What frickin' bizarro world did I wake up in?

[elisi]

I feel like Cordy:

Cordelia: Spike's a hero and you're CEO of Hell, Incorporated. What frickin' bizarro world did I wake up in?

Seriously. What IS this?

Anderson Cooper is trying to normalize ultra-racist Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck is vehemently protesting it. This is our world now, folks. https://t.co/TfM6AxClCO

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 16, 2016

Also, Jon Stewart argues against the idea that all Trump voters are racist (I have not watched it, but the ONTD crowd are NOT happy)

Here's Miss Manners explaining the problem (x):



FYI I have added two more tags:

darkest timeline (usa)
This is for stuff to do with Fuckface von Clownstick and the fallout from the administration

never give up never surrender
This is for stuff you can do, how to protest etc etc.

And finally, re. normalisation, I went and found this passage:

There are now a good many summer visitors to the village. The bathing-beach by the pier, with its array of banners, begins to look like a medieval camp. Each family has its own enormous hooded wicker beach-chair, and each chair flies a little flag. There are the German city-flags – Hamburg, Hanover, Dresden, Rostock and Berlin, as well as the National, Republican and Nazi colours. Each chair is encircled by a low sand bulwark upon which the occupants have set inscriptions in fir-cones: Familie Walter. Stahlhelm. Heil Hitler! Many of the forts are also decorated with the Nazi swastika. The other morning I saw a child of about five years old, stark naked, marching along all by himself with a swastika flag over his shoulder and singing “Deutschland über allies.”

The little Doctor fairly revels in this atmosphere. Nearly every morning he arrives, on a missionary visit, to our fort. “You really ought to come round to the other beach,” he tells us. “It’s much more amusing there. I’d introduce you to come nice girls. The young people here are a magnificent lot! I, as a doctor, know how to appreciate them. The other day I was over at Hiddensee. Nothing but Jews! It’s a pleasure to get back here and see real Nordic types!”
Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Novels

Oh, and BRITISH PEOPLE! Here's a petition for you:

Do not make Nigel Farage a lord
IT HAS LESS THAN 9000 SIGNATURES!

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

It's always fascinating for me, in times like these, to watch the evolution of my own thoughts in relation to the mood around me and how quickly they start diverging. I mean, obviously I was deeply upset about this. Still am, probably. I have zero doubt that there is some fucked-up shit coming down the pike for us. But at the same time it is so hard to sustain strong emotion, even about this, and my brain is already going down deep tangents about the kinds of profound change that this is probably going to bring on and finding it exciting?

I mean, it's not like, that's it, the Nazis have won and it's all over. Everything in society is reacting, shifting. In the same way that Trump can be read as a result of Obama, I think the end result of Trump will be similarly strong and opposite. I think both parties are going to be profoundly changed and re-aligned. I think quite possibly the balance of power between our branches of government will change. I think quite possibly we'll see more states reaching for greater independent powers. I think our sense of who we are as Americans has already profoundly changed. I think the mentality of American exceptionalism is probably dead soon. I think about the NY Times noting that white Christians are now a minority and all those stories about how white people figured out how to vote as a block and the stories about how how we're feeling now is how minorities feel all the time and I'm seeing that we're realizing and coping with the feeling that everybody in America is a minority right now. We're learning as a society right now how to deal with having a country with no majorities. It's not happening thirty years in the future, it's happening now.

I think this profoundly changes our relationship to media. You see it happening already, in the conversations about how did this happen? What was the media's culpability here? What is the responsibility of outlets like Facebook to police fake news? Trump has threatened the press, wants to tamp them down. I think it just as likely he raises a beast. This may save journalism. Probably it won't look like journalism as we knew it, but I think it's going to be a vital institution for us in the years ahead.

And I happened to be reading a book going into the election about the way that connections (resources, trade, data, migration) are taking over from nation-states as the defining organization of our world. Part of this is the idea that the world is now domination by inter-connected mega-cities whose residents feel more like citizens of the global city than they do their individual countries. A very real danger of this, the author points out, is that the cities abandon their hinterlands and these areas are completely left out of the new world--that one sat heavy in my stomach last Tuesday night. I'll tell you, for all the talk of red states and blue states we've had for twenty years, this time feels different. The palpable sense that the coast cities are a fundamentally different place from everywhere in between and the residents of both have no understanding of each other's situations--very real. I don't know how you fix that. Maybe, down the road, the country does break up. It's always been a somewhat unwieldy conglomeration.

And, in conclusion, there is a deep core of me that loves change for its own sake.

[elisi]

Hmmm. In the car at the moment, so not able to reply in depth... But yes to the vast gulf between city & country. Immediately post- Brexit London wanted to become independent.

The other thing I've thought about is how everything is out in the open - no denying the racism now! :(

Ok, we've arrived, will get back to you later.