US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9803

On January 30 2018 21:14 farvacola wrote:
That tweet doesn't even make any sense and I would hesitate before using it as an example of anything other than hyperbolic twitter folk. The NYT has its issues trying to straddle what it considers the center, but come on.

On January 30 2018 21:19 Gorsameth wrote:
So, the NYT is a fake liberal news and a white supremacist pro Trump paper.

I am very confused right now.

On January 30 2018 21:29 farvacola wrote:
Popular according to whom? Her credentials are basically "someone who has their own website and sometimes writes leftwing shock articles."

The Useful Idiocy of Donald Trump

The problem with Donald Trump is not that he is imbecilic and inept—it is that he has surrendered total power to the oligarchic and military elites. They get what they want. They do what they want. Although the president is a one-man wrecking crew aimed at democratic norms and institutions, although he has turned the United States into a laughingstock around the globe, our national crisis is embodied not in Trump but the corporate state’s now unfettered pillage.

Trump, who has no inclination or ability to govern, has handed the machinery of government over to the bankers, corporate executives, right-wing think tanks, intelligence chiefs and generals. They are eradicating the few regulations and laws that inhibited a naked kleptocracy. They are dynamiting the institutions, including the State Department, that served interests other than corporate profit and are stacking the courts with right-wing, corporate-controlled ideologues. Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the business of looting, exploiting and destroying.

Once democratic institutions are hollowed out, a process begun before the election of Trump, despotism is inevitable. The press is shackled. Corruption and theft take place on a massive scale. The rights and needs of citizens are irrelevant. Dissent is criminalized. Militarized police monitor, seize and detain Americans without probable cause. The rituals of democracy become farce. This is the road we are traveling. It is a road that leads to internal collapse and tyranny, and we are very far down it.

The elites’ moral and intellectual vacuum produced Trump. They too are con artists. They are slicker than he at selling the lies and more adept at disguising their greed through absurd ideologies such as neoliberalism and globalization, but they belong to the same criminal class and share many of the pathologies that characterize Trump. The grotesque visage of Trump is the true face of politicians such as George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Clintons and Obama, unlike Bush and Trump, are self-aware and therefore cynical, but all lack a moral compass. As Michael Wolff writes in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” the president has “no scruples.” He lives “outside the rules” and is “contemptuous of them.” And this makes him identical to those he has replaced, not different. “A close Trump friend who was also a good Bill Clinton friend found them eerily similar—except that Clinton had a respectable front and Trump did not,” Wolff writes.

...

Yes, the elites wish Trump would act more presidential. It would help the brand. But all attempts by the elites to make Trump conform to the outward norms embraced by most public officials have failed. Trump will not be reformed by criticism from the establishment. Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, who denounced Trump, saw their approval ratings plummet and have decided not to run for re-election. Trump may have public approval of only 39 percent overall, but among Republicans the figure is 78 percent. And I don’t think those numbers will decrease.

The inability of the political establishment and the press to moderate or reform Trump’s egregious behavior is rooted in their loss of credibility. The press, along with political and intellectual elites, spent decades championing economic and political policies that solidified corporate power and betrayed and impoverished American workers. The hypocrisy and mendacity of the elites left them despised and distrusted by the victims of deindustrialization and austerity programs. The attempt to restore civility to public discourse and competency to political office is, therefore, fruitless. Liberal and establishment institutions, including the leadership of the two main political parties, academia and the press, squandered their moral authority. And the dogged refusal by the elites to address the engine of discontent—social inequality—ensures that they will remain ineffectual. They lay down the asphalt for the buffoonery of Trump and the coming tyranny.

On January 30 2018 21:53 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Not sure if this means that NYT is doing a excellent job at balancing their editorials or that they just have bad columnists.

On January 30 2018 21:10 tomatriedes wrote:
I think the culture wars in the US are hitting peak crazy right now:

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/957411344688603136

On January 30 2018 22:14 Biff The Understudy wrote:

The fact that hysterical twats from both side call it all kind of names is a badge of honour for the NYT.

The NYT really shows that you can have a clear political leaning and remain fair, balanced and smart. I have read newspapers daily since I was 12 and this is certainly the best one I have found.

On January 30 2018 21:54 tomatriedes wrote:
This article nails for me the whole grotesque sideshow this presidency has become:


https://www.truthdig.com/articles/useful-idiocy-donald-trump/

On January 31 2018 00:08 Plansix wrote:
It is sort of hard to by the argument that the “elites” are liberal when Republicans have dominated DC for a decade and a half. The rot in Washington is equally spread, but there are simply more Republicans there.

Also that article over uses the term elite, which is not an accurate description of the average house representative. It is a throw away term used to paint them all as “over educated” and out of touch.