Make it ‘authoritarian’ and you have a solid point. However you are correct that ‘right-wing authoritarian’ comes not long after that.
Yeah, I did realize that while I was writing it, but didn’t really want to muddy the discussion with it.
What makes Sanders’ situation more unfortunate (sad?), is that he’s been using it as a club/crowbar to shift Hillary’s platform his direction, and saddling her with that same bargain to some extent.
I can live with that, especially as my target politics are somewhere to Sanders’ left.
But I’d rather see progress(ivism) in the hands of an experienced administrator who can actually get some of it implemented, than in another Student-Union demagogue who doesn’t have the first idea how to find the Oval Office and will take three years to figure out how to use the phone (a la Carter).
No, we won’t all be radicals going to free college by the end of next year. But we wouldn’t be under Bernie, either.
Trump has been upfront about his true goals since he first came to public notice decades ago. He wants attention and money. It’s why he sticks his name on everything he can manage to brand, it’s why he screws over his partners and investors and contractors and employees whenever he can if it turns out that honoring his commitments to them is going to cost him, it’s why he focused his career on being a reality TV star, and so forth.
You’re right that I don’t know anything more about Trump than the rest of the general public. But Trump has never concealed from the general public who he is and what he’s doing: it’s obvious from his entire record.
The only people who imagine Trump’s got some kind of clandestine deviously brilliant secret agenda underlying all his self-promotion are conservatives desperately trying to kid themselves that they haven’t picked a shallow narcissistic bullshit artist for their Presidential candidate.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
But I really doubt he’s going through all this just to make more money and become more widely known.
[/QUOTE]
Why not? It’s why he does pretty much everything else he does. It’s why he goes through bankruptcies, it’s why he peddles his face on flimsy vanity ventures like Trump Steaks and GoTrump and TrumpMortgage (launched in 2006! what timing!) and Trump University and so on. TrumpForPresident is just his latest vanity venture.
I think Trump’s motivation comes mostly from his ridiculous Birtherism and the mockery it was subject too, culminating in his being made the object of fun by Obama at the WH correspondents’ dinner shortly before OBL was killed.
It bothered him so much that he was the object of such mockery that he decided to run for President to show all the mockers how smart and capable he was.
So it’s really about the insecure child Trump is deep inside himself. Just my opinion, of course.
If we’re talking motivations, I think it’s as simple as he’s an insecure man who has chosen to deal with it through larger and larger conquests. He’s thinking it through about as much as the dog chasing the mail truck, as evidenced by his multiple business failures. He’ll quit when the going gets tough (hopefully before the election, is my prediction) and claim he played everyone for suckers, supporters and detractors alike.
The bigger mystery is why his supporters think they’ll be the first people in history that he doesn’t screw over.
I think you’ve hit on something.
An insecure child who just today said of Putin “I hope he likes me.”
I would challenge any Trump fan to find ANY other candidate of a major US party who has said of any Russian (or Soviet) leader anything remotely close to “I hope he likes me.”
Candidates and leaders may well say things like ‘I hope our upcoming talks will be fruitful’ or ‘I hope that we will be able to communicate.’
But… “I hope he likes me” …!!! That is one seriously fragile man-baby.
i wouldn’t say Trump is Superman, but his body has had a strange reaction to our yellow sun.
IMHO the Republican opposition to Obama has always been-- at base-- about the fact that he is black. And not just black, but an *uppity *black-- who went to Harvard and married a black woman who also went to Harvard. Who do they think they are?? (Besides being a Muslim from Kenya, of course.)
And much of the visceral opposition to Hillary Clinton is, at its root, based on the fact that she is an *uppity *woman who doesn’t know **her **place.
Please provide a breakdown of all these terrorists, as to which home countries they have been returned to, and the percentage that are now in Afghanistan.
Thanks.
I think it’s more nuanced than that (besides the fact that plenty of sensible Republicans just don’t happen to want a Democrat as Chief Exec, although those are not the Republicans who are currently supporting Trump, natch).
For whatever the percentage may be of Republicans who are indeed significantly motivated in their political views by racism and/or sexism, I think that a fair bit of their current “malaise” and angst is stemming from the fact that they didn’t actually want to be racist or sexist as long as they could still get to be demographically and socially dominant.
Some conservatives seem to genuinely believe that they “don’t see color” or “think a woman can do anything a man can do” as long as the non-white or female person that they’re willing to treat as an equal is a statistically insignificant outlier. They are happy to have a dream that one day this nation will be egalitarian in attitude, as long as it remains disproportionately white and male in practical influence and power.
But that assumption is being undermined by demographic and cultural shifts. Non-whites and women are emerging as not only literal demographic majorities but as voting blocs, constituencies, applicant pools, market shares, etc., whose unprecedented size and resources are making them actually start to matter in our society.
So, those “anti-bigotry” conservatives on some level are feeling cheated out of their unspoken bargain where they could generously extend equal rights to non-whites and/or women on a reassuringly token basis. If equal rights means that white men might actually have to cope with minority status and not automatically be the default human beings any more… well, that prospect has got a number of conservatives seriously rethinking their position on whether equal rights are a good thing after all. :dubious:
Excellently said, Kimstu.
One might argue that some of Hillary’s actions or policies might DISqualify her. But you can not argue that she is UNqualified. If you don’t know the difference, folks won’t give much credence to your opinions around here. (That’s the nicest way I can put it.)
The button made from the bumpersticker made from the tweet said “unqualified.” So there.
Well put, all of your post. I clipped this out because of its universality: the world is full of “egalitarian” people who can be benign and expansive and tolerant as long as it isn’t their toes that are stepped on. The moment their turf (including intellectual) is challenged, they turn into pit bulls. (Nod to the pit bull crowd here.)
There’s a famous figure who was noted as being both a crotchety old bastard who would cut old friends for a remark, and a deeply forgiving, generous man. What both fans and detractors never put together was that he was kind and forgiving to even those with views fairly extreme in comparison with his as long as his views were not actually challenged or questioned, and exceedingly nasty to those who so much as asked a pertinent question about his views. (Name on request, for those who can’t put two and two and my interests together.) I see him as a model for many, many people with a rather false sense of tolerance or acceptance.
Definitely more nuanced. That’s why I said “at base.” Thanks for spelling out the nuances-- what you said was implied in my word “uppity,” i.e. having the audacity to move out of their rightful, God-ordained place in the minority shadows where we can’t patronize and ignore them anymore.
Sounds very much like a litmus test to me. People have self-interest…duh. So how progressive is ‘progressive enough?’ Who qualifies as egalitarian enough for you?
Here is your litmus test:
First, the subject must have some worthwhile measure of influence. If they can rally mobs or shepherd legislation or veto bills, as long as they are not a hapless peon. If one has no voice, one’s position is negligible.
So the subject advocates an agenda to “improve our lot”. That agenda includes points A, B, C, D, E, F and G. So, we sum the weighted net effects of those points in terms of fairness (or whatever litmus metric we wish to use) to determine whether the person is egalitarian (not intent on needlessly screwing some people over).
If, for example, point E is really nasty, the other six points must add up to a sum that goes beyond balancing it’s effect out. If the overall total is neutral, that is not egalitarian (because the precedent situation is not).
The real difficulty in making these kind of assessments is the long view. If a policy seems fair today but is likely to have negative long-term effects, how that gets weighted becomes a matter of dispute, especially considering that other factors might well change in the intervening period.
Ultimately, the litmus test is most likely apparent motivation: one is not “egalitarian” solely to further their own personal ends.