Reminds me of something I read 4 years ago on Democratic Underground: A poster said that it would be an impeachable offense if Obama cut Social Security funding.
The reasoning went something like this: People depend on Social Security, and if funding is cut, some people might die, and so if that happens, Obama is indirectly guilty of murder. :dubious:
That is just one op-ed piece, and an article about that same op-ed piece.
It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome. There is no cure.
On a serious note, Liberals are simply adults who have not matured mentally. This is why they want a nanny state to take care of them from cradle to grave. Trump is a threat to that. They are afraid that they will have to take responsibility for their own lives, and it scares the HELL out of them. They are to be pitied.
You seem confused… in 1933, Hitler was still a fledgling fascist. Everyone was in wait-and-see mode. They waited and then they saw him progress to the actions you described above.
So that’s kinda the point… it would be sorta a good idea to squash Trump while he’s still a bubblegum fascist, because he can’t be stopped after he subverts every organization that could check his power.
You already see him using popular influence to undermine faith in the courts, in neutral government institutions, in our “archaic” (his words) government, to gin up fear of foreigners and mass arrests/deportations of them, separate him from press scrutiny, and openly suborn people to attack journalists.
This is indeed 1933 stuff. We’d best stop it before it progresses to 1939 type stuff.
I know many liberals, but none who expect the government to take care of them. Please don’t pity me, I prefer to be envied.
Of course they don’t consider their jobs at government agencies, state-funded universities, and income from government grants to be examples of welfarism for the
educated. But it is.
While I’m sure there are liberals (and conservatives) in these types of jobs, that’s not what I was referring to. The liberals I know our self employed or working “normal” jobs in the private sector.
In any event, I don’t think Trump plans on doing away with State universities or government grants. Perhaps he’ll cut the number of Government workers.
Same can be said for many conservatives who rely on military pensions, military contracts, VA, farm subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, etc.
Is it extreme hyperbole or just regular hyperbole? I’ll try to do more better.
I think ‘‘evil’’ is giving him way too much credit. He’s got the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old.
The danger of Trump, from my view, isn’t any sort of ideological view or conscious scheming. It’s that we’ve got someone running the country who doesn’t have the first clue what the fuck he is doing. He lives so much in the moment that he doesn’t have the psychological capability of considering the long-term consequences of his actions, or determining whether one course of action would be preferable to another.
This document co-signed by a bunch of GOP national security officials pretty much sums it up.
[QUOTE=Statement by Former National Security Officials]
Most fundamentally, Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President. He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world. He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary.
In addition, Mr. Trump as demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding of America’s vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances, and the democratic values upon which US foreign policy must be based… Unlike previous Presidents who had little experience in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself. He continues to display an alarming ignorance of basic facts of contemporary international politics.
[/QUOTE]
I truly don’t understand how that doesn’t scare the shit out of the people who voted for him, as Republicans have historically cared very much about national security and foreign policy. But as a culture, we’ve moved increasingly away from trusting the judgment of experts on such matters.
No time to read the thread yet, but I find it interesting that a (presumed} Trump apologist is upset about ‘extreme hyperbole’ when the person being discussed has built his career on extreme hyperbole.
(Of course what we call ‘lies’, he calls ‘truthful hyperbole’.)
I won’t bother to argue against the insult but I’m curious why you think Trump represents a threat to the “nanny state.” Welfare reform wasn’t a big campaign issue for him, as I recall. And he talked a lot about saving blue collar jobs - so it’s really Trump voters who were motivated by the desire to have the government save their jobs.
I see that you’re trying to explain opposition to Trump in terms of liberal immaturity, but I don’t think it fits. Trump wants to use protectionist policies and a great big, “long, thick, high” wall to defend America (and make himself look like the indispensable big man). If anyone is evoking a paternalistic state that will “protect you” with Freudian undertones, it’s Trump.
As for liberals suffering from puerility and arrested development, that would be what we call a hijack. Maybe I’ll start another thread about it; or you can.
Y’know, I read this great article today.
https://www.thenation.com/article/liberal-elites-are-not-the-problem/
In her fascinating recent book Strangers in Their Own Land, the brilliant sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild asks readers to climb the “empathy wall” and really try to understand the worldview of Trump voters—as she did, spending over five years getting to know white Southern Louisianians, many of them Cajun, who have extreme free-market, anti-government Tea Party politics although they live in “Cancer Alley,” an area where the petrochemical industry, abetted by the Republican politicians they voted for, has destroyed nature, their communities and their health. Hochschild has a deep grasp of human complexity, and her subjects come across as lovely people, despite their politics. As she hoped, I came away with a better understanding of how kindly people could vote for cruel policies, and how people who don’t think they’re racist actually are so.
But here’s my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschild’s subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-staters—that distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds.
And it’s true. There seems to be exactly zero effort by republicans (or, in this case, libertarians who are reflexively anti-liberal) to actually understand the opposing position, or why it is held. The reasons you’ve offered in this thread are so hilariously off-base that it makes me wish for fucking poll tests.
No, there isn’t. Derangement is not even a real thing, and is just derogatory term for people who think in a way you disagree with. And Syndrome is actually calling them mentally ill over it.
There was nothing wrong with that Huffpo article title. It’s a statement of belief. This is a big enough deal that some people think he should be impeached. He is choosing to let our entire planet die based on his own conspiracy theories about global warming. It really should be an impeachable offense, but we unfortunately live with a scientifically illiterate populace.
If you were going to try and prove some sort of “derangement,” you’d need to show people actually believing provably false statements. Like, say, Trump is an alien from outer space who is trying to weaken our planet for their conquest.
The whole concept is just a way to try and discredit any plausible theories about Trump. Even the Russian scandal was pushed as Trump Derangement Syndrome. They can’t argue against us, so they come up with some illness to assign to us. That’s all it is.
Conspiracy theorists have always existed, and will continue to exist. Trying to extend that to perfectly valid concerns (or articles) is just a tactic to delegitimize liberal arguments without actually rebutting them.
If you really believe that liberalism is a form of arrested development, I invite you to take it over here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=828221
the people still in his corner think the best foreign policy is “the rest of the world can kiss our butts or go to hell.”
Because empathy is for pansy-ass liberals. So I have heard it argued.
I don’t actually agree with the need to understand Trump supporters and why they are the way they are. Understanding them doesn’t fix the problem. That’s where I think liberals have been too starry-eyed, thinking that everything is just a misunderstanding.
I know why people support Trump. It’s because they believe horrible things. I know that their environment led them to believe these horrible things, as that’s literally the only choice. It’s not genetic. But that environment has already happened, and the die is cast.
We have to realize that we can’t empathize our way to getting people on our side. There are unreachables. And we need to do what we can to mitigate their damage instead of wasting our time engaging in futile efforts.
There are a whole huge host of people who voted for Trump reluctantly. Those are the people we need to go after. Not the diehards. The people who thought that there was no real difference and they might as well vote for the guy who would shake things up. The people who hate racism but feel that Democrats aren’t helping out the white working class. The people who actually are pro-choice but feel like they are pro-life because they hate abortion. The people who feel that Christianity requires them to vote Republican. Let’s go after them. Not the assholes.
Maybe once we are secure (instead of in a world ruled by these people’s sensibilities) we can afford to try and change the apparently unchangeable. But that’s a luxury we just do not have right now.
Now how is a man supposed to understand something he’s never studied? Or read? Or browsed? Or looked at in any way? Or ever considered for any purpose?
I mean, the guy isn’t Superman for the luva’ Pete!