luka
Well-known member
im still hoping he can be spiritually reborn. im not counting him out just yet. if only he'd listen to me he'd be flying. some people dont know where there best interests lie.
Trump
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- #mentoo craner had sex with a girl craner saw a girl naked crooked luka everyone has dickpicks of everyone grab them by the sufi hashtag jurisdiction hashtag witchhunts now impeach johnson ffs obsessive male feminists office romance or sexual harassment? parp pfft! poot! release the leo tapes! so much winning squirt tea fancies donald that's a lovely dress the j stands for genius trump le monde what about the snowflakes white men fight back
im still hoping he can be spiritually reborn. im not counting him out just yet. if only he'd listen to me he'd be flying. some people dont know where there best interests lie.
I hope my post didn't come over as trying to police jokes? As I was writing it, I was wondering if it'd come over as I intended - mentioning genocide seemed to undermine was I was saying and make it sound like I was being sarcastic which wasn't my intention. I meant what I said -
I genuinely find the combination of technology and subterfuge that's clustered around this mess pretty incredible.
Agreed re the Shakespearian nature of Trump. Will try and write a bit more when not on my phone.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Yeah, I did interpret it as sarcastic (hence the tone of my reply!), but reading back I can totally see how it can also be read in a non-sarcastic way. In that case I agree with you about the Cambridge Analytica story - the narrative is likewise so insane...
I would love to say that I've stopped being surprised by all the revelations, but unfortunately there's still a naive part of me going 'They really did that?'
When reading about Michael Cohen - and I'd not read that much about him previously - I did find myself wondering exactly how Trump inspires this kind of blind devotion and desperation to please in his inner circle, despite obviously being willing to throw anyone under the bus at any moment. Clearly his personality interacts with a particular kind of trauma in a quasi-magical way.
I would love to say that I've stopped being surprised by all the revelations, but unfortunately there's still a naive part of me going 'They really did that?'
When reading about Michael Cohen - and I'd not read that much about him previously - I did find myself wondering exactly how Trump inspires this kind of blind devotion and desperation to please in his inner circle, despite obviously being willing to throw anyone under the bus at any moment. Clearly his personality interacts with a particular kind of trauma in a quasi-magical way.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Leo
Well-known member
like the head of any mob family, trump values loyalty above all else. more than experience, skills, intelligence or ambition. he respects strength, but is also leery of the potential challenge/threat from a strongman.
Cohen was accepted into the inner circle at trump tower for 20 years because he was a loyal fixer, then booted from the kingdom when he started to put his own best interests before trump's.
Jeff sessions was flying high for his loyalty as one of the first GOP pols to enthusiastically endorse trump, then fell from grace when he recused himself from the mueller probe.
the sole reason trump hired an entirely unqualified reality show star (omarosa) for a do-nothing White House job was because she loyally supported him for all those years, then he called her a dog when she decided to cash in with a tell-all.
trump got rid of experienced political operatives like Reince priebis/Sean spicer and general McMaster as national security advisor because they were never loyal true believers, and is very happy with yes men like sarah Huckabee sanders, who loyally lies for him every day.
loyalty makes for great drama, both fictional and in real life.
EDIT: and then bingo, this appears: Trump Wants to Ban Flipping Because He Is Almost Literally a Mob Boss
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-boss-donald-trump-wants-to-ban-flipping.html
Cohen was accepted into the inner circle at trump tower for 20 years because he was a loyal fixer, then booted from the kingdom when he started to put his own best interests before trump's.
Jeff sessions was flying high for his loyalty as one of the first GOP pols to enthusiastically endorse trump, then fell from grace when he recused himself from the mueller probe.
the sole reason trump hired an entirely unqualified reality show star (omarosa) for a do-nothing White House job was because she loyally supported him for all those years, then he called her a dog when she decided to cash in with a tell-all.
trump got rid of experienced political operatives like Reince priebis/Sean spicer and general McMaster as national security advisor because they were never loyal true believers, and is very happy with yes men like sarah Huckabee sanders, who loyally lies for him every day.
loyalty makes for great drama, both fictional and in real life.
EDIT: and then bingo, this appears: Trump Wants to Ban Flipping Because He Is Almost Literally a Mob Boss
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-boss-donald-trump-wants-to-ban-flipping.html
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Leo
Well-known member
the times jumps on the trump-mob bandwagon...
With a Vocabulary From ‘Goodfellas,’ Trump Evokes His Native New York
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
With a Vocabulary From ‘Goodfellas,’ Trump Evokes His Native New York
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i wonder if he is bullet proof at this point.
liberals keep getting excited when a new scandal breaks, but none of it seems to have any effect whatsoever.
he is strangely good at getting extra mileage out of it. and it makes the liberal media look a bit desperate, so when something genuinely heinous happens, the impact is somewhat reduced. which might be clever on trumps part.
i am now convinced that it is inevitable he will get a second term unless anything esp terrible happens between the mid terms and then (or rather, if he gets better at diminishing the impact, and the media becomes even worse at communicating why his latest crimes matter).
people (well his supporters) still want to 'give him a chance'. maybe as they are myopic, or maybe just because, from my position in the uk at least, the democrat opposition looks a bit feeble..
liberals keep getting excited when a new scandal breaks, but none of it seems to have any effect whatsoever.
he is strangely good at getting extra mileage out of it. and it makes the liberal media look a bit desperate, so when something genuinely heinous happens, the impact is somewhat reduced. which might be clever on trumps part.
i am now convinced that it is inevitable he will get a second term unless anything esp terrible happens between the mid terms and then (or rather, if he gets better at diminishing the impact, and the media becomes even worse at communicating why his latest crimes matter).
people (well his supporters) still want to 'give him a chance'. maybe as they are myopic, or maybe just because, from my position in the uk at least, the democrat opposition looks a bit feeble..
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
You can almost see the montage of B/W newspaper front pages spinning towards you, embarrassed men in Italian suits and fedoras being led up courthouse steps in cuffs, trying to shield themselves from the paps' cameras with their free hand. On the soundtrack, dramatic orchestral jazz and popping flashbulbs.
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Leo
Well-known member
no doubt team trump has done an amazing job at normalizing horrendous behavior to the point where it doesn't stand out (and thus, offend) as much. pick any one terrible thing he's said or done in the past year and make believe it was said or done by Obama or Clinton...the country would be outraged and they'd be on their way out the door.
his re-election could hinge is whether all the moderate republicans/independents/democrats who hated hillary and held their noses and voted for him will be as motivated to come out in 2020 and do it again. trump's base is sizable but still barely 40%, all those nose-holders are the ones who put him over. when all those moderates in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. don't see all their manufacturing jobs return, when all the college-educated suburban women think about how disgusted they are by his personal behavior, and when lots of trump-supporting midwestern farmers declare bankruptcy due to his tariffs, they might feel burned. not that they'll suddenly vote for the democrat, but they're much more likely to just stay home on Election Day. once bitten, twice shy.
of course, it also depends hugely on who the democrats have up against him, obviously.
his re-election could hinge is whether all the moderate republicans/independents/democrats who hated hillary and held their noses and voted for him will be as motivated to come out in 2020 and do it again. trump's base is sizable but still barely 40%, all those nose-holders are the ones who put him over. when all those moderates in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. don't see all their manufacturing jobs return, when all the college-educated suburban women think about how disgusted they are by his personal behavior, and when lots of trump-supporting midwestern farmers declare bankruptcy due to his tariffs, they might feel burned. not that they'll suddenly vote for the democrat, but they're much more likely to just stay home on Election Day. once bitten, twice shy.
of course, it also depends hugely on who the democrats have up against him, obviously.
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version
Well-known member
Something I've found incredibly unsettling about Trump is that he's taken the country to the point where large swathes of the American public are elevating members of the CIA and FBI to the level of celebrity. You've got people from both organisations now going on late-night talk shows to whoops, cheers and applause. It's bizarre. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump was installed or allowed to win in order to generate support for the intelligence services kneecapping the government and democratic process.
Leo
Well-known member
the thing is, the whole trump situation is so corrupt and fucked up that lots of those cheers are from people who feel those organizations are a last defense trying keep democracy on track, or restore it from the White House dumpster fire/swamp/russian meddling. it's bizarro world for sure, but in a sense not entirely implausible.
version
Well-known member
Leo
Well-known member
yeah, who'd have thought that would ever happen. it's also probably transactional and of-the-moment, the whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing that will revert back to traditional liberal opposition once a "normal" bush-type republican wins the presidency again.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
On a similar note, it's occurred to me that the incredibly (unprecedently?) fractured and oppositional nature of modern politics is only superficially about a battle between progressives and reactionaries, or between 'left' and 'right' as traditionally defined. What's really happening is a rivalry between two competing gangs of bastards. I mean, sure, Hillary Clinton would probably have made a perfectly competent president in terms of keeping things ticking over, but it would have been very much business as usual - unrestrained capitalism at home, unrestrained military force abroad, a few tokenistic progressive policies not quite papering over police brutality and the prison-industrial complex. Similar story over here with Brexit: it goes without saying that Banks, Farage, Johnson, Gove and the rest are absolute scum (before you even consider the likely Russian influence) but the EU is certainly far from the purely benevolent liberal-socialist enterprise that some of the more starry-eyed Remainers seem to think it is. And when you look at some of the most high-profile pro-Remain figures - Cameron, Osborne, Blair - it's hardly a roll call of unequivocal progressives.
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Leo
Well-known member
in the US, it's come down to a toxic cocktail of cult of personality and basic tribalism. case in point: some hardcore farmland trump supporters prospered for decades off their agricultural exports and loved their Harley-Davidsons. now they support tariffs that will likely kill their own profitably and denounce Harley, for the sole reason that trump implemented those tariffs and shit on Harley.
there's no "left-right"/GOP-Dem basis for those changes, they occurred entirely because the order came from their dear leader on high. trump voters have some legit gripes, but many just blindly hate whatever trump hates. it's easier to be angry and against something. they used to relish "sticking it to the man" ("take this job and shove it!"), now they rally against the amorphous "coastal elites", Central American gangs and affordable healthcare.
we can only hope that those voters who hated hillary but haven't actually drunk the koolaid will help drive the course correction.
there's no "left-right"/GOP-Dem basis for those changes, they occurred entirely because the order came from their dear leader on high. trump voters have some legit gripes, but many just blindly hate whatever trump hates. it's easier to be angry and against something. they used to relish "sticking it to the man" ("take this job and shove it!"), now they rally against the amorphous "coastal elites", Central American gangs and affordable healthcare.
we can only hope that those voters who hated hillary but haven't actually drunk the koolaid will help drive the course correction.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...trumps-supporters-think-of-corruption/568147/
This is an interesting piece - it evokes the shade of Reich's Mass Psychology in it's central claim re. the corruption of the traditional order. Though I think Reich would've been more explicit in stating that the "traditional order"is in fact a network of sexually-rooted fears and taboos that cluster around the axis of race and gender. I was reminded also of what Jonathon Haidt writes about in The Righteous Mind - I suspect what's mobilised when Trump supporters think about Hilary is something like disgust, something deeply unpleasant but visceral and not amenable to conscious analysis or argument (maybe we could say the same about ourselves/fellow "liberals" and Trump?)
This is an interesting piece - it evokes the shade of Reich's Mass Psychology in it's central claim re. the corruption of the traditional order. Though I think Reich would've been more explicit in stating that the "traditional order"is in fact a network of sexually-rooted fears and taboos that cluster around the axis of race and gender. I was reminded also of what Jonathon Haidt writes about in The Righteous Mind - I suspect what's mobilised when Trump supporters think about Hilary is something like disgust, something deeply unpleasant but visceral and not amenable to conscious analysis or argument (maybe we could say the same about ourselves/fellow "liberals" and Trump?)
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Without wishing to derail the Trump thread, there is another direct parallel here in the most British farmers voted to leave the EU, despite the fact that EU subsidies are the only reason any farmers here are able to actually turn a profit. In fact the very areas that stand to lose the most from leaving the EU are the areas that voted most strongly for doing so.
I do wonder what would have happened if Sanders had won the Dem nomination. Do you believe the polls that suggest he'd have thrashed Trump? I mean, it's conceivable, and I like the idea. HRC certainly wasn't helped by Sanders fans who didn't vote or voted Green instead, and I think something like 12% even voted for Trump, which may have been crucial in him winning in several states and therefore perhaps in winning the election overall.
Do you think Sanders is going to run again in 2020? And do you fancy his chances? (Although I guess maybe it all depends too much on what happens in the next two years for that to be an answerable question.)