Trump's America

[Frelga]

Proposed Book Banning Bill in Missouri Could Imprison Librarians

Under the act, the boards would hold public hearings to receive suggestions as to possible inappropriate books, and would have the authority to order the library to remove any such material from access by minors. Any public library who allows minors access to such “age-inappropriate materials” would have their funding stripped, and librarians who refuse to comply with the act can be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.

To be clear, I don't think this is on Trump. On the contrary, I think it's the expression of the same forces that brought him to power.

[RoseMorninStar]

That is awful Frelga. I have unfortunate experience in this area.

We have neighbors who are activists as young earth creationists and they can be insufferable. They enjoy getting the limelight for their fringe ideas and had an affiliation with Jerry Falwell's Liberty University which would take on their crusades for free. They utilize the law (and threats of lawsuits) to threaten the library, the city, the local schools, etc.. if their demands are not met. It made nation-wide news in 2009 and was quite controversial. They had several librarians removed along with most of the library board. They will move books from the science section into fiction and move the biblical books into history (they have since been banned from the library). They basically blackmailed our school system for their causes even though their children are (mostly) home-schooled. For example, they will send their children to a gym or orchestra/band class so they can be in the school and raise havoc. They really hate anything to do with gay people, but also have other 'causes' such as trying to make the math department teach in cubits. Eventually they tried to take over the school board (and almost succeeded). Their purpose was to siphon off public money for a 'charter school' (that would be unaccredited) so that they could pay their home-schooling parents as 'teachers'. Fortunately people caught on and their attempt failed. They are always pushing the limits on their 'religious freedom' by harassing everyone else. They are those 'dinosaurs lived alongside people' persons who believe the earth is something like 4,500 years old. They helped build the Creationist museum. THey have a 'What's the Evidence' creationist dinosaur booth which they take to various fairs around the state. These are not meek 'Christians'. And of course they believe the worst of everyone else and are always pointing fingers. They are free to believe as they chose, but they will stop at nothing to force those views on everyone.

These are the 'wonderful christian neighbors' I've had problems with their dog using our yard as a toilet and eventually we put up a fence so they planted bushes in our yard/on the lot line that would knock it over.

So yeah, these people have been around for some time. I'm sure they revere Donald Trump and thought Obama was the devil incarnate. The reasoning behind that boggles the mind.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm sure they revere Donald Trump and thought Obama was the devil incarnate. The reasoning behind that boggles the mind.

I saw a Sanders supporter (a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend) refer to Hillary Clinton as "the mother of the devil". And I've seen Sanders supporters refer to Elizabeth Warren in worse terms than that in the past few days. Just to keep things in perspective.

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm sure they revere Donald Trump and thought Obama was the devil incarnate. The reasoning behind that boggles the mind.

I saw a Sanders supporter (a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend) refer to Hillary Clinton as "the mother of the devil". And I've seen Sanders supporters refer to Elizabeth Warren in worse terms than that in the past few days. Just to keep things in perspective.

I've been following the conversation in the election thread about some of the recent carrying-ons and it disgusts me. I don't understand the rabid support (of anyone) that goes beyond reason. I believe you mentioned something about Bernie supporters voting for Trump if Bernie is not the nominee.. that sort of thing, I. just. don't. get. it. People have lost their minds.

[elengil]

https://wtop.com/white-house/2020/01/dc ... -of-funds/
DC sues Trump inaugural committee, alleging abuse of funds

There is a Washington Post article on this as well, but I can't read it past the paywall

[elengil]

Interesting article on Citizens United and the current political situation
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... hment.html

[yovargas]

A bit of a tangential personal anecdote - rather stupidly, I started debating someone on FB yesterday about Trump and the impeachment. I pretty much never talk to full-on Trump supporters and I really wanted to try and have a calm and rational conversation about things and see if we could at least come to some kind of understanding. But then after a while I got really pissed and started cursing out Republicans. Still feeling really f****g irritated.

What sucks is that he was being fairly civil, it was me who got pissed and started cursing, though I at least avoided making it personal. There's part of me that really, really, really wants to believe we can at least have a civil conversation without assuming the worst about each other all the time, but I find that so incredibly difficult when I hear someone defending the actions of someone so deeply loathesome to me as Donald F. Trump.

[Sunsilver]

Yov, I fully understand what you are saying. How can any sane person support him? And just when I think he could sink no lower in my estimation, I find something like THIS:

https://triblive.com/news/politics-elec ... jBlAXHY9gY

A woman who says she was Jeffrey Epstein’s first known victim claims in a new lawsuit that the multimillionaire sex offender introduced her to Donald Trump when she was 14, saying, “This is a good one, right?”

Trump, according to the suit against Epstein’s estate, “smiled and nodded in agreement.” The woman filed the lawsuit Friday in Manhattan Federal Court under the pseudonym Jane Doe.

Trump and Epstein “both chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why,” the lawsuit reads. The alleged encounter happened in the mid-1990s, court documents said.

And Trump's supporters will no doubt shrug this off and say "Oh, he's a CHANGED MAN! He's not like this anymore!"

[Griffon64]

Yov, I fully understand what you are saying. How can any sane person support him? And just when I think he could sink no lower in my estimation, I find something like THIS:

https://triblive.com/news/politics-elec ... jBlAXHY9gY

A woman who says she was Jeffrey Epstein’s first known victim claims in a new lawsuit that the multimillionaire sex offender introduced her to Donald Trump when she was 14, saying, “This is a good one, right?”

Trump, according to the suit against Epstein’s estate, “smiled and nodded in agreement.” The woman filed the lawsuit Friday in Manhattan Federal Court under the pseudonym Jane Doe.

Trump and Epstein “both chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why,” the lawsuit reads. The alleged encounter happened in the mid-1990s, court documents said.

And Trump's supporters will no doubt shrug this off and say "Oh, he's a CHANGED MAN! He's not like this anymore!"

Wrong. Trump's supporters will call that a lie, call the victim unreliable, etc. They love him as is. They don't care what you accuse him of or what he admits - they support him. Even if they're somehow confronted with some evidence they'd believe, they'd just shrug it off. Doesn't matter. They support him no matter what because he gives them what they want politically ( making discriminating against certain folks great again, mostly, but also some other stuff. )

Now, if this was an unfounded conspiracy theory against a Democrat running a child sex trafficking ring from a pizza parlor or something, that would be a Big Deal. But I bet that Trump can go on Fox News molesting his constituents' children and they'll nod and smile and applaud and chant "Make America Great Again! Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!"

[yovargas]

I mean, he's already been accused of sexual assault several times and it didn't matter, so one more accusation certainly doesn't matter.

Hey, remember that one time when a presidential candidate bragged on tape that he gets away with sexually groping women without their concent because he's famous, and then voters elected him? Fun stuff.

[Frelga]

What sucks is that he was being fairly civil, it was me who got pissed and started cursing, though I at least avoided making it personal. There's part of me that really, really, really wants to believe we can at least have a civil conversation without assuming the worst about each other all the time, but I find that so incredibly difficult when I hear someone defending the actions of someone so deeply loathesome to me as Donald F. Trump.

It's easier to be civil when you don't have any skin in the game.

When reproductive health care is threatened, it's not men who die. When marriage equality is threatened, it's not straight people who lose the package of legal rights that come with marriage. When immigrants who are in the country legally are being deported, it's not citizens by births who worry that they will be next.

Not that this sense of security ensured any guarantee of civility from people on the safe side of the fence. But it's always people with much at stake who are admonished to be civil.

[RoseMorninStar]

Frelga, true dat. Among everything else, I am especially concerned about what is happening to our environment.

Sadly, I agree Griffy. Many are wrapped up in the idea that god is using this 'imperfect vessel' for divine purposes, and who is to question the purposes of god(!!) since everyone is a sinner. Except if you are a Democrat, then you cannot possibly be a 'real' Christian or an average sinner. You are an instrument of the Devil.

Evangelical thinker Lance Wallnau has stated that Trump is a “modern-day Cyrus,” an ancient Persian king chosen by God to “navigate in chaos.”

*gag* Trump IS chaos. He's navigating nothing but chaos, but this is the type of stuff they are pushing on Dobson's Focus on the Family and Fox news. This seems to be what motivates the likes of Pence and Pompeo.. in which anything they do in pursuit of the second coming is justified. Never mind that most will die in that pursuit and they are thinking of a kingdom on earth and all other sorts of messed up views, twisting the bible/religion to conveniently suit their purposes.

[Griffon64]

Ah yes. Little dollop of religions extremism. Seems like for many conservatives that stuff's pretty bad when it comes out of the Middle East but is to be coddled, admired and nurtured when it comes from the white folk in America's Evangelical churches. Kind of how the Constitution is so super important when it comes to carrying guns or the freedom to spout hateful rhetoric in public, but so very very inconsequential when it comes to stuff like separating church and state?

[RoseMorninStar]

Most evangelicals do not believe in the separation of church & state because it does not appear in the constitution in those exact words and some other mumbo-jumbo, but their views seem to change depending upon whether any given subject/view is directed at them & their religion or at some other religion/belief system.

[Griffon64]

Seems about right. People who just want to tell others what to do tend to latch onto external sources of authority they perceive can grant them that bully power - the Constitution and the Bible are two obvious examples - and set to work twisting what they see as words of power to give authority to their views and desires. If any of them actually believed in God they would also know that twisting God's words to suit their purposes will land them in a heap of trouble. But, since they don't actually believe and just want power, they twist away.

[RoseMorninStar]

Yeah.. I had a rude awakening and a long hard fall maybe 2 decades or so ago.

[Sunsilver]

If this article is true, Trump's actions on the Ukraine are just the tip of a very nasty iceberg:

https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/att ... sWvrULqoBY

For those of you who can't be bothered to click on the link, the last few paragraphs sum it up pretty well:

The public should be very alarmed about such a blatant — and murderous — foreign assault on one of our most fundamental American liberties, the freedom to commit acts of journalism. There’s a tendency to dismisses Trump’s “enemies of the people” rhetoric against journalists as just that — empty oratory to whip up his core supporters.

But the Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi wrote columns criticizing President Trump and his close allies, the Saudis. For doing that, he was murdered, dismembered and dumped in an unknown location, and when his newspaper complained their owner, an American citizen, was illegally hacked and blackmailed. This is what “enemies of the people” looks like in blood-red living color, and it’s spectacularly ugly. It’s a story of two autocrats separated by an ocean but joined in their ambition to literally murder journalism when it threatens their power.

And as the facts finally begin to dribble out, this nation — well, some of it, anyway — is witnessing the spectacle of 53 Republican senators drenched in cowardly personal ambition who have the nerve to timidly agree that abusing the power of the presidency to supplant the noble words of the Constitution with narcissism and greed somehow isn’t an impeachable crime. The truth was already dying the autumn day that we watched Jamal Khashoggi disappear — and yet did nothing. Now we’re just watching it bleed out, up on Capitol Hill.

[RoseMorninStar]

I was recently watched a few YouTube videos featuring people who escaped North Korea and are now living in South Korea. Some of the things they said got me to thinking about leaders like Kim Jong Un and how they come to be and how they maintain their power: lies, fear, and the situation in the US with Trump/GOP. Those who should hold the leader accountable are abdicating their duty to country by refusing to acknowledge anything the 'dear leader' says or does may be untrue, fabricated, criminal, and simply bad for the country & its people. The entirety of the GOP administration must toe the line (or be dismissed/destroyed) and congress/senate must be a part of the crimes, cover-up, lies, and participate in the denial of any wrong-doing and refuse to produce documents/witnesses that will hold the leader accountable. The FOX news misinformation machine. It's disturbing. This is how a dictator is made.

Incidentally, although they know Kim Jong Un to be a horrible dictator & liar, they believe Trump is more unstable

[River]

It's easier to be civil when you don't have any skin in the game.

When reproductive health care is threatened, it's not men who die. When marriage equality is threatened, it's not straight people who lose the package of legal rights that come with marriage. When immigrants who are in the country legally are being deported, it's not citizens by births who worry that they will be next.

So I have skin the woman game. I have people close to me with skin the homosexual and immigrant games. So yeah, I have a hard time being civil with Trump's fan base. My naturalized spouse started wondering if he's white enough during the 2016 election season and he's still wondering now. We've talked about it. Fun conversations to have with a loved one. I don't recommend it.

Rage donations to the ACLU help my nerves. Helps the ACLU too. I give them enough that instead of asking for more they just send thank you cards.

[RoseMorninStar]

That is a productive and proactive response River. My daughter was expressing her frustrations yesterday with the way this administration is dragging the country down on so many levels, including environmentally, civilly, etc.. I told her to educate herself on the issues & vote.. but donating to such causes is another very good suggestion.