Trump as tragicomedy

[stuper1]

"Meanwhile American culture continues to disappear. Big business wants the money and couldn't care less about culture."

As a stockholder you are big business. And what is "culture." We want immigrants who will increase GDP and not drain it, maybe instead of a border wall it should be an obstacle course

What is culture? I googled it. It says culture is the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. Are you saying that you don't believe that is actually a real thing? Do you enjoy traveling? When you go to China is it the same as going to Zimbabwe? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I think it's a good thing. It makes traveling more enjoyable.

Believe it or not, America has a culture too. Big business is ruining our culture by encouraging immigration at rates that are too high to allow the immigrants to assimilate to our culture. Instead they tend to stay in their own groups and keep too much of their own culture. Is that a good thing? I say no. If they want to keep their own culture, why don't they stay in their own country and improve it from within? But it's really not the immigrants' fault. You can't blame them for wanting to better their own standard of living. It's the fault of the powers in this country for allowing too much legal and illegal immigration.

I have no idea whether you were born in this country or how old you are. I was born in the mid-1960s. I can certainly say that the America I live in today is quite different from the one I grew up in. I don't think the changes are for the better.

[dualstow]

That was far before Trump's supposed "innovative" use of emergency declarations, so I don't understand the relevance.

Why does the passage of time make it irrelevant?

I don't understand the claim that Trump's use of an emergency declaration means that a future President is more likely to issue a confiscation order when the precedent is much older than that.

I see. WiseOne was making the case for Trump's recent "emergency" setting a precedent and you responded that the president doesn't have the power to suddenly tax. When I mentioned gold, it was just as an example of where-there's-a-will-there's-a-way, i.e. it wouldn't necessarily come in the form of a tax or be called a tax. I didn't mean the gold seizure itself as a sort of precedent that set things in motion.

[boglerdude]

> I have no idea whether you were born in this country or how old you are. I was born in the mid-1960s. I can certainly say that the America I live in today is quite different from the one I grew up in. I don't think the changes are for the better.

You're about 10 years older than me. Describe what you've personally seen and how it compares to the mass media narratives =)

[Kriegsspiel]

What's wrong with this picture...

The screenshot is from Bing news. Here is the link to the actual story. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/price-of-i ... ive-years/. Do you think it was just a mistake or does any negative story just get a photo of Trump by default?

I also noticed they used his "Douche-level-7" face rather than 8-10 (or 5-6 (he doesn't have a 1-4)).

Not only is he not even mentioned in the article, but the timeframe analyzed is 2012 thru 2016. Nothing of 2017 or 2018. No mention of republicans either.

Trump is a complete embarrassment of a human and President, but this isn't his baby.

I'd say it's a algo issue (I see stories with headline pics that don't make sense all the time), or else they're blaming it on Trump. No doubt the algo issue is a low priority-fix, since they're probably getting all kinds of clicks from people who assume it's going to bash Trump on his insulin-policy.

Or maybe they're taking a page from those paid clickbait links at the bottom of news stories. You know the ones: "NY State Drivers Should Read This!" and there's a picture of a hot chick seductively leaning on a barn or whatever.

[stuper1]

That's a good one. And yet we'll have to put up with the same people preaching to us that Trump is an outrageous threat to free speech when he calls them "fake news". Anybody who believes anything fed to them by the mainstream media deserves everything they get.

[dualstow]

That's a good one. And yet we'll have to put up with the same people preaching to us that Trump is an outrageous threat to free speech when he calls them "fake news". Anybody who believes anything fed to them by the mainstream media deserves everything they get.

lol. What do they get?

[stuper1]

Fake news

[Cortopassi]

What is the pejorative "mainstream" media? ABC, NBC, CBS, and I assume FOX and CNN as well?

Or is it whatever media that doesn't have your point of view?

I hate the discourse in this country lately.

[stuper1]

Me too.

[WiseOne]

It's definitely getting harder to read the news. You have to really look for the bits of actual information, buried in the spew of opinion. Some of it is well justified, but a lot is based on nothing whatsoever.

The last article I read in the hopes of getting some actual information was about the health care bill that passed the Senate, to limit surprise billing. For some reason I thought that was important :-). After the promising title, the article went on a huge and frankly irrelevant anti-Trump spew, and then buried in the middle was a statement something like "For information on what's actually in the bill go the this link."

I went to the link and didn't bother reading the rest of the article. I wonder what proportion of the US population is reacting the same way and turning off to news? The answer may well be an important factor in the 2020 election.

[Kriegsspiel]

What's the saying... The news used to tell you that something happened, then you had to decide what you thought about it. Now the news tells you how to think about something, and you have to figure out if it even happened.

[shekels]

That's a good one. And yet we'll have to put up with the same people preaching to us that Trump is an outrageous threat to free speech when he calls them "fake news". Anybody who believes anything fed to them by the mainstream media deserves everything they get.

lol. What do they get?

"1984" We are getting to see 1984 in slow motion. Where facts are being scrubbed from the Internet, and propaganda taking it's place.

[stuper1]

What is the pejorative "mainstream" media? ABC, NBC, CBS, and I assume FOX and CNN as well?

Or is it whatever media that doesn't have your point of view?

I hate the discourse in this country lately.

I'd say for practical purposes that "mainstream media" basically means anything that reaches your eyeballs or ears easily, meaning that you don't have to dig for it a bit. Thus mainstream media includes all the sources listed above, including Fox.

Of course, as is well known, the problem with the mainstream media is that it's controlled by big business. The problem with that is that the interests of big business are generally unaligned with the interests of me, an upper middle class American. And how could they be aligned? Big business isn't even a person, except as a legal fiction. Really the only interest of big business is to make money. My interests as a human being are much wider than that. And even and especially in the sphere of money, big businesses interests are often unaligned with my interests.

All I'm saying is that we should all take essentially everything we hear from just about any news source with a huge grain of salt. Of course, we all know that, but then we get busy with our lives and sort of forget it, and before you know it we're commenting about some news story and hardly stopping to wonder whether what the story says is in fact correct and not hugely skewed. We may think, "Oh, this news story has little to do with something that big business is interested in, so therefore there's no reason to think that it could be biased," when in fact, if we thought about it a bit deeper, we would realize that big business does have an interest in that subject and the story very well may be biased.

[jacksonM]

Things could be a lot worse as far as the MSM goes.

Back in the old days all we had was the evening news on CBS, ABC, and NBC and publications like Time Magazine and Newsweek. The liberal bias was palpable.

When Cable and FoxNews came along it was therefore like a breath of fresh air for a paleo-conservative/libertarian like myself (for lack of a better description). No, I don't agree with everything they say on Fox and their bias in the other direction is obvious but I think they give more air time to other points of view than any other network does.

Liberals don't seem to like this and I get the impression they would rather go back to the way it used to be.

[stuper1]

What's the saying... The news used to tell you that something happened, then you had to decide what you thought about it. Now the news tells you how to think about something, and you have to figure out if it even happened.

That's awesome and sounds pretty accurate to me.

Things could be a lot worse as far as the MSM goes.

Back in the old days all we had was the evening news on CBS, ABC, and NBC and publications like Time Magazine and Newsweek. The liberal bias was palpable.

When Cable and FoxNews came along it was therefore like a breath of fresh air for a paleo-conservative/libertarian like myself (for lack of a better description). No, I don't agree with everything they say on Fox and their bias in the other direction is obvious but I think they give more air time to other points of view than any other network does.

Liberals don't seem to like this and I get the impression they would rather go back to the way it used to be.

I think that big business has both "conservatives" and "liberals" in their back pockets.

[WiseOne]

Yah, I don't think that what we're seeing in the mainstream press has a lot to do with business interests. Otherwise they'd be a lot more favorable to Trump. I think it's more of a group ideology that somehow got disconnected from reality, and then moved on from there. It's got more in common with a fundamentalist religious cult than to any rational, self-serving set of interests.

In all fairness, the Right is just as susceptible to these things as the Left. Remember the bad old days of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority?

[stuper1]

Well ... to give a couple obvious examples:

1. Trump (says he) wants to lower the immigration rate. For big business, the higher the immigration rate the better because it means more consumers and more cheap labor.

2. Trump (says he) wants to keep us out of more military conflicts. For big business, the more wars the better because each time we say shoot off a missile, that's another $1M in the pockets of some big defence contractor.

And then layer on top of that the quasi-religious aspect that WiseOne mentioned and things just get worse.

[Kriegsspiel]

Yah, I don't think that what we're seeing in the mainstream press has a lot to do with business interests. Otherwise they'd be a lot more favorable to Trump.

How are you reaching that conclusion?

[WiseOne]

Yah, I don't think that what we're seeing in the mainstream press has a lot to do with business interests. Otherwise they'd be a lot more favorable to Trump.

How are you reaching that conclusion?

Big corporate tax cut? Deregulation? Anti-union and minimum wage stance? HELLO???

Obviously not everything he does is aligned with big business interests: tariffs, anti global free trade, anti illegal immigration, price transparency in health care etc. But on balance, big business would be way worse off with Democrats running the show: proposals for new wealth tax, Medicare for all, increased taxes on "the rich" and corporations, increased regulation.

[Kriegsspiel]

Yah, I don't think that what we're seeing in the mainstream press has a lot to do with business interests. Otherwise they'd be a lot more favorable to Trump.

How are you reaching that conclusion?

Big corporate tax cut? Deregulation? Anti-union and minimum wage stance? HELLO???

Obviously not everything he does is aligned with big business interests: tariffs, anti global free trade, anti illegal immigration, price transparency in health care etc. But on balance, big business would be way worse off with Democrats running the show: proposals for new wealth tax, Medicare for all, increased taxes on "the rich" and corporations, increased regulation.

Ahh, I wasn't even thinking along those lines. I thought you meant they would write nicer things about him instead of writing hit pieces and taking advantage of the (perceived) Trumpbumps.

[vnatale]

It has gone from hopeful to tragic for me. Sometimes funny, sure. The guy has a huge ego that seems to need to be stroked daily. I suppose I knew that, but now on full display, I regret that I had to make this choice.

I wish I had an opportunity to vote for Bernie.

You may well have that opportunity in November!

But, again, for me if it comes down to Bernie vs. Trump, I'm going with the best third party candidate available. I don't want either of those two!

After hearing Bloomberg speak today, I'd gladly choose him over those two. Just wish he wasn't so ancient!

Vinny

[vnatale]

Trump is certainly not my personal idea of a role model .... but, you know me, I place God's will above mans' sinful corrupted view of how things should be according to our fallen and cursed reason. To the best of my knowledge, Trump has not required us to go against any of God's Word. So:

LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR
#16 Parents and other authority figures in church and society deserve love, respect, and obedience because God has set them over us as his representatives. In the event that they command us to do something contrary to God’s Word, then we must obey God and disobey their command.
#17 Secular governments are instituted by God to maintain peace and order on earth. Therefore Christians should always respect their leaders as God’s representatives and should pray for them. Christians may serve in government and may work to improve government.

To the best of your knowledge, did Obama require us to go against any of God's Word? If not, then did you obey the rest you posted?

I'm guessing that its 25% you say that Obama didn't, 75% you say he did. And, that in the subsequent 2 1/2 years since you wrote the above that it is 100% that you say that Trump still has not.

And, I acknowledge there is zero black and white in all of this. When it comes to Biblical interpretation there are all kinds of judgments and reasonable people differ on those judgments. If there were not these differences, then there would not have been be so many different Christian denominations that developed from the story of just one man's life (and his followers) as told in just one book (albeit with many chapters).

Vinny

[vnatale]

I call him The Accidental President.

I don't think he thought he would win anything. He hooked a whale and couldn't let go as it pulled him into the abyss. By this time he must be thinking what the hell did I do?

I can go along with it being tragicomedy, for sure.

If you stayed up all the way until 4 AM (as I did) on Election night and saw him come out to give his victory speech you would have seen that your first sentence was definitely true. You could clearly see that he himself was totally shocked that he'd actually won!

Vinny

[vnatale]

Pointedstick,

Is Trump really the “de facto leader of conservative America”?

See Peggy Noonan’s column in last Saturday’s WSJ. Ronald Reagan’s most loyal speechwriter described Trump as “Woody Allen without the Humor.” She also scorched him for being a disgrace to American masculinity and unseemly in his remarks to the Boy Scouts. Can’t imagine her insisting (ala Reagan) that we just “Let Trump Be Trump!”

One possibility is that Trump will end up splitting the Republicans the way Teddy Roosevelt split the GOP between progressives and conservatives. The other is that this faux populist will fade into irrelevance and obscurity, like Jesse Ventura, the former pro wrestler who became governor of Minnesota in a 3-way contest against an unusually weak Democrat and an unappealing Republican.

I used to regularly hear Peggy Noonan on one of the Sunday news shows. During those shows she NEVER had ANTYING good to say about anyone who was a Democrat. So, was I shocked when I saw her as a regular this past Friday morning on MSNBC discussing the Impeachment Trial. NEVER thought I'd see Peggy Noonan rejecting anything Republican!

Vinny

[vnatale]

Pointedstick,

Is Trump really the “de facto leader of conservative America”?

Half of it, at least.

What's been revealed is that the Peggy Noonans of the USA are the elites of a very different tribe of conservatives than the one that elected Donald Trump.

It's very hard to pigeonhole the tribe of conservatives that elected Donald Trump. For so many, the choice was about the lesser of two evils.

The basic problem, as I see it, is that there are only 2 parties, and probably more than half the country if not more don't completely like either one. You may agree with a few things from each side, but think the rest of the platform sucks. I am one of these people, so yeah, it often comes down to who I dislike less. A change to government with many parties could only be a good thing. One can dream...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZfZ8uWaOFI

Vinny