US Politics/Biden Presidency (Trump-free zone)

[Matt]

On 1/12/2018 at 21:03, MikeO said:

I'm not suggesting he's stupid, just that he's a looney; idiot savant would probably be the best description. If the white working class/blue collar workers are gullible enough to buy it then that's very sad. Agree completely that the race problem over there is astounding, it's like the rest of the "civilised" world has moved beyond it (not totally but to some extent) while the US is stuck in Rosa Parks territory.

In some cases, it's not a question of being gullible, it's a question of frustration and desperation.

On 1/12/2018 at 21:13, TallPaul1878 said:

There's a lot going on in America. The interference in politics by vested interests is incredibly powerful. Movements like BLM and Antifa are all bought and paid for, I'm sure that right wing groups are just the same with financial backing from corporate agitators.

I'll tell you what I thought was the reason that Trump got in and what I believe went on in the minds of his more salient voters. I personally thought that Trump would go big on investing in the infrastructure of America. Compared to Europe the infrastructure is in the dark ages. I was expecting big mass transit programs, upgrading the internet networks and power grid.

The way he was talking was that America would catapult itself to the cutting edge of technology and aim to have the best of everything. The best trains, the best internet network, everything really that the population rely upon to go about their business.

It's a pretty ballpark figure that every $1 spent on infrastructure will see a $3 return on investment for the whole economy.

None of that has come to pass at all. I fear nothing will change in the good old USA now. Personally I think we're heading for another economic crisis, I think it's gonna end up in armed conflict too.

What makes you think that? The stock market has been steadily climbing since he took office

5 hours ago, markjazzbassist said:

pretty much nailed it chach.  Perfect example.  In the primaries my parents (diehard republicans and values issue voters) made fun of trump said they would never vote for him and thought he was an idiot.  The minute he got the nomination for repub they were singing a different song.  They vote for the republican regardless.

 

for me I was a Bernie sanders guy, when the dems screwed him over I didn’t go with Hillary, I went Green Party because I’d rather that than Hillary (too conservative for me).

 

This next election will be interesting.  The dems need a candidate the working class, minorities, intellectuals, and middle class can get around.  Sadly most of them don’t vote.  Old rich white people vote.

My father in law too. He votes for his party because of the founding principles of the republican party. The problem is that too many people go with a name without understanding the policies being put forward, or are simply too stubborn / prejudice to change the habit of a life time. That said, I completely understand why people chose the republicans if Clinton was the only viable alternative. The democrats really fucked themselves over, and should've fought extremism with extremism instead of that soulless, monotone pant suit

1 hour ago, tonkaroost said:

Same with my dad MJB. He hates Trump, but he always votes for the party. It makes no sense. He's the smartest person I know, but when it comes to politics we never see eye-to-eye. My mom is Republican too but actually voted for Hillary becuse of Trump's "grab her by the pussy" comments.

I'm not saying republicans can't be smart; I just don't understand why anyone would support Trump.

I've said it before: he makes George Bush look capable!

Some people were so desperate for change they've sacrificed their morals. Others just didn't see a viable alternative

[Chach]

14 hours ago, Matt said:

Others just didn't see a viable alternative, I completely understand why people chose the republicans if Clinton was the only viable alternative, soulless, monotone pant suit.

 

Trump and the alternative were chalk and cheese.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

 

 

[Matt]

8 hours ago, Chach said:

Trump and the alternative were chalk and cheese.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

I know, and if I was American I know who I would’ve voted for. But, I understand why so many people refused to vote for her, even life long democrats. 

[MikeO]

25 minutes ago, Matt said:

I understand why so many people refused to vote for her, even life long democrats. 

I don't when the alternative was a racist, bigoted moron. She may have her faults but nothing compared to the neanderthal in the red corner.

[Chach]

19 minutes ago, MikeO said:

I don't when the alternative was a racist, bigoted moron. She may have her faults but nothing compared to the neanderthal in the red corner.

No excuse.

If you live in a nailed on red state fair enough, register your disapproval. If you live in a blue state or swing state and threw your vote away then you're complicit in the Trump presidency.

[Matt]

44 minutes ago, MikeO said:

I don't when the alternative was a racist, bigoted moron. She may have her faults but nothing compared to the neanderthal in the red corner.

Well, I've had many a debate with Republicans and Trump fans, and I've spent several pain hours going back and forth with them. I'm with you for the most part, but some had gotten so desperate that any change from the democrats was justified. I'm not saying I agree with them, but I understood why.

[markjazzbassist]

On 1/14/2018 at 01:50, Chach said:

That election for you guys living it must have been next level weird, Iowa and Ohio predominantly white states who voted for Obama both times but preferred Trump over Hillary?

Regardless of Hillary's shortcomings of which there are many, that just doesn't compute with me. Got any insight into that?

Technically my vote meant nothing cause I was livin g in the south and it was going trump regardless and it did.  In Ohio where i now live it’s called the rust belt.  Used to be massive manufacturing and industry all in here and Detroit and buffalo (upstate New York) but slowly that all moved overseas.  So the areas became very depressed economically for decades.  The major cities in Ohio are majority black, Obama got all the big cities and then got the traditional dems.  Trump got all the democrat union guys Obama voters who were pissed their jobs left and he got the rich white people.  The minorities sadly didn’t come out to vote in record numbers against trump, as they had in favor of Obama.

 

sadly I fear you have to get a perfect ticket (minority and male/female in one president VP) to tick all the boxes in the future.  Cause women are the majority here and they vote.

[Chach]

No punches pulled review of Fire and Fury from conservative intellectual Andrew Sullivan

 

"Last year, Trump allowed the most extreme elements of the GOP to add countless judges to the federal bench, and so shift the judicial branch to the hard right for decades. This new year has seen them expand offshore oil drilling beyond anything Reagan dreamt of, continue the crackdown on illegal immigration (200,000 Salvadorians are now being deported after living in the US for decades), and wage a new war on widely popular, legal cannabis. In other words, the Republican Party is finding a way to cordon off Trump as far as is possible from actually running the country, but is using him as a base-pleaser and an antagonist to everyone they hate."

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine/culture/fire-and-fury-trump-white-house-michael-wolff-andrew-sullivan-book-review-w8p35jc32#

 

But her emails tho!

[Chach]

Paywall avoidance:

The core reason to believe almost everything in Michael Wolff’s devastating exposé of the Trump White House is that we knew all of it already.

We’ve watched for an entire year as a delusional, belligerent know-nothing has careened and plunged through what’s left of American constitutional norms. If you came across Trump’s Twitter feed without knowing whose it was, you’d assume it was a crazy old geezer, slumped on a couch, remote in hand, venting at Fox News all day, the orange powder from his constant snacking visible on his fingertips. But you’d also be unable to ignore how vindictive, vain, bullying and cruel this pensioner is. I’ve tried for a couple of years — I really have — to find some redeeming characteristic in Trump, and have come up empty.

Wolff is a dodgy player. But his sleaziness is usually with respect to ground rules: sneakily turning off-the-record quotes into on-the-record ones, using second-hand sources and gossip, rather than the meticulous and somewhat dry journalism of the Washington press corps, and creating great narrative, even if the strict chronology defies a simple story.

Yet this White House is so dysfunctional that he didn’t even need to employ any shenanigans. He was allowed to do what he wanted, talk to anyone (directed by the White House itself), and the new players were so disorganised and naive he got away with it.

And Wolff doesn’t make stuff up from whole cloth. His main source, Steve Bannon, has not repudiated any of the astounding quotes from the book — including the view that the Trump campaign engaged in “treasonous” dealings with the Kremlin’s emissaries.

The pushback from the White House has, in turn, largely been a vague denial of everything — rather than a clear refutation of anything in particular — along with the insistence that Trump is, well, some kind of mad genius, whose shameless lying, massive ignorance of policy, constantly shifting alliances, staggering laziness and contempt for liberal democracy have nevertheless achieved important policy goals. The “mad king” White House, in this view, is supplemented by a “sane cabinet” White House, and therefore the damaging charges against the president may be true, but are largely moot. This is not, it is important to note, a refutation of Trump’s unfitness or of Wolff’s sourcing. It is a changing of the subject.

The weakness of the book is that it concentrates on drama, personalities and the spectacle of a self-described “very stable genius”. It fails to note something arguably more important: that in the month before the book’s publication, Congress passed a tax bill that was a Republican fantasy — drastically cutting taxes on corporations and the super-wealthy, adding a trillion dollars to the national debt, and opening up the Alaskan Arctic to oil drilling, a goal that the Republicans have tried and failed to achieve for the past 30 years.

Last year, Trump allowed the most extreme elements of the GOP to add countless judges to the federal bench, and so shift the judicial branch to the hard right for decades. This new year has seen them expand offshore oil drilling beyond anything Reagan dreamt of, continue the crackdown on illegal immigration (200,000 Salvadorians are now being deported after living in the US for decades), and wage a new war on widely popular, legal cannabis. In other words, the Republican Party is finding a way to cordon off Trump as far as is possible from actually running the country, but is using him as a base-pleaser and an antagonist to everyone they hate.

And the core truth of the book remains: the American republic is now well into its decadent Roman phase, where unqualified celebrities and reality-show stars become figureheads of the idiocracy (Oprah is the Democratic alternative), and where brutal polarisation means that each party, if dominant, focuses on undoing every single thing done by its rival. For this moment in American decline, Trump is the perfect president: driven by hatred of the other tribe, and by incoherent prejudices and conspiracy theories.

And this is the story of the moment. Trump’s goal is to normalise this insanity, and Wolff simply refuses to play along. (It’s worth noting that it’s hard to dismiss Wolff as a typical left-liberal journalist. He has made a career of baiting liberal media types, is largely shunned by them, and began last year as an anti-anti-Trump polemicist.) It is not normal for a president to read nothing, and to spend hours a day tweeting at live cable news. It is not normal for a president to assail his own intelligence services, to threaten and belittle private citizens.

The most significant claim in Wolff’s book is one that well-sourced Washington reporters already know: that every single member of Trump’s senior staff believes he is incapable of functioning in his job. They regard him as a moron, an idiot, a spoilt, delusional brat: “Bannon described Trump as a simple machine,” writes Wolff. “The On switch was full of flattery, the Off switch full of calumny. The flattery was dripping, slavish, cast in ultimate superlatives, and entirely disconnected from reality: so-and-so was the best, the most incredible, the ne plus ultra, the eternal. The calumny was angry, bitter, resentful, ever a casting out and closing of the iron door.” You never knew which of these crude binaries would show up each day.

And that’s why very little in this book shocks. Every single senior Trump staffer has been leaking like a colander from the moment this farce began. As Wolff notes, this White House has achieved “landmark transparency”. And so we should be in no way surprised that Bannon, only recently lauded as a great friend, is now in Siberia. An unstable, disloyal, mercurial and vindictive boss will tend to attract unstable, disloyal, mercurial and vindictive staffers.

Despite all this, a hefty chunk of America and the world has greeted this spectacle by grabbing a bag of popcorn, plonking down on a couch and waiting for the next instalment of the reality show. Some of this rather staggering complacency is due to a near golden age in some respect: Trump arrived on the scene as a whole bunch of indicators turned upward. Eight years of growth in America have brought unemployment to a seven-year low, the Dow to 25,000, and median household income to a record high. Crime rates continue to plunge. More Americans now have health insurance than ever before. Isis has been destroyed in its heartland. Thanks to Obama, the US is no longer bogged down in occupying ungovernable failed states. Everything on the surface looks fine. The more drastic changes that Trump proposed — a trade war with China, an end to Nafta — have all disappeared down the plughole of what passes for his attention span. There’s a growing sense that perhaps we can ride this out, that we can get through the next three years without nuclear catastrophe, a constitutional crisis, civil unrest or an economic downswing.

And maybe we can. Maybe the drunk driver, squinting through the car window, skirting the kerb, swerving sharply around potholes on black ice, can avoid killing someone or trashing the car on the rest of his journey home. But the question that now hangs in front of America, and most specifically the Republican Party, is whether this risk can really be afforded, whether the stability of the world is worth a tax cut or some oil drilling, or whether it is the responsibility of those in Congress to acknowledge the emergency that is upon us.

We’ve known all about this shambles for a long time now. The real merit of Wolff’s book is that it brings it all together in one riveting narrative, with the truth coming directly sourced from the president’s own mortified advisers. The emperor’s clothes were falling down, but now they have vanished. And so we enter this new year suspended in surrealism: an emergency that still isn’t an emergency, a crisis that is not a crisis, while the opportunists make their moves, the irrational emperor steams forward, and we all wonder if reality will ever actually intrude on this farcical reality show.

 

[Matt]

That made my eyes hurt, but well worth the read. 

[Matt]

3 hours ago, Chach said:

No punches pulled review of Fire and Fury from conservative intellectual Andrew Sullivan

 

"Last year, Trump allowed the most extreme elements of the GOP to add countless judges to the federal bench, and so shift the judicial branch to the hard right for decades. This new year has seen them expand offshore oil drilling beyond anything Reagan dreamt of, continue the crackdown on illegal immigration (200,000 Salvadorians are now being deported after living in the US for decades), and wage a new war on widely popular, legal cannabis. In other words, the Republican Party is finding a way to cordon off Trump as far as is possible from actually running the country, but is using him as a base-pleaser and an antagonist to everyone they hate."

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine/culture/fire-and-fury-trump-white-house-michael-wolff-andrew-sullivan-book-review-w8p35jc32#

 

But her emails tho!

The latest argument in my debate with a rather difficult Trump supporter (family, so I have to remain respectful which is teaching me a lot about my levels of self-constraint and patience) is that Clinton’s a murderer and Trumps only a racist, and that “lefty’s” voted for her told the Trump supporter all she needed to know. I’m resisting the urge to highlight the claims against Clinton may well be true, but there’s no proof so for now it’s a fantastical conspiracy theory, whereas Trumps racism, mocking of the disabled, sexual assault, etc is all documented fact. 

But hey. That would be showing reason and logic. 

[MikeO]

Thanks for that @Chach, great read.

[Sibdane]

17 minutes ago, MikeO said:

Thanks for that @Chach, great read.

A great read if you don't live in the USA!

[MikeO]

26 minutes ago, tonkaroost said:

A great read if you don't live in the USA!

"Great" was probably the wrong word; should've gone with interesting or thought provoking or maybe even insightful.

[Chach]

9 hours ago, Matt said:

The latest argument in my debate with a rather difficult Trump supporter (family, so I have to remain respectful which is teaching me a lot about my levels of self-constraint and patience) is that Clinton’s a murderer and Trumps only a racist, and that “lefty’s” voted for her told the Trump supporter all she needed to know. I’m resisting the urge to highlight the claims against Clinton may well be true, but there’s no proof so for now it’s a fantastical conspiracy theory, whereas Trumps racism, mocking of the disabled, sexual assault, etc is all documented fact. 

But hey. That would be showing reason and logic. 

A good argument as soon as anyone mentions "lefties" "libtards" or any other centre left pejorative is that opposition to Trumps presidency is not a left and right issue at the higher levels, its separated the proper conservatives from the authoritarians and other assorted right wing nut jobs.

A lot of conservative and liberal thinkers are bonding over this dumpster fire and I think that can only be a good thing for democracy in the medium term.

[Chach]

Lie after lie after lie.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/17/trumps-false-claim-that-alleged-terror-suspect-brought-two-dozen-relatives-to-u-s/?utm_term=.d00f6c7da25a

[markjazzbassist]

i'm worried it's going to change politics in the US forever.  that people will just accept that you can lie and make up whatever narrative you like and act like that is reality and that's fine.  scary.

[Matt]

6 minutes ago, markjazzbassist said:

i'm worried it's going to change politics in the US forever.  that people will just accept that you can lie and make up whatever narrative you like and act like that is reality and that's fine.  scary.

To be fair, that's just politics in general, it's usually just better hidden. Politics will have been changed forever, whether for the better or not.... Well, we'll see provided he doesn't escalate his nuclear pissing contest further

[markjazzbassist]

2 minutes ago, Matt said:

To be fair, that's just politics in general, it's usually just better hidden. Politics will have been changed forever, whether for the better or not.... Well, we'll see provided he doesn't escalate his nuclear pissing contest further

yes and no, when the fact checkers prove you wrong the politicians usually have the decency to try and spin it and squirm.  Trump just says no.  "you said this and this" trumps response "no i didn't"  here is a recording of you saying it, his response "thats not me".  that's what i'm talking about, the pathological lying.

[Matt]

2 minutes ago, markjazzbassist said:

yes and no, when the fact checkers prove you wrong the politicians usually have the decency to try and spin it and squirm.  Trump just says no.  "you said this and this" trumps response "no i didn't"  here is a recording of you saying it, his response "thats not me".  that's what i'm talking about, the pathological lying.

Not sure what's worse to be honest; flat out lying or trying to deceive by spinning it. 

[markjazzbassist]

33 minutes ago, Matt said:

Not sure what's worse to be honest; flat out lying or trying to deceive by spinning it. 

but that's the thing, the minute someone pivots or tries to spin it's an admission of guilt/they are caught.  It's basic debating 101.  Trump doesn't uses the rules of debate, he just lives in a separate reality where it's whatever he wants regardless of fact/laws/etc.

[Matt]

1 minute ago, markjazzbassist said:

but that's the thing, the minute someone pivots or tries to spin it's an admission of guilt/they are caught.  It's basic debating 101.  Trump doesn't uses the rules of debate, he just lives in a separate reality where it's whatever he wants regardless of fact/laws/etc.

And rarely anything happens to them if they are. Trump flat out lies/denies and nothing happens to him either. 

I just don't see much of a difference between the two; they're both disgraceful acts

[markjazzbassist]

39 minutes ago, Matt said:

And rarely anything happens to them if they are. Trump flat out lies/denies and nothing happens to him either. 

I just don't see much of a difference between the two; they're both disgraceful acts

the fact checkers prove them wrong time and time again after the debate.  They never say "the fact checkers are wrong" they know it, it was spin.  Trump does, that's the difference.

 

http://www.politifact.com/

 

that's the one most of the media use after a debate or policy speech.

[Matt]

28 minutes ago, markjazzbassist said:

the fact checkers prove them wrong time and time again after the debate.  They never say "the fact checkers are wrong" they know it, it was spin.  Trump does, that's the difference.

http://www.politifact.com/

that's the one most of the media use after a debate or policy speech.

I know the site well, comes in very handy  

My point is both have the same start; they lied to the public. Whether they try and lie further to get themselves out of shit or flat out deny it isn'tt the big problem for me

[MikeO]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42717163

[markjazzbassist]

5/5 mike i'm ready to be president

[Chach]

10 hours ago, Matt said:

And rarely anything happens to them if they are. Trump flat out lies/denies and nothing happens to him either. 

I just don't see much of a difference between the two; they're both disgraceful acts

Totally false equivalency, for the most part politics is not philosophy and not an exercise in dialectics, its a debate and both/all sides are trying to win.

eg In the Lukaku thread using a straw man is dishonest as we are all Evertonians, supposedly trying to come to an honest position about one of our players through disagreement. 

In politics using a straw man in a debate might still be dishonest but its par for the course, conflating these two things is how our politics is going feral. Idealism in politics might be desirable but its not realistic.

Trump is lying in a way that attacks our institutions using despotic language, there is no equivalency unless you are comparing him to the likes of Putin, Mugabe, Assad etc.

 

[Chach]

Topical:

"Trump is speeding the global erosion of democracy, watchdog says"

 

 

[Matt]

4 hours ago, Chach said:

Totally false equivalency, for the most part politics is not philosophy and not an exercise in dialectics, its a debate and both/all sides are trying to win.

eg In the Lukaku thread using a straw man is dishonest as we are all Evertonians, supposedly trying to come to an honest position about one of our players through disagreement. 

In politics using a straw man in a debate might still be dishonest but its par for the course, conflating these two things is how our politics is going feral. Idealism in politics might be desirable but its not realistic.

Trump is lying in a way that attacks our institutions using despotic language, there is no equivalency unless you are comparing him to the likes of Putin, Mugabe, Assad etc.

 

So if it's par for course, that's ok? Not in my book. Both are forms of lying and dismissing criticism, they are both as bad as each other, they just go about it a different way to get to the end result; say something incorrect, get caught, try to get out of it. One is more direct, one is more sneaky. Both are dishonest. It's got nothing to do with idealism; neither are acceptable and if people got as riled up about politicians flat-out lying to them then sniveling their way back into favour by twisting and turning their words to suit the new agenda as they did Trumps flat out dismissal, politics might actually represent the people a lot better and be in a healthier state. Although, that's kind of what got Trump elected in first place, so maybe it only works if there are decent, honest candidates to choose from. 

He is a dictator in the making, and his rise to power isn'tt that dissimilar to Hitlers (not on the same scale and hopefully never will be) if you look at it from a very high level.

[Chach]

3 hours ago, Matt said:

So if it's par for course, that's ok? Not in my book. Both are forms of lying and dismissing criticism, they are both as bad as each other, they just go about it a different way to get to the end result; say something incorrect, get caught, try to get out of it. One is more direct, one is more sneaky. Both are dishonest. It's got nothing to do with idealism; neither are acceptable and if people got as riled up about politicians flat-out lying to them then sniveling their way back into favour by twisting and turning their words to suit the new agenda as they did Trumps flat out dismissal, politics might actually represent the people a lot better and be in a healthier state. Although, that's kind of what got Trump elected in first place, so maybe it only works if there are decent, honest candidates to choose from. 

He is a dictator in the making, and his rise to power isn'ttt that dissimilar to Hitlers (not on the same scale and hopefully never will be) if you look at it from a very high level.

Politicians lie because they are people and people lie, all of them including you. 

What you lie about, to what end, the frequency and potential damage your lies cause are important, if you don't believe that  you are going to have to retract your statement about it being nothing to do with idealism.