions are interpreted as intent/support to harm because a (possibly larger) independent group interprets it as such. Other equally large groups may interpret it differently. They may not be (morally) right, but they have their interpretations. Is someone who voted Democratic an enabler of the above death by supporting a party whose President signed an Executive Order enabling the enforcement of rules (FATCA IGAs) which led to the death? It may not be a fair comparison, but the for those involved, the end point may be no less tragic. 



I'm going to stop here. It's not really of value for either of us to go on.

I would like to close with this thought. If anyone is angry, upset, and in disbelief that Trump could be elected, please, please don't denigrate those who did not support Hillary. We may have lost one contributor already tonight. We, like you, are just ordinary people with unique backgrounds and cultural upbringings that have influenced our beliefs and led us to where we are now. We can't help that. This is not Facebook/Big Brother/The Apprentice. If anyone wishes to enlighten us, it takes education, understanding, dialogue, and support - not vitriol. Hillary supporters may find that repulsive, but that's how the game works, both here and in National elections.

And thank you lyonaria, for playing!

   

Is someone who voted Democratic an enabler of the above death

No.

I mean, of course not. It's an absurd analogy. You have a remarkable talent for false equivalency (I feel like I'm repeating myself here) and for justifying your political decisions to absolve yourself of any responsibility.

The man in your example clearly had some other issues. The tax situation may have been the tipping point, but mentally healthy people don't kill themselves. I speak from experience as someone with mental health struggles and suicidal impulses. This was clearly a case of unintended and unforseeable consequences. President Obama would bear no legal culpability for this man's death, and no moral culpability either I would argue, so clearly no one who voted for him would either. Furthermore, the remark that you attribute to Obama, while it is unnecessarily harsh and displays an ignorance of expats' circumstances and motivations, was not malicious and it wasn't intended to target any particular minority group just for being a minority. On the contrary, it was aimed at people who wilfully flout US tax law by keeping their assets offshore. It's a clumsy sledgehammer of a law, but as I said before not malicious, not designed to deprive any minority group of their rights, and not foreseeable for anyone who voted for Obama.

Contrast that with Trump, who has made his distaste for women, people of colour, Muslims, disabled people, and LGBTQA not only unmistakably clear but actually the main driving force behind his campaign. He has no policies, no plans or ideas beyond building walls, removing rights, and destroying healthcare and the environment. When all these things occur, they will not merely be the intended consequences but actually the only foreseeable outcome for a Trump presidency. Therefore anyone who voted for him or who abstained from voting out of a misplaced sense of, yes, false equivalency between Trump's flaws and those of Clinton, do bear responsibility for what he does. If you genuinely didn't think that it was worth voting for Clinton in order to stop Trump, then fine, that's your right. But at least have the courage of your lack of conviction.

They’ve discovered the current Democratic President of the United States made the statement “There is no reason for any American to have a bank account in a foreign country”.

No one has ever said that quote. I googled that exact phrase, because you've said our current president said it, and NOTHING came up from it. Just pages to help people with their taxes as expats.

I'm usually the king of links, but to be honest, in this thread, I didn't think anyone would bother with them and I wasn't about to take the time to search them out.

Oh, some of us bother! A bit surprised by that quote, I also googled and got nowhere, though I came across a press conference [video] and sat through a preamble by Timothy Geithner, wondering if Obama would utter those words. He didn't, though as mentioned he did sign into law the disaster that is FATCA, from which much sorrow has flowed, for anybody else who wishes to make a study of it. The tax situation in general is ludicrous, and many people of average means have got caught up in the nightmare of compliance. Another thread, perhaps.

This struck a chord with me:

IMHO, I do believe the US has the President-elect that the US deserves. I would have had the same opinion if Hillary had won. The US, at this particular point in history, does not deserve a respectable leader. It needs one, but it doesn't deserve one.

While being cognizant of the fears of those who felt directly affronted by the prospect of a president Trump, I too could not bring myself to vote for Clinton, who in my opinion would be an enabler of some of the worst excesses of the American empire. Nor did I like the company she kept (exhibit A / exhibit B parts one and two) or her rewriting of history. Many of us felt she would not be the lesser evil, but the more effective one. Left without a choice after Sanders dropped out – neither Stein nor Johnson appealed – I didn't vote, accepting tongue-in-cheek validation from the late great George Carlin [video].

Perhaps most disturbing, both after this and Brexit, was the wholesale denigration of large swathes of the electorate for voting as they saw fit. To quote myself (sorry), telling millions of people they're idiots is not really the best way to encourage continued democratic participation.

I actually deleted my account because of this topic! I'm more comfortable with cute woolly threads. Wary of getting pulled into a black hole of a conversation where it was clear that people with my point of view would be in the extreme minority, and opinions might be as entrenched as the Large Hadron Collider, I bailed. (Ignoring threads isn't always an option for political junkies.) Jonathan Pie [possibly NSFW video] persuaded me to return. Engage and debate: so simple and true. Though having said that, sometimes you really do have to throw in the towel, either to keep the peace or for the sake of your own time constraints and/or blood pressure.

At the risk of continuing a post-mortem I'm not sure I have the stomach for, here's a large dollop of Glenn Greenwald, who I don't always agree with but who put the blame where it belongs:

When a political party is demolished, the principal responsibility belongs to one entity: the party that got crushed. It’s the job of the party and the candidate, and nobody else, to persuade the citizenry to support them and find ways to do that. Last night, the Democrats failed, resoundingly, to do that, and any autopsy or liberal think piece or pro-Clinton pundit commentary that does not start and finish with their own behavior is one that is inherently worthless.

Put simply, Democrats knowingly chose to nominate a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable, scandal-plagued candidate, who — for very good reason — was widely perceived to be a protector and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption. It’s astonishing that those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge and scary gamble — that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone and Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate, especially in this climate — are now the ones being blamed: by the very same people who insisted on ignoring all that data and nominating her anyway.

But that’s just basic blame shifting and self-preservation. Far more significant is what this shows about the mentality of the Democratic Party. Just think about who they nominated: someone who — when she wasn’t dining with Saudi monarchs and being feted in Davos by tyrants who gave million-dollar checks — spent the last several years piggishly running around to Wall Street banks and major corporations cashing in with $250,000 fees for 45-minute secret speeches even though she had already become unimaginably rich with book advances while her husband already made tens of millions playing these same games. She did all that without the slightest apparent concern for how that would feed into all the perceptions and resentments of her and the Democratic Party as corrupt, status quo-protecting, aristocratic tools of the rich and powerful: exactly the worst possible behavior for this post-2008-economic-crisis era of globalism and destroyed industries.

It goes without saying that Trump is a sociopathic con artist obsessed with personal enrichment: the opposite of a genuine warrior for the downtrodden. That’s too obvious to debate. But, just as Obama did so powerfully in 2008, he could credibly run as an enemy of the D.C. and Wall Street system that has steamrolled over so many people, while Hillary Clinton is its loyal guardian, its consummate beneficiary.

Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate (for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently.

PS. Screenshot from the also late great Deadwood.

edit: Glenn has two n's. Oops.

Available money needs to be restricted. Super Pacs must be abolished. The two year campaign needs to be shortened – drastically, and not only for the President, but for the House and Senate as well. If you can’t get your point across to the constituency in 3 months, are you a serious candidate?

I’ll leave it to you. Did Bernie get a fair shake? Would a better Republican candidate (and not Cruz) have led to a better election contest?

I have read of different idea and models. It's tough. Any reaction I may have now may be shaded by the recent long and nasty elections. We almost have to draw back, again, and look at a very big picture.

We have to assume that our system is not perfect, and if there are faults, that they can be addressed. But I don't even have an idea about what sort of vehicle could be used. Some sort of Constitutional Convention? If not, if we use little ad hoc fixes, like say limiting funding in some way, does it really fix the problem? Or do pressure groups just figure out a work-around? I am thinking about, in Florida, term limits. They went into effect and all sorts of things occurred that weren't foreseen. I don't think they did a darned thing to "shake up the system".

But under what conditions could a real convention be held? That's a pipe dream.

But I'm really in no position to get too deeply into that.

What is bugging me terribly is this idea of lost progress. Regardless of everything else, we are now hashing out things that I had considered finished: racial things, equality of the sexes, that evolution occurred. Building a great wall can't be measured on a political scale it is so primarily nonsensical. And while we fight these silly battles, progress is slowed....and in terms of things like economic development....those factories still remain closed.   

PS. Screenshot from the also late great Deadwood.

edit: Glenn has two n's. Oops.

I only know Jim Beaver from Supernatural. He's a good guy all around though!

Not getting into this with anyone else. You all are firmly entrenched in your beliefs and I see no point in arguing with someone who doesn't have an open mind.

I would like to close with this thought. If anyone is angry, upset, and in disbelief that Trump could be elected, please, please don't denigrate those who did not support Hillary. We may have lost one contributor already tonight. We, like you, are just ordinary people with unique backgrounds and cultural upbringings that have influenced our beliefs and led us to where we are now. We can't help that. This is not Facebook/Big Brother/The Apprentice. If anyone wishes to enlighten us, it takes education, understanding, dialogue, and support - not vitriol. Hillary supporters may find that repulsive, but that's how the game works, both here and in National elections.

And thank you lyonaria, for playing!
 

If you're talking about f4mandolin, it wasn't only to do with political argument. He and I exchanged PMs and he had quite a few more reasons for deciding to spend much less time on the forum.