+- MacResource (https://forums.macresource.com)
+-- Forum: My Category (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: 'Friendly' Political Ranting (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6)
+--- Thread: "Being Honest About Trump" (/showthread.php?tid=192894)
"Being Honest About Trump" - $tevie - 07-15-2016
Superb essay by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker. Gopnik is always worth reading but most especially this time:
A certain number of the disengaged insist that Trump isn’t really as bad as all that. And there may indeed be another universe in which Donald Trump is one more blowhard billionaire with mixed-up politics but a basically benevolent heart, a Ross Perot type, or perhaps more like Arnold Schwarzenegger, preaching some confused combination of populism and self-help and doomed to flounder when he comes to power. This would not be the worst thing imaginable. Unfortunately, that universe is not this one. Trump is unstable, a liar, narcissistic, contemptuous of the basic norms of political life, and deeply embedded among the most paranoid and irrational of conspiracy theorists. There may indeed be a pathos to his followers’ dreams of some populist rescue for their plights. But he did not come to political attention as a “populist”; he came to politics as a racist, a proponent of birtherism.
As I have written before, to call him a fascist of some variety is simply to use a historical label that fits. The arguments about whether he meets every point in some static fascism matrix show a misunderstanding of what that ideology involves.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/being-honest-about-trump?mbid=social_facebook
Re: "Being Honest About Trump" - Ted King - 07-15-2016
That was excellent beginning to end.
All republics are fragile; the German one, like the Third French Republic it paralleled, did not commit suicide—it was killed, by many murderers, not least by those who thought they could contain an authoritarian thirsting for power. And, second, that the United States has been the ultimate home of so many cosmopolitan citizens rejected by Europe. People expelled by hate from Europe wanted desperately to get to the American Midwest, to cities like Chicago—and, no doubt, to Cleveland, where the Republican Party holds its Convention next week. Cosmopolitanism is not a tribal trait; it is a virtue, as much as courage or honesty or compassion. Almost without exception, the periods of human civilization that we admire as we look back have been cosmopolitan in practice; even those, like the Bronze Age, that we imagine as monolithic and traditional turn out to be shaped by trade and exchange and multiple identity.
I think the author rightly casts it as a clash of tribalism and cosmopolitanism. I think a lot of Trump supporters equate what the author refers to as "cosmopolitan" with "corrupt elite establishment jerks" rather than as being a culturally desirable state of affairs. And I think the author is right to use the history of authoritarian populists arising from tribal angst about cosmopolitanism and "killing" democratic republics.
I don't think it would be inevitable by any means that a Trump presidency would be an existential threat to our democratic republic, but the danger is tangible enough that we should definitely not take the chance.
One other thought about cosmopolitanism - one of the peculiar things I've noticed about the polling for the presidential election is that there is a substantial split in those who support Trump or don't support Trump between white men with college degrees and white men without college degrees. White men without college degrees are much more likely to support Trump than white men with a college degree. I wonder if at least part of the explanation is that college tends to nurture cosmopolitanism and reduce the impact of tribalism.
Re: "Being Honest About Trump" - mrbigstuff - 07-15-2016
tl; dr, but the one most important question that he has got away with, to my astonishment, is that of his seriousness to the job. I believe, as I have said here numerous times, he is caught up in this and had no real intention of sticking it out this far. and, I believe he will blow the election on purpose and/or hand the whole thing over to Pence if he were to win.
what the media, and BOTH parties refused to hammer him on, is his lack of qualification and his seriousness about follow through, and, quite frankly, his dismissiveness of the serious nature of the job. his fellow candidates never thought this would happen, and the media were so dumbfounded with sensationalist headlines, that he was not taken to task on this straightaway. and, given the nature of our electoral process, once a candidate reaches a certain plateau, they are deemed serious by reason of having reached that plateau. tail wagging the dog, as I believe Bush said at one point.
Re: "Being Honest About Trump" - rjmacs - 07-15-2016
mrbigstuff wrote:
tl; dr, but the one most important question that he has got away with, to my astonishment, is that of his seriousness to the job. I believe, as I have said here numerous times, he is caught up in this and had no real intention of sticking it out this far. and, I believe he will blow the election on purpose and/or hand the whole thing over to Pence if he were to win.
Drumpf has depended on rubes not believing that he's taking this seriously all along to fly under the radar and avoid serious challenges. You're exactly the kind of unbeliever he wants more of.
Re: "Being Honest About Trump" - mrbigstuff - 07-15-2016
rjmacs wrote:
[quote=mrbigstuff]
tl; dr, but the one most important question that he has got away with, to my astonishment, is that of his seriousness to the job. I believe, as I have said here numerous times, he is caught up in this and had no real intention of sticking it out this far. and, I believe he will blow the election on purpose and/or hand the whole thing over to Pence if he were to win.
Drumpf has depended on rubes not believing that he's taking this seriously all along to fly under the radar and avoid serious challenges. You're exactly the kind of unbeliever he wants more of.
wager? ;-)
Re: "Being Honest About Trump" - DeusxMac - 07-15-2016
mrbigstuff wrote:
I believe, as I have said here numerous times, he is caught up in this and had no real intention of sticking it out this far.
:agree: 100% I don't think he ever thought he would get this far.
mrbigstuff wrote: and, I believe he will blow the election on purpose and/or hand the whole thing over to Pence if he were to win.
miley-signs006: His ego wouldn't even consider the possibility that he wasn't up to the job. Same is true -if- he were to get elected.
Re: "Being Honest About Trump" - vision63 - 07-15-2016
DeusxMac wrote:
[quote=mrbigstuff]
I believe, as I have said here numerous times, he is caught up in this and had no real intention of sticking it out this far.
:agree: 100% I don't think he ever thought he would get this far.
mrbigstuff wrote: and, I believe he will blow the election on purpose and/or hand the whole thing over to Pence if he were to win.
miley-signs006: His ego wouldn't even consider the possibility that he wasn't up to the job. Same is true -if- he were to get elected.
"The Wire: Mission Accomplished (#3.12)" (2004)
Slim Charles: Don't matter who did what to who at this point. Fact is, we went to war, and now there ain't no going back. I mean, shit, it's what war is, you know? Once you in it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight.