DON'T MAKE FUN OF THEM OR IT'S 8 YEARS INSTEAD OF 4 FFS

Whenever you read these "a liberal went and talked to Trump voters" clickbaity articles is that if you take these people at their word, on a policy basis, they hardly agree with him, and on a personal basis, no one seems to like him all that much.

The thing that strikes you, and I think we can all guess this, is how much these people are simply triggered by liberals. These people just so desperately want dignity and respect. I suppose I'll leave my commentary about what is at the root of this for some other time.

Another striking related feature is how much these people have totally removed their own agency from any of this. You can see how effective a strongman authoritarian operates in this environment to allow people to channel their social rage and then rise above it seamlessly like they aren't involved. Trump is sort of the perfect man for this zeitgeist of cowardly, chicken**** politics of grievance and hate and self-loathing. Trump says what they all think, by their own admission, right before they pivot to say how disgusted they are by him. You don't say. I mean this whole story is basically this:

What Do You Like About Trump: he has no filters, has the guts to say what we're all thinking, finally.
What Don't You Like About Trump: he seems like an unhinged moron and a disgusting creep.
Tell Me Some Other Stuff About Political Culture: we're really mad at liberals for thinking we're disgusting creeps for cheerleading an unhinged moron, respect us more

Like how many people in that article are like "oh well it's a real shame at all the divisiveness Trump and the left are creating, I really feel bad about all this political divisiveness, I mean I wear my Make America Great Hat Again as an apolitical sign of bipartisan respect for America and people just get angry, a real shame all those loser liberals and despicable Trump are fighting. Trump sure is a ****ing lunatic who might explode us all, but Hillary had corrupt emails, what choice did we have here really?"

It reminds me of some posters here (hi Ineedaride) who on the morning after the election admitted they voted for Trump but then did a mea culpa and said they didn't actually think that would matter and they did it for fun.

Humans always struggle with collective, distributed guilt but it's going to be just gut-wrenching watch Trump do a bunch of ****ed up things and then have this crowd tsk-tsk and finger-wag about how it's just such a shame all that political anger arrived from outer space somewhere and elected Trump and we were all just leaves in the wind.

In the end these people are begging, simply begging for a completely irrational sort of ordering of the political system. That is to say: they want phoniness. They want insincerity and hypocrisy. They want a competent steward of government who oversees some mix of not-especially-ideological policies and isn't overly combative but tells them how smart and respectful all of their incoherent nonsense and resentments are.

You sort of have to take them at their word which maybe you shouldn't. But you can sense how much these people are internally conflicted by this nonsense. They have this rational part of their brain that recognizes Trump is dangerous and has the potential to cause a bunch of problems but they are so enthralled with his nods to the white populist aesthetic and commiserating with their petty cultural grievances ("SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS! SPEAK ENGLISH!") that they just can't help themselves, licking up all those liberal tears will just feel so good for a little.

These people want head-pats, is what I'm saying. Full stop. You can govern like a cosmopolitan globalist -- maybe not so much because they want that but because they don't give a **** either way. But you better flatter their sensibilities first, and then they'll stand down and let you get down to the business of competently running the government. Because what really galls these people, what really motivates them is that no one respects them anymore, and by being a dumbass who runs around from microphone to microphone babbling stuff he heard on Fox and Friends, Trump is finally, at long last, providing for their needs in ways politicians of the past weren't. What bothers them some is Trump is kind of an unstable attention seeking idiot, what they'd really like is a steadier hand who does the stuff Barack Obama kinda did like give them health care and not do wars but who tells them how awesome all they are, like the Fox and Friends crew does.

Texas policy forces transgender teen boy to wrestle against female athletes at state championship. He's 52-0.

The boy shouldn't lose too much credit for that. Pound for pound girls can wrestle and a number of girls have won state HS wrestling championships vs boys.

My daughter is on the wrestling team. It's a girls team, but not every area has enough girls to have separate teams.

Now if he's also using the wrong bathroom I'm going to be really outraged....

lololol

I think that sports are a tricky aspect of transgender policy, because there really aren't any clear cut answers. But easily my favorite part of debates on the topic is when some right-wing dip is acting as if a post-op chick dunking on some high school girl is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently.

Trump will appear at Gaylord conference center in Maryland in Friday.

This is not a joke.

The sole purpose is to embarrass and shame this kid. I don't think the people who wrote the policy care at all about his record.

I didn't mean it as anything to do with intent or the policy or what policy should be, just a tangent that him going 52-0 is still an accomplishment as 110lb girls can wrestle at the same level as 110lb boys.

Yea, my cousin was a mixed-gender state champ when she was younger. Although she quit in high school, and having to be the only girl on the team was at least a partial factor.

Any ideas why when I click the "Go to first new post" button in this forum, it takes me into the thread, lets me get a quick glance at the first new post, then puts me 10 posts higher and I have to scroll back down?

Probably an ATF question, but hoping you guys have a solution. This way I can post more!!

My wife has a cousin who played defensive end on her HS football team as the only girl. It wasn't a tiny rural school or anything, it's right in the middle of Orange County SoCal. And she's not even that big. I don't know how she did it other than grit. She also was on one of those TV game shows where they test how much torture you can take and she won that.

I think it's because of the embedded tweets.

The forum has become self-aware and tries to reject terrible posters.

Nice, that's nice.

We had girls on our pee-wee baseball and football teams growing up in KC in the early 80s. No one made a big deal about it.

This is correct. The page scrolls to the last viewed post, then the tweets fill in and push it down. I think twitter could correct this by having their embedded tweets re-trigger a scroll-to-target (#xxx) after loading. But then the page might bounce around.

Ugh. Unfortunately not. It's still up to us humans to take out the trash.

In the late 80's my uncle was reffing a pee wee football game where a girl was playing offensive line. I think these were 4th or 5th graders. The girl was mauling the boy on the other side of the line from her. The boy's Dad was none too happy about it and kept screaming at my uncle that she was holding and he should call penalties. This went on and on and finally my uncle turned and said to him something to the effect of "I can't help it if your kid is getting beat up by a girl.....". At that point the guy punched my uncle and flattened him. (no, he's not a Nazi) There was an article about the incident in Stars and Stripes magazine, and he ended up receiving a lot of supportive letters.

Can't see why the solution isn't society getting over the idea of sex-separate sports. OH NOES GIRLS IN THE NFL WHAT IF THEY GET HURT!?

And if it wasn't for Trump using Twitter as his primary means of communication, we wouldn't have so many embedded tweets in this forum. Thanks TRUMP.

Because some women want to play sports like basketball and some people want to watch them play?

Also, FREEDOM. If women want their own teams and leagues, what's the harm? There should be a pretty substantial harm before someone else makes it their business to oppose it.

For some unimaginable reason, Delta is playing Dwight Yoakam's cover of Purple Rain during boarding on every single flight. It's grotesque!

Why don't we just not use embedded tweets in this forum? Seems like it'd make readability a lot better...