President Donald Trump
I assume it's still acceptable to have a Trump thread in a Politics forum?
So this is an obvious lie - basically aimed at
2025 set a record for Blacks killed by police. Now those hotbed cities have highly militarized police forces. Probably not what people mean by doing something. And all that was certainly a factor in getting Trump elected. But where are the protests now and where have the protesters gone?
Sometimes feeling good about what you're doing doesn't translate into doing good.
BLM was a marxist/post structuralist movement.
The one thing that I have definitely hardened my stance on in the last few years is that the US, in actual reality, is a giant melting pot of convoluted ideological positions - far more so than the media or public forums portray. I think this also helps explain why political forums often splinter into tiny factions before any sense of agreement can be achieved within a group, i
That's just democracy. The elite no longer have to divide and conquer the people like kings did; the people will just do it to themselves, like a bunch of high school kids and their cliques. But it's not like anyone is reading Plato anymore.
I think of it more as a Marxist technique than what most people think if as communism. Divisiveness is the goal but socialism is more the means to it. But at the end of the day it's just elite academia wanting political power.
I think people think that Trump wants to establish a monarchy, which is probably true.
"Dynasty" is probably more fitting. Like the Kennedy dynasty.
I think of it more as a Marxist technique than what most people think if as communism. Divisiveness is the goal but socialism is more the means to it. But at the end of the day it's just elite academia wanting political power.
Isn’t the founder explicitly a marxist? Ultimately the liberals attempted to coopt it for something good but it was doomed as soon as they started defending riot was a legitimate form of social disobedience.
"Dynasty" is probably more fitting. Like the Kennedy dynasty.
No I think if he could then he would be a king. He has admired some pretty horrible people in the past.
It's not that the protests should necessarily attack his ego -- that is just trolling him for good measure -- but that the protest sure as hell shouldn't caress it. That's how he takes it, a snide, cynical, "I'm the king. I really am. I must be. Look at this." It feeds his autocratic lust. I find this an unfortunate result of the protests, and revealing that they don't really
How Trump interprets the protests is irrelevant. The protests are to let the politicians who created him and fear him know that they are on notice and their jobs are on the line.
It's amusing that you think No Kings will somehow make Trump become more of an authoritarian than he already is. When he tries to stop/steal elections in Nov, it was the plan well before any protests took place.
I don't think Trump's reaction to the branding should be much of a consideration for the people who are organizing protests. Old people live mostly insular lives. Billionaires live mostly insular lives. Egocentric people live mostly insular lives. People in power live mostly insular lives. Therefore, I think we can safely assume that this old, egomaniacal, billionaire U.S. president lives in a bubble of his own creation that is entirely populated by sycophants, dick riders, and coattail riders. Protesters who oppose the inhabitants of that bubble are a generic evil, a faceless "other." The specific words they write on their signs don't really matter to Trump.
Large protests like these *are* performative, but not in a reductive way. It's an effort to get people/families out that wouldn't otherwise go to a protest, typically out of fear. These are green-level, safe events. They let others know they aren't alone in their assessment of the situation. They help build community. That is their purpose.
The founders knew this stuff is important; it's literally in the first rule for the country. Rights unexercised will atrophy just as muscles do.
Isn’t the founder explicitly a marxist? Ultimately the liberals attempted to coopt it for something good but it was doomed as soon as they started defending riot was a legitimate form of social disobedience.
The "Marxist" label is just the branding for a specific technique: Critical Theory. It’s not about workers seizing factories; it’s about elite academics seizing definitions to grab political power. They’ve swapped Equality (fair shot) for Equity (forced results) and redefined Racism as "systemic power" so they can label anyone an oppressor. They attempted to do the same with the term "violence" but it blew up on them.
No Kings is the application of the same sans the violence.... maybe. But it looks like the Fox crowd is on top of it:
[QUOTE=Guardian]In Santa Fe, New Mexico, costumed characters included unicorns, chickens and frogs. “It’s about the absurdity of it all,” resident Amy Adler told the Santa Fe New Mexican while wearing a lobster suit she described as an ode to Portland.
On FoxLive, national security analyst Lt Col Hal Kempfer debated whether the costumes were for defensive purposes “I don’t discount that they are just showing off the costumes but any costume like that could provide a certain amount of defensive protection from pepper balls and stuff. But you have to weigh against that you can’t move very fast and you can’t see as well.”[/QUOTE]
Good grief.
Sorry, I was saying he will try to steal elections and is going to try everything under the sun to stay in power back in 2019 and was roundly mocked for it, so you are a bit late to that party. So the point isn't that it is increasing his autocratic lust, now a desperate need, but that he is simply getting off on it. You might as well post a sex video of him with a 10 inch dong and call it "No More Sex Scandals for POTUS" ... all he sees is the glorification of himself. That's all he is capable of anyway, but why feed into it?
If they pull off the family dynasty thing, or even some extended family/party version of it, that really is amazing to have overtaken the country, the super power so-called "land of liberty" as vulnerable as Bambi.
Sorry, I was saying he will try to steal elections and is going to try everything under the sun to stay in power back in 2019 and was roundly mocked for it, so you are a bit late to that party. So the point isn't that it is increasing his autocratic lust, now a desperate need, but that he is simply getting off on it. You might as well post a sex video of him with a 10 inch dong
Yeah, you must be talking about Brian, Bah, et al., if you say you were being mocked. People were saying he wouldn't want to relinquish power the moment he took office so no one was surprised in 2020.
But okay, now you're back to "I don't like Trump so I don't want him getting off on it," which if fine, but is still irrelevant to what the protests are for.
The "Marxist" label is just the branding for a specific technique: Critical Theory. It’s not about workers seizing factories; it’s about elite academics seizing definitions to grab political power. They’ve swapped Equality (fair shot) for Equity (forced results) and redefined Racism as "systemic power" so they can label anyone an oppressor. They attempted to do the same with th
Not sure I follow the throughline on this unless you are just speculating. Marxist states have existed, and people that identify with those states that purport to be Marxist do exist and are separate from critical theory. There are socialist political parties but no such similar critical theory political parties, so it’s hard for me to endorse lumping it all together unless you have a more compelling argument.
No Kings is the application of the same sans the violence.... maybe. But it looks like the Fox crowd is on top of it:
No Kings is the quintessential opposite of over academic weirdos. When you go to a protest, it’s like families with babies in strollers who would vote for either Bernie or Biden because they just hate Trump. There’s not much intellectual or academic about it. You don’t have to buy in to any critical theory nonsense to endorse it.
Good grief.
lol yes that’s the absurdity of trying to liken it to BLM.
Not sure I follow the throughline on this unless you are just speculating. Marxist states have existed, and people that identify with those states that purport to be Marxist do exist and are separate from critical theory. There are socialist political parties but no such similar critical theory political parties, so it’s hard for me to endorse lumping it all together unle
And those other approaches are what CT is critical of. Basically they don't believe it's possible to cease the means of production until you first cease control of the narrative, which starts with ceasing editorial control of the dictionary.
No Kings is the quintessential opposite of over academic weirdos. When you go to a protest, it’s like families with babies in strollers who would vote for either Bernie or Biden because they just hate Trump. There's not much intellectual or academic about it. You don't have to buy in to any critical theory nonsense to endorse it.
Sure. Who could possibly oppose kings or dictators? Hence, people opposed to them are pro dictatorship. But to what end? I doubt any of them voted for Trump and along with the rest of Dems are opposed to him.
lol yes that’s the absurdity of trying to liken it to BLM.
That wasn't directed at you or what you're saying. I meant 'good grief' re what the guy on Fox was saying about the costumes.
Again, Trump loves the "No Kings" rallies. "They think I'm king, " he thinks, when he sees that. Nothing could be more stroking to his ego. KING! If they called it the "No Flim-Flam Fascist Fatboy Kleptocratic Despots" rally ... he'd be a little less giddy about it.
That’s how stupid these people are. Trump loves this.
Also, these idiots were throwing bricks at the police in LA.
And those other approaches are what CT is critical of. Basically they don't believe it's possible to cease the means of production until you first cease control of the narrative, which starts with ceasing editorial control of the dictionary.
That’s why they’re not Marxists.
Sure. Who could possibly oppose kings or dictators? Hence, people opposed to them are pro dictatorship. But to what end? I doubt any of them voted for Trump and along with the rest of Dems are opposed to him.
I could run a term substitution on “pro-life” or “stop the steal” or “cut wasteful spending” or any number of conservative slogans. Although jokingly I have called Peterson a post-modernist conservative, I don’t think using clever language to gain support for your political position is some unique critical theory thing or the core of why it sucks.
If that was the case, Socrates seemed to have been dealing with lots of critical theorists back in his day.
That wasn't directed at you or what you're saying. I meant 'good grief' re what the guy on Fox was saying about the costumes.
I know, I was agreeing with it being foolishness. But that’s why you don’t get “every war is the Iraq war” syndrome.
A fine take from Nolan Dalla
IRAN'S BEST WEAPON -- TURNS OUT TO BE TRUMP!
Could anybody be a bigger **** up than Trump?
If you're on the other side of a war, is there anyone -- dumber, less stable, more irrational, so mentally disturbed, and so easily distracted and shockingly unfocused on what's going on than Trump and his sycophantic clown circus of gutless loons calling the shots in the Middle East?
One of the most revealing comments this week came from Iranian officials who spoke to international media. They made it perfectly clear they have absolutely *no* intention of trying to assassinate Trump.
Think about it.
Why interrupt a carnival of chaos? Why eliminate Iran's best "weapon of mass destruction" in this war? He's a blabbering blob of brainlessness.
Even though the United States (and Israel) already murdered the head of state of a sovereign nation in an arial bombardment when their unprovoked war was launched more than a month ago, and revenge would be entirely justified, apparently no reciprocal attempt on Trump's life will be made by the Iranian Government. Targeting Trump makes utterly no sense from their perspective. He's the mad castrated bull trapped inside the American china cabinet. Iran figures -- go ahead and let Trump break everything. Iran doesn't need to fire a shot. Trump's doing a helluva' job on his own, and there's tens of millions of cultists unwilling to acknowledge the carnage -- on bankrupt farmers, at the gas pumps, in declining stock markets, on the exploding federal deficit, and America's plunging reputation for stability and diminishing reliability around the world.
Indeed, the reason why an assassination attempt now appears so unlikely -- is both frightening and revelatory. Fact is, no weapon the Iranians could possibly build or launch could do more harm to the United States than Trump is doing right now. To the nation. To America's reputation. To trust in the United States. He's a performative self-obsessed neutron bomb of incompetence and perpetual dysfunction. Trump's grotesque mismanagement, his innumerable inconsistencies, and his ceaseless deception have even somehow managed to do what was unthinkable -- he's made certain aspects of Iranian society and their situation sympathetic to many. He's also destroyed every former international alliance, except for co-criminal conspirator Israel. Militarily, and certainly economically speaking, he's been outfoxed, outplayed, and appears boxed into a "no-win" game where the stakes are life and death (for those victims who will pay the ultimate price for bravado and failure).
Yes, Iran now sees Trump as a major asset.
Unlike America, which never, never, never, never, never learns from history, especially its own FAILED history in the Middle East, the Persians know and understand what it takes to overcome the odds and survive, even when they're outnumbered and outgunned. Yet again, arrogant America, led into a pointless war by reactionary conservatives, have underestimated their adversary which is always the ultimate danger in wartime. Iran might be an awful regime, but they're also not stupid. Remembering the words of Napoleon who once said -- ”Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
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Hasn't Iran basically doubled their oil revenue since the invasion started? They should cut Trump a commission check.
How is she being inconsistent?
Both Ukraine and Iran are under attack by a superpower.
Russia is nowhere close to being a superpower. There is only one superpower in the world today, but that one too is waning fast.
Russia is however a large and wealthy (well, for now) state under the control of a highly corrupt and totalitarian fascist regime, which uses the old colonial maps of the Russian empire to argue that anything on those maps which isn't currently Russian should be bombed indiscriminately until it agrees to be Russian.
For a certain subset of the political population which desperately needs Russia to be the good guy alternative to the evils of the west (some imagined, some genuine), this results in a lot of keeping their heads in the sand and being very vocal about how keeping your head in the sand is the only way to fight fascism.
All that said, there is certainly lessons to learn from Russia. Especially in regards to how authoritarianism and corruption exist in a highly effective symbiotic relationship, and we also see in countries like Turkey and Hungary that this relationship can erode democratic institutions very quickly. The US is also currently in such a spiral, and seems to be speedwalking the Hungary approach.
Russia is however a large and wealthy (well, for now) state under the control of a highly corrupt and totalitarian fascist regime....
All that said, there is certainly lessons to learn from Russia. Especially in regards to how authoritarianism and corruption exist in a highly effective symbiotic relationship...The US is also currently in such a spiral
Nah, the US is fire-walled against tyranny.
Russia's problem is concentration of wealth, ie, they don't have enough wealthy people. That's the firewall against tyranny Russia lacks. And it's no accident that these actual oligarchies have pretty much all sprung from collapsed socialist experiments. That's the problem with absolute equality: everyone becomes equally powerless to stop the despots.
Concentrion of wealth:
Russia: top 1% own 99% of wealth.
US: top 1% own 90% of wealth.
And absolute numbers matter too.
Russia: 3 millionaires per 1,000.
US: 85 millionaires per 1,000.
The US has close to 25 million millionaires and mints 1,000 new millionaires.... per day. Russia has less than 500k. Those are the people who get things done, not the 90%. And while they're not running things, if they don't like the way things are being run, meaning their self-interests gets threatened, they're the ones with the power to change things.
Nah, the US is fire-walled against tyranny.Russia's problem is concentration of wealth, ie, they don't have enough wealthy people. That's the firewall against tyranny Russia lacks. And it's no accident that these actual oligarchies have pretty much all sprung from collapsed socialist experiments. That's the problem with absolute equality: everyone becomes equally powerless to s
This post is wild, especially following citizens being executed in the streets by agents of the government.
How many billionaires in the US? How much wealth do they own?
