@coldjoint,
I could hear the "LOCK HIM UP" at the world Series Game. Boy he looked pissed. Did he want to declare Martial Law?
Why booing Donald Trump doesn't mean what you think it means
Chris Cillizza
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 12:41 PM ET, Mon October 28, 2019
(CNN)On Sunday night, President Donald Trump went to the World Series in Washington. And got booed. Loudly. And even was subject to a "lock him up!" chant.
This was celebrated on Twitter. And by liberals nationwide. He got a taste of his own medicine! Now he knows how people really feel about him!
Which is, well, true. Trump very rarely appears in public at anything other than campaign rallies and official events. In both of those situations, he is lauded. There are just very few occasions -- except maybe, when his motorcade passes protesters -- where Trump comes face-to-face (or close) with people who really, really don't approve of how he is handling his job.
But what the booing and chants on Sunday proved isn't that lots of people don't like Trump. We already knew that. What it proved is just how much he has changed not just politics but public discourse more broadly -- moving the goalposts (or maybe knocking them down entirely) on what is acceptable behavior.
"I have a hard time with the idea of a crowd on a globally televised sporting event chanting 'lock him up' about our President," said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons (D) on CNN's "New Day" Monday morning. "I frankly think the office of the President deserves respect, even when the actions of our President at times don't."
Whether or not you agree with Coons -- and many liberals absolutely will not -- the sentiment he is expressing is worth exploring.
What Trump tried to do in the 2016 election -- and as President -- is fundamentally alter the way in which we think of the office of the presidency. His campaign was premised on the idea that all these stuffed-shirt politicians acting so very proper were all just a bunch of phonies. All they were really doing was feathering their own nests and ignoring what real people wanted.
He turned the very idea of "being presidential" into a joke. At a 2018 rally in Florida, Trump claimed, "anybody can act presidential," walking faux-stiffly and intoning in a mock-serious voice: "Ladies and gentlemen of the state of Florida, thank you very much for being here. ... I will leave now because I am boring you to death."
"Being presidential" in Trump's mind was what had turned the US into a country that the rest of the world was taking advantage of and mocking behind our backs (and sometimes right in front of our faces). All these politicians were so worried about acting ""nice" and "right" that they didn't fight for the public. And Trump was coming to change all of that.
It was -- and is -- under that idea that Trump and his supporters have justified his words, his tweets and his actions over these past four years. His boorishness. His bullying. His know-nothingness. His unpredictability. All of it.
So when a crowd at a baseball game boos the President and chants "lock him up," it is less a we-are-going-to-show-him-what's-what moment than it is an accidental acknowledgment of how radically Trump has changed the way in which we think of presidents and how they should both act and be treated.
For some people, that's probably just fine. They'll argue that the only way to fight fire is with fire. That the only thing Trump understands is force and power -- and so to really make an impact on him (and his voters) you have to prove that you are willing to do (and say) whatever it takes.
Maybe? Until we see whether Trump gets reelected next year, it's impossible to know what the best way to beat him is.
But we do know from the 2016 campaign that when other candidates tried to get down in the mud with Trump, it didn't work. Take Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R). For a few days in the spring of 2016, Rubio made the clear calculation that he would try to out-Trump Trump. He repeatedly suggested that Trump's reportedly small hands were a sign of, uh, a smallness in other parts of the President. Which led to this famous/infamous line from Trump during a Republican debate:
"I have to say this, he hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I've never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands if they're small, something else must be small I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee you."
Rubio eventually apologized for his conduct. Trump didn't. Rubio lost. Trump won.
The point here is that getting into the mud with the pig rarely works in politics (or life). The pig enjoys it and you get muddy, as the saying goes.
And more broadly, even if giving Trump a taste of his own medicine not only makes you feel better but is also the only way to beat him, there are consequences to accepting and internalizing the lowered standards he has pushed into our public sphere.
Even if Trump loses in 2020 but does so in a campaign and a culture that has mainstreamed his brand of bullying and boorish behavior, he's won a sort-of victory. And one likely to last well beyond another four-year term.
@coldjoint,
I cannot celebrate insults, name calling or trolling behavior.
You have a choice to be better. I hope you choose a different path.
@coldjoint,
Quote:Please point out where I insulted you in that post, or called you a name.
This is one of G bag's sock puppets. Don't expect anything less than this.
Opinion piece by the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardiner on what next after the death of Baghdadi
Quote:The group will want to demonstrate its resilience and signal to its followers that it has not been knocked off balance by the loss of such a well-known figure.
A Shura committee of senior figures - all male - will have already considered a number of candidates.
Prerequisites for the role will be an unquestionable loyalty to IS, a proven ability to plan strategically and, preferably, impeccable religious credentials, some battlefield experience and perhaps also a reputation for meting out harsh punishments.
IS has always been a bizarre fusion of ultra-conservative jihadists with former members of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence apparatus, known as Baathists.
The Baathists provided the weapons, the explosives, the intelligence and the planning - nobody knew Iraq better than them - while the jihadists brought the fanaticism and the volunteer suicide bombers.
Baghdadi's successor will likely be someone with well-established links with both sides of this equation.
Baghdadi's loss will be keenly felt by IS for some time.
When jihadists around the world pledged allegiance to IS they invariably pledged allegiance to him personally, referring to him as "Caliph Ibrahim".
While he only appeared twice in videos, he was able to cloak himself with a sheen of religious authority.
He claimed direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad's Quraishi tribe and delivered his announcement of a "caliphate" from inside Mosul's Great Mosque, which he later ordered to be blown up.
The fact that Baghdadi was a serial rapist, forcing himself on, among others, the captured American aid worker Kayla Mueller, and presiding over the mass enslavement of Yazidi women and underage girls, does not seem to have troubled his followers at all.
Expect Revenge attacks.
The most likely targets will be in Iraq and Syria, where access to weapons, explosives and suicidal volunteers is easiest to come by.
But ever since IS lost its last piece of territory at Baghuz in Syria, it has been vowing to continue its attacks in what it calls "a war of attrition".
Europe, the US, North African, Gulf Arab and Asian countries are all in the sights of IS.
Even so-called "lone wolf" attacks, carried out by solitary individuals far from the Middle East and radicalised over the internet, are likely to be claimed by IS as payback for the death of Baghdadi.
France, which has long been close to the top of the IS target list in Europe, has warned its citizens to be on their guard.
Much as IS would like to stage a spectacular, mass-casualty attack, its leadership knows that the more elaborate the plan, the greater the chance of it being discovered by security services.
So in the immediate future it is most likely to opt for low-tech, simple attacks with relatively little preparation.
IS has a disturbing track record of resilience.
Under Baghdadi's guidance, and helped by the connections he made with other jihadists while incarcerated in the US-run detention centre at Camp Bucca, IS grew out of the largely beaten remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
IS split away from al-Qaeda in 2016.
They disagreed on several points, notably the use by IS of extreme, sadistic violence - which al-Qaeda correctly argued was putting off the vast majority of Muslim opinion.
Al-Qaeda hoped to win over that opinion; IS didn't care. It was happy to recruit misfits, psychopaths and paedophiles, people attracted by its violence and its cruelty.
IS already has a geographically distributed franchise around the world and that is not going to disappear overnight with Baghdadi's demise.
If anything, his successor will now be looking to rebuild and expand the organisation. Outside its core area of Iraq and Syria, IS has concentrations of followers, each calling themselves a wilaya (province), in Afghanistan, Libya, West Africa, South Asia, the Philippines and South-East Asia.
They are primarily involved in local or regional grievances, but during the years that it held down a physical territory IS was able to attract recruits from dozens of countries, laying the groundwork for a dispersed network of extremists that exists today.
One question that will be troubling intelligence chiefs around the world is just why Baghdadi had sought refuge in Idlib, in the north-west corner of Syria where rival al-Qaeda-linked groups are dominant (al-Qaeda and IS have been fighting each other in Syria).
Was it simply because he hoped that was the last place his enemies would expect to find him? Or, was it, more worryingly, because he was hoping to reach out to his rivals and form an even more deadly alliance of convenience?
The answers may not transpire for some time but the clues may well be in the haul of intelligence that US Delta Force commandos spent two hours retrieving from the ruins of Baghdadi's final hiding place.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50208793<br />
@neptuneblue,
neptuneblue wrote:I cannot celebrate insults, name calling or trolling behavior.
You have a choice to be better. I hope you choose a different path.
Don't be silly. You engage in that very behavior yourself.
You should try choosing to be better yourself before you think about advising other people on how they should better themselves.
@izzythepush,
One of the most hotly-pursued secrets in Washington right now is … the name of the "beautiful" and "talented" dog that was injured during the U.S. raid targeting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria's Idlib Province.
Thankfully, the dog's picture has been declassified
@coldjoint,
coldjoint wrote:Then you better cut it out.
Progressives think that they are special and rules are only for everyone else.
@coldjoint,
I was referring to this.
coldjoint wrote:In fact, men (Trump) act like that sometimes, and it should be celebrated not condemned because men fight, and some fight for freedom.
You are asking me to celebrate that Trump uses insults, name calling or trolling behavior.
I said
neptuneblue wrote:
I cannot celebrate insults, name calling or trolling behavior.
You too have a choice not to celebrate that kind of behavior from Trump. You can choose not look up to people who use those tactics. I think Trump isn't direct when he engages in that behavior. To me, that's the opposite of fighting, to me it's a sign of weakness.
I wasn't clear in my original response. I apologize for that.
I've seen a couple of sites with this as the theme this morning
The Many Deaths Of Bakr al-Baghdadi
Seems he is regularly killed or something.
@neptuneblue,
neptuneblue wrote:You too have a choice not to celebrate that kind of behavior from Trump. You can choose not look up to people who use those tactics. I think Trump isn't direct when he engages in that behavior. To me, that's the opposite of fighting, to me it's a sign of weakness.
So when
you act that way, it's because of weakness. Understood.
@edgarblythe,
Yes. Multiple prior claims he'd been killed, it seems.
@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:Thankfully, the dog's picture has been declassified
The White House PR team is at the top of their game.
Who would have thunk this would happen?
Quote:A new witness is about to damage Trump. Fox News is already smearing him.
Greg Sargent
This is a
very good piece that lays out how Vindman's testimony relates to and verifies the testimony of others and how Fox has been responding over the last 24 hours. Take the time to read it.
@blatham,
Further to that last post:
We all surely remember John Yoo's role in the Iraq War torture memos and his forwarding of the legal theory that a president could order soldiers or intel agents to crush the testicles of a youth in front of his father
if it was possible this might elicit information of terrorist activities.
It is essential to understand that after Trump is gone, Yoo and Barr and Ed Meese and Liz Cheney and others who are key figures in the GOP power structure will all still be in place working towards one party rule.
More big surprises
Quote:Fox & Friends edits boos out of video of Trump attending the World Series
MM
Obviously these folks have been studying how North Korea does information.
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
More big surprises
Quote:Fox & Friends edits boos out of video of Trump attending the World Series
MM
I watched that game and never heard of the boos or the Impeach banner until the next day.
