Summit with Putin

[IlliniDave]

7Wannabe5, do we know that the presence of Neanderthal DNA in humans resulted from male modern humans breeding with female Neanderthals? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought all the remnant Neanderthal DNA in humans was limited to Neanderthal Male->modern human female interaction. Could it be Neanderthals were seduced into extinction, perhaps lacking the mental elasticity to adapt to complex fluid mating contracts demanded by their new lady friends? I admittedly don't know much about Denisovans.

I think it's pretty clear that whatever inherent peaceful, nuturing, coalition building exists in humans is pretty limited in reach. Chimps aren't much different when they encounter other troops, or other species of monkeys for that matter. It seems that the further and deeper we try to project/impose homogeneous hierarchies on others, the more dysfunctional and often deadly they become, even while the flow of goods and ideas seems beneficial.

[7Wannabe5]

@IlliniDave:

I believe that current evidence is that matings occurred in both ways, but the most recent matings were human male/Neanderthal female. Apparently, the recent research revealing that humans and Neanderthal lines did not split until after deletion of genetic code for spiny penis* also may lend credence to the notion of Neanderthal male as attractive, because tender and caring, lover.


https://news.nationalgeographic.com/new ... e-science/


*shovel-shape remains as contrary indicator of competition at sperm level.

[jacob]

@iDave - In European countries, where elections are proportionally representative, each government is formed out of a coalition several political parties post-election (in general, the biggest party gets to pick the prime minister, not a rule... but important positions get allocated according to size). The voters can identify these parties when they cast their vote and the parties can identify their voters as well, so there's less of a guessing game of "who actually voted for Party X" and "what politics the voters actually voted for". It also seems to me that people are flexible about switching parties. This is why it took me almost a year to understand that the easiest way to predict what an individual US voter will vote is to look at what they voted last time. Shirt-color collections are a robust method in a de facto two-party system. It's not in a 10+ party system.

One of the most interesting thing about the fracturing of the GOP and now to the Democrats is that each US 'coalition' (Conservatives, Tea Party, Libertarians, Trumpists, Social Democrats, Democratic Socialists, Greens) have visible mirror parties in each European country. Implying if the US system wasn't split into two giant party blocks, the veil would be lifted from the voting demographic. Because of the way proportional representation works, center parties who are willing to switch allegiance from left to right tend to hold a disproportional influence. (Compare to centrist US senators who will sometimes vote for and sometimes against their own party).

It also makes it possible to see when a party runs a program that manages to recruit substantial numbers of people from other parties and where these voters come from!

I'm mostly familiar with Danish national populists which have also grown substantially in power (the "Danish People's Party" are currently part of the governing coalition). They are usually associated with the far-right... but it's more accurate to see them as syncretic ideologies which if you want to be cynical about it is not really an ideology at all and which if you want to be open-minded about it tries to reconcile parts from many different ideologies. Or if you wanna be cynical again: basically they're just opportunists.

It all started with the "Progress Party" (Fremskridtspartiet) back in 1976. PP was initially based on libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism (their leader actually went to prison for tax evasion). The early leaders saw the US as an ideal example and their stated goal was to reduce the government's bureaucracy as much as possible (at the time, government expenditure had grown to record levels and government debt was beginning to enter runaway mode. This was later solved in 1986 with austerity programs) as well as reducing personal income tax to zero.

They won surprisingly and "bigly" (28/179 seats in parliament... no small player) in 1976. Because of the fast success, they didn't have much of any political organization (the party leader wasn't really into paperwork) and no real ideology anyway (just a bunch of ideas), and so the party floundered in direction. Lots of internal disagreement. I'm sure we can recognize much of this in the Trump Administration as well ("What do you mean I have to bring my own staff/administration to the White House when I become President?!").

Unlike the other parties with libertarian leanings (e.g. Venstre, which means left but is actually on the right being the neoliberals and the Conservatives), the PP were also eurosceptics (Dexiters?).

In the 1980s, PP added a strong nationalist component seeking to ban all further immigration from Muslim countries including deporting all current immigrants. This is what they became most known for in the general public and to some degree this and the dexiting would be the unifying thread going forward. But de facto they mostly served as an obstructionist/deregulation party whose main policy was being in opposition. Perhaps because of this + the lack of internal organization, the party fractured into those who believed that maybe being pragmatic and working with other political parties would be smarter and traditionalists (compare to the Freedom Caucus) who believed in holding the line against any new regulation.

This resulted in a giant clusterfuck in which the party splintered and spun off several smaller parties over the years. "The Free Democrats", "Freedom 2000", and "Danish People's Party" all of which were initially smaller than the parent-party. Only the latter survived. In 2006 there was another scandal when the chairman welcomed people from "Danish Front" (self-declared white supremacists) causing some members to quit in protest and the party splintered again. In any case, the party still exists but it has not held seats in parliament since 2001.

Now ... DPP is the more interesting one when they fractured out, they were down to 4/179 but they now hold 37/179 seats which makes them the second-largest party. However, they specifically DID NOT want to be in government perhaps wisely understanding that if they were they would be held accountable for the outcomes of their policies. Instead they occasionally support the government which is a coalition of Venstre (the neoliberals, see above) and the Conservative (compare those to traditional US conservatives minus the religion).

So what are the current policies, if any, of the DPP?

They're still primarily an anti-immigration (at some point they literally declared themselves as the anti-muslim party) and anti-euro party. This is also the dimension along which they manage to trade votes with the government getting various admissions to restrict immigration policies thus resulting in Europe's hardest immigration policies(*). If they could build a wall, they would. Basically the aim is to prevent a multi-ethnic country which for them means reducing non-Western immigration and mandating cultural assimilation (mandatory language tests and lessons, teaching Christian(+) religion in schools, ... ).

(+) Even as it has an official state religion, Denmark is one of the least religious countries in the world so this is mainly to piss off the Muslims.

In terms of social policies (and this is where the interesting syncretic part comes in) they aim to improve conditions for the elderly and the disabled. For this reason, they've won a over lot of voters from the left, in particular the "Social People's Party" (think of them as democratic socialists, sardonically known as the party of school teachers and social workers) and the "Social Democrats" which used to be the biggest party. (Maybe compare to what happened for Trump in Michigan et al. these would be the equivalent of Social Democrat voters going to the DPP.)

They also mandate zero-tolerance policies for criminals when it comes to things like rape, murder, animal cruelty, and DUI but I suppose for reasons of personal preservation, they want to reduce punishment for hate speech of which they tend to be quite tolerant. Go figure

(*) On a personal note, for a few years, it was literally not possible for DW and I to move to Denmark until earlier this year when new laws replaced the old ones after lots of pressure. There were several examples of spouses living in the country and getting deported or immigrants who had lived there for decades and getting deported because their "attachment" to the country was no longer considered strong enough under the tighter rules. All that !@#$ ended, but it certainly caused some damage to individual people and families for the several years it lasted. There was literally an example in the papers about a Danish astrophysicist who had married an American woman and sold their house in California moving the family, children included, to Denmark ... and then the rules changed and the wife gets a letter from immigration services telling her that the rules had changed and that the children could stay but she had to leave the country. That could easily have been us. This still could be us, but in the US.

In terms of voter statistics ... and this will sound very familiar to the US.

DPP increasingly attracts unskilled workers (which used to go to the Social Democrats) in proportion to the socioeconomic Gini index divide ("as the rich get richer" more and more hate the elites because they aren't elite themselves). The bigger the divide, the stronger the attraction. Traditional European/Danish politics primarily happens along the socioeconomic divide but with increasing refugee streams due to ME wars and climate change, there's also a split forming along the sociocultural divide which is becoming increasingly important and for some people more so than socioeconomics. Here DPP attracts people who culturally conservative and wants to keep things the way they were (back in the 1950s). Make the country great again, meaning back the way it was.

To bring it all back to the original question: ...

The traditional left-right continuum, where left=deregulate the culture and regulate the economy and right=regulate the culture and deregulate the economy required a 2D-diagram to differentiate the regulation but that doesn't really fit the nationalist/nativist populists as they currently are with Trump, DPP in Denmark, and FN in France, and so on ...

These are in favor of regulating the culture and regulating the economy, that is, in favor of regulation. We only need 1 dimension for that.

Historically, for most of the history of these parties, it has been about regulating the culture (but along nationalist/nativist lines rather than moral lines which is the traditional conservative approach). While they dabbled with free markets it is now realized that this does not benefit their voters, so now they favor economic regulation that benefits their cultural voters: protect the elderly and the unskilled workers (protectionism). What's crazy about is that while they are strong on regulation and in that sense quite anti-libertarian, they still speak the libertarian language of their roots and well enough ("No more taxes!") to get the traditional neoliberal conservatives to go along on economic issues, so...

PS: This would be a lot easier to explain with graphs

[ThisDinosaur]

@ffj
Well, I can't argue with any of that. I still think his campaign probably collaborated nefariously with the Russians. But I understand that people might weigh the circumstantial evidence differently from the starting point you just described.

I thought all the remnant Neanderthal DNA in humans was limited to Neanderthal Male->modern human female interaction.

I believe that current evidence is that matings occurred in both ways, but the most recent matings were human male/Neanderthal female.

Neandertal Father / Modern Mother pairings would have resulted in more miscarriages and less fit offspring. The Neandertal Y is extinct (never been found in living humans) and has several mutations on it that would have triggered the mother's immune system to reject male embryos (which, being half of all conceptions, would reduce this couples' fertility by at least 50%).

@dinosaur @ffj

I am very far from being a Trump supporter, but god does the typical "why are people voting trump and how can we fix this terrible mistake as they are clearly stupid and ignorant and weak" make me mad.

Me, too. When I talk to my lefty friends, they think I'm supporting Trump. When I talk to my righty friends, they think I'm echoing those MSNBC talking heads sitting around "diagnosing" the undereducated yokels in the flyover states. All I'm trying to do is find the common ground and trace where the divergence of opinion starts. People aren't used to anyone talking about Trump without picking sides.

[TimeTravel]

I see Trump (and Putin too) as one that views others as just a pawn to be manipulated anyhow anyway for personal gain. Trump may say he's one your side one moment, then the next toss you under the bus. Looks at the folks that worked for him but got undercut, like Rex Tillerson, just to name one. Another example is Harley-Davidson hard by the Trump made tariffs. One moment, he had a big photo op with Harley-Davidson, only to next slam them by tweets when Harley had to cut jobs and move jobs overseas from the Trump tariffs. I think he even sees Melania Trump as just a pawn, like when she wore that "I really don't care" jacket. Which was just strange. Either that was just terrible taste on her part or if he told her to wear that, then he really doesn't care at all about damaging any credibility she had.

[IlliniDave]

Thanks ThisD and 7wb5,

I was just going off this observation:

No evidence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has been found in modern humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbree ... ern_humans

when it was implied above that it was somehow aggressive male modern human males forcing themselves on poor Neanderthal maidens prior to committing something akin to genocide. The point I was making was in line with the responses--that there was much more to the situation than modern human males running around wreaking havoc.

Perhaps that's changed now, but in my mind the more complex the story gets the more it implies the possibility that the interaction was often more cooperative than hostile, despite the primate origins of both sides.

[BRUTE]

For the facets of the ideology most opposed to any sort of heirarchy, what is the perceived benefit of a non-hierarchical system?

these are typically left-libertarians. the reasons are very similar to the reasons many other humans on the left perceive any type of hierarchy as oppressive or negative.

[BRUTE]

<explains entire history of Denmark>

very interesting how the same dynamics play out in many western countries.

brute has both observations and questions. he will list his questions first:

1.in DLJs perception, is there a "problem" with muslim immigrants in Denmark? in the US, one side claims all muslims are angels, the other side claims they're all terrorist. brute knows a handful of muslims, and they're all nice humans. none of them has terrorized anyone yet, as far as brute can tell. but of course, "they're all terrorists" means "increased chance". brute has heard horror stories about Swedish muslim immigrants and how they are suspected of raping and murdering humans at much higher rates. but these stories are told by the right. but brute just finds it unlikely that there isn't a single muslim who's ever committed a crime.

in short: is the fear of muslims of some Danes based on something real, or is it made up?

2.with Denmark being so unreligious, does DLj see any (positive or negative) effects on politics? some prominent US atheists would make brute believe that if religion were eradicated, all humans would be nice and rational. brute is skeptical to say the least. it seems that Denmark is very low in religion, but has the exact same political dynamics going on that the US has.


now here are brute's observations:

at least in the US, "left -> deregulate culture/regulate economy vs. right -> regulate culture/deregulate economy" is a relatively recent phenomenon. the deregulation of culture started in the late 60s, and deregulating the economy as a principle also seems pretty new (70s/80s? basically "neoliberalism").

or at least it isn't a totally clear left/right split. Teddy Roosevelt was famously pro many regulations and fought large companies. Hoover, who is often blamed for not "doing enough" in the Great Depression, actually intervened in many ways in the economy, including giving the Federal Reserve more power, deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, trying to raise tariffs, and so on. most of the things FDR implemented, Hoover started.

brute has never bought the "right -> deregulate economy" bit. it's always been a farce, just as with the Danish party DLj has mentioned. they say the words, but then they increase military spending and all kinds of handouts, which are all interferences in the economy.

[jennypenny]

going off of jacob's post ... Bret Weinstein equates the left/right debate to debating VHS vs. Betamax -- both are outdated and we need to give up the ghost. I don't see the US functioning well in a multi-party system though, it's too big and diverse. Realigning the parties to a socialism vs. libertarianism scale might work since the needle would move based of the level of government regulation people are comfortable with at any given moment regardless of the type.


@TD and others -- I can't defend everything Trump does any more than an Obama supporter could have defended everything he did during his tenure. I find the word 'supporter' troubling anyway. We should all 'support' the President to some extent regardless of who holds the office. Plus, I can't say I'm a Trumpster even though I voted for him, I don't really like the guy. That said, I'm fairly pleased with how the last 18 months have gone. I know a lot of others (who fall in the middle like I do) who also think so. Even a guess on CNN pointed out that Trump had a pretty good week.


Regarding the OP and Putin -- Putin is apparently pissed because he got nothing out of Trump during their private meeting. Putin is now saying that he is willing to host Trump in Moscow and visit Washington *if* certain conditions are met ... namely that some sanctions are removed to help the Russian economy. Nothing nefarious happened during the meeting*. Trump listened to Putin's requests, gave all kinds of Trump-esque assurances that he'll talk to his people, and then nothing came of them. Now Putin wants some guarantees before agreeing to another summit.

*This is not speculation on my part. This is what people in the WH press corps are saying.

[BRUTE]

brute thinks this map is enlightening:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... -maps.html

humans that live in big cities have different needs than humans that live in the countryside. a solution should focus on realizing there are distinct needs for distinct groups, recognize the boundaries, and try to make both happy.

[TimeTravel]

...

@TD and others -- I can't defend everything Trump does any more than an Obama supporter could have defended everything he did during his tenure. I find the word 'supporter' troubling anyway. We should all 'support' the President to some extent regardless of who holds the office. Plus, I can't say I'm a Trumpster even though I voted for him, I don't really like the guy. That said, I'm fairly pleased with how the last 18 months have gone. I know a lot of others (who fall in the middle like I do) who also think so. Even a guess on CNN pointed out that Trump had a pretty good week.


Regarding the OP and Putin -- Putin is apparently pissed because he got nothing out of Trump during their private meeting. Putin is now saying that he is willing to host Trump in Moscow and visit Washington *if* certain conditions are met ... namely that some sanctions are removed to help the Russian economy. Nothing nefarious happened during the meeting*. Trump listened to Putin's requests, gave all kinds of Trump-esque assurances that he'll talk to his people, and then nothing came of them. Now Putin wants some guarantees before agreeing to another summit.

*This is not speculation on my part. This is what people in the WH press corps are saying.

Difficult for me to support Trump. One reason is because we have someone in office that has disregard for the the entire constitution. We have someone who picks and chooses what works for him. Defends the second amendment yet is against freedom of the press. Instead of aligning with allies, aligns with our enemies. Those are just a couple of examples. I don't seem him as a leader of the country but only one that panders to his base.

For me, if I support or don't support a person isn't because of party as though my leanings on how I've voted in the past is more towards the left, I consider more the person. Him not releasing his taxes was already a deal breaker. I'm not one to forget where as many others let that slide. I see showing the American public taxes as like a job reference. If I was hiring and asked for a reference and the applicant said "Nope, not going to happen" I'd say "Run!!" Whether this is big time job executive job or someone applying as a housekeeper or babysitter.

Read somewhere about why Trump is like a sheep around Putin. Might very well be, no pee-pee tapes, but that Putin has proof of collusion and holds that over Trumps head making Trump do his bidding. Time will tell.

[Mikeallison]

If this thread has proven anything, it's that the guy has everyone dancing to his tune, guessing if he is going to zig or zag haha. Is it a master plan? Is he just winging it? Is he just a complete moron fumbling his way through?

While the world whines, complains, ponders deeply over every little move, Trump acts. He is what Karl Rove wishes he could have been.

"People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

If his heart survives all the Mcdonalds, I'll bet he ends up serving at least 3 terms, and the masses will applaud it.

[IlliniDave]

If this thread has proven anything, it's that the guy has everyone dancing to his tune, guessing if he is going to zig or zag haha. Is it a master plan? Is he just winging it? Is he just a complete moron fumbling his way through?

I've seen this since the beginning, and to me it is blatantly obvious. The biggest mistake a Trump opponent can make is thinking he is a moron. Ask HRC. He may not have a master plan laid out, but step by step he's making progress on most of the things he campaigned on (economy, taxes, undertaking foreign relations from a position of strength and getting results, etc.). We're even seeing the first baby steps of the potential of truly fairer trade in the future starting with the EU. That (continuing to do what he said he would in the face of opposition/criticism) is unusual with presidents in my lifetime with the exception of maybe Reagan (who interestingly enough was also lambasted as being a moron by the media and blue shirts). DT isn't a Mensa candidate, but I think the country was/is at a point where we weren't going to think our way out of the stagnant morass. Going back to the very first "how can the US be so stupid as to elect Trump"-themed thread, I remember mentioning that people were fed up and wanted a man of action as president. It appears they got one.

Random stuff on other sub-topics.

I still find the beholden-to-Putin stuff a real head-scratcher. There is an undisputed chain of facts that link the DNC/Clinton Campaign to Russian-derived anti-Trump disinformation/propaganda that was leaked during the campaign that is simply ignored. At this point the collusion case against Trump seems to hinge on whether or not he may have known about a meeting that he did not attend. That Russia was engaging in cyber attacks against the US was well known prior to the election, announced by Obama, and it's almost laughable that the gang who stood around with their you-know-what's in their hands and let it happen are now embedded with the media and calling the subsequent president a traitor. There is a lot of downplay of the fact that Russian cyber incursions spanned both sides of the aisle. In the meantime the current administration has imposed sanctions against Russia, expelled Russians from the US, declined to back down when Russia issued warnings regarding US action in Syria, and killed a couple hundred Russian mercenaries fighting for the Syrian government. And, presuming what jennypenny relayed above is accurate, frustrated Putin again by not acquiescing to some part of whatever Putin asked for in the summit. Putin would not be negotiating if Trump was beholden to him. Yet he seems quite anxious to negotiate.

jacob, that is all very interesting. I guess we have a different view of the situation here in the US because I see plenty of appetite from the far left, at the federal level, to regulate culture, something I view as the biggest danger the far left brings. But it is true that the right is okay with some amount of culture regulation, so long as it occurs on the state/local level. Trump himself does appear to be trying to scale back economic regulation, but Republicans in general seem to only give it lip service. Regulations often serve as a moat to protect the established players in a given sector, so all the politicians out there who are beholden to the lobby industry probably can't be trusted with them. I've read (don't remember where so can't provide a reference) that one of the reasons many red shirts seem to work at cross purposes w/Trump is that Trump doesn't court the lobbyists and so isn't part of the team.

I think some of the challenges the EU has faced in recent years parallel some of the historic US struggles. Nationalism in the EU is arguably analogous to "states rights" in the US. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that some amount of the nationalism in the EU is natural bristling against an external entity trumping the local will of the people. I guess you could say that in the US our coalitions are formed ahead of time, and the de facto two party system that's existed since the civil war (probably not a coincidence, that) has always had somewhat of a amoeba-like dynamic. I know in the three decades I've observed politics I've seen several complete reversals--I remember when the red shirts were pro-immigration and the ones who believed everything bad in the world had origins in Russia, for example, while the blue shirts took the opposite stance on both. I sense it is possible we're at the beginning of another shift. As you pointed out in another discussion, the folks in the wealthiest counties are now donning the blue shirts, and if the #walkaway movement continues to have traction the disenfranchised will migrate at least as far as purple territory rather than continuing to fly the blue as a bloc.

[slsdly]

@IlliniDave: Could you elaborate on truly fairer trade? Between goods and services, the USA's own trade numbers indicated a surplus with Canada. I realize the administration loves to just select goods, but NAFTA provides provisions for services just as it does goods. I feel it is disingenuous to exclude one or the other -- do you agree or disagree, and if the latter, why?

Trump says we need to be "punished" because the original deal didn't include provisions for dairy. Well, Canadians have their own opinions about softwood lumber too. I'm not sure if a dispute between us in a handful of industries is worth declaring war on us for what seems to be a pretty balanced arrangement, with a tilt in the USA's favour?

[IlliniDave]

slsdy, what I would like is truly free trade, but what I was referring to is the reported agreement with the EU where after some economic sabre rattling from both sides the plan reportedly is to institute an environment where all barriers (which I assume includes tariffs, quotas, government subsidies, etc.) would come down except for automobile imports/exports. I don't know why autos were excepted, but as long as the future barriers are the same in both directions, I would see that as "fair".

Regarding NAFTA we'll just have to see what they come up with in the end. I think it's a mistake to look at Trumps opening gambits as his end goals. I don't think the US has declared war on Canada since the South Park movie came out! I think Trump will be perfectly happy so long as whatever barriers remain (hopefully few or none) are symmetric. I think Trump talks about goods in his public remarks because it is simpler. I would agree that services should be just as freely exported/imported as goods. Are you saying the US puts up barriers to prevent Canadian services in the US?

I don't think his purpose is to somehow institute a US trade surplus across the board. I think the goal is to minimize the overall role government manipulations play in trade. The US will still probably have a trade deficit even if the playing field is leveled to the highest degree possible. The belief in some circles (I can neither dispute or concur) is that the US trade deficit is artificially high because of net government involvements, and that such activities on the part of governments makes it unnecessarily hard for US companies to keep their operations in the US.

The difficulty is that it is tricky to make things symmetrical when barriers remain. Take pulp and timber. If Canada "retaliated" by placing an equivalent tariff on US pulp and timber I expect it would be pretty meaningless since Canada is likely not buying much of that from the US. Trump putting a 275% tariff on Canadian dairy imports to the US would be equally meaningless. It wouldn't serve to get anyone's attention. That's why I think wide scale elimination of barriers is the way to go.

[IlliniDave]

... but why more people don't make a stand against this sloppy journalism is beyond me.

I remember during the primaries hearing about the supposed racist remarks DT was making, and heard the quotes supplied by the media to back it up. Then I got on the internet and starting listening to the entirety of the remarks from which the quotes were extracted and found that the manipulation of them (and other facets of the "reporting") was staggeringly disingenuous, as well as completely one-sided. And the more people call out the outlets, the deeper they dig in. I think "sloppy journalism" is far too kind. My favorite trait of Trump (there aren't a ton of those) is that he will not let such antics intimidate him. Far to many non-Progressive "leaders" simply wilt when attacked. Apparently refusing to tuck tail and run from them is now considered being anti-free press. It's possible we're seeing the death throes of the traditional television media format, and it is more desperation for ratings than enacting a charter to deceive that is playing out.

[TimeTravel]

My view is that Trump is an arsonist that calls himself a fire marshall.

He'll light a match, not worrying about the consequences but all ready to claim credit for stopping a fire that he created in the first place.

I'm no fan of him, but from a political standpoint, I think his best strategy is to keep on lying and keep on dividing. By getting voters to then argue and fight among themselves, that could lead to a re-election.

[Jason]

I can't remember the name of the journalist but she encapsulated the linguistic issue with Trump The Candidate as follows: Trump supporters took him seriously but not literally, Trump detractors took him literally but not seriously. I think that's highly insightful.

The question is now how to do we deal with this literal/serious dichotomy with Trump The President. Detractors think he is going to blow hard the US into a nuclear war. Supporters say its just more of the same. I think there is a difference between shit talking your Presidential opponents as a candidate and shit talking foreign leaders as a President although I have to admit not so much as I did before he became Shit Talker in Chief. His back and forth on Putin is a stain on our Gettysburg Address aspirations but ultimately when all is said and done, I think the issue remains the same in our post FDR world: the office of the Presidency has taken on an undue significance in the American problem solving consciousness than was originally intended. I always harken back to that scene in "Nixon" when Anthony Hopkins addresses the protesting students at the Lincoln Memorial realizes how little affect he ultimately has and will have. So in essence both sides are contributing to the problem on that front by equating status and attention with real impact and efficacy.

Does Trump set fires, sure. But the country was already doused in kerosene. Where most wouldn't throw a lit match, Trump does. But I don't think of him as an arsonist in the traditional sense because he knows the fire department is following him around and people love fires as long as its not their house that burns to the ground. And of course fires get The Huuge Ratings and Trump has reminded us that once you put a TV camera on something its time to stop pretending we are solely in the realm of non-fiction.

[IlliniDave]

The question is now how to do we deal with this literal/serious dichotomy with Trump The President.

Being a Midwesterner, which biases one towards being a little on the stoic side, the old adage actions speak louder than words come to mind, maybe results speak louder than words would fit the situation better. I haven't seen any results that are particularly horrifying, and it's a bit to early to chisel the successes in stone. It's not my personal M.O. (Midwestern thing again) but sometimes blunt words are necessary, even between friends. There may be a line somewhere, but I couldn't tell you where it is. Even fires and demolition have their places.

Trump has reminded us that once you put a TV camera on something its time to stop pretending we are solely in the realm of non-fiction

I like that, very insightful.

[Mikeallison]

At the risk of sounding superior, it's almost as if these people have no street smarts. As if they have never encountered the uncle that was full of shit telling stories for the sake of a good story.

I think Jason nailed it above with the literal vs serious quote. With the left now days, it doesn't seem to matter what you do, it matters what you say. If trump were to support open borders, abortion, gun control in his rhetoric, but enact policy that ended plan parenthood, supported the 2nd A, and built a wall, the left would still love him.

For them it is not necessary that you walk the walk, but you better damn well talk the talk. Hypocrisy is accepted as a matter of course, but being politically incorrect in your speech is not.

On the right it's a bit of the opposite, I'm sure there are a few idiots who take everything he says at face value, but most people see him like your uncle figure, he may be full of it, but he has your back, and gets stuff done. For the red states, talk is cheap, action louder than words.

I still don't really know what to think of him myself. I voted for him out of protest and despair, but I have to admit, I'm mildly impressed so far, and it sure as hell hasn't been boring.