Trump - Clown Genius

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IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:28 am

The Irish play aggressively but very fair. In fact if it wasn't for some bad referee calls, like those frequent but accidental helmet-to-helmet tackles, I doubt the Irish would ever get any calls against them. The commentators where I watch it my local TV station agree with this assessment. They seem like smart guys---they know way more about football than I do so I like to listen to what they say.
...

So you've never heard the old quip about the Michigan coach complaining to the referees saying, "Hey, ref, Notre Dame is lining up offsides on every play!!" to which the referee answered, "No we're not."

Of course when you watch sports some of it depends on who is giving the broadcast. Often they are broadcast by the team's own broadcast network/crew, and they are very openly biased and everyone knows it. Nowadays that's mostly relegated to radio broadcasts. Even still, despite the bias they don't threaten or call for bodily harm to the other teams coach or players. Other games are broadcast by the national networks unaffiliated with any school. In principal they endeavor to stick to a charter of being neutral. Doesn't always happen, but as a neutral observer to many neutrally broadcast games, they (traditionally) do a good job much more often than not and tend to stick to the scope of the game and avoid unverified/salacious commentary.

Sports is a great microcosm through which to view political machinations, which is why I started riffing on it here several years back. I was immersed in sports long before politics so it comes naturally to me.

That was a good essay.

IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

EdithKeeler wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:41 am
...
I wonder if time doesn't dim some memories.
It certainly can distort them: sometimes dimming them, but sometimes distilling them. BO was president 16X longer then Trump has been, so that sort of skews things too. I guess we do have some differences in acquaintances. The people I correspond with tend to be left-leaning (though generally not far enough left to be considered progressives). Certainly gives us a different perspective from which to view things.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob: Yes, but what is the purpose of the system of collegiate football? My first thought was "dominance", but that's not correct, because one football team can't eat another football team (unlike Amazon/Whole Foods, USSR/Estonia, Wolf/Coyote.)

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by jacob »

@ffj - If you define MSM as NYT, WaPo, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg, etc. probably yes. However, if all sources of news and opinions get included (add in Fox&Friends, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, etc.), that is, once you include the entire media/information river, the pattern gets a lot more symmetric. It could be argued that talk shows aren't news but that's where a lot of people get their world view and sentiments from.

It's very clear here that personal memories and interpretations line up with party affiliations and leanings. Not just in this thread, but elsewhere as well.

Republicans seem to have no memory of anything outrageously negative being said about Obama while at the same time being frustrated about all the outrageously negative things being said about Trump now; especially seeing left-leaning comments as they are being covered by right-leaning media and not reading them directly in context. Conversely, Democrats see the current coverage of Trump as being entirely reasonable---they are after all just covering a president who won't stop tweeting---while vividly remembering the Birtherism and talking about long guns and 2nd amendment rights to "protect ourselves from the Obama Tyranny"(*).

There's a strong tendency to excuse fringe representatives on MySide as individual outliers while at the same time judging everyone on TheirSide according to statements from fringe representatives. Yet, as long as those representatives are not saying crazy stuff, we're willing to listen to them again. We may condemn them for certain statements today, but all is forgiven by next week. There's also a strong tendency (see EK's posts) to dismiss stuff on MySide as "just a joke" while taking everything on TheirSide literally and personally. It's very hard to even give examples without having people who are invested declare that "That's not the same!"

All these determines what and how much is being remembered.

(*) The left would interpret this as practically calling for or at least justifying armed rebellion against the government. Whereas the right would see it as simply reaffirming the principles the nation is founded on. Neither side would have much understanding that it could be interpreted very differently by the other side.

The two sides don't have the same kind of humor and values and don't take the same things seriously. What one side sees as persecution, the other side sees as fair and balanced reporting. And vice versa. People on the right, who are now complaining about liberal bias, now understand how people on the left felt about right-wing talk shows during the Obama years.

I also bet that 95% on both sides will insist and keep insisting that the two situations are in no way comparable.

This also goes to 7wb5's question. This behavior reminds me eerily much of 3rd grade schoolyard and how kids from different cliques see a fight between two people from different groups of friends. According to OurSide "They started it because OurGuy was just making jokes that we all thought were kind of funny and then TheirGuy suddenly flipped out completely unreasonable". According to TheirSide "OurGuy had been bullying TheirGuy for months including stealing his lunch and finally he stood up and defended himself".

So it's not a dominance thing. It's a clique or team thing. Hence, the sportsball example. We simply tend to forgetful and blind to faults on our own side while drilling down on the other side. We hold the TheirSide to far higher standards than we do our OwnSide.

Wait and see next time there's a Democrat president. Left-wingers will suddenly develop amnesia forgetting the severed heads and comments about the first lady or Ivanka, etc. while at the same time lamenting how biased the right-wing media show is.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob: Gotcha. A lot of people still believe that loyalty is a virtue. ENTPs not so much. So, the purpose of collegiate football is to allow for a not-totally-violent outlet for the indulgence of the primitive instinct of loyalty.

BTW: I used to date a guy who played for Alabama in the 70s, and I had no clue about the identity of Bear Bryant prior.-lol. (Gawd, I feel ancient after typing this.)

Tyler9000
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Tyler9000 »

ffj wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:07 am
even with my confirmation bias goggles on I think I can still objectively make the argument that the MSM has treated Obama and Trump quite differently.
I don't know about that -- only a day after firing three employees for a blatantly false hit-piece on Trump, CNN clearly tried to balance the scales by bringing the heat in their latest Obama expose. :roll:

IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

ffj wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 1:17 pm
@Jacob

Yes, the internet is the great equalizer. If you were to count them all up including websites I would say that you are right as far as parity.

But the logical question would be how many people are accessing the internet exclusively for their news? And how many are using social media sites such as Facebook and the like? And how many rely on CNN,NBC, MSNBC,NPR, ABC,NYT, WASHPO, CBS, BBC, etc, etc. Plus most of Hollywood, late night pundits, etc? The advantage these organizations have is that they are still mainstream and readily more accessible to the average person. Is the average person more likely to hear what CNN or ABC or Seth Myer has to say on a subject versus Drudge? Probably.
That sort of hearkens back to my point a while back: what is out there at the forefront versus what you have to go somewhat out of your way to look for.

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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by jacob »

@ffj - That depends on how you define "news". As far as the political discourse goes, I would include everything right down to low-information voters who rely strictly on facebook memes (I know a few) or a single talk-show radio (or podcasts) to form their thoughts on the world.

Some Pew Research numbers ...
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/th ... -consumer/
http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/ne ... orms-2016/

Most people still get their "news" from TV. Here I would fully expect the right to be tuned into Fox News (the biggest channel) and the left to be tuned into a distribution along NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC.

You need to weigh them by viewership to get an idea of what the average person is thinking. Fox is more than twice as big than the second and third biggest put together (CNN and MSNBC). You do not have to go out of your way to tune into Fox News and leave it on that channel. To find a right-wing talk show, all you have to do is to turn on your AM radio. I think counting channels or outlets is too simplistic. If I measured media-bias by what was found on the AM-band, I would conclude that radio is heavily biased to the right. But I don't think one can do "science" that way ...

The second most popular source, not far behind TV, is social media. Only 20% still read newspapers ... dunno if we're talking national newspapers here or just the local rag. Most interestingly, those social media users who follow the news the least are most likely to rely on forwards/shares from friends/family whereas heavy consumers are not.

The average person would thus be more likely to tune their TV into hearing whatever bias they're already primed and desire to hear while ignoring the opposing channels. I'll bet money that for every person you can find who flips channels to see the same story on both sides, I can find someone on either side who never ever does that. I talk politics with people who exclusively watch Fox and MSNBC respectively. It's like they live in entirely different universes. It's not just that they see things differently. It's that they see different things. Something could be the most important crisis on one channel .. meanwhile, the other person has never even heard about that issue.

There was a study once that showed that liberals were more likely to unfriend people over political disagreements than conservatives on social media. This was, on the conservative side, hailed as showing how conservatives were more open-minded. Then there was a second study that showed that liberals tended to have a wider range of friends (politically speaking) than conservatives who choose their friends in a more .. lets just say politically narrow-minded manner already... and that the hardening up simply meant that liberals were becoming more like conservatives during the 2016 election.

So now there are fewer people with overlaps and therefore confirmation bias in the respective bubbles is rampant! As for the low-information voters on social media (either side now), it means that they pretty much only hear what their still approved friends are forwarding. This is also why fake news (in the original meaning of the concept) worked so well because it could survive/propagate in bubbles. Indeed, people admitted to forwarding news they knew to be fake simply because they thought it was fun to play along. Yay sportsball!!

I would also note, that liberals are much more politically active on social media now (as far as I can tell) under Trump than they were under Obama. Conversely, conservatives are much less politically active than they were under Obama. There's absolutely a demand for unflattering reporting about the opposition---it's just that it's coming from the other side now. MSNBC has grown spectacularly in viewership since Trump was elected, for example.

EdithKeeler
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by EdithKeeler »

I talk politics with people who exclusively watch Fox and MSNBC respectively. It's like they live in entirely different universes. It's not just that they see things differently. It's that they see different things.
Vouch. Example: My mom. She's housebound, but still mentally pretty sharp, and ingests a steady diet of Fox News and local TV news. I haven't had a TV in 6 years, and most of my news comes from NPR, WaPo and the NYT--I have online subscriptions. I can't count the number of times I'll ask my mom about such and such news story and she hasn't seen it. I usually see the news stories she mentions, probably on the Yahoo home page or something. When "her" news and "my" news do come together, they are usually spun differently.

I'm amazed sometimes at how ubiquitous Fox is--doctor waiting rooms, cafeterias, even bars.

BRUTE
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by BRUTE »

interesting, seems like there is some kind of long-tail thing going on with news as well. oh internet.

IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:03 pm

I would also note, that liberals are much more politically active on social media now (as far as I can tell) under Trump than they were under Obama. Conversely, conservatives are much less politically active than they were under Obama. There's absolutely a demand for unflattering reporting about the opposition---it's just that it's coming from the other side now. MSNBC has grown spectacularly in viewership since Trump was elected, for example.
Interestingly, my experience is the opposite (it being limited to FB as far as social media goes), there was quite a lot of left wing "presence" from the 2012 election right up until election day 2016, then a steep falloff after the initial post-election garment-rending ran its course to near silence once we had the assassination attempt and the collusion narrative fizzled. Now there's only a little occasional angst about health care legislation. The right has also toned down quite a lot. But maybe FB just knows I don't like it from either side and they screen it all out for me.

I don't think the issue is whether there is both right and left on TV, there is, although it is many outlets versus one. It's the degree of rancor/crudity and hate the respective sides use when covering the opposite side that sets them apart.

And don't discount the newspapers too much. Maybe not too many people read them, but much of the contentious reporting/discussion on TV of late is simply extrapolating from things that appear first in the New York and Washington papers (lately mostly leaks by anonymous sources). They've also set DT a-twittering more than once.
Last edited by IlliniDave on Sat Jul 01, 2017 3:35 pm, edited 3 times in total.

IlliniDave
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by IlliniDave »

EdithKeeler wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:15 pm
I'm amazed sometimes at how ubiquitous Fox is--doctor waiting rooms, cafeterias, even bars.
Who'd have thought two neighboring states in the south could be so different! I have yet to see Fox News shown in public anywhere around here, nor anywhere I've been in the last 15 years long enough to see a TV in a public place (Alabama, Illinois, and Minnesota). It's 100% CNN in this corner of N. Alabama when it's news, which is not often. The caveat is that I don't spend a lot of time in public places where I'll notice what might be playing on a TV. Back home my dad keeps one TV tuned to MSNBC all the time and it is the "background noise" in the house whenever he's awake. When he gets going on politics I just nod and smile politely--the gulf with a middle-of-the-roader like me is too vast to bridge. Definitely there can be very different perspectives (or spin) on the same events. As well as differences in what is covered.

bryan
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by bryan »

jacob wrote:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:28 am
Once we went to watch a game against Alabama with some friends because it was only on cable. Most of the people there were Alabama fans and they hated Notre Dame. I didn't know why because until then I had never even heard of Alabama (the team). The host even had to tell them to tone it down because there were also some ND fans at the party. We were just there to watch the game. I don't understand why other people can't be decent.
Us vs them and grudges. Alabama hating ND might have started in earnest in 1966 when ND opted to cowardly tie a late season game against MSU leaving BAMA as the only undefeated team, yet ND received the AP championship. Many think it was AP voters (and ND choosing to tie) punishing BAMA for segregation and not wanting BAMA to have three national championships in a row (still has never been done). ND never went to bowl games to put their ranking/awards on the line. Also ND is one of the only teams to have a positive record against BAMA, and doing so when BAMA was good. Also there was the dynamic back then that ND fans thought they are so much better than racist redneck Alabamaians.

BRUTE
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by BRUTE »

good speech. brute would watch again.

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GandK
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by GandK »

Haidt lovers: the Make Me Smart podcast had chosen 'The Righteous Mind' for their first book club selection. The episode where they discuss the book went up yesterday.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by ThisDinosaur »

Is the Clown Genius theory officially falsified now? Can we agree yet that potus is a low-brow pawn in a Russian scheme to discredit the US and weaken western influence in eastern Europe?

In all seriousness, I'm interested if anyone can still convince me that this dude is still just manipulating us with his unique insight into human psychology.

Chad
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Chad »

It will be difficult for a lot of people (in general), as many have staked their identity on Trump. I'm not sure anything other than a video showing Trump kneeling before Putin and kissing the ring (no, I don't think it goes this far) will cause some of them to give up support. The "genius" part of the moniker is really showing it's age quickly and not just on the Russia stuff.

Dragline
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Dragline »

Tweet of the day: "The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V."

Apparently, he's such a genius he can compose tweets accurately repeating and responding to things he has not even seen. I actually know most of what's on TV about Trump from Trump repeating it ad nauseum.

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jennypenny
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by jennypenny »

Is it too late to ask for a mulligan?

I'll agree that Trump should just be called 'clown' at this point, but I wouldn't call him a pawn in Putin's scheme. That's giving both of them too much credit. And Putin had nothing to do with Comey's influence on the outcome. Or Anthony Weiner. Or Clinton's health problems and mishandling of them. Post-game analysis showed that it really came down to voting/campaigning (or lack of) in four states and weak support for HRC in the african-american community. I don't think that had anything to do with the Russians.

Has anyone read Shattered? It's not a great read, but it makes the case (successfully IMO) that they didn't learn their lessons from 2008 -- when she lost out to another candidate who was significantly better at messaging -- and that's ultimately why she lost again.

I'm not excusing the meddling. If it turns out that DJT or junior actively sought out Russian help, then I'm all for impeachment. I'm just not sure if the meddling had a tangible effect. The fact that the DNC isn't cooperating with the investigation makes me wonder what the DNC was up to (besides suppressing Sanders). Pretty distasteful all around.

Chad
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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Post by Chad »

jennypenny wrote:
Wed Jul 12, 2017 5:10 pm
...but I wouldn't call him a pawn in Putin's scheme. That's giving both of them too much credit.
I would probably call him somewhat of a pawn. If Trump and his advisers fall for the info great. Russia helps to get a significantly more friendly president elected. Plus, if all of this ever gets found out it further erodes America's claim as the golden city on the hill and, if it doesn't, it is a potential sword to hold over Trump's head the entire time he is in office. All of this helps Putin.

A secondary impact is a slight bump in popularity at home having given America a black eye. Not a terrible thing for him, but again it's short-term.

The only real downside is making Clinton an enemy, and she was probably a staunch enemy of Putin with or without this meddling against her. Little downside for Putin in the short-term. Of course, long-term is where the intel types always fail because it's impossible to predict what will happen. Too much confidence, too many variables, and too many humans being human.

I would agree that there is definitely no dark smokey room with Putin and Trump sitting around a table planning all this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eosfNwMpMs
There is some happenstance, some unintentional crossing the line, and some intentional crossing the line. That's almost always the way it works.

So, not a pawn how you probably meant it. He wasn't controlled directly by Putin, but he was a pawn in Putin's machinations.

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