Now that Donald Trump has Won

I’m confused as to whether you’re claiming that the Trump era actually isn’t bad, or that the Obama era was somehow worse (and if so how).

Whataboutism can kindly screw off.

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The Obama Era is not worse by most metrics. It did however pave the way to the Trump era. Obama was the deporter in chief. Obama helped destabilize and project American imperial power across the world and normalized the Bush Era violations of civil liberties. I have lost count of how many other monstrous policies that were instantiated in the Obama era that we are living with the legacy of today. There are many people pining for the good old days of the Obama administration as some antidote to the Trump administration that clearly do not understand how we got here in the first place and we will continue to lose as long as many people in power continue to proffer it as a solution in place of a way forward. If you are not one of those people then this post is not aimed at you.

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What about your hurt white feelings am I supposed to care about?

I would enthusiastically go back to Obama era policy across the board if possible. But I would do so while retaining a newly energized sense of political consciousness, an expanded personal network of friends, acquaintances, and organizations to help me stay connected and informed and active on a variety of issues that I was more ignorant of before, and with great regret that we had to come this far in order for me to start looking past the old pleasant delusion that things are generally going to be okay. And next time someone tells me that for them things are not generally okay, I hope I will listen better the first time.

The “enthusiastically” part is where all the white liberals, your “we”, lose me on this one. I get having a grudging preference for the Obama administration but enthusiasm just means you did not care about the black people shot by police, the brown people deported and abused, the shambles of domestic policy and the imperial overreach across the world. You would just end up in the same place as before, you would just pay for it in more innocent blood the second time around.

Well you’re right in that I did not care enough before. My home town is 98% white, and in school growing up, politics was always presented as an arena for abstract philosophical debate (which was wrong and unhelpful). History classes, while openly acknowledging the problematic nature of “manifest destiny”, glossed over how that same horrific legacy directly informs virtually every major campaign issue to this day. These aren’t excuses, and I admit that the onus of having not cared enough is still ultimately on me.

But I maintain “enthusiastically” not because I think the Obama era was a utopic time, but because even a reality that edges hard into capitalist dystopia on many levels is still vastly preferable to the current hellscape.

I also think it’s way easier to find and point out problems than it is to suggest solutions. Imagine you’re discussing a problem, and there’s a participant whose contribution to a conversation consists entirely of interjecting occasionally with “nope, everything is still fucked” and “sorry, your idea is not going to work” without offering anything constructive. How invested do you estimate that person is in actually solving the problem at hand? What value is there in being able to say “I told you so” when the world ends if…the world still ends?

Despite whataboutism definitely being thrown about in bad faith by the right, I think it is important to recognize that many liberals look at the Obama administration with rose-tinted (opaqued, even) glasses. And to truly fix the problems of the present, going to have to be brutally honest (and open to that brutal honesty) about that, at the minimum within the liberal community.

I was with you until here. This analogy breaks down in context and the overall point reads as tone-policey. Or, in other words, if you’re being fucked over, you should not be expected to mince words about said fucking.

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That’s fair. Upon further consideration I agree that last paragraph was off-base.

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Y’all are fun, this is a good forum.

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I think the Obama administration was severely handicapped in what it could have done once the Congress flipped. You saw what happened with Henry Gates the one time that Obama had an opinion about racist police treatment. “Stay out of this, or we turn your second term into Impeachment hearings.” Notice Obama had a lot less to say about the police after that, and I don’t think it was that he didn’t care.

It would take 20+ years of a government control by not fascist sociopaths to begin to really fix things. I’m not saying this from a “wait your turn” standpoint, I’m saying this a from a “how the system is supposed to work.” Right now shit is going completely off the rails, and we’re maybe 1 or 2 elections from a Autocracy.

Was he perfect, no, but I think he tried to slow down the momentum that is the government machine. Of course the curren’t shitgibbon-in-chief has decided crank things into overdrive.

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Well, Obama may have tried to reign in police brutality and racism, but he was all for surveillance overreach. I lost a ton of respect for him right there. He’s still miles better than the con-man-in-chief we have now, but that’s not a very high bar.

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So now we’re screwed. The Dems in office are too spineless to hold up confirmation hearings like the GOP did and the elections are too far away. Does anyone have experience trying to get into JET or other English conversation schools in Japan or Korea?

Well, given how they’re in the minority and the filibuster rule has been eliminated for SCOTUS nominations, what can they do short of fist fighting on the Senate floor?

Granted, there is some precedent for that: Caning of Charles Sumner - Wikipedia

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JET and EPIK are probably the least bad of the lowest tier of English teaching. They at least do some kind of vetting, as opposed to taking any warm body with a BA/BS any any field. If you have actual questions, send me a PM.

Honestly if things get bad enough I’ll go to the any warm body folks if I have to because being a beleaguered ESL tutor living on a pittance in a safe and stable country will beat whatever the fuck might be coming.

If that’s an avenue you want to pursue, government-sponsored programs like JET or EPIK are the better route, and you need to start preparing soon if you want to go for the next school year. They at least pay you a half-decent wage and you have a fair amount of rights. Eikaiwa and hagwan will take anybody because they treat the people who work there as replaceable goods. Once you’re all used up, they toss you aside in favor of the next chipper, young human tape player.

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Obama receives disproportionate criticism, opposition, and backlash, because racism. I also identify with him on a personal level, as someone who is also third culture, and could see third culture mentality in his choices. But, my original point was that there are liberals who reflect on his presidency without nuance – either in critique or approval. Both of those perspectives are flawed and perpetuate the endemic issues of which TrumpCo is a symptom.

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Scott Pruitt has finally resigned. Fuck that corrupt sack of shit. Hopefully he gets indicted at some point, but considering who is in power the hope is kind of slim. Unfortunately his replacement will likely be as corrupt as him.

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