The late 80s and early 90s was rampant with panic over Japanese trade surpluses and fear that Japanese are buying up the country. What Trump was saying was mainstream and a widespread sentiment. That same anxiety was transferred to Mexico during the buildup to NAFTA, then China. So yeah man, it was in the news.

But hey Jonathan Chait thinks that it's UNLIKELY BUT POSSIBLE that Putin recruited Trump as an intelligence asset thirty years ago, so BREAKING NEWS

Not to be hyperbolic, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that several congressmen are up to their ears Russian in doodoo. There's a reason they refuse to go beyond "deeply concerned" when this President of the United States commits impeachable after impeachable offense.

lets say Mueller has actually really obvious and damaging **** that could get Trump impeached even by this GOP congress, does he still wait to get every corners and guilty people sorted out before coming out with it, even if it might mean letting a president-that-shouldnt-be work in power for months and months ?

Seems like it could still be years before every russian witch is burned.


ps: i just realized getting old is way less depressing when you imagine it as getting closer to trump being dead

Cartoon with Mueller and some people sitting around a fire post apocalypse.

“We had the pee pee tape on day one but we wanted to make sure that we had an airtight case.”

Of course with the idea being that if he wouldnt let that happen, then it probably means he doesnt have that much directly on him, yet.

We're all getting closer to death if that makes you feel any better.

Mueller is the kind of guy who has backup plans to back up backup plans that back up backup plans.

He knows how resistant people will be to this even if there's the slightest gap in evidence. The guy won't drop the hammer unless everything is rock solid.

https://politics.theonion.com/world-...-fo-1827666980

World Wonders What Trump Has On United States That’s Forcing Nation To Keep Him In Power

Onion

The BALLS on these motherfeffers!!

And this is amazing...wonder why this isn't getting bigger traction in the national media...

It's a pointless waste of time to speculate on the impossible.

Mueller's already dropped hammers that aren't rock solid at all in the republican media/online world--it doesn't matter they'll make up holes in the story if they have to.

Then if that fails, just say he had to do it and it's all hillary's fault for colluding with the russians in the election.

Sure that makes absolutely zero ****ing sense but it doesn't matter.

I like this post and I think it gets to the heart of the rise of authoritarianism globally.

I think #4 is important, understudied and can be expanded generally. I've made this point frequently over the last ~1-2 years but the same phenomenon is happening geopolitically/spatially, in addition to economically.

Take America. Tons of Trumpian regions (more remote suburban areas, exurban areas, rural areas) are subject to the exact same forces that the working class is: as the world evolves rapidly and education/technology strongly separately the young and educated and the older, the less mobile, the poorer, and the working class, and wealth is concentrated in cities and talented people follow it -- we see people literally physically sorted in a myriad of ways, like the political temperament, their ability to scrutinize bull****, their ability to access reliable information quickly.

That is to say, we get a really bad feedback loop where the young, the talented, the educated, and the rich flee to cities and wealthy suburbs proximate to cities...and now we have tons of people left out in the American hinterlands left to fend for themselves, and their political playing fields and communities and towns left to hucksters and charlatans (e.g., faux religious fundamentalist types, unscrupulous businesses and investment peddlers, self-interested politicians only interested in graft).

With the talent and education drain on these places, there's no proximate talented local political leadership available to these communities to ward off any of these bad influences, and there's no meaningful democratic interactions and very limited contact with more mainstream political movements, and so we're left a polity ripe for exploitation. Lies and hucksterism are that much harder to defeat when the audience is self-selected and sorted to be the kind of people who are most at-risk, and those same social forces have removed people from these communities who are best-equipped to inform their peers in the community about the risks and lies presented by opportunistic pariahs that are exploiting them.

And so garbage people step in to fill the void left by fleeing wealth, youth, the educated and equally problematic -- very few are left to combat this. Anger, despondency, self destructive behaviors (e.g., drug abuse) follow. The political leadership and elites that ARE available in these places are themselves self-sorted into the sort of authoritarian, Trumpian mindset -- the leadership and elites in these towns see themselves as rightfully and justifiably able to exploit and lie to the locals and recognize that lying and fostering resentment at the changing social order is a means to maintain control and power.

I think this is what confuses *some* analysis of Trumpism where we recognize that fascism is a mix of the wealthy, of local elites, and of some elements of middle class and working class whites. It's a cross-section of bourgeois and working class interests because the principle driving factors aren't precisely economic but instead a coalition of people who want iron-fisted maintenance of the current social order (parasitic, rent-seeking elites) AND the increasingly despondent who have seen their social standing erode and are desperately seeking a return to the old social order (e.g., old whites, poorer whites) where they think their dignity and political power rests (e.g., the rhetorical power of MAGA among these people).

Empirically:



The most Trumpian voters are 1) the locally segregated elites in these towns who are pariahs and maintainers of the current social order in them and 2) the victims of the charade, externalizing their anger and despair onto the changing social order (correctly) and latching onto authoritarian solutions and rhetoric promising a return to the old, cherished social order now long abandoned.

The result is a nascent and growing authoritarianism due to a classic feedback loop wherein vast social and economic changes leave a certain subset of people vulnerable to exploitation, and opportunistic/parasitic elites step in to exploit it, and the result is a small but powerful and economically inter-sectional political coalition where authoritarian solutions become preferable and desired. It's underlying a lot of the oppositional culture we see brewing in right-wing America.

America has this sort of 'bad luck' thing wherein the political system was design to aggrandize the political power of literal physical spaces (more correctly, property owners) over rote population counts, and so our political system is especially susceptible to this kind of coalition that is not especially robust but DOES predominate over large land areas to acquire undue amounts of political power.

I'm like the least USA#1 guy around to the extent that I can't even cheer for the US mens soccer team or Olympic teams, I basically hate the country and I even I feel pissed off and embarrassed for the country with Trump doing everything short of taking Putin's cock out and smacking himself in the face with it. It was probably one of the most cringeworthy and pathetic things I have ever witnessed. Anyone make a gif of one of those scared straight videos where the angry 13 year olds get put in a jail cell with lifers (with Trump/Putin faces)?

Dvaut.

Will process a little more and respond later. But yes, the geographic selection is pretty important.

In the UK. Its the old industrial areas that were most solidly brexit. Exact same thing there. The smart and the young have primarily left for London.

Also i think that the informationally competent, not informationally competent axis (must be a better name for that) is key.

We are in an age where the most productive class are thought workers, not manual workers, and the skills required to succeed in that economy are exactly what is needed to counter the big liars.

Additionally theres a couple of key features of that group of thought workers

1. They THINK they can join the ruling class, and obviously some of them can, so they dont really have a class identity. However the gulf between a 30 year old grad with a top degree, lots of student debt and a mortgage and the super rich is essentially insurmountable.

2. They are mobile, and less invested in any one area. This plays out internationally especially, and is one of the most harmful sides of the brain drain out of the developed world.

Previous generations of the educated had no choice but to stay and fight. Now we move to canada. We arent invested. Very few middle class educated liberals are gonna fight and die to fight fascism. (Although that might change as we wake up the fact that the whole world is on the brink)

An example. My girlfriend and I have just left the philippines. Duterte was a small part of that. Her parents both risked it all fighting Marcos as university students. Their daughter has choices they didnt, but the country is poorer for it.


In short. Net result is the new productive class, the thought workers, have no class consciousness or willingness to fight.

the working class (at least in the west) is a shadow of its former self and is being coopted by the big liars.

I can support this recollection. Japan was seen as taking over financially. They were buying up property like crazy. They owned huge parts of Hawaii and were heavily investing in California. There was a real fear of them economically.

Very much like China now. Plus japan had a technological edge back then with electronics and they were controlling a huge portion of the us auto market. Then Japan had a huge recession and things changed very quickly.

As for Trump’s stupid ads, I don’t give him any quarter because he clearly had no idea why Japan did not have their own military.

Lol at keedwald claiming trump was sharing the economic anxiety of the time. His ads had nothing to do with that. He wanted Japan to pay for their military defense, something we had a key role in overseeing and intentionally limiting due to a previous conflict. Like everything else trump gets upset about he understands about ten percent of it, even back in 1987. Ironically the ny mag article floats the idea that that happened right after Trump had visited Moscow for the first time and was perhaps co opted by Russia for the first time.

One thing we do know about Russia’s spy craft is they are extremly patient and will play the long game. So the idea that Trump might have been under Russian influence for 30 plus years is not even a little bit surprising. It is certainly much more likely than the alternative theory that trump is fighting against Russia tooth and nail and trying to strengthen NATO.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...20574371123200

****ing **** go to sleep

"So many people at the higher ends of intelligence"?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...24328927453184

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...26399542091776

Is it too late to provide further evidence that Elon Musk is an asshat?

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5...rce=reddit.com

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...33312052858880

Unless the liberal/left address the problems of the working class and many others) then populism will inevitably be the answer. It may be lies but that's kinda besides the point when the alternative isn't offering them anything. The argument that they will be better off is often true but totally besides the point because it's a self-worth & status issue far more than anything else.

Our democratic social capitalist systems are doomed unless radical changes are made. Tackling inequality isn't exactly the answer but it's a good start and absolutely necessary.

Whenever Trump says "so many people" "many people" "lots of people" he just means himself.