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President Trump: Part II

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Arcade22 said:
It's surreal: Less than week in and Trump has shown himself far worse a president than most expected.

  • He has already caused a international conflict with Mexico by being unable to convince them to pay for his border wall. Trying to bully your weaker neighbors into caving in to your demands isn't exactly going to make America popular.
  • Publicly supported torture and called for it to be US policy, seriously undermining his relations with European and other countries.
  • He has lost just about all of his credibility by peddling obvious lies about completely insignificant and irrelevant things like the size of crowd at his inauguration, but also the extent of electoral fraud during the elections despite the complete lack of evidence and thus undermining American democracy.

Seriously, i have a hard time recalling someone who started off this badly as a national leader. Honestly it's quite spectacular to watch this train-crash while it's happening. I mean what's he going to fail at next? Starting an armed confrontation with China? Saying that the Illuminati is undermining his presidency by portraying him badly in the media?
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But none of this matter to Trump supporters, because to them, Trump is doing what he promised he'd do*. Unfortunately for them, and him, ruling by decree isn't exactly how it works in the US, and he hasn't actually managed to do anything yet.

* The stuff the rest of us were told would never happen, because Trump was to be taken seriously, but not literally. How wrong that was.
 
uke2se said:
But none of this matter to Trump supporters, because to them, Trump is doing what he promised he'd do*. Unfortunately for them, and him, ruling by decree isn't exactly how it works in the US, and he hasn't actually managed to do anything yet.

* The stuff the rest of us were told would never happen, because Trump was to be taken seriously, but not literally. How wrong that was.
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I can see how this would appeal to a certain segment. The reactionary knee-jerk responses are quite attractive to some and 'common sense' to others.

Thus every military/foreign policy issue can be solved by 'sending in the SAS' and every domestic problem can be solved by 'locking em up and throwing away the key'

Sadly the real world is far more complex.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
It is true that the political center in the US is way off center to the right: what goes for liberal here would be right-center or just right wing.
Many GOP policies are considered far-right in other Western democracies.

So even a moderate Republican is still not really near the traditional political center.
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Nay, nay and thrice nay! Liberal doesn't mean left, if it did your right wingers would be against the USA constitution, the USA was and is founded on liberal principles, not right or left principles. And the mistake is often made in other countries, people in the UK wondered how our liberal ideology party (the libdems) could work with a right wing party and that is because a lot of liberal ideology is shared with right wing politics. For example free trade and minimal government interference. Where liberal ideology doesn't usually match up with right wing ideology is in regards to the individual, right ideology in general is authoritism in regards to the individual, for example recreational drug use being illegal.
 
Darat said:
Nay, nay and thrice nay! Liberal doesn't mean left, if it did your right wingers would be against the USA constitution, the USA was and is founded on liberal principles, not right or left principles. And the mistake is often made in other countries, people in the UK wondered how our liberal ideology party (the libdems) could work with a right wing party and that is because a lot of liberal ideology is shared with right wing politics. For example free trade and minimal government interference. Where liberal ideology doesn't usually match up with right wing ideology is in regards to the individual, right ideology in general is authoritism in regards to the individual, for example recreational drug use being illegal.
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All true. I vote liberal in Sweden. They are center-right.
 
SezMe said:
The total votes for president (ignoring third party votes) was 128,825,233. So you believe that almost 1.3 million voters changed their vote because of Clinton's deplorable remark. You might want to reconsider your estimate.
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No.

Clinton was simply echoing lots of rhetoric already in use, by herself and others. There was already a trend to label huge swaths of the American public as deplorable bigots. If Clinton had distanced herself from that trend, rather than embracing it, 1.3 million would be on the low side of my estimate of votes changed.

Her husband had a Sister Soulja moment. She had a basket of deplorables moment. There's a reason her husband won and she lost.
 
If you are right, and the denigration of Clinton has been going on since the 80s, and she managed to lose the nomination to Obama in the 2008 race, why did she or her team not have a better plan to tackle the defects in her campaigning? That would seem again to indicate that she was a poor candidate who was put forward just because it was her turn ("buggins turn we would say in Scots) with no thought to how effective she would be against any Republican nominee.
 
Arcade22 said:
It's surreal: Less than week in and Trump has shown himself far worse a president than most expected.

  • He has already caused a international conflict with Mexico by being unable to convince them to pay for his border wall. Trying to bully your weaker neighbors into caving in to your demands isn't exactly going to make America popular.
  • Publicly supported torture and called for it to be US policy, seriously undermining his relations with European and other countries.
  • He has lost just about all of his credibility by peddling obvious lies about completely insignificant and irrelevant things like the size of crowd at his inauguration, but also the extent of electoral fraud during the elections despite the complete lack of evidence and thus undermining American democracy.

Seriously, i have a hard time recalling someone who started off this badly as a national leader. Honestly it's quite spectacular to watch this train-crash while it's happening. I mean what's he going to fail at next? Starting an armed confrontation with China? Saying that the Illuminati is undermining his presidency by portraying him badly in the media?
Click to expand...

Similar to the thoughts of uke2se, none of this was unexpected. Furthermore, his supporters welcome most of it Even his bizarre peddling of obvious lies is not all that unwelcome. I listen to right wing radio while I drive. Their spin is that we have a President who is standing up to those evil people in the media.

Hannity was frothing at the mouth yesterday because several newspapers had the audacity to call Trump a liar. They didn't just say bad things about him, they had headlines with the word "lie" and "liar" in them. Imagine the gall! My thought was, "It's about time. Why weren't they doing this during the early primary season, when he could be stopped?"

It will take a couple of years, when people realize that America is not "great again" even though we've killed some Arabs and made nasty comments about people we don't like. They'll still feel left out, and left behind, and they will realize Trump is not their savior, but that will take time.
 
SezMe said:
The total votes for president (ignoring third party votes) was 128,825,233. So you believe that almost 1.3 million voters changed their vote because of Clinton's deplorable remark. You might want to reconsider your estimate.
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I don't think he means just the remark, but the general attitude of the left towards much of America.

ETA: Ah, ninja'd.
 
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I read lots of analyses about how economic hardship this and disgust with Washington that led Trump supporters to vote for him, but I keep reading in online forums that "I didn't want to vote for Trump, but I'm tired of being called ____". The message I get from these folks is that we're stuck with this wretched excuse for a man, and his treasonous and corrupt mob, because Trump voters' feelings were hurt.

That may not be the message they're trying to send, but it sure comes across that way.
 
Firestone said:
You can't make these things up:
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You might be unsurprised to hear that there's not much activity in the several threads about Hillary Clinton's "criminal" use of private email servers anymore.

You can cut the hypocrisy with a knife.
 
uke2se said:
You might be unsurprised to hear that there's not much activity in the several threads about Hillary Clinton's "criminal" use of private email servers anymore.

You can cut the hypocrisy with a knife.
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Yes, you really can.

Maybe, if and when things really go south for Trump, Jason will revive his "investigation" in the private email server.
 
Emily's Cat said:
WTF do you want? What do you think people should address? Both phiwum and I have said (on more than one occassion) that Trump is a buffoon, and that his election to the presidency is a travesty. Neither of us supported the fool. But I didn't support Hillary either - I still think she would have been a terribly president.
I have, however, called you and others on your methodology and your reactionary behavior. Castigating anyone who did support Trump as being deplorable bigots etc. is exactly WHY the democrats lost this election. I've tried to point this out many times. So have several others. But that doesn't seem to be what you want to hear. It seems that your hurt feelings are assuaged by lashing out at everyone else and calling them names. As if that sort of peer-pressure bullying has ever accomplished anything good. As if somehow a fear of being called a name would force someone to adopt your viewpoint.

That's not a discussion. It's social coercion.
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Just to save me the time of stating my position again, pretend I wrote this.
 
sts60 said:
I read lots of analyses about how economic hardship this and disgust with Washington that led Trump supporters to vote for him, but I keep reading in online forums that "I didn't want to vote for Trump, but I'm tired of being called ____". The message I get from these folks is that we're stuck with this wretched excuse for a man, and his treasonous and corrupt mob, because Trump voters' feelings were hurt.

That may not be the message they're trying to send, but it sure comes across that way.
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One other thing to consider is that the swayed voters might not themselves have been the target of pejoratives, but saw the over-use of pejoratives by one side as indicative of a lack of meaningful criticism. It's of course not the case that there isn't meaningful criticism of Trump (that shouldn't need to be said), or that meaningful criticisms weren't made. But that perhaps there was too much reliance on the 'morally reprehensible' angle for our current times.

I watched Michelle O's last speech before the elections. Never having heard her speak at length I was fairly impressed and thought she did a good job. At one specific point, however, she aimed her comments at men and asked something like "what would we say to our wives and daughters if we wound up electing this person (Trump)?". Even when I thought odds were still safely on Clinton's side that moment made me cringe a bit. There are so many viable criticisms to make of Trump, why on earth would you play the guilt card?

"What would we say to our spouses or children if we had elected the man who started a shooting war over a Tweet?" or "What would we say to our unemployed masses after we had elected the man who ran our country the way he ran his bankrupted businesses?" - that was, IMO, the angle to take. Substantive criticism of ability and temperament to do the job.

Then again, this is nothing more than Monday Morning QBing on my part, as, while I can think of reasons why someone might have voted Trump which would appear rational to them if not others, I'm still in shock at the number of people for whom those reasons were compelling.
 
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Arcade22 said:
It's surreal: Less than week in and Trump has shown himself far worse a president than most expected.

  • He has already caused a international conflict with Mexico by being unable to convince them to pay for his border wall. Trying to bully your weaker neighbors into caving in to your demands isn't exactly going to make America popular.
  • Publicly supported torture and called for it to be US policy, seriously undermining his relations with European and other countries.
  • He has lost just about all of his credibility by peddling obvious lies about completely insignificant and irrelevant things like the size of crowd at his inauguration, but also the extent of electoral fraud during the elections despite the complete lack of evidence and thus undermining American democracy.

Seriously, i have a hard time recalling someone who started off this badly as a national leader. Honestly it's quite spectacular to watch this train-crash while it's happening. I mean what's he going to fail at next? Starting an armed confrontation with China? Saying that the Illuminati is undermining his presidency by portraying him badly in the media?
Click to expand...

China don't need a conflict. Trump has pulled out of the TPP, he's handed all the trade to them.
 
OK, I had to do it...
bar-trialsandtribbleations.jpg
 
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