US Election: 2016

[The Bread Guy]

Just like Clinton and the anti Trump people. Except the Clinton people tend to be quite a bit more violent.

Whereas the pro-Trump people can be more ... intimidating (more) - for now.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Whereas the pro-Trump people can be more ... intimidating (more) - for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMux_UHmpvc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFOfmzlXLBk

I can see why Clinton supporters are intimidated when Trump supporters legally carry firearms.

 

[The Bread Guy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMux_UHmpvc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFOfmzlXLBk

I can see why Clinton supporters are intimidated when Trump supporters legally carry firearms.

And I still know where I'd bet money on re:  who to worry about more when one side or the other loses.

 

[Jarnhamar]

And I still know where I'd bet money on re:  who to worry about more when one side or the other loses.

Clinton? 

 

[cupper]

Hell, no. They'll just go back to sipping their $20 half caf decaf lattes, and ponder how they can make more money.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Whereas the pro-Trump people can be more ... intimidating (more) - for now.

Hmmmm. Two guys standing in the street exercising their 2nd Amendment Rights. Not heckling, not shouting, not pushing or assaulting anyone. Standing there talking between themselves. Like people do there every day.

I don't see anything intimidating about it. These kinds of people are seen on the street all the time there, doing open carry and no one complains. Give the dems something to blow out of proportion and they'll jump at the chance.

The majority of the violence has been caused by anti-Trump people. The same people paid for by George Soros who is also bankrolling Killary.

Nope. The dems can whine all they want. They set the bar, now they have play by the rules they set.

[cheers]

 

[Jed]

When you poke the sleeping giant (the American People) long enough and hard enough, they wake up, and by God, they finish it.

 

[mariomike]

When you poke the sleeping giant (the American People) long enough and hard enough, they wake up, and by God, they finish it.

Judging by the age of some of his followers, I can't see them burning and looting.
Hopefully most will be satisfied with venting their frustrations into their keyboards and calling it a night.

CBC News
Nov 01, 2016

'Time for revolution': Trump's Deep South diehards ready for revolt if he loses
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/revolution-alabama-trump-rigged-election-1.3828712
Alabamians for Trump hint at civil disobedience, but 'we pray that don't happen'

 

[Jarnhamar]

Clinton is corrupt and that seemingly extends to the FBI  and DOJ. 
Her shady organization takes monetary gifts from countries hostile to America,  countries that she admits are secretly supporting ISIS.
Clear and mounting examples of voting fraud.  One corruption after another.

If Clinton wins it's pretty easy to believe her presidency is invalid.  Think the armed forces would side with her after all this stuff is coming to light (and continuing to do so)?    I wonder what would happen if some generals say nope,  redo the election.

 

[mariomike]

I wonder what would happen if some generals say nope,  redo the election.

Best two out of three? 

 

[cupper]

Best two out of three? 

No, this is for all the money. Best of seven. The ratings will be yuge.  ;D

 

[cupper]

Judging by the age of some of his followers, I can't see them burning and looting.
Hopefully most will be satisfied with venting their frustrations into their keyboards and calling it a night.

CBC News
Nov 01, 2016

'Time for revolution': Trump's Deep South diehards ready for revolt if he loses
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/revolution-alabama-trump-rigged-election-1.3828712
Alabamians for Trump hint at civil disobedience, but 'we pray that don't happen'

I'm thinking that it won't be safe to go into a diner or coffee shop until it's past their bedtimes anywhere down here. ;D

 

[FJAG]

...  I wonder what would happen if some generals say nope,  redo the election.

I was at Fort Bragg the night of the elections of Nov 1980 (Ronald Reagan was running against the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter) when the then commander of XVIII Airborne Corps (a very vocal Republican) gave a toast to a large group of officers at the O Club with the words - "Gentlemen, tomorrow we will have a new president or you will have a new commander of XVIII Airborne Corps". I, as well as all the assembled officers, took it quite seriously at the time that he would not serve in the military for another term under Carter.

I would certainly expect that any generals who feel unhappy with Clinton as their commander in chief would take the same course and resign. On the other hand I doubt that any of them (or maybe just a few) will resign.

[cheers]

 

[mariomike]

I would certainly expect that any generals who feel unhappy with Clinton as their commander in chief would take the same course and resign.

"If you work for a man ( or in this case a woman ), in heaven's name work for him, speak well of him, and stand by the institution he represents. Remember, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault - resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart's content - but as long as you are part of the institution, do not condemn it. If you do, the first high wind that comes along will blow you away, and probably you will never know why."
Elbert Hubbard

 

[tomahawk6]

The US military prides itself on being non-political.When you take the oath to uphold and defend the constitution thats what you do.We dont take an oath of allegiance to any one President.They all get the best that the military can provide.A few generals have gotten in trouble because they broke that rule.

 

[McG]

I'm beginning to think that all the pro Trump anti Clinton people here are like Fox Mulder tilting at aliens.  ;D

Well, I suppose you could attribute it to too many individuals with delusion-based mental illness reinforcing their beliefs through internet based echo chambers ... but you will find some already opposed to that theory:

Don't blame dark voting trends on online thought bubbles
Doug Saunders
The Globe and Mail
01 Oct 16

When I watch election polls rolling out of the United States and Europe, with big margins of voters willing to back the previously unthinkable, my mind keeps straying back to the story, reported this summer, of Timothy Trespas.

Mr. Trespas, an unemployed guy in his early 40s who lives in New York, began noticing a problem a few years ago: He is being stalked by strangers. Dozens of people are following him all the time, and they occasionally whisper mysterious things in his ear. He went online to see what was wrong. A search revealed tens of thousands of people plagued with similar “gang-stalking” problems. They call themselves “targeted individuals,” or TIs, and they’ve created hundreds of YouTube videos and dozens of e-books on the phenomenon, explaining the government plots behind it. They’ve organized support groups (key advice: don’t see a psychiatrist). Mr. Trespas, as he told Mike McPhate of The New York Times, lost his friends and became more fearful and withdrawn. He only believes news from TI sites.

Gang-stalking theories are well known to the psychiatric community: They are classic symptoms of schizophrenia and other delusion-based diseases. In recent years, professionals have reacted with alarm as people have stopped reaching out for help and instead reach for their browsers. There they find only confirmation of their delusions. If you come to suspect that vapour trails are actually mind-control chemicals, or that the “spherical-Earth theory” is a fraud, you will find limitless amounts of support, and a welcoming community that protects you from alternative views.

It is tempting to think of Mr. Trespas as the very model of the modern voter. Are many of our fellow citizens, like him, getting information only from sources that confirm their ideologies, preconceptions and pathologies?

It’s not difficult to find people on Twitter or Facebook, or sometimes at family gatherings, who seem to live in ideologically isolated, self-confirming worlds – or, in the phrase coined by Internet entrepreneur Eli Pariser, “filter bubbles.” But, it turns out, such people are both very rare and also very atypical – perhaps increasingly so, studies keep showing.

The most recent research, by Andrew Guess of New York University, assembled a representative sample of 1,400 people across the United States, sorted them by self-declared ideology and monitored everything they viewed and shared for three weeks. It found that the online sources used by almost all Republicans were almost identical to those used by most Democrats, and those were mainly the less ideologically polarized, big-tent mass media everyone uses – except at rare, intense moments, when they would glance at Fox News or Breitbart or some other partisan website, then return to the centre. But for the most part, everyone was hearing everyone else’s voices.

Another study, completed in March by three researchers at Oxford, Stanford and Microsoft Research, looked at the activities of 50,000 Americans. It found that social media are indeed increasing “the ideological distance between individuals” – people are fighting from partisan positions – but that “these same channels also are associated with an increase in an individual’s exposure to material from his or her less-preferred side of the political spectrum,” and that mainstream news sources still account for the “vast majority” of what ideologically polarized people visit.

A large-scale study by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago similarly found “no evidence that the Internet is becoming more segregated over time.” And a 2014 study by four scholars at the Wharton School found that Internet filtering was causing not fragmentation but, in fact, an “increase in commonality with others.”

It appears, from this work, that people are not being isolated into self-confirming thought ghettos; rather, they have more sources than ever before, and prefer the credible ones – but they’re also members of communities of believers who influence them, sometimes darkly. It is community, not content, that causes extremism.

As those studies show, the Internet has compartments, but it also has a lot of cracks. They’re how the light gets in. A lot of people have been won over by bad ideas, but they’re able and willing to listen – so it’s worth the effort to try to persuade them otherwise.   

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/bursting-the-bubble-of-online-filter-bubbles/article32172155/

Some suggest social media and irrational bloggers are the leading catalyst for some intellectually shallow analysis of (and resultant conclusions on) the candidates:

Why Has the 2016 Election Been So Crazy? The Answer is Actually Fairly Obvious
Allen Clifton
forwardprogressives.com
18 May 2016

I’ve followed politics for many years, but I’ve never seen anything like the 2016 presidential primary. Even as much as I love following politics, this election has, at times, pushed that “love” to its limits. To call some of what we’ve seen from both sides a “circus” doesn’t really do it justice, but the battle between Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hasn’t been anywhere close to the outlandish sideshow we’ve seen from Republicans.

So, what gives? Why has this year been such a hot mess?

Well, depending on who you ask, you’ll get any number of answers. The generally accepted belief is that Americans are “fed up,” “angry” and “tired of business as usual.” Many have said that the push for an “outsider” is the reason why candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have been so successful.

I think those points are valid. People are angry as well as being sick and tired of the same old thing we seem to get year after year. Plus the allure of an outsider as president has persisted in politics for decades.

However, I believe it goes a lot deeper than that.

If you ask me, what’s made 2016 such a strange election is the fact that this is the first presidential election where social media has been established as the “go-to” source for many to get their news and political information.

Now I know what some are going to say, “But social media was around in 2008 and 2012, you’re an idiot!”

To be fair, that’s true. However, in 2008, social media wasn’t nearly as developed as it is today. Hell, the iPhone had barely been around for about year. Today – nearly everyone has a smartphone.

Then in 2012, while social media had definitely become much more ingrained in our lives, we had an incumbent president and a Republican party that really didn’t seem to think it could beat him. Let’s face it, the 2012 GOP primary was a sad showing where nearly every candidate was a “favorite” at one point until Republicans realized they were all batcrap crazy and settled on the “most electable” one, Mitt Romney.

But in 2016, social media dominates when it comes to how many people get their news and information. This has given the “independent media” (blogs, Twitter and Facebook pages, in particular) huge influence in politics. This is also the first presidential election where social media has had a significant influence during a time where both sides feel that they have a chance to “get the win” because there’s no incumbent running for re-election.

Look, I’m not here to be one of those writers who whines incessantly about clickbait or to act as if everything I’ve written has been based on some sort of moral compass where I never decided to write an article because I knew it would get clicks. Everyone in this “business” does that and anyone telling you they haven’t is full of crap. Of course, there are some blogs and Facebook pages that are far worse about doing it than others.

The problem I see is that behind a lot of these blogs and Facebook pages are people who aren’t at all qualified to actually deliver the information they’re producing – especially as it relates to often very complex political issues.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on people breaking down polling information who have no idea how to accurately or ethically report on sometimes very complex polling data.

See, that’s one of the issues with the “independent media”: There’s really no accountability.

A site can have a clear agenda, push blatant propaganda or even flat-out lie and the only form of “checks and balances” that exist are the amount of traffic their website gets. You’re not going to see in-depth investigations by The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or any other mainstream source on random blogs or large Facebook pages pushing false or blatantly inaccurate information.

*Sidenote: While I know memes are quick and easy ways to share things you really like seeing – please fact check them before clicking “share.”

Again, not that all of these “independent media” blogs or pages do this. Many are fantastic sources of information that provide a well-rounded, researched and articulate take on what’s going on in this country.

However, there are some that don’t – especially on the right. Though there are some liberal sites out there that do nothing but push inaccurate and blatant far-left propaganda and conspiracies, as well. These are the sites and Facebook pages (some of them very large) that frequently prey on fear and anger by pushing stories that work people up, often based on information that’s either been cherry picked to fit their narrative without any sort of context included, or they just flat-out distort the truth.

Why? Well, because outrage is what sells best.

Trust me when I tell you, “good news” stories are often terrible for getting traffic – which means they hardly make any money. The stories that do “get the clicks” are the ones that trigger outrage, shock, disgust, anger, or all of the above.

Then when you factor all of this in with the “confirmation bias bubble” in which so many people wrap themselves, it’s a very dangerous combination. It’s people who are isolating themselves inside of an echo chamber surrounding themselves with sources that tell them what they want to hear whether or not a lot of the information they’re being given is actually true. Then for any source that doesn’t, those are quickly discarded, “unliked” or blocked.

And if people are only wrapping themselves up in sources that are often factually unreliable or are flat-out propaganda – while rejecting factual sources simply because they’re not telling these folks what they want to hear – that’s a huge problem.

That’s exactly what we’re seeing, which has helped make the 2016 election such a mess.

That’s how someone like Donald Trump has become such a rock star among so many Republicans. During his campaign he’s become the living embodiment of these right-wing blogs and Facebook pages. He’s literally saying the very same vile, bigoted propaganda and lies that these sites have been pushing for years. He’s simply feeding people who don’t want to be told the truth everything that they desperately want to hear.

Even on the Democratic side, I’ve spent more time this year combating misinformation that’s being pushed by agenda-driven left-wing blogs than I have talking factually about the issues facing this country.

It’s all been absurd.

But I do feel that a lot of the rather ridiculous antics we’ve seen during this 2016 primary election are linked to the fact that, while the rise of social media has brought with it amazing benefits, like the Internet itself, it’s also made people who have no business being treated legitimately as news sources – seem legitimate.

And we’re finally seeing this culminate in the first post-social media election where we didn’t have an incumbent, where both parties have gone “all-in” with doing whatever they can to win the White House.

So, from here on out, a lot of the strange and often mind-boggling events we’ve seen in 2016 might be the “new normal” in politics. 

http://www.forwardprogressives.com/why-has-the-2016-election-seemed-to-crazy-the-answer-is-actually-fairly-obvious/

 

[FJAG]

On a completely unrelated matter: Yeah Cubs.  :Bday Dancer:

[cheers]

 

[The Bread Guy]

I don't see anything intimidating about it. These kinds of people are seen on the street all the time there, doing open carry and no one complains. Give the dems something to blow out of proportion and they'll jump at the chance.

And I guess still haven't confirmed the motive behind this incident, right? 

 

[Lightguns]

And I guess still haven't confirmed the motive behind this incident, right? 

Given the mantra of "innocent until proven guilty" of this site, can we really say that the arsonist is the also the spray painter?  Can we say that one or both are Trump supporters?  Given the level of email evidence on the level of organization of ALLEGED Democrat paid vandals can you really simply lay this at the feet of the GOP and say own it?  Is it possible that the arsonist, in a area where black church burning are still routine, is just hitching a ride on Trump? 

 

[The Bread Guy]

Given the mantra of "innocent until proven guilty" of this site, can we really say that the arsonist is the also the spray painter?  Can we say that one or both are Trump supporters?  Given the level of email evidence on the level of organization of Democrat paid vandals can you really simply lay this at the feet of the GOP and say own it?  Is it possible that the arsonist, in a area where black church burning are still routine, is just hitching a ride on Trump?

All possible ...