Reasons for optimism

@joefromchicago,

Well we did have a few members who stuck with "Obuma" for almost 8 years so there is precedent.

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

Right you are. Post bull shyt and ignore the real post. tRump bothers you. Good.

1 Reply

@RABEL222,

RABEL222 wrote:

tRump bothers you. Good.

No, that doesn't bother me at all. It just makes you look like an idiot. That's something that should bother you, but I very much doubt that it does.

1 Reply

@Rabel
First, as I've mentioned to you earlier, Joe has it right on the tRump thing. It's juvenile and you should drop it because it does damage to anything you might want to argue when you use his name.

@Joe

Quote:

1. Trump was the most moderate of all the Republican candidates running for president. So as impossible as it may sound, it could have been worse.

I'm not optimistic here. My guess is that because Trump knows almost nothing about the job, about US political history, about foreign affairs, about how government actually works, about his relationship with the other bodies, etc etc etc and because he has proved himself to be so incurious and so reluctant to study and because he is motivated primarily to receive adulation and to punish those who don't grant him that adulation, that he will do almost none of the work and organization associated with the Presidency. He will farm this out to others around him and within the GOP and conservative movement power centers. Just look at his EPA transition team head, a shill for the petroleum/gas and other extraction industries. Or his reliance on the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation for his SC nominee list. And it is going to be like this across the boards - because Trump himself is a know-nothing. The existing structures of movement conservative extremism are going to ride through this administration and get pretty much everything they want.

Let's recall this statement from Norquist made four years ago.

Quote:

"All we have to do is replace Obama. ... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. [...]
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared."

4 Replies

@blatham,

Okay, so there are also some reasons for fear.

1 Reply

@roger,

Oh yes. Above, I didn't even mention the aspect of media and what we can expect from Trump and his crowd now. These guys won't be much better, if any better, than authoritarian regimes anywhere in the ways in which they move to control information flows. They know how they won this election and it won't be a lesson they'll forget. I highly recommend this piece from Jay Rosen written two days prior to the election. http://pressthink.org/

0 Replies

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

I'm not optimistic here.

Well, neither am I. You'll note I only listed two things to be optimistic about.

0 Replies

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

I'm not optimistic here. My guess is that because Trump knows almost nothing about the job, about US political history, about foreign affairs, about how government actually works, about his relationship with the other bodies, etc etc etc and because he has proved himself to be so incurious and so reluctant to study and because he is motivated primarily to receive adulation and to punish those who don't grant him that adulation, that he will do almost none of the work and organization associated with the Presidency. He will farm this out to others around him and within the GOP and conservative movement power centers. Just look at his EPA transition team head, a shill for the petroleum/gas and other extraction industries. Or his reliance on the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation for his SC nominee list. And it is going to be like this across the boards - because Trump himself is a know-nothing. The existing structures of movement conservative extremism are going to ride through this administration and get pretty much everything they want.

You appear to be very certain of things about which you likely have far too little concrete knowledge or even observation. Indeed you assume you know Trump's inner drives & emotions, and other things that are clearly beyond your (or anyone's) ability to know. Such uncritical and venomous hyperbole does not encourage thinking people to take your words or opinions seriously.

Initial impressions of Presidents, and other leaders, are often proven wrong. None of us really knows what kind of President Trump will be. There was very little in his record to recommend Harry Truman when he took office in 1945, but over time he proved to be wise, courageous and remarkably unpretentious and honest. Woodrow Wilson was an acclaimed academic, intellectual and Governor (NJ) before he took office, but the verdict of history on his Presidency is hardly favorable.

You appear to convict Trumjp for the evil of having political views different from your own. That is the essential meaning of the term "know nothing". I find it odd that you don't detect that yourself.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

Harry Truman when he took office in 1945, but over time he proved to be wise, courageous and remarkably unpretentious and honest.

Yep. That's just what we can expect from Trump, fer sure. Particularly "remarkably unpretentious and honest".

Quote:

does not encourage thinking people to take your words or opinions seriously.

I'm not much worried on that count, george. Whether I consider my relationships with my profs at university or my many thousands of online conversations with smart folks or my email conversations with people like Glenn Greenwald or Norm Ornstein or my relationships with the psychoanalytic community in New York or smart folks I've known just in the course of living, I've rarely had cause to conclude I am not taken seriously.

1 Reply

@Kolyo,

Kolyo wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

1. Trump was the most moderate of all the Republican candidates running for president. So as impossible as it may sound, it could have been worse.

On the issues? That's correct.

Depends very much on what issues you're talking about, no?

On immigration and deporting people, for example ... not so moderate.

On ethnic and cultural diversity (eg muslims) ... not so moderate.

The far-right parties over here in Europe often have some pretty centrist, occasionally even leftist, economic policies. They're still far-right. Because their hateful, primary programmatic focus overrides their mish-mash of populist economics.

1 Reply

@RABEL222,

You can accuse Putin of a lot of things, but he's no communist. So admiring Putin doesn't make Trump a communist either.

If anything, Putin's ideology more closely resembles fascism. And that does say something about those who admire him.

1 Reply

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

I'm not much worried on that count, george. Whether I consider my relationships with my profs at university or my many thousands of online conversations with smart folks or my email conversations with people like Glenn Greenwald or Norm Ornstein or my relationships with the psychoanalytic community in New York or smart folks I've known just in the course of living, I've rarely had cause to conclude I am not taken seriously.

How many of them predicted a Trump victory this year?

Frankly that appears to me to be a fairly narrow universe with a perhaps monotone viewpoint. But then I don't know Glenn Greenwald or Norm Ornstein. I'm not trying to compare that stuff here: we've both seen and experienced a lot in our lives. However I have come to recognize such intemperate opinions, exaggerated claims of intimate knowledge, and obvious lack of doubt as the usual hallmarks of prejudgment, excess credulity and error. I believe that most thinking people see things that way as well - but often only when they stop and think about it.

Besides you misjudge my "redwood friends": most were for Hillary (but I write that off to pretentiousness and a herd mentality. However I forgive them for it. (It's easy to identify a Trump supporter in a political discussion there: they are the ones who keep their mouths shut. It's largely the same here on A2K.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

How many of them predicted a Trump victory this year?

Almost no one predicted that. McCain's campaign manager predicted Hillary would be at 350 in the electoral college. Bill Kristol predicted a clear Hillary win. etc etc I doubt you predicted he'd win. And then there's this...

Quote:

The questions reflect what Mr. Trump’s advisers described as the president-elect’s coming to grips with the fact that his life is about to change radically. They say that Mr. Trump, who was shocked when he won the election,

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/politics/trump-president.html

Quote:

Besides you misjudge my "redwood friends": most were for Hillary

Explain this please. Why were they for her and opposed to Trump?

1 Reply

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Quote:
Besides you misjudge my "redwood friends": most were for Hillary
Explain this please. Why were they for her and opposed to Trump?

Yes, the majority were. A handfull of very thoughtful people, A, Simpson, J. Webster, H.K. and others of that ilk saw through it all, but even they often evaded candor. We're all human and my experience has been that such behaviors don't change much. I learned over time that in terms of wisdom and perceiving the truth, my sailors were every bit as good as their "superiors". I think of that when I read coy references to "white male high school educated inhabitants of rural America", and other like
sweeping "assessments" by the self-appointed cognoscenti.

Conventional wisdom is just that .... conventional.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Why were they for Hillary? Why against Trump? I cannot imagine they held that position and did not explain why.

1 Reply

@nimh,

nimh wrote:

Kolyo wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

1. Trump was the most moderate of all the Republican candidates running for president. So as impossible as it may sound, it could have been worse.

On the issues? That's correct.

Depends very much on what issues you're talking about, no?

No. It depends on who you're comparing him to.

1 Reply

@blatham,

Pretty much for the same bullshit reasons one reads here.

Anyway I have to get on a flight to the East coast tomorrow for somewhat tiresome trip. Don't be too offended and emotional about this stuff. I tend to say what I mean without much dressing on it. and probably should try harder to be nice. Hell you have that problem too.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

Hmmm. So the majority of conservatives/republicans at the forest wingding held that Trump was unfit for the office (in countless ways) and that Hillary would damage the country less than would Trump.

And now that Trump has won, and I voice what I see as the dangers now manifesting and that those men perceived likely or sure to manifest if he won, you still wish to maintain that I am voicing something extremist and without a proper rationale?

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

I tend to say what I mean without much dressing on it. and probably should try harder to be nice.

I am not bothered by that.

0 Replies

I watched the latest episode of the Showtime series "The Circus" in which 2 reporters and a political strategist follow the election week after week. This was the only episode I've watched although I've seen the principles as guests on various News Talk shows.

What struck me most was the scene where one of the reporters joined four political strategists/campaign managers at some regular dinner they have around election time.

They were both Republican and Democrat and I suppose one could admire the congeniality these intense rivals enjoyed, but they were so smug and utterly dismissive of Trump and most of the candidates they served in the past, frankly, that rather than seeming like four professionals united by the love of the job, irrespective of ideological differences, they appeared more like four pretentious jackasses united by their smug sense of superiority. Republican and Democrat and perfect examples of the Washington political class that drove the working class voter to Trump.

That they were all, in retrospect, clearly talking out of their assess made it so enjoyable to watch. For a few minutes I thought of how embarrassed they would feel watching the video of that dinner, but then I realized that pretentious jackasses such as them are probably never embarrassed by their misses, and they already chalked it up to the unpredictability of the uneducated, grimy handed slobs who flocked to the equally unsophisticated Trump.

It was clear that they saw themselves as kingmakers, Wolfe's Masters of The Universe, who, unfortunately, despite all of their great talent, sometimes just couldn't turn chop meat into filet mignon, and it was the flawed material they had to work with (McGovern and McCain being two) and not their lack of expertise that had them dinning together in a swanky eatery rather than managing either of the competing candidates’ campaigns.

A reason for optimism might be the possibility that such creatures will have less influence in American politics, but who am I kidding, that's just crazy talk.

0 Replies

Reasons for optimism

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know