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

[Mahlerian]

(Oh, and from Dictionary.com, apparently one of your trusted sources:

Hyperbole:

2. an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as "to wait an eternity.". )

Umm...yes...I understand that.  The problem is that you haven't shown that these statements you're calling hyperbolic are "extravagant."  Trump really is a horrifying candidate to those of us who think that the things he says are offensive when they aren't merely ignorant or idiotic.

It's hyperbole to say that an above-average day is "boiling hot," while it's not hyperbole to say that water that's been heated to 100 degrees Celsius is "boiling hot."  The fact that someone says something is horrific is not itself indicative of hyperbole.  It's certainly hyperbolic to say that it's horrific when McDonald's raises the price of their goods by a cent.  On the other hand, to many people, flagrant lies in the support of racist remarks from someone wanting to become a world leader are in fact horrific.

[Todd]

Trump really is a horrifying candidate to those of us who think that the things he says are offensive when they aren't merely ignorant or idiotic.

I suppose the operative phrase here is "those of us".  Because you feel he is horrifying doesn't make it so.  I find the term an exaggeration.  An extravagant one. 

To reiterate a prior post, I did not vote for him, nor do I like him.  But the emotional overreaction to him has apparently obliterated some people's ability to discuss or write about him in non-exaggerated fashion.

[Mahlerian]

I suppose the operative phrase here is "those of us".  Because you feel he is horrifying doesn't make it so.  I find the term an exaggeration.  An extravagant one. 

And likewise, your personal opinion does not make it hyperbole.  You are failing to distinguish once again between expressions of personal opinion and expressions of fact.  As with "truth," you treat "hyperbole" as a term to be defined at your personal whims, depending on how factual or hyperbolic something seems to you.

To reiterate a prior post, I did not vote for him, nor do I like him.  But the emotional overreaction to him has apparently obliterated some people's ability to discuss or write about him in non-exaggerated fashion.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that he has run a campaign based on lies, fueled by racist rhetoric, one which has encouraged blatant anti-Semitism and excused flagrant sexism.  That's all in the public record.

[Todd]

You are failing to distinguish once again between expressions of personal opinion and expressions of fact.

On the other hand, to many people, flagrant lies in the support of racist remarks from someone wanting to become a world leader are in fact horrific.

Hmm.

You obviously fail to see the exaggeration, the hyperbole, in what you write.  That's fine, but it simply reveals your bias, and your tendency to believe your opinion is based on some type of objective truth.

[Mahlerian]

Hmm.

You obviously fail to see the exaggeration, the hyperbole, in what you write.  That's fine, but it simply reveals your bias, and your tendency to believe your opinion is based on some type of objective truth.

You either lack basic reading comprehension ability or are unable because of your desire to read my statements as partisan to accurately suss out their meaning.  I'm done with you here.

[SimonNZ]

Fair enough, but that's not the same as persuasion.  In any event, try the Guardian from time to time to see if they have biased or hyperbolic headlines or sub-headers.  Then try Fox or any other right-wing outlet of your choice and see if you can spot bias or hyperbole there.  It's generally pretty easy to spot.  Headlines are meant to grab attention, and sub-headers to reel in the reader, and it is not uncommon for editors to tailor them to the prevailing readership.

Um, yeah, thanks for that useful lesson on how to spot bias. I'm actually already familiar with both, and they're nothing alike. The Guardian is one of the very few sources remaining of professional independent journalism. Whereas Fox News is Rupert Murdoch's sock-puppet / alternate-reality.

[amw]

Check The Guardian about every 30 minutes for the latest headlines.  Shouldn't take long.  That's one of the funner outlets.  Now, there is every chance that you might not find anything biased because of your own biases. 

Vox is also still in full on panic and/or clickbait mode, which is somewhat frustrating for an outlet that published some good pieces during the campaign.

Regarding Trump being "horrifying": Some of his campaign promises, such as legitimising torture, making police officers less accountable to accusations of abuse or brutality, killing the families of suspected terrorists, establishing a "deportation force" that would act primarily via racial profiling, etc, are horrifying from a perspective of civil liberties and human rights. (i.e. someone who believes that these things should be expanded rather than restricted would experience feelings of fear and revulsion from such policies being implemented.) It's obviously unclear if he is actually going to do most of these things. Others, such as his proposed trade war with China, might be more horrifying from an economic perspective, but again we have no idea if he will do that either. Finally, one can also say the man's conduct towards women is horrifying if one thinks women are human beings (for instance one could read the details of the child rape case filed against him, which the plaintiff ended up dropping due to harassment and threats from Trump supporters), or that his racist views are horrifying, as above.

I think the truth is that in recent years these things have become a little bit too ordinary to be horrifying. They are merely depressing and unsurprising. Obama made drone killings commonplace, has taken minimal steps to keep the police and military in check, deported 2-3 million people (about as many as Trump now says he's going to deport), and in general has done little better than Bush on the human rights front. Too much about the expansion of executive power and the surveillance state became normalised over the past sixteen years. Women have always known that a lot of men are mini-Trumps, that it's best to stay silent about their behaviour to avoid calling attention to yourself, and you simply have to keep your eyes open and not put too much trust in anyone who has a penis. Racism is not horrifying to people of colour—it's simply the reality they live in, and at least now white people are being open about it, so you know who's a racist right off the bat instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop. (Some even prefer Trump's overt racism to what they see as fumbling, patronising attempts to prove they're "down with minorities" from the likes of Clinton.)

Maybe we should be horrified? I don't know. I feel like it's easy to get cynical when you look at US politics combined with the hard right turn of the entire Western world since 1989, and conclude that things are just going to get worse so long as governments are still allowed to do things, and wave your anarchist flag or vote for Gary Johnson (who, if he is elected president of the United States, will immediately resign, in order to make the government smaller and more efficient). I'm not horrified though, just kind of pissed, lol.

[Herman]

I don't see any surprises, he seems to be naming the establishment conservatives that supported him in his campaign. I see his status as an "outsider" and champion of the blue collar American not evident. It appears to be heading towards more tax cuts mainly benefiting the very wealthy, deregulation of the financial sector, dismantling of consumer and environmental protections, and perhaps a ramping up of military spending. This is the standard right-wing policy that has led to an America dominated by big global business and where the majority see erosion of their financial and social security. The threat of disrupting trade with protective tariffs to keep jobs in the U.S. seems like a red herring. As I understand it, revision of tariffs would require Congressional action and it is hard to imaging the incoming Congress going along with it.

You forgot one or two other things this administration is heading for: turning back civil rights issues, curtail voting rights (so as to facilitate the GOP in elections) and women's rights. Roe v Wade is going to be in peril. By the end of these four years tens of million people will again be uninsured for health care.

These are not your standard conservative establishment republicans, but rather guys, just like Trump, from a generation ago, who in the Eighties were trying to go back to the Fifties.

And then there's the certainty that nothing will go as planned. One police shooting of a black guy and lord knows what's going to happen when Trump will fan the flames.

All it will take is one terrorist attack that can be (rightly or wrongly) attributed to radical Islam, and all hell will break loose. And you better believe that it's going to happen.

[Herman]

Governing is not the same as campaigning.

But this may be a different case. Most likely Trump is going to do what he does best, and that is marketing himself i.e. campaigning. There is already talk of a kind of victory tour with big rallies in fly over country.

Pence will have a lot of work on his hands, and Trump will, like Dubya, be the Decider, i.e. the guy who signs papers.

[amw]

You forgot one or two other things this administration is heading for: turning back civil rights issues, curtail voting rights (so as to facilitate the GOP in elections) and women's rights. Roe v Wade is going to be in peril. By the end of these four years tens of million people will again be uninsured for health care.

These are not your standard conservative establishment republicans

I'm not sure how much attention you've been paying since January 20, 2011. >_> Those are all standard conservative establishment ploys that have been put into action at the state level, which have been very successful due mostly to aggressive gerrymandering and voter suppression, combined with appeals to populism. That is the Republican party these days, minus some traditional Reaganite conservatives whom the alt-right likes to refer to as "cucks" for some reason.

One police shooting of a black guy and lord knows what's going to happen when Trump will fan the flames.

I mean, the amount that's done by the Obama administration about police shootings of unarmed black people (and latinos and indigenous people) is already next to nothing. Miscarriages of justice simply don't bother the majority of Americans unless the victim is a pretty white girl. (What happened when someone or other called black men super-predators?)

All it will take is one terrorist attack that can be (rightly or wrongly) attributed to radical Islam, and all hell will break loose.

We had one of those about fifteen years ago (some towers, in New York or something, idk). I think it's safe to say that we're already in the part where hell is breaking loose.

[EigenUser]

[...] or vote for Gary Johnson (who, if he is elected president of the United States, will immediately resign, in order to make the government smaller and more efficient). [...]

I love Gary Johnson and this statement made me laugh. That almost sounds like something he would do, considering how obsessive he is about small government (so am I, generally).

[Mister Sharpe]

Per CNN:  "The ex-Breitbart executive, who serves as Trump's chief strategist for the new administration, told The Hollywood Reporter that 'darkness is good.  Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing,' he said in an interview published Friday, his first outside of Breitbart since the election."

That ringing endorsement of Lucifer has just got to make the religious right cringe and wonder if perhaps they made the wrong choice.  Or maybe they're just oblivious.  In any case, Todd may be right: this could be fun, though I people don't get hurt - emotions are running high out there.

[Jo498]

So you hope that when Pence and Bannon meet they might annihilate each other in a flash of pure energy? One can hope...

[kishnevi]

Per CNN:  "The ex-Breitbart executive, who serves as Trump's chief strategist for the new administration, told The Hollywood Reporter that 'darkness is good.  Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing,' he said in an interview published Friday, his first outside of Breitbart since the election."

That ringing endorsement of Lucifer has just got to make the religious right cringe and wonder if perhaps they made the wrong choice.  Or maybe they're just oblivious.  In any case, Todd may be right: this could be fun, though I people don't get hurt - emotions are running high out there.

I presume he was being rhetorical, hoping to get a knee jerk reaction from the media.

[Todd]

I'm not horrified though, just kind of pissed, lol.

That's a more sensible reaction, and if Dems involved in organized politics are likewise pissed, they can get more done.  Anger can focus the mind.  Horror leads to blubbering.

But this may be a different case.

Maybe.  I don't know what goes on in Trump's mind, but I would guess he's very interested in a few policies - perhaps primarily those that will directly benefit him - and then there are probably a lot of policies he doesn't care much about.  If he delegates a lot, that won't be uncommon. 

As to a self-serving agenda, WAPO ran a good op-ed yesterday going over some of the issues with Trump's businesses, and the risk he faces if he doesn't watch what he does.  I have to think he has a phalanx of lawyers reviewing the issues involved, but I also have to think that Dems have people reviewing the same thing, and they will be ready to pounce if anything even hinting at untoward behavior occurs.  Yesterday, WAPO also ran a story about how the Trump International Hotel in DC has apparently become more popular in the last week.

Per CNN:  "The ex-Breitbart executive, who serves as Trump's chief strategist for the new administration, told The Hollywood Reporter that 'darkness is good.  Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing,' he said in an interview published Friday, his first outside of Breitbart since the election."

That ringing endorsement of Lucifer has just got to make the religious right cringe and wonder if perhaps they made the wrong choice.  Or maybe they're just oblivious.  In any case, Todd may be right: this could be fun, though I people don't get hurt - emotions are running high out there.

Not Satan.  Now that dude is scary for reals.

[Mister Sharpe]

So you hope that when Pence and Bannon meet they might annihilate each other in a flash of pure energy? One can hope...

I'm so looking forward to that! 

[Tritone]

Just as you're not distinguishing between matters of fact and matters of opinion, you're failing to distinguish between hyperbole and figures of speech.  I know personally I stood stunned more than once at the brain-dead and offensive pronouncements coming out of Trump's mouth over the course of this campaign.

But SimonNZ's call stands.  Can you come up with an example of a member of the mainstream press writing something biased (however you might define that) outside of an Op-ed (they're marked off as opinion; why should it matter that they express one)?

Reading through many of these posts, you seem to have set yourself up as arbiter of all that is correct and right.  Now, where have I heard that before?

There is a visceral contempt for anyone not conforming to the ideal citizen of our brand new world i.e. slim, fit, intellectualised, relativist and mild mannered. The working class fail on most counts. They eat the wrong foods, express opinions forcefully, admire symbols like flags or queens instead of abstracts ideas like equality and are generally closer to the idea of a beast than a man (from the elite's perspective of course). They are an anachronism and for anyone who believes in history as continual progress, this is intolerable. Poor ethnic minorities are equally repugnant to the elites, but they are spared because they are used as tools for moral gratification. In our morally illiterate society, pity has supplanted proper charity and some groups are stripped of their humanity and used merely as means to the ends. They are not loved for who they are but for what role they play in the elite's PC theoretical construct (much like the proletariat was the plaything of Marx)

This backlash will not stop. Despite the equality rhetoric, some groups see themselves as natural rulers and in possession of higher authority over the rest. Democracy is only adhered to as long as they lead intellectually and politically. Their support for diversity was always phoney. Under the guise of equality they demonise dissent and have turned the media and schools into indoctrination machines. Now they are forced to live in a world not of their own creation and their authoritarian and megalomaniacal instincts are there for all to see. No emperor left his throne without a dirty fight and these people are no different.

[SimonNZ]

...which brings us back to the topic of "hyperbole".

[Florestan]

...which brings us back to the topic of "hyperbole".

Hyperbole it is, indeed: Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain, abdicated voluntarily. 

[Herman]

these pampered liberals cannot help but go bat shit crazy.

Yeah, the actor who gave that brief speech was clearly bat shit crazy, foaming at mouth and jumping up and down.

In your mind.