Trump's Tantrum

Pin said:

Click to expand...

Wow it's amazing how little he's aged.

(apologies, my head hurts a bit much for intelligent conversation right now. I love reading your debates though)

Reason said:

Nope, the Democrats and Republicans play different games but one isn't any more accountable to the other. Obama took all that Goldman Sacchs money right as the big bailouts were happening and didn't do much to the banks at all in office.

Click to expand...

President Obama passed the Dodd-Frank Consumer Wall Street Reform Consumer and Protection Act as a direct response to the 08' Financial Crisis and Great Recession that followed.

Was the regulation strong enough? Not in my opinion, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything the Republican Party has done for working people in my lifetime. Furthermore, the Dodd-Frank Act gave us the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which responds to hundreds of thousands of consumer complaints every year pertaining to the reckless activity of financial institutions.

I don't like that he accepted campaign donations from Goldman Sachs but it's not his fault that the United States does not and did not publicly finance elections during his campaign. Also, guess which party campaigns on fixing this problem today? You guessed it, the Democrats.

@Reason

Pin said:

Also, guess which party campaigns on fixing this problem today? You guessed it, the Democrats.

Click to expand...

See? We need to get money out of politics and publicly finance our elections.

From a distance of several thousand miles it looks to me as though the problem in the USA is not at the roots political but social. The politics simply reflects that problem. Trying to fix the politics is just a displacement and won’t solve the issues down in the roots. There’s a direct positive feedback process in place now between naive opinion and efficient social media that bi-passes traditional political governance and leads to social instability. As long as that feedback works so efficiently the polarisations will get worse until they could easily result in the destabilisation of established state infrastructure and institutions.

Somehow, we need to reduce the efficiency of these feedback mechanisms or our societies will become ungovernable - the risk is that there is a precipice of totalitarian takeover if we get this wrong. Either through an urgent response to social disintegration or through an excessively authoritarian attempt at control.

When I see many conservative news outlets of today that are bankrolled by billionaires, I'm reminded of the John Birch Society which intellectually and historically preceded them.

Talk of communist infiltration, one-world government, and anti-semetic conspiracy theories are nothing new.

Pin said:

When I see many conservative news outlets of today that are bankrolled by billionaires, I'm reminded of the John Birch Society which intellectually and historically preceded them.

Talk of communist infiltration, one-world government, and anti-semetic conspiracy theories are nothing new.

Click to expand...

Oh yes - the plutocrats will always try and find a way to manipulate government no matter what form of government is in place to rule a state. Mostly they are pretty transparent and voters have an instinctive feel for billionaires who are out to line their own pockets, because in the process they often line the pockets of millions of other people too, but they do generate inequality - so politics tends to swing back and forward between parties that favour such activity and parties that seek to restrain it and redress the inequalities, and so the balance is kept, sort of.

What I see in the main in the UK and the USA in recent years is a failure of the left to reflect and champion the needs of the people and to act as an effective pragmatic balance against the elite wealth generators. Left wing parties in recent years have been taken over by middle class elitist intellectuals and theorists who have treated the working class people who are the roots of their movements as children who should be seen and not heard. As far as I can see, Trump didn't win the presidency - it was Hilary Clinton who lost it, because the traditional supporters of her political tradition simply could not identify with what the Clinton Dynasty, and the left wing elite surrounding it, actually stood for. The same has happened in the UK - the Labour Party of my childhood was led by working class guys with hearts of gold and very deep roots in the communities they represented. It isn't any more - the leading lights are mostly folks with an upper middle class background who did political or social sciences at university - and soaked up a load of left wing theory that make them come over more as the priests of some impractical left wing religion than as true representatives of the less advantaged people in our country. It gets up people's noses quite honestly. It's a disaster because if there isn't an effective political balance then the more business oriented parties will be too dominant, and the people who are the victims of this will start to use undemocratic tactics in challenge to it, which undermines the authority of the state. Let's hope that some sort of balance will be restored now that a measure of stability is in sight, but it'll mean people truly listening and taking to heart what each other are saying instead of just rubbishing and vilifying each other in the social media.

John K said:

From a distance of several thousand miles it looks to me as though the problem in the USA is not at the roots political but social. The politics simply reflects that problem. Trying to fix the politics is just a displacement and won’t solve the issues down in the roots.

Click to expand...

I was thinking this, too, but on a much more basal, physiological level.

I'm sure that one could conduct quite a compelling analysis of 'American brains' vs 'European brains' and find that, on average, Americans have larger amygdalas (or whatever other indices one might like to measure, maybe in MRI machines), resulting in higher levels of anxiety and stronger fear and threat-responses.

The life-histories and developmental environments that US citizens experience are quite unlike those of the rest of the first world, particularly in terms of perceived danger (I'm thinking of the mortal danger everybody faces from firearms, as well as the strangely overhyped news programming television that they are forced to consume), for instance.

It's just a thought (and iirc, much of this kind of comparative work has already been done) - maybe there would be no difference, or merely a negligible one, but its hard to escape the fact that Americans have been subject to an incredible diet of fear for a very long time.

Deleted member 16771 said:

I was thinking this, too, but on a much more basal, physiological level.

I'm sure that one could conduct quite a compelling analysis of 'American brains' vs 'European brains' and find that, on average, Americans have larger amygdalas (or whatever other indices one might like to measure, maybe in MRI machines), resulting in higher levels of anxiety and stronger fear and threat-responses.

The life-histories and developmental environments that US citizens experience are quite unlike those of the rest of the first world, particularly in terms of perceived danger (I'm thinking of the mortal danger everybody faces from firearms, as well as the strangely overhyped news programming television that they are forced to consume), for instance.

It's just a thought (and iirc, much of this kind of comparative work has already been done) - maybe there would be no difference, or merely a negligible one, but its hard to escape the fact that Americans have been subject to an incredible diet of fear for a very long time.

Click to expand...

I'm sure you are right - and the culture of conspiracy theory adds fuel to that fire as well. The trouble is that an ungoverned social media supports and promotes these nightmares and I think there needs to be a radical review of the role of the media in democratic societies. By 'governed' I don't mean ruled by government necessarily, but governed in the way an engine is controlled and prevented from over-revving. We have got to the point now where it's not easy for the average guy to know what is true and what isn't any more.

Reason said:

Unfortunately for him, the next few years aren't going to be much different from now in terms of high tensions.

Click to expand...

John K said:

the problem in the USA is not at the roots political but social.

Click to expand...

Politics has become a social disease imho. If politicians spent half as much time funneling energy back into large and small town America instead of the pissing matches of who bested who ... awe hell it makes my head hurt, lol.

I'll stand firm in my idea, (Emporer @Pin psst); We've spent the last 200+years doing Democracy the 'way it's always been ', imo, 2-party should be 1Dem, 1Rep, President & VP, which ever way it lands, running the high office.

We all spout out bipartisanship throughout Congress, we should try it in the Oval Office too.

Sandie33 said:

Politics has become a social disease imho. If politicians spent half as much time funneling energy back into large and small town America instead of the pissing matches of who bested who ... awe hell it makes my head hurt, lol.

I'll stand firm in my idea, (Emporer @Pin psst); We've spent the last 200+years doing Democracy the 'way it's always been ', imo, 2-party should be 1Dem, 1Rep, President & VP, which ever way it lands, running the high office.

We all spout out bipartisanship throughout Congress, we should try it in the Oval Office too.

Click to expand...

We did try it in the White House. The earliest elections had Presidents and Vice Presidents of opposing parties. Nothing got done and people were violently angry.

That's why Presidential candidates choose their Vice Presidents now and as you can see, not much has changed.

John K said:

As far as I can see, Trump didn't win the presidency - it was Hilary Clinton who lost it, because the traditional supporters of her political tradition simply could not identify with what the Clinton Dynasty, and the left wing elite surrounding it, actually stood for. The same has happened in the UK - the Labour Party of my childhood was led by working class guys with hearts of gold and very deep roots in the communities they represented. It isn't any more - the leading lights are mostly folks with an upper middle class background who did political or social sciences at university - and soaked up a load of left wing theory that make them come over more as the priests of some impractical left wing religion than as true representatives of the less advantaged people in our country. It gets up people's noses quite honestly.

Click to expand...

I agree. Even microscopically, we can see this in Georgia between Warnock & Ossoff. John Ossoff doesn't (to me) seem like a bad candidate; he seems sharp and vibrant. However, Warnock feels like somebody who understands, as well as motivated. Warnock's win was much wider.

It is a big cultural problem. But it's not all of us... A slim majority voted to toss Trump out and flipped the senate. And we have a lot of work and healing to do. But Trump is what happens when religion becomes conflated with politics. And that is what right wing media has been doing for years. It has primed a huge segment of our citizens to champion a demogouge.
Trump has become a cult figure whose followers hang on his every word with an almost religious fervor. It's so bizarre!

We used to have something called the Fairness Doctrine which required media and news outlets to give equal time to opposing views. You couldn't just make any sort of claim about something of public interest and maintain your license with the FCC. In 1987, FCC abolished it under Reagan claiming it violated the First Amendment. At that time, it was argued that you couldn't force someone to talk about something that didn't interest them under First Amendment. The focus shifted onto the outlet rather than the public interest. The public then chose to follow whatever appealed to them. And the information began to break down into more partisan (and extreme) sources. Outlets continued to air whatever got them the most views or subscribers for revenue. Telecommunications Act of 1996 made it possible for these local sources to go national. So they reached a much wider audience. Then came the internet.... And ultimately here we are.

I grew up listening to right wing pundits raving in the background as I grew up. Everything on the right tied to Judeo-Christian values or the US being a Christian nation. There's a popular quote by Barry Goldwater from 1981:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."

I remember remarking to my younger bro as a teenager, "I just don't understand why mom is so angry all the time!" And he is the one who pointed out, "Don't you hear what she listens to all day!?" Exposing yourself to hyper partisan pundits is toxic. And unfortunately a lot of my family still support Trump even after Weds... And make excuses and cling to conspiracy theories to avoid reality. And their chosen punits and infotainment sources continue to pump them full of false or incomplete information and conspiracies.

Now, we have an almost cult like adherence to conspiracy theories and a devotion to demogagues on the right. I really hope the sane remnant of Republicans can fix their party. There are a few left. Ben Sasse, Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney are a few I can name off the top of my head. I do not support a majority of their views but I can appreciate that they stood up against Trump and this madness. We do need a functional Republican party. The rest have been pandering to the base for political clout and humoring Trump's false claims.. some members in congress only changing their minds on objecting to certifying Biden's win after seeing the very real possibility that they could be murdered in the halls of congress by the very people they pander to.

Hmmm I think, as a Christian.. that Trump really isn't a practicing Christian. He's not an example in the slightest to having a real Christian in high places, politically speaking. Not all Christians are angry. Many I know are very calm and tender, kind and gentle.. But remember power corrupts, even those with good intent often, which is part of the problem of politics in general, Republicans and Democrats alike.

That said.. Trump is a creepy, narcissistic, power hungry, drug addicted psychopathic pedophile using his supposed faith to get votes. He doesn't act like a Christian in any way, shape, or form that I can see and I hope they televise Das Boot.

@Misty he's not. But the right has coopted religion and has been doing it for decades now. Some Christians see through it. Unfortunately, many think that voting Republican no matter what is God's will because the issue of abortion has become a Republican rallying point. I know many who started off supporting Trump based on just that but now they've completely drunk the kool aid.

acd said:

@Misty he's not. But the right has coopted religion and has been doing it for decades now. Some Christians see through it. Unfortunately, many think that voting Republican no matter what is God's will because the issue of abortion has become a Republican rallying point.

Click to expand...

Right. This is a very good point, I agree. ^Meanwhile the politicians are all at least 80 percent corrupt on both teams by the time they hit the white house. I'm just so happy they got rid of that excuse for a president. *Watches with popcorn as he leaves*..

"the message Trump has been preaching is a Democratic message."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol...ities up to 2015,the Republican Party in 2009.

He only changed back to Republican in 2015 to run against the Clintons. I chuckle each time I hear a Republican tought that his agenda is a republican agenda. His agenda is his agenda and he needs to amend it and turn in his resignation.

I'm not American, but it's been nice seeing a few years of unabashed patriotism and an America-centric outlook occupying your Whitehouse.

Much like a level of personal self-acceptance is important in people, it's also important for countries.

While I've heard a lot of Americans complain that they were embarrassed by Trump, as an outsider in a tiny country, I think the self-confidence and zero international cowtowing America radiated in the last few years was attractive.

Pin said:

Was the regulation strong enough? Not in my opinion, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything the Republican Party has done

Click to expand...

Reason said:

The Democratic voters didn't care. They liked him better than Republicans and that's all that apparently mattered.

Click to expand...

I'm glad we agree

I don't think the populistic left and the populistic right teaming up to fight the establishment is terribly likely by the way, there's no reason why it *couldn't happen, but it's just not terribly likely. Low order of probability.

Reason said:

I'm glad we agree

Click to expand...

But I don't get how you get to the conclusion that Trump ran on better policies than Clinton in most respects. I also don't get how you arrive at the conclusion of Republican policies being better than Democratic policies in the broad context of American history since the 60s.

I'm a Democrat because I agree with the vast majority of the policies proposed by the Democratic Party since the 1960s.