This is the only correct way to play this game. If the stock market raises 5000 points under Trump or a future Democrat, I will not care. Same thing if it lowers. I'm not going to push any story like that along, I'm not going to promote it, nothing, and you would be wise to do the same.

Why?

It's confirmation bias. People will take what they want away from it. The Dow has raised over and over again, it has even raised 5000 points. http://twitter.com/PressSec/status/942917780793413632 But as usual, this has turned into nothing for wage workers. People use it for their own biases and to serve their own perceptions, illustrating that, I've got a picture of a person who said last year the Dow is raising because it is in the tank for Hillary and that same person retweeting the Trump saying the Dow is raising and it is to "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN"...



The stock market has also been wrong, very wrong, like when there was a rally and it was because stockbrokers predicted a "quick Iraq war"... oops.

The stock market is, quite simply, a form of phrenology for the economy. And if you want to reach out to the disaffected out there, including people who don't generally vote and won't see any of this skyrocketing Dow's returns, then let's all give a thumbs down to using the stock market as an indicator of the economy. Now and forever, regardless of who is President.

I've started seeing well meaning people and conservatives say we shouldn't come out against Trump and the ever-increasing joke of our increasingly illegitimate federal government because we're playing into Putin's hands or that we're being divisive for his benefit.

I dare to say that, at most, the US people being divided is only secondary, if even that.

If you don't want to play into Putin's hands...

Stop normalizing oligarchy - Let's start saying the Dow or the stock market is no oracle. Stop saying that it's success or lowering actually means anything other than what it means for those countries. It really does not benefit you, just the high level shareholders, oligarchy... just like Putin's government.

Stop being stupid - No, national security is not "There is a mass shooter, sure, but the mass shooter is white and doesn't pray in a funny way, so... win." If Trump says something dumb then excuse it, say he said something dumb and he is incorrect. Period.

Stop being paranoid - The whole willingness to trust Putinists over your neighbors because they're liberal, or if they're Muslim, or if they have the audacity to say their lives matter (The horror... the horror) needs to stop.

Being divided is simply the means; paranoid of the 'other' America, being stupid, and being OK with oligarchy is the end. And if there was a better means to achieving that end, then that is what they would be doing. Remember that.

In political science, legitimacy is the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime. Whereas "authority" denotes a specific position in an established government, the term "legitimacy" denotes a system of government—wherein "government" denotes "sphere of influence". An authority viewed as legitimate often has the right and justification to exercise power. Political legitimacy is considered a basic condition for governing, without which a government will suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this is not the case, unpopular régimes survive because they are considered legitimate by a small, influential élite. In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BC), the political legitimacy of a ruler and government was derived from the Mandate of Heaven, and unjust rulers who lost said mandate therefore lost the right to rule the people.

In moral philosophy, the term "legitimacy" is often positively interpreted as the normative status conferred by a governed people upon their governors' institutions, offices, and actions, based upon the belief that their government's actions are appropriate uses of power by a legally constituted government.

The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit consent of the governed: "The argument of the (Second) Treatise is that the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of the governed." The German political philosopher Dolf Sternberger said that "legitimacy is the foundation of such governmental power as is exercised, both with a consciousness on the government's part that it has a right to govern, and with some recognition by the governed of that right". The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset said that legitimacy also "involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society". The American political scientist Robert A. Dahl explained legitimacy as a reservoir: so long as the water is at a given level, political stability is maintained, if it falls below the required level, political legitimacy is endangered.

Link

* Are we at the stage where our government only has legitimacy because this small elite says it does? If this is true, are we doing ourselves any favors by going along with this charade?

* In terms of moral philosophy, the DC government's legitimacy should clearly be in question when we had legislators more worried about what their donors thought about the tax bill than their constituents. Donors are not anywhere in the Constitution by the way. Are we prepared to call this out? If not here, then where is the line?

* We keep seeing polls and the actions of legislators widely diverge from each other: War on Drugs, Planned Parenthood, and more. What is the reason for this? Why is this sustaining itself? Is it because we are letting it?

* Are we really going to have a Senator who says the rich should get tax cuts because everyone else just spends their money on "booze, or women, or movies" and we have the possibility of having another Senator who says America was great when we had slavery? In what version of our government is this the "most appropriate and proper" way to govern?

* Questioning legitimacy and withdrawing consent to be governed does not require revolution or even bloodshed... but we need to be brave. Can we do it?

We've got a Republican Party and a right wing that is...

* Becoming increasingly friendly with an ultra-right that thinks The Purge and Punishment Park are how-to videos

* Demonizing the poor, refugees, Muslims, immigrants, the GLBTQ, racial minorities, and black people who have the audacity to say their lives matter

* OK with a degenerate madman controlling our nuclear weapons and being our country's spokesman

* Turning being sick and/or not being able to pay for healthcare into the 'other', the whole "As long as you're not *that*, you're fine" kind of thinking

* Turning the idea of "national security" into "Well, at least the guy doing the shooting isn't a Muslim. So it's *just* mass murder."

Seeking high road points is fine and dandy but they don't give me comfort when I realized this could have been my nephew who also has a rare disease or when I told an Iranian coworker to be careful when she was taking a vacation... because I had the "travel ban" in my mind.

"We take the high road" works for smears and schoolyard taunts, not this... for the 'other side of aisle' is girded for war, not disagreement, but the wholesale eradication of anything deemed 'liberal' and even too 'other'... and the only way to respond to that is to play dirty. Period.

I think we need to start looking at this option. They simply are not the bodies as described as per the US Constitution, but have degenerated into mockeries of it.

Common defense and general welfare - Article I, Section 8. I'll tell you what national security isn't - "There's a mass shooter but he didn't shout "Allahu Ackbar", so it's *just* a mass murder." If this is your idea of public safety, then you aren't contributing to the defense of this country. Period.

We have placed the interests of few (The stock market or as we are seeing in the tax bill, donors) over the interests as the American people as a whole. This is not what representative government is about.

And the interests of the people and what we see our government do keep widely diverging... support for Planned Parenthood, the War on Drugs, healthcare, etc.

An election is not going to fix this. Not by itself. The problem is systemic, and so there must be a systemic way to push back. That means forming organizations and telling bodies overseas to stop recognizing the DC state within a state as a legitimate government. That means having elections free from the occupying party of Trump, McConnell, and Ryan. I have no illusions Trump can be removed from power, but we can take away from the power of the President, so we have to crack the bully pulpit... express disbelief just because the President says it, and yes, leave your "respect for the office" by the door.

We have to withdraw our consent.

Ten GOP exposed as a Putinist implant. Kind of funny that they could fool a "Navy intel officer" and member of the "alt-right", right?

Make sure to check links and take lots of screen caps of conservatives falling for that e-polonium right here before they eventually do that whole silent scrubbing thing they like doing like how no InfoWars person ever called Sandy Hook a hoax:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22ten_gop+suspended+site%3Atwitter.com

We had Bush and his horrible policies for 8 years and then suddenly on January 21, 2009, no Republican really supported Bush, all of the sudden it became OK to say Bush wasn't the messiah, nobody really thought the Iraq war was a great idea, nobody voted for him twice, oh yeah he didn't become President on September 12, 2001, that he wasn't selected by God himself, that it's OK to criticize him now, etc.

I don't want this to happen with Trump supporters, you feel me?

If one day becomes the first day of the post-Trump era, I don't want to see any Republican or conservative suddenly saying "But I never really supported Trump" and it going unchallenged.

You say "Prove it, or you are a liar!" Tell them to cite something or their credibility is on the line.

Bookmark this thread, keep it in your hearts.

(Plus giving a little hope that there is a post-Trump era at all.)

There's a reason why Steve on the corner with the sign the world is ending next week for the past year now is not a meteorologist, there's a reason why Walid Shoebat is not considered an expert in national security, and there's a reason why you don't call up that 13 year old kid (or 31 year old conservative) who claims to be an ex-navy seal and is coming to find you to commit grievous assault on you for news on the technology circuit.

They're not reputable and they're not experts.

With Trump's long train of false statements and the whole "he's just trolling you" with his coming storm remark, he is clearly in that camp above.

There is nothing forcing any media organization to cover any item by or of Trump or his cohorts at all.

Now it's time to make a request of the media, if they want to be viewed as reputable, then any claim that is made by a member of the Trump administration and they plan to include it in a news cycle at all, then they need verification that that the claim was made and that it is accurate.

The Trump administration may have destroyed the credibility of the executive branch and the respect for the Oval Office, but there is a real chance for a real media to rise from the ashes.

So yes...

We've got a generation of conservatives fed on right wing and fake news media telling them that they should see it as preferable to scratch their eyes out than to take direction from a liberal, minority, or some other "other"

We've got people who think you are insane if you tell them the truth that the south did not win the civil war

We've got people who think "national security" simply means returning to the days when spree shooters were white and most definitely not! Muslim!

But we're not supposed to call it out, we're not supposed to call it racism, we shouldn't even be talking about it according to pundits and politicians.

This is what we are up against though, this is what our democracy is up against.

If we can't fight this, then we are not going to win. Period.

Now why post something like this? I'll tell you why. There was a guess as to just what some of the Russian propaganda being shoveled into Facebook was. I took some of these images and used a Russia-based search engine (Yandex), In addition to a site that was just coincidentally called "culturekill . com", I also found this article which is how we are seen according to Putinist propaganda.

Let's not call this a civil war though, it's not, if you're trying to divide Americans, if you're trying to turn law abiding Muslim Americans into an enemy, if you are pushing fake news against people who say that black lives matter, etc.; then you're not the south vs the north in a second civil war, you are an agent of Putin. It's as simple as that. This isn't a civil war now, you are the tip of the spear for the Kremlin, for the people who killed Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Magnitsky, for the people who blew up MH-17; you are fighting for a nation, but believe me, it isn't your version of the United States.

Spread the word.