Comments

1

The suggestion that Joe Scarborough is a left-leaning media type is bizarre.

2

How could anything done by Americans, in a baseball stadium of all places, be un-American?

3

Those aren't liberals.

5

There's never been such a blatant display of this liberal obsession with manners that I can think of. I think this was a bridge too far for average liberal media consumers- they can see that their media personalities and gatekeepers are way out of touch. Everyone knows booing Trump is good.

This is an extension of the liberal desire for things to "go back to normal" and for "adults in the room" to save us. Apply the same lesson to Obama and Clinton, please. There have been a prisons for immigrant families for years- ICE raids terrorizing immigrant neighborhoods is not a new thing, we called Obama "deporter-in-chief". Family separation by policy is an example of the GOP being more evil, but well-mannered stylish lesser evil should not deserve respect. And I don't just mean to avoid hypocrisy- it actually matters. A lot of the powers Trump has now came out of Obama era - he refused to hold Bush accountable, refused to hold industry accountable, etc. The Bushes and Clintons are chummy now. Solidarity among the ruling class is strong.

I'm glad for liberals to see what bullshit all these civility / tone arguments are, but I hope they extend them beyond Trump and let go of their respectability politics altogether including their defense of mainstream Democrats.

BTW regarding the Tulsi conversation last week (why a Hindutva aligned politician would have legitimate reason to favor Russian politics in MENA), here's Clinton herself- the one that accuses her of being a Russian asset- explaining the US role in the creation and exportation of salafism. She talks a lot about Regan's policies in the 80s and says nothing about her husband's similar training/funding of salafists in Eastern Europe in the 90s, but the gist is the same. She also skips over her own state dept policies which contributed to the rise of ISIS in Libya, Iraq & Syria, but to be fair these clips are while that was all happening so you can't expect a retrospective. Immediately relevant to Tulsi- she describes ISI's role which is the foundation for a lot of the shit going down in Kashmir under Modi. (Again this is not to defend Tulsi nor Putin- I prefer an antiimperialist third option and think they are all thugs, but it's simply true that the US has often been on the "wrong" side during the War on Terror. There's another deep dive you could take on what al Baghdadi was doing in Idlib in the first place, but that's another topic).
https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status/1188531665846583301

8

While boos and derisive laughter are straight to the point and unmistakable, chanting “Lock him up!” was the perfect rejoinder, considering how Flynn plead guilty after having led chants to imprson Hillary.

9

Outta the way Peck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luTlm7Pc1Ko

10

Boo this man! BOOOOOOOOOOOO

11

This speaks volumes about how trump is truly perceived, and if anything our response should not be to judge each other but to recognize that it's acceptable to unite in the face of the unprecedented attacks on our institutions committed by him and his cadre of villains.

12

I am absolutely stunned at what an utterly clueless comment that is coming from Nate Silver, of all people. I honestly thought better of the guy. Just shows a complete lack of perspective, context, an inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes or comprehend how real people--real people with lives--actually think.

At least now we know how any crowd of Americans should greet Donald Trump from here on.

13

Haha. Sad snowflake Trump. Respect is earned, and you have to give it to get it. This President has shown nothing but disdain for this country.

Lock his ass up.

14

Sorry, decorum and respect for the office of the presidency rather than who occupies it trumps raw passion. When they go low, we go high.

Let's look to our better angels. Joe Scarborough and Chris Coons are right.

15

@14

I respect the office of the presidency by booing the impostor and the infidels who defile it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRx6_RDKWoc

19

First: It's Washington DC. The most liberal town in the country, all packed together in a stadium. If they wanted allies they should have gone to Oklahoma.

Second: What little decorum and dignity and honor may have been left in the office of the presidency (and there was very little after Clinton, Nixon, and a few others) was flushed down the shitter as soon as Donnie moved in. There is no dignity left in the presidency, much less this entire country. Go ahead and let the world see how much he's disrespected, hated, insulted, and laughed at. It's no less than he's done for the country himself.

20

@18: You owe your mother an apology for wearing dirty underwear.

21

The reason for all the pearl-clutching by elites is that this jeering arose spontaneously from a crowd. In the world they inhabit - populated entirely by people who would actually pay Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax - nothing is scarier than an angry mob.

22

@12,

That threw me too. I actually double checked the twitter handle, wondering if someone was spoofing Silver or something. It'd have made sense if people were chucking beer bottles at him or even just being vulgar, but they were freaking booing and yelling a silly chant that HE actually popularized at HIS rallies. I'm in complete agreement that our country is dangerously divisive and seemingly getting worse, but this is pretty freaking milquetoast, even for us on the left.

23

Three million cheers for the fans who chanted "Lock him up!" Good on you folks!!! It's about time Trump heard people other than those who attend his rallies. And, were it not for his secretive cronies, money, and high-powered connections, he would--and should--have been locked up years ago. Here's to you fans who chanted! Your action epitomizes the term "good citizenship."

24

@19 Eh, the crowd may have had a slight leftward tilt but this is a sporting event, not the symphony. Pretty good indication of what a good cross-section of the populace thinks of our cartoon wannabe despot I'd say.

25

@14: Please let us know when right-wingers generally, and Republicans specifically, start following your advice concerning any President they themselves did not vote to elect.

Meanwhile, you can amuse us by giving them the full force of your tut-tutting scolds — and by quoting, in full, any responses they deign to give you.

26

HAHAHAHA!
Nationals Park was full of "Liberals and leftists?" Have these stupid motherfuckers ever gone to a ball game, let alone one in Nationals Park before?

Respect for the "office?" HAHAHAHA. Booing a president is patriotism at it's finest and always has been.

This used to happen all the god damned time when the American power elite actually had to occasionally occupy the same air as the rest of us. Now of course they can scuttle about from protected enclave to protected enclave and use digital media to dictate what they want.

But this is what happens when rightwing dipshits like Trump leave the bubble. And it should.

27

@25: Trumpists never will. But that doesn't negate the virtue of pursuing an elevated disposition.

28

Boeing, i mean, booing, Ceaușescu, i mean, Trump, off the stage sounds delicious. It's also perfectly democratic, h8rs be damned.

In Ceaușescu's case, the helicopter pilot of his getaway vehicle landed in a field to get him arrested, after which he and his wife were tried and shot by the military.

Thoughts and prayers.

29

I loved it, he deserves to be reminded every day how much America despises him. He should thank his lucky stars that all he's getting is boos, Reagan got shot by a hater and Trump has a lot more haters than any other president in my lifetime.

30

@25,

That's a fair point.

By the way, googling politics and sports attendance I ran across this slightly old (2012) but still cool bubble chart of sports, political leanings, and voter turnout:

https://www.businessinsider.com/politics-sports-you-like-2013-3

The chart doesn't say what the size of the bubbles indicate but I'd guess larger bubbles = more fans/viewers.

Doesn't really surprise me that golf is both highly republican and highly politically engaged. DID surprise me at first that NBA has way more democrat fans than any other major sport by far.

31

Er, I mean @24, not 25 in my last post

32

Mizz Liz - I'd have thought not recognizing who he was (and then acting cold and unconcerned on being told) would be more wounding. Boos are easy to turn to profit.

I didn't realize you're an expert on Ms Gabbard. I almost regretted putting her on my Never List; she seemed a plausible winner had she been nominated.

33

I'm curious when this supposed "reverence" for the office of the President happened or was deserved?

Was when the presidents endorsed slavery? Or when the president was forced to declare war on half his own country and after slaughtering his fellow Americans for quite some time was murdered by someone (with such reverence) while enjoying a show? Was it when US presidents had an official policy of genocide against native populations for the better part of 50 years? Or maybe it was presidents coddled Klansman or locked up Japanese Americans? Or when Presidents bombed Southeast Asia into the stone age murdering 2.5 million Vietnamese in the process? Or when a president ignored a disease that killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens just because they were undesirable or gay? Or when the president lied to get us into a $3 trillion dollar war in Iraq that ended up killing a couple hundred thousand innocent people?

When was the deserved traditional reverence supposed to have happened?

34

Those DC residents are clearly wrong. They should have spoken to their congressmen and/or senators and had them vote against trumps policies. That's the American way.

35

@31: I thought you meant to refer to @27.

36

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWjt6LGhHsI

37

Nevertheless, I like Brian Tyler Cohen's take on things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dXeS6dg0hs

38

Great comments.

"Or when the president lied to get us into a $3 trillion dollar war in Iraq that ended up killing a couple hundred thousand innocent people?" --ProfessorHistory

Minor quibble -- it was the dick Cheney who dragged us into that war. Gee dubya spoke the
truth when he said, "That dick lied to me." But yeah, they all suck. Some more than others.

Is it time for a Political Revolution?

I know this guy

39

Venn, I dont know too much about Tulsi herself. I know quite a bit about salafism, Indian hindutva and the Pakistani ISI. Very lately, this has meant Tulsi pops up quite a bit- she started her political career with sangh parivar funders and I don't know enough about her to know how much she's working for them or just generally swimming in the same ideological pool.

She belongs on your never list. She's only decided to grudgingly accept gay people because she realizes that religious fundamentalists are worse, and she's openly a nationalist. While I maintain that the US is often the worst side of political disputes in the Middle East, that doesn't mean that I think we should embrace the lesser evil. If we are attacking imperialism and foreign policy that enables terrorists, then we might do better than to settle for anarchocapitalist dictators. IN short, even if Modi or Putin or Assad are preferable to ISIS (and they are) that doesn't mean I'm going to throw my hat in with them either. She's totally cool with what's going down in Kashmir right now.

40

BTW Venn I don't think there's any way for a crowd of people to ignore and give the cold shoulder, but regardless, the point isn't to bruise egos but to take power. There is potential power in mass movements, but ignoring powerful people who are doing terrible things is not a very useful strategy. That's exactly my point- that liberals need to learn. Taunting Trump, calling him drumpf, flying a balloon of him in a diaper, saying that he's gay with Putin- it's not strategic. Best case scenario, you manage to bruise an ego, so the fuck what. I want to actually take power from him. I want accountability. Bush should've been charged with war crimes and all the extended powers given him under the Patriot Act including the establishment of ICE & the AUMF should all have been revoked. Bankers should've stood trial and gone to jail after the crash. If these basic things had happened, we'd be in a different world today. People aren't shouting for Trump's head (yet) they are shouting for justice and accountability. The point isn't to hurt his feelings though that's a happy by-product if it comes with it.

41

Had the stadium erupted with a sustained Lock Him Up trumpfy might've seen the light/power of 40,000 people united in one small space. But, as noted above, going forward he'll likely be afraid to show his face anywhere other than at one of his Nuremburg Ralles to paid MAGA operatives and True Believers, wherever he goes...

For a Bully he's quite Fragile, this guy.

42

From the NYT: "Why Did It Feel So Good to See Trump Booed? When he goes low, Democrats are supposed to go high. Except, it turns out, going low feels wonderful."
by Jennifer Weiner

"Civility is a wonderful thing, when shared among equals. When people who have power require civility from those with less, or none, though, that demand is a cudgel, a weapon the haves use to keep the have-nots in line. When you’re confronted with evil, you don’t shake its hand or applaud it. If booing is incivility, bring it on.

(And if you want to complain about incivility in America’s most pastoral pastime, start with Rob Drake, a Major League umpire, who just apologized for tweeting about his plan to purchase an assault weapon, 'because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVIL WAR!!! #MAGA2020.')"

"The booing is fine. It’s my own reaction to the booing that troubles me — the joy I took from Mr. Trump’s pain and the example it sets for my kids.

Maybe we can take a stand and do what’s necessary without discounting the cost; go low when it’s required without reveling in the other side’s pain, taking care we don’t get stuck down in the dirt.

Because if Donald Trump remakes all of us in his image, no matter who takes the White House in 2020, he will have won."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/opinion/trump-booed-world-series.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

43

Two comments on the same article @42:

"People didn't boo the president of the United States. They boo'd a man whose mental deficiencies make him unfit and incapable of carrying out the duties of the presidency.

This wasn't partisanship. This was the US immune system
rejecting a foreign invader besmirching our national honor.

When we aren't allowed to boo this type of man simply because he is in the role of president, we will no longer be a free people." --DB, NC

"Booing at a sporting event is an accepted way for fans to express their opinion. Fans could have taken a page out of the Republican playbook, ordered pizzas and forced their way into T rump's box, refusing to allow him to watch the game.

Compared to Trump and Republican's behavior, booing was downright polite." --Michael, from Massachusetts

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/opinion/trump-booed-world-series.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage#commentsContainer


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