Zanten said:
UnderstatedCornHole said:
I agree, seems reasonable. You haven't made a judgement.
What would you consider grounds for condemning Trump going forward that someone who thinks he should be given a chance? I think saying there are concerns is completely fair but specifically, what would need to turn up to make those concerns something genuinely corrupt? How would that be proven and shown? How would liberals be satisfied that those concerns were baseless?
See that's my issue here really with the liberals and that includes deskpro2k3 and Soundwave in this thread, they have this style of placing a bomb then running away and then placing another bomb. It's what all liberals do, it's very hard to actually have a conversation.
Trump did this, ok well he might not have done that but he did that, and that, oh he did that too (etc)
Don't take that the wrong way, it's not intended to be inflammatory, it's how it reads. There doesn't seem to be any concrete points to respond to apart from adhominem.
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Well, here's the thing.
I HAVE made a judgement, but that doesn't mean it's set in stone, more a 'work in progress' based on what has happened so far; judgement need not be this binary, 'Totally Open,' 'Totally Judged' thing, outside the legal system of course. When it comes to one's own personal judgement, all we really have to go on is what we see and hear, and how we measure that against our own beliefs and values. As new information is made available, one should be prepared to re-evaluate their previously held beliefs, judgements, etc.
With that in mind, I've done everything I can to strip away the things that Trump has not, himself, said and done when it comes to my considerations. So I won't put much weight on stuff like the report that Ivanka Trump sat in on Trump's meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, or the report that Trump wanted to give his children high security clearances, or the idea that diplomats could feel pressured to stay at Trump-owned hotels, etc.
But even then, what I am left with has me set rather firmly against him for the moment, and nothing really 'For' Trump other than a hopeless sense of 'Well, crap, we're stuck with him now, maybe it WON'T be a complete disaster!'
This could certainly change once he gets into office, IF the actions he undertakes then are more promising than those he has undertaken now.
Allow me to present my reasons, if you wish to address me specifically on any or all, I will not run away. ^.^ (Though may occasionally take a day or two; holiday craziness and such.)
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For example, I call him a liar. I don't choose that word lightly, or randomly, and it's in no way unrelated to the issue, because Trump being a liar is actually pretty crucial when it comes to processing and assigning 'weight' to anything he says. If you disagree with my assessment that he us a liar, I can go into more detail of course, but for the sake of brevity I'll keep this post moving. But if you at least agree that Trump's been as 'loose' with the truth as any crooked politician, I assume you also agree that it's important people KNOW about that when dealing with something Trump says. In the same way one should keep Peter Molyneux's track record in mind every time he goes on record gushing about how totally ground-breaking his next game will be.
In addition, his cabinet picks have been less than encouraging. We're talking about a man who railed against the idea that the current establishment was bought and paid for by the rich elite, who was going to run for office and serve the common people. Yet once he was elected, IMMEDIATELY turned around and filled his cabinet with the rich elite. Goldman Sachs execs, bankers, oil bigwigs, people who donated large sums to his campaign and even in the case of Linda McMahon at least to his FOUNDATION. The cabinet is like an 'Everything Wrong With The Political System' diorama. Will they do some good? Probably! Will they also do bad? Probably! Are the industries they're linked to going to thrive even more under their watch, at virtually any cost? That's a pretty safe bet, and at that point the question becomes 'What will the cost end up being?'
Which brings us to his choice to have the EPA run by a man who consistently worked to undermine the very idea that climate change is a man-made concern; it's a viewpoint that runs in direct contradiction to the conclusions the vast majority of the scientific community, BUT is pretty damn convenient for most of the industries in the world since the regulations that spawn in response to fighting climate change cost these companies money. The tobacco industry used to dig in its heels against claims that smoking cigarettes were linked to such icky things as lung cancer, even after the Surgeon General decisively settled the matter in 1964, because ultimately that kind of shit, even when true, makes it harder to sell cigarettes. =P
(Interesting side note, guess who was on the Tobacco industry's side about that back in 2000! Our upcoming Vice President Elect! The fact that his family business, now defunct, operated a chain of a couple of hundred stores called 'Tobacco Road' proooobably had nothing to do with it. I wasn't really going anywhere with this, just dug it up while fleshing out the Tobacco industry parallel and found it a funny coincidence. xP )
His choice for who will oversee the nation's education system raises red flags that, rather than try to improve the nation's public education system, his administration may instead seek to defund and dismantle that system in favor of private, for-profit institutions.
The fact that he has delayed bringing up any explanation on how he would avoid conflicts of interest is concerning- especially given he eschewed a blind trust entirely. (Because no, putting your children in charge of your business is NOT a blind trust. Not unless he plans to avoiding contacting them at all for the next four years.)
Jesus, this post is getting long. So, real quick, his total lack of restraint when dealing with criticism, his bright idea to leverage a jab against the One China policy, (not as a principled stance against the tyranny of a foreign nation, mind you, but strictly because he think he can use it to make China do what he wants at the bargaining table,) that Department of Energy questionnaire that the Trump transition team now insists was distributed by someone in that team without the consent or knowledge of the others, SO MUCH about the Carrier deal and a lot of the shit he said when he was just running to be the Republican candidate that, since he's a liar, may or may not even be anything he plans to pursue.
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Phew. x_x
Honestly, while a connection to Russia- which could have major and potentially catastrophic global implications if true, especially if Russia's still got territorial expansion in mind- is worth concern, there's also a lot of OTHER stuff I've got to worry about. =P
Right now Trump is just arranging his pieces on the board, no significant changes (positive OR negative) have been made because he has yet to grasp the reins. But the pieces he has chosen- their beliefs, their history and their actions- should be considered.
Giving Trump a chance doesn't mean ignoring everything he does UNTIL he's actually in the Oval Office, after all.
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Right well, from the get go here I'll say I agree with every single one of your points of grey areas on Trump. The important factor is that there have been so many grey areas that to argue one of them may be reasonable but to argue every single one under the guise of plausible denyiability would be disingeous, much like Russia denying involvment in Ukraine completely a couple of years ago on RT. It's plausible 50% of it is not true, it's plausible 75% of it is untrue. But it's implausible all of it is a stitch up.
I'm absolutely pro-Trump, but not to a fault; I'm not going to stand back and twist an event to suit my bias. But I would like to provide a bit of a back story, one that the Trump phenomenon has struck a cord with. (just checked your profile and you're from the UK like me so you may well be on the same page to some degree, or certainly be able to empaphise with the following).
This isn't politically correct and I'm guilty of the same thing I call the liberals out on for this, in terms of not quantifying my annoyance or concern. In essence I am sick to death of
Political correctness, dishonest politians (not liars, I mean weasils), the pussy footing around Islamic "issues" let's call them, the mainstream allegedly impartial BBC that is a beacon of hope (I need to vomit), SJWs, Youtube bloggers, liberal academic institutions, "scientiest" that have a job because of public and EU funding, neo-cons dressed as humanitarian saviours.
The fact I cannot even DISCUSS most of these topics in a public forum without the feeling that I will be made into a villain was a strong force and still is in Trump.
Back during the Ukraine situation with Crimea I watched all the news on all networks. Al Jazeeria at the time seemed the most impartial, and rightly so it had no direct vested interest, RT looked like some 2-bit recreation of the soviet era broadcasting. The BBC was fairly straight down the line in it's usual style over substance ye olde english way of not actually giving much background. CNN was a joke. Obviously all these outlets were just pouring out the government view of who was funding them.
I was so angry watching Petere Lavelle talk utter crap about Ukraine on RT, Oksana Boyko having alleged frank interviews with genuinely impartial UN representatives, and I don't mean the biased human rights wing that the BBC quotes as being the same thing as the core UN, it was a charade of epic proportions. (Just to add I'm not denying the US had some interfering there in the Ukraine).
My gripe though here is that there are no good guys, there are no bad guys, it's just one big power struggle. It just so happens when events don't impinge on a nations politics that nation's news outlets are able to be basically - honest, like Al Jazeera was.
Fast forward to the US election and we saw that same thing play out.
Trump said this, Trump said that, none of it was important or mattered to my core values of who I am or how I see the world. The introduction of feigned outrage amongst SJWs over "words" making a mainstream impact on reporting on CNN especially. Hell, Fox News had become the voice of the centre and was my go to for "fair and balanced" news!
This is one hell of a ramble to get across where I want to go and just realised it's going to take a few posts, need to have a coffee so hope can carry on shortly and actually address you directly, because I don't disagree at all in my heart or your overarching sentiment on an emotional or moral level.
I disagree with the level of value and what that means for the disputed points, how the world is really run, and it's something that has developed since that stuff in Ukraine. Back then, wrong was wrong and right was right.
Trump is not someone I would want to be my father, he is not someone I would want as a friend. He comes across quite obviously sociopathic, is he? I don't know, he needs to adopt a persona and a sociopathic one is exactly the type you need in positions where there are other power players, but from his natural ability to wade through in a subliminal way, I would strongly say I believe he is.
That sounds like strong condemnation, and if I ascribed to the liberal mantra it would be. But I don't.
Being someone of personal moral integrity is something liberals always look for, it's something liberals in power prey on. It's EASY to pull of, it's called virtue signalling and it's something even a 14 year old SJW who is so unaware of their own insignificance can do in the most honest yet ignorant way.
Politicans can do that, any politican, and well. They don't need to be good people to do it and quite the contrary. It's exploiting the concept of virtue. Obama does it as good as anyone, but Hillary mixed race and gender into that - to me that is something I don't have the word to use. The only way I can think of it is as a kind of social genocide of ones own country, treason.
Oh dear, I'm not sure if I should continue. Not really just typed from mind before and still nowhere near where want to go, well if you want to cut this apart as I'm sure it's not hard to then go for it. But again, really appreciate reading your thoughts, all good points. Maybe I need to focus a bit here :p
Just to cut to the chase, I think all politicans are evil, they all have agendas, they all have interests and I want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt because he is my only hope in the short-medium term. At this point because he is my only hope I will only prosecute him if I see guilty beyond reasonable doubt of being like all the rest. Though having said that, I'd prefer him to a liberal who exploit the human nature of desiring to be good and use it against the population. :D
