Farther up this page, ThelmaLou said:
I don’t think it takes much assuming to conclude that (not sure on pronoun here, but I’m referring to ThelmaLou) doesn’t really understand it.
Trump supporting husband: “I work at Walmart, and I just got a raise and a bonus! Thanks, Trump!”
And his wife: “I work at Sam’s Club and I showed up today and the doors were locked. Everyone lost their jobs. Uh…Thanks?”
MAGA!
Well, I, for one, don’t need to come up with artificial scenarios involving imagined husband-and-wife teams. I work for a small business and I…haven’t gotten a raise or bonus at all. Nor do I expect to. And I strongly suspect that the vast majority of workers are in the same boat, as it were.
Are your taxes going to go down next year?
How much is wrong with this letter? It’s an understandable sentiment, but three problems jump out to me:
- The saying, “It is better to be feared than to be loved,” comes from Machiavelli, who said it in a larger context often forgotten, to wit: A ruler would like to be both loved and feared, but if you must choose, choose fear, for love is fickle. However, never, ever let fear turn into hatred, or you’re on the way out and probably dead.
- I think it’s important to realize that Trump is not on our side. Not “his domestic opponents,” nor his voters. Trump is known for screwing over anyone who does business with him, barring a few direct employees.
- Trump has friends?
American politics, to a large extent, is about cultural signifiers and performative tribalism, not concrete policy, which is why so many Republicans love that Trump makes liberals mad, regardless of whether they benefit personally from the gilded age 2.0 policies. He’s a boon to the rich, so it’s not a mystery why the professional class would sing his praises (they’re the ones who own stock), and he’s bringing the boot down on immigrants and moving the racial Overton window to the right, which the reactionaries love.
You may have answered your own question–that these people are educated, intelligent, and employed; and after adding up all the pluses and minuses (as intelligent and educated people do), they have found that they like Trump. Reading their letters, I find coherent arguments, logical thought processes, and the like. Not too different than we might find here on the SDMB.
Understand that I am no fan of Mr. Trump. Not being an American, I am among the 70% worldwide who disapprove of Mr. Trump (cite). These reasonable, rational letters to the NYT in support of Mr. Trump will not cause me to change my mind.
But I contrast them with the messages I see elsewhere online, which obviously come from the unintelligent and uneducated. No letter to the NYT mentioned “Obummer,” “Obozo,” or “Shrillary,” for example; neither did any letter claim “Trump will go down in history as the best president ever.” No letter painted all immigrants (legal or not) as “welfare mooches”; no letter claimed that “All Dems and leftists are communists.” No letter asks for a complete scrapping of Supreme Court caselaw precedents “by lib’rul judges,” in favour of an originalist reading of the Constitution. I could go on, but I won’t. Compared to the extreme views elsewhere on the internet, these letters are harmless.
The educated, intelligent letter-writers to the NYT have written educated and intelligent letters, as should be expected from readers of the NYT. Like I said, they’re harmless. What is truly scary are those who would never consider sharing their views with the NYT, or similar mainstream media; and instead choose to read opinion blogs that they cite as fact, post wildly inaccurate definitions of socialism and its dangers (especially when they state that free and capitalist countries such as Canada, the UK, and Norway, are socialist when they are clearly not), and otherwise hold Mr. Trump as Dear Leader Who Can Do No Wrong. Because we already know of a country that has a Dear Leader Who Can Do No Wrong, and we know what kind of a mess it is in.
I see this as a weak argument.
When GOPers extend the tax cut in a few years, we’ll hear instead from opponents about its huge budget-busting effect (which is indeed the major drawback). What we won’t hear much about is how we can’t keep piling up enormous deficits indefinitely without foregoing needed spending, just to pay interest on the mountains of debt.
My crystal ball also foresees that an upcoming major market downturn will get blamed on Trump, which makes about as much sense as crediting him for the Dow’s surge.
The Gulf of Mexico was created when he sat down?
There are really two answers to this question, Shodan.
-
The honest one: not as much as people think.
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The political one: everything. President’s tend to get credit or blame for what happens during their administrations, even if it is blindingly obvious the President had nothing to do with what happened.
And there is a third and more common answer.
- The President is responsible only for what is good (if he is from one party) and responsible only for what is bad (if from the other).
Regards,
Shodan
This has turned into quite a good discussion. Thanks, y’all.
I like when the same set of facts is good for one President but bad for another.
Sure, but look at the big picture here. I think of it like the pilot who says “look at how great I am, I got this plane to fly much faster!”
By putting it into a dive. They stimulated the economy by borrowing 1.5 trillion dollars from our kids. It’s not sustainable, and it’s something that in the long term will be a net negative. But hey, right now we’re going faster, so who cares?
I know how to look at the big picture, but many don’t. “Less taxes for me = better. 1.5 trillion? So what? Obama doubled the deficit and nobody complained”
Again, an intelligent conversation about the tax cut can be had, along with some other issues, but without some compassion from the people you are arguing with, they are not going to see how cutting CHIP to make sure private airplane owners get a tax break is bad. Compassion, that if it exists, may disappear when they start being told they are “too stupid to know any better”
It was never lupus.
The issue of compassion is indeed somewhere in there, but not where you think it is. Or to state it another way, compassion already disappeared among people who prioritize a tax break for private plane owners over the Children’s Health Insurance Program. :rolleyes:
True. But I would be talking about people who don’t really know what is involved with the tax cut, or what CHIP is, or that private plane owners get a tax break. Educating them would be a good step, not simply calling them stupid.
I myself had never even heard of CHIP before the stories that funding was running out last year. Of course, I know how to read and try to stay somewhat informed, so I learned what it was. Many people don’t do that.
I’m sorry, would you mind repeating that? I didn’t quite catch it.
I’m not sure what you mean. Two of those are one post that you copied and pasted twice. 2 are two different responses to different posters, and 1 is about a different policy. Not sure what is being repeated.