EmpressInYellow
Banned
I'm not sure I'd say he gets stronger, exactly. He just doesn't stop. He's like an even-less-likable Jason Vorhees.
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The Trump victory tour starts Thursday in Cincinatti Ohio
- Thread starter Torokil
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I'm not sure I'd say he gets stronger, exactly. He just doesn't stop. He's like an even-less-likable Jason Vorhees.
Honestly nothing is annoying me more then this co-operation from almost all parties involved in allowing Trump to turn the vast, dis-connected, diverse news outlets that exist in this country into a monolithic entity.
A glorified straw man he can mold into whatever serves his purpose, that he can then bludgeon. Something you even see liberals going along with these days. Much more then with Bush's bullshit.
The NY Times is not CNN is not the Washington Post is not PBS is not BBC America is not Fox News is not The Atlantic is not The Economist is not John Oliver.
A glorified straw man he can mold into whatever serves his purpose, that he can then bludgeon. Something you even see liberals going along with these days. Much more then with Bush's bullshit.
The NY Times is not CNN is not the Washington Post is not PBS is not BBC America is not Fox News is not The Atlantic is not The Economist is not John Oliver.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
A system rigged by economic desperation rewards deplorable, populist behavior. Take advantage of desperation or intentionally create it, and people will look for an angry ranting strong man to huddle behind and draw strength from.
A system promotes awfulness indirectly if it promotes the pre-conditions for the average person to no longer care about high-minded ideals that, while good for humanity in an absolute sense, don't help them survive in the present moment.
When people feel secure and have a decent amount of personal resources, it's easier to get them to feel charitable towards others, promote empathy, and look down on deplorable behavior. We like to say problems are caused by the "fuck you, I got mine attitude", but often it's really "fuck you, I'm gonna get mine first".
This is getting farther afield, but I've been thinking about it recently: I agree with author Alain de Botton's observation that western society has secularized badly. It has been shrugging off religion, without doing a good job of replacing certain things religion promotes, such as recognizing some people are disadvantaged by circumstances and fate rather than being "losers" in the game of capitalism. Broad-spectrum compassion for others. An ethic of restraining one's ego and maintaining perspective and humility. Meanwhile the religion that remains has increasingly been pushed to a fringe where extremes live, leaving people with a choice between an uncaring meritocracy and crazier forms of religion that promote theocracy, bigotry, and social regression.
This dovetails with survival anxiety, desperation, and lack of hope. A lot of people have been becoming simply meaner and less compassionate, drifting towards amoral nihilism, or clinging that much harder to evangelical madness that educations them with a warped view of the world. They are not dealing with hard times well and aren't interested in looking out for others during hard times. There is less communal identification with the idea of getting through things together.
Which has also made it that much easier for politicians, demagogues, and populists con men like Trump to divide the little people and make them fight against each other, while society's resources are plundered.
https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/804498065264672771?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
good ole roman salute at 0:29
good ole roman salute at 0:29
Bruce Springsteen
Member
He's winning so much it's got to get boring at some point for him
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
And he didn't even say that exactly. He said gun, not bitch. CNN was amazingly positive for his speech actually.
EmpressInYellow
Banned
And so it begins.
Psamtik. Death's Demise
Banned
The only thing that helps, at this point, is reminding myself that he's seventy and fat as hell.
CarpeDeezNutz
Member
CoffeeJanitor
Member
His dad lived to 93
EmpressInYellow
Banned
Being president ages you prematurely.
But that assumes you actually take the job seriously and give a shit, which, well...
GuyKazama
Member
He's having the time of his life.
EmpressInYellow
Banned
Sure, but he hasn't had to start DOING anything yet. This is the honeymoon period.
Again, though, that presumes he has any intention of taking the job seriously or giving a shit about what happens once he's actually president, and I have little confidence that's the case.
Bruce Springsteen
Member
You're making the assumption he's going to be under the same stress as previous presidents
Bush may have been an idiot but I believe he was genuinely a good guy who got played by his dad's people. Trump doesn't give a shit is just going to delegate all his work
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
He doesn't give a shit.
He's just doing what he thinks "should" be done. He doesn't actually give a shit about governing.
PersonAndStuff
Member
Do you think he will actually comfort the families of servicemen killed in action or does he pawn that off on Pence? A question no one had to ask about any other president.
CarpeDeezNutz
Member
What it means to be the leader of the USA is going to drain his brain.
Preach.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Because the electorate are humans, not cyborgs.
theignoramus
Member
Obama is incredible at delivering written speeches, Trump's ability to flow off the cuff is exceptional. Whether or not you agree with what he's saying, he can keep an entire arena spellbound for the better part of an hour with no script. Hes pretty average at scripted speeches though.
EmpressInYellow
Banned
Sure, but humans can still make informed, rational decisions instead of relying on meaningless feel-good rhetoric.
Sure, but people find car accidents captivating, too.
I'm not denying the appeal he has for some segment of his base, mind you. I'm simply disagreeing that that makes him a great speaker.
killertofu
Member
I kinda think...it's smart for him? Yeah I mean its a total ego boost but doing rally's like this has to keep him within the publics eye right? I mean who knows if this supporters will stick but I feel like of all of Obama's charisma, once he got into the Presidency and did work, he disappeared from the public eye, he became a regular politician, part of the system, and people tuned out and opinons started to shift when they realized that change doesn't come easy.
Am I crazy? I feel gross now
Am I crazy? I feel gross now
theignoramus
Member
Bernie Sanders was connecting with people and he trafficked in none of these things.
Unknown Soldier
Member
The fact that so many Democrats still think the rhetoric that got Trump elected is meaningless suggests they will be facing 8 years of Trump and probably another Republican after that.
Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia and straight up told people she was going to put them out of jobs. I'll let you think about that a moment. What a great politician she was.
theignoramus
Member
Notice how the crowd was dead silent when he said we must reject bigotry & the language of division. He riled them up for a year and a half, those people dont want to hear a word of that. They want blood.
IAmAnAgnostic
Member
I kinda think...it's smart for him? Yeah I mean its a total ego boost but doing rally's like this has to keep him within the publics eye right? I mean who knows if this supporters will stick but I feel like of all of Obama's charisma, once he got into the Presidency and did work, he disappeared from the public eye, he became a regular politician, part of the system, and people tuned out and opinons started to shift when they realized that change doesn't come easy.
Am I crazy? I feel gross now
No, it is very smart for him, actually.. Depending how long he keeps this up it could make 2020 quite difficult. (of course that depends how successful he is as president in general)
EmpressInYellow
Banned
I'm not saying rhetoric is irrelevant. I'm saying that it's depressing that the electorate apparently prefers comfortable lies to concrete policy, and no amount of "they're humans, not cyborgs" absolves them of that.
Also, I'm not a Democratic strategist, so frankly, my opinions about the electorate as a whole have very little bearing on the party's electoral prospects for the future,
He talks like some kind of cartoonish dictator character in a b-movie. He's not compelling to me at all, I just don't see it. He rambles so much it makes my head hurt. If the knock on GW Bush was that he sounded "dumb," and the knock on Al Gore was he sounded "boring," then I gotta say Trump sounds "rambly."
IAmAnAgnostic
Member
I think the appeal is that he doesn't sound anything like a politician. People have really come to hate politicians..
I find his way of speaking repugnant, and this isn't even going into the specifics he says.
Is it too much to ask that he at least speaks like a human being? I'm convinced that his supporters are like trained dogs, they don't understand what he is saying, but instead respond to tone only.
Sure would be nice if the party most responsible for political dysfunction would stop being rewarded for it.
Beer Monkey
Member
This guy was trolling.
Right?
Right?
This guy was trolling.
Right?
No I was down there. That shit was everywhere. He might be joking...or a super stan
Unknown Soldier
Member
He has a talent for speaking off the cuff which is very uncommon among politicians. Because he isn't a politician.
Traditional politicians are great at memorizing and giving pre-written speeches. Obama was one of the greatest deliverers of that kind of speech in living memory, one of the greatest natural politicians of the modern era. Bill Clinton was another example of this. (Conversely, his wife was one of the worst traditional politicians of the modern era.)
But Trump isn't anything resembling a traditional politician. He's more like the guy who's running for high-school president. He's a political neophyte and he acts like one, but he has a natural gift for reading crowds and responding to them. It's why he became such a successful reality TV personality, I don't know many other businessmen who could have been the host of the The Apprentice. He has the right mix of charisma, bombast, and explosive charm to be a great TV personality, and that was exactly the kind of person who would make an effective populist political candidate.
It sounds like he's rambling but he's actually up at that podium listening and reacting and feeling the mood of the crowd that surrounds him and he adjusts what he's saying in real-time based on the rise and fall of their energy. It's such a natural instinct that he makes it look completely effortless but it is a very powerful innate talent and it's something that has made it possible to get him elected to the Presidency of the United States without any prior experience of any kind in politics. People like him wield incredible power over hearts and minds and people have already been underestimating him for this long and still don't get it. He was elected President. It's time to give him credit for who he is and respect his ability because otherwise I'm going to be frank, you're all fucked if you keep underestimating him.
The End.
QFFT! Been saying this for ages.
If anything Trump is going to put them out of jobs faster by dropping restrictions on natural gas production.
But I guess he had the common courtesy to lie about it?
Jmanunknown
Member
He doesn't deserve credit for anything except being a good con man. After he finishes making the country worse again I am sure he will get the respect he deserves.
Really? I feel like Trump says a lot... of words. There is no meaning behind them and often he repeats the same thing 3-4 times. I think "this guy is an idiot" every time I listen to him.
Psamtik. Death's Demise
Banned
Sure, but that works remarkably well on idiots.
That's cuz you are listening already prepared to hate. Trump is a great talker.
Maybe? Except, I actively rooted for him in the Republican primaries... still thought he sounded like a complete moron.
EmpressInYellow
Banned
Or it's because they have some actual awareness of the issues he's talking about and realize how little sense Trump is actually making. That's a possibility, too.
Unknown Soldier
Member
You've decided you would rather be fucked instead of trying to understand how he could have won the Presidency. That's your decision, and you will be solely responsible for it in the end.
There's a difference between being a good speaker and being able to feed off of the emotions of the crowd. Trump does the latter.
Come on, how hard is that? Donald Trump is an ugly, fat, male version of Sarah Palin.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
This really is a farce.
Unknown Soldier
Member
If you think that what he does isn't one type of good speaking, then you should get on a podium in front of an arena full of people without prepared comments and just wing it for an hour. Let's see how you do compared to him.
Spoiler:
You'll do much worse than he does.
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