Given how incredibly biased the media has been about Trump, and how hard they try to inflate his every faux pas into a major scandal, it's hard to tell what's real from what's fake. But one thing that's clear is that Trump himself hasn't been helping matters with his personal style.
I support almost all of Trump's stated positions from his campaign. We need to enforce our borders, especially with regard to Islamic terrorists. We need to play hardball with China, have better relations with Russia, and help the middle class by bringing jobs back to this country. And, we shouldn't be engaging in the Sisyphean task of nation building abroad.
I don't blame Trump for the fact that some of his good faith efforts have been stymied by Congress (with the Wall, and with sanctuary cities) and the courts (with immigration). With other issues, it's less clear; but there may be hidden reasons for some of the shifts in stances (for instance, we may need China's help in dealing with North Korea).
But in the meantime, Trump is the ultimate in distractibility. Late last week he had to throw a jab at Rosie O'Donnell (telling her that they finally agreed on something -- that James Comey should have been fired). It was sort of funny, but it was also beneath the dignity of the Presidency. And it wasn't even in response to anything recent, just a gratuitous leading jab.
When people actually insult him, Trump's narcissistic personality and ADHD together render him incapable of not firing back -- whether it's O'Donnell, Chuck Todd, Alicia Machado, Kizr Khan, or Alec Baldwin. Trump's ego simply won't allow him to let an insult go unavenged. And, he seems incapable of admitting that he is not the best at everything, ever.
Presidential candidates used to run ads asking whom you would trust to have their finger on the nuclear button at 3 AM. In the next campaign, they'll be asking whom you would trust not to have his finger on the Tweet button at 3 AM.
A President is supposed to at least pretend to be noble, and gracious. I've never quite bought into the canonization that Ronald Reagan seems to have undergone in Republican circles, but he was a master at acting gracious.
Reagan hit his peak in that regard after being shot by John Hinckley. As he was wheeled into the operating room, a bullet in his chest, he joked to the assembled doctors, "I hope you're all Republicans." If it had been Trump, he would have said, "I hope you're all top rate doctors. Because I deserve the best -- the very best. Hey you, where'd you go to med school?"
Afterward, Reagan told his wife, "Honey, I forgot to duck." Trump would have spent the rest of his Presidency grousing, "That Hinckley....what a loser. Jodie Foster is way out of his league. He's right where he belongs, in a mental hospital. What a loser."
Imagine if FDR had a running feud with some minor entertainment figures, and had constantly sniped at them in his fireside chats. "Oh, and can you believe that fat sow Marie Dressler? She's as big as a house -- and ugly to boot. Her career is really going downhill fast. And Claudette Colbert, what a moron! What she knows about foreign policy I could fit in a thimble!"
Abraham Lincoln was once supposedly asked (apocryphally, I'm sure) how long a man's legs should be. His famous reply: "Long enough to reach the ground." If it had been Trump, he would have replied, "My legs are the ideal length. I'm six foot two inches, which is really the perfect height for a man. The perfect height."
George Washington reportedly told his father (in another obviously apocryphal tale), "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree." Trump would have said, "Father, that cherry tree was blocking the view from the foyer. We have such a great view now, what I did was a great move. The property is worth a lot more this way, believe me. It was a really smart move."
I'm still rooting for Trump to be able to make good on his campaign promises. It's just hard to root for the man personally.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
39 comments:
Couldn't agree with you more. The guy can really step on his own dick.
Deiphobus --
There's another example I should have used:
Teddy Roosevelt said to speak softly and carry a big stick. Donald Trump proclaimed loudly, on national television, that he has a big stick.
I haven't heard the "step on one's dick' phrase since my Army days. Very pungent and descriptive. But I disagree a bit here. I'm one of mny Tumpists (I'm trying to give traction to the term "stormtrumper) who get a vicarious kick out of his targeted boorishness. Some critics deserve to get hit with boorishness.
Baloo --
Yes, some critics deserve their comeuppance, but I wish it were by someone other than Trump, because every time he gets involved in one of these minor kerfuffles, it distracts from the much more important business he has at hand. I'd far rather he got that Wall built, or succeeded in bringing jobs back for the middle class, than deliver some zingers to Rosie O'Donnell. Plus there's the matter of his ego, which renders him less appealing and therefore less persuasive to some.
This is well said. Change your blog to Just Well Said.
I noticed something about Trump years ago.
He sold his Bahamas property to Merv Griffin and the way he acted in interview was like he beat Merv by dumping a bad property on him for above market value.
Like he saw it as winning vs losing instead of maybe a win-win where Merv could use his entertainment skills to improve the property.
Trump just seemed petty and got what I thought was inappropriate satisfaction from the deal.
Ann Coulter has said she likes Trumpism more than Trump. And I agree.
Let's just see if the results of Trump's efforts turn out to be better than his style and presentation.
Although the media will make it all about the later.
Rifleman --
Thank you very much. Yes, "petty" is a good word to describe him. I honestly don't think he's a sociopath, but he's an extremely narcissistic personality, and just incredibly ungracious to boot. (Part of the reason I don't think he's a sociopath -- which, btw, puts him a notch above the Clintons and Barack Obama -- is that he's not good at hiding his narcissism. A sociopath would simply be a lot slyer about hiding his ego and would be more skillful at employing subterfuge to get his way; Trump just comes across bluntly.)
That's a great example about his deal with Merv Griffin, I hadn't heard that before.
I'm afraid it's going to be hard for Trump to make progress against the combination of the media, the Deep State, and the RINO Republicans, not to mention the Democrats. They've all combined to create such a loud cacophony of hysteria about everything he does that anything good he proposes gets drowned out. And the fact that he seems to be an intrinsically dislikable guy just sets him back further.
Anne Coulter recently said, "I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque; it was the issues." The issues being an end to mass immigration and fughting endless, futile wars overseas.
David Brooks says Trump has the mind of a 7-year-old: "Trump seems to have not yet developed a theory of mind." Trump can't correctly guess, based on words, tone, gestures, and facial expressions, what others are thinking or what emotions they are experiencing. Here, I think it works both ways. Most of us can't imagine what is going on in Trump's head either, because Trump is so far off the scale of normality, of the kind of people we're accustomed to dealing with.
Mark --
It WAS the issues. But at a certain level, a lot of us liked him because he scoffed political correctness, too, and he did it publicly and fearlessly, which is what we all wanted to see. Most of us were so fed up with the lies of political correctness and the kowtowing everybody felt obliged to do to it that we were overjoyed to see someone just pooh-pooh it the way he did. He was, in a sense, our collective id. And it was gratifying.
But the downside is that it takes a certain kind of personality to do that that publicly, and anyone who's so convinced of his righteousness and so blindly self-confident, pretty much has to be a narcissistic personality. And that's what we got. And, he's not that smart to boot.
After eight years of a schoolmarmish queer, America made the foolish choice to think a loud asshole would produce opposite policies. Inside the package, though, was the same ZOG president as before: welcoming Hispanic invasion, looting billions for Israel, not hanging the Fed, etc. Don't feel particularly bad about 2016 in particular, though, because in 2000, after eight years of a grope-happy hillbilly, Americans thought that a high-functioning chimpanzee in a cowboy suit would be an improvement, and after eight years of that chimpanzee, they thought the homo schoolmarm would fix things. It's like a yo-yo dieter going from starvation diets to binging on 5-gallon tubs of ice cream, then back to starvation, then binging, ad infinitum. No matter how many times it doesn't work, we seem to think that the personal image and temperament of whoever's reading off the official teleprompter is going to affect DACA or quantitative easing or invading North Africa again.
I can certainly understand how redecorating the cover of the book has fooled people into buying the same story over and over. What in Hell will they sell us after they're done with Trump? By then, it might well be time for an openly lesbian president, to serve as such a sharp contrast to Trump's image. If I were a betting blogger, my money would be on whoever she is--lesbian or trans or otherwise--speaking and acting a lot differently than Trump, while continuing to tithe Israel and usher as many indios as possible into what remains of America's job market.
Lamenting Trump's attitude is like wishing Dubya hadn't bought that ranch right before the 2000 primaries in order to pretend to be a cowboy: the stuff he does is well calculated to seem so different from the last goy that most people end up overlooking his complete and total lies, and assume he must've been better than [insert loser here].
High Arka --
Those have to be the pithiest phrases ever to describe our last four Presidents; I enjoyed your comment for that alone. And you're right that bemoaning the personality of the President is sort of irrelevant. But I disagree that Trump himself is part of the conspiracy; I think it's the Deep State itself. And the proof that Trump -- despite his arrogant personality -- actually meant to do things differently is the hysteria with which his administration was greeted, by the media, by the Democrats, and by all the entrenched government operatives who've done their best to stymie him. Trump hasn't gone back on his promise to build the Wall; Congress simply refused to fund it for him. He hasn't got back on his promise to cut back on Muslim immigration; a couple of judges halted his plan in the courts.
The Deep State may prove impossible to overcome, but that doesn't mean that Trump didn't have the right intentions.
I don't think that Trump is incapable of reading people's expressions or empathizing with them the way Aspies struggle...I think that Trump knows perfectly well how others feel or think, but he just doesn't give a shit.
That being said, the man LOVES to be admired, which is his rather obvious Achilles heel.
Fled --
His narcissism (needing to be admired, and being unwilling to admit he's not the best at anything) and his ADHD (which makes him highly distractible) combine to get him into all those little tiffs which, as President, there's no upside to. Add to that the fact that he's a 70-year-old multibillionaire who's had people kiss his ass for the past 40 years -- so he's not used to anything else -- and it all adds up to a very thin-skinned guy. He's got to just accept that being criticized is part of his job.
I have questioned if Trump even likes/wants to be President, now that he's had the job for several months. You can start something, then once you get into it, you realize it's not your cup of tea.
- Susan
Susan --
That rings true; Trump HAS made a few comments along the lines of, how he is surprised at how difficult it is to get stuff done. (Obama made similar comments.) Plus Trump seems to enjoy getting away as much as he can, to Bedminster NJ, or to Florida (Mar a Lago). I don't get the impression he enjoys the trappings of office all that much, either, perhaps because he was used to better in his personal life. (Has he been to Camp David even once?)
I could see him becoming bored with the job. All that he and his family have endured by way of the insane left (media, Democrats, etc.), it's not worth the aggravation. I think if I were him, I'd walk out the White House doors and never come back. I'd enjoy my remaining years doing what makes me happy.
- Susan
Susan --
Come on, when you take on the Presidency it's with the assumption that the job is much more important than your personal life, and you're going to be making certain sacrifices. If Trump somehow walked off the job I'd lose ALL respect for him.
He's made the commitment. Hopefully, he sticks with it. If it were me, the Vice President could have the gig.
- Susan
So if you had to choose a song to play for him would it be this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SkoD2CIakQ
We're witnessing death by a thousand unverified allegations by anonymous or more likely fabricated sources.
Mark --
That sure seems to be the case.
I'm not actually astounded, but to employ the vernacular, I'm constantly astounded at how willing Americans are to excuse their chief executive's failings because that executive doesn't have enough power to get anything done. And yet, they completely expect that a few Congresspeople, or a single judge, does have that much power.
Trump was elected, Trump is commander-in-chief of the Army, and the Army has a corps of engineers created for the express purpose of building things to protect the nation. Trump the billionaire leader of the (technically) most powerful company in the world, may not be as intelligent as High Arka the random internet blogger, but there must be someone among his staff who is at least that intelligent, and can say, "Order the Army to build it." He could launch missiles at Syria, so how about at Mexican invaders? The U.S. has spent decades enforcing border controls and shipping sanctions against various faraway countries. If a judge tried to "stop" them by writing an "order," that judge could be Guantanamoed, or just civilly prosecuted, or at the very least disbarred. What a ridiculous excuse for stopping the wall-based promise!
During the last formal war for Israel, many judges tried to order Dubya to stop torturing or monitoring, et cetera, and his administration completely ignored the judges, and nothing happened. Months or years later, the Sanhedrin sprang into action and sided with Dubya, decreeing that it was a military matter in which judges could not interfere.
There are a thousand times a thousand ways that a high school dropout in Virginia, with an internet-user's knowledge of the Constitution and the executive branch, could justify the law. It is a true flight of fancy to pretend that Trump couldn't enforce existing border legislation if he wanted to. Mexicans have fired weapons at U.S. border patrol agents, in actual non-staged occurrences, entirely different than the bullshit pretexts for the last fifty years of foreign interventions, and we're supposed to believe that "a judge" or "lack of Congressional funding" is the reason Trump is jewing us?
This is similar in form to the arguments one could have with Reagan supporters in the early 1980s. Reagan was supposed to lower taxes and fix the deficit, and instead he exploded the deficit. Point that out, and people just can't figure it out; can't acknowledge that it's happening. "Oh, it must be those Democrats in Congress." Or Obama in 2009: "The reason he won't arrest the bankers and stop invading places is because of those Republicans in Congress."
A single consistency has remained throughout all of these years, and that consistency is Jews. The only way to predict American politics is to assume that [the President] will tax Americans to fund Israel, kill Americans to fight for Israel, and expose Americans to foreign invasion to cut down on America's ethnic homogeneity to keep America diverse, directionless, and susceptible to Israel.
It was a beautiful story...an enchanting fairy tale...the idea that one of us might have sold all his children and pretended to be an Israeli for six decades only in order to attain power that he could use to help us. I can understand the allure. Like being an orphan and clinging to the fantasy that your parents are good and rich and loving, and gave you up for reasons of absolute necessity, but will someday return and embrace you. I share your despondency at discovering it wasn't true, but I just can't pretend that it's someone else's fault.
<3
Allan --
Sorry for this late response, somehow your comment ended up in my spam box....Yes, I basically agree with his platform, it's his presentation that needs fixing.
High Arka --
I would never question the power of the Jewish lobby, nor their primacy in the media, and I understand the reasons behind their desire for a diverse society. But how then do you explain the complete hysteria, not just with the protesters in the street, but by the media, to his election, if they saw him as their tool? There has never been a President, certainly not one in this century, whose inauguration and first 100 days were greeted with such complete hatred and hysteria. They seem to see him as Hitler, a metaphor we've all heard multiple times. That doesn't exactly make it sound as if he's their man.
Hey Mr. Craig, that is a good question, and touches on an issue that initially helped give me some hope about Trump. Extended experience with the media had taught me that almost everything they do and say is wrong--both factually, morally, and at an even higher level, the things they choose to focus on, are all wrong.
Now ask yourself this: why is it such a popular tradition among American candidates running for national office to claim that Washington, D.C. is a problem that they are going to fix, even when they have extensive ties to Washington, D.C., and even if they are running for re-election or have prior government experience and have been part of Washington, D.C.? Well, it's because candidates know that people dislike Washington, D.C., so the term gains a totemic power, whereby a lifelong bureaucrat gets cheers and support for saying that he hates the bureaucracy and will eliminate it.
Imagine a group of people who are intelligent enough to have realized that Americans distrust the media. Like many occupied peoples, Americans have spent the past many years distrusting the media. Accordingly, one of the most effective marketing slogans the media could use is to describe something as bad, making it look good by comparison. I too share your desire, instilled in me over many years, to assume that anything the media says is bad is actually good. But they are smart enough to use that against us: to portray something negatively in order to drive us to defend it.
Consider what Trump's candidacy and presidency would be without all of this carefully-stoked negative attention. Like Obama, Dubya, Clinton, et cetera, his accomplishments are nothing except starting and perpetuating fights in the Middle East, welcoming workers to displace citizens, and sending vast sums of tax money to Israel. Like all other presidents, he can take credit for corporate decisions or market fluctuations that occur while he's golfing, and there certainly have been a few positive statistics available here and there, which we can attribute to the mystical, non-specific powers of Our Leader. But aside from those little nothings, Trump has done nothing except continue the Clinton-Bush-Obama period while giving more white-guy-focused speeches. If we didn't have "left wingers," "the media," and other rodeo clowns trying to distract us with their idiotic behavior, many more of us would be able to see Trump for what he is.
I'm very old-fashioned in that I consider it a very serious crime for an "American" administration to threaten working families with IRS liens and police home invasions if they don't pay taxes in order to send billions of dollars a year to Israel. That is high treason, as is the knowing failure to admit non-citizens and force working Americans to subsidize the health care and schooling and foster-parenting and family-reunification of people from other countries. The crimes we are accepting from all of these presidents are serious matters, touching on life and death for individuals and for this entire nation. I had hoped that all the internet chatter about mass rapes in Sweden and Idaho would get Americans to man up and stop accepting any excuses for the theoretically most powerful man on the planet from doing his job, but my hopes are frequently dashed every time a new Our Leader is selected.
Like before, I don't expect to change anyone's mind now. I hope that, in four years or eight years or whatever else it is, you and your fellow Americans are able to contemplate the way you reacted to Trump in 2016-2017, and what you got out of it, and ask yourselves if pragmatically compromising on your principles worked out for the better.
<3
Hey Ms. Arka --
True, it's a perennial tradition among candidates to abjure Washington DC, and "inside the beltway" has become synonymous with both (a) living in the bubble and (b) K Street-style corruption. And, yes, all candidates once in office seem to settle quite comfortably in/be seduced by life inside said beltway.
But I don't buy that the media is using reverse psychology on us. As a group, they're just not that sophisticated. IF using reverse psychology was their standard MO, why did they not use that with Obama? He was the progressives' ultimate wet dream: half black, half white, gay, fully indoctrinated in Leftist ideology, and by nature slippery enough to disguise his true self. But every time he screwed up, i.e., let his true colors show, as with the IRS scandal, the media would just go into see/hear/speak no evil mode. Why no reverse psychology there?
I just don't think Trump is part of that big conspiracy. Is he vulnerable to it? Of course. And can they stymie his goals, as with The Wall and immigration? They have so far. But I would as soon believe he was elected with THEIR approval as I would believe that a sophisticated blog is run by a 15-year-old girl in Georgia.
hi John,
With regard to the idea that our next president be a lesbian ... my response is PLEASE NO !!
my alma mater Amherst College "enjoys" Biddie Martin as its President and you may as well burn every straight white guy and every athlete at the stake up there given here view of the world.
if we were to go that way, I will be tempted to join Cher's chorus about leaving the country.
Arka: Why don't you just get a job? Better yet, psychiatric care.
Sorry Deiphobus, this is all I've got.
Mr. Craig, I've found that the right wing in 2017 tends to be more mature than the left wing was in 2009 when their messiah candidate is/was questioned. I appreciate that.
Perhaps this is due to their inherent differences, but at least some of it is due to how they feel about the media. The scam run on leftists building up to and during the 2008 campaign had to be different in form than the one run on rightists 2015-2016, for a lot of reasons, but the level of mastery was still comparable. Obama was openly presented as a respectable mainstream candidate who said that racism was over now, while being subtly presented person-of-color savior who, by virtue of being discriminated against, would have the know-how to finally end the U.S.-Zionist-Fed project of global imperialism. In the way that rightists correctly complained at the time that Obama was an accomplishment-free homosexual with a too-cozy relationship to Islam and communism, leftists embraced him for those things, seeing them as indicia of Obama being truly outside the system. Finally, after eight years of the utterly neocohenservative Dubya, maybe a queer red Muslim could stop the slaughter of millions.
There were whispers of all the usual things...BDS Israel, lower working class taxes and raise megacorp taxes, stop attacking the Middle East, and that holy of holies, shut down the Fed and end banker control of the state. The con there was different, because those seductions were only delivered in whispers. Just like the rightists in 2016 fantasized that Trump was secretly a JQ-aware anti-banker, the leftists had their own fantasies about Obama, and watching rightists froth about birth certificates and communism, when Obama was publicly a Goldman-Sachs-style stooge, seemed to validate their unfounded beliefs that Obama would be a good person.
Of course, he wasn't; he was, like Dubya and Trump, just another Clintonite figurehead. But there was so much hope that he would be different.
You might find the most valuable similarity when comparing the media's "negative" perspective on Trump with the media's "negative" perspective on Obamacare. Remember when Trump was campaigning, and the media howled that he was going to deport all foreigners, not just "criminal" ones? Many rightists took that to mean that Trump really would deport all foreigners, and create the ethnostate they wanted. Trump publicly stated that no, he wouldn't; he only wanted to deport criminals. But many rightists hoped that he would save them from the ongoing demographic replacement, and that gave Trump a lot of support that he needed to win against more established politicians.
Now, remember when Obama was going to reform health care, and the media howled that it might be a socialist takeover of health care, similar to the NHS in Britain? Obama publicly stated that no, it wouldn't be that; he only wanted to make insurance "more accessible." But many leftists hoped that he would save them from the rapacious corporations, and that gave Obama a lot of the support that he needed.
In each case--rightists squalling about their beloved capitalism that was failing so miserably, and leftists whining about their beloved immigrants that were succeeding so terribly--the media's ability to "raise grave concerns" about something the candidate wasn't intending to do lulled the voter base into believing it was a real possibility. Most leftists before Obamacare wanted a no-nonsense nationalized health care system, and most rightists before Trump's election wanted a border wall and mass deportations. By televising the idiotic rants of capitalists and rapey immigrants, respectively, the media pretended to be showing concern about the policy in question, when really it was tricking people into believing they'd get what they really wanted. Trump himself never had to openly lie that he was pro-HBD, just like Obama himself never had to openly lie that he was for completely socializing all hospitals and doctors. The media scripted the impression for them. And people walked right into it, and now we have Obamacare and no border wall.
High Arka --
Obama was not regarded by any stretch as a Friend of Israel. He and Netanyahu absolutely loathed each other; some of that was personal, but some of it was political, too. Obama always gave off the vibes of being quite sympathetic to Islam, and to Muslims in general. Whether this was because of his boyhood background in Indonesia or his leftist sympathy for all "oppressed" people, I don't know. But his deal with Iran was something he did over the objections of Israel, and his refusal to speak "radical Islamic terrorists" showed where his heart was.
As far as his sympathy to Goldman Sachs, I don't see that either. he had his minion Eric Holder squeeze as much money as he could from the banks, when in fat the mortgage crisis was probably due more to the government's original encouragement to the banks to loosen their lending requirements to get more minorities into homes. (Not that the banks were blameless, what with their bundling of CMO's.) The realtors and house buyers themselves were also culpable, but they didn't have deep pockets, so Hoder didn't go after them. Had justice been served, Holder would have sued FNMA and Freddie Mac as well. AND Bill Clinton, for pushing to abolish redlining. Plus Obama originally wanted to increase the capital gains tax more than he did, and he wanted to institute a trading tax as well, though he was talked out of that.
We're going to have to agree to disagree about Trump. I don' like the guy personally, but I think he came to office with real populist instincts.
High Arka --
In response to your second 3:37PM post -- Actually, I don't remember the "media" howling about Obamacare; that was just the Right. The media for the most part supported it. And it was drive through Congress, through all sorts of nefarious means. The media DID howl about The Wall, and you're right, we don't have it. The media usually seems to get its way.
BTW, I'm almost at the point where I'd prefer nationalized healthcare (with a two tier system for those who want to pay more to get extra). Costs are just completely out of control, there's almost no competition, and the system seems stacked against the patient. With nationalized health are, at least we'd cut the insurance companies out of the equation, and possibly cut back the influence of the hospitals, and have a system of pricing that's more transparent then the current incredibly opaque system. Obamacare just made things more expensive, an dI don't get the sense that the Republican plan is going to bring costs down. I'm not pretending to understand healthcare, but at least with a nationalize system you wouldn't have people having to declare bankruptcy because they got sick once.
Opinion on the 100 billion dollar arms deals to Saudia Arabia? I am just asking for an opinion because I am a bit unsure of it. Nothing implied.
-Ga
PS. I wish English has a method of pointing out intentions or the mood of a sentence like Chinese like
Leih Sik Faan (You eat rice.)
Leih Sik Faan a? (You eat rice, right?)
Leih Sik Faan wo! (I HEARD you eat rice, wow)
Leih Sik Faan ge (It is the case you eat)
Leih Sik Faan La (Come one, you should eat, okay?)
Leih Sik Faan Le (It's time for you to eat, come one)
Leih Sik Faan ga? (Am I correct you eat? I request a direct answer)
and 2 dozen more plus combinations of up to three in a sentence are possible, two arguing people may not have disagreed at all but misunderstood eachother!
Ga --
I don't know enough about it to have an opinion. I have no idea how it compares to past deals, and whether Trump is making good on his promise to make our allies pay a larger share of their own defense. Maybe there's someone who's better informed than me on this thread.
Mr. Craig, you might find this interesting in 2024: http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-definitely-lied-about-having-intent-to-prosecute-banksters/5375269?print=1
High Arka --
That IS interesting, thank you. I guess Wall Street donated enough money in '08 and '12 to buy themselves a get out of jail free ticket. I had always been under the vague impression that none of them had gone to jail because it would be too easy to make a castoff incompetence rather than guilt, and also because the government was also so obviously complicit in the mortgage crisis. But Obama was protecting them from the start. Hmm.
But Reagan helped to bring down the Berlin Wall. I can't see Trump achieving anything similar, even though it is within his power to. It's unlikely he's going to keep his election campaign promises. *How* will he make Mexico pay for the wall? And *how* will he take good care of the poor, seeing as he is currently scrapping the Affordable Care Act? Out of interest, is there anything that would make you turn against Trump? Do stories like these not bother you? http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN19I00F
- Gethin
Gethin -
If Trump doesn't keep his campaign promises, it will be mostly because he's been stymied by Congress, because of a press which has decided that they will distract him in any way they can, and because of an entrenched deep state which sees his promises to drain the swamp as a threat to their livelihoods. I don't blame him for any of that. I would blame him if he personally went back on trying to fulfill his promises. The only instance of that I've seen so far is inches newfound opposition to Syria. He had campaigned as a guy who would ally with Russia to stamp out ISIS, and he seems to have gone back on that, which I don't like. (How much this is a result of the huge hullaballoo about "Russian collusion" and him feeling he has to prove that he's not in bed with Putin, I don't know.)
As far as the ACA, that was in a date spiral anyway, it was losing insurance companies left and right, and was sold on a bunch of lies to begin with, so I'm not sorry to see that go. (And he did say he was going to repeal it during the campaign.) As far as America's image abroad, that's controlled to a large extent by a press which is extremely hostile to Trump -- and I'm guessing that article you linked (which I read) was also written by someone hostile to Trump. so how could I hold that against Trump?
American government is great because of the good things it does for Americans, like helping them rationalize endless failure by blaming different branches of the root system. I'd almost feel guilty at trying to dispel that myth, but on the plus side, I don't have the power to, so everyone can remain rather comfortable. Lakers playing the Celtics anytime soon?
High Arka --
Well, I"m glad I can remain comfortable, at least.
Actually speaking of power and the Lakers and Celtics, as you're sort of saying, REAL power in this country lays with the media, and their ability to endlessly distract us with different forms of entertainment. Anything they want to keep in front of us, they do, as with Donald Trump's noxious personality. And anything they want us to forget, they simply don't mention. Has anyone here even thought of James Hodgkinson and how he was brainwashed in the past 48 hours?
Post a Comment