But Seriously...

The Waffle House down the road has been doing this for years. They have a security guard after 11 to keep out the riff raff.

 

Edited for truth.

 

Maybe some day you'll help me understand why I got banned for calling him a dumbass once when he's now written that same deranged frothing at the mouth crazy person post directed at me about a dozen times now. I don't actually care because I can't take him seriously anyway, but I'm just saying.

 

Oh, and not to make the thread go nuclear, or anything, but because it's come up a few times now - https://econofact.org/voting-and-income

I'm not saying the broke ass, meth addicted republican redneck doesn't exist, but applying it across the board isn't very accurate. I personally tend to agree with left wing politics more often (but not always) than right wing politics, but the whole pretending they're all dim witted morons incapable of succeeding at anything just isn't true. You'd think with democrats being better educated on average they would be wealthier, but nope.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump?wprov=sfla1

This is such an issue it's a Wikipedia article, going back to the 1970's. As a thought experiment, consider how bad it had to be for NY to investigate a landlord for discrimination in the shithole NYC was in the 1970's. Seriously, think about how egregious you'd have to be to get investigated for that, settle and then get ANOTHER investigation in 1983.

Is EVERYTHING the result of racism? No, I'd argue the vast majority of it is incompetence and stupidity. A lot of his "solutions" fall neatly within racism parameters, and he thinks of himself as ballsy for doing it. How do we solve the threat of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism (which, in the history of overblown threats makes Y2K look like the Goddamned Book of Revelations)? By just preventing Muslims from coming here. That's his solution. Is it discriminatory? By definition. Is it racist? Hard to argue he doesn't have a thing against Muslims if the solution put forth by the most powerful individual on Earth has no more nuance than that. Same thing with the wall. "All brown people are the same, and I want them over there." If you don't try a little bit harder than that, yeah, it's easy to conclude you're a racist.

Trump's racism merits discussion and coverage because, well....it's a big fucking deal. It's the President of the United States, someone who's tweets have crashed the stock market on a whim. It's an absurd amount of power put into the hands of someone who is blatantly untrustworthy. He couldn't get a loan for his business in 2014, and yet now somehow he's the saint of conservatism and a victim of media coverage? Horseshit.

I'll give you a real-life example of why this is bad. FEMA, during this administration, started directing a lot of funding to churches and religious institutions. There was some support for it, but most of us want to tread carefully there, because most religious institutions are community fixtures, and oversight there is sketchy. It's hard to hold them accountable (who wants to audit a church?) and they are politically radioactive. They can, through a variety of measures, exclude people and restrict service to only the ones they choose. It's rare, but...well, there's a lot of room for abuse: on Sunday, it's fire and brimstone against the homosexuals, and on Monday, they get millions in funding to shelter people? Who do you think DOESN'T show up for that? It's a dog-whistle solution to prevent funding from going places filled with people that the administration doesn't want to fund. Also, what churches can afford to have a grant-writer apply for this stuff? You guessed it....the rich ones. That's for emergency food and shelter. Imagine what that looks like for education programs, or sex ed programs....on and on and on.

The racism Trump perpetuates is exclusionary: he wants to keep minorities separate and finds ways to communicate this, execute this and promote this. The coverage is only part of the solution in exposing it. In moments where a normal, rational person would express sympathy, compassion or at least understanding, like the current protests, Hurricane Maria, etc., he doesn't. It should be very chilling to think that the sitting US President doesn't consider these lives equal, a fundamental tenet of our country.

Maintaining the dialog about this, makes sure that the abuses perpetuated are brief, documented and defended. Look at the horrific conditions at the border: if the media coverage wasn't so frantic, that would have gone on for years. Now at least there's some relief, and the promise of redress. I know 80% of it is overblown noise, but that roar keeps the spotlight going, and it makes it harder for him to cheat, steal, lie and discriminate. It's not like our justice system or the Senate is doing the job of keeping him accountable.

Yes, it's fucking exhausting. We are all tired. It's not the media coverage, it's not some racism boogie-man trumped up by the liberals, or some conspiracy to undermine him. It's the exhaustion of defending our core values from a President who doesn't share them. It's the exhaustion of no recourse, no accountability and no respite from a parade of disgusting behaviors. It's the exhaustion of realizing we are better than this piece of shit and still watching him behave this way.

Does supporting the GOP mean you're a racist? No, anymore than being a Democrat means you're a welfare queen. But it does mean you're comfortable supporting a racist, and that's....not a good look, especially when it's so fucking egregious.

 

Well, we're really going to disagree here because I don't think a wall (theoretical efficacy aside) to keep out illegal immigrants and a ban that was only on something like 5% of the world's Muslims is "fucking egregious".

By the way, you might want to check this out - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-build-cages-immigrants/

 

If you are silent when Trump says something racist because he supports a thing you like, like blocking gun control, that means you're okay with him saying and doing racist shit. You lose any moral high ground you might have had because of your approval, tacit or otherwise, of his racism.

 

Sigh. No, it just means you don't care that someone else is creatively interpreting something else he said as 'racist.' I would fall into that group.

 

Then why, oh why, did no one try it before Trump?

Its such a simple, obvious solution, so why is he the one that could pull it off? I wonder why no one else tried that?

But good work with the reading comprehension, you almost understood the whole post this time!

 

Don't you dare threaten me with a good time.

 

It's a loophole you'd never figure out.

 

You mean the Muslim ban?

Yeah, that was stupid, but that wasn't my point. It's not a horrifying example of systemic oppression. It was a temporary ban on a small percentage of Muslims.

 

We all got along so much better before we allowed serious discussion here. I remember when @Aetius told a guy to cook and eat his date's dead cat and he instantly became one of my favorite people. However, it's been revealed we disagree with just about everything else that isn't how to deal with a date's dead cat.

Was that cat thing about 15 years ago, buddy?

 

I've told so many people to eat so many dead cats, you're going to have to be more specific.

 

When the advice is good, spread it to many.

 

pettyrevengeofthenerds