To be really glad I don't live in America right now

[AnonymousBleep]

I really feel for ordinary Americans. It's bad enough on this side of the Channel, hearing daily about Trump's latest petty, spiteful, idiotic bullshit - that rant against the Bishop who asked him to have mercy on immigrants, the ridiculous and insulting attempt to blame 'diversity' for the plane crash - but living under it must be so much worse. And heaven help you if you're LGBT or a woman. Or an immigrant. Or not white. Or poor. Or anyone else Trump and his freakshow of a government despises. I moan about the UK all the time, like everyone else who lives here, because god knows it's far from perfect, but at least we don't have a government in charge who is trying to strip huge swathes of the population of their rights and citizenship.

it takes a lot of complex mental juggling to think that a loss of faith in the Democratic political machine in any way justifies choosing an addled, lying, bankrupted six times, adjudicated felon and fraudster who's banned from running charities, with multiple sexual assault allegations, who spent the last part of the campaign lying about people eating pets, swaying onstage to music for 45 minutes, fellating a microphone and bragging about Arnold Palmer's dick over an imperfect but perfectly competent woman.

Yep!

True, but again if it wasn't racism, what was it?

choosing an addled, lying, bankrupted six times, adjudicated felon and fraudster who's banned from running charities, with multiple sexual assault allegations, who spent the last part of the campaign lying about people eating pets, swaying onstage to music for 45 minutes, fellating a microphone and bragging about Arnold Palmer's dick over an imperfect but perfectly competent woman.

The main beneficiaries of dei are white women so stop using 'black lesbians' as your measure of unqualified people getting jobs. Try and learn what dei is about before opening your mouth. Oh and the vice president was in favour of dei when he was offered dei entry to Yale due to being a military veteran and someone from an unfancied, underachieving area i.e. Appalachia.

You gave one reason upthread @MeTooOverHere !

It might be racism but from my POV it's just as likely to be that American exceptionalism - you know, laws don't apply. From a rule-of-law culture, Trump's blatant thumbing of nose at the law is appalling but a lot of Americans seem to admire that.

As an immigrant myself, I completely agree that American exceptionalism exists, and that small government is preferred to big government in many states.

Sorry, badly worded. What I meant was it might be racism but it could also be American exceptionalism - you know, laws don't apply. Blatant thumbing of nose at the law is appalling but a lot of Americans seem to admire that.
I put the quote in to show what I was responding to/what triggered my thought process.

FWIW I think the diversity argument is worth investigating. Jobs like controlling aircraft should be done by the best people to do them. Diversity should mean that the best person gets the job regardless of their background, i.e. if the best candidate is a black lesbian that shouldn't matter,
No suggestion that the best person is NOT getting the job.

President Trump has just in the last day used tariffs to motivate Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and Canada to cooperate over immigrants, drugs and other matters.

So you see it is not random, but a strategy that is working perfectly.

He hasn't actually had to impose any tariffs on them as the possibility was enough. A non violent way to achieve a safer America.

I suppose it could be seen as evil if you believe countries have a right to push drugs and people over the border into another.

I don't know what was said to Stanmer, but if Trump were to make a few suggestions I'm sure Starmer would oblige and we could use the help.

Drugs such as fentanyl are brought in by American citizens who are not stopped when returning to the US. The US allows guns to cross into Mexico. Are they addressing this? Are they addressing the illegal immigrants and visa overstayers from Europe or just the brown skinned ones?

Yes, I have been sitting here wondering why that pp is worried about us.

it is specifically white American male exceptionalism not general American exceptionalism. How many black men or women who thumb their nose at the law are admired by Americans in general? They seem to get shot and killed by police at the slightest provocation, forget about thumbing their nose at the law!

Here’s three questions in order that may help for next time:

1. is the candidate a murderer? Don’t vote for them if their opponent isn’t a murderer.
2. is the candidate a rapist? Don’t vote for them if their candidate isn’t a rapist.
3. is the candidate a felon? Don’t vote for them if their candidate isn’t a felon.

If you have two candidates who are both either murderers, rapists, or felons equally then you can legitimately say you have a difficult decision to make.

The mental gymnastics people are doing to justify supporting Trump over Harris instead of accepting that they’re racist is eye opening.

At least have the self-awareness to understand your own biases!

But here you are, hmmm

And yet it was Biden who eviscerated sex-based rights for women literally on day one. Why is he always given a free pass for something so fucking heinous and unconscionable? How is THAT not Handmaides Tale territory?

My sister lives in the US and although a lifelong Democrat she is incredibly grateful that her daughters get to have female-only sport again, and no boys in their changing rooms. As long as the blue Governor doesn’t insist women and girls still
forego their rights of course.

The Dems honestly didn’t need to go so batshit crazy.

It’s also really disingenuous to deny that DEI is putting lives at huge risk in many areas. I mean if immutable characteristics can trump merit in air traffic control then every rubicon of insanity has been crossed. Black and gay people also want to fly safely. Just google the dumbing down of entry requirements - it’s not a myth, whatever luxury beliefs virtue-signallers in the UK cling to.

If you want to help the life chances of black people you need to work on the terrible education most receive in grade school (through no fault of their own). Not parachute them into jobs they aren’t qualified for as adults. That’s not just dangerous, but achingly easy. Giving a better quality of education is much, much harder.

And this patent bullshit is precisely why Harris lost, and the Dems will keep losing.

Bigotry of low expectations might be your thing, but many people think better of black people. They don’t think it’s obligatory to vote for someone or pretend they were anything but a dire candidate simply because of the colour of their skin.

No serious person could have watched Harris on the campaign trail and concluded she was qualified to be the most powerful person on earth. Not only were her nonsensical word salads legendary but she never even faced a primary - being anointed in a deeply weird way. Not forgetting she was one of the most unpopular VPs (and previous presidential candidates) in history.

And that’s putting aside what a traitor she was to her sex, being all in on gender ideology and worshipping Dylan Mulvaney among others.

The Dems need to un-crazy or they’re never going to win again. No more DEI to the point of lunacy. No more ‘birthing bodies’ and land acknowledgments and totally open borders. Diversity isn’t our strength. Unity is. What we share, not what divides us. Of course there’s no grift in that…

He laid out his policies before the election. The majority of the people of America decided that’s what they wanted. They voted for him, and he’s now implementing his promises. Nothing wrong with that. And you don’t know what it’s been like for the average American over there, because you’re thousands of miles away, so can’t judge what you don’t know. They’ve put up with a lot during the last year with Biden - mentally ill, and no-one knowing who was pulling the strings behind the scenes. Americans know what they want and it’s very patronising of us to think we know what’s best for them.

@WomensRightsRenegade

It’s also really disingenuous to deny that DEI is putting lives at huge risk in many areas. I mean if immutable characteristics can trump merit in air traffic control then every rubicon of insanity has been crossed. Black and gay people also want to fly safely. Just google the dumbing down of entry requirements - it’s not a myth, whatever luxury beliefs virtue-signallers in the UK cling to.

Can you tell me just how entry requirements for air traffic control specifically have been "dumbed down"? Remember, entry requirements are the first testing phase, not the last.

How dare you say that black people are parachuted into jobs they are not qualified for. The nerve of you. The point of dei is to widen the pool of candidates to include everyone with the appropriate qualifications not just 'your white friends/cousins' etc. is it okay that mediocre white men get all the good jobs because they know the recruiters?

@WomensRightsRenegade

No serious person could have watched Harris on the campaign trail and concluded she was qualified to be the most powerful person on earth. Not only were her nonsensical word salads legendary but she never even faced a primary - being anointed in a deeply weird way. Not forgetting she was one of the most unpopular VPs (and previous presidential candidates) in history.

How can you watch Trump in action now and then seriously go on to write this?

Did you think that white boy trump was a better candidate than Harris? You must be deluded. You are like all the white American women who voted race rather than qualification.

I keep pointing out that dei is actually a system of giving jobs to white women. The American department of labour says that black people are the last to benefit from dei appointments after white women, Hispanic people, Asian people, native Americans, the disabled, military veterans and sometimes LGBT candidates, but your lazy racism insists that the blacks are being given everything free of charge. Go and do some research before opening your ignorant mouth.

Then why are you so upset that DEI is on its way out?

Surely a system that prioritises white women is less than ideal?

It doesn't actually matter how the rest of the world feels about Trump, how much everyone shouts and jumps up and down. What matters is that he was democratically elected. And it would appear he is doing exactly what he said he would do if he was elected.

Which is unusual behaviour in a politician, but there you go. The US Citizens who voted for him appear happy enough. The ones who didn't need to organise and convince the others to change their vote next time.

I suspect Australia is about to take a hard step to the right. The Left isn't listening shouting racist and bigot at even the mildest of questions doesn't win elections. It shuts people up, and then in the privacy of the ballot box they make their decisions.

Doing the same thing over and over again whilst expecting different results is stupid.

@MumoftwoGirls11, You’ve really got the wrong end of the stick. Whom do you think I voted for?

To get a different result in 2028, we have to face up to why millions of people voted for Trump, despite his obvious flaws. Attributing it to racism is far too simplistic imo and won’t lead to change.

Surely a system that prioritises white women is less than ideal?

Less than ideal than what, the current system that deprioritises and dehumanises all women? If you think that a white woman getting something should make all men and all handmaidens everybody angry enough to over through everything, then I would strongly suggest that you are a big part of the problem - and suffering strongly from misogyny, internalised or otherwise.

Did you read anything into the background of the ATC scandal? It was bad tbh.

Like, they threw out an applicant pool of 1000 people that had passed their skills-based assessment (the number one predictor of job performance) because it was too white.

Like, that thought should not be in anyone’s head. At all.

And this is the least of the scandal tbh as there were more dodgy aspects of the scandal.

perhaps she was thinking of Claudine Gay who absolutely WAS such a hire.

And perhaps Vance was a DEI entrant. I believe he would have got in without consideration for his deprived upbringing.

But that is the thing with DEI: you don’t know. So it is better to get rid of it altogether.

And Harris was definitely overpromoted because she is a black woman. You should note a lot of the beneficiaries of ‘DEI’ are NOT descendants of black slaves. Harris, for example, is not a descendant of black slaves yet she benefited enormously from policies originally meant for them.

It has now come to mean ‘not white’ and increasingly ‘not East Asian’.