Do you like or hate Donald Trump, and why?
Minor point of correction Blob re whose side we were on. In WW2 the Soviet Union was on our side, which was just as well because if they hadn't been we would be arguing about the Third Reich, not the EU. Yep, those commie bastards won the war to make the world safe for the free market.
What’s this mean , Facto ? :
““Me first & the gimme gimmes. The under-educated & over-mortgaged. Downward envying, forelock tuggers. The petty bourgeoisie”
Well I voted One Nation and I’m literally none of those things."
Ha ha, Blow In, says you! “
You think I’m under educated and over mortgaged ? Forelock tigger ? Me first and gimme gimme ?
Funny stuff.
Funny that people think they are always right and that others are just wilfully ignorant.
There is a great word in Bahasa Indonesia that doesn't translate totally to english it's called "Sok" pronounced like "Sock"
It's kind of like the meaning of know it all or pretentious, but a bit different because you can combine it with so many different words.
like
"Sok tau" = Know it all
"Sok ganteng" =Thinks he is hansom
"Sok pintar" =Thinks he is clever
You can use it with so many different words, i think you can even say "sok berselancer" = thinks they are a better surfer than they are.
You can also just shorten it, and say " yeah he is so sok" for those kind of people that are just so full of themselves.
We really need a similar english word.
Ha ha I had to laugh Blowin that you voted for One Nation, there is a few policies i like but others I'm totally against, sometimes i feel like the most right wing person around here, but i don't think i could ever vote "One nation" i don't even think I've even voted Liberal although i agree with them on many issues, i just don't think it would benefit me as a middle to low end of middle class earner, i honestly just can't vote for anyone now, id rather just get my name ticked off and put my vote in blank.
What do you mean it doesn’t translate?
The word you’re thinking of is wanker.
Yeah Indo.
Most of the One Nation deal makes me feel crook too. I didn’t vote for them cause I like them.
Haha blowin, just admit it, you've got a soft spot for redheads :)
Otherwise, please explain?
Ahhh Blindboy
What was it.....when did I stop beating my wife?
Never started bro
Sheesh, I only escaped your evil genius by the skin of my teeth that time.
But since you finally answered my question, can you tell me, if abortion at 8 1/2 months for convenience is immoral, at what point in the pregnancy do you deem killing the developing baby for convenience as immoral?.
Sharkman
No, I don't believe in shooting refugees
Good question though.
Blindboy
Thanks for the correction on WW11.
....but did I say the soviets were on the other side?
See, I always thought they were in a pact with Hitler till they changed sides.
......Russia won WW11 then got into a Cold War with the West right?. A Cold War that cost a lot of lives in Korea and Vietnam.
Pay attention.
Factotum
How did Trump 'proudly brag about a history of sexual abuse'?.
Do you think some Muslims celebrated on 9/11 or not.....was Trump only guilty of exaggeration?.
Factotum
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2015/12/01/7-pieces-of-documentation...
https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-true-story-donald-trump-did-not-mock...
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2018-07
I personally knew a Muslim who was disgusted by those celebrating over 9/11 in a Sydney mosque he attended.
Maybe he was lying.
Or maybe you are a willing fake news source
Blob , your rave on leftism and socialism shows how much you must dislike Jesus and his teachings as he would be considered a lefty in today's world ?
Blob regarding refugees , what do you do with them , as they are at the point of where they have nothing more to lose , so the rule of law starts to break down?
Sharkman
You keep rabbiting on about Jesus.
You must be an expert.
If you have an actual argument that will convince me that Jesus was a socialist feel free to present it.
Make sure you include the most basic principle of socialism......that we are to obey God, not man.
Sharkman
First they must be refugees and not economic immigrants.
How do the thousands of Central Americans walking across Mexico qualify as refugees?
When Mexicans and others are deported back to their own countries are they persecuted and killed?.
The left have lost this argument many times over.
Give up on it.
I'm all for putting adequate amounts of money into refugee support in the closest countries able to house them, with the goal of their return home ASAP.
Sypkan
Umm, you are part of the richest and most free cohort in the history of planet earth.
Thanks to free markets.
Get real.
You talk about government debt as if that condemns capitalism.
40% of our tax goes in transfer payments.
That's socialism buddy.
The government should ensure the economy Is fair and free, look after its own appropriate spheres and get out of the way.
We don't really have that at the moment.
"Blindboy says he thinks it is immoral to abort babies but we should be able to do it anyway."
Well no he didn't. What he said was more nuanced than that .... but Blob doesn't get subtlety. Nor does he have much grasp of history, it's all cut and paste cliche and one dimensional thinking. Line up your straw men and blow them down with a giant puff of over-heated rhetoric. Hurray for the good guys! Straight out of a Hollywood movie. You know the schtick. .... goodie vs baddie. Shades of grey? Not in this universe.
Sp just for fun let's cast our minds back to that golden economic period between the end of WW2 and the first oil shock. Strong economic growth across western nations. Rising indicators of health and education, reduced poverty, cohesive societies. And what were the policies of every government at that time? What we would now call socialism. And when did it go wrong? When did poverty rise, education and health decline, urban riots start and economic growth recede? With the advent of neoliberalism beginning with Reagan and Thatcher.
Oh and Blob, don't avoid the question. I said just a date remember. Or is it OK for you to ask me leading questions and demand a simplistic answer but not for me to do the same? McCarthyism? Your approach to the abortion question would have done dirty old Joe proud.
Aaah blob. Why do you keep clutching at straws to justify your love of Donald and the Republican gang.
Is your Breitbart link really the way to justify Trumps honesty?
Right.......wrong again.
What do you think about the Saudi's and their relationship to 911?
Do you know that the 55 storey WTC 7 building miraculously fell to ground on the same afternoon?
So what you say?
It was the muslims, lets get over there now, kill em all, and give me a hallelujah whilst we're at it.
All in the spirit of democracy! Right?
All in the spirit of the war on terror!
Right!
Wrong.
Again.
Trump boasting about selling $110 billion of weapons to the Saudi's must make you proud of him.
What do think about Trumps decision to rip up a decades old nuclear weapon treaty? Good for peace, or a selfish plug to boost his mid term hopes in the House and the US weapon industry?
The Republicans sure do love their weapons, sometimes more than their God.
Somebody, give that man a Nobel Peace Prize.
hey @Blob give satan's typewriter a break, you will wear yourself out. Anyway, what's your take on the degradation of the environment by humans. Was the earth given to us by God to exploit mercilessly as it is or should the earth and all life on it be considered sacred?
"Do you know that the 55 storey WTC 7 building miraculously fell to ground on the same afternoon?"
You support 9/11 conspiracy theories?
@Indo,
Fact:
The collapse made the old 7 World Trade Center the first tall building known to have collapsed primarily due to uncontrolled fires,[7] and at the time, the only steel skyscraper in the world to have collapsed due to fire.[8]
Not only did it collapse, it collapsed at free fall speed.
I'm sure there's nothing in it.
I also wonder how 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens and yet it never seemed to matter.
It was on for Bin Laden in Afghanistan then onto Iraq and the whole war on terror is a sad and sick blight on humanity.
From 2005, "... newly released US government records show that Federal Bureau of Investigationagents gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the US, while several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed.
I'm sure it's nothing, and trust that the government has told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth....
Blob , when I look at the right wing ideology , that gets spouted here and in politics in General , it looks to me and whole lot of born again Christians , very unchristian like.
Jesus was very clear about helping your neighbor , do unto others as you would have them do to you ...etc....so refugees whether they are economic/climate or political refugess , I don't think Jesus would have differentiated , but you do , which makes it look like you are doing the opposite ?
Turns out the alt-right pipe bomber has a comb over, jackass you're not fooling anybody with that fucking comb over, just like the little orange man, he isn't fooling anybody either, bald as badgers ya are.
special acknowledgement to Billy Connolly's hilarious skit on comb overs lost somewhere on the web.
GuySmiley, those comb overs are down right scary, but they do make a good meme though.
Re Trump and Saudi Arabia, I can neither confirm nor deny the truth in the statement below, but it sounds logical;
"Trump’s first international visit as President was to Saudi Arabia where he received a medal and participated in some sort of sword dance.
He then claimed he made a big arms deal with them but in fact it was Obama’s existing deal that was “on hold” pending investigation into human rights abuses in Yemen. Trump just reactivated the deal and made it look like it was a new one and claimed credit.
The US invasion of Iraq was largely to placate Saudi’s fear of invasion by Iraq after the Kuwait incident.
However, as well as being a good weapons-buying customer the main reason for the US support of Saudi Arabia is down to the importance of the Petrodollar which maintains the value of the $US and as long as OPEC continues this arrangement, all is OK for both sides.
That’s why the US conveniently turns a blind eye to the excesses and atrocities carried out by the Saudis and continues to support them and is therefore complicit in many of the things they do.
This latest event will be little more than an embarrassment and will result in business as usual. Expect another distraction from elsewhere and this incident will soon be forgotten."
Trumps second place to visit after becoming President was Israel, another peace loving state like the Saudi Arabia.
I wonder if Benny was able to give some advice on how to build a wall?
Benjamin Netanyahu has a comb over too, jackass.
@ Westlake
There is a great documentary on why the trade tower came tumbling down its really quite interesting, the construction of the tower was quite unique and totally different to anything built at the time in design and construction (i think this is the docco)
Not to mention there is countless other websites, articles. docks etc that explain and bust any 7/11 conspiracy theories with science and proper investigation and explanation.
Sure indo there is convincing evidence from both sides of the argument.
In order to not spin the thread topic off course I would prefer to move on.
I'm sure you understand.
I love conspiracy theories love the videos etc, but also love the busting of conspiracy theories.
I think the 9/11 ones are among some of the least believable that are widely believed.
As divisions grow deeper in the US with pipe bombs and racially inspired massacres, it is tempting to think that there is no road back, that Trump has so deeply debased political culture that the forseeable future must resemble the regrettable recent past. Tragically that is a realistic possibility, but it is far from inevitable. The longer Trump remains in power, the clearer his modus operandi becomes. He works from the same playbook as many other tyrants. Amongst current leaders he most closely resembles Duterte in the Phillipines. They both tell people what they want to hear, promise more than they can deliver, lack all restraint and have overwhelming faith in their own good judgement.
Duterte rules a nation with only a shallow tradition of democracy and weak institutional balances against dictatorship, so he can rule in the fashion to which Trump aspires. Be clear on this, Trump aspires to dictatorship and will take every opportunity that comes his way to achieve it. And he has some advantages in his pursuit of that ambition. He is a trained media performer, he likes the camera rather more than the camera likes him, but it does like him. He also has one rare quality that is absolutely priceless; he has no concept of truth.
All politicians lie. In fact it is an entirely reasonable proposition that politics would be impossible without a certain level of dishonesty. Politicians lie for obvious reasons. The truth can be very inconvenient to good governance and, even more commonly, fatal to career prospects. So they lie. But they lie knowing that they lie and knowing that the truth exists. This does not apply to Trump. He has embraced the extreme of positive thinking. Starting, quite literally with, "How To Win Friends And Influence People", he has moved on to total self delusion.
Trump has no concept of truth. What he says is so only because he says it. And should he say the opposite an hour later, then that will also be so. This is an umimagineable asset simply because it guarantees that whatever he says will be said with absolute, unimpeachable sincerity. There is an old joke that if you could only fake sincerity, you could sell anything to anyone. Trump has transcended that. He is absolutely sincere. The only problem is that he has lost touch with reality. But, as a politician, that is no problem as long as what you say is what people want to hear and Trump knows, on a deeply emotional level, what many Americans long to hear...... that they are a great nation, that, despite all available evidence, they are a shining light of morality in a dark world, that a white American male has rights and privileges above and beyond the rest of humanity and that all their problems have been caused by an educated elite.
Yet for all this, Trump lacks a key ingredient for dictatorship. He has taken the language of reality television and applied it to politics with its simple appeal to emotion and total absence of intellect. Trump asserts, he does not explain. This is his great appeal to those who, out of habit, do not think about politics. They respond only to the emotion and they believe because they recognise the sincerity. He has drawn his potential audience to him but he cannot expand it. The language he speaks is not a universal language. It will never draw in those who, out of habit, do think about politics. If they ever watched reality TV it was with a keen sense of its limitations and an awareness that, whatever else it might be, it was not reality. So the apprentice dictator will, in all probability, fail the audition and his self-delusions will not protect him when the public tells him "You're fired!"
"Duterte's political success has been aided by his vocal support for the extrajudicial killing of drug users and other criminals.
Human rights groups have documented over 1,400 killings allegedly by death squads operating in Davao between 1998 and May 2016; the victims were mainly drug users, petty criminals and street children."
Comparing Trump to Duterte is drawing a pretty long bow.
Never go full retard BB.
I thought I was quite restrained Andy. I mean there are definitely similarities between Trump and Hitler. I might have to go there next time.
By your standards maybe you were restrained ;)
BB rather than a Trump/Hitler , which usually means desperation in a debate , use Mussolini as an example of fascism ...he was the author of the Fascist Doctrine in the early 20's and Hitler copied him ....big difference was Mussolini's narcissism made him believe he was a Roman Emperor , but he forgot that when he attacked Yemen he didn't have a real army , whereas Hitler was a Mussolini follower , but got his army right!
Flaming good read blindboy.
America is a tinderbox and its president is like a child playing with matches.
This thread is starting to go into fairy land with every post now, 9/11 conspiracy theories, now Trump compared to Duterte, just glad it wasn't Hitler.
Personally I no longer see the point of discussing Trump, his weaknesses are there for all to see. Its like politics here, you would have to be so rusted on to the right of politics to not be totally disaffected by the last 5.5 years of failed LNP government. As with Trump as here there are some successes but on balance its been calamitous.
While America's democratic and legal institutions thankfully hold Trump in check, much to his obvious annoyance, I would imagine there would be much about Duterte he would admire. Likewise its easy to imagine Trump looking on with affection on how Benjamin Netanyahu rules Israel and especially the constant land theft from the Palestinians.
For the good of democracy we should all hope Trump's excesses are restrained starting with a positive result for the Democrats in the mid-terms.
Agreed Guy, in the immortal words of the legendary Sir Joh Bjelke-Peterson, "You can't go on flogging a dead horse in the back paddock forever."
And interestingly, Sir Joh is also quoted as saying ‘You don’t tell the frogs anything before you drain the swamp.’
Considering the thread, does anyone else see this as president, umm, I mean prescient?
Eerie, even?
I hear you GuySmiley, spot on.
"...For the good of democracy we should all hope Trump's excesses are restrained starting with a positive result for the Democrats in the mid-terms."
Nah, for the good of democracy I hope the democrats get slaughtered. They've learnt nothing from this whole process.
Two years on, no leader, no policies, no acknowledgement of any of the issues that put them in this position, no self reflection whatsoever.
Just blame trump. Pathetic
‘You don’t tell the frogs anything before you drain the swamp.’
Has this got something to do with Pepe?
Talking about prescience - real prescience - have a read of this. Written by one of the great writers and thinkers. And easy to read!
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Some history, some philosophy, always some humour, and there's even a listicle for those that dig that kind of thing!
Oh yeah, and it's from 1995!
Seems to be a world-wide contagion of lack of self awareness Syppo.
From the Australian Libs blaming Turnbull for their loss in Wentworth to the U.S. Democrats stuck on blaming Trump like there's a massive scratch on their old vinyl record.
In a perverse sort of way @sypkan you well be right. 4 or even 8 years of Trump may cure America and perhaps even the world of ever voting that way again. Likewise, I'm sort of hoping the farce that's been our own neo-liberal experiment for the last 5.5 years will see the right voted out of office for a very long time. Anyway, none of us know, we're all strapped in for the ride so we will all just have to wait and see.
A listicle - isn't that what happens when one of your balls is heavier than the other?
From Facto's Umberto Eco article:
"Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives."
This is why I wonder if, on balance, Trump is the president that the U.S. needed to have.
Sunlight being the best disinfectant and all...
"This is why I wonder if, on balance, Trump is the president that the U.S. needed to have."
Thoroughly agree. Just like the 90s recession, Trump is the POTUS we had to have. It's ugly, but the reckononing was long overdue.
Doesn't excuse his behaviour at all. The 'straight talking' that people admire is a dangerous quality in a politician but all that will hopefully be overlooked if some good can come from his time as leader.
As someone who isn’t that into US politics, can you tell me if the Democrats have learned anything or are they still fielding more Hillarys ?
So much to take out of Eco's piece. A couple of bits that caught my eye:
"Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority."
Howard? Trump? Hanson? Farage?
"Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People."
Wow! He wrote this in 1995?!
"This is why I wonder if, on balance, Trump is the president that the U.S. needed to have."
You're not alone in your wondering there andym...
Shit has gotten so out of whack something had to give...but our great leaders weren't willing to give an inch...hence trump.
"To qualify for that title you don't have to be a good person or even intelligent. You just have to change history."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/10/26/fts_gideon_rachman_wh...
I am curious if you guys like DonaldTrump, or do you hate him?