I find it highly amusing to see this lambasting liberals for lack of personal responsibility in a thread devoted to Trump who has never once accepted personal responsibility for anything in his life. Any criticism directed against him he ignores as some “loser” being jealous of his greatness. Honestly, I challenge any of the Trump’s supporters to cite one instance of a “the buck stops here” from Trump.
So, when Trump’s net worth rises, he “achieved a wealth” or “rebuil(t) his empire”, when he nearly goes bankrupt it’s “(d)ue to various factors”. That’s some pretty one-sided personal responsibility there.
Yes, but that’s probably not the paragraph you were referring to.
Of course we push and push and push. Things can always be better. How do you think progress is ever made?
Are you being facetious? I have to assume so - your position is too ridiculous to take at face value. Kudos for the Poe.
Really, you can read that post and not see it reeks of spin? I said “spin”, not falsehoods. What is “spin”? Distortion and amplification to suit the target audience and the presenter’s aims.
Spin, let’s start with the simple statement about the Trump Republican position: “Americans truly want to see America made great again”. Wow, so generically vague, but uniformly great. Of course Americans want to see America great, whether “again” is merited or not. But there’s nothing there.
Contrast to the nine lines (it’s not sentences, it’s complex clauses, so it’s difficult to quantify meaningfully; how about approximately 160 words) to summarize the supposed alternative position of the Democrats. That level of disproportion in description reeks of spin.
We can look at some of the ideas presented.
“40 years of liberal dominance in the fields of education, news and entertainment media, and Hollywood have managed to brainwash enough of us into desiring a version of American ‘greatness’ that belittles success and achievement and handwaves them away as merely the product of ‘privilege’;”
I won’t dispute the “liberal dominance” part or the list of fields. How about the casting as “brainwashing”? That’s a negative word with strong connection. Then there’s the summary that liberals somehow belittle success and achievement. That’s one perspective, but only for certain definitions of success and achievement. It distorts the picture of what liberals value. And obviously some success is a product of privilege.
Note, I will agree with you that Donald Trump has been a business success, that he’s taken a shitload of money and turned it into a super shitload, then got slammed by the crashing economy and managed to take his remaining shitload and repeat the process. Yeah, he’s a business tycoon. But he also overhypes his “brand” and regularly lies about the value of his properties. He admitted it in a deposition. But that’s irrelevant to this analysis. Do you think George W. Bush got where he was on his own accomplishment, or was there some privilege involved?
Let’s continue.
“a land where any and every possible form of victimhood is lauded and seen to grant moral superiority;”
Again, this takes a certain underlying truth and magnifies it to infinity. Are you disputing real victims shouldn’t be supported and their oppressors refuted? Are you suggesting there’s no moral superiority to being anti-bully, anti-hate, anti-bigot, anti-criminal, anti-thug?
“where decades of drug, gang and criminal activity have resulted in a militarized police force;”
I’m stumped on this one and how to connect it to liberalism. Note that statistically, crime is actually down from the '80s. Also note that the militarization of police forces is a conservative response, as is the War on Drugs, and 3 strikes laws and mandatory sentencing. Cecil just did an article discussing how those are the factors that are driving up the US incarceration rate to being the highest in the world.
Are we supposed to “allow[del]s[/del] [conservatives] to deny responsibility for the harm they’ve caused, and to ignore the future consequences of the things they push for”?
“and where a small but ever-increasing number of ‘social justice warriors’ are allowed to determine for themselves how everyone else should think, speak and behave, followed by immediate and aggressive (and more often than not, dishonest) bullying heaped upon anyone who either refuses to toe the party line or perhaps blunders across it innocently out of ignorance borne of having not quite kept abreast of which have been the latest words to be decreed verbotten by the speech and thought police.”
Okay, I’ll grant this to a degree. Sometimes there is an overabundance of “this is right and anything else is wrong”. This is still a bit of an overemphasis on one element of the behavior. I mean, are you suggesting that racism is an honest and equal opinion that deserves respect? Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t, as a society, be trying to treat each other with more respect and dignity rather than less respect and dignity?
For a concrete example, let’s look at the Transgender community, and I’ll put myself in the limelight. My own attitude on this follows awareness that has been promoted by “Social justice warriors”. A few years ago, it didn’t mean anything for me to notice, say, a guy at the Renaissance Festival who had breasts (not man-boobs, but actual breasts) and make a snide comment about it to my friends. I wasn’t so rude to say something to his face, but later to others yes. But my sensitivity has grown, and now when I catch myself, say, evaluating a make up on Face Off, I try to avoid less sensitive terms and characterizations. Like noting that a certain make up made one female model look masculine, rather than saying she looked like a transvestite/tranny.
Are you saying that I shouldn’t care, that these people don’t matter, that their feelings aren’t important because they fall out of the mainstream and buck your opinion of what is natural?
If you feel like I’m putting words in your mouth or distorting your position, congratulations, welcome to spin.
I’m still having a hard time figuring out how gang life is a liberal thing. 'Splain it to me.
This analysis shows all their numbers. My grandmother has had a better rate of return. Nana for President!
In 1980, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. Ever since then, it’s been nothing but push and push and push by Republicans to cut taxes with no end in sight. We are down to a top marginal rate of 35% now, yet Republicans still want to cut taxes with no end in sight and no tax cut too extreme.
Why are our extremes reprehensible and your extremes admirable? Do you think one party has a monopoly on prudent and reasonable government?
SA has made it clear he thinks our society achieved its pinnacle of paradise in the 1950’s. The top tax rate then was 90%. But for some reason we shouldn’t go back to it.
Hey, watch your language! Internet Message Boards in the 50’s would have never put up with that kind of talk.
“The radicals hack out the trail, the progressives clear the campsite and build the cabins, liberals show up when the hot showers are installed.”
Like most American liberals, I’m a champion of personal responsibility. Before our troops invaded Normandy, Eisenhower wrote a letter taking full responsibility if the mission failed – he wasn’t going to place blame on his engineers, his weather forecasters and certainly not his troops. Truman took responsibility for his decisions such as dropping the A-Bomb. On his desk was a plaque. It said, “The buck stops here.” When the first bomb didn’t work, he didn’t blame bad intelligence like George W Bush. Nor did he pass blame to his underlings for orders that he had signed, like Ronald Reagan did with the Iranian arms for hostages dealings. No: Truman addressed the problem, dropped another atomic bomb and defeated the Japanese conservatives.
Donald Trump’s father appointed him President of the Trump Organization in 1974. It was worth $200 million. Deutsche Bank pegged Trump’s net worth in 2005 at $785 million. That barely keeps up with inflation, a truly awful rate of return. ($200 million in 1974 was worth $792 million in 2005). In Donald Trumpspeak: “What a mess!”
Look: the Donald certainly knows self promotion and he is the second greatest troll in world history. He truly is a man of accomplishment. He has appointed himself ringmaster of the Republican clown car and nobody knows how to get rid of him. He has negotiated some decent deals for himself. But he isn’t a great businessman, certainly not as successful as his father. That said, I wish him luck in his future endeavors; I doubt whether we will have seen the last of him in 2016. I anticipate that he will play every bit a constructive role in the GOP as Ted Cruz.
Oh, knock it off. Being appointed president of the Trump organization does not ipso-facto mean every dollar of the organization’s worth is your personal plaything. The properties owned by Fred Trump remained owned by Fred Trump, and the assets and liabilities of the Trump Organization remained those of the Trump Organization. All it meant when Trump became president of the Trump Organization was that he was put in charge of running the company’s day to day affairs. It was essentially a custodial role. Trump’s “net worth” is an expression of the value of his own personal holdings minus liabilities. It’s not remotely the same as the net value of the Trump Organization.
For example, was Bill Gates worth Microsoft’s total worth simply because he was president and CEO, or was he merely worth the value of his own personal holdings? Was he free to invest every cent of Microsoft’s net worth in his own personal projects? Did Steve Balmer suddenly gain such abilities when he was named president? Etc., etc., etc.
You really need to quit posting on this subject. It’s obvious you don’t know anything about business or about the role of president within a company. I’m sure you aren’t aware of it, but you instantly lose all credibility to those who know better when you post things like this. They may not be calling you on it because they’re on the same side of the aisle you are politically, but trust me, they know better.
Bloomberg did an interesting piece on it.
Not a bad article in the main, though more than once it seems to make some of Trump’s successes sound more like something that just fell together for him rather than being the consequence of smart, savvy, hard work.
I found the end of the article telling, where it says that even if he loses his run for the presidency he still gets to go back to being Donald Trump. Another of the things Trump wrote about in The Art of the Deal is how he keeps several balls in the air and multiple options open at all times so if what he’s hoping to accomplish doesn’t pan out he can still come out ahead through other means.
The Donald really is the bomb. We badly need people of his intelligence, discipline, negotiating ability and insight running the country these days. In the words of my quasi-friend, iiandyiiii: “Go Trump Go!”
In Trump’s defense, he wasn’t trying to be Goldman Sachs, but to go out and build things. Presumably, actually doing something involves spending money and taking risks.
(Note: This is not to claim that his buildings are well made.)
This is amazing! So glad to welcome Starving Artist to the dark side of liberal politics! Some of the things Trump supports:
First of all, you know perfectly well that if Trump were all that much of a liberal you guys wouldn’t be feigning glee/whistling in the dark the way you do at the prospect of him being the Republican nominee.
Second of all, in more rational quarters I’m not considered all that much of a conservative myself. I’m actually in agreement with Trump’s stated position on some of the things on that list.
Third, I’m not a single issue or hot button voter. If I think a certain candidate is essentially in line with much or most of what I support, I’ll readily vote for him even if I disagree with some of his policy positions.
Fourth, as I’m sure you already know, Trump has evoked the name of Reagan to illustrate how a conservative candidate may once have had more liberal views and changed his mind. I don’t beieve Trump currently supports all the views you’ve tried to attribute to him with that list.
Of course you’re right that some things were better then, some better now. Certainly one cannot argue that more black kids going to college is a very good thing. Or, conversely, that 74% of black kids growing up without a father in the house is an improvement. It all depends on the metrics you use. I’d be interested to know:
- the likelihood of a black kid today being killed before the age of 21 vs the '50s/60s
- the basic knowledge of poor black kid who graduates high school today vs the '50s/60s
- the ability of a poor black child being able to escape poverty (sure, college is a huge help, but I don’t know if it makes up for generations being stuck in the same failing public schools)
On balance, I think it would be nuts to argue for life in the '50s/'60s over now for a black person, but that doesn’t men that one can’t look at the ‘50s’/'60s and wish some of that bygone reality was the reality today. One bad rap that I think SA gets is that if he looks back to some of the better elements of the '50s/'60s, that he’s wishing to bring back the all the negative stuff too.
Assuming this is all 100% accurate, what else would a candidate have to do to get the Dem vote? Policy-wise, what would be his major failings?
For starters, his immigration policy: mandatory deportation of 11 million people. Building a wall (not a fence!) along the 1700 miles of the Mexican border. Ending birthright citizenship without a Constitutional amendment.
His trade policy: Protectionism and abrogation of every trade agreement with China and Mexico.
His foreign policy: War with Iran. War with ISIS.
See, it’s the little things that piss us off.
Well, why not? You described his losses as “due to various factors” rather than being the consequence of poor decisions and lack of foresight.
Do you start counting at birth? I found this table of infant mortality rates from the 1950 until 2010. And don’t forget to figure in things like polio and smallpox.