The Trump Problem (the real one)

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
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Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

The problem, as we have discussed in this thread, is that they don't want any of the potential solutions. Their solution, at least it seems to be the one they want, is a trade war, which will hurt other Americans just to give them the specific job they want. Though, it's not highly likely the trade war would get them a ton of jobs for reasons we have discussed before.

Of course, the same people that will be hurt by this trade war are the same people willing to be taxed to pay for education, welfare, etc. to help transition them, but they don't seem to want that. They seem to be falling into this trap:

"they’d prefer to live in a world where the average salary was $25,000 and they earned $50,000 than one where they earned $100,000 but the average was $200,000."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... te/403201/
First, given the choice, I would also prefer to make twice average income, rather than half average income. Giving everyone more money just increases prices, basic economics, but written for an audience with low appreciation for economics, in general.

Second, grouping the people who have differing opinions (as I did above) into a homogeneous "they", is just lazy thinking. It prevents us from discussing solutions, because it misdefines the problem.

Economic changes in small towns is a self solving problem. The capable leave. It is that simple. The rest make do. Your constant reference to the disability of Mississippi residents is a great example. Those who could compete, did. And those that couldn't, left, and those who couldn't leave, made do. And used what resources were available.

Now, you being offended that this last group isn't happy with the solution set provided by your side, is your problem. They aren't hypocrites, they are just getting by. These people will never be grateful to take your handouts, and by the way, neither is anyone else. Welfare recipients, in general, regardless of race or history, or program are not happy about their status. It is kinda BS that you segregate this group to harass for not blindly supporting your cause.

These people would have voted red, regardless of the candidate.

Your Trump problem was people who would normally vote Democrat, but either changed their mind, or stayed home. That is all a Democratic problem.

Recasting this as a racist, whitey, rural problem is just spin, from the powers that be, within your party, to keep the followers following. The problem and solution all fall within a real change in leadership within your party.

Trump vs Anybody Else, was an easy Democratic victory. And now that we have 4 years of The Douchebag, and his backup band, the neoliberals desperately need you to focus on hypocrites from Mississippi, rather than them.

I expect 4 years of OMG RACIST WTF NAZIS!!!! Or you and yours could focus on cleaning house.

For the record, I don't expect registries, or a wall, or brown shirts. However, if I am wrong, please let me know. My name will be on the petition, or whatever form of protest is available. But I'm not going to protest a douche for just being a douche. Life is too short.

Chad
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Chad »

@jacob
Thanks. That really isn't Slate. Well, that's what I get for a quick no depth visit to this thread.

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Ego
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Ego »

@Rigger, I think you are missing the bigger point here. We've had bad presidents in the past. Trump isn't just bad. This isn't like anything else every before. If you need evidence of his fantastic powers of manipulation you need only look at what he did to the fourth estate.

Is he a racist or not? An isolationist or a globalist? A hawk or a dove? Does he want to demolish the Republican party or does he want to work with those who have led the party for decades? Is he beholden to nobody or beholden to foreign powers? Does he want to deport Muslims or welcome them? Is he draining the lobbyist-filled swamp or mining it for talent?

Nobody knows, not even those who are in his inner circle because for each individual member, their presence is almost certainly contradicted by another member of the inner circle who holds the exact opposite view. This may seem like dysfunction or chaos. It is not. It is by design. There is a method to his madness.

This is just a snippet. I encourage you to watch the entire thing.
https://vimeo.com/192285341

Notice the word "dark" and "dark uncertainty". Bannon just spoke about this yesterday. Who did he learn it from? Is that where we want to go? Where else do they maintain power by pitting factions against one another?

Has anyone read anything by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky? I haven't yet. But I will now. I think I'll start with Doomed City.

For the U.S., this isn't like anything that we've ever seen before.

Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

https://www.facebook.com/benjamin.orozc ... 181443168/

This video may help. Be calm, get your footing, get an accurate feel for the situation. React appropriately.

Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

I generally avoid long quotes, but:
17. Isn’t this a lot of special pleading? Like, sure, you can make up various non-racist explanations for every single racist-sounding thing Trump says, and say a lot of it is just coincidence or Trump being inexplicably weird, but eventually the coincidences start adding up. You have to look at this kind of thing in context.

I actually disagree with this really strongly and this point deserves a post of its own because it’s really important. But let me try to briefly explain what I mean.

Suppose you’re talking to one of those ancient-Atlantean secrets-of-the-Pyramids people. They give you various pieces of evidence for their latest crazy theory, such as (and all of these are true):

1. The latitude of the Great Pyramid matches the speed of light in a vacuum to five decimal places.
2. Famous prophet Edgar Cayce, who predicted a lot of stuff with uncanny accuracy, said he had seen ancient Atlanteans building the Pyramid in a vision.
3. There are hieroglyphs near the pyramid that look a lot like pictures of helicopters.
4. In his dialogue Critias, Plato relayed a tradition of secret knowledge describing a 9,000-year-old Atlantean civilization.
5. The Egyptian pyramids look a lot like the Mesoamerican pyramids, and the Mesoamerican name for the ancient home of civilization is “Aztlan”
6. There’s an underwater road in the Caribbean, whose discovery Edgar Cayce predicted, and which he said was built by Atlantis
7. There are underwater pyramids near the island of Yonaguni.
8. The Sphinx has apparent signs of water erosion, which would mean it has to be more than 10,000 years old.

She asks you, the reasonable and well-educated supporter of the archaeological consensus, to explain these facts. After looking through the literature, you come up with the following:

1. This is just a weird coincidence.
2. Prophecies have so many degrees of freedom that anyone who gets even a little lucky can sound “uncannily accurate”, and this is probably just what happened with Cayce, so who cares what he thinks?
3. Lots of things look like helicopters, so whatever.
4. Plato was probably lying, or maybe speaking in metaphors.
5. There are only so many ways to build big stone things, and “pyramid” is a natural form. The “Atlantis/Atzlan” thing is probably a coincidence.
6. Those are probably just rocks in the shape of a road, and Edgar Cayce just got lucky.
7. Those are probably just rocks in the shape of pyramids. But if they do turn out to be real, that area was submerged pretty recently under the consensus understanding of geology, so they might also just be pyramids built by a perfectly normal non-Atlantean civilization.
8. We still don’t understand everything about erosion, and there could be some reason why an object less than 10,000 years old could have erosion patterns typical of older objects.

I want you to read those last eight points from the view of an Atlantis believer, and realize that they sound really weaselly. They’re all “Yeah, but that’s probably a coincidence”, and “Look, we don’t know exactly why this thing happened, but it’s probably not Atlantis, so shut up.”

This is the natural pattern you get when challenging a false theory. The theory was built out of random noise and ad hoc misinterpretations, so the refutation will have to be “every one of your multiple superficially plausible points is random noise, or else it’s a misinterpretation for a different reason”.

If you believe in Atlantis, then each of the seven facts being true provides “context” in which to interpret the last one. Plato said there was an Atlantis that sunk underneath the sea, so of course we should explain the mysterious undersea ruins in that context. The logic is flawless, it’s just that you’re wrong about everything.

This is how I feel about demands that we interpret Trump’s statements “in context”, too.
This is from http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/yo ... ying-wolf/ who seems to be a progressive with his head still attached.

Yes, there is the line, "If you can keep your calm, while all around you are losing their minds, you probably don't understand the problem." Maybe I just don't understand. Because, I just saw a douchebag win the presidency. And his opponent was so bad, I'm relieved. We had a long list of REAL problems with Clinton, including effective use of power (for evil). I won't go into how bad she was, that's been covered. What I can say about Trump is he seems ineffective. Let's say that again, ineffective. He took a bundle of his daddy's money, actively invested it in real estate, and didn't do very well with it. He started Trump University, a school for losers to become diploma bearing losers. He is a reality show stuffed shirt with the natural leadership and strategic thinking of Honey Boo Boo. He had less than half the popular vote, running against an opponent with more baggage than we have seen from a major party candidate in a century.

I don't deny that he is a racist. I've never met a native New Yorker (City, not state) who wasn't racist. And, he's 70. So, weird tweets aside, I think he's racist. That doesn't mean he is going to appoint the KKK to the cabinet.
Nobody knows, not even those who are in his inner circle because for each individual member, their presence is almost certainly contradicted by another member of the inner circle who holds the exact opposite view.
Excellent! The more infighting, the better. Again, this points to ineffective.
This is just a snippet. I encourage you to watch the entire thing.
https://vimeo.com/192285341
Yes, I watched the whole thing. I think you may have missed the key point. "Angry people CLICK." There is an industry trying to keep you outraged. In fear. Off balance. Trump is one of the tools they are using. YOU are one of the tools they are using. Stop emoting at the problem, get your footing, keep your balance, assess the world around you. React accordingly.

Chad
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Chad »

Inspired by Riggerjack's postings here is a surprisingly similar take on Bannon:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 13554b40d9

Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

This country survived FDR, Johnson, Nixon, Jackson and Washington. Trump would have to be pretty amazing to come up with a new way to abuse power.

And it's not like he is deep, effective or charismatic. Al Gore would have wiped the floor with him in a general election.

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Ego
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Ego »

Riggerjack wrote:
......
This is the natural pattern you get when challenging a false theory.
But.... you never challenged the theory. If you've got specific challenges, I'm all ears.

If anything, you agreed with it....
Riggerjack wrote: Yes, I watched the whole thing. I think you may have missed the key point. "Angry people CLICK."
I agree 100%. Yes, angry people click. You are confusing two things:

1) Angry people click.
2) Talking about the fact that angry people click, how they are manipulated and what that means for our new-normal.

I am doing #2.
jennypenny wrote:Trump hires Bannon from Breitbart to run his campaign ... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/us/po ... afort.html

This is probably the beginning of the end for Trump. My personal feelings might be clouding my judgment though since I have some knowledge of what goes on inside Breitbart. IMO, in the years since Andrew Breitbart's death, Bannon has taken a fact-based conservative outlet and helped turn it into a rag sheet who's only position is anti-allthingsliberal. Bannon's not actually *for* anything, only anti-Obama and now anti-Clinton.

Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and Bannon will surprise me. If I had to guess though, he'll repackage the campaign as 'Trump against the world' (including mainstream republicans) and set Trump loose.
This is how someone with insider knowledge felt about him running the campaign. Now Bannon has a senior position as adviser to the President of the United States. He specializes in generating angry clicks. He claims to love the dark. Go back up and read #2.

This is different than anything we in the U.S. have seen before. It has been seen in different forms in different places. It may be wise to look at those places and learn from them.

Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

This is different than anything we in the U.S. have seen before.
We have had:
The whiskey rebellion
The Jackson presidency
A president travel in drag to avoid assassination
An attempted secession
President Hays, who lost, but was still President
FDR, who was radical, beyond the belief of the times, who threatened to pack the Supreme Court if they failed to comply.
A few world wars
A few police actions
A president retire and be pardoned, rather than face prosecution
And plenty of other drama that doesn't come to mind.

Currently, we have a 20t debt, continued deficit spending, we are at war throughout the Middle East with a poorly defined enemy.

But a mysterious advisor to the President using words like, "dark" and "dark uncertainty" is the unprecedented crisis that is going to bring us down?

Riggerjack
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Riggerjack »

I'm not arguing that Trump/pence/bannon are good, or even competent. I'm saying they are not the Unholy Trinity.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: This is different than anything we in the U.S. have seen before. It has been seen in different forms in different places. It may be wise to look at those places and learn from them.
Right, because now the Plutocracy having gorged itself at length upon the global buffet has started to shit ever closer to where it eats. Divide the savages into two groups (Hutu/Ttsi, Muslim/Hindu, red/blue) then pit them against each other, and then pick the minority or most malleable to receive favored status, beta to the Plutocracy itself. Once you have them adequately distracted, then secure whatever resources are available in the realm under secure cover of crony-capitalism and open the tap with direction of flow towards Plutocratic coffers.

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Ego
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Ego »

Riggerjack wrote: But a mysterious advisor to the President using words like, "dark" and "dark uncertainty" is the unprecedented crisis that is going to bring us down?
Bring us down? I said several times now that this is different than anything we've seen before. We have a president who used very different techniques to get elected than those we've ever seen before. He was unconventional. He has ushered in a massive change in the way we elect people.

Many of the situations you've mentioned have been the result of those with bad intent. Does Trump have bad intent? Nobody seems to know.... and that not-knowing is by design. Maybe, as you say, he will be ineffectual. Maybe he will be very effective in good ways. Maybe not. Who knows?

One thing we do know is that he is a highly effective manipulator.

Notice that whenever someone criticizes his current actions or the people he appoints or the things he say or the people who are celebrating his win... the response is quite interesting:

1) He doesn't turn the other cheek. He fires back with unpresidential sociopathic venom.

2) How many times have we heard... "See that's why people voted for him! This is all your fault because you harped on Bannon's antisemitism", or...... a hundred other legitimate criticisms. This is sheer brilliance. He set up a feedback loop to ensure and justify control through both acquiescence and resistance. It is the quintessential move of the sociopath. Your reaction to previous abuse justifies continued abuse. It has been well studied in abusive relationships and prison guards. Now we have it in a president. Yipee!

Did it work? Well, look at the people lining up to "work with him". Good luck with that.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: Your reaction to previous abuse justifies continued abuse. It has been well studied in abusive relationships and prison guards. Now we have it in a president. Yipee!
So, Joe 6-Pack has the internal emotional landscape of Sylvia Plath? What keeps individuals embroiled in abusive relationships is their tendency to react rather than respond. It is extremely common for both parties in a divorce to describe their ex as narcissistic. It is my belief that this is just another level of white hat/black hat. It is more productive to observe that person A is exhibiting narcissistic behavior, analyze under what conditions such behavior is more likely to be manifested, and then RESPOND by reducing those conditions. IOW, I am not saying that the "Good German" heuristic is necessarily completely off-base, but there is a functional opposite and a dysfunctional opposite.

I was teaching a very multi-cultural group of teenagers this morning, and they were goofing off a bit, playing video games and watching highlights of the Lions game. One of them showed another something inappropriate on his phone, and the second teen loudly responded "Dude, no way!
That's the kind of thing that got Trump elected.", and all the kids around him laughed uproariously. I couldn't help but smile.

bryan
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by bryan »

Today the executive branch has way more power than pretty much any point in the USG's past. Power has been relegated away from congress to different, effectively autonomous agencies, that are not, effectively, beholden to the US Constitution (or it's gist). A president wouldn't need some "Muslim registry," you just need to have a few big data software or machine learning engineers granted access to various USG databases and have at it. A president that lacks the morals or faith in the system of government we have is a dangerous president (given that the executive branch does the enforcing, has all the guns and other tools).

The US empire may have survived Jackson (the American Indians maybe not so much), depressions, world wars, and a Civil War, but to project that undefeated record forward is quite mistaken.

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Ego
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Ego »

Apparently Bannon is a fan of Howe and Strauss. So much so that he made a documentary about the Fourth Turning.

Article about his interest in it
http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon- ... d=tcoshare

The full documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3SLtP10NQ8

Chad
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Chad »

Good to keep this in mind as we move forward.

http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen- ... ?r=UK&IR=T

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Ego
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Ego »

Along those same lines from the School of Life. We are reverting to the mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUaz2h8Wz5c

Dragline
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by Dragline »

Ego wrote:Apparently Bannon is a fan of Howe and Strauss. So much so that he made a documentary about the Fourth Turning.

Article about his interest in it
http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon- ... d=tcoshare
"A second, more alarming, interaction did not show up in the film. Bannon had clearly thought a long time both about the domestic potential and the foreign policy implications of Strauss and Howe. More than once during our interview, he pointed out that each of the three preceding crises had involved a great war, and those conflicts had increased in scope from the American Revolution through the Civil War to the Second World War. He expected a new and even bigger war as part of the current crisis, and he did not seem at all fazed by the prospect.

I did not agree, and said so. But, knowing that the history of international conflict was my own specialty, he repeatedly pressed me to say we could expect a conflict at least as big as the Second World War in the near or medium term. I refused."

Confirms my suspicions. If you are eagerly expecting "a new and even bigger war", chances are you'll start it yourself.

George the original one
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by George the original one »

From the Stephen Hawking piece:
> With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present.

What incentive, apart from avoiding an armed force forcibly separating the privileged from their resource, is there that would encourage the sharing?

The Trump voters appear to say "more jobs" is an answer, but that flies in the face of 4.8% unemployment and the current tight labor market. They certainly can't have their old jobs back because that ship sailed. Maybe they're really saying "better jobs" is the answer? If so, then they have to meet the market requirements and the market isn't going to change to suit them.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Trump Problem (the real one)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What incentive, apart from avoiding an armed force forcibly separating the privileged from their resource, is there that would encourage the sharing?
Polyamory?

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