Trump - how long has he got?

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How long do you think Trump will last as US President?

< 1 week
0
No votes
< 1 month
0
No votes
gone before 2018
4
16%
< 6 months
4
16%
serves full term
11
44%
serves both terms
2
8%
gone once the magic bullet from the grassy knoll finds it's mark
2
8%
at the end of the forth Reich
2
8%
 
Total votes: 25

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Friendly Stranger
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I must say as an aside, no matter how f*cked up the US is right now, when I smoke a joint and listen to "Everything You Do Is A Balloon", I am overcome with a feeling of profound certainty that everything is going to be okay.

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OrangeRomeda wrote:I must say as an aside, no matter how f*cked up the US is right now, when I smoke a joint and listen to "Everything You Do Is A Balloon", I am overcome with a feeling of profound certainty that everything is going to be okay.


Bless. I often feel the same. BoC can be a real escape from the political and material world when you need it to be.

Also, due to his recent decision regarding a certain 'Capital' City, I have lost almost all respect for Trump.

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Dayvan Cowboy
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From the perspective of being in the states, it's kind of interesting at this point - the couple of people I know who were excited about Trump and were happy to tell you that they voted for him after the election over the past few months have slowly lost interest in talking up Trump or any of the media sources that tend to signal boost his agenda - they still seem to have too much pride to completely disavow him though.

I live in a blue state (thanks to NYC, which is a 7 hour drive or so and might as well be another world), but a red county that had a huge manufacturing backbone that managed to survive trickle down economics in the 80s but finally got bit in the past 10-15 years. So now many of those people have been laid off/retired, the slightly younger ones in that industry don't know where to correctly place their frustration.

There's a pretty big ideological divide here (maybe more than many places) between the baby boomers that have stayed red and the younger generations that tend to work more in IT or service industries, things like that. I consider the fact that my father (one of those traditional red baby boomers that thrived in our manufacturing heyday) is completely turned off a good thing - it started for him in 2012 when he refused to vote for a Mormon! So not voting for Trump wasn't much of a stretch once he had a taste for abstaining. I didn't really agree with his reasons but in the end I guess we ended up on the same page.

"Tax reform" and supporting a pedophile in Alabama seem to have driven GOP support off a cliff outside of the southern states most recently.

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Dayvan Cowboy
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Mexicola wrote:I guess I just hoped that when the revolution came, it didn't involve a misogynistic, bigoted, egomaniac giving succour to neo-nazis. If this current shower of excrement is the best we can summon up as a species (and I include Putin, Nigel fucking Farage et al) then perhaps we don't deserve better. Except, my 5 year old daughter does. So no, I can't accept it and I won't.


Everything that happens is a reaction to something that happened before it. Prior to Dubya, despite all the jingoistic fervor in this country, thinking ourselves being the "best" in the world, land of the free, etc - no one here ever realistically imagined that there would be a black president in our lifetimes. Jr dropped the ball so badly, that it happened and for 2 terms of constant abuse and shenanigans from the right, no less.

Trump's ascension was a direct reaction to the inability to successfully denigrate/humiliate/impeach the USA's first black president. Institutional racism is a real thing here, particularly in the South. They just never got over losing the war and their slaves, and its a sentiment that's been passed from generation to generation. Sad stuff.

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Interesting take Opothecary. Let's hope that when Trump is eventually dumped the reaction leads to something humane and progressive, rather than simply Pence in the oval office. Because after this clown, pretty much everyone else feels sane and moderate.
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Opothecary wrote:Trump's ascension was a direct reaction to the inability to successfully denigrate/humiliate/impeach the USA's first black president.

Could be part of it, but Trump's base has been in the making since the 70s. There was a proto-Trumpian candidate back then whose name I forget, and was possibly on track to get the Republican nomination until he got shot. Those who supported him later became part of the Reagan generation, but they've basically been constantly dissatisfied, used to being on the margins, until now. When Trump is gone, the base will remain and with the new confidence that they can have some influence, we may see someone even worse than Trump (i.e. smarter). This is especially likely because the Democrats cannot move past neoliberalism. Without a left alternative, things will continue on their current trajectory.
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I take back everything I have said in this thread.

I still despise globalism and anyone feeling they have more rights or more power than the common man, but aligning oneself to left or right is something that has really just been set up as a distraction away from the fact that Authoritarianism presents its self on both sides of the 'spectrum' and either way you vote, it is unlikely you will get a candidate that doesn't slowly edge towards a totalitarian police state.

Don't get suckered in to either side of race politics either, its just one of the many distractions fabricated by the media and the agents therein. Sewing division by playing both extreme sides of a coin off against eachother is a rather cunning tactic of theirs. You have the 'not making eye contact with people of colour is a microaggression hate crime and should be punished by law + Its okay to be racist if you are being racist to the right group because that doesn't count as racism lmao fuck white ppl' vs the 'I want to unironically bring back lynching' people. Making it seem like you have to pick a side. They both inevitably want to harm or imprison people for being human at the end of the day. 'Anarchists' that support a police state and punishable thought crime and who talk openly about killing people with different opinions to them vs racial purists who talk openly about killing people with different opinions to them and want to live in a society where everyone is armed to the teeth and constantly twitching their trigger fingers in fear. Wow.

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The left is not solely or even mostly comprised of that type of thinking. The anti-racist left isn't out to kill all white people.

If you refuse to take a side you're allowing racism to rise unabated. The fact there is authoritarianism within the left (which is not some monolithic entity) is not an excuse not to engage. "You can't be neutral on a moving train."
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Aerial Boundaries wrote:The left is not solely or even mostly comprised of that type of thinking. The anti-racist left isn't out to kill all white people.

If you refuse to take a side you're allowing racism to rise unabated. The fact there is authoritarianism within the left (which is not some monolithic entity) is not an excuse not to engage. "You can't be neutral on a moving train."


That section of the left are the ones that would, in an 'ideal' world, have me live my life behind bars because my saying that telling ten year old boys that feel like wearing dresses sometimes that they should go on hormone therapy and have their bits mutilated for life might possibly be horribly, horribly wrong. If either of these sides gets significant traction, it will be the removal of your human rights.

Everyone is jumping on the tolerance train to get their sick groups recognised and protected under hate speech laws.
'Pedosexuality' is incoming. And it will be a hate crime for you to say that it is sick and wrong. 'Love is love' after all.

'Oh they would never go that far, common sense says that...'

Its happening, slowly but surely, its happening.
One of my biggest fears at the moment is ending up a prisoner due to expressing my own opinions
A lot of what I have said here, if I said it on Twitter under my real name, is already something I could be summoned to court over.
The rules on what it is and isn't legal to say are getting narrower by the year and it is the hard Left spearheading that stereotypically fascist ideology. One day soon it will be one of your opinions that becomes illegal. Remember that 'they' don't actually care about the rights of minorities or LBGT etc. They care about using hate speech as a way to expand into other areas, illegal opinions. It happens very slowly so that the frogs don't realise they are being boiled alive.

Someone drew a small picture of a pig in the snow in Germany this past week, it happened to be near enough to a refugee camp, they are putting a lot of time and effort into finding the person that did it and charging them. I don't endorse what they did, but still.

A picture of a farmyard animal drawn crudely in the snow = Jail time

I see people throwing around the term 'Hate Criminal' these days. Its really freaky. Hatred is a state of mind, a thought. Thought criminals? Eventually it will just be any statement that contradicts the narrative. Anything at all that they dislike. Its the Stalinist 'You find me the man, I'll find you the crime' (Guilty because we will find any reason to charge them if we don't like them) system rearing its head again. It has happened before and it will happen again.

Stalin got away with the Genocide of 20 million Ukranians and countless thousands more in his Gulags for committing thought crimes against his regime. Some of the Ukranians were trading among themselves (they were already undernourished and desperate) rather than allowing the state to have full control over their farmland and goods. He removed all of their food, reserves, farming equipment, money, everything and many resorted to cannibalism as 20 million died whilst they guarded and enforced the borders to make sure that none of them could escape to find food elsewhere.

But you are still allowed to fly his flag, it isn't a 'hate symbol' - They still struggle to get it recognised as a Genocide, because if the world did recognise that as one of the worst genocides in modern history, they might learn something from the mistakes made there about not letting thoughtcrime ever be a part of society.

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I will reply to this thread when I feel less angry. Val, with the best will in the world, choose your words more carefully

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In fact actually no, I'll say that once again this thread is going way off topic, (had I gone on record as supporting his idiocy I wouldn't want to talk about him either, but I sure hope id steer the argument off course without ploughing it headlong and carefree into another marginalised group in the process) and as much as I want to tell you the many ways what you just said is hurtful, paranoid and at least as wrong as anything else you've said in this thread, doing so would only distract from what it's about which is: Trump is a dangerous embarrassment who's time in office is surely drawing to a close. I only hope he goes before the fucker gets his Reichstag fire and it's not too late to rid the world of the poisonous ideology he seems to have reawoken.

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Negamuse wrote:In fact actually no, I'll say that once again this thread is going way off topic, (had I gone on record as supporting his idiocy I wouldn't want to talk about him either, but I sure hope id steer the argument off course without ploughing it headlong and carefree into another marginalised group in the process) and as much as I want to tell you the many ways what you just said is hurtful, paranoid and at least as wrong as anything else you've said in this thread, doing so would only distract from what it's about which is: Trump is a dangerous embarrassment who's time in office is surely drawing to a close. I only hope he goes before the fucker gets his Reichstag fire and it's not too late to rid the world of the poisonous ideology he seems to have reawoken.


I have nothing against Trans people whatsoever or the LBGT groups generally. It is just when pedophiles start trying to take advantage of movements like that to get themselves recognised and legitimized that it becomes really worrying. They are the ones taking advantage of the rights of people who were born liking the same gender or wishing to be the other gender, not me.
I do have something against convincing children to go on hormone therapy and under surgery in the name of tolerance.
It should be reserved for people only over the age of eighteen. It is a decision that will affect their entire life and may well lead them to suicide. This whole "Beautiful Trans Kid" thing is disgustingly wrong, that is just an opinion. Crossdressing children? Fine. Mutilation? No, its unethical because they are too young to make that kind of decision that will affect them for the rest of their lives. A significant number of people are fooled by the doctors claims and they end up suicidal, desperate to transition back.

Who exactly did I hurt?
Parents who convince their kids to go under the knife so that they can have a trophy child?
Children shouldn't be sexualised in any way. Nor should doctors, hungry for money, take people with gender dysphoria and convince them that mutilation is the end of all of their emotional issues. The suicide rate is higher among post-op trans people and doctors convincing them that the surgery "Really does make you the other gender" are wrong and cause a lot of hurt and a lot of suicides in vulnerable people.

Do you think that, by law, I shouldn't be able to express these opinions because you find them to be hurtful?
I am sorry that you feel the way you do about this arrangement of letters. Genuinely. But I go out of my way to challenge certain ideas to create interesting debate where everyone comes out of it more knowledgeable and with a better degree of critical thinking. Its a win/win.

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We are way derailed here, yeah...

Val i think you need to get a grip, but I agree from a certain angle - I would like to see trans people take a shot at psychedelic therapy via MDMA, psilocybin or LSD or a combination thereof to attempt reconciling their spirit with the body that they are currently living in as a first option simply for the reason that it's a lot cheaper and less extreme, and possibly less buyers remorse in the end.

If you can possibly make peace with yourself without permanent physical alteration, that seems worth a try. This is coming from someone who isn't even willing to commit to a tattoo - while I suppose I'm ideologically liberal, I'm just not big on making changes that cant be reversed with minimal effort.

Every human life is filled with desire to see how green the grass is on the other side. Not to trivialize the trans experience, but I feel that psychedelics are a powerful way of attempting to make peace of spiritual unease, from anything from addiction, to feeling like hitting a wall in your professional life to maybe not feeling like you belong in the body that you inhabit.

It seems like a uniquely American capitalistic puritanical approach - let's spend thousands of dollars to transform our body without first taking a psychedelic shot at altering our mental reality to reconcile the current burden of our existence.

Ultimately, I support people's journey to take the path necessary to be themselves, but I look at psychedelics as getting a second opinion from another doctor regardless of whatever is troubling you (Something like schizophrenia or other actual mental illness excepted, of course)

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Jesus f'n christ. As someone who is apart of that LGBT group and lives it everyday I feel pretty comfortable saying you are nothing but a fucking tourist and are utterly clueless. You are talking out of your ass about parents trying to have a trophy trans child and having them go under the knife before 18 yo. The most common form of treatment is hormone suppression in the teenage years and gender re-assignment at 18 or older which is not without its complications but it is a very complicated matter that one can only hope gets easier. I hope one day gender re-assignment is as easy as a nose job because really who gives a crap what your gonosomes dictate.

"It is just when pedophiles start trying to take advantage of movements like that to get themselves recognised and legitimized that it becomes really worrying." Yeah we booted NAMBLA from the get go, and that was quite a while ago probably when you were still shitting yourself if indeed you were even born yet, pedophiles seem to be pretty exclusively heterosexual men who occasionally run for the senate.

Now get the hell off my lawn.

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machinea wrote:Jesus f'n christ. As someone who is apart of that LGBT group and lives it everyday I feel pretty comfortable saying you are nothing but a fucking tourist and are utterly clueless. You are talking out of your ass about parents trying to have a trophy trans child and having them go under the knife before 18 yo. The most common form of treatment is hormone suppression in the teenage years and gender re-assignment at 18 or older which is not without its complications but it is a very complicated matter that one can only hope gets easier. I hope one day gender re-assignment is as easy as a nose job because really who gives a crap what your gonosomes dictate.

"It is just when pedophiles start trying to take advantage of movements like that to get themselves recognised and legitimized that it becomes really worrying." Yeah we booted NAMBLA from the get go, and that was quite a while ago probably when you were still shitting yourself if indeed you were even born yet, pedophiles seem to be pretty exclusively heterosexual men who occasionally run for the senate.

Now get the hell off my lawn.



I wasn't in any way trying to undermine LBGT movements, Rather, I was saying that the re-emergence of pedophile groups trying to take advantage of it is sickening and worrying. The NAMBLA situation in the 90s was bad, that kind of thing went quiet for a while after that but there is suddenly a re-emergence of people trying to promote 'LBGTP' (Pedosexual). With magazines like Salon hiring literal admitted pedophiles as writers, allowing them to write long articles about how they are the victim and that it is a legitimate sexuality, is worrying beyond belief. Also, you have no idea as to my sexuality. Why are you assuming that I am heterosexual?

As far as gender re-assignment goes, any kind of body dysphoria is a real issue and a real illness in my eyes. I feel immense sympathy for these people but I don't feel surgery is the option. Anorexics feel that they are thin people trapped in a 'fat' body, the equivalent would be saying that they identify as thin and therefore are entitled to surgery that reduces them to skin and bones.

I feel that many of the people that opt for surgery don't understand the full implications and have money hungry doctors gloss over the negatives. I won't go into detail but Dilation, chronic bleeding etc etc. Its actually significantly dangerous and could even be viewed as a form of self harm. I am sorry to take such a negative approach to it, as someone who has suffered with types of body dysphoria and made myself incredibly ill/ hospitalized as a result in my teenage years, they have my full sympathy, but I also recognise that their obsessions about body are the same as mine where, just targeted at a different aspect.

The suicide rate is actually higher among post-op trans folk, this implies that the surgery doesn't solve their issues at all and adds credence to the fact that it is a mental obsessive disorder that they are constantly trying to find cures for, in vain. I worry for them as human beings.

I agree with Opothocaries statement. It is much more about finding peace with your body psychologically rather than being attached to the physical. If someone feels they are of another gender inside, nothing is stopping them wearing the clothes and adopting the lifestyle of said gender.

It is getting rather like the mad hatter's tea party, though. We have people who were born white saying they feel black inside, private surgeons hungry for money tell them that 'we can make you how you feel inside' and do an awful con-job at melanin implants etc etc. Leaving the person deformed, perhaps permanently. Its really starting to happen and it is opening the flood-gates to it being a hate crime to say "Hey, I think you might be ill and I really want you to get help and be at peace with yourself"

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You're right I haven't got any idea. Are you queer? And I'm not being rhetorical, I'd really like an answer to that.

I am however pretty sure I am older and lived through more of this than you have. I've been out since 1987.

There are things going on in the queer community I'm not down with but really don't speak to much namely issues between transwomen and lesbians in which I think both are wrong depending on the issue And also is something that is not happening in the transmen vs gay male identities at the same level. And that is about all I'll say.

I would also argue that pedophilia has never had anything to do with LGBT communities ever. They may have tried to ally themselves with the 'other' but were never welcome (irrespective of the massive age differences in many gay relationships in the days before Stonewall due to needing to be shown the ropes by elders e.g. Christopher Isherwood and Don Bacardy).

I actually have sat in on meetings with those who head up the DSM and why they choose to still classify Transgenderism as mental health issue. Namely it is so these individuals can receive health care coverage with their insurance. But the treatment protocol is to treat the stress felt with the condition but not to 'cure' it. The general consensus from professionals is that it should be stricken from the DSM. I don't doubt there are people who take advantage of others but by and large this is a non issue, I don't believe there is some conspiracy among practitioners and parents to convert people and make them believe they have gender dysphoria. Occam's Razor, most likely the people claiming it actually feel that way, and I'm just going to take them at their word.

What this has to do with Trump though? Nothing.

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machinea wrote:You're right I haven't got any idea. Are you queer? And I'm not being rhetorical, I'd really like an answer to that.

I am however pretty sure I am older and lived through more of this than you have. I've been out since 1987.

There are things going on in the queer community I'm not down with but really don't speak to much namely issues between transwomen and lesbians in which I think both are wrong depending on the issue And also is something that is not happening in the transmen vs gay male identities at the same level. And that is about all I'll say.

I would also argue that pedophilia has never had anything to do with LGBT communities ever. They may have tried to ally themselves with the 'other' but were never welcome (irrespective of the massive age differences in many gay relationships in the days before Stonewall due to needing to be shown the ropes by elders e.g. Christopher Isherwood and Don Bacardy).

I actually have sat in on meetings with those who head up the DSM and why they choose to still classify Transgenderism as mental health issue. Namely it is so these individuals can receive health care coverage with their insurance. But the treatment protocol is to treat the stress felt with the condition but not to 'cure' it. The general consensus from professionals is that it should be stricken from the DSM. I don't doubt there are people who take advantage of others but by and large this is a non issue, I don't believe there is some conspiracy among practitioners and parents to convert people and make them believe they have gender dysphoria. Occam's Razor, most likely the people claiming it actually feel that way, and I'm just going to take them at their word.

What this has to do with Trump though? Nothing.


And I am overjoyed at the fact that the movement shuns pedophillia at every turn. The problem is them trying desperately and constantly to associate themselves with it, attempting to trick ordinary citizens into thinking that they are somehow a similar marginalized group.

I don't think that it is a widespread conspiracy, and you are right in that respect, but if someone approaches a private surgeon about transitioning, dollar signs will appear in their eyes and the health risks will be glossed over.

When word got out that I swung both ways and had been close to another male at secondary school, I don't tend to talk about this because I don't like whining about something that was in the past in reality, but I was beaten by a group of people until I was bloody and my vision was blurred/ I had a minor concussion. Its then that I realised that words really aren't what is important in defending people's rights and that it was actions. I grew an immunity to words, a positioning of the vocal chords because all it really was to me was soundwaves. It wasn't a group of people physically attacking me while I was lying on the ground. I find it kind of worrying that there aren't separate categories for 'hate crimes' and Hate crimes. The people that have been physically attacked for their beliefs or sexuality etc shouldn't be grouped together with people who have had a rude comment on the street directed towards them and don't have a thick enough skin not to go and try to make insulting someone a criminal offense. People being rude and hateful to eachother is wrong and it can be very hurtful, but you can't legislate that, its human nature and it should be dealt with by education and social change, not punishing people for using the wrong words.

If someone says something to a person that is hateful, and the person tells them to stop, any further comments come under harassment and it should be dealt with that way.

Even people who would use their free speech to ridicule and insult me either based on having an effeminate appearance and long hair, my preferences when it comes to gender or my religious beliefs. I would fight and fight for their right to say it not to be taken away. I would also fight for anyone that tries to escalate something like that from verbal to a physical attack to be punished to the full extent of the law.

Let's take it back to Trump. He has made some pretty bad decisions, one decision I agree with is not allowing Transgender folk to serve in the military. When the US military won't even allow diabetics to serve, based on the fact that they can't guarantee that they could receive their medication in the field, it follows that someone who is either on hormone therapy or requires dilation and other daily medical needs isn't fit to serve in the field. If it was someone who was trans but didn't require any daily or weekly medical treatment (self administered treatment or otherwise) it would be fine for them to serve, but as that isn't the case. It is probably a prudent decision.

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Pestilence - be silent. No one is listening.

Prithee all be hushed. I had warned you of this, Mexi.

I can no longer stand this -HORSE SHIT- and have contemplated leaving since its inception. If it need be discussed, why not create a board one can choose to hide called "fake politic"? Better yet, why not lump it in the US politics thread? Publicly acknowledging that this sort of thing has driven me away from Twoism, as I do not need reminders that I am stuck in a hole of bile and shit. This is all I have to say, without bias, and shall not further post in this derelict thread.
Okay...now...wait for fog machine.

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Well that's me told then ;-)
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Jonse wrote:Pestilence - be silent. No one is listening.

Prithee all be hushed. I had warned you of this, Mexi.

I can no longer stand this -HORSE SHIT- and have contemplated leaving since its inception. If it need be discussed, why not create a board one can choose to hide called "fake politic"? Better yet, why not lump it in the US politics thread? Publicly acknowledging that this sort of thing has driven me away from Twoism, as I do not need reminders that I am stuck in a hole of bile and shit. This is all I have to say, without bias, and shall not further post in this derelict thread.


I am sorry you feel that way. I like an open and stimulating discussion about US politics as it is in a rather unique phase, I think a lot of what is discussed here relates back to Trump and, you are right, I have been using this as a general purpose US politics thread rather than things that are explicitly Trump related. Note that, especially recently, I haven't been treading on anyone's toes and I understand their contempt for the man so I let them vent without interruption. I express my own opinions as a standalone and engage in discussion with anyone that wishes to reply to them.

I know that you are someone that has to deal with the consequences of this man's decisions firsthand and it is saddening.

I hope I don't come across as rude, but there are a list of topics and one doesn't have to click on/ read a thread that they know will make them feel uncomfortable (I am sorry).

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