This isn’t a Babylon Bee joke.
The University of Massachusetts-Lowell Center for Public Opinion surveyed Democratic primary voters at the end of January, and someone had the inspiration of asking a question designed to gauge the extent of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The survey found that nearly two out of three would prefer that a massive meteor collide with Earth, triggering an extinction-level event “extinguishing all human life,” than for President Trump win re-election.
I thought the irrational Trump Hate deliberately and unceasingly promoted by the “resistance” and mainstream media false narratives, conspiracy theories and Big Lies was dangerous, but I didn’t expect this.
Caveats are in order: the YouGov poll used a relatively small sample of just 400 people and had a large margin of error of 6.4 percentage points. I also assume that a number of respondents would choose a dinosaur death over the Bad Orange Man as a symbolic expression of their opposition to the President rather than as a genuine conviction. (It they are anything like me–or my instinctively perverse son—they would.)
On the other hand, it does seem that the Democratic Party has been following a strategy of encouraging Trump Derangement as its best, and perhaps only , route to victory next November. If the economy holds, the party will be asking voters to vote against their self-interest and for one of the unattractive alternatives now compeeing for the role out of pure, blinding, hysterical hate. A political analyst was widely quoted around the web and social media this week based on an opinion piece in which she argued Trump would lose because so many voters would go to the polls to express their personal revulsion of the President, and that issues and the opposition won’t matter.
Apocalypse is favored in lower income brackets (69 %under $50,000) more than higher (49% $100,000 and up). The less educated N.H. Democrats are, the more likely they want to die like Tia Leone in “Deep Impact” (66% over 58% for more educated primary voters). Women would rather have all of their loved ones perish (68%) than see another Trump term than men (53%).
Good job, everybody!
After three years of hysteria and partisan fear-mongering, people are going nuts.
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Here is the link to use to share on Facebook: https://twitter.com/CaptCompliance/status/1226566112122458113
Ethics Alarms 
I would not put too much credence into such a poll.
Ask if they are prepared to kill family members or be killed for their political beliefs. That will be more relevant.
These hypotheticals are hardly indicative of what people will actually do. Most of these people talk a good game until the shit hits the fan. What concerns me is not the Trump deranged if Trump wins it is their behavior if he does not.
Exactly Chris, like the empty threats to move to Canada.
compeeing will be submitted to the Urban Dictionary; I’m just the guy to do it…
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If I actually answered the phone for a pollster, and humored them long enough to answer their questions (rather than hang up), if they actually tested my patience by asking if I preferred the heat death of the universe over a second Trump term, of course I would answer in the affirmative. What self-respecting individual of either party wouldn’t?
This reminds me of a real encounter I had online. Someone once asked online in a Catholic web forum if Triangles were a perfect represention of God’s love.
I responded that triangles were in fact sacrilege and forbidden by Canon 666.
Ask a stupid question…..
“Sometimes, people just explode… natural causes”
Part of the problem is that movies like “Deep Impact” continue to push the idea that an ELE is somehow survivable. What part of .EXTINCTION LEVEL are they not getting?
I remember at the end of the second full week of June, 2006 I boasted it was “a great week to be a conservative.” It was, because US forces had just killed al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Quaeda in Iraq, Karl Rove had escaped the pointless Valerie Plame probe, and Ann Coulter’s latest book was #1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Unfortunately the good fortune didn’t last through the end of that year, but that’s another story.
I think the president just took the conservatives’ great week up to eleven this past week. He was already getting there at the end of the week before, as the Senate majority decided they had heard enough, and shot down any chance that the impeachment trial would become prolonged.
On Tuesday, there’s no other way to put it, he hit a home run, taking the State of the Union Address and turning it into a masterpiece of political theater. The fact is that the State of the Union has always been the president’s chance to parade his achievements before the nation and make his case for continuing those policies. It’s always been a show. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a master showman like Trump should use it to its greatest effect. The practice of using guests to enhance the message actually started in 1982, when Ronald Reagan saluted Congressional employee Lenny Skutnik for diving into the Potomac to save a life after the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 and gave a nod to former POW (and former admiral) Senator Jeremiah Denton.
The next few presidents used the technique more, but still somewhat sparingly: Bill Clinton bringing in civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, George W. Bush bringing in Lisa Beamer, widow of Todd Beamer, who perished on 9/11, Obama pointing out Daniel Hernandez, who saved the life of Gabrielle Giffords, were some of the notable ones. Donald Trump, however, does not hesitate to parade multiple guests who illustrate his agenda in a way everyone, from the college professor down to Joe Six-Pack, can see and comprehend, and which are guaranteed to resonate.
Everyone loves a WW2 hero who also battled racism, the toughest enemy of all. Everyone loves a soldier who’s sacrificed much finally reunited with his family. Everyone loves a first responder who rescued large numbers of victims. Everyone who loves someone faced with a sudden problem who steps up. Everyone loves someone who tried honestly but fell short finally getting their chance. Everyone has sympathy for the victim of a terrible crime or that victim’s survivors.
Or do they? Like it or not, it looks bad when one of these individuals is pointed out and you refuse to applaud or look sour. To do so is the mark of a graceless sore loser. Yet a good chunk of the Democratic Caucus did just that. A few even walked out. Had this been the other way around and GOP members done those things to Obama, the news media would be ablaze with shouts of “sore loser” and “racist.”
The first masterstroke was the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to talk radio pioneer and voice of the right Rush Limbaugh. I guarantee you if the award were scheduled ahead of time at a White House ceremony, every prominent Democrat would have found a plausible excuse for being someplace else. This way, they all had to not only witness the award to a man they loathe, but had to either applaud or look like they swallowed poo and chased it with alum.
The second masterstroke was provoking Nancy Pelosi into ripping up her copy of the speech on camera. I don’t believe for a minute the president didn’t know he was supposed to shake hands with the Speaker of the House, he’s already delivered two of these addresses. However, no matter how sharp policy disputes and personal dislikes have gotten in the past, only twice before have speakers declared political war on a president by seeking his removal, and only once since these addresses became the norm (Nixon was never actually impeached). Like it or not, the president was within the bounds of ethical behavior not to shake hands with the woman who had become a general in the war against him while her latest effort against him was still pending. Ripping up the speech, on the other hand, particularly in the face of almost certain defeat the next day, just made Nancy look like a petulant and powerless child who breaks her own toy when she realizes she’s not going to get her own way, or even a little bit of it, and there’s not a damn thing she can do about it.
And what’s the Democratic response to the president’s list of successes, spun or not? All they can say is that he was lying and it’s them who get things done. Maybe someone should have told Gretchen Whitmer that the way to illustrate that wasn’t by opening with a story about a kid who went out and filled potholes with dirt because no one else would. No one told them that the way to prove the other side’s stick is crooked is to lay a straight stick next to it either, not to rail about it being crooked. At the end of the evening it was not just a win for the president, but a decisive one.
The next day it didn’t even take the Senate an hour to vote “not guilty” and exonerate the president of the ridiculous, half-baked, and completely political charges against him. Of course it was almost a straight party-line vote, with not one Democrat breaking ranks and only Mitt Romney breaking ranks on the Republican side, and only on one charge. I don’t know what Romney was thinking, but, if he spoke the truth in his remarks afterward, he sure picked a strange time to suddenly get principled, and he voted in a way that was guaranteed to please neither side. That might make him principled, but it also makes him foolish, since now his own party views him as a turncoat and the other party can’t view him as anything other than a one-time maverick. Yes, sometimes the principled man stands alone, and sometimes your principles are the hill you finally have to stand and die on, but, in this case, it gains him nothing and it gains the people he represents nothing. John McCain voted against the president just to spite him, knowing full well no consequences could touch him. James Comey has tried to play the last principled man, and it’s gotten him noplace. Romney’s got four more years at least in the Senate during which he must wheel and deal, both with his own caucus and with the president, and he just made it that much more difficult to do both, while changing nothing.
On Thursday this president had a whole hell of a lot more to say than Bill Clinton in the wake of his own acquittal. Clinton spoke for about 2 minutes and said he stood there humbled. He should have been, because he’d committed a crime and gotten away with it. He’d successfully talked his way out of something that almost any other public official would have resigned over. It’s usually very easy to talk yourself into trouble but hard to talk your way out of it. Clinton was a master of deceit and game playing, though, and could charm and bs his way out of anything, but even this time he needed luck, and he got it.
Trump spoke for about an hour, and he finally unloaded on the other side. Like now-Justice Kavanaugh, who elected to speak up like a man fighting for his reputation rather than just maintain a dignified silence and trust John 8:32 to play out, he decided to tell his own side of things. He was absolutely right.
As I’ve said before, the Democratic Party and the left generally have been on a mission to take him down from the day he was elected. That’s true, but even that isn’t the whole story. It’s a fact that the left was using every dirty trick in the book, and more than a few that weren’t in the book, to try to ruin him during the election campaign.
There’s a certain level of tolerance for some of that, since all’s fair in love, war, and campaigning, but the last campaign and what followed was dirtier than CBS’ attempt to swindle the voters with lies about George W. Bush’s time in the Texas ANG. It was dirtier than the sudden dredging up of a DUI in October 2000. It was dirtier than the unfair late hit regarding Iran-Contra on Bush the Elder in 1992.
The difference is that all that stopped, or stopped for a time, once the election was over. In the case of Trump, it just kept on rolling. No honeymoon period, no hundred days, no talk of reunifying the country, just refuse, resist, Russia, and, if necessary, riot. I’ve never seen any Senate try to slow-walk even uncontroversial and necessary appointments (Pompeo), nor have I seen a holdover acting attorney general defy a direct order from the president (Sally Yates, who I’d have a lot more respect for if she had resigned on principle). I’ve never seen members of Congress so unhinged, nor a House of Representatives so obsessed with not just fighting, but trying to destroy the president. I’ve also never seen career bureaucrats, all of them bound to support the Constitution, some also sworn to uphold the law, become a de facto fifth column against the president. This president pointed all of this out.
Almost any other president and any other circumstance, I’d say don’t exult in your victory, and just say it’s all over and let’s get back to working for the American people. Unfortunately, in this case, as the left has said too many times (and yes, now I’m throwing their words right back at them) this isn’t an ordinary president and these aren’t ordinary circumstances. The president can’t say let’s get back to work, because the other side won’t go back to work, and they’ve already made that clear. They are going to keep digging, keep harassing, and keep resisting until this presidency is history, one way or another. This country has faced enemies like that before, in the Pacific, in the Cold War, on the peaks of Afghanistan and in the desert of Iraq. The only way to end those conflicts was to utterly defeat the other side, as the Japanese found out first hand and how countless terrorists have found out. The only chance this president has is to do the same to the other side, ,and he just took a big step that way.
I concur.
Jack gave an example of the damage caused by that scandal.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2012/09/07/the-ethics-corrupter-in-chief/#comment-476699
A 6.4% margin of error is really huge, but the fact that you had any more than 4.5% (U.S. serious mental illness rate) of any population answering in the positive is disturbing. BTW, the US suicide rate is only 0.0145%.