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Trump Watch

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Harry Marks
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Re: Trump Watch

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ant wrote:Harry wrote:
Maybe, but it's hard to pin down what exactly should have been done to prevent the violence surge
It's called the National Guard.
When the Guard was called and arrived in Los Angeles, the looting came to nearly a complete stop.
In situations like social anarchy it does little to open a forum to debate what exactly needs to be done when you have specific resources that are available and have been known from experience to quell civil unrest. Indecisiveness is a hallmark of Democratic thinking
We seem to have a disconnect here. I thought we were talking about the shootings that hit the news this weekend, which seem to have had nothing to do with the looters or demonstrators.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/us/homic ... index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/us/child ... index.html
We don't usually call the National Guard in for crime waves, in large part because they are effective more against massed violence than against the shootings that crop up when there are too many guns around and too much trauma around. Maybe this looks like the same social anarchy to you, but to me it looks very similar to waves of shootings that occurred in the years before the virus.
ant wrote:
You just showed a video of the right being full of self-righteous moral indignation. It seems to be in the air these days.
As I said, I consider it justified. But it does seem to be in the air these days. It is much, MUCH more prevalent on the left though.
Follow mainstream media today if you don't normally do. You will see it daily
When is self-righteous moral indignation not justified to those who agree with the condemnation?
I'm glad you agree with the statement journalism of today is actually political activism:

CNN MSNBC PBS CBS ABC NYT NewYorker LAT vs Fox
I am somewhat concerned with equating journalism with activism, but I have been stunned by the extent to which CNN and MSNBC fill their time with material that could be considered political activism. PBS aims for factuality, but again, with their choice of what to cover, they clearly promote criticism of social ills and those who want to underline them. More prevalent on the left? Maybe. Every time I watch Fox the moral posturing seems to be heavily laced into the commentary, but I don't watch it that often. By the way, Fox is not the only one on the right - the Wall Street Journal is, and the mainstream press considers the L.A. Times to be conservative (and they certainly entertain strident, morally indignant conservative voices regularly), plus there is the Washington Times and the New York Post and the New York Daily News, and, in its timid way, USA Today.

But leave that aside. I have worked on the inside of the press, many decades ago, and it is clear to me that the professional press leans to the left. This is partly just the shadow side of the way violent institutions have traditionally hushed up their abuses, and truth-telling is an exciting way to be virtuous. In many parts of the world being a journalist is life-threatening, and journalists are very conscious of the dynamic in which power wants impunity and the press threatens it. To me that confrontation with power is a very good thing, creating accountability where there might not be otherwise.

But I accept the criticism that this dynamic also leads the press to take sides with those who criticize power, sometimes irresponsibly. Another part of the story is that taking a morally superior position is easier if you aren't actually responsible for the outcome, and the press can slip by with that. As true on the right as on the left, of course.
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Harry Marks
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Re: Trump Watch

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Roger Stone is a victim. And what do we think about people who hide their crime behind victimhood? Well, if we are this president, we believe they should be let off of punishment.

So, let's get this straight. If you are a crony of the president, you don't have to worry about the penalties of the law. The big guy in the big house has your back. So you can . . . .

While if you tell the truth about what the president does, you will lose your job. And be investigated. For . . . . telling the truth about what the president does. Which is now going to be treated as against the law. Because the law is . . . . whatever the president says it is.

Despite his oath to uphold the constitution and enforce the laws.

Is it possible that conservatives don't see this? Is it possible that the president's voter base does not care? Do they prefer to live under tyranny so long as the tyrant takes their side on social issues?

Whoa.
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DB Roy
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Re: Trump Watch

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Trump isn't doing anything different than he's always done. He will continue to break the law until someone stops him. Protesting his actions won't do any good. He cannot self-police and he will not. He will thumb his nose at his opponents, taunt them and dare them to stop him because he knows they won't. He has suffered no consequences for anything he's done so why should he care? If people want him to stop, they will have to stop him.
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Re: Trump Watch

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A variant of the Trump reelection banner, seen in my area, reads, "TRUMP 2020. NO MORE BULLSHIT."
And I wonder just what that is supposed to mean.
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Re: Trump Watch

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DWill wrote:A variant of the Trump reelection banner, seen in my area, reads, "TRUMP 2020. NO MORE BULLSHIT."
And I wonder just what that is supposed to mean.
Me too. It sounds to me like "Money talks, bullshit walks" or just "show me the money."

If we accept that most Trump voters are voting symbolically, for someone who stands for the emotional commitments they feel matter most, and we accept that traditional masculinity is the impulse behind racial animosity, opposition to abortion, and rage over being replaced by low wage workers abroad, then it kind of adds up.

Racial animosity follows because traditional masculinity comes from a posture of hostility to all except allies (and even they have to prove themselves over and over), seeing the world as a dangerous place in which we need to watch our own back and guard the honor that comes from defending what is ours, so that any hint of "other" will automatically be interpreted as rivalry and the need to crush it.

Opposition to abortion follows because a woman is only to be trusted if she understands her dependence and agrees to the bargain of her submission in exchange for the man's protection, and anything less than bearing children within this compact is an attack on the patriarchal social order. (This may sound like a stretch, but engage an abortion opponent in honest, curious discussion sometime - I have not found any exception to the pattern that traditional gender roles are considered to be at stake. Women who oppose abortion are as attached to these as men. Think of it as orthodoxy.)

Rage over competition from abroad follows because the pressure of the masculine role demands that social and economic order support the breadwinner. Life is tough enough as it is, without elites rounding up feckless poverty-stricken competition to undermine you. "Those people" don't know how to build a competent, civilized economy, and they cannot be allowed to undermine the hard-working men who support their families in a society that does function.

If you think about it that way, it probably seems obvious to reject the liberal (in the old, British sense) effort to globalize the economy and to reach from our confidence and our competence to solve those big, nebulous problems that are not personal or family problems. Confidence sounds great if you have tenure. Regular guys have real problems to deal with.
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Re: Trump Watch

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DWill wrote:A variant of the Trump reelection banner, seen in my area, reads, "TRUMP 2020. NO MORE BULLSHIT."
And I wonder just what that is supposed to mean.
It might mean that, in your area, Trump will disallow cowpatties to be made by bulls.

Or, it might mean that Trump was slinging bullshit for these last four years, and he will stop doing that once he's re-elected in 2020.
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Re: Trump Watch

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DWill wrote:A variant of the Trump reelection banner, seen in my area, reads, "TRUMP 2020. NO MORE BULLSHIT."
And I wonder just what that is supposed to mean.
Because Trump is playing this as though he was the challenger instead of the incumbent. Trump loves to go on the attack and hates to have to defend--mainly because he accomplishes nothing beyond enriching himself like the parasite he is. So Trump is going on the attack even though he is hurting himself. No more bullshit?? Who has been president for the last four years? Why has that president been allowing bullshit to proliferate? If he couldn't prevent bullshit then, how is he going to prevent it now??

How is he to defend his utter lack of policy? How is he to explain breaking virtually every promise he made in the 2016 campaign while his centerpiece promise--to build a wall--has gone completely unfulfilled? Everything he said was bullshit but no more. From now on, no more bullshit. He's right, though, he won't be president for much longer.
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Re: Trump Watch

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In his supporters' minds, it's hard to fathom what the slogan means. Why, after 3 1/2 years, would they still be claiming that reelecting get him would do away with the bullshit that presumably hasn't been done away with? Well, there's no understanding the reasoning, because it's not there, just as it wasn't with "Drain the Swamp."
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Re: Trump Watch

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All the bullshit that refers to is the perceived slights by the left. The fake investigations, harmful protests, fake Covid, etc. All that fake stuff that is actually real. We're in an age of information overload, where our neighbors can live in a different ideological universe based on the media they consume. Narrowstream media is corrupting people, yet they trust it more than mainstream media due to Trump's sloganeering. They turn off CNN and watch Youtube, where the algorithms spoon feed people what they want to see. Same with Facebook.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Trump Watch

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Republicans, or should I say Trumpublicans, are growing worried, and frantic is next. Joe Biden isn't playing according to their preferred script. He's staying calm, releasing policy outlines, and when he speaks or is interviewed, lo and behold, he shows what a reasonable adult sounds like. Much to the chagrin of his opponents, he isn't leaving a trail of gaffes behind him. Trump, by contrast, yesterday gives an hour interview to the tough Fox journalist, Chris Wallace, and provides the Democrats with a plethora of campaign ad material, a priceless gift for them. When do Trumpublicans decide not to sacrifice their careers to Trump? Do his polling numbers have to get into the 30s for that to start to happen? Principle isn't enough, except for a precious few, but survival might be.
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