Donald Trump

[Damocles]

That gives a bit of context to what you write, I guess. Like you are the one who knows what truth is and how to get there - anyone that disagrees with you is talking bullshit and so can be righteously 'taken to task' until they come back into alignment with your truth. Good luck with that and, well, no wonder you come across as a little 'upset' on occasion. Have a great day and enjoy the fruits of your labour :)

No, I am the one that knows how truth is determined. And it's through evidence and rationality. And if you're not doing that then I'm going to ask why you're not doing that.

 

[west didsblue]

In Hitler's early days in Office, he/the Nazis dismantled the press by taking them over, attacking their printing presses and killing their journalists. Trump's Press Secretary, who gives a press conference every single day, didn't invite 4 news outlets to a briefing where invitations are traditionally rotated, and he often insults them for insulting him.

Hitler grabbed hold of the "stab in the back" narrative from the First World War that stated that as Germany was fighting in France, the homefront gave up on them. In this he blamed Jewish conspiracies then arrested many Jews and sent them into concentration camps for being traitors. Trump ordered a ban on new refugees from 6 countries which the Obama State Department declared as terrorist hotspots.

So no, I don't see the comparisons in techniques and find the comparison in itself gross.

Are you familiar with a phrase used by the Nazis - "Lügenpresse"? Compare that with Trumps regular declarations of "Fake News".
I'm sure you'll disagree with this article but there are certainly some valid points.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...der-germany-fuhrer-us-president-a7568506.html

 

[CityStu]

That's essentially it yes. I think most of Trump, Brexit, and also Black Lives Matter and fringe left groups are all a response to economic and political inequality rather than the somewhat screeching world views that are getting belted out from all corners, deafening the populace. The "have-nots" all seem to be turning on each other and rather than looking at billionaires like Trump and bankers like Farage as the enemy, we're embracing them and their rhetoric.

Whichever way you look at it, it is undeniable that both Brexit and Trump struck a chord with millions of people. Calling Trump a demagogue cult figure or all of his supporters idiot racists is not only patronising to those people but also is pointless simplification that achieves nothing. I thought Trump would lose and lose heavily. I thought UKIP would be a nothing party in the last elections and Lab/Lib coalition would win. I thought Brexit was an impossibility. I thought all of these things because the media I consumed and the people I listened to in my friend group also all thought those things and when I saw contradictory opinions to this on places like Bluemoon, I wrote them off as morons or secretly racist trolls. I lived in a bubble of ignorance and even worse than this, had no idea I lived in a bubble of ignorance.

This isn't where I want to live; the truth and reality are important to me and I've recognised my impression of the views of the nations were very out of whack with the views of the nation. Due to my federalist globalist views, it's pretty common that where I think we should be politically is not where we are but we're also in a different place for where I thought we were. Social media and the mainstream media presented me with a reality that was undeniably false.

The only way I know how to determine truth is through evidence, critical analysis and starting with a non-biased perspective wherever possible. As a member of Labour, I'd like us to win an election and continue all of the good things that Labour is known for (and maybe do less of the bad things). I don't know how to achieve that when we don't understand the country, the world, or how it is changing around us. On how we stop playing the "everybody is a bigot" card and start listening to people that we've ignored and insulted for 20 years. Trump is a lightning rod of this change and understanding what it is that he is doing, what it is that is appealing and what it is that the rest of the Government are doing in opposition to it is important information in that discovery. What happens in the States invariably makes its way across the Atlantic 5+ years later. I don't think Farage is that change and think we have our own Trump to come.

For 20 years I've preached inclusion and excluded people who hold opinions that I built into racism that was never there. Once that was eliminated post-Brexit and I started fact checking things that I'd never fact checked before, I found that the world looked a bit more like those views than it first appeared. Not totally of course, their views are still in opposition to mine, but at least the logic started to make sense if I did still disagree which is a step forward. Racists exist and support Brexit, of course they do. But lots of people who aren't racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic or nationalists also support Brexit and it would be nice if we figured out a way to cater towards them within the confines of liberal democracy.

And this all sums up my central core belief - fair and democratic elections can never be wrong. The democratic experiment that started in the US and France replaced the monarchist/imperial systems of Europe and did so a shockingly short time ago really. It was only about 100 years that most of Europe still had monarchs and had them as de jure rather than just de facto rulers. We're a less stable social system than we really give ourselves credit for - and yet democracy has saved the day on numerous occasions. In the Nuclear Age could we see the conquest driven Old World Emperors or Kings restraining themselves to ensure that type of peace like Kennedy and Khrushchev did? I don't know, it feels not.

The system is right and it works. When a program that you know to have good logic inside produces surprising results, you examine the inputs and outputs - you don't call it names and claim it's a racist powermad dictator. That's where I'm at politically and mentally. I don't understand the situation in front of me and don't think any of the answers masquerading as insults that I'm given are satisfactory. I do feel however that listening more and giving people a good faith chance to explain situations has helped rather than demonoising them at every step.

Absolutely fantastic post. I think you're attitude towards Brexit and Trump, as someone who disagrees with both, is exemplary. It's fair to dislike those decisions but dislike them for rational reasons.

 

[Damocles]

Are you familiar with a phrase used by the Nazis - "Lügenpresse"? Compare that with Trumps regular declarations of "Fake News".
I'm sure you'll disagree with this article but there are certainly some valid points.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...der-germany-fuhrer-us-president-a7568506.html

Mate, that's fucking nonsense. How can you not see that's fucking nonsense?

“Cut to the current election. We had heard allegations that Trump kept Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, but somehow we normalised that.

He's getting slagged off her because in 1990 he owned a book (that was gifted to him by a friend) called My New Order which sat in a bookcase in his bedroom that happened to be near his bed. Now re-read that sentence. Do you see how "facts" and contextual facts are completely different and that's been lost here?

Calling Hitler a "mountebank" - a con man, he compared his behaviour to how "Trump appealed to his nitwit thug racist, anti-Semite followers", adding "this is the comparison I’d been seeking”.

The author continued with a caution: "Trump’s outrageous conduct and shamelessly lying mouth seemed so ridiculous we wouldn’t have to take him seriously. Until we did.”







How can you read what I said about rationality and evidence and link me to an article by somebody like this, containing the quotes above, as a serious look at comparison? I've got no time for his shit and people like him, it's hard enough to get through all the decent journo stories.

 

[geoff clipp]

Whatever you think of Trump, your final sentence provides you with the answer you seek regarding his business acumen, delegating to geeks and dorks who make him a shed load of money, makes him a very astute businessman indeed...!

But he hasn't really made any money over the course of his life. He inherited a shit tonne of money and currently has less money than he would have if he'd just left it in the bank for the past 40 years.

 

[west didsblue]

Mate, that's fucking nonsense. How can you not see that's fucking nonsense?

“Cut to the current election. We had heard allegations that Trump kept Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, but somehow we normalised that.

He's getting slagged off her because in 1990 he owned a book (that was gifted to him by a friend) called My New Order which sat in a bookcase in his bedroom that happened to be near his bed. Now re-read that sentence. Do you see how "facts" and contextual facts are completely different and that's been lost here?

Calling Hitler a "mountebank" - a con man, he compared his behaviour to how "Trump appealed to his nitwit thug racist, anti-Semite followers", adding "this is the comparison I’d been seeking”.

The author continued with a caution: "Trump’s outrageous conduct and shamelessly lying mouth seemed so ridiculous we wouldn’t have to take him seriously. Until we did.”







How can you read what I said about rationality and evidence and link me to an article by somebody like this, containing the quotes above, as a serious look at comparison? I've got no time for his shit and people like him, it's hard enough to get through all the decent journo stories.

Of course that article is overstating it; I didn't say I agreed with every word. But the point remains that Trump's campaign was built on lies and proclamations of fake news against everyone who takes an opposing view. You've got to admit that "Fake News" and "Lügenpresse" bear a striking similarity and the use of lies and smears formed a huge part of both campaigns. I'm not talking about bending the truth here, I'm talking about blatant whoppers. Just saying that "all politicians lie" like you did in a previous post is completely understating the level of mendacity in Trump's campaign and in his presidency to date. I suppose when comparing Trump with other politicians, at least you know Trump's lying as he's so blatant about it whereas with other politicians you only find out whether they're lying later.

 

[Vic]

he wasnt stupid enough to paint himself orange though

How do you know? That's in black and white.

 

[arfurclue]

No, I am the one that knows how truth is determined. And it's through evidence and rationality. And if you're not doing that then I'm going to ask why you're not doing that.

Thank you. What if I suggested that there is a way of truth that is beyond (not less than) 'just' evidence and rationality? I do not mean this to say that I am 'right' or you are 'wrong' - more curious as to where you are coming from. A while back I seem to remember you speaking of 'redressing the balance' (which felt like you were saying something like 'bringing things back to a state of truth?) and I'm not sure that 'evidence and rationality' of itself can really do this - a bit like the idea that logic has a limited ability to bring balance but it can come to be used in a balanced way?

 

[Damocles]

Thank you. What if I suggested that there is a way of truth that is beyond (not less than) 'just' evidence and rationality? I do not mean this to say that I am 'right' or you are 'wrong' - more curious as to where you are coming from. A while back I seem to remember you speaking of 'redressing the balance' (which felt like you were saying something like 'bringing things back to a state of truth?) and I'm not sure that 'evidence and rationality' of itself can really do this - a bit like the idea that logic has a limited ability to bring balance but it can come to be used in a balanced way?

I express myself badly at times.

Here's the problem as I see it - there's no foundations for debate. When I talk about the use of rationality and evidence in the political sphere, I'm attempting to establish that foundation. At the moment we can't even agree on what events are happening and not happening so we can't reasonably discuss what they mean or don't mean and how they should apply to how our society is ran and structured.

For example, let's say me and you are talking about the City performance against Liverpool. Maybe I think we played well and you think we didn't? Within that argument there's lots of room for us to reasonably talk to each other because we have a set of common and established principles such as:

• We both agree that City and Liverpool exist.
• We both agree that they played a football match with each other.
• We both agree that they played that with 11 players each plus sub, and that it was played within the rules of the game as laid out by the FA and FIFA.
• We both agree that it would be better for City to have won than not won.
• We both agree that whoever scores more goals and concedes the least wins the game.

So that's fine, we can talk about performances because there are ground rules in play on which you can build arguments upon. I might not agree with your argument that Nolito should have played instead of Sterling to free Sane to have a pop at Milner. I might instead think that Sterling's 20 assists show he's just as good. But whatever, all of this is fine because we both have a clear vision of what happened, why it happened and our opinions differ on how to approach things in the future.

The problem with the political sphere at the moment, and I put this down to the media both mainstream and social, is that we can't even agree on the basic facts of what happened any more so there's no axioms on which to build opinions. So Brexit won - we can all agree. But did people vote for Brexit or something else? I don't know, do you? I presume that people voted for Brexit and wanted a hard Brexit but I've got no real reason to think that apart from the presumption that people understand what it is that words mean. What if they didn't know what leaving the EU meant, what if they thought it meant closing off the immigration from the EU and pulling out of the Single Market? What if, what if, what if?

Every argument is essentially a pyramid. Both of us agree on the events and then start building cases on top of those events using our belief systems, our personal experiences and our information. If we don't have those shared events then all we have are bricks to throw at each other.

When I see Breitbart or the Washington Post start using facts without context or build pyramids on a foundation of lies then it's important that people go out of their way to knock those down, as if we can't even agree on what reality looks like then we've got no way of building to a shared compromise which is the foundation of all political systems. Even if, in fact no; especially if, those versions of reality are generally left unchallenged.

 

[r.soleofsalford]

How do you know? That's in black and white.

allegedly