Who, the Koch brothers? They’re using him as they used us in times past.
For a while it was Bannon. Trump has the same small government ideas that libertarians have, and he’s been acting on it. Except where it increases his own personal power and agenda, e.g. immigration. I don’t think it’s a coherent philosophy from him, I think it’s a case of personal utilitarianism. Small government and reduced regulations means more money for him. Increased Presidential power means more direct power for him. Belittling and deriding the courts is an effort to sway public opinion in his own favor on topics of his interest. Etc.
But plenty of conservatives and libertarians are happy with the outcomes of his actions, at least on economic and government regulation topics.
My first post dates 20 years back. I was cleaning up my email and found some SD related stuff…got sucked back in. :smack:
Lost my tact along with my original account.
I think he will go down among the worst presidents ever, and stay there. And I say this as someone who has studied History.
The economy - whoever said Historians don’t know economics hasn’t been in a History department for a while. At one time, History was a lot of politics and battles, but now it tends to be much more interdisciplinary, and economics is one of the disciplines that we understand has a lot of connections. Plus we are overdue for a market correction if Trump ends his term on a high note, I’ll be really surprised.
For future Historians climate change will be a big deal. Who did something (Obama did something, but no enough, GWB sort of ignored it, Clinton didn’t do enough…), who set us back (Trump). Trump will be to climate change what James Buchanan was to the Civil War or what Hoover was to the Great Depression - and History has not softened on either one of those idiots.
I still don’t see Trump as charismatic. He may have a strong following, and he says all the right things that please his followers, but all he manages is boorishness and petulance, and, as has been said so often, at the level of a four year old. And those who do not support him regard him as a vacuous loudmouth. Charisma, even of the wrong sort, gets a certain amount of respect. Or so I see it. Shall we now define what we understand by charisma?
Actually, if you look at Hitler speaking, he behaves and speaks in a manner that is just like the temper tantrum of a little brat. But his public appearances were carefully staged and his words and gestures meticulously rehearsed, whereas Our Donald just shoots from the hip. However, comparisons with historical figures are pointless in the end, since Our Donald is more like Trump than anybody else from the past.
Back to charisma; it’s hard to define, so I suppose we need to have some exchanges as to what it is? It is just that, IMHO,
there is one key difference between Trump and Hitler. and it’s Hitler volunteered to serve in the German army and fought in combat in WW I and was gassed.
Please PM your original account and additional associated information with it (email, etc.) and I can see about getting it merged.
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Interesting thread.
Of course, we are only talking here about what history says at times, and in places, when there is freedom of speech.
With that caveat, the only real question is whether Donald Trump will go down as the worst (meaning, worse than James Buchanan, who now is most commonly considered the worst), or only, as you say, “among the worst.”
My guess: If he leaves the White House voluntarily, he’ll be among the worst. If he refuses on grounds that the 2020 election* was rigged (and you know he’d say CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS projections, that he lost the election, were fake news), thus creating a uber-major crisis, he instantly becomes the worst, regardless of whether authorities like the Secret Service do their constitutional duty.
Assuming they will do their duty, and force DJT out of the White House, Trump then will be the worst president until such time as the United States, under the Constitution, seeks to exist. Then the last US President will presumably be the worst – or, at least, the least successful – and Trump will go down as the guy whose violation of democratic norms paved the way for said worst.
- Or the 2024 election, if he wins in 2020 and a Democrat wins in 2024.
I’ll never comprehend how people think Trump is “charismatic.” I find him viscerally repulsive. I remember watching the debates and someone said, “Trump is winning!” And I was like, “Trump isn’t even speaking coherent sentences!” I just don’t get it, and I never will.
Yep. Even when he has time to formulate an opinion or thought and then tweet it out, he makes no sense.
He’s 10 times worse when he’s speaking off the cuff.
Trump isn’t speaking your language. He speaks in a way that emotionally resonates with millions though.
In other words, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Well, it has been my experience that your average conservatives pay lip service to small government but they like a large government just fine when it is not aimed at them, like government thugs taking babies from their mothers’ arms so long as mom and babe are brown enough.
If you look at just the economic side, plenty of conservatives look just fine, especially in the house where taxes are originated. When you also take into account the personal liberty side they don’t fare so well, like gay rights. Show me a prominent libertarian who has publicly embraced Donny Two-scoops’ policies and I’ll gladly throw rocks at him.
I don’t know about “fondly”, but through the dispassionate lens of history I think he’ll be seen as far less catastrophic.
I keep reading opinions in this vein but there’s going to be video documentation of Donald speaking. And if he sounds really disjointed to so many now, imagine how he might sound to the more advanced and better educated populaces of the future.
Yes, I know the immediate blowback that I’ll get for making the above assumption.
Will herpes be remembered more fondly if a cure is found someday?
The answer depends solely on whether he starts a medium to large-scale war. Wartime presidents are always beloved. See Truman. Hated to the core when he was around, now he is viewed as some kind of statesmanlike figure. GWB will be fully rehabilitated soon enough, the process has already begun.
Sample size of one here, and maybe I’m still not at enough of a distance (I was 6 when Nixon resigned), but I actually despise Nixon more than I did 10 years ago.
I read, “All the President’s Men,” and I knew the broad strokes of the Watergate affair, so I always had a low opinion of Nixon. But, as time went on, I was able to kinda, sorta, wrap my head around how a President with Nixon’s personality flaws could reach a point of paranoia and distrust that something like Watergate could happen.
And then I learned about his interference with the Vietnam peace talks, and his entanglements with the DOJ during their investigation of Spiro Agnew, and how his mis-deeds around Watergate were even more under-handed than I knew, and I think much less of him now than I did a decade or two ago. The man can rot in hell for eternity as far as I’m concerned. The fact that his legacy isn’t complete and utter garbage based on the Vietnam affair alone completely baffles me. There ought to be millions of veterans and families of killed and wounded service-members who show greater vitriol toward Nixon than they do toward, “Hanoi Jane,” but somehow this aspect of his political life doesn’t see as much press as Watergate.
Trump will not only be viewed as among the worst Presidents we’ve ever had, but his legacy will decline even further in the coming couple of decades as more and more memos, e-mails, and other internal sources start making their way into the public sphere. We think we know how bad it is, but I suspect that we don’t actually know the half of it.
Nixon and Bush look better because the GOP keeps getting worse. It would take someone worse than Trump to make him look better.
It’s garbage all the way down.
I wonder what the Trump presidential library will be filled with, screenshots of his Tweets?