Sounds like a whole bunch of stupid, all in one place.

This is some serious brown shirt shit.

Back to 1933 Deutschland.

Scared the living shit out of me, but anybody could see it coming.

Oh, I don't know about that. Sometimes stupid is just stupid. No need to make everything into the second act of "Cabaret".

Germany in the 1930's was a very different place than the US in the 20-teens. It was overwhelmingly white and Christian, and economically depressed to a level that we have not experienced in this country in the modern era (which includes the great depression). If Trump were to be elected, the fault would lie as much with the smart people who knew better and didn't vote as it would with these dolts.

was i supposed to read this and reconsider my opinions of trump voters?

"I told them both that I didn't feel safe conducting this interview any more, and they both left."

See, being ignorant *and* resentful is an all-ages affair.

@1: A whole bunch of willfully stupid.

My grandfather said his uncle heard Hitler at a rally once, he couldn't really remember what was said afterwards, but at the time he was totally swept up with the rest of the crowd, all feeling that Hitler was this golden Siegfried who was going to lead Germany into glory and restore their Teutonic pride and power that was being stomped into the ground by vengeful France and Britain with the Treaty of Versailles. He said it was the most frightening experience he ever had (especially since he was French!); Hitler was this totally nothing dude with funny facial hair, but he had so much charisma that everyone was mesmerized and brainwashed.

It's open season on males, particularly white males - we are now disposable. Voting for Hillary will only hasten that. This Bernie supporter will consider Trump an option, if nothing else we'll get the government we deserve.

@12

by "open season" do you mean "season where we not only abuse every other demographic (women, people of color, nonchristians), but we do it while whining that we are the victims"?

You poor poor white men! I mean, your the number 1 category of people for domestic abuse, you are number one in drug crimes, and yet because most cops, prosecutors are fellow white men, most people prosecuted and harassed for those offenses arent white men.

Sigh, if you didn't go around saying "it's open season on males, particularly white males", non-crazy people would talk to you, you'd be able to get laid (or at least a date!). Then you wouldn't feel so disposable!

Human frailty necessitates our cruelty. Surviving requires we displace others and consume resources out of proportion with our animal fellows. Indeed, the zeal to extract and exploit--typical of right-leaning politics--is our most genuine genetic course. It's exemplified in Trumpian politics. Regrettably, the consequences of that course are homicide, ecocide and, finally, suicide. The alternative--a human being managing life in an equilibrium with the biosphere--requires inquiry, empathy and education. It requires a commitment to nurture. Once successful indigenous--and currently successful--human communities recognize this. This commitment to nurture--the only alternative to suicide--is a sometimes tedious and tiring--and necessarily continuous--effort. This is Bernian politics.

@12: you were always disposable, just like anyone else. see: the last 30 years of corporate policy. fucking duh.

Wow! More evidence presented that younger demographics are leaving/not joining Democrats in drove and the comments essentially amounts to "stupid" and "lazy". Democrats are in big trouble.

Rich, I thought it was a fascinating post. Well done.

"Hurting my feelings is the real racism" - white guy @12

..lord...

I went in protest at the rally. It was fascinating and depressing. The only times I really saw it get out of hand were due to a few Trump supporters getting a little too heated. The police intervened and it stopped. What I did find disheartening was how many democrats I spoke to who had the mentality that if it was Hilary over Bernie that they may just choose not to vote. Please, please, please don't do this democrats. Think of your future, your children's future, every person of color, every gay person, every Islamic person, every woman you know, every person who is not rich. Trump is not the right person for this or any country regardless of who the alternate option is.

@24.. well... it sure SOUNDS like stupid. you know what they say about ducks.

@25 That water and insults roll off their backs?

Seriously though, in WA, the Democratic Party has been a prime purveyor of neoliberal, pro-corporate, regressive taxation, union busting, unemployment cutting bullshit. The Ds had house, senate, and governor rule for over a decade and couldn't fix this shit. Instead, they gave more tax breaks to Boeing, who proceeded to cut jobs anyways, while trying to come up with new revenue streams. Democrats here are awful because they see Republicans as the bad guys when they're just as guilty on a lot of the same topics. The only significant differences come with social issues like women's rights, LGBT and race relations.

@19: I don't think we can really draw such a broad generalization from such a small sample, particularly one so self-selected. It would be akin to concluding young people are widely embracing White Identity politics because you happened to encounter a few at some skinhead rally.

@27 I said "more evidence", because the Sanders' campaign has amply demonstrated that youth feels establishment Democrats like Clinton are out of touch with the needs of their generation. The analogy with sampling skinhead youth isn't accurate either unless you were to ask them what is their family political history and almost all of them told you their parents were Democrats.

I gotta agree with Raindrop here, at least sorta.

Trump didn't create the anxieties he is exploiting - the failures of our political order did. His wickedness is to misdirect blame away from the true culprits and towards various out groups. The Mexicans that are taking American jobs all still live in Mexico. And his wall will do nothing about that.

He also makes promises about getting companies to bring the jobs back, but its obvious which part of his message these crowds are responding to.

Naturally, *I* think they should all become groovy social democrats like me. And they should then all become Democrats and we'll squeeze the neo-liberal bankster creeps back out of the party and march onto the sunlit uplands of a Scandinavian style welfare state and the selective nationalization of certain industries. But I can't even sell that plan to a lot of genuine liberals. So oh well.

@24 "stupidity is a subjective observation"

sure, to stupid people.

Last election I was so worried that Romney would get elected because he was flip flopping and seemed to not have any firm principles! That seems so naive and quaint now.

For pity's sake, please don't sit home and refuse to vote. These people are angry and volatile, they're already burning black churches, mosques and minority businesses, and beating up non-white people. How long before they escalate to bombing and killing, once they figure out Trump don't give any more of a shit about them than the rest of the GOP money bags and their minions? Four years will be an ETERNITY if Trump gets elected - it'll will be bad whether Trump is really as nasty as the things he says or if he's just trolling for their votes. He CAN'T deliver any of the things he has promised them, even if he tries. Mexico isn't going to pay for any wall; the old manufacturing jobs are NEVER coming back from overseas; no one is going to deport all the immigrants - they are crucial for our economy, and ALL the businesses know that, just ask all the small farmers, fruit growers and meat processing people who couldn't find workers when the hate and the deportations started and they almost went out of business and had to let their fruits rot, their fields lay fallow and cut production! We can create lots and lots more jobs if we stop corporate welfare and go after the CEO tax cheaters. Our bridges, roads, rails and power grids are crumbling. We have several right here in WA that should have been replaced decades ago. It's a fucking Death-Bridge-Roulette to drive across our country. We don't have a very good earthquakes and volcanic eruptions monitoring system!! If Rainier blows everyone in Tacoma will be buried under 100+mi/hr pyroclasctic flows and lahars! Oklahoma has had over 100 earthquakes already this year and they are getting stronger! Our wildfire seasons are nonending all over the West, and now even the South and Midwest - Forest Services are spending most of their budget on fighting fires and has none left to service and stabilize the roads and prevent landslides, rock falls and avalanches; we don't have enough firefighters for them to take breaks, hurricanes and tornadoes seasons are starting earlier and ending later; deadly flash floods in South East and Texas, of all places; and unending droughts everywhere. We are WOEFULLY UNPREPARED FOR THE NEW NORMAL EXTREME WEATHER!! A wildfire like the one currently raging in Alberta will KILL a lot of people here - Canadians are more disciplined and have much more trust in their government than us, read the stories: when they were told to evacuate, they left with just what they had on and their pets! American families would delay several hours to pack up their SUVs with all their stuff and take several cars and be trapped in the inferno! There will be people who will claim it's just the environmentalists and the liberals lying to kill fracking and refuse to leave!

If we can have a fair, SANE tax policy, there'll be more jobs created for the foreseeable future from fixing our crumbling infrastructure, removing lead, water policies, and in new sustainable energy sector than we can fill, without having to victimize women and minorities. You can keep disliking her, you WON'T be able to move to Canada - they have enough problems to fix after all the Harper's years, PEOPLE WILL DIE! Just hold your nose and VOTE!!!

Did you know that if we can't keep the temp rise to under 2 degrees C, 50 percent of birds will be gone. Please go read the Audubon Report. Imagine how unbearable the world would be WITHOUT Orcas, Belugas, Hummingbirds, bees and butterflies! It's already too late for some species, we do not have FOUR YEARS. I voted for Nader because I was in college and idealistic. We all know what happened there. This will be worse, stop the Trumpocalypse, VOTE!

Mainstream national polls consistently, repeatedly, and uniformly show Bernie beating Trump in a presidential election by wider, safer margins than Hillary would. Assuming purely for the sake of argument that Trump is indeed a homegrown Mussolini in the making, why would Democratic Party leaders want to run Hillary rather than Bernie against him? My only explanation is that they consider Bernie's rather conventional social-democratic proposals to be a greater threat to their interests than Trump's ostensibly fascistic populism is ... which should tell you something important about whom the Democratic Party's leadership actually represents. (Hint: it ain't us.)

@35 (blip): I actually gave your response serious consideration.

I think Hillary's unexploited vulnerabilities ("free" trade and war-mongering, to name only the ones most likely to be tapped by Trump) are actually much more numerous and serious than Bernie's (being a "socialist" whose programs are derided by corporate hired guns). On the other hand, Hillary is the conglomerate media's handpicked heir to the crown, and their news outlets are a lot friendlier to her kind of vulnerability than they are to Bernie's.

Even so, I suspect Bernie's stronger favorability and electability ratings would hold. Americans have made some bold progressive choices lately, from electing a black president to flipping on marriage equality. With the "recovery" proving entirely illusory for Americans on the lower half of the totem pole, maybe they're ready to vote for a guy who's promising a New New Deal -- even if he does persist in calling himself a "democratic socialist" (or maybe in the case of young voters, because of it).

(By the way, Bernie's calling himself a socialist seems to drive real socialists batshit. Seeing as how all of his proposals are pretty mainstream social-democratic stuff, I'm really not sure why he does it. He's at least managed to begin de-demonizing the socialist label and take some of the air out of red-baiting, so I guess that's something. But what the hell; if the French Socialist Party can still call itself socialist, anyone can.)

#12:
As ANOTHER Bernie supporter(and a white male), let me be the latest to tell you to STAY THE FUCK AWAY from the Sanders campaign. We are ANTI-racist, ANTI-sexist, and ANTI-fascist- and you don't have anything to do with what Bernie or the near-unanimous majority of his supporters stand for and will be fighting for all the way to Philadelphia. We don't want your hate and we don't want your paranoia.

And you are simply, totally, delusionally wrong.

White men are not disposable. It's just that we are no longer any more important than the majority of the human race who are not white males. And the rest of the human race are not our enemies. All we need to do is accept that this world exists just as much for everybody else as it does for us. We lose nothing by doing that.

Let's make the world we need, rather than whining about the unjust world that is dying and can never be preserved.