The Donald....the newest savior.....

Simple Minded

The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

I think the newest savior from the East deserves his own thread!

Obama and Trump: Two of a Kind

July 21, 2015
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8555

Outwardly they couldn’t be more different. But take a closer look.

by Victor Davis Hanson

President Obama is said to feel liberated, in the sense that he can finally say what, and do as, he pleases — without much worry any more over political ramifications, including presidential and congressional elections. Obama’s lame-duck presidency has now devolved into the progressive bully pulpit that his base always longed for. Of course, his editorializing and executive orders may worry Hillary Clinton — much as Donald Trump’s pronouncements do his more circumspect Republican rivals.

Trump is a celebrity who tweets and phones his praise of and insults to comedians, athletes, and media kingpins. But so does Obama love the celebrity world. He is comfortable with Jay Z and Beyoncé, picks the Sweet Sixteen on live television, and has reminded us that he’s the LeBron of the Teleprompter, who won’t choke under the spotlights. Both see pop culture and the presidency as a fitting together perfectly.

Would the Chicago community-organizing cadre be that much different from the Trump Manhattan clique? Isn’t big-city know-how key to “fundamentally transforming” the country? Is there that much difference between Trump’s golden name tags and Obama’ faux Greek columns, vero possumus, “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” and cooling the planet and lowering the seas?

Would not Trump perhaps agree with this Obama assertion from 2008: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” Both men seem to believe that the presidency is dependent on ratings, something like The Apprentice: “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

In his current unbridled commentary and without worry over party politics, Obama has perhaps gone the full Trump — though in the opposite fashion of tossing out politically correct themes of the progressive Left, which lead to little concrete action. So Obama is Trump’s doppelgänger. The two see the world in similarly materialist — though, again, opposite — terms: Trump wants net worth to be the litmus test of political preparation (“The point is that you can’t be too greedy”), even as Obama professes that big money is a Romney-like 1 percent disqualification. Obama’s infamous communalistic quotes to the effect that you didn’t build that, at some point you’ve made enough money, and this is no time to profit are just bookends to Trump’s money-is-everything ideas that he built everything, he’s never going to make enough money, and it is always time to profit.

On matters of race, liberals seem to like the fact that Obama no longer lectures so much about pathologies endemic in black communities, but now focuses on institutionalized bias, as if he is tired of scripted talk about the preservation of the family, the need for education, and the avoidance of illegitimacy and drug use. It is far easier to reduce all that down to institutional racism and legacy unfairness, much as Trump waves his hands about the next complex issue — trade, China, immigration, veterans’ affairs — and tells his audiences that a distant “they” and “them” are the problem. The respective bases both love the message that someone else did it to us.

The media rightly notice Trump’s first-person — I, me, my, mine — overload, but that too is Obama’s favorite kind of pronoun. The president often refers to his “team” in narcissistic terms, as if the West Wing were a sort of Trump Tower. It is said that Trump is tasteless and gets into tit-for-tat squabbles or tosses out gross quips that are unpresidential. One wonders when Trump will make jokes about the Special Olympics, or about siccing lethal drones on the would-be suitors of his daughters. In any case, Trump handled NBC’s Katy Tur in the same manner in which Obama dispensed with CBS’s Major Garrett.

Trump was blasted for editorializing on the tragedy of Kate Steinle’s murder at the hands of a seven-time felon and five-time-deported illegal alien. But that habit of seeking political resonance in individual tragedies bears the Obama imprimatur. Although the Steinle tragedy did not offer Obama the correct political calculus, he has sought to channel Ferguson, Baltimore, and mass school shootings as fuel for his own political agenda. So far Trump has not quite descended to the level of the president’s use of a racial affinity with Trayvon Martin, although his quip about prisoners of war like John McCain being less than heroic comes close.

More importantly, like Trump, Obama does not worry over inconsistency or bombast, and has no hesitation about insisting on things that not only are not, but perhaps could not be, true. Obamacare would, Obama assured the nation, lower premiums and deductibles, reduce the deficit, and allow Americans to keep their current doctors and plans, but in fact it did no such things. Obama repeatedly warned his supporters that our immigration law was unquestioned settled law, duly enacted by Congress, and that no president could unilaterally override it — a strange Freudian foretelling of exactly what the president would soon do. Reset with Russia was the proper corrective to George W. Bush’s alienation of Vladimir Putin — only it was not, and instead ensured new levels of Russian–American alienation. The post-Saddam Iraq was a great achievement; the country was now secure and self-reliant enough for American troops to leave — and then it just wasn’t, after we skedaddled. How exactly did the “jayvee” ISIS team punch above its weight as the varsity? “Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now.” That was six years ago, and Guantanamo is still in business.

Talks with Iran were originally supposed to have been predicated on anywhere, anytime inspections, no enrichment within Iran, real-time snap-back sanctions, and tough protocols about weapon purchases and subsidies for terrorists — until they really were not. Red lines were game changers, only they weren’t — and they weren’t even Obama’s own red lines, but the U.N.’s. Chlorine gas did not count as a WMD: it wasn’t really a weaponized chemical agent at all. Trump’s inconsistencies and contradictions so far are no more dramatic.

Trump understandably envisions world leaders and foreign policy itself as World Presidents’ Organization meetings of business pros like himself, who horse-trade to win their own constituents the better deal. Wheeler-dealers like Trump, we are to believe, are thus the most successful occupants of the Oval Office, especially when energized by savvy and innate charisma. The problem supposedly with our foreign policy is that bureaucrats and diplomats were never negotiators and dealers, and so got taken to the cleaners by far more clever and conniving foreign operators.

But again, is Obama so different a spirit? He feels that his own winning charm and community-organizing skills can succeed with revolutionary leaders, in a way the political skills of a George W. Bush never could. Relations with Turkey hinged on a “special friendship” with Erdogan. Apparently, Obama felt that neo-Ottomanism, anti-Israel rhetoric, and increasing Islamization were mere proof of inevitable revolutionary turmoil, a good thing, but one that could be capitalized on only by someone like himself, who long ago was properly ideologically prepped. Ditto Obama’s mythography of the Cairo speech before an audience that, on the White House’s insistence, included members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or his outreach to Cuba and Iran (note his past silence about the 2009 green demonstrations in Iran). So if Obama has won over the world’s one-time pariahs, maybe Trump can try the same first-person methodologies to coax the more business-minded prime ministers to our side. The self-absorbed idea of Trump outfoxing a Chinese kleptocrat is similar to that of Obama hypnotizing an Iranian theocrat.

Donald Trump believes he can oversell America abroad in the manner of Chamber of Commerce boosterism; isn’t that the twin to Obama underselling the country in the fashion of a wrinkled-browed academic? Both are stern moralists: America is too often shorted, and so Trump is angry over the sins of omission. For Obama, past genocide, racism, and imperialism vie as sins of U.S. commission.

Would a Trump bragging tour be all that much different from an Obama apology tour? If, in politically incorrect style, it is implied that all immigrants are likely to be criminals, is that any sloppier or more politically motivated than the politically correct assumption that all are dreamers? Threatening to charge Mexico per illegal immigrant seems about as sensible as leaving the border wide open and nullifying existing immigration law.

There is no need to elect Donald Trump; we’ve already had six years of him.
Last edited by Simple Minded on Wed Jul 29, 2015 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

Donald Trump and the Fed-Up Crowd

July 27, 2015

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8567

Watching Trump’s rise, America’s middle class “fed-up crowd” is enjoying the comeuppance of an elite that never pays for the ramifications of its own ideology.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Donald Trump — a former liberal and benefactor of Democrats — is still surging. But his loud New York lingo, popular put-downs of obnoxious reporters and trashing of the D.C. establishment are symptoms, not the catalyst, of the growing popular outrage of lots of angry Americans who are fed up.The fed-up crowd likes the payback of watching blood sport in an arena where niceties just don’t apply anymore. At least for a while longer, they enjoy the smug getting their comeuppance, as an uncouth, bullheaded Trump charges about, snorting and spearing liberal pieties and more sober and judicious Republicans at random.

Perhaps they don’t see the abjectly crude Trump as any more crude that Barack Obama calmly in academic tones assuring Americans that they all could keep their doctors and health plans when he knew that was simply untrue or announcing to the nation that his own grandmother was a “typical white person” or advising supporters to “get in their face.” They see Trump as no more vindictive that Harry Reid lying about Mitt Romney’s tax returns (and then bragging that such a lie helped defeat him), or a Sen. Barbara Boxer publicly attac­­king the single, non-parental status of then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. And they certainly don’t see Trump as uncouth as an Al Sharpton — former presidential candidate, chief advisor on matters of race to Barack Obama, and current TV news show host. Trump’s crass bombast is enjoyed by the fed-up crowd as the proper antidote to the even greater bombast of the Left, who created Trump’s latest manifestations.

The conservative base is tired of illegal immigration. Their furor peaked with the horrific killing of Kate Steinle by a seven-time convicted felon and five-time deported illegal alien. They are baffled that one apparently exempt and privileged ethnic group can arbitrarily decide to ignore federal law. They are irate that they are lectured about their supposed racism from an open-borders movement predicated on La Raza-like ethnic chauvinism. They do not want to hear about nativism from a lobby that so often at rallies waves the flag of the country that none of the protestors seems to wish to return to, a country whose authoritarianism is romanticized as much as their host country is faulted for its magnanimity. Call this what you will, but emotion over neglecting federal law is much less worrisome than cool calculation over violating it.

The fed-up crowd expects statistics to be massaged to counter reality; in the real world nearly a million illegal aliens have committed crimes, with almost 700,000 charged with felonies and serious misdemeanors. In fantasyland, they are said to be more lawful than U.S. citizens. Most Americans would be guilty of felonies for creating false identities, or using fraudulent Social Security numbers; in matters of illegal immigration, these common crimes are not even considered crimes.

The furor over the death of Ms. Steinle reflected the mounting outrage — especially at the hypocrisy of the elites who crafted sanctuary-city legislation. Would they be so nonchalant about the law if a daughter of one of the architects of the legislation were to be gunned down by an illegal alien? Would San Franciscans object if Tulsa nullified federal gun legislation or declared open season on federally protected species? Only liberalism can take a reactionary Old Confederacy idea of federal nullification and turn it into a progressive fad.

The recent disclosures about Planned Parenthood likewise infuriated the fed-up base. Again, they were not incensed just at the callous and sick way supposed humanitarians at Planned Parenthood talked of slicing up fetal tissue and selling organs, but at the hypocrisy of it all. At a time liberals are Trotskyzing our past to damn to memory any ancient historical figure who owned slaves or practiced racism, how does Planned Parenthood’s godhead Margaret Sanger, the racist eugenicist and promoter of abortion to curb minority populations [6], get a pass?

Liberals lecture about “settled science” and adherence to logic instead of myth and folklore. But they also insist on talking of fetuses as non-human organisms, even as they concede both that fetuses in the womb possess viable — and marketable — human tissues and that developing babies at 22 weeks are now viable outside the womb.

For those who bandy about words like troglodyte, it is quite Neanderthal, in the scientific sense, to believe that a baby is not a living, viable organism until it emerges from the birth canal. For a movement that talks of caring and compassion, it is hard to write a script more cruel and callous than that of the Planned Parenthood talking heads referencing a Lamborghini or a “less crunchy” abortion technique or the macabre house of horrors of the abortionist and convicted murderer Dr. Gosnell. As for the supposed questionable ethics of catching Planned Parenthood with ruse and stealthy tape, no one seemed to object over secretly taping at a private gathering Mitt Romney’s unfortunate quip about the “47 percent,” much less did liberals object to four decades of 60 Minutes ambush-style, secret-video reporting.

The fed-up crowd is tired of racial hypocrisy. In the Trayvon Martin case, the president weighed in on the ongoing case in blatantly racist fashion by announcing the deceased might have looked like his own son, as the New York Times invented “white Hispanic” to lessen George’s Zimmerman’s ethnic fides (e.g., is Barack Obama, of similar half-minority lineage, a “white African-American”?) and as the media photo-shopped Zimmerman’s head wounds and selectively edited his taped 911 call.

Fantasy was thematic ad nauseam from the Duke lacrosse fiasco to the Michael Brown mythologies, the font of the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie that became a national slogan. But again, the hypocrisy is what irritates more — a Barack Obama siccing his administration after supposedly elite segregated neighborhoods as he sends his kids to Sidwell Friends.

The fed-up crowd expects that Paula Deen, the Duck Dynasty crowd, and Donald Sterling can become public enemies with a racist or insensitive word. But this is not so when a Harry Reid, Joe Biden, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson mouths unequivocal racism. They assume that Jefferson can be rendered no more than a slave owner, but not liberal icon Woodrow Wilson who practiced 20th-century not 18th-century-style racism.

The fed-up crowd senses that if America continues its present regressive trajectory it will end up as a Greece, Detroit, or Chicago, without anywhere in America to flee to. It no doubt wants Trump to continue for a bit longer, as he struts about and shouts over why Hillary has a career when Gen. David Petraeus’s was ruined for roughly the same offenses, or cuts short an agenda-driven and biased Telemundo reporter as biased and agenda-driven. At some point the fed-ups will have vented and become fed up themselves with the circus-master Trump, who equates his own money-making with both virtue and wisdom. But we are not there yet quite yet.

To explain the inexplicable rise of Donald Trump is to calibrate the anger of a fed-up crowd that is enjoying the comeuppance of an elite that never pays for the ramifications of its own ideology. The elite media, whose trademark is fad and cant, writes off the fed-up crowd as naïve and susceptible to demagoguery as the contradictory and hypocritical Trump manipulates their anger. In fact, they probably got it backwards. Trump is a transitory vehicle of the fed-up crowd, a current expression of their distaste for both Democratic and Republican politics, but not an end in and of himself. The fed-up crowd is tired of being demagogued to death by progressives, who brag of “working across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” as they ram through agendas with executive orders, court decisions, and public ridicule. So the fed-ups want other conservative candidates to emulate Trump’s verve, energy, eagerness to speak the unspeakable, and no-holds barred Lee Atwater style — without otherwise being Trump.
noddy
Posts: 11318
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:09 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by noddy »

i wouldnt have thought being a protest vote would help for making it to the final selection.
ultracrepidarian
User avatar
Nonc Hilaire
Posts: 6168
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:28 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Can't agree. Obama is low-end rental politician. He is just a puppet being played on stage.

Trump is an independently wealthy media personality trying to buy the Republican party. Adelson is getting old and Trump recognizes the opportunity to become the new kingmaker. His game is completely different from the rest of the field.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
Mr. Perfect
Posts: 16973
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:35 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Never figured you for an establishment GOP type SM. If anything Trump struck me as your dream candidate.
Censorship isn't necessary
Mr. Perfect
Posts: 16973
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:35 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Mr. Perfect »

noddy wrote:i wouldnt have thought being a protest vote would help for making it to the final selection.
Trump is not a protest vote. He's in it to win it.
Censorship isn't necessary
Mr. Perfect
Posts: 16973
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:35 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Can't agree. Obama is low-end rental politician. He is just a puppet being played on stage.

Trump is an independently wealthy media personality trying to buy the Republican party.
He hasn't spent a dime on the GOP.
Adelson is getting old and Trump recognizes the opportunity to become the new kingmaker. His game is completely different from the rest of the field.
He could do that without running for President.
Censorship isn't necessary
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

Mr. Perfect wrote:Never figured you for an establishment GOP type SM. If anything Trump struck me as your dream candidate.
:lol: Oh Mr. P!

I don't think our realities have much intersection. Figure me as whatever best suits your fancy.

If we ever encounter each other outside of the cyber-fantasy political arena........ you might not even recognize me.

Usually the candidate with the best hairdo wins. Donald's opponents are in big trouble..... ;)
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Can't agree. Obama is low-end rental politician. He is just a puppet being played on stage.

Trump is an independently wealthy media personality trying to buy the Republican party. Adelson is getting old and Trump recognizes the opportunity to become the new kingmaker. His game is completely different from the rest of the field.
Who do you think is pulling Obama's strings?

O & T strike me as similar egos. Both realize it is more stagecraft than substance, but I think both may have fallen prey to the siren song of celebrity.
Mr. Perfect
Posts: 16973
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:35 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Mr. Perfect »

You are suggesting there is something new under the sun.
Censorship isn't necessary
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

Mr. Perfect wrote:You are suggesting there is something new under the sun.
either that or just observing business as usual.

ie; two ego-maniacs who did not have the sense not to buy into their own PR.
manolo
Posts: 1582
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:46 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by manolo »

Mr. Perfect wrote: Trump is not a protest vote. He's in it to win it.
Mr P,

I agree with you. The best outcome will be if Trump decides to go third party. He is likeable for many voters and he could pull them to the booths.The demographic he needs to win are white folks disillusioned with the main stream politics. This should be an easy sell.

The 2016 election could be hanging on Trump's ego. Let's hope that it is big enough.

Alex.
User avatar
Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11571
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

Mr. Perfect wrote:.

Trump is not a protest vote. He's in it to win it.

.


Looks to me a competition who can ruin our beloved America faster :lol:


Oh, Lord, what has America done to deserve this ? ?


These folks, were they not in America, would be in ZOO :lol: :lol:


What s disaster

.
manolo
Posts: 1582
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:46 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by manolo »

Simple Minded wrote:
Outwardly they couldn’t be more different. But take a closer look.
SM,

I agree with you about similarity and difference. Under the surface, each of these men embodies the 'American Dream'.

One has been born into wealth and natural privilege and sells the dream that others can avail themselves of such good things.

The other has been born into a poor background, with obvious natural disadvantages. He has strived against these odds to become the first black POTUS in history.

It's inspiring and true. :)

Alex.
Mr. Perfect
Posts: 16973
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:35 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Donald Trump wasn't born poor.
Censorship isn't necessary
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

manolo wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
Outwardly they couldn’t be more different. But take a closer look.
SM,

I agree with you about similarity and difference. Under the surface, each of these men embodies the 'American Dream'.

One has been born into wealth and natural privilege and sells the dream that others can avail themselves of such good things.

The other has been born into a poor background, with obvious natural disadvantages. He has strived against these odds to become the first black POTUS in history.

It's inspiring and true. :)

Alex.
Alex,

Obama said it way back in 2008, better than anyone else, paraphrased: "I am like an ink blot that people project upon." Great for candidates, not so much for incumbents. Prior to reading OTNOT, I had no idea that the rest of the world seems to just as interested in projecting on to POTI as many Americans.

for many in the world, POTUS is very similar to the Pope. Almost superhero or deity like.

Even though Obama is half white and half black, marketing him as black was genius. It appealed to pride, guilt, and a sense of healing in many Americans. His first campaign was the most interesting presidential campaign/social phenomena I have ever witnessed.

Considering his childhood, half white, half black, and abandoned by his black father & white mother, (and brown? stepfather), his obsession with race is understandable. He does seem remarkably well adjusted considering that how those closest to him discarded him. I do have to credit him for that. The few people I know who have been abandoned by even one parent bear deep emotional scars.

All in all, Obama strikes me as a typical POTUS. Some hate him, some love him, which says more about the observer than about Obama.

As for the Donald, I really don't know much.

Both he and Obama seem have fallen prey to the worshipping of their sycophants.

Humans and ego.... fame is a very heavy burden that few seem to bear well.
manolo
Posts: 1582
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:46 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by manolo »

Simple Minded wrote: Humans and ego.... fame is a very heavy burden that few seem to bear well.
SM,

Fortunately Barack Hussein is one of those few. :)

Alex.
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

manolo wrote:
Simple Minded wrote: Humans and ego.... fame is a very heavy burden that few seem to bear well.
SM,

Fortunately Barack Hussein is one of those few. :)

Alex.
:) Alex,

I think we also need to give ourselves some credit. Or international reputations as omniscient internet oracles does not seem to have made either of us vain nor unpleasant. If the plebs ever find out we put our skirts on one leg at a time....... they will not be happy! :shock:

;)

I wish you could have been in the US to witness his 2008 campaign/election. The closest visual image I could use to describe it is a Kim Jung ___ rally, a Hitler rally, a Papal rally, or maybe a Beetles or Rolling Stones concert. People went nuts. I think Obama was on more magazine covers in the course of 2 years than Elvis, The Beetles, or The Rolling Stones were during the course of their respective careers. Google the magazine cover contrary indicator some time. It is very revealing of social dynamics and trends.

Now on to a more serious subject. ;) Do you think Brits will ever overcome their inherent racism enough to elect a black or half-black PM? :)

If the Yanks can do it......

cheers mate!
manolo
Posts: 1582
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:46 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by manolo »

Simple Minded wrote: I wish you could have been in the US to witness his 2008 campaign/election. The closest visual image I could use to describe it is a Kim Jung ___ rally, a Hitler rally, a Papal rally, or maybe a Beetles or Rolling Stones concert. People went nuts. I think Obama was on more magazine covers in the course of 2 years than Elvis, The Beetles, or The Rolling Stones were during the course of their respective careers. Google the magazine cover contrary indicator some time. It is very revealing of social dynamics and trends.

Now on to a more serious subject. ;) Do you think Brits will ever overcome their inherent racism enough to elect a black or half-black PM? :)
SM,

You have hit on my own criticism of Obama. In order to get elected he sold the old American snake oil of the 'Dream'. All along he knew what he had to offer was peace, economic recovery and competent presidency. The voters would never have bought that, so maybe I am being hard on the guy.

Re US and UK? I think we are evens on diversity so far, but you will be ahead if Hilary wins 2016.

Alex.
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

manolo wrote:
Simple Minded wrote: I wish you could have been in the US to witness his 2008 campaign/election. The closest visual image I could use to describe it is a Kim Jung ___ rally, a Hitler rally, a Papal rally, or maybe a Beetles or Rolling Stones concert. People went nuts. I think Obama was on more magazine covers in the course of 2 years than Elvis, The Beetles, or The Rolling Stones were during the course of their respective careers. Google the magazine cover contrary indicator some time. It is very revealing of social dynamics and trends.

Now on to a more serious subject. ;) Do you think Brits will ever overcome their inherent racism enough to elect a black or half-black PM? :)
SM,

You have hit on my own criticism of Obama. In order to get elected he sold the old American snake oil of the 'Dream'. All along he knew what he had to offer was peace, economic recovery and competent presidency. The voters would never have bought that, so maybe I am being hard on the guy.

Re US and UK? I think we are evens on diversity so far, but you will be ahead if Hilary wins 2016.

Alex.
Alex,

You are correct that US voters prefer the option of magic to competence for their POTUS candidates. The successful candidate must win the liar's contest.

Once in office, the line between "greatest POTUS of all time" and "Worst POTUS of all time" seems remarkably thin, subjective, and always in flux. What Fred demands from POTUS at occupation W, age X, income Y or location Z is often the opposite of his desires when any one of those four (or a host of other) variables change.

The old saying that "Disagreeing with another's views on religion and politics is like calling their wife ugly & their children stupid." seem to apply more to POTUS than any other politician.

The psychological need for deities, heroes, and oppressors seems popular. Those who don't get it from religion, often seem to substitute political figures.

In you opinion, is the same is true in the UK for PMs?

We promise not to overcome our institutional sexist attitudes in the US if you guys promise not to overcome institutional racism in the UK. Together, "we" can make each other look better, relatively. ;) Lets work together for the "common good."
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

Yet another opinion:

What Voters See in Donald Trump

His rise is not due to anger at government. It is a gesture of contempt for government.


By
Peggy Noonan

Updated July 31, 2015 6:49 p.m. ET

I had a conversation this week with a longtime acquaintance who supports Donald Trump. She’s in her 60s, resides in north Georgia near the Tennessee line, lives on Social Security. She voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and was in fact the first person who alerted me to the breadth of his support. In 2012 she voted Republican, disappointed in Mr. Obama not from the left or the right but the center: He couldn’t make anything work or get anything done.

So, why Trump? “The whole country will be in better shape. And ISIS won’t like it that he’s in charge. He’s very wealthy and can turn around the economy. He’ll get things moving. The Donald will kick a—.” She knows other supporters locally and among friends of her son, an Iraq vet. “They’re completely disgusted and just furious, and he’s igniting their passion. He’s telling them ‘I will make this country great again,’ and they believe him.” Mr. Trump is dismissed as exciting, but “we have to get excited to get up out of the chair to vote.”

Does he strike her as a serious man, a patriot? Yes. “All he does is talk about how great this country is and how greater he can make it, how he wants to get good trade deals and take care of veterans. . . . He doesn’t need this job, he’s already got everything, it’s a pay cut. He doesn’t need the stature. I think he wants the job because he wants to do it.”

Does he have common sense? Yes, she says, he is concerned about what everyone is concerned about, except politicians. “A lot of deals have to be made and he knows the art of the deal. The biggest problem is all the illegal immigrants.”

Wonder Land Columnist Dan Henninger on why voters support the Republican presidential candidate’s populist platform. Photo credit: Chad Crowe.

Is it OK with you that the next president could be a reality star who plays the part of himself, who acts out indignation and fires people on TV? “It doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t bother the American people. And if you asked the people down South here, they don’t care either. They just want somebody in who’s plain and simple who can get the job done.” Otherwise, she worries, “we’re gonna be Greece in another four, five years.”

Does it bother her that Mr. Trump has never held elective office? She paused half a second. “It bothers me a little bit. But I think we need a very tough businessman with great business acumen. We can restore the highways and tunnels and airports, he’ll rebuild them. He’ll build a wall with Mexico. If he was a reality TV show guy that’s OK. Get it done.”

Afterward, a longtime GOP operative underlined her comments on infrastructure, but from a different angle: “Trump intuits that the Republican base loves this country and yearns for an American restoration. The GOP once was a party of industry—bricks and steel—and Trump, the builder, connects with that narrative.”

Some Trump anomalies that have to do with the tropes people use to categorize others:

He was born to wealth and went to Wharton, yet gives off a working-class vibe his supporters admire. He’s like Broderick Crawford in “Born Yesterday”: He comes across as self-made. In spite of his wealth he never made himself smooth, polite. He’s like someone you know. This is part of his power.

His father, a buyer and builder of real estate, was wired into New York’s Democratic machine and its grubby deal making. Donald knew the machine and its players and went on to give political donations based on power, not party. Yet his supporters experience him as outside the system, unsullied by it. He’s a practical man who did what practical men have to do.

He never served in the military yet connects with grunts. He has lived a life of the most rarefied material splendor—gold gilt, penthouse suites—and made the high life part of his brand. Yet he doesn’t come across as snooty or fancy—he’s a regular guy. A glitzy Manhattan billionaire is doing well with evangelicals. That’s a first.

His rise is not due to his supporters’ anger at government. It is a gesture of contempt for government, for the men and women in Congress, the White House, the agencies. It is precisely because people have lost their awe for the presidency that they imagine Mr. Trump as a viable president. American political establishment, take note: In the past 20 years you have turned America into a nation a third of whose people would make Donald Trump their president. Look on your wonders and despair.

Mr. Trump’s supporters like that he doesn’t in the least fear the press, doesn’t get the dart-eyed, anxious look candidates get. He treats reporters with courtesy until he feels they’re out of line, at which point he calls them stupid. They think he’ll do that with Putin. His insult of John McCain didn’t hurt him, and not because his supporters have any animus for Mr. McCain. They just saw it as more proof Mr. Trump will take the bark off anyone.

They’re not nihilists, they’re patriots, and don’t experience themselves as off on a toot but pragmatic in a way the establishment is not. The country is in crisis, we can’t keep doing more of the same. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” We have to do something different. He’s different. If it doesn’t work we’ll fire him.

Trump’s power is not name ID. He didn’t make his name in this cycle or the last, he’s been around 35 years. He’s made an impression.

His ideological incoherence will not hurt him. His core supporters don’t prize him for his intellectual consistency. He has called himself pro-choice but so are some of his supporters, and no one sees him as a ponderer of great moral issues. In the past he has described himself as “quite liberal” on health care. That won’t hurt either. An untold story right now is that everyone was “right” about health care. The Republicans were right that ObamaCare would not and will never work. Democrats—though they haven’t noticed because they’re so busy clinging to and defending ObamaCare—were right that America would support national health care, but not as they devised it. We’ll get out of ObamaCare by expanding Medicare. Most of America, after the trauma of the past five years, won’t mind.

The GOP is waiting for Mr. Trump to do himself in—he’s a self-puncturing balloon. True, but he’s a balloon held aloft by a lot of people; they won’t let it fall so easy.

The first GOP debate looms, next Thursday in Cleveland. If Mr. Trump were on the stage with the second tier, who have nothing to lose, one or two would go at him. But he’ll be with the first tier, who will treat him gingerly. A guess: He will come out with friendly dignity, shake hands, wait quietly for a question, attempt to demonstrate a statesmanlike bearing to anxious and opposed Republican viewers. But he won’t be able to sustain it. And his supporters won’t really want him to. They’ll want him to be The Donald. Bombast will commence.
Mr. Perfect
Posts: 16973
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:35 am

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Seems like your dream candidate.
Censorship isn't necessary
Simple Minded

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Simple Minded »

Mr. Perfect wrote:Seems like your dream candidate.
I think you are describing yourself dreaming of me dreaming of Trump as the GOP candidate.

What am I wearing in your dreams? ;)
User avatar
Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11571
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: The Donald....the newest savior.....

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

2410544_pic_970x641 (1).jpg
2410544_pic_970x641 (1).jpg (125.34 KiB) Viewed 2577 times
Post Reply