Former CIA Agent Valerie Plame Launches Campaign To Buy Twitter, So She Can Ban TrumpFormer CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, who was famously put in harm's way by former president George W. Bush in 2003 after his administration leaked her identity as an agent as a way to try to discredit her husband's denunciation of the Iraq War, has taken to social media to join the call to get President Trump banned from Twitter. She's now put together a crowdfunding campaign -- albeit probably a symbolic one -- to buy a controlling share of Twitter so that she can do the job herself. As the Associated Press notes, that would cost about $6 billion. So far it's raised a bit over $22,000.
Let's #BuyTwitter and #BanTrump:
Donald Trump has done a lot of horrible things on Twitter. From emboldening white supremacists to promoting violence against journalists, his tweets damage the country and put people in harm's way. But threatening actual nuclear war with North Korea takes it to a dangerous new level.
It's time to shut him down. The bad news is Twitter has ignored growing calls to enforce their own community standards and delete Trump's account. The good news is we can make that decision for them. [...]
Proceeds from this campaign will be used to buy a controlling share of Twitter. If we can't get a majority interest, we'll explore options for buying a significant stake in the company and champion this proposal at the annual shareholder meeting. If that's impossible for any reason or if there is a surplus from this campaign, 100% of the balance of proceeds will be donated to Global Zero, a nonprofit organization leading the resistance to nuclear war.
It's almost comical how people get riled up over Trump, failing to realize he's not the problem but the symptom.
Popcorn time!
It would be comical, were it not so sad and dangerous, that some people fail to realize that having a racist, misogynist homophobe in charge of our government gives encouragement and support to the worst people in this country and emboldens them to act. Is Trump a "symptom" of the fact that hate crimes have increased 91% since the beginning of the year? I think you have a sloppy grasp of causality.
Also, if in one of his unhinged, egocentric tantrums he manages to start an actual war, what then would that be a "symptom" of? When people are dying, will you still pat yourself on the back for your clever spin on what caused it?
Do you really think that what he tapped in wouldn't have been exploited by someone else? If Trump would not have taken it this time, someone else, much more "golden tongued" would have in four years.
Blame the Democrats. They had an outside, like Trump, in Sanders. He would have stood a chance to actually beat him, he probably would have beat him.
Instead the Democrats just re-affirmed just how rigged the game is.
Quite frankly, I wish Sanders and Kasich would get together and start a third party. It could offer people a real option from both sides in 2020.
But that won't happen. America and it's politics are way too bi-polar and divided to make a difference.
Without a third option, you'd get another Trump in four years, if not THE Trump.
And yeah, I agree. How this ends is a good question. Nuclear end of the world is quite possible. I made my peace with it. I realized that way back in 2003. Now I am just watching the insanity like Trump and BREXIT and try to figure out how to not get caught in the cross fire.
I think that if literally anyone else had won the election it would not have gotten this bad this fast.
I blame lots of people for lots of things -- but the only one I blame for Trump is Trump, and the people who put him in power and continue to enable him.
Your nihilism is stupid. Some of us aren't ready to just lie down and die just yet.
Not as fast, but it would have happened. That's my point.
The "ray" I see with Trump is that it will force people to confront the direction things were going instead of having that slow "drip drip drip drip".
Maybe I am too cynical, but I am convinced by now the only way people learn is when they bleed from their own nose (or die of blood loss by a thousand cuts). So in that context, I prefer Trump. At least he forces people to confront the direction they were going.
Where I am not happy is that a lot of people seem to think if they get rid of Trump things would be "back to normal", which they won't.
For one he's shifted the goal post of what is permissible permanently quite a lot, and secondly, nothing he tapped into will go away.
America, and the world, will need to ask itself a lot of hard questions, and that is not something I see happening. Unfortunately.
Yeah, I guess I am a Misanthrope. Too bad the Misanthropic Bitch isn't still around.
So you believe that it's an inevitable race to the bottom, things can only get worse, so just make popcorn and laugh at anyone who "tries". "Trying" is for suckers. Great.
I believe that people lack the abilities to really look far enough ahead to actually work for the change that is needed. People are reactionary. We react to stimuli. The problem is that most of the stimuli are not what drives our direction these days.
We get caught up on personal pet peeves and try to "fix" them, but miss the bigger picture in which this is all happening.
I think BREXIT is a wonderful example of this. You have politicians, people who "should know how the world works" flail around aimlessly not realizing that the fights they chose no longer matter.
The same applies with Trump. He's not the problem, as I said, he's the Symptoms. Getting rid of him, won't change the direction we're on.
Humans are reactionary, we're driven by emotions, not by rational. We use our intellect to rationalize our emotional decisions.
Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" really does explain this rather well: https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/B008OEMNNQ/
The world never made a lot of sense to me. It was only two years ago that I found out I have a personality trait called Alexithymia (aka Emotional Blindness) and I never understood why most people reacted the way they did. Now I do.
My point is: By all means: Oppose what Trump stands for, but try to understand that he is not the problem. Getting rid of him in 2020 (and it won't happen before then) won't solve the problem that got him to where he is in the first place.
Maybe humans can surprise me, I have a great admiration for human ingenuity and resilience. But that's on a species level. I am pretty sure that even after a nuclear holocaust our species won't end, though it def. wouldn't be a world I would like to live in.
All the things over the years that you have decried about the software / technology scene? That all happens in every single aspect of our lives. Technology isn't an outlier, it's just another facet of the human condition.
Please go punch yourself in the face until you die.
And I should do this why?
He graduated from symptom to problem last November.
Perhaps your alexithymia would improve if you spent less time trolling.
Personal attacks instead of addressing the points.
You're way closer to Trump than you probably realize. Congrats for being part of the problem.
You weren't trolling? You opened with
You explained that you have trouble perceiving emotions. Do you think you are going to pick up that skill on the internet?
So it is trolling pointing out that you're trying to address the wrong problem? Yeah, you are like Trump, he yells of Fake News and you yell about Trolling.
You also did not reply to my original comment, you chose to reply to one several posts down in the thread after I expanded my original point. But sure, let's ignore that and instead talk about me being a troll.
Lastly, Alexithymia is a personality trait, that means my brain is wired that way. But I guess you would also tell an autistic person or someone with gender dysphoria that they just "need to learn $skill" and all will be good.
Outside of personal attacks you have brought absolutely nothing to this discussion. Just like Trump who goes on attacks when he has nothing to say.
As I said: Welcome, you're part of the problem.
"Trying" would only add more entropy.
Your "ray" was shining when he announced as candidate, when he was selected, throughout his campaign, when he was elected, from the bewildering array of dumb, illegal and unethical things he has done and said. Each time, the level of unquestioning or wilfully disbelieving support carried him through. There is no 'what would it take' moment for most of his active or complicit supporters until it's so far down a terrible path that you've left the forest, left the beach and are half way across the ocean floor.
the hatterSure, and now ask yourself this: If someone can act that way and still get all the support and be cheered on, what makes you think that our destination would be any different if there wouldn't be a Trump in the mix?
Do you seriously think he came out of nowhere and just magically conjured up all these people? Or did he tap into something that was always there and was used by other people in a much more subtle way?
That's the point. You can decry Trump all you want but he is a product of the society that elected him. People who oppose him still don't understand that getting rid of him won't change a thing, the only way you can really affect the change is to try and understand why so many people support him and give them an alternative.
The more you attack Trump, the more they will be in their resolve to keep him. Because you also attack them. So as a country figure out what makes people support him, then find a way to offer them an alternative that isn't Trump.
I think it's possible to simultaneously acknowledge that Trump's behavior is harmful, and that the indignation over his behavior is disproportionate to its consequences compared to stuff that he and the Republicans mostly agree on, such as dismantling the ACA and doing nothing about climate change.
He's a symptom of wider problems sure, but he's also part of the problem.
The office of the president is pretty powerless compared to most other Government leaders in the West. Power still mostly sits with Congress, so if you want to limit his problematic behaviour, make sure the right people get elected in the next mid-terms.
Powerless except for the whole nuclear-weapons thing.
Psychologically speaking people who actually "give in" to their anger are much less extreme in the end than those that constantly swallow it until they explode.
So from that standpoint I am less concerned with Trump and blowing up the world. I have no doubt though that he'll find a country or strip of land he'll bomb conventionally and with that he would be in good presidential company. I don't think there has been an American president since the 60s who hasn't at one point in time or another bombed some other country.
Nuclear though? For whatever you think of Trump, he's not suicidal. People make the mistake to ascribe any negative stereotype they can think off on Trump because it makes it easier to hate him.
With Bannon out of the Whitehouse, we'll see if he calms down a bit now.
My point was only that someone who has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons (which I understand the US president to have) is not 'powerless' in any reasonable definition. Although I realise that in orher senses the president may not be that powerful.
I saw a joking (not joking) thing a little while back speculating about Twitter paying to keep an actual human in the loop on 24/7 POTUS's account to try and be a last barrier between it and a random script kiddie provoking WW3.
I don't know if that's actually the case, nor whether I feel better about the world believing it is or not.
So Twitter is the "red phone" now. We're screwed!
Um, I'm not so sure I want Trump off Twitter. During his campaign, many people claimed that Trump's awfulness was just his campaign persona, and that he would become more "presidential" once elected. Twitter is the means by which he constantly proves those people wrong; it serves as a daily reminder of who he truly is. If Trump is eventually impeached or forced to resign in disgrace, I believe his tweets will have had a huge part in making that happen.
Twitter is the rope by which Trump is hanging himself; do we really want to take that away from him?
I think the problem is that we're well and truly past the point of giving enough rope. Like, "Okay, we get it. You're a piece of shit who shouldn't be president". The hangman is asleep at the lever.
If Trump were removed from twitter today, we would have more than enough tweet material to refer to. At this point, his continued presence on Twitter is like a bad sewer pipe leak contributing to an already neck-deep flooded basement.
Yet his staying in place shitting over the legacy of the USofA and the office of the Presidency is actually the best I can hope for here.
Say he DOES resign, or get impeached and removed from office. That means his shit-show of incompetence is gone and that Pence becomes POTUS. THAT repressive asshole actually knows how to work with the other branches of government to advance an agenda and might ACTUALLY get things done that can't just be reversed by the NEXT POTUS.
Say what you will about the dumpster-fire of an administration we have right now, his utter incompetence is preventing him from doing lasting legislative damage (so far). Presuming he doesn't get us into a war with someone that can actually fight back the actions he's taking so far can MOSTLY be undone with more executive orders in the future.
I'm sympathetic to that position: that impeachment or resignation would actually be worse, because right now Trump has alienated the entire Federal Government to the extent that he cannot actually accomplish much, so he's been contained, and we should just wait it out.
But, I'd put the odds of him having a tantrum some night and deciding to launch a nuke at, you know, NON ZERO. Pence's Handmaid's Tale agenda is at least not so spur-of-the-moment.
With Pence, we might have a State Department that was staffed. Is "let's just not have a government for four years" better than Pence? Uhh.... maybe? Probably not? Neither is what you'd call ideal.
Of course this isn't ideal. Of course the risk of POTUS deciding "fuck it, I get a lot of attention when I bomb things" and throwing a MOAB or a small scale nuke at Pyongyang is extreme. As I said - if he can somehow keep that instinct in check then his incompetence on the domestic front is a net win.
Pence will be less likely to blow shit up, but Pence will also be able to better get a legislative agenda through the various houses.
I guess in the long run I'm still just trying to figure out what flavor of dystopian hellscape we'll be living in. There are so many options...
You don't think we have Pence now? Other hastily leaving the room just before the Russians enter, he's got as much access to the ear of POTUS as the rest of the White House staff.
Given that POTUS seems only to remember the last thing he heard for five minutes or until he hears something else, it's down to a question of timing as to how much of Pence's agenda gets implemented.
I'm sure Pence is acting as a POTUS whisperer right now. Of course he is. But POTUS is the one that is throwing grenades at House and Senate leadership, calling the Intelligence Community Nazis (but not calling out ACTUAL Nazis), etc. Pence knows enough not to get into public shit-throwing fights with the rest of the Hill, POTUS currently doesn't seem to understand that throwing shit at these guys (and the lower minions of those chambers) is not how one cajoles them to his bidding.
Between all the trolling above, Michael made a couple of good points:
-Even if you get rid of Trump, the people who voted for him will still be there, so... what do you do with them?
-Get people to vote on the midterms. The GOP built most of its power starting at the local level: state legislatures, governors and also Congress. The sooner the Democrats take Congress back, the sooner you can impeach him. (This also has the advantage of serving as a check on future President Pence).
There was no trolling on my part. Just because I point out that things like taking Trumps Twitter microphone away is laughable does not mean I am trolling.
Reality is even if Trump would not be POTUS he could easily afford to get a different outlet, say, via Minds.com or even set up his own site.
Trump is trolling the "left" and people fall hook line and sinker for it because in a lot of way what is considered "left" these days is just a mirror of what Trump is. Trump was a Democrat for most of his life. He became a Republican because he got pissed at Obama and wanted to show him he could become President.
He, and Sanders, both only joined their respective parties because they had ambitions. Both understood the mood in the country way better than the media, pundits and politicians.
People like NT hate Trump not because of what he is, but what they think he is and that is often way too close to their own attitude towards the world.
I am making a prediction here: If people don't let go of their Trump fixation and figure out what he tapped into and provide an alternative he'll get another term in 2020, regardless if he is a Republican or not. If anything, if the Republicans kick him out he can use that as a badge of honor that the establishment has rejected him.
Some additional data points to consider:
1. iGeneration, the "safe space" and "trigger warning" generation. Voted predominantly for Trump, not HIllary. (Source: https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy-Adulthood-ebook/dp/B01N6ACK3B/r)
2. Calling Trump (and by implication his supporters) Racists, homophobes etc. will just cause people to "knuckle down". You want to get rid of his support you need to understand WHY these people voted Trump. Hint: It's nothing that you have ascribed to them so far, at least not for the masses.
3. Stop your moralizing. As long as you claim to have the moral high ground you will not reach the people. Read the Haidt book I linked in another post. He clearly explains what it is that has people knuckling down and circling the wagons. If you cannot be bothered to actually read the book, at least watch this video which explains to you how to engage with people in a positive way: https://youtu.be/X9KP8uiGZTs
4. Engage with the "other side" in a neutral way. Go to their online forums and discussion groups. Read their statements and opinions, don't preach. LISTEN. This goes straight to #2 & #3.
As long as you just spew hate towards the other side you're not going to win and you just give Trump another four years. You just need to look at the numbers about the vote last year to realize that what you're doing isn't working. The media and the "left" establishment has tried to demonize Trump and his supporters for 18+ months now. It has not worked, it WILL not work. Keep in mind: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. The media clearly hasn't learned that. If you want to affect change, it has to come from the bottom up and the first step is to stop seeing this as an "us vs. them".
Good luck.
That is all very fine and commendable and reasonable-sounding. Now, please explain to me these little details:
-How is a muslim-american citizen suppose to engage "in a neutral way" with people who call him a terrorist and want to deport him?
-How should a hispanic american citizen engage respectfully and "listen" to people who don't consider him a "real" american, despite the fact that he might actually have been born in the US?
Latte-sipping coastal élites can be annoying and self-righteous, I get that, but we are talking here about real human lives, you know. Maybe you hadn't realize that because, and now I'm guessing here, you are white.
Easy to preach tolerance when you are not the one being deported.
How is a muslim-american citizen suppose to engage "in a neutral way" with people who call him a terrorist and want to deport him?
You're making the mistake to look at the Trump supporters through the funhouse mirror the media is holding up. Think about this: The votes between Trump and Clinton were basically 50/50 split. Yeah, Hillary got a few more votes on the popular vote, but in the end it's basically a wash. So if your assumption is right then every other person you meet on the street is basically a racist. Do you really think you live in a country like this?
Much more likely is that most people don't fall into that category and that they had other reasons. You can continue to try and "engage" with the extreme fringe, but that's a folly and all you do is drive the centrist people away from any good point you have. The fastest way to get people to ignore you is if you call them names.
Easy to preach tolerance when you are not the one being deported.I like how you reduce this to skin colour. So just two notes:
1. I don't live in the US.
2. I am not a citizen of the country I currently reside in. So there is a pretty good chance I can get deported as well.
I live in the UK, not the US, but yes, that is what I think: there are a lot of racists. Really, a lot. What I once thought happened in the last 50 years was that racism and the other bigotries were finally going away. But I was wrong: what actually happened was that it became increasingly unacceptable to say racist / bigoted things. A very large number of people were still thinking this stuff but dare not say it out loud. Now it is becoming acceptable for them to say what they have always thought. The problem of racism was not fixed at all: idiot liberal elitists like me just thought it was.
It might be useful to also admit that when you start playing identity politics you automatically create divide. Along racial, sex and other identitarian lines.
The quest to "stomp out hate" is never going to succeed, the best you can hope for is "live and let live".
Any social movement follows a curve. You get the motivated people in who want to see change, it's a slog, they get pushback. Societal changes aren't easy to accomplish. Eventually though, with new generations, you start seeing change. More people come along for the ride. Up to a point. Eventually you reach the "good enough" stage and most people move on. The whole "mission accomplished" kind of stuff.
At that point the only ones left behind are the true believer and for them, nothing is ever good enough.
What happened here is that those people managed to actually break back into the mainstream, but now you have the other side pushing back in the exact same way. Which side will win? Who knows. Right now I'd say we have a decade or two of chaos ahead of us and it will be in a much different way than in the 60s.
Isn't your point 1 more or less nonsense, the vote in the 18-29 age range overwhelmingly went to the Democrats?
Similarly, on my side of the Atlantic, in the UK, younger people mostly voted Remain. This is so pronounced that the country is likely to be majority remain by the time we finally get round to leaving the EU, just as a result of leave voters dying off.
Not according to the source I cited. And that was based on a lot of studies around that generation.
Keep one thing in mind: When there are opinion polls being made about "who did someone vote for" they are more likely to say the "politically correct" thing. What happens in the voting booth though, stays in the voting booth.
There is also another possibility: Most of iGen may be more sympathetic to the Democrats but not to HIllary and they just stayed home while the ones that were leaning Republican / supporting Trump did vote.
But either way, don't make the mistake to paint an entire generation with one Brush. Clearly there is much more diversity within these groups than most people know / want to realize.
Except that exit polls from 2016 show a majority of young people voting Democrat, this doesn't square with only young Republicans turning out.
I agree with your statement about painting entire generations with one brush. Isn't that more or less what you did when you claimed they "Voted predominantly for Trump, not Hillary". Not to mention the phrase "the 'safe space' and 'trigger warning' generation", or the iGeneration label.
Sticking labels on a whole generation, and declaring that they behave identically is stupid. Looking at trends within specific demographics is less stupid. Exit polls show that younger people vote liberally more often than older people. This is the opposite of the thing you said.
Generational labels are useful for demarcation purposes and to discuss overall generational trends. It's no different than when people talk about "the old geezers who voted for BREXIT". I did not come up with that label. The iGen label denotes the generation after the Millennials and the first group that basically grew up "always connected".
As for exit polls. I think we can conclude that they are not really reliable when you have a close call on an election outcome. The BREXIT exit polls also hinted at a narrow win for remain only to then lose it when the votes were actually counted. I suspect that a lot of that has to do with the samples not really being broad enough to actually be reliable in closely contested races.
Exit polls show that younger people vote liberally more often than older people. This is the opposite of the thing you said.
Keyword here: more often, that does not mean always and the question is why would this younger generation have voted more Trump than Clinton? Do you object to the research done with regards to the iGen poll because you don't like the result of it or because you found a problem with their methodology?
Like with PaulJBis I have the impression your objection is driven more by you not liking the message rather than any actual objection to the result.
You said "iGeneration . . . Voted predominantly for Trump, not HIllary[sic]". My objection is that this doesn't match exit polling data.
I'm not really sure what survey you think you're citing, but assuming that it's the GenForward poll, my reading of that was more young people ultimately voted Republican than had been predicted by polling weeks before the election, not that the youth vote went to Trump.
Sure, I object to the message too, so far as the implied message is "Young people support Trump, therefore left wing parties need to bend over to right wing views if they want to win elections in the future", but my main point is that data doesn't back this up.
I linked the source above it came out of this book: https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy-Adulthood-ebook/dp/B01N6ACK3B/r
Specifically Chapter 10 on politics.
Sure, I object to the message too, so far as the implied message is "Young people support Trump, therefore left wing parties need to bend over to right wing views if they want to win elections in the future", but my main point is that data doesn't back this up.
I seriously have no idea how you read that in my post. But that's been the problem with the debate on here. Everybody has a very narrow view of what is going on and when that view isn't validated the next jump is to the extreme of the opposite spectrum.
If you want to know why things are the way they are. This is one point. The never ending polarization on both sides. The "left" calls everybody to the right of them a Nazi or alt-right, and anybody on the "right" calls anybody to the left of them "Marxists" "Stalinists" etc.
To be clear, that's not the vast majority of people, but the public discourse in the media and on social media clearly is in that section. If in lack of argument, just start the name calling.
So why are you and others so surprised that that someone like Trump wins? He exhibits all the same "qualities".
As an added data point, this popped up this morning:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/21/highly-ideological-members-of-congress-have-more-facebook-followers-than-moderates-do/
The most liberal and conservative members of the 115th Congress have attracted more Facebook followers than moderates, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
So, congrats. This is only going to get worse and it's pretty much down to everybody who partakes in the mud slinging.
Charlie Stross noted (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/08/blocked-on-blogging.html):
Folks, it's time to stop feeding the troll.
You will never get a spergelord to change his mind on anything, and it's getting boring.
Presumably you also oppose companies having terms of service that ban death threats and hate speech because "they will just do it somewhere else instead".
And the idea of satire -- wow.
This post really is bringing out the shithead drive-bys. I wonder what cesspool site they're coming from.
Yeah, I've had it with these idiots. Turning off comments.