President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

As I believe I've said here before, in the '70s and '80s, Wall Street traders were coked up ex-frat boys ages 27-36. Now, they are computers programmed to act like coked-up ex-frat boys but much more quickly and efficiently.

 

Then.

Fox Blasts Obama's 'Hip-Hop BBQ' for Failing to Create Jobs - The Atlantic

Now: The College Dropout meets the Fraudulent College Creator

 

MAGA, bitches.

374 Acts of Vandalism in Our National Monuments and Counting

 

Another big drop. Time for some more Trump jawboning.

 

Corporations must be finished buying back their stock.

 

Discussions of the stock market would be slightly more sane if 1. Media outlets used the S&P rather than the Dow and 2. Advances and declines were expressed as percentages of the whole. Overall, the Dow has gone down about 5 and a half percent in the last two days. That's significant, but it just doesn't sound as scary as OMG a 1300 point loss! All coverage of the market comes in two flavors: Oh, boy we're all gonna be rich and oh, no we'll all be bankrupt by breakfast.

 

Racism is much larger than a grievance.

I'm thinking more of grievance as a petition, with the presumption government and/or a regulatory environment can adequately address that. Many of the grievances, in their own way, are legitimate.

The far right, even the moderate right, prefers to address few grievances through policy, preferring to let the "market" or "individuals" work them out. I don't care for that approach much because it's rife with abuse of privilege, specifically the privilege of money.

But the left struggles to prioritize grievances because it links so many of them of up to large, multi-generational, societal-wide issues like racism or human rights. Some grievances really are that large. A lot of them aren't. When so many issues are rooted in nothing short of human dignity, it's hard to get off the ground, and even if there's harmony now in intersectionality - because it's protest platform - it's a tenuous harmony because, when the left is in charge - and it will be soon - dangit, gotta make priorities. Something has to take a back seat.

For example: I'm pretty comfortable putting universal health care, rental rights/cost and how we look at drug use and drug crime in America at the top of my care-about list. I think all three have been significantly affected by some form of systemic racism. I choose those not merely because they matter, not merely because racism affects them, but from a pragmatic, objective standpoint: You address those effectively and you improve quality of life in ways that reduce other grievances.

What's harder is being for 17 different things with equal intensity. Hard to keep track of all of them. Hard to address all of them.