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yesss
Why.
it's a thing
The glorious teat, Catanthia, and The horseland
Well I prefer him over either of the two most likely people to succeed him if he gets removed from office.
Catanthia, Cale nova, and Novi-raventsvo
We basically just allowed the biggest, worst bully in the class to become the Student Council President, with his cronies as the remaining officers. Except that it's real life and he has nuclear weapons.
Also, the difference between Trump and Putin may be summed up as the difference of about 50 or 60 I.Q. points in the latter's favor. Trump's statement from the campaign that the United States is effectively run by morons should have been interpreted as a prediction, not a description of reality at that point.
Novantis, Power Girl, The horseland, Bastetipet, and 2 othersPukwudgie, and Ace pride
Two? Isn't there only Mike Pence?
Post self-deleted by Gresdenia.
Hello from the FCG! Guess what today is? THE FCG'S ONE-YEAR BIRTHDAY! Yep, the FCG is a year old today!
Biotopia, Bastetipet, Pukwudgie, and Ace pride
Hey, does Gay already have a booth organised for the NationStates World Fair?!
Though you have to give him credit for actually listening to the theater-cast which confronted him on his positions that one time after the elections.
Who knows, it could be a signal that he'll be more open to different perspectives than before.
Regarding succession and LGBTQ issues:
While anti-LGBTQ positions are (and have been) the platform of the GOP for some time, not all Republicans brace them with equal enthusiasm. While GWB said some fairly hateful things about us leading up to the 2004 election, once he was safely re-elected, he quietly dropped the subject. Obama started his presidency overtly with the same position GWB left it, a belief in civil unions but not full marriage equality. When public opinion shifted enough, Obama, too, "changed" his mind and became the first sitting president to advocate for full LGBTQ equality.
I actually believe that like GWB, Trump is not personally invested in the anti-LGBTQ agenda; while I doubt his administration will be good for us, I don't see any sweeping changes on the horizon. Mike Pence, on the other hand, is apparently a True Believer and would likely seize every opportunity to oppose us. I dunno about Paul Ryan, but any "policy wonk" who hates poor people so much would not likely be good for us, either.
What this discussion has so far ignored is the vast role the Supreme Court has played in the USA for civil rights in the past 60+ years. Back when we had a liberal SCOTUS, we saw major advances for blacks, women, people with disabilities, separation of church & state, etc. The conservative SCOTUS of the past 30 or so years has been great for protecting the rights of the rich and powerful and degrading the rights of ordinary folks. Interestingly, the biggest LGBTQ advances, making private, consensual sex between adults 100% legal and mandating marriage equality for LGBTQ people have come (by narrow margins) under these conservative courts. Those justices do read the papers and watch what the states are doing, so when the states are obviously moving in a particular direction (interracial marriage, abortion, gay marriage, etc.), they're more likely to go the same way. Right now, the court is composed of 3 hard-core conservatives, 1 mostly conservative, and 4 liberals. Obama's candidate for the court would have added a progressive centrist, giving the court a somewhat leftward slant. Republicans in the Senate would have none of that and have unprecedentedly stopped the process cold for most of a year now, so that the new president would have a say. I don't know who Trump might nominate or whether Senate Democrats will filibuster every nominee, but I am sure no good will come of it. Sometimes it's better to suffer a small defeat and maintain your principles than make a naked grab for power.
A word about game mechanics: at almost the exact time that Cale nova became the new WAD/F, NS++ broke down again, as it did last summer. No NS++ means no new recruitment letters going out, so we have shrunk about 10% in less than a month. Looking at the last 10 regional happenings, 6 are the death of nations (in two puppet die-offs), 2 are embassy closures due to regional closings, and 2 were a quicky visit and departure by a new nation. Since many other similar regions also use NS++, they have been in a parallel losing posture, too, so we are still on page 4 of largest regions in the world, where we have been for a loooong time, since long before we peaked at 395 nations last May through now. Hopefully NS++ will get its act back together soon.
The horseland, Bastetipet, Cale nova, Chironica, and 2 othersAce pride, and The coal region
Just dropping by to say I'm still alive and kicking! :D Well... At least the "alive" part... Now that I think about it... Maybe not even that. >.>
Catanthia, Bastetipet, Novi-raventsvo, and Ace pride
I agree but I actually got sick from listening to his speech yesterday. I mean, what was he trying to do? Unite the world against him? Make the US the new threat for World Stability? And the part about domestic affairs? I'm not even going into the climate change and LGBT part of the webpage having miraculously disappeared.
I have a similar kind of reaction. My body is naturally allergic to Trump. Just looking at his disgusting face makes me want to retch. Everything about his physical form (I say that because I'm still convinced he's a demon from an alternate universe) is just awful and brings me out in a bit of a rash. I'm not sure how I'm going to withstand the next 4 years. I should carry an Epi-Pen with me everywhere I go from now on.
Yesterday was something of a rollercoaster for me, emotionally. I started the day alternatively seething and dejected about this entire sad political affair, but as the day went on my spirits lifted.
I was amazed to see the Women's March and how there were apparently 373 or so official marched across the entire world. The American press is notoriously self-absorbed, but on BBC there was footage of different marches happening across the world, in places as unsuspecting as Copenhagen, Nairobi, and even in Antarctica. There were about 500,000 in Washington, D.C. and 400,000 in New York City alone, which is a huge showing. Also, only 10% of Trump's votes came from people aged 18-29, compared with 19-20% of Hillary's, so that is also encouraging.
This is the time, when everyone who isn't a straight, white male has been essentially disenfranchised to a greater or lesser extent, for people all over the world and especially inside the United States to stand up, rediscover their activism and collective interests, and to use this time spent in exile from the halls of government to energize people on the local and regional levels. We need to work together now to make sure that the ill-conceived presidency of Trump is not a return to power in the long term, but rather a "last stand" of so many social and cultural forces that had appeared to be going--more or less quietly--into that good night.
We have demographics on our side, but as we just learned, that's not an excuse to drop all other strategies and outreach programs. We need everyone: the young, black, trans woman from the Bronx and also the older, white, hetero male from West Virginia who both share a commitment to respect, virtue, compassion, etc. If this progressive vision is to be worth anything, we have to move beyond old categories of oppressor and oppressed, and invite everyone into a new, equal, and fundamentally-positive project for the future. If we essentially "give up" on white people, small-town people, or uneducated people, then we're automatically only playing with about half the deck.
I would very much agree.
We had a similar demographic problem over here with the Brexit referendum. The vast majority of older people voted Leave, whereas the vast majority of younger people voted Remain. There is a direct correlation between the probable number of years you have left to live and the likelihood of you voting Leave - fewer years = more likely. As you might expect, this has led to a LOT of fury and resentment directed towards the elderly from the young, who (somewhat rightly) believe our future has been stolen by a bunch of racists who don't have to live to see the consequences of their actions, whereas we have to put up with them for the rest of our lives.
However, the fact that most young people seem to be liberal, progressive, cosmopolitan and well-educated is a step in the right direction. They will be the voters of the next few decades. They will, hopefully, raise their children to be just as liberal, progressive, cosmopolitan and well-educated, and so the cycle will continue.
I don't think that Brexit, Trump, Le Pen etc mean we're stepping backwards vis-à-vis civil rights. I think we've just sort of stalled, but we'll get the engine up and running again soon enough with a bit of luck. If you need a sign of hope, look at the number of people - mainly young people - who turned out to support Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
hey I'm back
Infidel State, The horseland, Cale nova, Novi-raventsvo, and 1 otherAce pride
I've been drinking lads
Catanthia, Infidel State, Bastetipet, and Cale nova
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