Posts by Rob Stowell
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Hard News: The Long, Strange Trip, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
He’s created a first world Cargo Cult and all he has to do is keep telling his supporters that things are better, and they will feel better and that will be enough.
There’s some truth in what you say. This has been the triumph of emotion – rage, grievance and fear – and maybe some sense of triumph will be enough. I don’t think so though. Rage and grievance and fear will also need to be fed :(
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How does Trump even begin to satisfy the white working class voters who elected him? There's nothing in his economic policies - or those of Paul Ryan - except perhaps massive govt spending on infrastructure. And there's a lot that will directly hurt them.
Trump could become immensely unpopular very quickly. The obvious ways he could turn include scapegoating (his first reaction) circuses (in the Roman tradition of massive distractions) or a war.
Interesting times. -
Its tough to realise Trump did this with far less money and organisation than Hillary had.
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The implications are slowly sinking in - a bit like Brexit, there's going to be some panic along the lines of: "what's the plan?" "I thought you had a plan?" "Does anyone know where we put the plans?"
Goodbye TPP and Obamacare. Other trade implications are hard to judge. There's a strong chance China will quickly move to take some leadership positions, possibly joining Europe to lead on climate change. In some areas the US may simply get left behind.
The wall, the deportation of undocumented immigrants - who knows. Probably a powerful wall committee will sit on the fence for four years. Tax and government finances will be run by Paul Ryan, who has a horrible agenda. I don't think it will make many Trump voters happy. The supreme court is fo-barred, abortion under threat, and gay marriage maybe too. In the meantime quite a few more states have voted to legalise pot - maybe the US will just end up with a very stoned populace :)
It will be interesting to see how Trump spins his brilliant plan to defeat ISIS, and no doubt be alarming who he finds as new friends in a world where other major economic powers might just wave the US goodbye. -
Fuck. Wisconsin. How can anyone have trusted a state that elected Scott Walker. 3 times. Want to stop looking, can't stop looking ...
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Hard News: From Zero: New Zealand and drugs, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
from 1924*:
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19240919.2.57</q>Hard to read of the demonization of Chinese in NZ by virtue of their association with opium and not feel the burning hypocrisy. First Opium War
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Looking forward to this. I bet there are some great stories.
Complete tangent but it was astonishing and delightful to fall over an old (1940s or 50s) thesaurus of american slang and find in the (by far the best) underworld section a big range of drug slang dating back decades.
The history of drugs is far too interesting to remain untold. -
Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Increasingly the sort of aggressive, paranoid style of the US right pops up here as well.
It’s here in force. Of course our very own whale thing and kiwiblog (and a few more …) run the same engines. Propaganda/agit-prop with different flavours for different tastes (‘pretending to be calm and rational’ and ‘more-or-less barking mad’) stoking the same fires.
(Te Std and Daily Blog also howl with the wild dogs. Fevered conspiracy thinking and the hyper partisan screams are everywhere. It’s depressing.) -
Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Yeah. Misogyny is definitely a deep strand. The double standards are right there in your face.
But there's definitely more to it. I reckon it's misogyny plus ... a combination of 20+ years of GOP dirt-digging and Oppo research, throwing so many tonnes of mud, some has stuck, and some things about Hilary that make her hard to like - esp, it seems, if you've only met her on TV, where (I think) she's not good. (People who have known her well, and worked with her, seem to mostly have a far more favourable opinion.)
I have my own theory about the TV perception (she doesn't enjoy it; she feels self-conscious, which leads to a whole range of things including a perception of fakeness; and she is, for to some degree very good reasons, highly suspicious of media scrutiny. Plus she has definitely been coached to the max, and the misogyny also hits here: when she smiles - and she smiles a lot, because if she doesn't she gets a heap of 'angry woman' nonsense - it can look smug or a little misplaced.) -
Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to John Farrell,
What I find interesting about this whole schemozzle is the number of Trump supporters infesting New Zealand based web forums, bombarding them with strange pictures of Clinton, and spreading the latest “facts” from project veritas.
It's all very strange - and even stranger to consider these anti-Clinton stories emerge from an unholy mash-up of alt-right Breitbartian propagandists and Russian troll-farms.