ant wrote:
i've always been center-left.
This post was deleted. DB Roy, please watch the name calling.
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Views on Russia have a range of reasonable positions. It is difficult to predict the results of different paths. Even seemingly unreasonable positions that Trump adopts may prove to have merit if they prompt further dialogue and reflection and realignments.DWill wrote:Would there be no opportunity, then, for "principled criticism" of aggression towards Crimea and Ukraine, support of the brutal Assad regime, crony capitalism of the worst sort, extra-judicial killings, and subversion of our election? I'll come right out and ask you: do you agree with the neo-Russophiles that Russia should escape criticism?
The main page that Trump is borrowing from the Putin playbook is defence of national interests. That is where the Democrats are vague and Trump is clear. Free trade is the best theoretical solution in an ideal world, but the reality of trade is the art of the deal, a topic where Trump has some expertise. What you criticise as "nativism" is what others support as patriotism. Working out how the USA can function as a tribe in the world economy is not easy.DWill wrote:Putin has launched a nativist-nationalist revival in Russia, with great success. The pitiable Russian public has thus ignored how rapacious is their country's leadership. Trump also hews to nativist nationalism with the same nostalgic flavor of turning the clock back to around 1950, when America was great. So there is a natural reluctance to criticize soul mates. The job for our country now is to oppose him if he tries to take more pages from Putin's book, especially with regard to corruption.
The useful idiot fellow travellers like George Bernard Shaw imagined that Bolshevism was creating heaven on earth. Trump’s admiration for Putin is solely in terms of being a strong leader who can achieve results, against the assessment that dithering liberals have failed to stand up for American interests.DWill wrote: I compared him with the old comm-symps on the trait of his positive valuation of Russia. That's the point you should have tried to refute.
Islam provides social comfort for its believers in telling them they belong to an expansionist world tribal identity. But its ideology is stagnant and pre-modern and does not serve anyone’s real interests except the theocrats. The Koran explicitly preaches military expansion, as detailed at http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages ... lence.aspx By contrast, Christianity has the capacity to evolve and reform to become compatible with modern rationality.DWill wrote:How much of that is analysis and how much is support for such a purpose?The travel ban was a shot across the bows for the global war against islamofascism. It was a signal that Trump supports Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory of history, and will endeavour to define and support Judeo-Christian culture against the threat of Islam.
This is not about “ordinary people”. It is about seven countries which Obama agreed were too high risk to assess visa eligibility. Nowhere in President Trump’s executive order does he single out any country for visa suspension. Instead he suspended approvals from countries who the Obama administration categorized for extreme visa vetting.DWill wrote:Preventing ordinary people from traveling to and from the U.S. would seem a weird means of combatting terrorism.
That would be an interesting debate. I take the view that we should respect all human diversity as providing a rich tapestry whose value is irreplaceable and priceless. But there are some cultural practices and beliefs that are obsolete and should be left in the past.DWill wrote:On Huntington, there is a good case to be made that parts of his thesis are simply wrong.
She said “you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it." That is identity politics and cultural relativism on steroids. Clinton was saying that all good people should utterly deplore and shun anything that reminds them of these alleged evils, that any Americans who stand for traditional values and do not roll over to the new identity politics of anti-family, anti-border, anti-Christian should be deplored.DWill wrote:Come on, Clinton's political blunder had nothing to do with the forces you identify.The pervasive dominance within postmodern society of the ethical values of cultural relativism and denigration of Western Civilization, as seen in Hillary’s deplorable blunder, is a problem that energises the identity of Trump’s supporters.
The Deep State culture is resisting Trump by opposing any action that rejects the dominant modern cultural relativism. They aim to see Trump off as soon as possible, but I suspect the discussion about values is only getting started. Obviously those Deep State people in the swamp do not favour Islamism, but they do support Hillary’s numbing mind-control policy of rooting out the thought-crimes of Islamophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia wherever they find them.DWill wrote:There is scant evidence of progressives with any clout favoring the "backward ideology" of Islamism. It would be stupid for Trump to go along with Netanyahu's dream of moving the capital. That would only incite fundamentalists in Israel who believe that the Bible should prescribe politics. There was a full-page ad in a newspaper supporting the move, with the headline, "Walk with King David." What rubbish.
That line of attack is long out of date. Fox News is American media. Breitbart News is American media. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, innumerable smaller market right wing radio announcers, The Drudge Report, The Wall Street Journal, The Blaze, and even Info Wars are American media. Blogs and specialized news aggregators are also American media and allow partisans to avoid opposing views. Recently we have the "alt-right" creeping into the media. I haven't checked ratings in a long time, but Fox used to crow about having a larger viewership than CNN, MSNBC, etc. So the quote above is not true.The American media is largely a left wing propaganda machine that no longer holds to any concept of objectivity.
The man is such a moron. How can you not understand the hysteria after watching him talk for 5 minutes? When he speaks, it's always a display of gut-wrenching stupidity. Just WATCH him. Listen to him. He's a moron. Read the tweets where he mispells words that my 8 year old son knows. Count the number of times in every single sentence he leans on bombastic adjectives, like a novice marketer. Look how he takes every truthful criticism against himself and honestly believe is only applies to others. Look at all the stupid stuff he's done with just a month in office. He's elected a full blown bible thumping creationist to be Secretary of Education. He's erased mention of climate change on government websites then put a gag order on environmental agencies.RT wrote:An anti-Trump hysteria has gripped the American popular media, as the President mentioned at his long press conference today. The emotional hostility towards Trump is grossly imbalanced
I think Clinton would have been more dangerous than Trump. These are dangerous times. Politics is all about positioning, defining goals, identifying friend and foe, and framing language to move toward strategic objectives. That is what Trump is doing with his ambiguous language, such as his signalling on Israel. America is far safer with Trump’s strong border policy than with the weakness seen in Europe.geo wrote:The anti-Trump hysteria is pretty warranted, I'd say. As Interbane says, just look at the content of his remarks. This man is not grounded in reality. He just makes up shit and makes decisions based on that. The man is dangerous.
In each of these cases, it is worth comparing your stark summary with what Trump actually stated. There are differences which indicate that you are exaggerating. RFK has not been appointed Autism Czar. The only use of the phrase “existential threat” I could find in recent time was the head of the EU complaining about Trump’s impact on Europe. Trump has certainly made dire assessments about ISIS, but not about Islam that I could find. His comments about reporting included the point that the media does not “want” to report, implying there is some reluctance rather than actual fakery.geo wrote: In recent days, he has stated that vaccinations cause autism, that there is widespread voter fraud, that the media doesn't report many acts of terrorism, and that Islam poses a grave existential threat to America.
My impression is that Trump has a reasonable grasp of evidence, but sees a post-truth political advantage in pushing simplified and distorted memes.geo wrote:There's absolutely no evidence that any of these are true, yet Trump believes them anyway, and he will act on his beliefs, regardless of evidence. Trump simply doesn't understand facts or evidence. He bases everything on gut instinct.
At the level of the Presidency, myths are as real as facts, especially the myth of confidence. If Trump can construct a vibrant myth of economic confidence, as he is doing with the stock market rise of more than ten percent since the election, it is likely that he will force clearer debates about the topics where people consider he has strayed from the truth.geo wrote: Robert, I think you must be letting your politics get in the way of common sense. Isn't the ability to understand reality a rather important quality for the American president?