2016 United States Election

[Cerin]

You are not frightened of Trump because you think his bile is a aimed at groups to which you do not belong and you risk nothing if he comes to power. You can afford to not be frightened.

It should not be necessary to explain to you that you do not know the why of anything I think or feel. Please stick to explaining yourself, which is all any of us is qualified to do.

And Donald Trump's supporters doesn't get stampeded because of the nonsense Fox News, Glenn Beck, the candidate himself, etc, fed them?

Yes, of course they do.


edit grammar

[Frelga]

Cerin, I am not talking about how you feel. I am talking about why you can afford to feel as you do. If the prejudice and fear that Trump is whipping up spills into violence, it will not be directed at you.

Not at first, anyway.

[Griffon64]

And Donald Trump's supporters doesn't get stampeded because of the nonsense Fox News, Glenn Beck, the candidate himself, etc, fed them?

Yes, of course they do.

Does that frighten you?

[Cerin]

Cerin, I am not talking about how you feel.

I didn’t say you were talking about how I feel. I stated how I feel. You presumed to tell me why I feel as I feel:

You are not frightened of Trump because you think his bile is aimed at groups to which you do not belong and you risk nothing if he comes to power.

You theorize that white people don’t fear Trump because they don’t interpret his remarks as a threat to themselves, i.e., they can afford not to fear him. That’s a perfectly valid theory, but please state it as your own idea, not as the rationale behind my feelings. You are not entitled to speak for me. I am the only one who has the right to state what I feel, or to try and explain why I feel it.

And Donald Trump's supporters doesn't get stampeded because of the nonsense Fox News, Glenn Beck, the candidate himself, etc, fed them?

Yes, of course they do.

Does that frighten you?

Yes, the manipulative power of the media is frightening, from whichever side it comes.

[Frelga]

I'm not speaking for you, I'm talking about you.

Moving on.

There has been some speculation about the discrepancies between the amount of money Trump claims to have collected in his fundraising and the amount that his campaign has spent. This seems to shed light on the issue.

https://plus.google.com/+AndreasSchou/posts/XZJB7vfoSBu

I must note that the linked post does not include a supporting link at the moment. This is most likely an oversight, as Mr. Schou's posts are usually backed by respectable sources.

As it turns out, we now have the answer to where Trump's campaign donations are going. And it wasn't to his campaign: after admin and fundraising costs, the Trump campaign's largest expenditure was hats. From a financial perspective, his campaign seems weirdly like a hat website which advertises by running a guy for president.

But that's only 1.8m. Where did the rest of it go? As it turns out, he isn't repaying his loans. He's just being dishonest about how many donations he's gotten.

Partisan political campaigns in the United States can set up what's called a JFC: a joint fundraising campaign. These are almost always split down the middle. But Trump's are unusual, and I suspect the reason was to make his campaign look more healthy than it actually is. That money is being split 80/20 between the RNC and the Trump campaign, but because the JFC funds are attributed to the presidential campaign until they're disbursed to the party, 100% of those funds were attributed to Trump on last month's fundraising reports.

Edited to expand the quote and to add the Fortune link with the same basic information.
http://fortune.com/2016/08/22/trump-campaign-spending/

[Griffon64]

Yes, the manipulative power of the media is frightening, from whichever side it comes.

On that we can agree.

Democracy comes with the responsibility to critically evaluate the information the press provides. If you have a inquisitive audience applying rigorous vetting to what they're told, you don't have this problem. But that kind of thing isn't taken too seriously in this democracy from what I can see. I'm sure sites like Snopes.com turn a tidy profit, basically by calming down endless strings of breathless Chicken Littles who cannot tell a clickbait fake site from a real news source. People tend to follow their favorite media, the one that reenforces their favorite echo chambers. More so, they are often actively hostile towards the media if it reports something they don't want to hear.

If I simplify the problem, I arrive at the conclusion that the media performs adequately, for all its deficiencies. The fault lies not with them but with their audiences. You can usually find the truth, in time, by evaluating reports from different sources. Or taking the time to read source material for yourself in the really important cases.

Know what frightens me? The power of mob mentality. And man, does social media make it easy nowadays for people to air that vileness. Shielded by anonymity, the worst nature of man is front and center nowadays.

I'd like to see a supporting link on that post, Frelga. Seems it would be an interesting read. That post gels with the kind of thing I've been reading about the Donald Trump campaign, that the money isn't exactly streaming in.

EDIT: Ah, there it is. A link straight to the source material, my favorite kind of link, as I just addressed above.

[Cerin]

I'm not speaking for you, I'm talking about you.

You spoke to me and for me. You stated why I am not frightened of Trump (something you have neither the right nor the understanding to do).

As for talking about another member of the board, that would be rude, and it's something we don't do here, to my knowledge.

[JewelSong]

You theorize that white people don’t fear Trump because they don’t interpret his remarks as a threat to themselves, i.e., they can afford not to fear him. That’s a perfectly valid theory, but please state it as your own idea, not as the rationale behind my feelings. You are not entitled to speak for me. I am the only one who has the right to state what I feel, or to try and explain why I feel it.

Okay, Cerin. I'll bite. What IS the rationale behind your feelings? Why do you NOT fear Trump or, to be more specific, why do you seem unconcerned about his popularity with certain groups of people and the effect of that popularity on the country?

[Cerin]

Okay, Cerin. I'll bite. What IS the rationale behind your feelings? Why do you NOT fear Trump or, to be more specific, why do you seem unconcerned about his popularity with certain groups of people and the effect of that popularity on the country?

Jewel, I wasn't trying to get someone to 'bite'; I was defending my right to speak for myself. As you know (you were involved in the conversation), I've tried before to explain my reaction to Trump; it was a fruitless exercise then, and I have no reason to believe it would be anything other than a waste of time now.

[JewelSong]

Well, then, I guess that settles things.


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[anthriel]

That post gels with the kind of thing I've been reading about the Donald Trump campaign, that the money isn't exactly streaming in.

I think he's going to lose, and he's going to lose big. If he's farting around about how much money is coming in, that's because he's trying to seem more popular than he is. All in a day's work for a politician, methinks.

Hah. I just called him a politician. Them's fightin' words!

[JewelSong]

There is a not-too-impossible-to-believe train of thought that Trump actually WANTS to lose. That he was primarily attracted to the *idea* of running for President and the attention it gave him. And now that things have become real, it's just too much work for him to contemplate.

I sort of half-believe this. Even if he isn't consciously *trying* to lose, I wonder if he isn't deliberately sabotaging it.

My brother thinks he is getting material for a new reality show after the elections.

[Alatar]

[Inanna]

Brilliant.

Meanwhile, France makes an ass of itself over the Burkini.

[River]

Brilliant.

Meanwhile, France makes an ass of itself over the Burkini.

I'll just leave this here. Warning: salty language.

[axordil]

A little off topic, but funny.

[Inanna]

Very funny.

[River]

A little off topic, but funny.

I know. I just couldn't help myself though. Sometimes things just appear on your Facebook feed and, well, you know...

[Alatar]

This is just depressing to watch

https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/v ... f=NEWSFEED

[Frelga]

This is just depressing to watch.

Is there any way to make this a byline for the whole thread?