Trump or Hillary ?

[azgreg]

This election is getting nuttier and nuttier.

[cbc58]

Video about Huma Abedin - quite concerning if accurate.

[MountainDon]

Not that I don't believe everything I see on youtube,    but there may be a bias...  of interest on thewire.com

[cbc58]

I'd wager there is something to this - we shall learn more in the coming months.  Someone posted a question on Quora: "Is the Atlantic (thewire) left-wing biased ?"  response follows.

Anonymous
Written 22 Oct 2015
I have subscribed to the Atlantic for about 3 years (and cancelled my subscription this month) so can give an answer from that perspective. The politicalness of the magazine has changed drastically this year as it went from being largely apolitical magazine to a hardcore leftwing outfit- and this all happened in the course of 2015.  I spoke with others who read it and got the same opinion, so it's not just me.  My guess is there was a change in leadership of the magazine that led to this deliberate shift.

This is quite unfortunate as it used to be a general-interest magazine, writing about broad subjects such as unique places, interesting personal stories, science, etc- and the quality of the articles was top-notch.  Ocasionally they would brush up on political issues, and were left-leaning but in the selection of issues they discussed rather than opinion "bias" per se.

This year they went off the reservation- put a front page story of a nutjob race-bater who was arguing for reparations for blacks, and the argument lacked any intellectual merit that would be interesting to read- something straight off msnbc.  Over the course of last few months, they had a number of articles from blacks claiming that "its' all whitey's fault", and a bunch of anti-capitalist rants to top it off.  Then, they just had a huge piece on Al Gore's sustainable investing, and the article contained so much spin it was painful to page through.

The unfortunate victim of this shift was quality journalism of which very little seems to be left

[MushCreek]

I am shocked. I truly expected Hillary to win, and go on to a second term as well. In the end, I couldn't vote for either of them, and concentrated on the down ballot.

[cbc58]

phew. 

[Carla_M]

Or should that be P.U.?

[cbc58]

no - phew.  call me deplorable.

[Redoverfarm]

A co-worker (retired from WV and relocated to WA)  of mine sent me this and it makes a lot of sense.

We were all Americans yesterday, as we are today and will be tomorrow. Democracy is a pendulum that swings both ways in time to keep us generally moving in a straight line forward. In four or eight years, if we do not like our course, we will change it again. The Democratic Party did not fail Democrats, any more than the Republican Party failed Republicans eight years ago, they are both equally effective and absolutely essential for a Democracy to survive. As an Independent from a largely Democratic state that voted 68% for Trump, I have seen the ebb and flow of this process. The pendulum is our checks and balance, if it ever stops swinging, we are all in trouble. Embrace the process, no one likes to lose, but we are all actually still winning as long as that pendulum continues to swing.
 

[akwoodchuck]

A co-worker (retired from WV and relocated to WA)  of mine sent me this and it makes a lot of sense.

We were all Americans yesterday, as we are today and will be tomorrow. Democracy is a pendulum that swings both ways in time to keep us generally moving in a straight line forward. In four or eight years, if we do not like our course, we will change it again. The Democratic Party did not fail Democrats, any more than the Republican Party failed Republicans eight years ago, they are both equally effective and absolutely essential for a Democracy to survive. As an Independent from a largely Democratic state that voted 68% for Trump, I have seen the ebb and flow of this process. The pendulum is our checks and balance, if it ever stops swinging, we are all in trouble. Embrace the process, no one likes to lose, but we are all actually still winning as long as that pendulum continues to swing.

I like it... ...although unfortunately its looking more like a blank check for one faction than checks and balances...

[MountainDon]

   and yes to the blank check which is never good.

[azgreg]

If anybody is interested here's a link to an article that outlines Trump's goals for his first 100 days.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501451368/here-is-what-donald-trump-wants-to-do-in-his-first-100-days

[azgreg]

Interesting thread to go back and re-read.

[Don_P]

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273

Read the text of Federalist 10.
I wonder if with the advent of social media and some of the press that dominates discussion if we have become not a large republic, but a small one.

[NathanS]

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273

Read the text of Federalist 10.
I wonder if with the advent of social media and some of the press that dominates discussion if we have become not a large republic, but a small one.

I had mostly ignored social media for years, until George Floyd protests were happening on the other side of the planet. Networks like twitter are "small world" in that everyone is only a few connections from everyone else. A packet of information that is especially interesting can go viral and instead of having traditional circuit breakers (space and time), it
can spread across the entire world in a few hours.

2020 had me read the Federalist Papers too, which lead me to more classical texts. I read Thucydides recently, and his insights on revolution were striking.