Kobal2
June 23, 2019, 3:49pm
33825
I’m sure he actually is. For real. You can call MAGAheads a lot of disparaging things, but they’re both consistent and united in their multiple, multiform awfulnesses. Also very active, militant and GoFundMe-happy.They’ll stick with Trump, Kavanaugh and Roy Moore for the rest of their natural lives just on the off chance that it might piss **you **off.Et après moi, le déluge (or les Chinois . Same thing as far as they’re concerned)
I can see where inside Chump’s diseased mind, calling off the Iranian strikes and maybe avoiding war may be akin to his own Cuban missile crisis.
He has never ever heard in his life about any “Cuban missile crisis”. (if he HAS, he didn’t understand it and forgot instantly about it)
SteveG1
June 23, 2019, 9:31pm
33829
Typo_Negative:
I wanna reporter to ask him that!
I saw him being interviewed, saying he called it off because it was bad this way and bad that way and he called it off because the buck stops with him, dammit.
Nobody (on this channel, anyway) asked him “Then why the fuck did you order it then ???”
We know the real deal.
He walked away from a treaty/deal Iran was honoring, according to the UN and OUR allies. HE broke the deal and then piled on sanctions to make it worse.
It’s similar to the bullshit he pulled with North Korea. CREATE a crisis, rattle the saber, cave in, and then take credit for stopping a shit storm HE started.
Buck_Godot:
I’m leaning towards the whole thing being a planned stunt from start to finish.
Its a textbook example of Trump’s usual strategy. Create a crisis, back off a the last minute and then try to take credit for averting said crisis.
Trump single-handedly prevented war between Iran and the US. Nobel peace prize here he comes.
US launches cyberattack on Iran. The same day as the aborted missile attack. I can’t if this confirms your theory or refutes it (i.e., it’s one more thing staff hid from him.)
enipla
June 23, 2019, 10:21pm
33831
Kobal2:
I’m sure he actually is. For real. You can call MAGAheads a lot of disparaging things, but they’re both consistent and united in their multiple, multiform awfulnesses. Also very active, militant and GoFundMe-happy.They’ll stick with Trump, Kavanaugh and Roy Moore for the rest of their natural lives just on the off chance that it might piss **you **off.Et après moi, le déluge (or les Chinois . Same thing as far as they’re concerned)
Yes, but a codicil if I may.
Trump supporters have never been at the VERY bottom. That’s for those other folks. The immigrants, those that may speak funny or look different. They could at least say they where better off than ‘them’.
Times are a changing. And ‘those’ people, those that are willing to work and make a better life may just do that. If that happens (as it is) Trump supporters really will be the very bottom. That’s what really sticks in their craw. They may have NO one to look down on (as if they ever did, they voted for Trump)
Actually since he considers avoiding VD his personal Vietnam, I’d think his personal Cuban Missile Crisis would be keeping the pee tape from counting as a violation of his pre-nup…
Fucking hysterical. Also sad because it is true. The one candidate guaranteed to win is - Oprah.
Great. The one person as stupid and gullible as Trump.
She’s a much better businesswoman.
Before we go on, this was not supposed to be a serious post calling for Oprah to run.
asahi
June 24, 2019, 1:42am
33837
It might not have meant to be serious, but in a way, it is serious. America is addicted to entertainment stars and we’ve been electing entertainers to office for the past 40 years. Maybe Stone Cold Steve Austin is the next Republican nominee. Maybe he runs against Chris Rock.
If he ever did, his first reaction probably was, “Mark Cuban has missiles?”
asahi
June 24, 2019, 2:42am
33839
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21655553&postcount=32780
Although we heard a lot about new-wave Democrats like AOC, a lot of other Democrats won seats and helped the party re-take the House by being moderate and essentially pledging not to be hard partisans. By acting outrageous, he puts Democrats in a position where they almost have to be partisan. Polarization works by breaking down your enemies, dividing and conquering.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21077960&postcount=63
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21254161&postcount=61
I’m not even sure that Democrats are united on anything right now other than their horror over Trump, but this sort of thing has played itself out in other countries, and despite the fact that 60-70% of the population viscerally dislikes the government in charge, its not going to do shit unless it can unify opposition. That’s one of the beauties of a strong, stable two-party system. And the trend in recent years, on both sides of the political spectrum, is to abandon the center left v center right dichotomy. This has consequences.
The irony of someone like Trump is that they can actually become stronger with outrage. Polarization weakens extremists when there is a stable establishment in place. When the establishment parties collapse - which they have - then polarization works to the advantage of whoever has the strongest faction among multiple factions. Trump appeals to white christian nationalism, and in this country, that’s still unfortunately a pretty potent tribe to be reckoned with.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21502602&postcount=32
But one of the concerns I’ve had in the era of Trump is that polarization could be used to divide and conquer a political coalition that essentially depends on diversity in order for it to succeed. The Yugoslavian conflict was the result of racial and ethnic polarization, which splintered coalitions along racial lines. Russia has since copied this blueprint to sow unrest throughout Eastern Europe throughout the Putin era. Let’s not kid ourselves: It’s a potentially explosive and effective strategy that could be employed here. White males may be white and they may be male, but they are still a part of the diversity equation.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21569420&postcount=31606
Polarization is a strategy, and it’s the only way he can win re-election, which is also why I don’t think we’ve even come close to seeing the worst of what is to come. To be more specific, it will pay to polarize along racial, ethnic, and cultural lines, because it will divide everyone else.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21579476&postcount=31814
Trump is unlike any other presidential incumbent in recent memory in that he has decided that he needs polarization as a strategy to win re-election. He assumes (probably correctly) that it’s too late to try to rebrand himself as a bipartisan, or as someone who can cross over and appeal to minorities. Trump needs culture wars to win. Trump needs to light the fire of rage under his supporters asses so that they’ll have something to vote for in 2020. Don’t expect this to get any better; it’s probably going to get much worse
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21594887&postcount=161
If we want to see an example of how Trump’s end could play out over the course of 4-8 years, maybe the example of Silvio Berlusconi is worth analyzing. Like Trump, a billionaire with a background in entertainment. An unconventional right-wing populist. Someone who uses divisions among people and polarization to win elections because he knows that the moment people of all stripe begin to figure out they’re paying a price for his corruption, it’s over.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21620339&postcount=11301
What concerns me at the moment is that while our politics are already clearly polarized, that’s not necessarily the worst of it. We’re entering a dangerous abyss in which our politics aren’t just polarized, but radicalized. The Russians already have a LOT of experience at using polarization and radicalization to sow political divisions and even violence. They’ve done this in Eastern Europe for years as a way to destabilize countries so that they don’t function well, thereby perpetually giving Russia access to its sphere. I was absolutely not joking when I said that Trump could start a race war - whether he would knowingly do so with full recognition of what he’s doing and what the consequences are doesn’t really matter. The point is that with Russian guidance, the Republicans, who already cater to white nationalists anyway, will move away from merely polarization and into the zone of radicalization along ethnic and cultural fault lines.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21629240&postcount=475
Trump has intensified the radicalization of the Republicans and the far right, and in doing so he has also inspired a similar radicalization among the left. This is how polarization can be used to a political group’s advantage, and in this case, I think it works to the advantage of republicans. When people point out that Trump’s approval rating is historically low, they’re missing an important point, which is that we are now living in the age of fringe politics. The days of a politician of any kind getting 60% or higher are gone for the foreseeable future because neither the far right nor the far left want a moderate. They want crusaders and warriors for their cause. A moderate would be considered compromising on virtue. We saw this on the political right wing in the years leading up to Trump, and we’re beginning to see the reaction among progressives. This is how radicalization and polarization can be a successful tactic if political candidates and parties can capitalize on it.
I say it works to the republicans advantage simply because they have a demographic majority that they can exploit. It’s easier to break the progressive left because they can be divided in different ways. They can be divided and conquered over differences on race, gender, and other forms of identity. Once conservatives become more fully aware of these vulnerabilities, I suspect that they will exploit them with behavior that we thought was a part of our past. They’ll do it because it’ll give them power, and that’s all the justification they would need in the end - in their minds anyway.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21634818&postcount=32419
Putin must have also realized somewhere along the way that even in free societies, tribalism can work, because tribalism relates to questions about perceptions of identity, security, equality. Putin realized that a lot of conservative white Americans tend to value their own freedom but not necessarily everyone else’s, and that is something that could be exploited. Understand that Putin will push the Republicans to drive this wedge much, much further than where it is now, because Putin has seen how polarization can tear societies to pieces. They, like the rest of us, saw how Milosevic and Karadzic turned the former Yugoslavia into an ethnic bloodbath, which is why the Russians have invested in a ethno-nationalist propaganda machine there today.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21651916&postcount=24
I think the deeper purpose is to create hyper-partisan polarization. He assumes that pardoning war criminals will excite the more blood-lusting among his base, and maybe he’s right. Most veterans I know differentiate between “shit that happens” on the battlefield and cold-blooded murderers, wanting civilians to understand the first type but having contempt for the latter.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21683009&postcount=6
On the other hand, Bill Clinton was probably in a better position to build a broader coalition than Biden, allowing him to easily defeat Dole. The very same polarization and tribalism that makes Trump historically unpopular simultaneously makes it more complicated for Biden to energize a healthy coalition that won’t fall apart because of internal ideological divisions, which are festering.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21685909&postcount=12
Trump is changing the political culture of the country. He is easily one of the most corrupt presidents in the history of the country, if not the most corrupt. He is making corruption and polarization into a political norm. It’s something we simply shrug off and accept, kinda like mass shootings. It’s not what Trump is doing; it’s what Americans aren’t doing. We’re not opposing him. We’re accepting our country’s decadence.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21705026&postcount=20
He’ll struggle to win simply because he’s a polarizing figure, but that polarization is also what could make it challenging to defeat him because his supporters are motivated to support him - his supporters know what they’re getting, and they like what they see.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=21707751&highlight=polarization#post21707751
It figures that twitter is where the outrage machine is to be found. People follow each other on twitter and regurgitate the same filtered bullshit instead of listening to it and thinking about something in its entirety and in its context. What’s scary is that social media and the filtered internet are the lenses through we view politics, and the nature of it, with people of a like mind following each other and reacting to each other regardless of how accurate their takes are, have had a lot to do with the kinds of polarization that Biden is trying to fight against.
Also much less malicious (with the understanding that this is neither a high bar to clear no sufficient mitigation for her gullibility).
Nearly 100 internal Trump transition vetting documents leaked to “Axios on HBO” identify a host of “red flags” about officials who went on to get some of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. government.
<snip>
One red flag for Gen. David Petraeus, who was under consideration for Secretary of State and National Security Adviser: “Petraeus Is Opposed to Torture.”
My bold.
https://amp.axios.com/leaked-donald-trump-vetting-docs-hbo-6ce3cd26-1eb9-4da8-b15e-47b56020aef7.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic&__twitter_impression=true
The Trump administration considers it a strike against you if you’re opposed to torture. I’m not surprised, of course. I’m a little surprised they didn’t at least dress it up with a euphemism, like “enhanced interrogation”. They just come right out and call it torture, and they’re all for it.