Criticizing Is NOT Supporting

I've met Ross Perot. The guy is crazy. He was a sales guy, and his populist positions reflect that. But that said, I find it interesting that you support a candidate whose positions are 180 degrees from the guy you currently support. Perot was pro-choice. He thought taxes for the wealthy should be increased. That capital gains taxes should be increased.

 

That's what I don't understand. The idea that blowing things up is better than tweaking smaller manageable fixes. I get that doing demo when renovating a house is fun because you get to destroy something to replace it with something better, but that doesn't mean you demo the whole house when all it needs renovated is maybe some new tiles or floor boards. Nor do you demo without a plan for what the renovation will look like.

It also goes against the whole idea of patriotism in wanting what's best for the country you claim to love while at the same supporting its institutional destruction. Also no real solutions are posed by ipaman other than blow it all up and start new or something.

OK. I'll play this game. After it's blown up. What's the new plan? You gotta pick up the mess you made first. Then come up with a feasible plan that somehow fits our existing Constitutional law and then wait and see if society is better after it's democratic annihilation or worse with this unspoken new plan all to appease the Bannon type's thought experiment of what their vision of America should be. So far the plan has been garbage.

 

The media didn't start calling him crazy (they actually loved him at first and were building him up) until he started ACTING crazy. Then he became a joke. He didn't listen to his advisors and dropped out of the race when his poll numbers slid. Then he came back and then...he started with all the conspiracy theories. That's when the media called him crazy. The whole thing about the Black Panthers being hired by the Viet Cong to kill him, and the whole conspiracy theory around wiretapping and trying to embarass his daughter - doing that on 60 minutes...do you not remember this?

People don't want someone acting unhinged or unstable - and if you want to be president, you better not talk about conspiracy theories. I mean that's common sense.

I like Chappelle a lot but Chappelle is an odd duck too. He defends Cosby as innocent for instance and has some very peculiar views including believing in a lot of conspiracy theories.

 

You are a stupid person.

 

Somewhere out there in the open ocean... I'll shoot a hole in my boat because I really really hate that guy in my boat. Winning.

 

While I am not criticizing the poster's intelligence, I do believe he is not being honest. Which is hard to understand... why try to deceive people on an on-line discussion board? The idea that someone would support the politics of Ross Perot, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. yea... I buy that...

 

its amazing that someone who disagrees with damn near all of trumps policies spends so much time defending him. as someone who is obsessed with politics as a team sport i guess you are just defending your "side".

its also amazing that someone could claim they supported perots polices fully, liked several of bernies and also constantly defends trump. you are either lying about all this or your political ideology is about as deep as a puddle.

youre the one who constantly tells people to shut up and worry about their "side". you get upset when people criticize trump. you are obsessed with treating politics as a team sport. as ive said before, people like you are the biggest problem with american politics. you claim you disagree with everything trump does, but you defend him constantly and attack people who criticize him...just because he is on your "side". and now you are trying to claim you are non-partisan...which is it dude?

 

I hope at the end of the day people will never read something like this from anything I post.

 

He said he is supportive of Trump because he really hate the other side. And he said he disagree with most of Trump policies. Taking those on face values, this is very possible and quite common, although at less noticably destructive level. He is shooting himself so he can satisfy that hate.

Think about people who need so much to have revenge, they would do jail for it. This is at that level. I think it's a mental illness. Hatred really does a number on folks.

 

You know your entire thread here is basically a microcosm of Trump's political presence thus far. The hyperbole and self-contradiction, the misaligned arguments, everything that experienced officials on all sides of the political spectrum correctly anticipated and rightfully resisted about his candidacy and prospective administration. And with the only genuinely honest or revealing comments being the bitter personal insults at the end with the phony postscript meant to hedge against any responses to or accountability for it later.

 

I'm skimming back through this thead and this post caught my attention. As often a very good post from Deji and wanted to respond.

I agree there is a lot to admire about Rand Paul, although I don't think he is nearly as ideologically pure or consistent as he portrays himself to be. That said if you're lookin for ideological purity or at least ideological honesty personally for me I don't think those are necessarily the best reasons for voting for President. Ideological consistency is an easy thing to admire but it is also something that can cause a lot of problems when given the vastness and complexity of the US and the World.

I had this discussion with two other friends last night when one said that looking back he regrets thinking that GW Bush was the worse president ever. Yes it can always get worse and Trump might not be the worst. That said a lot of what has prevented disaster is that Trump himself is so unsuited to getting much done in government. Many of his most disastrous proposals have been thwarted by Congress, courts, and just the ineptness of the Administration itself. The US government, economy and society does have a lot of resilience but I wouldn't count on that. The Trump Administration has only been in office for about 9 months there are many problems that are brewing and that will gradually manifest themselves.

I was an unabashed Clinton supporter and even a donor but will not deny that she had many deep flaws. If your concern was that Clinton was serving the oligarchy well Trump is an oligarch. So the populace has just skipped the middle man/woman. That said I think the concern regarding corporations, entrenched power structures and etc. while important is overblown. Further I think the election of Trump as a function of the oligarchy and entrenched power structure wasn't the case and I will agree with the OP on that. What I think it was though was a matter of the shallowness of our society. Trump is dumb in many areas but not when it comes to marketing. How else could a NY billionaire convince so many that he really was the champion of the working class.

Trump's tweets do need to be put into context but to all those who say we should just ignore them consider he is the President of the US and the words of the President matter. The president does wield an enormous bully pulpit and can shape opinion in ways that few individuals on this planet can.

Also this probably doesn't apply to you Deji but for all of the conservatives out there imagine if Clinton had won and tweeted even a quarter of what Trump has. I doubt many of them would be so willing to just say get over it and don't obsess over it.

 

I'm not looking for "ideological purity." I know the term has popped up in Democratic Party circles to malign Bernie supporters and people critical of party leadership in general, but to me it sounds like an accusation a Stalinist would call a Trotskyite

I don't believe in the unexamined idea of American exceptionalism, maintaining 800+ military bases, undeclared wars, or maintaining a military budget over 10x what we are supposed to believe are our main adversaries (China and Russia). Just updating our land based nuclear missile program is expected to cost 85 bilion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's 20 billion more than Russia's entire yearly military budget. The Paulite wing of the conservative-libertarian spectrum are in agreement with that fundamental concern -- the difference between them and me is that I would rather use that money to build infrastructure or a single payer system than tax breaks, but I feel far more sympathetic to them than I do the hawks in the DNC. I can say from personal experience that war really, really sucks.

After the fall of communism in the early 90s, even Jeane Kirkpatrick thought the US would return to a "normal country in normal times." But we didn't -- we needed a reason to justify maintaining the largest military in the history of civilization and hey, here come the neo-cons with plans to destroy and rebuild the developing world.

Challenging the militaristic status quo is a fundamental (and I would argue Constitutional) argument that's a lot more important than "ideological purity." I don't want to vote for politicians that want to expand the military and jump into new conflicts. I have great respect for the US military (I tried to become a naval aviator at one point and didn't make it, ironically due to budget cutbacks in the 90s) but I think their mission is to defend the US, not to rebuild the Middle East.

I've said as much in other posts -- I don't disagree with that at all. Trump apparently has a public and private position on his populism, it would appear. He appointed half of Wall Street to the cabinet and proposes pro-oligarch policy that would make Reagan blush. But that means the oligarchy is pleased, no matter how boorish Trump needs to be to get their needs met. Trump is proof that the only way to avoid depending upon the largesse of the oligarchy, is to be the oligarchy. I also cringe at the notion that enlisting Oprah, Cuban, Zuckerberg, Soros, or some other left-leaning billionaire is the answer to challenging the Mercers and Kochs.

My interests are not represented by an oligarch or a celebrity. My interests are represented by civilized people who have a broad education and are committed to upholding the Enlightenment values of the Constitution and providing competency to their constituents. That doesn't make me an idealist. That makes me a responsible voter -- something any republic requires of its people in order to not lapse into decadence and collapse.

I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. I think the money in politics we now permit corrupts everything, including our culture.

Because the party that claims to be for the working class abandoned it years ago for a cocktail of the urban professional class and identity politics. Goldman Sachs on a rainbow flag is less appealing to the working class than Donald Trump promising jobs and that everything is gonna be so awesome you can't believe it. It wasn't hard.

I voted for Clinton, but my main reservation was her hawkishness and inclination to create tension with Russia. She and her surrogates managed to do that anyway. Twitter's main audience is composed almost entirely of celebrities and journalists and wannabe celebrities and journalists insulting each other. They are the only ones who care about Twitter. Basketball scoops from Woj are the main reason I keep my account

Trump is the ultimate 21st century reality star and we created him. The truth hurts: He's not the president you or I want but he is unfortunately the one that represents us as a whole. Italy survived Berlusconi -- we will survive Trump. But if you want to prevent another one in the future, it's the oligarchy you should be primarily concerned with. They buy the politicians that shape our public policy.

 

Italy is still reeling from Berlusconi. The debt and lack of infrastructure reinvestment will be our albatross.

 

Lies, lies and more lies, you have been supporting Trump for months...just own up, say you were wrong and feel better.

DD

 

You have supported him on here for months, now that the **** is hitting the fan you are trying to change your stances - look, if you are upset you backed him - or supported him....great, you woke up....

Just own up to it, you aren't fooling anyone on here...

DD