Parkour-
You clearly have very strongly held positions, and are perhaps absolute in your views.
I'm curious if they are adjustable. Comments:
Parkour said:
I'm stepping in because the confirmation bias is rediculous here when it comes to Drumf and apparently I'm now somehow contrarian for thinking Trump is a b**** who would suck off Putin to get an edge in the election. He won with advanced school yard tactics by being a reductive a** and appealing in large part to the insecure and ignorant segments of the country that are responding to his bravado more than his message. But hey, maybe that makes me somehow sound like an elitist prick. Chase's article helped many of us understand his strategy and tactics which makes him an effective debater.
Tactics were part of his success, yes. The other part was strategy. And his strategy was to present a more compelling argument for him to be president than his competitor to be president.
Most of the liberal commentary I've seen post-election has been flummoxed at how Trump could win and how anyone could possibly be stupid enough to vote for him. The answer is that Trump voters are not stupid (nor are Clinton voters). Rather, both voters are voting for what they perceive to be in their own self-interest. More explanation here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15036#p75663
As for contrarian, it was contrarian to be pro-Trump until November 8th. Now there's not really a contrarian stance. The pro-Trump people are the present winners, while the pro-Clinton people are the old establishment, newly defanged (for now).
Who is contrarian goes back and forth depending on who's in power in the American system. Christian conservatives were in power under Bush and atheist liberals were contrarian then. Then Obama won, and atheist liberals became the establishment, and conservative Christians became a contrarian group. Etc. Trump's election is not about Christians, but various parties gain or lose outsider/insider status based on how well or not their message rings with the public.
Parkour said:
Miserable failure was and will always be W. His policies were egregious at the loss of life, war crimes, and flaccid attempts at trying to get the guy who actually took down the towers and he certainly didn't leave the economy in a good place.
No debates there.
Although worth noting economic collapse was due to removal of regulations on Wall St under Bill Clinton. These enabled the mergers and derivatives trading that led to the real estate bubble, then collapse. Though Bush 43 certainly did nothing to put regulations back and stave off this disaster.
Parkour said:
Obama fixed the f'd up economy he inherited
Bush 43 made a $700 billion bailout to the big banks.
Then Obama got in, and made another $700 bailout to the big banks. He managed to triple the U.S.'s national debt, and while the U.S. doesn't have the worst national debt situation in the world (that honor goes to China), the U.S.'s is pretty bad.
In 2012, there were 109,631,000 Americans on public assistance, or a little more than 1/3 of the citizenship at that time. As of September 2015, 94,610,000 Americans were not in the labor force. Both of these are record numbers, much higher than any historical norms. Meanwhile,
all net employment gains between 2000 and 2014 went to immigrants - not to Americans.
The media reports unemployment as "low" because unemployed individuals stop getting counted as "unemployed" once they've been unemployed longer than 6 months. For all intents and purposes, if you stay out of work more than 6 months, you shift back to being "employed", as far as unemployment statistics are concerned.
The Bush/Obama stimulus packages and quantitative easing programs staved off the damage done by the housing bubble and allowed the bankers to get off scot free, for now. But, in fact, we're now mired in another housing bubble,
this one even bigger than the one that popped in 2008.
Parkour said:
got Osama, and left us with cheaper gas
No arguments there.
Also, pretty amazing how quickly OPEC lost all its teeth the instant North America started taking advantage of its own oil reserves.
Parkour said:
more people with healthcare that need it
The costs of the Affordable Care Act are rising so rapidly they'll be out of reach for most people very soon. Insurers have pulled out of the program in droves, simply because it isn't economically feasible for them to cover individuals with preexisting conditions. The Affordable Care Act simply isn't affordable.
I give credit to Obama for trying - healthcare is a bloated mess in the U.S. However, he watered his plan way down to make it more palatable to Republicans, and in the end none of them voted for his watered down plan anyway, and all we got was a bungled execution of a great concept in theory.
Parkour said:
reduced the body bag count of Americans coming back from wars W started.
Indeed.
Yet, Obama's arming of Al'Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS, and his acquiescence to Clinton's "kill Muammar Gaddafi" plan, followed up by the "give lots of money and arms to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who then give lots of money and arms to ISIS" plan, have led to utter chaos in the Middle East (and, by way of migrants, Europe).
Though not many Americans have had to pay for that with blood - only with blood money funneled to ISIS.
Parkour said:
I'm a hell of a lot better off than I was 8 years ago when my stocks were destroyed and my industry lost jobs because people were unemployed in numbers much worse than today. Now I could get amazing jobs without trying and so can many many other people.
Happy to hear it! Do realize though that your personal situation is not representative of the nation as a whole - this is the problem of generalizing from anecdote. Conditions for the average man have deteriorated over the past 20 years, not improved.
Parkour said:
So I'm just calling BS. I don't buy Trump's frame for a second. He's great at distraction from realistic effective policy.
Trump has taken systemtic problems in the American system (plutocratic control of government via corporate, special interest, and foreign government lobbies being the biggest by far), amplified them, and cast a spotlight on them. He's made them out to be a more impending danger than they are, and in fact has been saying the same things since the early 1990s.
But you don't get the frog to jump out of the pot by gently suggesting that the water around it is getting warmer. You get it out of the pot by jabbing it with a sharp stick and yelling at it that if it doesn't get out of the water, it's going to burn.
Parkour said:
Color me skeptical and maybe I'm simply not scared of Hillary or the non-story of her email antics.
The mishandling of classified emails story at a tactical level was blown out of proportion. No one cares if you lose a few emails.
The real story was the pay for play. The mishandling of emails was a symptom of what appears to have been a deliberate attempt to conceal potentially incriminating communications by keeping them beyond the reach of auditors.
I've talked to some Clinton supporters who do not care if we have individuals in our government who sell government favors in exchange for personal enrichment. But the moment you allow schemes like this to take over the republic, you've utterly lost. There aren't many Ciceros or Trumps willing to stick their necks out and get tarred and feathered to come in to try and save the republic from itself (Cicero ultimately had his hands lopped off and displayed in the Roman forum after his defeat and death by Marc Antony). If government becomes an easy way for the unscrupulous to enrich themselves, the only people you will have left populating the government are the unscrupulous looking to enrich themselves.
The enrichment, by the way, comes from the constantly-shrinking portion of the American public that still pays taxes and isn't long-term unemployed or on public assistance. Most large American corporations do their best to keep their profits offshore and outside the American tax system.
Parkour said:
I don't think she was some threatening feminist.
Nor do I.
Much of her campaigning revolved around feminist talking points. Her campaign slogan, her constant use of feminist pop stars and pop icons, and repetition of feminist talking points all made her out to be a clear feminist to anyone who took a merely casual look at her. But all these gestures came from Edward Bernays-style focus groups that told her campaign team these displays would get the optimal reception from the voters she was after, so she adopted them. Just campaign rhetoric.
Parkour said:
She's a tough chick who has been through some shit and made a solid bid against a guy who had no qualms about shutting that shit down.
Indeed.
Parkour said:
Maybe it's that Trump just appears so weak on "grown up" policy and so ill prepared for statehood that I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious reduction of America's place in the world.
This is where the lensing comes into play.
The folks in the Clinton camp view Trump this way. Weak, dangerous, thin-skinned, ill-prepared. Dark.
The folks in the Trump camp view him completely the opposite way. Strong, direct, tough, and the only guy in the room who will point out the emperor has no clothes while everybody else is busy telling the emperor how good his new attire looks.
If you read my article on Trump persuasion (I also talked about some of Clinton's persuasion there), you'll know why. You'll also either agree with the contrarian/Trump view on issues, or you agree with the mainstream/Clinton view on them. Depending on whom you agree with, the other side likely looks weak, manipulative, or crazy.
Parkour said:
The man completely lacks integrity in many of his business dealings (don't get me started)
Due to non-payment of contractors who failed to perform. I also do not pay people who do garbage work or don't deliver. It's unfortunately a reality of running a business - some people do good work, some do not.
I have an uncle in real estate, and he says this is particularly bad there. Contractors will try to slip by with all manner of shoddy workmanship, low quality materials, etc., to save on their costs and increase their profits. Charge you for high quality work, deliver low quality work, keep the change. Business owners that tolerate this don't stay in business too long.
Parkour said:
and if that lack of responsibility carries over into the country, something we all agree is really really important, than we're all that much worse off for the next 4.
God, I hope it does. Can you imagine kicking all the inefficient people who do crappy work and deliver shoddy performances out of government? Can you imagine replacing them with only the best?
Not sure if you've ever worked in government. I have. I've worked in various state and federal agencies in the past. There are some good people in there, but for the most part, if you spot terrible inefficiencies and see a way to make things happen 200x faster, good luck getting anyone to even consider it. They'll need to have 20 committee meetings and call in the Admiral and discuss it for the next 2 years. And then ultimately they'll approve half of what you recommended, not realizing that half of what you recommended instead of the entire thing is little better than what they currently have.
I don't know if Trump can actually clean that mess up. I'm doubtful. Governments accrue red tape, they don't clear it. We're not likely to get a cleaner running system until the collapse-rebuild / Shiva-Vishnu cycle moves us into whatever comes after the United States. In the short-term though, if he can extend the lifespan of this country (and the wave of transformative technological progress we haven't seen the likes of since Alexandria 2000 years ago)... Man, that will be a good thing.
Parkour said:
So what do I think is going on in his mind? He's an archetypal narssisist based on deep seeded insecurity who was granted the most powerful job in the world (while the US is still relevant).
Most likely.
Parkour said:
With all of this validation, I suppose he's currently thinking: "I am the closest thing to God incarnate in this world and I alone will align the universe and name it Trumpiverse".
Possibly. Though it's impossible to know what's in someone else's head.
Judging by the level of humility he displayed, and the level of interest Obama claimed he had in picking his brain and learning everything he could from him, what's going on his head seems to be something other than this. He certainly didn't need to behave gracious post-election; he could've rubbed his victory in Hillary Clinton's nose, declared he'd appoint a special prosecutor his first day in office, and ditched the meeting with Barack Obama or acted like a super alpha in the press conference with him. What are they going to do, un-elect him?
His behavior to the contrary, despite no need for him to behave that way, would seem to refute this. But of course, no way to know what's in another man's head.
Parkour said:
This will be followed by realistic projects to attempt to satisfy his validation needs like thinking about how many statues of himself we will build, how many other things will be named after him, and how many times he gets to be on TV and the internet as more than the barely relevant he was before this (despite being ultra tryhard).
Just sayin...
Trump is almost certainly a narcissist. As is Barack Obama, Bush 43, Bill Clinton, etc. Hillary Clinton, with her shrieking and hurling objects at Secret Service, her apparent threats to have Matt Lauer fired after he asked her an unscripted question on live TV, and the like, would suggest she, too, falls into this camp. I'm not sure if the U.S. presidency has ever had non-narcissists as presidents, but we certainly haven't had this anytime in the modern era.
The more pressing question is how does whatever narcissist we have at the moment pursue his aggrandizement? Obama did it through healthcare, globalism, and racial / sexual politics. Trump has been very clear since the 1990s that he intends to do it through better trade deals, reduced foreign entanglements, and efficient government. If he's been harping on these same points for 25 years just to get into office and build statues of himself, it's a heck of a long con. More likely, though, he's been harping on these issues for 25 years because he believes they are the issues the country most deeply needs to address, and his own personal aggrandizement will be attached to addressing them, rather than adding a fifth face to Mount Rushmore.
Chase
