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On January 29 2017 04:08 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 03:14 On_Slaught wrote:
NYT put out a pretty bad looking article for Trump this morning about Trump's lying (on phone otherwise would link it). This morning he had another Twitter Tantrum lashing out at the NYT, so my guess is he read it before it was put on their website.
TLDR: basically Trump lies more than any other president we've ever seen and uses it as a strategy because it worked in the business world. The problem it is it undermines a representative democracy and is the preferred weapon of authoritarians.
Undermining the press when they tell the truth is beyond damgerous. And that, not calling out real fake news, is obviously Trump's real strategy. I have yet to see one article of serious self-reflection from any MSM/legacy news outlet that discusses and acknowledges their role in allowing Trump to thrive in this environment. This suggests to me that they will continue to be ineffective in the face of Trump's onslaught.
Do you deny that Trump is making a point to call true stories fake?
Do you deny that by calling true news fake, he sets up a situation where he can plausibly deny future true news that actually matters (not this crowd size shit)?
Alternative facts are the foundation of authoritarian governments. No good comes from it.
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On January 29 2017 04:42 On_Slaught wrote:
Do you deny that by calling true news fake, he sets up a situation where he can plausibly deny future true news that actually matters (not this crowd size shit)?
IIRC xDaunt's stance toward this is essentially "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it", viewing it as a slippery slope argument and fear-mongering rather than legitimate concern.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 29 2017 03:44 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 03:31 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 02:34 Mohdoo wrote:On January 29 2017 02:18 Doodsmack wrote:
It's a giant failure of execution, considering also that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are not included. Since when would Trump not stand up to an ally sponsoring terrorism? Very anti-populist. On the bright side, this is likely an indication as to how this whole thing is going to go on a grand scale. We are already seeing a lot of groups coming together on the left in a similar way that the right united against Obama. Obama was a huge boost to right wing unification and it looks like Trump is doing the same thing to the left. Such a unity is illusory at best. The center-left "Hillary wing" and the left "Bernie wing" are no less at odds with each other than they were before Trump was such a pervasive factor. If they really were ready to unite against Trump then there wouldn't be such a mass defection in the face of the possibility of a Trump presidency, back during election time. It doesn't have to be fully united. The GOP and the Tea Party managed to do it while hating each other. They just need to motivate people enough to do the very simple thing of oppose Trump. Republicans did it against Obama, even when they disliked each other but they both could get around cock blocking Obama. Just need greater numbers of people participating (IE voting and doing more then just bitching on the internet). and obama had a pretty solid approval rating overall. meanwhile, trump is starting off about 40%, which was about obama's floor (according to gallup).
It is not without a sense of irony that I notice that Trump, the least popular candidate in history, was elected to more or less undo the legacy of Obama, one of the more popular, if ultimately non-transformative, ones, as opposed to the person who was basically Obama's chosen successor. The way I reconcile this is just simply to presume that Obama had something of a distortionary effect, where the fact that he was pushing policies that really weren't so great was kind of forgotten in the face of his own personal charm. His chosen successor had zero charm so all the ugly came out.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 29 2017 04:35 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:08 LegalLord wrote:
I'm sure some people thought he'd revert to the GOP status quo. To Trump's credit he seems to be doing exactly what he promised.
I was one of those people, and to be honest, I have no idea what I'm supposed to feel about the fact that he's actually keeping to some of the more insane things he promised.
My view on it consists of two basic points:
1. I wasn't the one who voted for him. For those who voted for him to get those things, good for them - they seem to be getting what they wanted. In a way it might be necessary to break the deadlock of a reversion to an unloved status quo.
2. Moving forward, I take the Bernie Sanders approach: if Trump really is serious about doing the things he said he would for the American workers and various other matters (FP being a pet project for me in that regard), then I'll go along with it - but if he's going to focus on some of the stupid shit he was rightly panned for, then I'll be part of the opposition bloc.
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On January 29 2017 04:47 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 03:44 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 29 2017 03:31 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 02:34 Mohdoo wrote:On January 29 2017 02:18 Doodsmack wrote:
It's a giant failure of execution, considering also that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are not included. Since when would Trump not stand up to an ally sponsoring terrorism? Very anti-populist. On the bright side, this is likely an indication as to how this whole thing is going to go on a grand scale. We are already seeing a lot of groups coming together on the left in a similar way that the right united against Obama. Obama was a huge boost to right wing unification and it looks like Trump is doing the same thing to the left. Such a unity is illusory at best. The center-left "Hillary wing" and the left "Bernie wing" are no less at odds with each other than they were before Trump was such a pervasive factor. If they really were ready to unite against Trump then there wouldn't be such a mass defection in the face of the possibility of a Trump presidency, back during election time. It doesn't have to be fully united. The GOP and the Tea Party managed to do it while hating each other. They just need to motivate people enough to do the very simple thing of oppose Trump. Republicans did it against Obama, even when they disliked each other but they both could get around cock blocking Obama. Just need greater numbers of people participating (IE voting and doing more then just bitching on the internet). and obama had a pretty solid approval rating overall. meanwhile, trump is starting off about 40%, which was about obama's floor (according to gallup). It is not without a sense of irony that I notice that Trump, the least popular candidate in history, was elected to more or less undo the legacy of Obama, one of the more popular, if ultimately non-transformative, ones, as opposed to the person who was basically Obama's chosen successor. The way I reconcile this is just simply to presume that Obama had something of a distortionary effect, where the fact that he was pushing policies that really weren't so great was kind of forgotten in the face of his own personal charm. His chosen successor had zero charm so all the ugly came out.
Or there was a distortion effect of reality versus imagined fears that came out during the election as Trump pushed hard how "bad" things were and he would fix everything while Clinton didn't have the charisma to pull people away from their unease.
Also I don't agree to the extent that XDaunt thinks that the MSM has been destroyed credibility wise. What is actually happening is people are flocking to whatever news agrees with them and then discounting everything else. So people are still lapping up MSM, just becoming increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone who says things they don't like. So yay for Trump pushing the polarization trend in media even harder?
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On January 29 2017 04:41 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:39 zlefin wrote:
despite the memes ot the contrary, politicians do generally keep their promises, or at least seriously try to (obviously some even if they push very hard on it they can't get enough support to make them happen, as they're not dictators).
I didn't go in viewing Trump as a politician, which is why I assumed that in the face of pressure and busywork, he'd leave the actual policymaking to people who actually have some amount of experience doing that. Admittedly, it's still early, and there's definitely time for him to do that anyway.
I prefer the simpler method of considering anyone running for office to be a politician, even moreso once they actually hold office.
and trump acts a lot like a politician anyways.
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On January 29 2017 04:26 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On January 29 2017 04:08 xDaunt wrote:On January 29 2017 03:14 On_Slaught wrote:
NYT put out a pretty bad looking article for Trump this morning about Trump's lying (on phone otherwise would link it). This morning he had another Twitter Tantrum lashing out at the NYT, so my guess is he read it before it was put on their website.
TLDR: basically Trump lies more than any other president we've ever seen and uses it as a strategy because it worked in the business world. The problem it is it undermines a representative democracy and is the preferred weapon of authoritarians.
Undermining the press when they tell the truth is beyond damgerous. And that, not calling out real fake news, is obviously Trump's real strategy. I have yet to see one article of serious self-reflection from any MSM/legacy news outlet that discusses and acknowledges their role in allowing Trump to thrive in this environment. This suggests to me that they will continue to be ineffective in the face of Trump's onslaught. What do you mean by ineffective? They're effective at fact-checking Trump and calling him out on his lies; do you mean that they're ineffective at changing the minds of Trump supporters? Because if that's what you're assessing, how do you propose that news sources change the minds of Trump supporters if news sources also have an obligation to tell the truth? They've been rendered ineffective politically. Sure, the legacy outlets still reach and sway a large number of Americans, but that number is far less than it used to be and is dwindling. Trump's election in spite of the media's outright advocacy for Hillary is proof of it. The problem that the media has is that it still refuses to concede that it has been partial towards the left for decades. I was reading a Politico article this morning that discussed whether it was wise for the media to call Trump a "liar" (the author argued it was counterproductive), and the author continued to peddle this fantasy that legacy media was grounded in journalistic objectivism and political impartiality. I don't expect any rube who mindlessly spouts the phrase "the truth has a liberal bias" to understand, but we on the right are acutely aware of media bias, and have been for decades. If the media wants to take down Trump, they need to authentically move towards the center and actually make an effort to be impartial. In short, they need to regain the trust of some people on the right. Of course, this is never going to happen, which is why I expect that Trump will continue to successfully berate the media and diminish them just as Steve Bannon revealed in his NYT interview last week.
I think there's a difference between leaning left or right in the news and actually reporting things accurately, though. When Trump lies and the "MSM" says he's wrong, that's not liberal bias. Even Fox calls him out from time to time (begrudgingly), and I do want to add that Fox and now certain tabloids (like Breitbart) are both conservative and "MSM", so I assume you're just talking about the liberal and centrist news sources (since any time a network disagrees with Republicans/ Trump, it's automatically dismissed as liberal bias), But when it's a fact that 1+1 = 2 but Republicans insist that 1+1 = 37, you can't just compromise and say "Well I want to be centrist and I don't want to offend conservatives, so let's just say it's a matter of opinion/ let's just say it's somewhere in between". If you compromise between a fact and a fiction, the middle isn't necessarily a fact. How does a news network, for example, deal with the fact that Trump and Spicer insist that Trump's inauguration was more popular than Obama's? It's a quantifiable, verifiable, truth-value statement, and no amount of semantics makes them even remotely close to correct. And then they get called out on their bullshit- which is the news reporters' job to do- and it's the news reporters that are the bad guys? That's ridiculous, not to mention the fact that Republicans are 100% running the country now, so it's not like 50% of the news stories could possibly be about Democrats.
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On January 29 2017 04:44 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:42 On_Slaught wrote:
Do you deny that by calling true news fake, he sets up a situation where he can plausibly deny future true news that actually matters (not this crowd size shit)? IIRC xDaunt's stance toward this is essentially "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it", viewing it as a slippery slope argument and fear-mongering rather than legitimate concern.
At which point a "I told ya so" won't mean shit because the damage is done and the system completely undermined. I don't see it as taking a leap of faith to say what the likely outcome of this strategy is. Especially since it is already starting to happen. People already don't believe true stories because they think every negative story the media says is a lie.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 29 2017 04:50 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:47 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 03:44 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 29 2017 03:31 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 02:34 Mohdoo wrote:On January 29 2017 02:18 Doodsmack wrote:
It's a giant failure of execution, considering also that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are not included. Since when would Trump not stand up to an ally sponsoring terrorism? Very anti-populist. On the bright side, this is likely an indication as to how this whole thing is going to go on a grand scale. We are already seeing a lot of groups coming together on the left in a similar way that the right united against Obama. Obama was a huge boost to right wing unification and it looks like Trump is doing the same thing to the left. Such a unity is illusory at best. The center-left "Hillary wing" and the left "Bernie wing" are no less at odds with each other than they were before Trump was such a pervasive factor. If they really were ready to unite against Trump then there wouldn't be such a mass defection in the face of the possibility of a Trump presidency, back during election time. It doesn't have to be fully united. The GOP and the Tea Party managed to do it while hating each other. They just need to motivate people enough to do the very simple thing of oppose Trump. Republicans did it against Obama, even when they disliked each other but they both could get around cock blocking Obama. Just need greater numbers of people participating (IE voting and doing more then just bitching on the internet). and obama had a pretty solid approval rating overall. meanwhile, trump is starting off about 40%, which was about obama's floor (according to gallup). It is not without a sense of irony that I notice that Trump, the least popular candidate in history, was elected to more or less undo the legacy of Obama, one of the more popular, if ultimately non-transformative, ones, as opposed to the person who was basically Obama's chosen successor. The way I reconcile this is just simply to presume that Obama had something of a distortionary effect, where the fact that he was pushing policies that really weren't so great was kind of forgotten in the face of his own personal charm. His chosen successor had zero charm so all the ugly came out. Or there was a distortion effect of reality versus imagined fears that came out during the election as Trump pushed hard how "bad" things were and he would fix everything while Clinton didn't have the charisma to pull people away from their unease. Also I don't agree to the extent that XDaunt thinks that the MSM has been destroyed credibility wise. What is actually happening is people are flocking to whatever news agrees with them and then discounting everything else. So people are still lapping up MSM, just becoming increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone who says things they don't like. So yay for Trump pushing the polarization trend in media even harder?
You're wrong right off the bat. The general fear that people have of their livelihoods being threatened is not imagined. Say what you will about Trump vs. Clinton overall, it's definitely not true that everything is going good and people are just not getting it. Hillary saying "why MAGA when everything is already great?" did her zero favors with everyone outside of her "hip urbanite elite" core.
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On January 29 2017 04:50 LegalLord wrote:
2. Moving forward, I take the Bernie Sanders approach: if Trump really is serious about doing the things he said he would for the American workers and various other matters (FP being a pet project for me in that regard), then I'll go along with it - but if he's going to focus on some of the stupid shit he was rightly panned for, then I'll be part of the opposition bloc.
To a large extent, I am willing to accept policy that disagrees with my own ideas--I accept that my perspective is limited and my view on what's best for the country is biased. What concerns me more is that policy is executed thoughtfully and effectively, and Trump has failed to give me comfort in this regard. It wouldn't bother me that Trump's agenda is not my agenda if he demonstrated that policy decisions were made based on sound logical analysis and with careful planning. Much of what he's pushed out in the past few days seems rushed and poorly thought out, and the people he's surrounded himself with give me no comfort as many of them seem poorly qualified to manage the things they've been assigned to.
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On January 29 2017 04:42 On_Slaught wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:08 xDaunt wrote:On January 29 2017 03:14 On_Slaught wrote:
NYT put out a pretty bad looking article for Trump this morning about Trump's lying (on phone otherwise would link it). This morning he had another Twitter Tantrum lashing out at the NYT, so my guess is he read it before it was put on their website.
TLDR: basically Trump lies more than any other president we've ever seen and uses it as a strategy because it worked in the business world. The problem it is it undermines a representative democracy and is the preferred weapon of authoritarians.
Undermining the press when they tell the truth is beyond damgerous. And that, not calling out real fake news, is obviously Trump's real strategy. I have yet to see one article of serious self-reflection from any MSM/legacy news outlet that discusses and acknowledges their role in allowing Trump to thrive in this environment. This suggests to me that they will continue to be ineffective in the face of Trump's onslaught. Do you deny that Trump is making a point to call true stories fake?
How do you define "true?" There have been plenty of stories where Trump has torn into the media for using "true" facts to create a false narrative. The pissgate stuff is a great example of this, and Trump absolutely should rip into the media when it does this.
Do you deny that by calling true news fake, he sets up a situation where he can plausibly deny future true news that actually matters (not this crowd size shit)?
No, I don't deny it.
Alternative facts are the foundation of authoritarian governments. No good comes from it.
Alternative facts doesn't mean lies or mistruths. It means just that: alternative facts -- ie the editorial selection of different facts than those originally reported on. I don't quite understand why so many liberal fail to acknowledge the editorial bias of the media.
All that said, I do think that Trump has a problematic relationship with the truth, and I don't like it because I do recognize the slippery slope pitfalls of what Trump is doing. On the other hand, Trump and his team very clearly have a far better understanding of how to manipulate and punish the media than I or anyone else around here does, and they are using that acumen to further important interests from the Right. If nothing else, Trump's attacks on the media are opening up a new range of strategic and tactical possibilities for future politicians from the Right.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 29 2017 04:58 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:50 LegalLord wrote:
2. Moving forward, I take the Bernie Sanders approach: if Trump really is serious about doing the things he said he would for the American workers and various other matters (FP being a pet project for me in that regard), then I'll go along with it - but if he's going to focus on some of the stupid shit he was rightly panned for, then I'll be part of the opposition bloc. To a large extent, I am willing to accept policy that disagrees with my own ideas--I accept that my perspective is limited and my view on what's best for the country is biased. What concerns me more is that policy is executed thoughtfully and effectively, and Trump has failed to give me comfort in this regard. Much of what he's pushed out in the past few days seems rushed and poorly thought out, and the people he's surrounded himself with give me no comfort as many of them seem poorly qualified to manage the things they've been assigned to.
Maybe we do need someone to break things - because people are far more inclined to replace something that is broken than something that is barely functional.
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Bloomberg reporting suggests the countries excluded from the Muslim ban are ones in which the Trump Organization does business or has pursued deals.
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On January 29 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:
Maybe we do need someone to break things - because people are far more inclined to replace something that is broken than something that is barely functional.
Sure, but when you break something with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel rather than a butcher's cleaver, it's much easier to put the pieces back together when you're done. Something being destructive or revolutionary does not preclude planning and forethought.
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On January 29 2017 04:56 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:50 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 04:47 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 03:44 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 29 2017 03:31 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 02:34 Mohdoo wrote:On January 29 2017 02:18 Doodsmack wrote:
It's a giant failure of execution, considering also that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are not included. Since when would Trump not stand up to an ally sponsoring terrorism? Very anti-populist. On the bright side, this is likely an indication as to how this whole thing is going to go on a grand scale. We are already seeing a lot of groups coming together on the left in a similar way that the right united against Obama. Obama was a huge boost to right wing unification and it looks like Trump is doing the same thing to the left. Such a unity is illusory at best. The center-left "Hillary wing" and the left "Bernie wing" are no less at odds with each other than they were before Trump was such a pervasive factor. If they really were ready to unite against Trump then there wouldn't be such a mass defection in the face of the possibility of a Trump presidency, back during election time. It doesn't have to be fully united. The GOP and the Tea Party managed to do it while hating each other. They just need to motivate people enough to do the very simple thing of oppose Trump. Republicans did it against Obama, even when they disliked each other but they both could get around cock blocking Obama. Just need greater numbers of people participating (IE voting and doing more then just bitching on the internet). and obama had a pretty solid approval rating overall. meanwhile, trump is starting off about 40%, which was about obama's floor (according to gallup). It is not without a sense of irony that I notice that Trump, the least popular candidate in history, was elected to more or less undo the legacy of Obama, one of the more popular, if ultimately non-transformative, ones, as opposed to the person who was basically Obama's chosen successor. The way I reconcile this is just simply to presume that Obama had something of a distortionary effect, where the fact that he was pushing policies that really weren't so great was kind of forgotten in the face of his own personal charm. His chosen successor had zero charm so all the ugly came out. Or there was a distortion effect of reality versus imagined fears that came out during the election as Trump pushed hard how "bad" things were and he would fix everything while Clinton didn't have the charisma to pull people away from their unease. Also I don't agree to the extent that XDaunt thinks that the MSM has been destroyed credibility wise. What is actually happening is people are flocking to whatever news agrees with them and then discounting everything else. So people are still lapping up MSM, just becoming increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone who says things they don't like. So yay for Trump pushing the polarization trend in media even harder? You're wrong right off the bat. The general fear that people have of their livelihoods being threatened is not imagined. Say what you will about Trump vs. Clinton overall, it's definitely not true that everything is going good and people are just not getting it. Hillary saying "why MAGA when everything is already great?" did her zero favors with everyone outside of her "hip urbanite elite" core.
Everything is fine as long as you handle the economic transition well. Trump promised fantasy scenarios while in reality just doing things to halt any transition to attempt to make shallow prop up of industries we need to move past. This sets us up for disaster further down the line with those he was peddling too hurt the worst. Say what you want about Clinton failing to message her plans correctly but she at least had something tangible to offer those in the awkward spot in the economy while playing the long game and shifting the focus of the economy to future industries.
People were willing to buy into the fantasy because they logic'd themselves into thinking Trump as a non career politician might be worth rolling the dice on when the competition was a career politician with several scandals hanging over her head. Not hard to see why some people might see Clinton as a representation of the bad parts of Washington but I can't agree with Trump being any positive answer. Most people who voted for him fully acknowledge the risk he offers and didn't like voting for him in the first place. Its not like the majority actually buy him being awesome (what probably 30-40% of his voters are in that camp).
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Haha,
the ban not only targets Green cards and already accredited visas, but it even hits double passports...
The vice president of the German-American parliamentary group and board member of several other transatlantic politic partnerships and member of the German Bundestag (parliament) is also banned from travelling to the US, as he has both Iranian and German citizenship.
He actually even has a diplomatic passport, but no, no entrance allowed.
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On January 29 2017 04:25 NukeD wrote:That would be a suicide move for China. Their army may have the numbers, but its nowhere close to US in all other regards.
If the past US conflicts have taught us anything, it's that we don't give numbers enough credit. We think our technology, drones and smartbombs overcomes numbers, like numbers don't even matter.
Technology helps. But to win a sustained conflict in any decisive sense, numbers are really all that matter.
China has military tech to a degree that, given their numbers and military discipline, and add to that the war-fatigue and malaise of Americans... It wouldn't be suicide for China. It'd be suicide for us. Given current military enrollment, we would need a massive draft -- can you imagine drafting millenials into a war with Asia? Good luck. Whereas for China, a war actually might be the thing that catapults them as the premier superpower.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it will happen. I think Trump is honestly a flash in the pan. He's great at proposing ideas that will be a logistical fucking nightmare to actually implement.
The wall, the ACA, immigration, foreign-policy. He has a lot of trains rolling... but they're all headed for quick derailment. I think once these proposed changes get bogged down in legalese and logistics, the idea of war will be a complete no-go with the vast majority of people, and Trump will be forced to concede whatever is required to prevent war from happening.
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On January 29 2017 05:03 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:42 On_Slaught wrote:On January 29 2017 04:08 xDaunt wrote:On January 29 2017 03:14 On_Slaught wrote:
NYT put out a pretty bad looking article for Trump this morning about Trump's lying (on phone otherwise would link it). This morning he had another Twitter Tantrum lashing out at the NYT, so my guess is he read it before it was put on their website.
TLDR: basically Trump lies more than any other president we've ever seen and uses it as a strategy because it worked in the business world. The problem it is it undermines a representative democracy and is the preferred weapon of authoritarians.
Undermining the press when they tell the truth is beyond damgerous. And that, not calling out real fake news, is obviously Trump's real strategy. I have yet to see one article of serious self-reflection from any MSM/legacy news outlet that discusses and acknowledges their role in allowing Trump to thrive in this environment. This suggests to me that they will continue to be ineffective in the face of Trump's onslaught. Do you deny that Trump is making a point to call true stories fake? How do you define "true?" There have been plenty of stories where Trump has torn into the media for using "true" facts to create a false narrative. The pissgate stuff is a great example of this, and Trump absolutely should rip into the media when it does this. Show nested quote +Do you deny that by calling true news fake, he sets up a situation where he can plausibly deny future true news that actually matters (not this crowd size shit)? No, I don't deny it. Show nested quote +Alternative facts are the foundation of authoritarian governments. No good comes from it. Alternative facts doesn't mean lies or mistruths. It means just that: alternative facts -- ie the editorial selection of different facts than those originally reported on. I don't quite understand why so many liberal fail to acknowledge the editorial bias of the media. All that said, I do think that Trump has a problematic relationship with the truth, and I don't like it because I do recognize the slippery slope pitfalls of what Trump is doing. On the other hand, Trump and his team very clearly have a far better understanding of how to manipulate and punish the media than I or anyone else around here does, and they are using that acumen to further important interests from the Right. If nothing else, Trump's attacks on the media are opening up a new range of strategic and tactical possibilities for future politicians from the Right.
How about Trump's/ Spicer's/ Conway's insistence that Trump isn't wrong about his inauguration being more popular than Obama's? That is a 100% falsehood; he's objectively wrong. It's backpedaled as an alternative fact or that Trump is actually correct, when in reality he's not. He's either lying, delusional, or just can't fucking count. His claim is false; it is a true statement to say that more people attended Obama's inauguration than Trump's.
The White House Press Corps have a responsibility to keep the president honest and learn the truth, and this has nothing to do with liberal bias.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 29 2017 05:07 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 04:56 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 04:50 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 04:47 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 03:44 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 29 2017 03:31 Slaughter wrote:On January 29 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 29 2017 02:34 Mohdoo wrote:On January 29 2017 02:18 Doodsmack wrote:
It's a giant failure of execution, considering also that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are not included. Since when would Trump not stand up to an ally sponsoring terrorism? Very anti-populist. On the bright side, this is likely an indication as to how this whole thing is going to go on a grand scale. We are already seeing a lot of groups coming together on the left in a similar way that the right united against Obama. Obama was a huge boost to right wing unification and it looks like Trump is doing the same thing to the left. Such a unity is illusory at best. The center-left "Hillary wing" and the left "Bernie wing" are no less at odds with each other than they were before Trump was such a pervasive factor. If they really were ready to unite against Trump then there wouldn't be such a mass defection in the face of the possibility of a Trump presidency, back during election time. It doesn't have to be fully united. The GOP and the Tea Party managed to do it while hating each other. They just need to motivate people enough to do the very simple thing of oppose Trump. Republicans did it against Obama, even when they disliked each other but they both could get around cock blocking Obama. Just need greater numbers of people participating (IE voting and doing more then just bitching on the internet). and obama had a pretty solid approval rating overall. meanwhile, trump is starting off about 40%, which was about obama's floor (according to gallup). It is not without a sense of irony that I notice that Trump, the least popular candidate in history, was elected to more or less undo the legacy of Obama, one of the more popular, if ultimately non-transformative, ones, as opposed to the person who was basically Obama's chosen successor. The way I reconcile this is just simply to presume that Obama had something of a distortionary effect, where the fact that he was pushing policies that really weren't so great was kind of forgotten in the face of his own personal charm. His chosen successor had zero charm so all the ugly came out. Or there was a distortion effect of reality versus imagined fears that came out during the election as Trump pushed hard how "bad" things were and he would fix everything while Clinton didn't have the charisma to pull people away from their unease. Also I don't agree to the extent that XDaunt thinks that the MSM has been destroyed credibility wise. What is actually happening is people are flocking to whatever news agrees with them and then discounting everything else. So people are still lapping up MSM, just becoming increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone who says things they don't like. So yay for Trump pushing the polarization trend in media even harder? You're wrong right off the bat. The general fear that people have of their livelihoods being threatened is not imagined. Say what you will about Trump vs. Clinton overall, it's definitely not true that everything is going good and people are just not getting it. Hillary saying "why MAGA when everything is already great?" did her zero favors with everyone outside of her "hip urbanite elite" core. Everything is fine as long as you handle the economic transition well. Trump promised fantasy scenarios while in reality just doing things to halt any transition to attempt to make shallow prop up of industries we need to move past. This sets us up for disaster further down the line with those he was peddling too hurt the worst. Say what you want about Clinton failing to message her plans correctly but she at least had something tangible to offer those in the awkward spot in the economy while playing the long game and shifting the focus of the economy to future industries. People were willing to buy into the fantasy because they logic'd themselves into thinking Trump as a non career politician might be worth rolling the dice on when the competition was a career politician with several scandals hanging over her head.
Maybe Trump isn't right for the job, yes - but the concerns people have are legitimate and they are right for doubting that Hillary could give them what they wanted.
Sanders would have probably been decent enough in that regard, even though he too is a bit of a pie-in-the-sky leader.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 29 2017 05:06 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:
Maybe we do need someone to break things - because people are far more inclined to replace something that is broken than something that is barely functional. Sure, but when you break something with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel rather than a butcher's cleaver, it's much easier to put the pieces back together when you're done. Something being destructive or revolutionary does not preclude planning and forethought.
The problem is that we don't have a surgeon in this scenario.
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EPT
