ant wrote:
i've always been center-left.

An anti-Trump hysteria has gripped the American popular media, as the President mentioned at his long press conference today. The emotional hostility towards Trump is grossly imbalanced, and appears to reflect a situation where Obama’s eight years in office normalised attitudes which are at odds with a major part of the American populace.

My commenting in this thread is reacting to the febrile level of opposition to Donald Trump among those who have mounted a cultural war against him. The mainstream media reaction reminds me of a baby who had his rattle taken and erupted into a temper tantrum. Trump is offering a corrective to the political correct group-think of the liberal progressive world. The election result is an extreme jolt to the assumptions that progressive thought has a monopoly on moral values and could just ignore and belittle traditional views. The hysteria seems to imply that it is morally evil for Trump to stand up for defence of American interests and traditions.

Even if the departure of Mike Flynn may remind critics of Ernst Röhm in the night of the long knives, what it really shows is that Trump is decisive, reorganising to take advantage of a wider talent pool than he had during the campaign.

DWill wrote:Would there be no opportunity, then, for "principled criticism" of aggression towards Crimea and Ukraine, support of the brutal Assad regime, crony capitalism of the worst sort, extra-judicial killings, and subversion of our election? I'll come right out and ask you: do you agree with the neo-Russophiles that Russia should escape criticism?

Views on Russia have a range of reasonable positions. It is difficult to predict the results of different paths. Even seemingly unreasonable positions that Trump adopts may prove to have merit if they prompt further dialogue and reflection and realignments.

I have sympathy for the alt-right view of politics, based on traditional conservative values of competition and self-interest and cultural values. I do not much admire Russia, after reading widely in Russian history and seeing its blundering bullying behaviour. But statecraft deals with realities, and only promotes ideals as they support real objectives.

The NATO strategy of isolating Russia has not clearly served the interests of stability, dialogue and peace. The Crimea and Ukraine conflicts reflect a western geostrategic containment policy, aiming to keep the Russian speaking people who live in eastern Ukraine within the western orbit. The overwhelming support for Russia in the Crimea referendum of 2014 made it clear that the 1950s gift of Crimea to Ukraine occurred at a time when collapse of the USSR was not imagined.

There is a case for Ukraine splitting on linguistic lines, with the western provinces joining NATO and Europe, while Russian majority areas become part of Russia. Such realignments should not be condemned on principle but should be assessed against rights of self-determination and promotion of good international relations.

The hostility towards Russia from the Democrat camp and Clinton’s meddling in Russia’s affairs fomented Putin’s payback. Putin said, “As we say, husband and wife are the same Satan.”

DWill wrote:Putin has launched a nativist-nationalist revival in Russia, with great success. The pitiable Russian public has thus ignored how rapacious is their country's leadership. Trump also hews to nativist nationalism with the same nostalgic flavor of turning the clock back to around 1950, when America was great. So there is a natural reluctance to criticize soul mates. The job for our country now is to oppose him if he tries to take more pages from Putin's book, especially with regard to corruption.

The main page that Trump is borrowing from the Putin playbook is defence of national interests. That is where the Democrats are vague and Trump is clear. Free trade is the best theoretical solution in an ideal world, but the reality of trade is the art of the deal, a topic where Trump has some expertise. What you criticise as "nativism" is what others support as patriotism. Working out how the USA can function as a tribe in the world economy is not easy.

DWill wrote: I compared him with the old comm-symps on the trait of his positive valuation of Russia. That's the point you should have tried to refute.

The useful idiot fellow travellers like George Bernard Shaw imagined that Bolshevism was creating heaven on earth. Trump’s admiration for Putin is solely in terms of being a strong leader who can achieve results, against the assessment that dithering liberals have failed to stand up for American interests.

DWill wrote:

The travel ban was a shot across the bows for the global war against islamofascism. It was a signal that Trump supports Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory of history, and will endeavour to define and support Judeo-Christian culture against the threat of Islam.

How much of that is analysis and how much is support for such a purpose?

Islam provides social comfort for its believers in telling them they belong to an expansionist world tribal identity. But its ideology is stagnant and pre-modern and does not serve anyone’s real interests except the theocrats. The Koran explicitly preaches military expansion, as detailed at http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages ... lence.aspx By contrast, Christianity has the capacity to evolve and reform to become compatible with modern rationality.

Trump may not be engaged on the potential for Christianity to reform, but his supporters could prove more receptive to that objective than progressive liberals are. So even though on the average Trump voters may be less educated, their instincts are sounder. Liberals basically hold an unrealistic dream of the secularisation of culture, so are incapable of defending their own interests through simple stories of shared identity, except at the racial and minority level, whereas Trump seeks national cohesion.

If we end up discussing Dennett's book on evolution, I will be interested to look for this theme of religion as a basis of group identity, and how fragmentation or bonding promoted by myths associated with evolutionary or religious memes can make a society weaker or stronger.

Cultural evolution, in my view, should look to the most viable precedent systems that can build a durable and stable and productive society. In my view, that means America needs to celebrate its roots in Judeo-Christian civilization, integrated with modern secularity. Islam should gradually wither away as better ideas are presented to its adherents.

DWill wrote:Preventing ordinary people from traveling to and from the U.S. would seem a weird means of combatting terrorism.

This is not about “ordinary people”. It is about seven countries which Obama agreed were too high risk to assess visa eligibility. Nowhere in President Trump’s executive order does he single out any country for visa suspension. Instead he suspended approvals from countries who the Obama administration categorized for extreme visa vetting.

DWill wrote:On Huntington, there is a good case to be made that parts of his thesis are simply wrong.

That would be an interesting debate. I take the view that we should respect all human diversity as providing a rich tapestry whose value is irreplaceable and priceless. But there are some cultural practices and beliefs that are obsolete and should be left in the past.

With indigenous cultures, the good parts of their heritage and identity are best retained when they leave behind obsolete practices and adopt the proven achievements of modernity, including on individual rights.

Islam retains a dangerous collective oppression which makes apostasy a capital crime, together with obsolete cultural practices and views that denigrate learning. That is just the tip of the iceberg of why the civilizational clash between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world will only intensify, with Trump starting to bring into the open many topics which have been taboo.

DWill wrote:

The pervasive dominance within postmodern society of the ethical values of cultural relativism and denigration of Western Civilization, as seen in Hillary’s deplorable blunder, is a problem that energises the identity of Trump’s supporters.

Come on, Clinton's political blunder had nothing to do with the forces you identify.

She said “you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it." That is identity politics and cultural relativism on steroids. Clinton was saying that all good people should utterly deplore and shun anything that reminds them of these alleged evils, that any Americans who stand for traditional values and do not roll over to the new identity politics of anti-family, anti-border, anti-Christian should be deplored.

“Islamophobic” has become a hot button word with a rather vague meaning. I do not personally fear Islam, but consider that its tenets should be subject of calm discussion. When the intelligent reasoned commentator Ayaan Hirsi Ali was ‘no-platformed’ by fanatical pro-Muslim Jewish students at Brandeis University in Boston in 2014, it showed a rising tide of liberal intolerance that has only grown worse. Ordinary people who voted for Trump were scared that fanatic no-platformers were waiting in the wings to help Hillary.

Yes there is a kooky fringe on the political right, but Clinton’s effort to denigrate the identity of half of Trump’s voters certainly was an overplay for cultural relativism.

DWill wrote:There is scant evidence of progressives with any clout favoring the "backward ideology" of Islamism. It would be stupid for Trump to go along with Netanyahu's dream of moving the capital. That would only incite fundamentalists in Israel who believe that the Bible should prescribe politics. There was a full-page ad in a newspaper supporting the move, with the headline, "Walk with King David." What rubbish.

The Deep State culture is resisting Trump by opposing any action that rejects the dominant modern cultural relativism. They aim to see Trump off as soon as possible, but I suspect the discussion about values is only getting started. Obviously those Deep State people in the swamp do not favour Islamism, but they do support Hillary’s numbing mind-control policy of rooting out the thought-crimes of Islamophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia wherever they find them.

The American media is largely a left wing propaganda machine that no longer holds to any concept of objectivity.

That line of attack is long out of date. Fox News is American media. Breitbart News is American media. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, innumerable smaller market right wing radio announcers, The Drudge Report, The Wall Street Journal, The Blaze, and even Info Wars are American media. Blogs and specialized news aggregators are also American media and allow partisans to avoid opposing views. Recently we have the "alt-right" creeping into the media. I haven't checked ratings in a long time, but Fox used to crow about having a larger viewership than CNN, MSNBC, etc. So the quote above is not true.

Nearly every speech and press conference Trump made in the last year has been broadcast in full on all news channels. This used to include even his plane rolling up to to the venue. Fifteen minutes ahead of time, "Here is Mr. Trump's plane, we're waiting on his eminent arrival to discuss XYZ here in ..." No politician has previously enjoyed a complete verbatim broadcast record by the media.

Only 4 weeks in and Trump's performance is getting bad enough that even Fox is attacking statements in the latest press conference. See 1 minute blistering video.
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/journalists-re ... 52174.html

RT wrote:An anti-Trump hysteria has gripped the American popular media, as the President mentioned at his long press conference today. The emotional hostility towards Trump is grossly imbalanced

The man is such a moron. How can you not understand the hysteria after watching him talk for 5 minutes? When he speaks, it's always a display of gut-wrenching stupidity. Just WATCH him. Listen to him. He's a moron. Read the tweets where he mispells words that my 8 year old son knows. Count the number of times in every single sentence he leans on bombastic adjectives, like a novice marketer. Look how he takes every truthful criticism against himself and honestly believe is only applies to others. Look at all the stupid stuff he's done with just a month in office. He's elected a full blown bible thumping creationist to be Secretary of Education. He's erased mention of climate change on government websites then put a gag order on environmental agencies.

One or two of these items is a forgivable measure of stupidity in the president. The fact that it's an unending list with a single month in office is terrifying. What stupid thing will he do with the next 3 years and 11 months? How soon until one of his stupid acts leads to large amounts of damage to life, liberty, wealth, etc? It's not emotional language, it's truthful. He's beyond the level of stupid required to make a blunder that costs many lives, wastes untold resources, or sets us back economically or educationally decades. If you can't see that he's dumb enough to do great damage, then you're biased. The emotional hostility towards Trump is grossly imbalanced towards acceptance. He needs to go, now.

The anti-Trump hysteria is pretty warranted, I'd say. As Interbane says, just look at the content of his remarks. This man is not grounded in reality. He just makes up shit and makes decisions based on that. The man is dangerous.

In recent days, he has stated that vaccinations cause autism, that there is widespread voter fraud, that the media doesn't report many acts of terrorism, and that Islam poses a grave existential threat to America. There's absolutely no evidence that any of these are true, yet Trump believes them anyway, and he will act on his beliefs, regardless of evidence. Trump simply doesn't understand facts or evidence. He bases everything on gut instinct.

Robert, I think you must be letting your politics get in the way of common sense. Isn't the ability to understand reality a rather important quality for the American president?

Trump is definitely a ticking time bomb and he is scaring the hell out of me.

Trump is taking himself down. No need to write your congressmen of any of that shit. The Russian thing is killing him. The White House is falling apart. Half of his staff is ready to bolt--Reince Priebus in the lead.

Even Fox News is turning against him:

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

Olbermann once again lays it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IEBSxXFmRI

geo wrote:The anti-Trump hysteria is pretty warranted, I'd say. As Interbane says, just look at the content of his remarks. This man is not grounded in reality. He just makes up shit and makes decisions based on that. The man is dangerous.

I think Clinton would have been more dangerous than Trump. These are dangerous times. Politics is all about positioning, defining goals, identifying friend and foe, and framing language to move toward strategic objectives. That is what Trump is doing with his ambiguous language, such as his signalling on Israel. America is far safer with Trump’s strong border policy than with the weakness seen in Europe.

Yes, Trump makes false statements. That is morally dubious, given the propaganda function of his incendiary memes. Some of his comments appear primarily designed to position his administration in ways that shift the midpoint of mass political opinion, and are not necessarily framed within the conventions of rational evidence. It is a question of political opinion as to whether his ends justify these means.

geo wrote: In recent days, he has stated that vaccinations cause autism, that there is widespread voter fraud, that the media doesn't report many acts of terrorism, and that Islam poses a grave existential threat to America.

In each of these cases, it is worth comparing your stark summary with what Trump actually stated. There are differences which indicate that you are exaggerating. RFK has not been appointed Autism Czar. The only use of the phrase “existential threat” I could find in recent time was the head of the EU complaining about Trump’s impact on Europe. Trump has certainly made dire assessments about ISIS, but not about Islam that I could find. His comments about reporting included the point that the media does not “want” to report, implying there is some reluctance rather than actual fakery.

geo wrote:There's absolutely no evidence that any of these are true, yet Trump believes them anyway, and he will act on his beliefs, regardless of evidence. Trump simply doesn't understand facts or evidence. He bases everything on gut instinct.

My impression is that Trump has a reasonable grasp of evidence, but sees a post-truth political advantage in pushing simplified and distorted memes.

You could have also mentioned his climate denial. My impression is that his statement “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive” is not so much a scientific as a political statement, and so should be assessed in purely political terms. With the politics, Trump’s point is that reducing emissions reduces economic growth, and so any policy suggestions to fix the climate have to be positive for growth. That may look ridiculous, but I think it is actually a good position, since any liberal attack on growth for the sake of the planet will fail at the point of delivery. Trump is demanding that the terms of the debate shift to become politically real. He certainly is posing an “existential threat” to those who live in the yoyo land of Europe, and they fully deserve it.

geo wrote: Robert, I think you must be letting your politics get in the way of common sense. Isn't the ability to understand reality a rather important quality for the American president?

At the level of the Presidency, myths are as real as facts, especially the myth of confidence. If Trump can construct a vibrant myth of economic confidence, as he is doing with the stock market rise of more than ten percent since the election, it is likely that he will force clearer debates about the topics where people consider he has strayed from the truth.

I think a lot of the comments about Trump have stressed what might be called clinical evidence. Robert, you are claiming that what we see before us as disturbing, alarming behavior in Trump is really some kind of Machiavellian strategy by him, that he has a further end in mind when he rants and raves whenever he speaks. But his behavior is not strategic; it is primary evidence of psychological unfitness to serve. His last press conference, which you apparently found reassuring, can be reported out in the terms of a clinical interview. He displayed grandiose self-regard, hair-trigger sensitivity to insult, tangential thinking, reactive hostility, and general emotional lability. Using the most charitable words that I can, Donald Trump made a terrible, disastrous career choice when he decided to try for political office, given his proven psychological liabilities.