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President Trump

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Didn't realise that an anagram of Trump & Farage is Rape, Fart & Mug.

Christ I'm bored this afternoon.
 
It'll be President Pence anyway. The Republicans would want that more than Trump as everyone knows Trump is using the presidency for himself. They are already looking at the building case for Impeachment (but you cannot impeach a President Elect before he enters office) or even preemptively use the Electoral College to get Pence in. No Trump = no need to deliver on his policies as stated and no need to explain/backpedal and failures. A lot is solved by this.

Trump has no support from the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom have called him "thin skinned and constitutionally unfit to command the departments of the DoD". They are all fine with Pence because Pence listens to them, actually Pence is a consummate surviving Republican who navigates Trump's temper tantrums and that bodes well for the Justice and the Senate if he is POTUS. The upper echelons of the Republican party have stopped attacking Trump and now, its all chummy chummy for now and it's a waiting game; Pence is heading the transition team and is positioned perfectly to slide into his role as a president whose creationist pro-life, pro christian, pro conversion therapy rhetoric -- while odious and actually worse than the self-serving amorality of Trump -- will serve to placate the anything-but-Trump popular voters over Hilary and enable a better more formal Republican structure for re-election in 2020 (remember campaigning for 2020 starts in 8 months time). Pence has bigger plans for America than Trump. Keep an eye on him.

Trump is instinctive and I know he knows this is a plan: reaction is to surround himself with family for key positions in the transition team is a sign of that but if Impeachment or Electoral College votes Pence in, a restructure is inevitable anyway and I expect he has Plan B ready to go. Giuliani and Pence are very good buddies and I thing Giuliani would make a better veep than SoS.

Seeing what has happened this past year none of this is far fetched. Its a bad time to write alternative fiction. Even a narrative that matches the Man in the High Castle is looking possible now.

Basically we have two choices: eat shit or drink piss. We can hold our nose though.
 
droodzilla said:
For a "Blairite traitor" Angela Eagle talks a lot of sense:
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to be fair, i agree with most of what she is "describing", but it is hardly insightful, which is what a writer should strive for in an opinion piece. i am also more that a bit put off by this bit in the opening:

It brings to an end seventy years of US global leadership and ushers in a dangerous new world disorder.
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really? offensive, imperialist sentiment aside, and even if we skip over korea, vietnam, nicaragua and many others to the GWB iraq fiasco, how can this be taken as anything than ideological propaganda? is she suffering from a slightly different flavour of fascist nostalgia? the good old days when america was perfect?


Then we saw it writ large in Trump’s campaign. If downright lies and conspiracy theories are propagated with such impunity - indeed, if they are rewarded with stunning electoral success - then all objective reality and integrity in public discourse is destroyed. The danger is then that democracy itself then cannot long survive unscathed.
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correct, but i keep coming back to the wholesale "establishment" lying that has been going for a long time -- it's a lot more cunning, polished and without brazen surface vulgarity. it is a misrepresentation of actual political objectives so horrible that, as pilger points out, ends up creating a "trump". a false prophet who can point to a massive deception.


Welcome to the age of the American demagogue.
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i read that as a symbolic personification of the problem. it does nothing to help us think about and resolve the matter. if this issue is, as she claims, that people can be so easily persuaded by what to her are such obvious lies, then what does she make of a culture that believes in angels, denies climate change, pushes for the teaching of intellignet design and villifies and/or marginalizes intellectuals like noam chomsky and julian assange? is there no relationship here? a simple villification of trump does not address the root causes. it may be good as a temporary venting of anger/frustration, but it is no better than his tactics as a long term solution.



vuk.
 
vuk said:
i am curious: who paid for that trip? surely it wasn't an offical political visit. i am also baffled that farage seem to wield so much ideological and persuasive power but is unable to translate that into any kind of electoral victories.
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No he has no official role in relation to the UK government. He is a wealthy man and probably paid for it himself.

His "ideological and persuasive" power only really extends as far as thick racists (which is why he never wins elections) and TV producers (which is why he is on TV all the time).
 
vuk said:
i read that as a symbolic personification of the problem. it does nothing to help us think about and resolve the matter. if this issue is, as she claims, that people can be so easily persuaded by what to her are such obvious lies, then what does she make of a culture that believes in angels, denies climate change, pushes for the teaching of intellignet design and villifies and/or marginalizes intellectuals like noam chomsky and julian assange? is there no relationship here? a simple villification of trump does not address the root causes. it may be good as a temporary venting of anger/frustration, but it is no better than his tactics as a long term solution.

vuk.
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Assange is an intellectual now? He's a hacker, a publisher and an activist, but to put him in the same league as Chomsky seems eccentric.
 
Not really a hacker, at best a script kiddie. His actual hacking abilities start and stop at re-purposing the open source Wiki code and a bit of pgp.

Not really an intellectual either as an intellectual could have thought his way out of the hole he has dug for himself.
 
PsB said:
Assange is an intellectual now? He's a hacker, a publisher and an activist, but to put him in the same league as Chomsky seems eccentric.
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maybe a bit of a stretch but i always find his analysis of things top notch. in the area of politics, i think he is certainly at the level of chomsky and that's the realm we're concerned with here.

one thing that really struck me was his elegant conspiracy-free account of the so-called "military-industrial complex" beginning at the 11:00 mark in this interview:



vuk.
 
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claire.fox said:
Not really an intellectual either as an intellectual could have thought his way out of the hole he has dug for himself.
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i don't think anyone presenting outlandish theories about pence taking over power (especially when doing so with such confidence) is in a position to comment on what is intelligent political analysis.



vuk.
 
I don't buy that. Good analysis does not imply intellect. The "military-industrial complex" has been a notion batting about since at least (in the form he is speaking about) CIA military cooperation in Nicaragua. He is an consummate repackager of ideas, however.

A synthesis and repackager of ideas, a user of other people's skills and talents Manning, Snowden have both paid heavily for his opportunism. There comes a time when the private cost to an individual starts to foreshadow the advantages of sites like Wikileaks.
 
vuk said:
i don't think anyone presenting outlandish theories about pence taking over power (especially when doing so with such confidence) is in a position to comment on what is intelligent political analysis.



vuk.
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I think you are a comfy white sexist serial point scorer whom has given up almost nothing for his "ideologies" and who thinks he is adored and admired with his glibness and you have very little going in your favour. A voyeur at best. An appropriator of fake Anarchy and free software philosophy as a ideal. You are not even disgusting to me.
 
A few pages back it was suggested that Trump will stimulate the US economy by, among other things, massive spending on defence.

Given his avowed intention to back out of Syria and the middle east, and determination to take a back seat in NATO and let other (under-contributing) partners step up to the plate, I have to ask myself why he intends to spend all that money on the military. I don't have an answer, but I suspect I won't like any that emerge.
 
vuk said:
to be fair, i agree with most of what she is "describing", but it is hardly insightful, which is what a writer should strive for in an opinion piece. i am also more that a bit put off by this bit in the opening:



really? offensive, imperialist sentiment aside, and even if we skip over korea, vietnam, nicaragua and many others to the GWB iraq fiasco, how can this be taken as anything than ideological propaganda? is she suffering from a slightly different flavour of fascist nostalgia? the good old days when america was perfect?




correct, but i keep coming back to the wholesale "establishment" lying that has been going for a long time -- it's a lot more cunning, polished and without brazen surface vulgarity. it is a misrepresentation of actual political objectives so horrible that, as pilger points out, ends up creating a "trump". a false prophet who can point to a massive deception.




i read that as a symbolic personification of the problem. it does nothing to help us think about and resolve the matter. if this issue is, as she claims, that people can be so easily persuaded by what to her are such obvious lies, then what does she make of a culture that believes in angels, denies climate change, pushes for the teaching of intellignet design and villifies and/or marginalizes intellectuals like noam chomsky and julian assange? is there no relationship here? a simple villification of trump does not address the root causes. it may be good as a temporary venting of anger/frustration, but it is no better than his tactics as a long term solution.



vuk.
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Actually, I agree with a lot of that.

The Left needs to think critically about what just happened* and get it right next time. Still, everyone devastated by Trump's victory is surely permitted a de profundis moment before they get on with the task of resistance.

I think Eagle is spot on about the corrosive effect on politics of a Trump victory built on lies. It's one of the things about Trump's campaign that upset me most. I doubt Trump even makes a distinction between what's true and what's convenient for him to believe at any given moment. In that sense, he really is a psychopath.

* Though, lest we forget, Clinton won the popular vote and it looks like her margin of "victory" is increasing as the last votes are counted.
 
claire.fox said:
I think you are a comfy white sexist serial point scorer whom has given up almost nothing for his "ideologies" and who thinks he is adored and admired with his glibness and you have very little going in your favour. A voyeur at best. An appropriator of fake Anarchy and free software philosophy as a ideal. You are not even disgusting to me.
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actually, i think that alot people here do not like me and are offended by many of my beliefs. i certainly don't believe anybody adores me -- you have clearly fabricated that one for a rhetorical purpose.

it's interesting how you are resorting to bullying and personal hostility, yet post cartoons about how good people should try to intervene when that sort of thing happens.



vuk.
 
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