Lets imagine you have a crystal ball in which to gaze possible futures, but all names are missing from the headlines.
In one of those futures there is a world where our economy has collapsed, people are persecuted for being of different ethnicities or religions, climate catastrophe has compounded, and we are at war with our neighbors.
Which president do you think presided over this?
In all honesty the worst case scenario I can imagine with Hilary Clinton in charge is just another politician doing politician things with little to no reform. But I can absolutely imagine Donald Trump being literally the worst president in the history of our country.
He is openly racist. Openly sexist. An un-repentant bully, loudmouth, and braggart. A liar, and adulterer. Honestly.... I have trouble communicating this man's faults. I'm like someone in the million dollar sticky booth, but instead of dollars there is a blizzard of Donald Trump's ineptitude and lunatic assertions billowing around me.
He doesn't even know how to be a person, and people are trying to elect him president? What we are seeing isn't a man. It's a Colonel Sanders. A Ronald McDonald. This is the corporate mascot of the Trump reality show.
He has stood by while people are beaten at his rallies. Commended the aggressors and commented that maybe that guy deserved to be beaten.
He has stood silent as the KKK endorsed him.
He has behaved like a baby in any and all public challenges.
Stood by while people at the podium IN HIS RALLIES have called for Hillary Clinton to be shot.
McCain, as bug-fuck crazy as his campaign was last go-round, at least he wouldn't stand there and let crazy people talk on his behalf. That old lady said Obama was a Muslim and he shut it down.
Trump can't even be held to the standards of the McCain Palin circus?
He wants to build a ludicrous border wall that will cost billions of dollars.
He said he wants to deport over 11 million Mexicans. Destroying families and making orphans.
He said he wants to prevent ANY Muslim from entering the country.
He proudly restricts the press, and touts it as something to be proud of, rather than be ashamed by.
He loves Putin.
How is this a thing in this country? How is this Colonel Sanders of being the loudest, douchiest, dickhead on TV leading the republican party.... and why haven't the republicans done something about this? This is two cycles in a row now, guys.
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Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
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- johnson1010
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Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro
Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?
Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?
Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
-Guillermo Del Torro
Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?
Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?
Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
Just in considering the cultural antecedents of the insanity of the shambolic and dangerous Trump candidacy, it is interesting to compare what is happening now with the insanity of a century ago.
We have been reflecting in Australia on the centenary of the battle of Fromelles in Northern France. Quoting an article by journalist Paul Kelly, “ill-prepared Australians attacked a heavily fortified German position in a flawed military operation. Beginning at 6pm on the evening of July 19, 1916, the Australian 5th Division over the next 24 hours suffered 5533 casualties with 1917 killed.”
This appalling botched massive battle in France was almost entirely forgotten to history for eighty years until a farmer found a mass grave with hundreds of Australian bodies. Just tossing away the flower of a nation’s manhood for nothing betrayed a gross detachment from reality. And the man ultimately responsible, British General Douglas Haig, still has the main park in the north of Canberra, where I live, named after him.
Why compare Fromelle to Trump? The First World War showed that the veneer of civilized existence is thin, that humans can be extremely stupid and callous, that modern technology brings immense dangers and equal responsibilities, and that the risk of collapse from civilization into madness is high. Hitler amplified all those worries, inflicting grief on unimagined scale.
Luckily the Trump convention is trumping itself with inane incompetence, between failures of media scheduling, plagiarism, booing of Cruz, and constant insults to each other and to the intelligence of everyone.
We have been reflecting in Australia on the centenary of the battle of Fromelles in Northern France. Quoting an article by journalist Paul Kelly, “ill-prepared Australians attacked a heavily fortified German position in a flawed military operation. Beginning at 6pm on the evening of July 19, 1916, the Australian 5th Division over the next 24 hours suffered 5533 casualties with 1917 killed.”
This appalling botched massive battle in France was almost entirely forgotten to history for eighty years until a farmer found a mass grave with hundreds of Australian bodies. Just tossing away the flower of a nation’s manhood for nothing betrayed a gross detachment from reality. And the man ultimately responsible, British General Douglas Haig, still has the main park in the north of Canberra, where I live, named after him.
Why compare Fromelle to Trump? The First World War showed that the veneer of civilized existence is thin, that humans can be extremely stupid and callous, that modern technology brings immense dangers and equal responsibilities, and that the risk of collapse from civilization into madness is high. Hitler amplified all those worries, inflicting grief on unimagined scale.
Luckily the Trump convention is trumping itself with inane incompetence, between failures of media scheduling, plagiarism, booing of Cruz, and constant insults to each other and to the intelligence of everyone.
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
The problem with trump also seems to be that words like craven ego-maniacal lunatic, get tossed around too freely.
So what happens when those words perfectly apply in the most straight forward interpretation of those words, to one of the front runners for president of the united states?
Wait, wait, wait... it just hit me. Without democrats, this insane cheeto would ALREADY be president.
What the fuck, republicans.
So what happens when those words perfectly apply in the most straight forward interpretation of those words, to one of the front runners for president of the united states?
Wait, wait, wait... it just hit me. Without democrats, this insane cheeto would ALREADY be president.
What the fuck, republicans.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro
Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?
Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?
Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
-Guillermo Del Torro
Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?
Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?
Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
- DWill
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
How about the unimaginable weirdness of a candidate for president on the right wing who shills for Vladimir Putin and Russia? What were all those years of Red Scare about, when every lefty was a traitor in league with the Kremlin? Trump is out in the open, downplaying our commitment to NATO while boasting like an idiot, "Putin likes me!"
- geo
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
It seems almost irrelevant, but Trump isn't right wing at all. Though he's under the GOP umbrella, his ideas are centrist or even left. Apparently many conservatives are more anti-liberal than they are pro-conservative. They would elect an ugly dog over Hillary Clinton, or whoever is being offered by the Democrat machine. And apparently they will also ignore their candidate's declared admiration for Putin. It boggles the mind.DWill wrote:How about the unimaginable weirdness of a candidate for president on the right wing who shills for Vladimir Putin and Russia? What were all those years of Red Scare about, when every lefty was a traitor in league with the Kremlin? Trump is out in the open, downplaying our commitment to NATO while boasting like an idiot, "Putin likes me!"
The GOP has become a monster which no longer even pays lip service to conservative ideas. They have been pandering to stupidity and partisan politics for so long, that Trump now seems a reasonable choice (to some people at least). The rise of anti intellectualism in America is truly frightening. I was recently amused by something Stephen Colbert said, that "reality has a liberal bias." It's true, GOP politics has become anti reality.
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/10/donald_ ... loves_him/
I used to wonder if the rise of totalitarianism comes from the left or the right, but apparently it can easily come from the center. The good news in all this is that despite an intense dislike for Hillary Clinton, the Democrats are still articulating good ideas. Michelle Obama's speech the other day was incredibly gratifying in that respect.
-Geo
Question everything
Question everything
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
That's very well put, geo. I would still identify Trump as on the right wing currently, mainly for the nativist, racist, and chauvinist feelings he's exploiting. I don't mean that these feelings typify everyone on the right any means, but they are more typical of dark underside of that side of the spectrum. You're right absolutely, principled conservatives are aghast at Trump. I've looked for a positive appraisal of Trump from writers like Will, Krauthammer, and others categorized as conservative, but haven't found a single one. And this goes for a large number of Republican politicians as well. I don't even believe that Trump has ideas; appetites and instincts aren't ideas. He's running a campaign based on emotion only, in my view, and they're not positive emotions.
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
I think Oliver is correct about the fact that Trump would almost certainly be a hands-off president. He's said it himself in the past. He delegates and he "gets the best people". I think the storm cloud has a silver lining. At least a little one.johnson1010 wrote:The problem with trump also seems to be that words like craven ego-maniacal lunatic, get tossed around too freely.
So what happens when those words perfectly apply in the most straight forward interpretation of those words, to one of the front runners for president of the united states?
Wait, wait, wait... it just hit me. Without democrats, this insane cheeto would ALREADY be president.
What the fuck, republicans.
- DB Roy
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
I think that maybe the democratic convention might have sealed the deal for a Clinton presidency. I was actually impressed by it--great speeches and a good lineup of speakers and celebs and some of the best orators in the business today. Michelle Obama was so impressive that I believe she might well be the second female president because I think if she ran, she'd win. Even Trump was clearly awed by her and when has he ever been awed by anyone other than himself?
As all the pundits are saying, their message was upbeat and that's what Americans would rather hear. The truth is, though, the republicans handed them that one with a pretty bow on it. They preached so much gloom and doom that they really left the dems no choice but to preach a more upbeat message. That goes on Trump because of his "Let's Make America Great Again" implies that America is no longer great and so they had to point out to the country how and why America is no longer great and, frankly, who wants to hear that for 4 days?
One thing that was hard to ignore was the near total absence of minority speakers at the rnc. Ben Carson the token lapdog was about it. No Muslims. Contrast that with the dnc where there were plenty of black speakers and a Muslim man who gave one of the best speeches of the whole convention. Trump's lack of minority support will doom him. You have to have sizable minority support. Lack of it is a death-knell. In 2012, the republicans far out-spent the democrats in the election and lost due to lack of minority support. Trump's lack of minority support is nothing short of shocking. In some voting districts in this country, his black support is literally at 0%. No blacks will vote for him. I don't believe I've seen anything like that. I think even George Wallace had more black support than Trump. When not a single black person in an entire district is going to vote for you, you have to acknowledge at least to yourself that you have done a piss-poor job of reaching out. Trump has done an exceedingly piss-poor job bigly.
Then the number of high-profile republicans that refused to show and Cruz's refusal to endorse Trump is telling. It's bizarre that such a man could become a presidential nominee when he doesn't have a presidential bone in his body.
As all the pundits are saying, their message was upbeat and that's what Americans would rather hear. The truth is, though, the republicans handed them that one with a pretty bow on it. They preached so much gloom and doom that they really left the dems no choice but to preach a more upbeat message. That goes on Trump because of his "Let's Make America Great Again" implies that America is no longer great and so they had to point out to the country how and why America is no longer great and, frankly, who wants to hear that for 4 days?
One thing that was hard to ignore was the near total absence of minority speakers at the rnc. Ben Carson the token lapdog was about it. No Muslims. Contrast that with the dnc where there were plenty of black speakers and a Muslim man who gave one of the best speeches of the whole convention. Trump's lack of minority support will doom him. You have to have sizable minority support. Lack of it is a death-knell. In 2012, the republicans far out-spent the democrats in the election and lost due to lack of minority support. Trump's lack of minority support is nothing short of shocking. In some voting districts in this country, his black support is literally at 0%. No blacks will vote for him. I don't believe I've seen anything like that. I think even George Wallace had more black support than Trump. When not a single black person in an entire district is going to vote for you, you have to acknowledge at least to yourself that you have done a piss-poor job of reaching out. Trump has done an exceedingly piss-poor job bigly.
Then the number of high-profile republicans that refused to show and Cruz's refusal to endorse Trump is telling. It's bizarre that such a man could become a presidential nominee when he doesn't have a presidential bone in his body.
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
I pride myself in acquiring my news from both sides. But apparently I'm biased. It's not a surprise, of course. The shocker is that I see some people ripping apart Clinton as if her evils hold a candle to the nuclear bomb that is Trump. It has to be a case of Fox-news-onlyism. Or something. How is this not clear as daylight to critical thinkers?
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Re: Donald Trump and America's flight from accountability
I had to look it up, but wow you are correct here is Khizr Khan's speech. Here's a powerful interview Khizr Kahn and his wife had with Lawrence O'Donnell.DB Roy wrote:...a Muslim man who gave one of the best speeches of the whole convention.
Trump has used that word straight out of the Simpsons (embiggins) multiple times. Some claim he is actually saying "big league", but that doesn't matter. Trump's opinions are not relevant. His vocabulary and personality is like a 14 year old bully. We simply cannot elect an obnoxious adolescent to the Presidency!Trump has done an exceedingly piss-poor job bigly.
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