Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[SimonNZ]

Trump Meets QAnon Kook Who Believes Democrats Run Pedophile Cult

"On Thursday, President Donald Trump posed for an Oval Office photo with one of the leading promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that top Democrats are part of a global pedophile cult.

YouTube conspiracy theorist Lionel Lebron was in the White House for an event on Thursday, according to a video Lebron posted online. During the visit, Lebron and his wife posed for a smiling picture with Trump in the Oval Office.

Lebron is one of the internet's leading promoters of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory based on a series of anonymous clues posted to internet forums. QAnon believers have interpreted the clues, which they claim without evidence are coming from a highly placed source in the Trump administration, to mean that Trump and the military are engaged in a high-stakes shadow war against a supposed globalist pedophile cult. The conspiracy theory has caught on with Trump supporters, who have held up QAnon-related signs and wear QAnon shirts to the president's rallies.

Lebron claimed to have received a "special guided tour of the White House" before posing for pictures with Trump. In a video posted Friday, Lebron said he didn't use the brief encounter with the president to ask Trump about QAnon or its slogan, "Where we go one, we go all.""

[drogulus]

I still think this is wishful thinking.
Ask them, if they suffer (more) because of Trump.

    I said Trump voters are suffering from their choice, I didn't say they would say that. Trumpists are (heh!) unreliable narrators.

[Marc]

    I said Trump voters are suffering from their choice, I didn't say they would say that. Trumpists are (heh!) unreliable narrators.

And if so... how come?

[milk]

Exclusive: Ex-Trump World Tower doorman releases 'catch-and-kill' contract about alleged Trump affair
"Sajudin told CNN he claims to have knowledge of a relationship Trump had with his former housekeeper that resulted in a child."
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/24/politics/trump-tower-doorman-contract-ami/index.html

[Florestan]

I think most (ir)responsible children would not vote for an adult like Trump though.
And most Peter Pans would not, either.
(Just my tuppence worth of course.)

Too bad Trump did not run in Neverland, he'd have been history by now. 

[Florestan]

Still, the 'movement' behind Trump needs more investigation and understanding than the "I Am The State" phenomena Trump itself. Also, because it's a movement that can be seen in many self-appointed civilized countries.   
How come? What did 'the others' do wrong? What to do about it?

Precisely my point. Severely reprimanding "Trumpkins" and apocaliptical handwringing about Trump is definitely not the way to go.

[Karl Henning]

And if so... how come?

Like their boss:  For their ends, disinformation has benefits which the facts do not provide.

[drogulus]

And if so... how come?

     It has to do with pain and what people attribute it to. If social pain was less acute people could be a less militant about "who" is causing it, and less vulnerable to a demagogue. The historical pattern is that an economic one-two punch is followed by a demagogic outbreak. It starts with a huge deflation and is followed by an austerity program. The importance of the second blow is that the policy is chosen and therefore a betrayal by the leadership. This destroys trust not only in the competence of policy makers but in their intentions. That creates the opening for untrustworthy but charismatic finger pointers. The grumble list of "those people" becomes the hate list.

     Not everyone buys the economic approach. Some people think politics is about ideas in a more disembodied way. People are fighting about principles that they hold, which occasionally makes them crazy. That's the view that untrustworthy people should be taken literally even though literalness is not an art they have mastered.

[Florestan]

        Not everyone buys the economic approach. Some people think politics is about ideas in a more disembodied way. People are fighting about principles that they hold, which occasionally makes them crazy.

Substitute "Few" for "not everyone" and "Most people" for "some people" and I applaud you: finally, finally, finally you have seen the light.

[drogulus]

     

Substitute "Few" for "not everyone" and "Most people" for "some people" and I applaud you: finally, finally, finally you have seen the light.

     I didn't invent the idea that economics has a larger impact than is usually attributed to the process, but I am the one who has devoted brain cells to it here. I deliberately and with malice aforethought brought my little light to bear.

     My view is that people are not economists in the front of their brain where they do published explanations. Tracing out causation without the emotive chaff is a skill. It doesn't make you right, but it tips the probabilities in your favor.

     

[drogulus]

     The Explicable Mystery of the National Debt

     People don't usually refute bad ideas, the worst are unfalsifiable, an aspect of their worstness. What they do is give up on them, and that takes time.

This is why there is nobody squeezing the U.S. government to repay what the government has "borrowed." They have already been repaid by the treasury bonds they took in exchange for the dollars they "loaned." (As you can see, the term "loan" applied to this transaction has the same paradoxical ambiguity as the term "borrow." What's really happening is that one kind of money is simply being traded for another.)

    Are we there yet? Why do we owe China dollars they have?

     https://www.youtube.com/v/vW3J5LBVfGc

     Repubs and Dems each use versions of the same bad idea to blame each other for shortcomings that belong chiefly to what is common to both, that money is scarce "stuff" you have to go get and not created for its use.

[Marc]

Like their boss:  For their ends, disinformation has benefits which the facts do not provide.

That's far too one-sided for me.
Throwing all Trumps voters together and generalize their thinking/reasons. You sound just like Hillary and her crew.

[Florestan]

That's far too one-sided for me.
Throwing all Trumps voters together and generalize their thinking/reasons. You sound just like Hillary and her crew.

+ 1.

[Karl Henning]

That's far too one-sided for me.
Throwing all Trumps voters together and generalize their thinking/reasons. You sound just like Hillary and her crew.

The question was about Trump voters, so I decline your suggestion that the baggage is mine.

I also decline your one-sided suggestion that my answer lumps all Trump voters together. I have at least three siblings who voted for Trump, to whom my hypothesis does not apply, and only partly because they don't defend everything that Trump does or says.

Your remark about Hillary is wide of the mark as well as pointless.

[drogulus]

That's far too one-sided for me.
Throwing all Trumps voters together and generalize their thinking/reasons. You sound just like Hillary and her crew.

    People are general unless you want to talk about a person. What about "Trump voters", what about the difference between valid and invalid generalizations that pollsters and researchers seek? Before I choose sides I try see see as much beyond sides as I can and make the kind of generalizations that justify my vote for a party. I treat aggregate characteristics with total seriousness and won't stand for false equivalence as a substitute for actual fairness. I don't find that much "sound like" in the sides people come down on.

[lisa needs braces]

RIP to the scumbag warmonger John McCain, who suggested Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks to justify the push for the Iraq war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2pxuv_teQk

[Marc]

The question was about Trump voters, so I decline your suggestion that the baggage is mine.

I also decline your one-sided suggestion that my answer lumps all Trump voters together. I have at least three siblings who voted for Trump, to whom my hypothesis does not apply, and only partly because they don't defend everything that Trump does or says.

Your remark about Hillary is wide of the mark as well as pointless.

Well, this entire thread is actually pointless, so no news here.

You wrote yourself that Trump voters are like their boss. That's plenty of 'proof' of generalizing and lumping them together. No matter whether friends or family might be part of them.
We agreed in the past about the wrong tactics of Hillary, and that the Dems needed another approach: lumping the Trumpeteers together was part of those rather arrogant and counter-effective tactics.

So sorry Karl, I know we agree on many political issues, but showing disdain for other voters is not gonna help any anti-Trumpist and is also not going to solve the widening gap and enlarging divisons, whether or not that anti-Trumpist is part of the policital system or 'just' a voter himself/herself. It will only help widening the gaps.

[zamyrabyrd]

RIP to the scumbag warmonger John McCain, who suggested Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks to justify the push for the Iraq war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2pxuv_teQk

I feel for John McCain the same I do for Ted Kennedy, a long public life, a LOT to answer for.

[zamyrabyrd]

K Henning: "Like their boss:  For their ends, disinformation has benefits which the facts do not provide."

So sorry Karl, I know we agree on many political issues, but showing disdain for other voters is not gonna help any anti-Trumpist and is also not going to solve the widening gap and enlarging divisons, whether or not that anti-Trumpist is part of the policital system or 'just' a voter himself/herself. It will only help widening the gaps.

I remember quite a few presidents by now, and at NO time was there such visceral, vile takedowns of the person who got the office, even when it was deserved like Lyndon Johnson who was a nasty piece of work.

It could be there is no real civil public discourse anymore, just mudslinging. Well, I am still not used to it, coming from a different time and education.

[milk]

I remember quite a few presidents by now, and at NO time was there such visceral, vile takedowns of the person who got the office, even when it was deserved like Lyndon Johnson who was a nasty piece of work.

It could be there is no real civil public discourse anymore, just mudslinging. Well, I am still not used to it, coming from a different time and education.

Stop worrying about public discourse. Grab a pu#@y and say terrific! And even on a day when captured guys get mourned as some kind of heroes, thankfully you can still talk about women as bleeding-from-the-you-know-where dogs! This-'s still 'merica even if low IQ black people get high ratings. And public discourse  will be back when all Tump's enemies are behind bars where they belong.