Purity of heart is to post one thing.
Totally convincing innocence there.
I've been distracting myself by diving into the glorious Sam Wang/Nate Silver model fight. I am #teamsamwang
27- I call foul, 538's final map magically came into alignment with PEC on the very last addition of polls, so they both have identical maps now (except maybe for ME-2)
28: That would be consistent with the pollster-herding 538 warns about, though.
The basic issue with 538 was that their probabilities bounced around all season, which is great for internet traffic but is a sign of an overly volatile model. If a Clinton 3-point lead in November only gives her a 65% chance of winning, then how did they ever have her chances in the 80s?
Glad this works now.
Polling places are inspiring for those like me who basically spend the day hanging out at them.
29: Yes. Silver has a quite plausible scenario (sadly) that represents most of his Trump win possibilities: Systematic polling error in Trump's direction not beyond what has been seen (Obama 2012 for instance I think) coupled with the a scenario where Clinton does not make it over the bar in any of her Sun Belt opportunities and and Trump *does* in the Rust Belt--so many of them involving a Trump popular vote loss.
But I have no idea what the actual conflict between Trump and Silver is. (I think one is that Silver's is also much faster-reacting, and seems to be more prone to picking up things like potential response bias error in the wake "significant" errors.)
A good tweet re: Silver: ""Hi it's Nate Silver. Just calling to remind you there's a small chance your pet could die while you're at work today. Well have a good one"
Results? Too soon.
Now, results at the polling stations: it took me 2 hours to vote. Camaraderie was high among those in line around me ... not counting the asshole a few people back who harassed the woman from the Girl Scouts table over yonder.
Said Girl Scouts table was selling, obvs., Girl Scout cookies, at a proper distance of 100 yards from the polling station. Around 11 a.m. they decided to fold up, and had extra coffee to be rid of, so they walked up and down the line extending outside the building declaring, "Free coffee!" The asshole hissed at them, "Soliciting is not allowed at the polls." Girl Scout leader lady said, "Not soliciting! Free coffee as we're closing up our table!! Free coffee!" Asshole says, "Right, teach the girls to break the law, way to go, keep it up." Lady replies, "Absolutely, free coffee!"
Jeez.
That said. The 2 hours were primarily the result of the fact that there was only one scanner at the polling station. (Maryland has paper ballots, which you then feed into a scanner to record electronically.)
Once one managed to enter the building, it was fairly quick to actually fill out a ballot -- then another hour-long line snaking around to wait to feed into the scanner.
Everyone agreed this was absurd. One scanner?! Apparently there is only one assigned to each polling station in my county. Hrm, clearly that must change in future. Far too many people were blowing off the voting altogether.
I hope you took a cup of coffee and gave the girls $5 just to fuck with him.
33: Agreed. But when Sam Wang says 99%, I feel more unease than anything. If he said 90%, I'd feel much better.
I'm sad nobody else discovered the secret channel.
Hey, you know something else my 3rd-world kleptocracy does? Truck all ballots to centralized counting centers where they are, inter alia, scanned. You just drop your ballot in a box and walk away. Amazing!
I had about an hour wait for voting today, which compares favorably with the previous two elections. The democrats were out in force at the polling station, with only a lone Republican handing out flyers.
We have a couple of ballot measures, one to put right to work into the Virginia constitution (stupid, voted against), and another to impose a tax on restaurant meals with 70% earmarked for education (voted in favor), along with some bond issues. There was a strange amendment to the constitution to exempt spouses of first responders killed in the line of duty from property taxes as long as they don't remarry. The Democrats are in favor so I voted for it, but I'm a little bit conflicted about it. I'd rather there just be a flat payment up front than fuck around with the tax code.
Silver's model is implausibly volatile. The whole point of averaging polls is to reduce the variance you get from sampling error. The effect of his trend adjustment is that it undoes the effect of poll averaging. It's not as bad as simply just using the latest poll, the way the media used to do, but his model goes further in that direction than Wang's does.
I guess I don't really get to laugh at American election incompetence this year.
You're incentivizing widows to shack-up without sanction of church or state.
37- He changed to 93% in a final update based on a somewhat larger error estimate in polls.
Has anyone figured out whether the Slate thing is in any way meaningful or helpful? I can't figure out why they went to the trouble to do this.
It looks pretty stupid. It's just some bars that keep moving throughout the day but there's no way to tell if it has any connection to reality.
for a thoroughly implausible and unreliable same day prediction of who's really winning, Slate has something running.
http://www.slate.com/votecastr_election_day_turnout_tracker.html
At the moment, Hillary's ahead in all seven states they are tracking, but it's really close. Would be helpful information if I believed it.
47 was posted by me, and was pwned. Also it's not working right, doesn't show the promised county leve; results.
30: The percentage in the 80s was from when they were projecting Clinton with a 6-7% lead, instead of the 3.6% lead they are looking at now.
Oh look, Trump's already filed a suit saying early vote in NV is rigged because they let people in line vote past the official closing time despite the fact that the law precisely says that's what's supposed to happen.
I'm feeling distressed over all the voter suppression and intimidation stories, and how many hours people have had to stand in line - even in early voting, and the stories about how many polling locations have been closed.
Voting this morning went smoothly for me. Two people in line ahead of me and my son. Our precinct tends to have a bunch of people either voting early by mail, or later in the day, so going early generally results in fairly short lines.
I voted just after 9am and it was easy - a dozen people in front of me in line, under ten minutes. There's also only one scanner per precinct, but they're fast so I'm not sure why that would be a problem. A dozen little booths with pens in them.
My wife made what I think was a tactical mistake by trying to be part of the early crowd, in line before the polls opened at 7am, and there was a long line then. So she bailed and will try again after work, which means I may have to leave work early so that she's not standing in line with Mr. 4-and-Impatient for too long.
51: And James O'Keefe is following a van filled with black people in Philadelphia. That will end well.
52: Indeed. There's no way in hell voting should be an endurance test. At my polling station, numerous people, infirm in one way or another, had to be helped to sit down while their place in line was held. One guy was actually carrying a folding chair with him.
That I said, I apparently had a small "interaction" with Nate Silver last night that is a bit hmmm (or probably is nothing).
Several folks had pointed out that in the last few days there had been a lot of swing state polls from Republican consulting firms (Remington and Trafalgar are two--I don't think Daily Kos Elections includes them, 538 does but "adjusts" them a few points towards Dem). Anyway, someone had tweeted the following about some hinky-looking crosstabs (What is shown is % Trump in the groups)
More Trafalgar Group. Trump Black/Hispanic breakdowns in swing states:
FL: 26% B/41% H
MI: 27% B/39% H
CO: 27% B/36% H
PA: 28% B/35% H
All of them significant outliers towards Trump and of interestingly similar magnitude. (The populations as %s of the electorate seemed somewhat reasonable, however). I pulled some of the results and verified a few of the guy's numbers (the polls are presented in an odd format, here's Pennsylvania). Just as I was doing that @NateSilver538 posted an update. So I took the opportunity to ask if they had noticed the pattern and then linked the guy's table. (I know they have some really bad partisan pollsters they have banned in the past.) he I noticed I seemed to be muted in his timeline... (I did do it hastily so had my usual typos and he probably in general mutes out that type of quibbling, but I do think questions on which polls to include are legitimate.
The point of the Trump suit is clear from the details, there's a hearing now. Claims that people were allowed to join the line after the cutoff, in collusion with the Dem party/unions, which would be illegal (has no evidence this happened, of course.) He wants ALL machines/ballots from 4 heavily D sites impounded and NOT COUNTED until the complaint is resolved, which means that he would probably win NV in the first count because that's tens of thousands of D votes held back as "suspicious", even people who voted much earlier in the day and were unquestionably valid. (And maybe from throughout the week? I don't know if they keep a running tab through the entire early voting period or just each day, I imagine daily.)
Voted at 11:30, which is a weird time for me (almost always evening voting). Short, but unusual, line. We were 190 & 191. My neighbor who used to staff the polling place said a few years ago that there were about 600 registered voters, although that's probably gone up thanks to conversion of an empty skyscraper into yuppie apts. Anyway, I'd guess that we're on pace for turnout at 2008 levels minimum.
When I canvassed Sunday, I only contacted a few voters, but all were emphatic. Given that, by definition, my targets are irregular voters, that was heartening. AB canvassed this morning, same story.
Based on 59.2, and things like the Pantsuit Nation page, I'm harboring a hope that HRC will outperform polls significantly, and that she'll have some unexpected coattails. I've given up on the House, but I'd really like to make it a narrow majority, which would be super-unstable given the GOP caucus these days.
57: I wondered about that PA poll. The firm has certainly done competent polling, but I assume they know who pays them.
61: From where do you know that they've done competent polling?
Voted this morning. No line, but there were a few other people there.
The main beef I have heard about partisan but competent firms (PPP on the Dem side for instance) is that they will sit on results they don;t want to release (either bad or "too good" in some cases).
Any way I for one would have been happier with a 6-10 spread rather than a 206 in major polls...
Also Ohi not looking like racist goobfuckers.
There's no meta-pedia about who is editing their own Wikipedia page.
I'm going to persist in edginess until I see Florida and Pennsylvania called.
So apparently the Trumpy-sounding Bellichick endorsement letter was real?
Vice News is keeping running tallies
https://news.vice.com/story/live-election-day-turnout-results-with-votecastry
69: I've had a pit in my stomach for a week--I am not made of the right stuff for this kind of thing.
(Also being basd as we only did one turf (it was a big one, however) rather than two ...
57: They only polled about 138 black Pennsylvanians. Margin of error for that is 8.3%. Still seems high (although I'm misapplying margin of error, surely).
Livetweeting of the NV hearing for the Trump lawsuit. The case is apparently embarrassingly flimsy and the judge is super-skeptical.
Update that came in as I typed: "JUDGE IN NEVADA: 'I am not going to issue any order. I'm not going to do it.'"
75: Yes. I'd be leery of a poll result showing that but not too skeptical--it is the persistence across 4 polls for both blacks and latinos that really seems off.
I'm shook. Taken 3 anxiety shits already. I need to be done with work and a visa filing deadline so I can crack some beers and start f5ing my laptop
Attempting to work but instead fucking around on the internet. Have a workshop in 2.5 hours and have to read a paper on Byzantine eunuchs.
Also listening to "A mighty fortress", the militaristic reformation hymn that sort of serves as comfort music for me. Listened to the English and Swedish versions.
I voted by mail and mailed back my ballot almost two weeks ago, but I still feel like I should be voting today.
77: That's a good point. In at least some cases they should underestimate Trump black/Latino support, no? I'd also wonder if there might be some more natural systemic bias; maybe black/Latino people who are willing to put up with a pollster at this point are more likely to be pro-Trump?
I've wondered about how you observe the characteristics of that segment of the population which does not respond to surveys. You might think, "Well, it's the inverse of the survey responsive population", but that only works for those data which are known without recourse to polling.
80: Yes. And I also suspect subtle cultural clues in live caller polling can shift participation rates.
I voted at 8am, an hour after the polls opened. Was voter 102.
No line for me, but the other ward that votes in the same polling location had a line of at least 55 people. I couldn't figure out why -- they didn't seem to have fewer or slower poll workers, or fewer booths. I wonder it it's a demographic difference and they have more retirees who are voting early.
I sort of voted by mail/email but messed it up and ended up doing in-person absentee last month. Apparently when they email you an overseas ballot, if you print it out and bring it back in person it breaks everything.
But- I have the email that lets me print out as many official-looking ballots as I want. I was thinking it would be fun to print a couple dozen, mark some Trump some Clinton, and film myself leafing through them and trashing the Trump ones.
the other ward that votes in the same polling location had a line of at least 55 people
I wish I had a better understanding of how the number and location of polling stations is determined: no doubt it's done on a local level. At least 55 people strikes me as: that's all? My own polling location had at least 200.
We really need to fix this stuff.
OK, this may be cherrypicked but I have at least validated the numbers. Orange County, FL (Orlando), in 2012 had 467,385 presidential votes cast, 59% of them for Obama, over 6% of all his statewide votes. In 2008, 462,712 votes, also 59% Obama.
According to the county website, adding early voting and today's voting, they've got 520,394 ballots cast so far, with hours left in the polls.
Super Hispanic turnout?
Súper. Con el acento.
Super Hispanic turnout?
According to the Pew Research Center, Puerto Rico's population dropped 9 percent to 3.5 million in 2015, particularly accelerating after 2010. The island's debt crisis, which has led to a federal takeover of its finances, has sent some Puerto Rican residents seeking economic reprieve on the mainland, especially Central Florida. But the Puerto Rican influence in the state isn't exactly new. Julio Ricardo Varela, political editor of the Futuro Media Group and founder of Latino Rebels, said few have paid attention to Puerto Ricans' growing political clout, but the impact could easily have been predicted.
...
Orlando in particular has maintained a large population of Puerto Ricans throughout its history, although recent migrants from the island have it on the brink of surpassing New York City as the largest diaspora. Varela said that in the past, discrimination against Latinos in the area and apathy within the Puerto Rican community have meant little to no representation in state and local governments.
But Rios-Andino said recent events, including the shooting at Orlando's Pulse Nightclub in June, might be motivating Central Florida's Puerto Rican community to become more politically active.
86: The census site is a little tricky to read, but I think Orange County is 42.5% non-Hispanic white and 29.8% Hispanic, with both numbers moving in the right direction since 2012 (down and up, respectively.)
No line for me at 7:51 am. I was #88, and our ballot boxes now show a projected vote total, which seems likely to provoke the Repugs, but who cares? Projection was for 1577 voters which is absurd -- ahimsub, I used to run that precinct, and even in hotly contested years, I don't think we ever broke 1,000.
86 is a thoughtful choice for a tracker, thanks!
88: The Great Recession. The cause of, and solution to, all of our problems.
Slate seems to have Hillary winning everywhere, which seemed good until it occurred to me that the non-college educated white male demographic are probably most likely to vote after a 9-5 work day, compared to such Hillary demographics as students, service workers, and caretakers of small children.
93: Not necessarily true. Could be pro-catch, neuter/spay, and release.
88- Don't tell O'Queef, he'll say it's proof of foreigners coming into the US to vote.
If you want some early, perhaps-premature schadenfreude, multiple 4chan Trumpites learning today they had to register to vote. (CW: Pepe.)
Have a workshop in 2.5 hours and have to read a paper on Byzantine eunuchs.
If your uncle had no testicles, he'd be your eunuch.
I'm so looking forward to actual results so they'll drown out the repetitive critiques of how some people aren't happy to vote for Clinton for the right reasons that seem to be flooding my social media feeds.
Parsi, here at least the number and location of polling places is a county determination. I'd be surprised if Maryland wasn't the same.
No lines at the polls here in Oregon. Voting was quick and easy...
102: One innovation in states like Indiana has been for the state to give every county election board member veto power over the addition of polling location (to require unanimity), so that they only expand access when Republicans are comfortable it won't hurt them.
I'm so looking forward to actual results so they'll drown out the repetitive critiques of how some people aren't happy to vote for Clinton for the right reasons that seem to be flooding my social media feeds.
We all know the story this year with white people is that Clinton is winning white people with college educations by a small margin, and losing white people without college educations by 40%, but the dichotomy has been so obvious in my Facebook feed.
People with college education: I voted! Go vote! Yay!
People with no college education: Posting about the meteor of death, or the shit sandwich, or how depressing everything is and they can't wait for it to be over.
Standard disclaimer: "College education" is about 75% white people, "No college education" is 100% white people. All people in this sample are under 40 and I have so far seen nobody claim to be voting for Trump.
I have a number of college educated white FB friends who are posting pro-Trump and, even more so, anti-Clinton stuff. Geography matters independent of education. This number isn't huge, but it's certainly bigger than number of people I know who still live in Nebraska and are putting up Clinton stuff.
106: I do agree with a few things I've read that, for weirdly undiscussed reasons, the most salient non-racist identity behind Trump support is the rural/metropolitan divide.
Nothing says "sensitive to rural concerns" like an NYC real estate developer who only goes outside to play one of his golf courses.
VA: too close to call. Fuuuuck! I don't want to live in a nutbar state.
Virginia was always going to be close. Blue, but close. More interesting to me is that South Carolina is too early to call. It will go red, but it bodes well that it didn't go red immediately.
55: At 7:30 I had a 25 minute wait.
VA is to early to call. SC and GA are too close. Don't you listen to Maddow?
Clinton won 57% of Virginia women, 38% of Virginia men. There are going to be a lot of awkward conversations between Virginia couples tonight...
You know, maybe it's not "P.C." to say this, but it really would have been more efficient to have had Hillary in '08 and Obama in '16. She's gonna be plumb wore out in 2025! And Obama could have been the greatest Sec'y of State in US history. And he would have had a great campaign this time around, talking about "take us even further" and "build on success". (Also, let's be honest, Hillary would have been A LOT tougher in the healthcare fight.) Ah well, musn't grumble.
113: if that data holds I believe we're closer to totally fucked than I thought, going in.
Uh, yeah, someone else can run the math of how many more women would have to turn out than men for those numbers to mean a Clinton win, but that's heavily towards Trump.
Probably biased by Democratic areas reporting late.
A lot of things are going to be biased by Democratic areas reporting late. Ajay, remember this. It takes longer to count in densely populated areas and there aren't many Democratic areas that aren't densely populated.
From fivethirtyeight:
Preliminary exit poll results suggest that we may see a record gender gap among voters in Virginia -- a 19-point advantage for Clinton among women, 57-38 percent. It's not too much of a leap to suggest that this might be connected to Trump's treatment of women -- 62 percent of women in the state said they were "bothered a lot by Trump's treatment of women." In North Carolina, Clinton appears to have won among women by 13 percentage points, which ABC News says appears to be another record.
What's interesting is that although there was a record gender gap nationally in 2012 -- about 20 percent -- it didn't show up so much in these states. Obama won female voters in Virginia by 9 points and won that group by only 2 points in North Carolina. We are seeing something new.
115, 116: yeah, it's not the numbers that are interesting, it's the gap between them...
Anecdotally, it's been interesting to see the depth of feeling against Trump among pretty much every woman I've seen discussing it. And this is including lots of anarchist women who don't generally spend a lot of time on electoral politics. He really struck a chord. Oft evil will, will evil mar, I guess.
112: CNN's Florida coverage is giving me heartburn.
Big turnout in the prostate gland section of the state.
That's what yggles says.
Slate pulled down their votecastr for the state because it was ridiculously incorrect.
Clinton down to 76% on NYT dashboard from 85% before.
CBS is stressing us out here, but I must remember it's in their interest to keep it interesting.
Regardless, time to get btocked
Aaaaaaaugh. Where's Megan. I'm stressed out.
How good have exit polls been historically?
MSNBC is now talking about Michigan falling.
The white folk in Florida voted with a vengeance for the nutty racist guy...
133: The boyfriend is horrified by this possibility. We did our part, voters 113 and 114.
Nothing is good so far. Everything is worse than expected so far. My heart is pounding more than I can remember in years. I can't eat.
If nothing else, this is going to be close enough that Trump will not concede even if he loses the EC.
I was at a HS soccer game to avoid this. When I left there Fla. was looking quite good ...and now this.
I fear this is the night of the revenge of the white people.
Nate Silver: "The results so far are pretty well in line with pre-election polls, which showed a close race in many swing states and Clinton more often having the lead".
So, in the words of Mayor Quimby, "we are far from screwed".
NY times has the uncounted Florida votes clustering in the cities. I'm breathing.
With 2% of the vote, Johnson is carrying Monroe County in the Poconos.
Dude on CBS is saying that only 16% of Broward County, FL votes are in, and it went heavily for Obama. It ain't over yet.
I'm calming down. Cities report more slowly than rural areas.
So far the projected maps are intact, they're just not being called for Clinton. Seriously, Michigan, VA, PA, MN?
Broward is being very slow counting. And remember, Clinton can lose Florida and still win comfortably. She can lose Florida and NC and still win comfortably. And she is looking good for Ohio, which was in Trump's column.
145: he's wrong in a sense. That is the % of election day -- most was early voting and already in. I think Florida is gone. I am going to bed.
Here's a crazy idea- how about we get some more fucking polling machines for cities so they're not always delayed reporting because their lines have to stay open 3 hours after closing.
I'm not calm. This should be a blow-out.
Dude on CBS is saying that only 16% of Broward County, FL votes are in
There's some weirdness in the numbers. NY Times has over 600,000 votes counted in Broward, but only 91 of 577 precincts reporting. My guess is that the 600,000 includes early votes, across all precincts, and the "91 of 577" is about final counts.
In other words, there's a lot less than 84% votes to still count.
At least we can say that Slate comes out of this looking moronic.
Not calm one bit. This is the one Nate Silver scenario potentially playing out .... She does better than expected in Texas, Georgia etc but nothing over the top while trump slithers by in the traditional swingers.
149/152: Yeah, you're right. My bad. There's still a lot of votes to pick up there, but maybe not enough. I thought Florida was a bit of a stretch, and we don't need it, but it's unfortunate if it goes red.
63% Clinton. This is 2000 and 2004. Fuck this.
Winning Florida was the early chance to kill Trump. Its harder now.
Yes. Financial markets have taken notice and are plunging...
Fuck older white guys. Ok to kill me when you take the rest of them out. You have permission...
Now they have it at ~50% with 700k votes, in a county with a population of 1.9m. So maybe they have their numbers consistent now?
I have stress-eaten 8 oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies and two mango bars in the past 90 minutes. I miss the happy feeling I had coming home today, when all was my joyful sense of camaraderie with my city and our wonderful Philadelphia stubbornness.
At least I got to give tokens to the delightful man panhandling in the train station who was yodeling about how much he didn't like Trump's wall.
(I was out of cash. And yes, we still use tokens for our public transit system.)
I'm so shook now. Monster white vote. This does feel just like 2004
The NYT dashboard is wobbling the EC to the Trump side.
Yes. Election betting markets and real markets in free fall ..
Nice act what do you call yourselves?
The patriarchy.
Quick, start disarming the nukes.
Fivethirtyeight is scaring me about MI right now.
Everything is scaring me. What the fuck is going on.
Jesus Christ, people. What is happening?!?
in the words of Mayor Quimby, "we are far from screwed"
He says this right before Springfield erupts in a garbage volcano
I might convert to the Chinese folk religion, because the only explanation I have is Trump really does have the Mandate of Heaven.
Anyone remember how far behind Obama came from to win OH in 2012? I need some reassurance that a basic firewall is still plausible. I feel like in 2012 the early returns were more equivocal than tonight.
Did somebody's wonks underestimate the number of white people or something?
I was SO MUCH HAPPIER thirty minutes ago before I had looked at any news about election results. What the fuck. I don't want to get drunk next ow but now I feel like I need to.
Sure looks like Gary Johnson will be the spoiler tonight, in the races I've looked at, at least (ITRILAAL)
I've been avoiding the news. Checking in here for tone and what i just read iss not making me happy. I'm still not turning on the TV.
She may be squeaking out Virginia.
Donald trump may be the greatest politician of this age. Think about that.
At first I thought the media was fucking with us to boost rating. Now it realize America is just fucking with us for the lulz
47 people have so far voted for the SWP candidate for President, in MN, with 3% reporting: I wonder how many of them I know?
174: Yes, and their anger. A lot of whites who voted for Obama are now voting for Trump
For goodness' sake, you can't be a lawyer if you don't represent banks."
--Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail in 1992
From False Choices The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton 2016, all articles by leftist women against Clinton. May quote from it at length if she loses, cause the Democratic Party will need total war.
Banker's best buddy was perhaps not the best choice after 2008 and the last 8 years.
PS: Didn't vote, wasn't going to cast a symbolic vote in Texas this year. Checked for initiatives none and my black democratic congressperson was safe so just stayed home and got/getting stoned, watching de Oliviera's version of Madame Bovary, listening to Ronnie Earl and Teleman, reading Mao Zedong.
Call back later.
I feel like authoritarian China is coming out of this as the winner.
171: so the quote works either way. Nicely Delphic.
If I were to suggest Nate Silver:Sam Wang::Negan:Glenn, would that be racist?
Oh, and 2000? 2004? Shit.
Oldtimers remember motherfucking 1980, but it only compares if Kamala Harris loses in California.
I still don't think Trump wins.
Stepping back from the ledge- let's game this out. FL is gone. NC the vote suppression is going to work. VA she's coming back, PA firewall should hold. The critical ones are MI, WI, MN, she absolutely has to hold those to have a chance. Then you go out west- NV & NM should be safe, the risk there is CO. If she holds the midwest firewall but loses CO, and if she loses ME-2, it's... 269-269. Ok, now I'm back on the ledge.
And fuck Brian Williams, stop coming back from commercial and saying, "We have a change!!! State X moves from too early to too close to call." THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!
Even if she wins, it's horrible that it's close at all. White people, we have so much work to do. SO MUCH.
195: Thank you for reaffirming my decision to not stream TV.
Can your despair wait a bit? Despairing early won't do you any good, and waiting won't feel much worse.
This is the first time all year that I've truly feared a Trump presidency.
Thank God the 1.75L Tanqueray was on sale today.
My less-political sisters are stress-texting me. I was reassuring them when Trump was only winning expected states. Now it's harder.
Same for me, Witt, but I'm staying the course.
So at this point it's either a Trump win, or a protracted Supreme Court battle with a 4-4 balance.
Yeah, it's hard.
If you need something to calm you down, that Vine of a dog dancing to Toto has been helping in our household.
A spot of good news: Minnesota is sending a Somali American Muslim woman to the House. And my friend who I campaigned for also won his (local) race.
What's the physiological cause of that metallic taste in the back of your throat when you're feeling physically threatened?
Harry Enten at 538:
"Talking about shocking counties, look to New Hampshire. Trump is up by 3 percentage points in Grafton County. That's amazing considering Obama won it by a little less than 25 percentage points in 2012."
Wot, 25 points more sexism than racism, y'all will figure out something.
I can't believe what I thought was the best results page, at TPM, has been down most of the night. Idiots.
I was gonna let y'all have your celebration. Maybe I will have to honor your grief instead.
@pronounced_ing on Twitter is doing stress-relieving animal posts. Also @dog_rates
How am I going to get out of bed tomorrow and go to work if this goes wrong?
211: Thanks, will follow @pronounced_ing. (Dog Rates is a little too, I dunno, formulaic for me.) I've been relying on @darth.
At least our lovely Commonwealth is still holding.
Its the bratwurst belt that worries me.
I apparently haven't seen any pictures of Nate Silver in a while. Since before he was going bald. Dude looks like he's had a hard year.
Is it true that Joe Manchin won't commit to remaining a Democrat if the Senate splits 50/50?! Please tell me that's not true.
Yeah, Nate Silver, wow. That's the only smile I've cracked in the last hour.
My less-political sisters are stress-texting me.
My sisters are stress-texting me from Toronto, demanding explanations. I don't know what to tell them.
My god, Ohio, too? This is horrifying.
Ohio was expected. It's Michigan and WI that are the problem.
Yes, but the margin in OH is terrifying.
This is terrible.
Goddamit fucking bullshit sonovabitch shit fuck hell.
Looks like CO will hold, Dems hold the senate seat. So it's all the midwest.
If they lose MI the only hope is totally unexpected Latino turnout flipping AZ. I'm not optimistic.
PA is "too close to call" according to fivethirtyeight?
Clinton has a 68% chance in New Hampshire right now.
Goodnight. On the bright side, I'll probably still have health insurance and everybody who loses it will know that not a single branch of government was controlled by Democrats when they lost it.
538, an update as I was typing.
The presidential races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are too close to call. Our model now gives Clinton a 51 percent chance of winning; Trump now has a 48 percent chance.
Trump wins Ohio. Our model now gives him a 55 percent chance of winning the election.
All year long I was pretty confidant y'all would motherfucking get this shit done right. Irresponsible motherfuckers, does Hillary make you feel really fucking good? Who you gonna blame, Tigre?
God damn you all fucking to hell.
232- You give them too much credit, it's called Obamacare so when they're cut off it will be his fault.
228: being total shitheads is the folkways of our people.
PA is definitely too close. I've been tracking the state returns and it's flpiping back and forth with 72% reporting.
Text from my sister: Friend is crying in fear for her (religious-minority) family.
I haven't felt this much impotent grief since 2004. Even if HRC wins (and I think she will), you can't just un-do all of these months of hatefulness, and the celebration of it by the mainstream media through free airtime.
236 to Byzantine eunuchs, I hope.
I'm drunk but not drunk enough. Drunk enough involves alcohol poisoning.
The dumbfuck data analyst on MSNBC just showed a hypothetical map of Trump winning 273-269. Someone tell Nate he's going to have to change the name of his website to 542.
Meh. Not what I was hoping for, but certainly we are living in interesting times.
240
Thanks for making me laugh in this dark time
I haven't felt this much impotent grief since 2004.
Me neither. I don't know what to do.
Yeah, OH was such an early call with such a huge margin. MI news was full of low turnout in Detroit and Flint, which is bad news for Clinton. 30% reporting in MI, but there was really high turnout in Grand Rapids, a Republican stronghold.
I'm trying to tear myself away from the news. What the hell, white people?! How could you vote for that mess?
How am I going to face my kids in the morning.
My kids are up with us. I am being calm and reassuring about our impending Trump presidency. My wife is not doing so well.
We're all throwing up in terror. Welcome.
I'm supposed to get on a plane tomorrow morning. Really not looking forward to a flight crew that is exhausted and angry. Maybe they all went to bed before the election returns started coming in.
It looks like he's done it. I'm going to cuddle with my dog
252: I dunno about most everyone else, but I'm following your early lead and getting good and well btocked.
How the he'll can this be happening?
In the long run, the joke will probably still be on the white people for failing to reproduce at a high enough rate.
259: You not used to the Democrats getting shocked, shocked! that this wasn't an intellectual exercise?
Is there any chance that the election was actually hacked?
Have a meeting tomorrow with a colleague who determinedly finagled me into a conversation two weeks ago so he could explain how cool he was with his third party voting purity. Strangely there doesn't seem to be a projectile vomiting emoji. I think I am going to be unavailable for this meeting.
I guess you don't need a ground game to turn out angry, scared people who are used to voting and being considered the center of things.
So what are the odds America winds up as warring ethnic states? Asking for a friend.
I can't quite wrap my head around the depth of sexism necessary to make this happen.
I knew how much some people hated Hillary. I don't think I underestimated that.
I knew how much some people will grasp at any straw to not vote for a woman. I don't think I underestimated that.
I did severely underestimate people's willingness to hurt themselves badly just for the sheer spitefulness of knowing others will hurt worse.
I did severely underestimate people's willingness to hurt themselves badly just for the sheer spitefulness of knowing others will hurt worse.
Do you think that's how they see it?
262 I remember Reagan and I've done my very little bit.
What's her path to 270 at this point?
flight crew that is exhausted and angry
If it does go that way, the cabin crew will probably be angry. The pilots will probably will be happy.
272: Honestly? Some, no, for sure. But some -- absolutely.
Look, people who don't like me usually see me as a pushy, overeducated white liberal who reminds them of a schoolteacher or social worker. So I'm not free to eavesdrop on *every* type of political spaces or social context.
But precisely because I *am* white, they will sometimes say things to me assuming that I agree with their hatefulness. And when I probe -- gently, respectfully -- they unleash. The hatred and contempt they feel for my friends is real.
I think if Trump wins a lot of people who voted for him will see their lives get worse and very few will make the connection to him and the Republican party.
How fucked are we? I have made a list of problems we are now facing as a result of this election, in no particular order:
- There will be instability in the financial markets, potentially leading to a global recession.
- American commitments to allies can no longer be considered sacrosanct. The NATO alliance is now in jeopardy at the same time the EU is weak, Brexit on its way, and Russia and China are expanding. And apparently we are now going to be besties with Russia. There is a weird realignment going on, and no one has any idea how its going to wind up.
- The United States government is now an obstacle to the fight against climate change, and a threat to the long term ecology of the planet.
- Minorities in America are in for a very bad time.
- Scalia's empty seat on the court is now going to a conservative.
What else?
What's her path to 270 at this point?
It might take more than one election.
Hill has to run the table at this point.
Arapio loses in AZ. Maybe there is a Mexican Miracle yet.
1980. 1980. Worse worse, we had a better court. This is hell. Why do I have to go through this shit.
Winning is the only thing. Winning is the only thing. Winning is the only thing.
Warren would have won easily. Not entirely sexism.
Clinton over Sanders supporters should just STFU. What have you done?
Not yet but they will.
They won't see it, though. They'll just keep blaming it on whatever group of "others" is close at hand.
268: I hear you. It is to utterly despair.
Also: Piss off anyone who contributed to the utterly irrational, and yes, fundamentally misogynistic, Hillary-hate.
I didn't think the powers that be would let this happen. Is it possible that there's no such thing?
Look, people who don't like me usually see me as a pushy, overeducated white liberal who reminds them of a schoolteacher or social worker.
So you at least flash a blade to convince them otherwise? I can recommend one if you don't.
279: Anyone who protests anything gets thrown in jail. Institutions are forcibly disassembled. The media ceases to exist in any coherent sense.
- American commitments to allies can no longer be considered sacrosanct. The NATO alliance is now in jeopardy at the same time the EU is weak, Brexit on its way, and Russia and China are expanding. And apparently we are now going to be besties with Russia. There is a weird realignment going on, and no one has any idea how its going to wind up.
I don't mean to marginalize how bad many Americans--because they're of color, or women, or poor--are going to be fucked over by a Trump presidency. It will genuinely be awful and I'm heartbroken over that. But this one is really, really bad for the world.
What about the tax returns? The sexual assault allegations? The trump university case?
279: the seat of older than the earth's crust Ruth Bader Ginsburg will very likely also go to a conservative.
How the fuck is this even close? Gaaah!!!
If I recall, Hillary got unexpectedly beat in Michigan in the primary. I would have thought she would have spent more time on fixing whatever that issue was.
I wonder if I should stay overseas after all?
The adrenaline hangover is awful. Almost as awful as these results.
293: I'd also been seriously considering finally moving back to the US next year. Now, probably not.
I've retreated to snarky texts with fellow Canadians-in-US and dance music loud enough so I can't think. Husband is mad I can't watch results but prob just mad in general. I just hit up my sister for her spare room and told husband I'd like to move after Christmas. Not that Canada will be okay.
Anyway.
I am close to being physically sick
The NYT Upshot dude said Fox News called Wisconsin for Trump.
Nate Silver's latest update:
Trump And 2018
With no inside information, I've suspected that many mainstream Republicans wanted Trump to lose, but to do so narrowly, helping the party preserve its majorities in the House and Senate. The reason: One of the regularities of American politics is that the party holding the presidency loses ground in midterm elections. Now 2018 is especially important: In various states, it sets up control over redistricting after 2020. The GOP would sorely like to maintain control over redistricting in states ranging from Pennsylvania to Michigan and block the Democrats from doing the same in Maryland and Illinois. Given the length of our current economic expansion, it's also reasonable to expect that the economy might hit a rough patch before 2018. And neither Trump nor Clinton was exactly popular overall. If history is any guide, Trump is more of a threat to the GOP's congressional majorities as president than as a presidential candidate.
I would have thought she would have spent more time on fixing whatever that issue was.
The Dems haven't been real big into introspection into their complicity in the destruction of the middle of this country.
293 I hear you.
This is just unbelievable.
There is also the possibility that the jobs I was interviewing for last week are no longer on the table. Would you hire anyone right now?
I guess we can consider those contradictions heightened.
247: MI news was full of low turnout in Detroit and Flint,
What's the explanation for the low turnout?
Oh God, I was so certain she'd outperform her polls. I am heartbroken.
I can't believe how exhausted I feel. Like trudging under bricks. Everything is so awful.
I might have to leave the US. This is unbelievable. I'm watching with a friend from Michigan,she started crying.
I'm not ready to feel heartbroken: I'm still too goddamn angry.
I'm going to bed. Not expecting to sleep.
Don't worry everyone, very reliable people assured me Clinton was electable.
There's no way I'm sleeping until this is settled. I totally get 297.
I wonder if I'll get any brownie points if I come in early tomorrow? Shit is going to be crazy.
That Supreme Court seat is weighing on me now.
On the bright side, a candidate who large numbers of Americans believe is a criminal who only narrowly escaped indictment via more criminality has nearly 50% of the vote.
2004 made me sick to my stomach. Now I feel sick and fearful.
Donald Trump understood America better than both political parties and better than every fucking pundit.
I'm glad I don't have kids.. Things won't probably totally fall apart till after my dog dies.
2004 made me sick, but I actually thought it was going to be that close and probably a Bush win. This year the only reason I thought it might be like it's turned out was because of the Brexit vote.
It's disgusting. It's completely unfair, because these people are only secondarily or tertiarily or more at fault, but I find my rage boiling largely at the purported "left" that echoed the stupid right critiques about Hillary. But if you're the SPD the KPD really did fuck you and since they are sort of vaguely theoretically on your side it hurts worse. I've already unfriended some folks, including people from here, permanently and I am done forever with the internet left. Assuming the (now) most likely happens, we have a sober resistence to conduct, unless we need to flee. In any event even if Hillary pulls it out I am done with this bullshit.
Yeah, but the Greens didn't make any difference at all.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
I'm mad too Tigre, but I'm 99% sure that wasn't the problem.
I think it strains credulity to believe that very many of tonight's Trump voters were swayed by Lefty McLefterson, the misogynist Bernie Bro, posting anti-Hillary stuff on Facebook.
319: There are a couple of Sanders supporters in my fb feed who are now gloating in a concern-troll sort of way: Why, this is just awful, but we told you so! if only it had been Bernie, etc, etc. Obviously I need to unfriend.
I thought maybe you were being too hard on a certain sort of middle-aged lefty dude. You were not; I was wrong.
I can't sleep, I'm so worried about the future.
I keep having the bizarre thought that Lizardbreath is going to show up and solve this.
I've been so afraid the last three weeks, but now it's happened it doesn't seem real at all.
319: Back at you asshole. I knew you wouldn't take any responsibility and blame the left for this loss. I hold you personally, and your neoliberal ilk more generally, for the millions of deaths coming up and the decades of fascist dominance (they will rig the system, look at Hungary) unless WW III.
Sanders didn't lose to the Orange Clown. Warren didn't condemn the world to hell. Clinton was your champion. I never voted for her.
Yeah, this is a catastrophe and a disaster but most of all it is a FAILURE.
I have always said the maps are terrifying, with blue dots in a red sea.. Socialists ( do not give a flying fuck for Dems or liberals anymore) absolutely will need some proportion of the rural vote:
538:"College-educated white women voted for Clinton 51 percent to 45 percent, but non-college-educated white women voted for Trump 62 percent to 34 percent. That difference is nothing but stark and something we saw inklings of in October, when I wrote about how many Republican women were willing to overlook Trump's history of sexual harassment allegations and derogatory comments about women. Partisanship is a hell of a drug."
non-college whites are the new peasants. Back to reading Mao, the urban intelligentsia thought Mao was crazy in the late 20s.
And a serious resistance will need starting. I might help with that. Clinton supporters not welcome. And obviously not talked about here.
Say goodbye to Weimarica. Welcome to revolutionary conditions. Law and liberals no longer apply. It is gonna be that bad, no worse.
She's underperformed (as a percentage) Obama's 2012 results with Latinos and African-Americans.
I think 322 is right, in an earnest sense, and honestly in Trump-world all that matters is earnest. But I'm still fucking mad.
I think 322 is right, in an earnest sense, and honestly in Trump-world all that matters is earnest. But I'm still fucking mad.
Oh great, bob's going to just let his dogs poop everywhere without picking it up.
What's really maddening about all of this: Trump is a complete ignoramus who's not fit to mind mice at a crossroads, but the media will now be touting his brilliant electoral strategy. I mean, you know it's true: they'll be falling all over him in exchange for "access."
Also: a Trump victory vindicates birtherism.
Can Lizardbreath please show up and make this right?
Anyhow, I'm done here. We have more serious shit to do, all of us.
I am entirely sympathetic to 319. I don't think 320 or 322 say anything that contradicts it.
333: I voted for Clinton, but your smug attitude toward Bernie supporters made it (slightly) harder for me to do so. Take some responsibility for your own mistakes instead of taking it out on us.
Fuck off, Bob. My Berniebot friend is pulling the same bullshit on Facebook and I may actually punch him in the face next time I see him. Even though I know it wasn't his fault, he's no less wrong.
What should we do?
Rededicate yourself to jiu jitsu?
Bob's not all wrong, but it's not a time for recriminations.
341 is good advice. My current hobby of pool was not a good fit for my mood tonight.
340: I'm sick and tired of hearing about your shitty FB friends. I voted for Bernie in the primary and Clinton in the general. If you think this election result is a good opportunity to tar and feather Bernie supporters, you're part of the problem.
343: Hell yeah it is. I wasn't going for a long time and sticking to just kickboxing because I kept aggravating my elbow but my joints have been feeling good and my older daughter is insistent that we're going to get our blue belts before summer. Good a goal as any.
345: You might get a threesome out of that ad but it's a bit terse.
Can neb break the blog again, pretty please?
344 - welp, fuck you too. Your blindness in part caused this shit and I have no respect for you whatsoever. If it's time to take up arms (I hope it's not) I hope you're on the right side. Until then, later on.
I said nothing about you. I admire and respect Bernie supporters. I loathe Bernie supporters who could not go one single day throughout the entire post-primary campaign without posting bullshit negative articles about Clinton. Which camp do you belong to?
If it's time to take up arms (I hope it's not)
Because you all never got around to buying one? I keep telling you people to have a gun or two around.
350 is how I understood stuff. I voted for Sanders, then I voted for Clinton, and I'm happy with both those votes. I saw some stuff from people who are a certain kind of farther left than me that I found infuriating. In a first-pass-the-post system, if you chose not to vote for one of the top two candidates you're saying you see them as equally bad and forfeit your decision to the rest of us.
But that's all obvious. In some states, it's going to hurt. It's really going to hurt here, where the margin between Trump and Clinton is about what Stein got, yet alone Johnson.
But it's not the main problem, and relative to that problem it's comparatively easy to solve: we need to push for IRV, or some other ordered preference voting system, from within the Democratic Party.
I suspect Sanders would be losing tonight too.
A lot of people I follow on twitter (not FB) are activists who I think are doing a lot of good things at community, local levels. But my god do they love to blame everything on white liberals.
350: I voted for Clinton and told the people around me to do the same. I suspect terms like "Berniebot" and "Bernie bro" originated as part of a Clinton campaign strategy during the primary, not as a good-faith effort to point out assholes (who, btw, totally did/do exist).
I just woke up. Jesus Christ, what did you people do while I was sleeping?
Go back to sleep, Walt. I should have done the same.
I'm certain of it. Seems to me that a whole lot of people with a somewhat imprecise idea of exactly what the job is, and what the guy can do, went for him, despite the fact that he's not going to be able to give them what they want.
Except, he'll stop paying for health care for people of color. That, he can do.
https://twitter.com/billscher/status/796231289888243712
It'll be interesting to see how these numbers hold up.
353: I've been wondering about that, or if the polls were wrong because Clinton is unusually hated, with a lot of reluctant enthusiasm among her supporters, while Trump is unusually well-known for someone with no political experience and apparently very charismatic to his supporters. I joked about it above, but Clinton is the first candidate I can think of who many people genuinely believe is a criminal (because of the email, not the even crazier Vince Foster stuff which I don't think ever had the same reach). That seems like enough plausible deniability to cover for people who want to vote Trump for "fuck the system" and white supremacy reasons, but don't want to admit that's why they're doing it.
I don't think Sanders had anything going on that would make him as vulnerable to that level of attack. We can say that the Republicans will smear whoever their opponents are, and they will, but Obama didn't get the same level of shit and even the Swift Boat stuff didn't reach this kind of saturation. Although, Trump would have had rallies chanting "traitor" about Kerry.
Can't wait till we start torturing people again.
BTW let me tell you about the rest of my week so far-
My grandmother died
The first company I worked for, where I've been holding exercised options for years, went out of business
Still only Wednesday, plenty more time.
My condolences, SP. That sucks on all counts.
350: as for making negative comments about HC, I think when we were discussing HC's email server here, I expressed something to the effect that if I did what HC did, I could very well have been fired with cause and possibly prosecuted if someone had it out for me. It struck me as strange that I wouldn't have been a candidate for middle-manager paper pusher after doing something like that while HC was interviewing for a promotion to the top job.
Thank you for relitigating that for us one more time. Much appreciated.
344: Half of us were Bernie supporters, you narcissistic motherfucker. You don't get claim the title of martyr here. Tigre's complaining about the people who went for Stein.
Take some responsibility for your own mistakes instead of taking it out on us.
Oh please. You're going to blame halford for this descent into the abyss?
I am so done with the precious snowflake, leftier-than-thou contingent who insisted on undermining Clinton at every turn, even when they reluctantly acknowledged (which many of them did not, btw) that they might be persuaded to vote for "the lesser of two evils," if only everyone were nice enough to them, and validated their "my personal is the political" preferences. Because, you know, it's not as though the fate of the republic were ever at stake, it's just about me and my purer preferences! Also: Clinton and Kaine are bog standard centre-to-left Democrats, while Trump and Pence are truly hauling water for the forces of pure evil.
This was never a game; and it looks like we've lost it.
I'm not willing to go down the Trump would beat any dem candidate yet.
Guys trump didn't win because of far left defectors, that's a dumb dragon to chase.
There will be plenty of time for circular firing squads in the future; don't lets rub salt in each other's wounds while they are still fresh.
AP calls Penn and race for Trump
367: you asked the question in 350, so I tried to be honest in my answer: the one semi-negative post I made about HC was earlier on this blog. How was your sarcasm constructive?
Without Johnson this would be a blowout.
||
NMM to the United States of America.
|>
In practical terms a lot of us will undoubtedly be faced with an increased pace of tough "moral" decisions in our personal and professional lives. Those of us who can afford to will certainly fail most of them. The large organizations and institutions will certainly adapt quickly and force more such choices upon us*. Prepare.
*A lot of media/political folks calculating where they fall on the enemies list right now and how to minimize damage. The "shocking" re positioning of the media already in evidence.
She willl most likely win the popular vote by more than Gore,
I see people saying "subscribe to a newspaper, it's more important now than ever" but I'm guessing Farenthold and others won't have the same jobs in four years.
You know who else won the popular vote by more than Gore?
Most analysis of this election, like most analysis of everything, will be of the form "This event proves me right about everything". (Who wrote the original of that, after 9/11? Was it dsquared?)
Am I reading the exit polls on NYT right? 90% of whites with no college education voted for Trump?
343: I think pool sounds incredibly soothing on a night like tonight.
Advice for children you'd told their classmates were being racist because racism is in the air when oops actually racism is going to the be the official thing for the next four years at least? My bad, I guess. (I did hedge everything I possibly could for them, but never how much and how clearly they're being followed by the real results.)
If massive sexism across the political spectrum isn't part of your portfolio of causes you are wrong.
That LA Times tracking poll is looking pretty good about now.
Why am I even up and posting, need to be working on the little moral crisis of how do I work professionally with many people who are unintentionally undermining the Enlightenment through their ignorance and bigotry?
The Elightenment was racist*, though. Vote Stein!
*I mean, I know it was. But maybe the analysis doesn't end there.
384: Not so much -- it was +5 or something to Trump overall. Her coalition turned out to be about the maximally bad for a ~1.0% popular vote win.
Has anyone heard if Kevin Drum is ok? His last post is Hillary way up in FL based on votecastr.
I need to give a talk in a few hours, in the Netherlands. I was going to make a little joke about the election, but I'm pretty sure I'll just burst into tears if I say one word about it.
"You think your countries are low, wait until you hear about mine!"
God bless you for not being in the USA. I just had a probably hysterical but hopefully not long convesrsation with my mostly Jewish and partially Mexican-immigrant and extraordinarily successful family about whether we could move to Switzerland because I'm a Protestant with a degree from the University of Geneva. I wishI was kidding but my mother who (as some of you know) is an extraordinarily successful person in the USA just called me up to ask about options re Swiss citizenship, in practical terms. Of course I can provide nothng. Hopefully this is hysteria but if you enabled or disregarded this situation go fuck yourself, forever.
A friend of mine just pointed out that today is 18th Brumaire.
Look at the numbers for evangelicals (81T/16C)/non-evangelicals (59C/35T). Combine those with the exit poll question about the importance of the Supreme Court pick (those who said it was "the most important factor" were the only ones to favor Trump) and the one about which candidate quality mattered most ("can bring change" favored Trump 83/14). Finally, more people had negative views of a Trump presidency, but more of those people (12%) voted for him anyway. This looks to me like the religious right holding their nose and engaging in good old fashioned "family values" voting.
The Elightenment was racist*, though. Vote Stein!
O, fuck off! anyone, who claims the Enlightenment was racist, or colonialist, or whatever. The Enlightenment is why your children are not carried off by that host of childhood diseases that used to claim the lives of the innocents before they reached the age of five; and it is also the reason why you have any notion of universal human rights in the first place.
(I'm still too angry to feel heartbroken, obviously. I feel a surge of anger in the blood, and for the moment, I'm just going to go with that).
293, 295: As surely as if it disappeared off the map, I can never move back to America.
I woke up to a condolence e-mail from my boss and I've been intermittently fighting back tears for the last hour.
I hate everything.
Swiss citizenship is hard to get, unless you're rich. Then it's easy to get.
Back to the future 2 was a terrible prophecy
Swiss politics aren't exactly openness to the world, are they? Or have things changed on the immigration front?
Clinton just called Trump and conceded.
I wish she hadn't.
Well, we burned the witch, anyway.
Not yet Comey hasn't. I fear for her safety.
It's not clear what's going to happen. They passed an initiative to cap immigration, but it's completely incompatible with their EU treaties. The Swiss government is trying to come up with some way out, but they haven't found one. It may end with Switzerland being kicked out of the EFTA.
But before that Switzerland wasn't too bad. Zurich canton is like 25% foreigners.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Scalia's death was indirectly the cause of Trump's win? Kill me now.
My Swiss ties are way too distant for citizenship. My grandmother came over in 1922, didn't realize she was still a Swiss citizen until she applied for a US passport to go back and visit in the 1970s.
There may be a path to Taiwan citizenship, and I liked it when I visited on a family reunion, but I want to stay here. I don't really have a good idea what to do to get involved politically. I don't even save enough to be able to feel like I can donate meaningful amounts, so that low-level route isn't open.
Trying to explain to my foreign friends wtf is going on. Having a hard time.
Doesn't every country have a Trump equivalent? Berlusconi, Le Pen, Wilders, Duterte.
A friend of mine just pointed out that today is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
407: I really do recommend the point made in 383, the elephant in the room. I think there's something particular to the U.S. and particular to the presidency.
I can't sleep.
Ah, Jaysus Christ, my American friends:
For the past decade or so, I've been trying to focus on what is great and good about America. And I still truly believe there is something great and even sublime about America, but also: America is kind of scary.
And believe you me, as a Canadian living in the US of A, I'm well aware of that annoying Canadian tendency to get all smugly self-righteous about universal health care and guaranteed maternity leave, and so on and so forth. The revenge of the Loyalists against the patriots, I guess: we supported the King of England when you said we were a bunch of craven cowards, and we now have an almost comically more progressive social order: ha! ha! joke's on you, with your much-touted "revolution" and etc. etc.
But tonight, I'm not feeling the schadenfreude, because I love America, and I love a bunch of Americans, and I'm just feeling sick to my stomach.
Two from the dark night of Slate's Soul (Jamille Bouie: "I got this election wrong. We all got this election wrong. I am sorry."
There are other good posts at Slate, recommending moving to swing states. C'mon down too Texas, y'all! Only 8 points between C & T here. Doable.
Worst night of my life? I think so.
391: Yeah, need to sort out how to balance those kind of considerations. My wife who began the election season reading The Plot Against America and is finishing while being halfway through The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has staked out her position pretty clearly. (And she reminded me today that afew years ago before he died her Holocaust -survivor father kept telling her that the US would some day be run by a right-wing dictatorship.)
I think a facade of calmness over the abject terror is the right approach for now.
IN the end the only thing that is important is to keep an accurate accounting of the dead.
At least we're one step closer to the extermination of all life on Earth.
410: and particular to the presidency.
I do think that is a factor. Acceptable and viewed positively as SoS, but don't ask for that fucking promotion.
It is hard for me to contain my (already existing) rage at the media. This is the kind of thing they've been toying with for 20+ years. Bush v. Gore as a test run ...
The tow period when she was polling high enough to probably get over the threshold in many of the swing states was after the convention and during the "debate period." Both features significant direct exposure to broad swaths of the population.
Trump's campaign manager deserves some credit. She figured the secret was to keep Trump out of the news, and let the media fill up the extra time with Clinton non-scandals.
during the "debate period."
She completely destroyed him in the debates. Didn't matter, though; didn't matter one whit at all. She may be a witch; she may be a Satanist; does she weigh the same as a duck?
America is not ready for a woman at the helm. Left and right, they both seem equally resistant. Sad!
I just checked a few calender converters. 8 November 2016 was indeed 18th Brumaire 225. Tragedy, farce, ...
WE'RE THE DEFINING ISSUE OF OUR TIME
I look forward to the Snapchat scandal of 2032.
If it's any consolation (I know it isn't), this is very similar to what happened here last year with Netanyahu. After that shitshow, and then Brexit, I had a sinking feeling it would happen again with Trump. I wish I could blame it all on Putin somehow, but it looks like humanity is just going through a dark time. Maybe the takeaway lesson is that lefties everywhere should forever always put education first? Better than no takeaway lesson and meaningless terror.
351 is literal truth. Next step for fascism is violent takeover.
I still can't sleep. I admit I'm not really trying. I suppose everyone with leftist sympathies will have to band together, agree to nominate a few sentries to take one for the team and read the news/deal with social media, and then put their heads down and devote a few hours each week to firefighting. There is NFW I can be a media sentry, but I can probably fight fires (with education?).
It is really the fucking hydra this time, though. I have read my kid The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe multiple times in the last few weeks, and all I can picture in Washington now is the White Witch's army of evil beasties. I will refrain from mentioning this to the poor kid, who went to sleep worried about Trump winning.
re: 351, I really do want to learn how to use and maintain a gun, but I don't want to actually own one, or at least not own one that's left at home. Maybe I need a cloud-based gun education MOOC.
Hope you're feeling good about not casting your symbolic vote, bob. And I hope you're glad, Halford, that Obama was gentleman enough not to make that recess appointment when he had the chance.
425: Squemishness isn't something you can afford any more. Totally for real, if you fuckers want to redeem yourselves at all you need to arm and organize while you can.
Now I'm going to go teach a bunch of kids who can no longer rely on the American security umbrella. Fuck.
411, 426:
I am grateful for this. I want to sign on to the America-love too, and I know I'm emotional at the moment and will see things differently after cooling down, but honestly, I am having a hard time looking at America and seeing anything but a society that is rotten to the core, founded on a dehumanising institution that even still enables Americans to routinely dehumanise each other. I can't think of another nation where so many different groups of fellow countrymen hate each other's tribes so much for so little reason. Between the wild west fantasies of gun culture, the god-bothering patriarchal fantasies of control over women, the antebellum nostalgic fantasy of a permanent lowest-class in the form of slaves, to protect white christians from the threat of ever falling to the bottom of the status hierarchy, to an obsession with moral hazard so bizarrely oversized that people would rather risk having no healthcare when they need it than let some undeserving leech have a trip to the doctor, America seems to be backward-looking in every way and absolutely determined to squander its blessings. It's not a civilised society, just rich enough to dress like one. Rich enough to indulge in epistemic closure on a grand scale, rich enough to keep pretending climate change is a hoax while the developing world burns and drowns, rich enough to ignore the well-studied history of how fascism is given reign. What is there to love about a society that despite so much self-regard ultimately loves itself so little?
Forgive me. Gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes. I just need to get it out of my system.
Awl is very right I think. Education first and then organisation. Permanent mobilisation doesn't mean never having a drink with your friends or watching a movie, but it does mean not seeing the political process as something that happens every couple of years, and acting on that understanding. I know I don't need to tell anybody here that, but you need to tell it to a lot of other people. That's education too.
I mentioned the problem of "shy Tories" a while ago, and my god, did they come out of the woodwork. The result itself distresses me beyond words, but it doesn't shock me.
In my spare time, I give adult literacy lessons to people who need to learn English. I've been doing this for years (I started out in B'more, when I was a grad student at Hopkins), but the massive underfunding means that I'm now attempting to teach five students at one go: that's not "tutoring," that's basically running a class. I try to do real prep, and stuff, because my students take it so seriously, they come "to class" all eager to learn, and they want me to give them homework. Some of them are no doubt undocumented, but that's not my business, and I don't want to know, I don't even ask.
I feel so sad, and utterly defeated. I decry anyone who does not recognize the value, and the fundamental humanity, of my adult literacy students.
Tim went through a lot to get his greencard before we got married. He should be eligible for citizenship in a year and a half,
Maybe we should think about moving to Canada then. Any areas to recommend?
I'm already scanning the real estate ads for Toronto.
I can think of lots of countries where people hate each other that much. None of them are first world.
He won the popular vote by a hair. We don't even have that solace. 1% to Stein. Would Johnson supporters have voted for Clinton if he hadn't been in the race? That seems like it was a big enough number to move it.
Of all the times to be under contract on your first house.
I just woke up, hungover and hyperventilating. I'm hoping this is one elaborate nightmare I will wake up from.
I wish I could blame it all on Putin somehow,
I did wonder briefly whether the Russians had hacked some voting machines.
437: Johnson voter here: no. And no from the handful of friends who admitted to voting for GJ. To link it to 432, she was an integral part of the deporting-est administration ever and she's all for bombing the hell out of the Third World. Basically, they're all part of the same hypocrisy. Much more respect for a true believer Stein type candidate (despite fundamental differences) than any of the major party candidates this cycle.
437: every count I see has Clinton winning the popular vote (slightly).
I really want to see the post mortem on the polling. This is some Dewey defeats Truman shit.
I also really want to burn things down, but I'm going to hold off until he does something egregious, most likely around January 21st.
The Vagenda of Manocide is going to have to be put on hold for a little while.
She will
end up winning popular by at least 1.5M
443: Last night The NY Times was reporting something different.
At least we know that a majority of voters don't support him,
Basically, they're all part of the same hypocrisy.
442: Can you explain this idea using different words? Maybe rephrase it, or maybe just unpack it and go into more detail? Because I don't get it.
I'll be more specific. You seem to be holding two ideas that I don't understand: the idea that there are no significant differences between the two parties, and the idea that hypocrisy or some similar kind of moral purity is the problem, rather than the political policies they espouse and enact. I'll be more forthright and say that I think I disagree with them, but I honestly just don't even understand those beliefs. I can't imagine a worldview in which they make sense. Have I misread you, or can you make those beliefs make sense?
I'm told liberals need to listen more. This is me asking for your opinion.
I think unless somebody is a non-college-educated white from the Rust Belt, or in a pinch a social scientist who studies non-college-educated whites from the Rust Belt, they have no idea why Trump won the election. The impulse to conclude that grand events prove you right about everything are irresistable.
I will speculate a little bit, though. My family is non-college-educated whites from the Rust Belt, though the non-college-educated ones are all dead now, and Trump really spoke "our" language, in a way that a Westerner, or a patrician, or a Southerner, or a Mormon didn't. Trump's weird rants always sounded like what your drunk uncle would rant at Christmas dinner.
I thought this Stephanie Coontz interview was really good, re: capturing the phenomenology of the resentment in women for whom Trump's misogyny doesn't matter:
http://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/25/13384528/donald-trump-women-stephanie-coontz
The few women that I talked with, they certainly were not the pious people who expected to be or had been virgins until marriage. But they still held very strongly to the idea that they needed marriage, and that men should take responsibility and step up to the plate.
And so they saw a lot of these high-achieving women as giving men permission to be total individualists and not to step up if they need to get married, and also that these women are taking jobs that should go to men with families to support. I don't think the profane attacks that some women make and proudly allow their sons to make on Hillary Clinton are driven by exactly the same contempt for women that that you see in some men's remarks, but by this hatred of elite women who seem to be taking jobs from their men and saying to men: Women don't need your help, women can do it on their own.
I think unless somebody is a non-college-educated white from the Rust Belt
Hello? Or at least 30 of my 65 years. And fuck did I spend those years with racists and sexists and homophobes. Been 15 years now with zero contact with my extended family.
But I can't say why Trump won. The most interesting thing this morning is his anti-campaign, the abandonment of the accumulated technology and embrace of emergent social media. This is an anti-authoritarianism or something.
Ok, come to think about it, fascism at the base level allows an incomprehensible amount of private initiative.
I'm babbling. I suspect that's healthy today.
286, 351: A friend reposted an unpleasant anecdote: A woman was walking home last night, not far from the university, some young men accosted her, with comments along the lines of " now that Trump won, we can grab you whenever we want" -- she had to pull a knife to get them to back off. I am certainly thinking about getting more protection myself.
448: I think unless somebody is a non-college-educated white from the Rust Belt, or in a pinch a social scientist who studies non-college-educated whites from the Rust Belt, they have no idea why Trump won the election.
I find this confused: Trump didn't win the popular vote. He won the electoral college vote. Unless you're saying that the two classes of people you mention best understand how the electoral college trumps takes precedence over the popular vote, I disagree with you.
I'm finding far too many journalistic autopsies of events focusing on this "elites just don't understand!" mantra. No. This came down election-level, institutional functions. Ian Millhiser has a good piece on this.
451: To the extent that this election is a rejection of elites, it seems like a rejection of elite morals -- open racism and sexism had become somewhat vulgar and declasse. I think this is why Trump underperformed Romney in college-educated whites.
"Unless" should be "If", I suppose.
452: how many of the things on that list can plausibly change? Like yes, the electoral college advantages small states which are mostly rural and for people who live in cities this sucks, but if someone puts changing the electoral college on a critical path to winning they're just planning to lose...
Trump's win is an unpleasant outcome; it's also an unpleasant surprise. I certainly had the occasional thought that anyone who supported Trump was a racist chucklefuck who didn't deserve to live. In retrospect, expressing this thought to others was the best way to ensure that I'd underestimate Trump's support.
This is pretty shitty all around.
The most interesting thing this morning is his anti-campaign, the abandonment of the accumulated technology and embrace of emergent social media.
Yeah, the mechanics of his win are curious to me. How did he actually pull that off? For years we've been hearing about the importance of organization and ground game, but apparently the advantage of wonks with finely tuned databases can be overcome through public presence and personal branding.
Though, I am curious about just how involved the RNC was here. Did they actually manage to put together an amazing GOTV operation that wasn't on the Democrats' radar? Or are they just happy to take credit for having done so?
428: It's not squeamishness. I don't think having a gun in my apartment makes anyone safer.
456: There's a long Bloomberg piece here that gives a number of details although it's not comprehensive. Voter suppression was a major explicit initiative, and they didn't mind saying so in the national press.
Just overheard a Canadian co-worker react with shock to learn that old white guys who restore old tech love Trump. Hillary is the greatest criminal to run for office and beating her is like slaying the wildebeest. This is the greatest thing to ever happen. What about the racism? It's all made up.
Yeah, voter suppression. Holy shit that's evil.
456:Yeah, the mechanics of his win are curious to me. How did he actually pull that off?
Well, y'all know I am reading some in "cybertheory" i.e., how is this Webs stuff actually changing everything. Googling Jodi Dean and MacKenzie Wark can provide syllabi. Falkvinge Swarmwise DeLanda.
Let me see: no campaign organization, no GOTV, no press office, confused or nonexistent policy positions, saying horrible stuff as if nobody cared...
...Trump didn't have any mechanics, he didn't take actions that would lead to his victory, he just got up and winged it, very loudly...
...Trump didn't win. His constituents chose him in the primaries and general. Not quite an empty vessel, but not in charge or control of his own campaign either. It's kinda Zen.
Just kidding. Emergence. There is media theory out there that models this, who makes Facebook? Twitter? This comment thread?
We are in, no we are an economy of "Circulation of commodified affect."
Commodified in terms of both monetary and social exchange. Among others. We are all in search of an audience for our identity performances.
461: The link in 458 is worth reading, for real.
Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), it's excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million. "I wouldn't have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn't known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine," says Bannon. "Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power."
349: "blindness"? Eat shit, you ableist asshole. Ableism is never acceptable: not from Trump and not from you.
368: sure, Halford never railed against Bernie and his supporters in general, just the ones who voted for Stein. Pull the other one. Your lying condescension is part of the problem.
369: did I say Halford put Trump into office? No. Does your putting words into someone else's mouth make you a lazy piece of shit? Maybe.
I was talking this mirning with a Latino man who expressed his concern for his undocumented family members. How does one even respond in the moment, other than expressing sympathy and condemning the racism and shit coming from Trump and his Trumpistas?
351: I've never wanted a gun for many reasons, one of which is the sense that I live in a civilized society and therefore don't need one. Maybe I'm wrong about that. After all, the police are just another gang, right?
I wonder if we've entered an era where having a personally inspiring candidate overshadows any ground operation, as long as you have more than nothing. I'm guessing Obama and Clinton had similar operations. I've never bought into Clinton hate but I don't think you can deny a gap in enthusiasm among supporters.
Your values, who you are and what you do and the stuff you prefer, Nietzschean and moral and aesthetic, are now your product and production, and what you do in the market to get exchange value. A lot of unpaid labour is now dedicated to becoming and performing the person your boss wants and your chosen community includes.
Trumpsters don't think anybody listens to them with respect, just as BLM gave Bernie a hard time until he actually and humbly listened. Because your story, your narrative, is not only your identity but your product. Maybe telling themselves that Trump was listening was a delusion, but Trump and the Democrats seem to support that.
Oh and you have to give them expensive stuff, like TVA and Grand Coulee Dam and Social Security.
Maybe later I will explain why Drexiclya at LGM is probably right, from a black perspective, in wanting to drive whate men from the Demmocratic Party. Aw hell, there are only three people who can see this comment.
African Americans are only, outmyass, 12% of the country and 25% of Democrats. As such a minority, how do they get a radical agenda through the Party? By radicalizing their coalition as a Party of Grievance with a common oppressor and enemy The White Man. If you can unite women and other minorities toward that target and win power, you might get reparations and other radical policies.
"Good" white men in your coalition lessens the energy and solidarity. It's confusing.
I find this theoretically sound.
Voter suppression was totally expected and should have been countered. Dems are not outnumbered.
Voter suppression is a failure of Clinton and the Party.
463: Sorry you don't get to claim the title of martyred Sanders supporter, but you don't. I voted for Sanders in the primary, and yet I'm not wallowing in self-pity over it.
469: you're a lot more polite this time. Progress. But you're the only one talking about martyrs. Pointing out that an ableist asshole smells bad after shitting and is hurting our shared cause is pretty weak sauce as an example of martyrdom.
Just kidding. Emergence. There is media theory out there that models this, who makes Facebook? Twitter? This comment thread?
Yeah, I think emergence sounds about right. Trump went viral.
It turns out emergence is more than something that just happens. It can be engineered. Trump and his people figured out how.
If Halford had said "your failure to see" or "your inability to see" rather than "your blindness" would that also have been ableist, and if so, is any such metaphorical reference to sight ("I saw the solution at once!") ableist?
There is one song they sing in church. "Amazing Grace." So, so ableist.
If Halford had said "your failure to see" or "your inability to see" rather than "your blindness" would that also have been ableist, and if so, is any such metaphorical reference to sight ("I saw the solution at once!") ableist?
I think that if you're going to run with that argument
(shit)
I think if you're going to use that argument, then Halford would be left without a leg to stand on.
(shit)
...left in a very difficult position. It wouldn't be unheard of
(shit)
...it wouldn't be unprecedented to use claims of bias to hobble the
(shit)
...to hamstring...
(shit)
... to trip up...
(shit)
... to interfere with one's opponent's ability to use figures of speech...
(shit)
...figures of discourse, but I suspect Frostbite may have gone a step too far...
(shit)
...may have overstepped the mark...
(shit)
...may have exceeded acceptable boundaries.
472: the first two examples are still using lack of vision in a derogatory sense. As for "I saw the solution at once!" I don't know. Some people who identify as blind use expressions like that while still objecting to the explicitly negative usages.
474: you know there are members of this community who have disabilities, right? Take your shit and stuff it up your maggot-infested asshole.
the first two examples are still using lack of vision in a derogatory sense.
I don't think "your inability to see ..." uses lack of vision in a derogatory sense (or that a similar statement like "I don't see how the phrases in question are derogatory" figure it in a derogatory way—I'm not derogating myself or my lack of (ahem) insight there), to be honest. I mean, it would certainly be possible to use them in the course of being derogatory (vide ajay supra), but in themselves?
477: I know self-described blind people have said phrases like "blind to his privilege" are ableist, and those two examples seem to be channeling the same underlying impulse. But I've honestly never had the chance to learn from people who are blind whether those examples would be generally considered unacceptable in the same way.
Is it a greater offense to the disabled to use blindness as a metaphor, or to appropriate their concern regarding its use as a metaphor to wield as a cudgel in an unrelated argument in blog comments?
Take your shit and stuff it up your maggot-infested asshole.
That's a novel way of defending the importance of polite and considerate discourse.
Also, offensive to the very real sensibilities of those suffering from Herod's Evil. Particularly rich from a commenter appropriating the pain of those injured by extreme weather conditions.
Indeed. I have friends who have suffered great pain from frostbite and as a result are now permanently disabled. I'm offended on their behalf. No, on their bewhole, because they are still fully human beings.
you know there are members of this community who have disabilities, right?
Yes, and unlike the people you're attacking, this is the first time I've seen you verbally gesture at compassion for and interest in them. This "community" has a lot of different people, but it has been relatively free of infrequent commenters who pick fights and use the lives of other community members as rhetorical props. If you want to claim the right to speak for the community, start acting like a part of it. Make friends. Share. Contribute to non-political threads. Otherwise it's opportunistic posturing and no one, disabled or no (and I'm at least borderline, if you want to get in my face about it), is likely to welcome it.
has been relatively free of infrequent commenters who pick fights and use the lives of other community members as rhetorical props
Bob, of course, is always with us.
I am not sure "infrequent commenter" is the first epithet people would apply to bob, as "always with us" implies.
The silly thing is that I'm perfectly sympathetic to anyone pointing out that they're offended by language that I hadn't previously spotted as offensive. But dude, if you actually want to change anyone's behavior, being that kind of twerp about it isn't going to get you there.
I am not sure "infrequent commenter" is the first epithet people would apply to bob,
No, I think people applying epithets to bob probably cycle through a whole lot before they get down to any referencing his commenting frequency.
Having just learned the term "Herod's Evil" and having following it to the Wikipedia page on "Fournier's gangrene," I think there should be a moratorium on having pages on particular kinds of gangrene have images of it visible on page load.
483 is eloquent and a good recommendation. 486, too.
I regret googling Fournier's gangrene.
I have not googled, and I note that there is an NBA player named Evan Fournier and he has warned people to not google his last name.
You warn people to not google your last name?
The Distendedanus family has a proud history they should be eager for people to share.
Oh, hey, does anyone who's changed their name recently have any tips for remembering to use the new version when you're talking to people? While it'll be months before it's legal, I'm trying to drop the hyphenation of my last name when I introduce myself to people in my new department, but I have a hell of a time remembering.
I somehow don't remember this as an issue at all last time.
477: I know self-described blind people have said phrases like "blind to his privilege" are ableist, and those two examples seem to be channeling the same underlying impulse.
I guess what seems confounding to me is that in these examples you're generally attributing something bad to someone (being uncomprehending of one's privilege: bad!). Is it similarly objectionable to say that so-and-so, a modern Cato, is blind to/doesn't see the appeal of corruption? Is it ableist to use language whose literal meaning pertains to the having, lacking, impairment, or excellence of a particular ability, where the ability is given a metaphorical sense? It seems categorically different, to me, from something like "that's retarded", where "retarded" is just there as a term of abuse and wouldn't serve if not for an existing animus in the speaker's mind against the mentally disabled. (It's not the same as saying "progress was retarded by the delaying tactics of partisans".)
I of course think it's reasonable to not speak in ways that people ask you not to speak in, in general, but I think "please don't say that because it bothers me" is a lot easier to swallow than "please don't say that because it is offensive [in some more or less specific way]". I'm pretty sure we can find someone to say that all sorts of totally innocuous speech and action is offensive to them! That doesn't make it actually offensive.
I hope this isn't offensive to any IBS sufferers in the group, but I enjoyed the shit out of 474.
Also, you know that thread not so long ago about what makes you feel like a proper adult?
I'm feeling mighty good about finding the willpower to refrain from googling Hesiod's Evil and Fournier's Gangrene right now. Thanks for the warning that I would not have followed as a youth.
Herod's Evil. Hesiod's Evil probably has something to do with flawed prosody.
Hesiod's Evil
Don't google "dorophagos".
As somebody who has lived with cerebral palsy from birth and now additionally has acquired a neuropathy which makes it increasingly difficult to walk at all, I can say that I'm genuinely not fond of usages such as "lame", meaning inadequate, or "spastic", meaning pathetic. However I have very rarely come across these used with malice aforethought and most people who do use them aren't particularly prejudiced against physically disabled people, just unthinkingly using widespead colloquialisms.
Had we but world enough and time, I would make more of an issue of this than I do. Right now, though, it figures at about number 478 on my list of things I would change to make the world a better place.
Upon extended reflection, I've realized that I am deeply offended on behalf of my canine companion at ajay's use of the b-word. If she could smell you, ajay, she would bark angrily in your general direction.
I was just trying to protect anyone else who might google it in a weak moment.
504: Oops! Sorry, ajay! I should have directed that to Halford. I forgot who used the offensive term way back in the middle of this thread.
I just had to edit a bunch of shit I'd written to change all the references to "disabled people" to "persons with disabilities." Which, I understand why, but its a pain in the ass as far as the composition of rhetoric goes. I'm actually giving a presentation on that Monday and I'm really hoping I don't fuck it up.
My preference is toward reducing the number of linguistic landmines, and being magnanimous to people who accidentally step on them. People who intentionally set them off, of course, fuck them.
change all the references to "disabled people" to "persons with disabilities." Which, I understand why
I do not understand why. Why?
(503 to 499, btw)
498
I find your comment offensive to people with low willpower. Am I less of an adult because I just googled Fournier's Gangrene?*
*Actually probably yes. I did click the link on gangrene in general, but avoided the link to noma, gangrene of the face.
And...nevermind. I googled noma. I blame you people.
I do not understand why. Why?
Because "disabled people" essentilizes the disability as core to the identity of the person, whereas "persons with disabilities" makes it not so much a core of their identity. I don't necessarily buy into that explanation, and I think its splitting hairs, but also I don't have a disability so my own personal feelings about it shouldn't count for much. If the disabled community ("community of persons with disabilities?") has a preference I am absolutely down with following that.
I'm not actually clear on why "persons with disabilities" is better than "people with disabilities", but its the language that comes from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities.
Huh, that's interesting. Of course, calling people what they want to be called is basic courtesy, and so always wins for me. But it seems to me that this part:
"disabled people" essentilizes the disability as core to the identity of the person, whereas "persons with disabilities" makes it not so much a core of their identity
runs counter to the trends in self-labeling, or at least self-conceptualising, among other kinds of minority groups, which emphasise the non-majority feature precisely as essential to identity. And in most cases, that emphasis seems hard to argue with: surely being any kind of person who's obviously different from the majority around you must be critically formative to your identity.
"Persons with disabilities" vs. "disabled people" sounds to my (admittedly ignorant) ear like "men who have sex with men" vs. "gay people." One is a label you use when you have to, for practical reasons, refer to people who may get shirty about being included in a stigmatised group; the other is what people who identify as part of that group call themselves by choice, on those occasions when they have to call themselves something.
I've always preferred the "adjective-people" construction (black people, gay people) over the adjective-as-noun form (blacks, gays... grammar nerds - there must be a term for this, right?). Maybe that's why "disabled people" sounds not only more natural than "persons with disabilities" (because it just is) but, I dunno, nicer. I'd rather just be another kind of people than a person with a feature.
Although now that I've thought about it, maybe the important difference is that many disabled people are persons who acquire disabilities later in life after they've already formed an identity that does not include the disability. In that case I can see how they would resist having their disability make them a kind of person other than how they already think of themselves. Even if it does.
The word "disabled," like the word "victim," always sounds a bit extreme to me for what it's describing (you can't disable a person like you disable an alarm). I don't know if that's any part of the complaint.
I think that logicking over the structure of preferred language is usually a mistake -- the major issues are, as far as I can tell (1) avoiding slurs, which are pretty arbitrary (and there are complexities like groups deliberately reclaiming slurs, but mostly you want to avoid them), (2) moving away from prior neutral, inoffensive language that has accreted slurring connotations, like 'retarded', and (3) honestly, and I don't mean this negatively, pure hoop-jumping as an expression of good-will. If there's a consensus among group members that they want to be called X and disfavor Y, then knowing that and using the preferred language signals that you're educated enough to know what's preferred and friendly enough to the aims of the group to go along with it. But the rationalizations for why one word is objectively preferable to another are mostly not that compelling.
513: agreed... my preference would be "handicapped" because someone with a handicap is playing the same game as everyone else but just with a disadvantage, while something which is disabled is not functioning. But not really up to me.
514.3 is something that I had considered but hadn't quite articulated fully. A high energy cost to show you mean it. Makes sense.
I'd call it a minimal energy cost, but it's something.
I guess is depends on how high your personal bar for ambition is set.
Sorry, 516 was me. High and minimal aren't contradictory.
That sounds like a stoned 20th-century classical music composer. Or possibly a midcentury skyscraper.
What if, like, we made music without music? Woah.
507. In the of diabetes prevention and treatment the preferred term over ten years was "people with diabetes" as opposed to "diabetics." So this is nothing new.
It does sound clunky though.
483: your point is received in good faith, but I'm not trying to speak for this community. I was sincerely surprised and disgusted by ajay's comment. Only the in-crowd has the right to address problematic discourse?
480, 486: tone policing. That's the problem with procedural liberals: "polite and considerate discourse" takes priority over truth and justice.
496: I can only relay what I've learned, but I can't speak for people who are blind about opinions on ableism in this context.
I'm familiar, through Caribbean relations, with the term "enslaved persons." Has it caught on in the continental US?
pure hoop-jumping as an expression of good-will.
Yeah, again, calling people what they want to be called is almost always the right thing to do. I would not want to be understood as arguing with anyone about their preference.
rationalizations for why one word is objectively preferable to another are mostly not that compelling.
Agreed, but I was trying to talk about why one word is *subjectively* preferable to another, and I do think that's a conversation worth having as long as it doesn't take the form of "YOU'RE wrong for wanting to be called X, because of MY reasons."
I really dislike language policing where it gets in the way of conversation, while at the same time understanding that it can be good or constructive or necessary, and so I like to stop and think about why some words come in or out of favour, and consider how much of an asshole it might make me if I choose to disregard a particular convention.
There was a point in my life where it was worthwhile to think through whether I wanted to call myself gay or queer or a homo or a fag. It doesn't seem that important anymore, but it was a worthwhile exercise when I was consciously working on my own identity, and if I'm to empathise with those who are different from me, then going through the same process as, for instance, I imagine myself as a person with a disability, seems only natural.
"polite and considerate discourse" takes priority over truth and justice.
Its not that polite and considerate discourse is the priority, but maintaining norms of decency in communication is a valuable tool in maintaining the frameworks to support truth and justice. That's not the same as being the tone police.
524: Yes, considered best practices in some circles already and I'm sure it will be even more as time goes by. IME usually corresponds to something like "slavers" rather than the old "slaveowners/slaveholders."
511: It's a big deal for a lot of people with mental illness. Activists prefer to be described as having schizophrenia not being schizophrenic.
Various above: There is in fact an ongoing and in some quarters strongly felt dispute among people whose brains or bodies function as outliers to the main curve between advocates of "disabled people" and advocates of "people with disabilities" as the turn of phrase they prefer. It shows no sign of a resolution, because the arguments for both are strong; so just roll with whatever the person you're talking to likes. I personally prefer "disabled people", but only marginally. "Handicapped" is generally regarded as implicitly making it up to the person to overcome the thing that is off the curve, rather than up to society to accept and integrate them; it is therefore disfavoured.
LK, don't knock yourself. If you're disabled/have a disability, own it and demand that people accommodate you. It doesn't matter if it's minor in your opinion, that's like saying you can't complain about being poor because you can only afford one meal a day, when there are people who can only eat every other day. You should get three meals a day, and you should not be unnecessarily inconvenienced by a disability, great or small.