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Post by Christine on Aug 16, 2017 19:35:47 GMT -5
...except that the KKK and neo-Nazis are absolutely seeing Trump's wishy-washy, "both sides are to blame" statement as a wink and a nod to their side. They absolutely believe that he supports them, whether he really does or not. And, frankly, it's terrifying and infuriating that it's not easy to tell which it is. I agree that they are taking all of this as a wink and a nod, and that is totally on Trump. He's become completely unhinged (again) on this issue. Imo, this is not because Trump is a racist, but because in true narcissist form, he's concerned about his ratings. The left doesn't like him, they're the enemy. The alt-right does, they can't be all that bad. It's all about who likes him and who's criticizing him, as opposed to right and wrong. Or as I saw on Twitter (paraphrasing): Trump: Mexicans are bad Trump: Muslims are bad Trump: The media is bad Trump: Nazis, White Supremacists... let's not rush to judgement Intentionally or not, Trump was dog-whistling to these hate groups long before now.
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Post by poetinahat on Aug 16, 2017 20:22:05 GMT -5
That's exactly how I see it, Christine. He's not specifically racist, but the only thing that matters to him is who supports him.
Which might raise the question of whether fawning over him would be an effective strategy for the Democrats/left/what-have-you. Hard to stomach, no doubt, but could it work? His gripes with media and Democrats aren't about ideology; they're about how he feels they treat him.
I see parents of ill-behaved toddlers doing this just to keep some peace, and they all look exhausted, but thinking they'll survive until the kids grow up and move out.
(Sort of joking, sort of not.)
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2017 20:24:55 GMT -5
Presumably Ivanka fawns all over him, and her pet causes seem to wither and die.
Scaramucci fawned over him, and look at him now.
I could go on, but damn, I'm tired.
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Post by poetinahat on Aug 16, 2017 20:50:09 GMT -5
Hmmm. Could it be because they depend on him - but they can't necessarily do anything for him? Or that he knows he can take them for granted? Of course, this didn't help Comey, and it may not help Sessions.
That might be another part of the formula: 1) give him lots of attaboys 2) have something he wants or needs, like influence or wealth 3) not be a threat 4) not be in a position where he can dispose of you
Getting closer?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2017 21:16:51 GMT -5
My own theory is that he has neither brain nor heart. A few drunken bumblebees flit about inside his skull and dictate his words and actions.
Nothing can keep him in check. Not love, not hate, not Ivanka, not John Kelly.
Fawn over him and he will eventually turn on you or simply ignore you. Threaten him and he blusters. Reason with him and ...well, it's an utter waste of time. He'll turn right around and do the opposite, then double-down on it.
This worked for him as the CEO of his own family company where even when he failed he answered to no one but himself. For a president, though, it is a disaster.
The only way to contain him is to get him out of office.
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Post by michaelw on Aug 16, 2017 21:30:58 GMT -5
The only way to contain him is to get him out of office. Repeal and Replace.
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Post by nighttimer on Aug 16, 2017 21:37:23 GMT -5
The only way to contain him is to get him out of office. Repeal and Replace. Investigate. Impeach. Imprison. You need to watch this. You need to know this.
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Post by maxinquaye on Aug 17, 2017 0:53:49 GMT -5
I believe Max is cooking up some moose. [Derailing to answer this important point] I actually had a side of Elk in the freezer at home. One of my relatives is a hunter, and likes to go out into the forests and sit for hours with his buddies as mosquitoes slowly eat him alive. But it has the benefit that us relatives get frantic calls now and then "I don't have any room in my own freezer. Do you want half an elk cow?!" He just rang a month ago to offer me a whole deer, but I couldn't take it because I'm not at home yet, and I don't have any room in the freezer.
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Post by Vince524 on Aug 17, 2017 10:00:50 GMT -5
Presumably Ivanka fawns all over him, and her pet causes seem to wither and die. Scaramucci fawned over him, and look at him now. I could go on, but damn, I'm tired. He has no loyalty, that's also true. Except to himself.
I imagine his in not a racist free heart, but I also don't think he supports the hard line evil that is happening in white nationalists.
A lot of his stance is stubborn pride. A lot of it is just plain old idiocy.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2017 11:38:02 GMT -5
I believe Max is cooking up some moose. [Derailing to answer this important point] I actually had a side of Elk in the freezer at home. One of my relatives is a hunter, and likes to go out into the forests and sit for hours with his buddies as mosquitoes slowly eat him alive. But it has the benefit that us relatives get frantic calls now and then "I don't have any room in my own freezer. Do you want half an elk cow?!" He just rang a month ago to offer me a whole deer, but I couldn't take it because I'm not at home yet, and I don't have any room in the freezer. You should have taken the deer for our outrage party. We could have roasted it on a spit over Angie's bonfire. Sigh. Trump is tripling down, bemoaning the loss of the "beautiful" confederate statues. www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/08/17/trump-mourns-loss-of-beautiful-statues-and-monuments-in-wake-of-charlottesville-rally-over-robert-e-lee-statue/?undefined=&utm_term=.ecc3fb782e0f&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1Vince is likely right that a big part of Trump's attitude is plain old stubbornness. But whatever is behind it, it is incredibly damaging to him and to our entire country. As a side note, I am betting most of the statues end up in museums or possibly on appropriate battlefields, perhaps faced with statues of Grant et al. Neither of those things would bother me, if it was done appropriately (i.e., no plaques extolling the Glorious Southern Cause). Certainly the statues are part of history. The real problem, IMO, is that (a) the way they are displayed now glorifies them as heroes (inappropriate, since they rebelled against our country and championed slavery), and (b) they've ended up becoming rallying points for white supremacists. They simply don't belong on our streets and in our city squares. It's clear now, or should be, that the fact that they are treated the way they are, elevated to the level of George Washington and the founders, is helping to feed some evil elements in our country.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 17, 2017 14:06:59 GMT -5
I imagine his in not a racist free heart, but I also don't think he supports the hard line evil that is happening in white nationalists.
Talk about damning with faint praise. "He's probably not personally a Nazi."
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Post by robeiae on Aug 17, 2017 14:30:46 GMT -5
I can't see where Trump has done much right in his response to these events, from his wishy-washy first response to his stupidity in trying to parcel out responsibility to both sides. That said, the above is unfair, imo. It's nice when Presidents reach out to people who suffer losses, but it's ridiculous to suppose that they owe the family of every victim a phone call. He offered condolences to her and to the family of the officers killed, which is what he should have done, to be sure. Wtf, rob. Seriously? I know you have to be Fair and Balanced (tm) to Trump at all costs so no one thinks you're getting soft, but seriously? A rote acknowledgement that he's pretty much been a disaster in every way which you then have to follow with a "but here's this totally pedantic nitpick about how it's not fair to blame him for this one thing"? I mean, that's just being obtuse - no, the President does not routinely phone the families of every single high-profile victim of a crime, but when it's a national incident like this one, and given the optics, yes, it's not unreasonable to ask him if he's reached out to her family. It's not so much "You have an obligation to call every victim's family" as an attempt to dig for some evidence that he actually gives a fuck, or at least give him an opportunity to pretend he does. Oh, please. I'm not much of a bandwagon poster. I picked at the point with which I disagreed--still do--nothing more. You know, I'm watching something of a shitstorm on my FB the last few days. People are actively scouring their FB friends in search of closet Trump supporters, are unfriending and/or blocking ones they find (how they can be certain on their assessment is beyond me). Others are going father, getting rid of friends who are not speaking out strongly enough against Trump, are not part of the fables "resistance." They're free to do this stuff, to be sure, but I'm not going to be coerced into emotive, hand-wringy, end-of-the-world statements, simply to satisfy people who apparently can only accept agreement on something if the expression of such meets their arbitrary standards. Beyond that, Trump did reach out to the family, as it were, on twitter. The victim's mother, in fact, thanked Trump for his expression of sympathy. But lord knows, the torch and pithcfork crowd isn't going to acknowledge that, isn't going to accept it as enough. Because let's get real here, that crowd is using this murdered woman as nothing more than a prop to criticize Trump, imo. Most of them don't give a shit about her, they only care that she represents a means to an end. Much of the media is complicit in this regard, to be sure. Again, I agree: Trump's response to the events in Charlottesville was awful (mostly because Trump is awful). It's more than fair to expect him to condemn the people responsible for this events, to not try to parcel out blame to counter-protesters who were only there because these white supremacist clowns were there. But holy shit, Trump isn't responsible for her death; he's not responsible for the protests, counter protests, and violence. Yet it seems few care about what happened, about issues involved, about the why and how of the violence, except in context with how these things can be used to criticize Trump. And frankly, I find the equating of these clowns with the historical Nazis in Germany to be incredibly idiotic. My grandfather has some medals, too. A number of them came from the French government. And he got them for fighting against the German Army in WWII. He got them for helping to clean up Dachau. The Nazis--the real ones, who had names like Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich--sent that army out to the field, set up that camp in Dachau. These shit-kickers in Charlottesville, the shit-kickers at the Daily Sturmer (I think that's just one guy, actually), couldn't hold the former group's jockstraps, when it comes to being evil, racist psychopaths. Don't get me wrong, I think the latter crowd are horrible, dangerous, and belong behind bars (at the very least), but they'e not NAZIs, this isn't the second coming of Adolf Hitler and we're not post-WWI Germany.
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Post by Vince524 on Aug 17, 2017 18:48:07 GMT -5
I imagine his in not a racist free heart, but I also don't think he supports the hard line evil that is happening in white nationalists.
Talk about damning with faint praise. "He's probably not personally a Nazi." Yeah well, it's about as good as your gonna get. Not that you're asking for praise. It's an honest assessment. Do I think he hates Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, or the LBGT? No, but he's indifferent to their plight if it gets in the way of his ego. He'd sell all the white nationalists down the drain in a second if he thought it'd help him.
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Post by Vince524 on Aug 17, 2017 18:53:35 GMT -5
Wtf, rob. Seriously? I know you have to be Fair and Balanced (tm) to Trump at all costs so no one thinks you're getting soft, but seriously? A rote acknowledgement that he's pretty much been a disaster in every way which you then have to follow with a "but here's this totally pedantic nitpick about how it's not fair to blame him for this one thing"? I mean, that's just being obtuse - no, the President does not routinely phone the families of every single high-profile victim of a crime, but when it's a national incident like this one, and given the optics, yes, it's not unreasonable to ask him if he's reached out to her family. It's not so much "You have an obligation to call every victim's family" as an attempt to dig for some evidence that he actually gives a fuck, or at least give him an opportunity to pretend he does. Oh, please. I'm not much of a bandwagon poster. I picked at the point with which I disagreed--still do--nothing more. You know, I'm watching something of a shitstorm on my FB the last few days. People are actively scouring their FB friends in search of closet Trump supporters, are unfriending and/or blocking ones they find (how they can be certain on their assessment is beyond me). Others are going father, getting rid of friends who are not speaking out strongly enough against Trump, are not part of the fables "resistance." They're free to do this stuff, to be sure, but I'm not going to be coerced into emotive, hand-wringy, end-of-the-world statements, simply to satisfy people who apparently can only accept agreement on something if the expression of such meets their arbitrary standards. Beyond that, Trump did reach out to the family, as it were, on twitter. The victim's mother, in fact, thanked Trump for his expression of sympathy. But lord knows, the torch and pithcfork crowd isn't going to acknowledge that, isn't going to accept it as enough. Because let's get real here, that crowd is using this murdered woman as nothing more than a prop to criticize Trump, imo. Most of them don't give a shit about her, they only care that she represents a means to an end. Much of the media is complicit in this regard, to be sure. Again, I agree: Trump's response to the events in Charlottesville was awful (mostly because Trump is awful). It's more than fair to expect him to condemn the people responsible for this events, to not try to parcel out blame to counter-protesters who were only there because these white supremacist clowns were there. But holy shit, Trump isn't responsible for her death; he's not responsible for the protests, counter protests, and violence. Yet it seems few care about what happened, about issues involved, about the why and how of the violence, except in context with how these things can be used to criticize Trump. And frankly, I find the equating of these clowns with the historical Nazis in Germany to be incredibly idiotic. My grandfather has some medals, too. A number of them came from the French government. And he got them for fighting against the German Army in WWII. He got them for helping to clean up Dachau. The Nazis--the real ones, who had names like Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich--sent that army out to the field, set up that camp in Dachau. These shit-kickers in Charlottesville, the shit-kickers at the Daily Sturmer (I think that's just one guy, actually), couldn't hold the former group's jockstraps, when it comes to being evil, racist psychopaths. Don't get me wrong, I think the latter crowd are horrible, dangerous, and belong behind bars (at the very least), but they'e not NAZIs, this isn't the second coming of Adolf Hitler and we're not post-WWI Germany. Yeah, this raises an important point. This isn't a problem because of Trump. It was there before he took office. Maybe it's coming out more cause they think he's got their back. Or because of things that were building anyhow. Or both. Trump is certainly not part of the solution. The real question is, what do we do? The President should be leading the way, if in nothing else, moral outrage. But that's saved for the fake media and anyone who tweets something mean about him. So assuming we get nothing else from him that useful on this front, what can we do?
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Post by Vince524 on Aug 17, 2017 18:55:35 GMT -5
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