U.S. Politics: He's an Idiot, Plain and Simple

[butterbumps!]

58 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

And you think that's literally all you have to do to get elected President? 

You really don't appreciate how Trump totally bumbled his way to the top in spite of his vast, almost unfathomable stupidity (or in some cases because of it.  His rally-going mouth-breathing army seems to find stupidity a positive for some reason, and the elites behind him enjoy the benefits of his being a "useful idiot").  

The quick, overly simplistic answer is: yes, being a monstrously idiotic bigot is all you need when all these other factors align the way they did for this chode to ascend.  With the way everything aligned, his intellectual bankruptcy and gross incompetence did not impede success.  His demagogic bigotry earned him rabid fans in an overcrowded primary where no one earned a majority.  In the winner take all system, he became the R candidate b/c all of the less mentally-wanting candidates split the vote.   That earned him not only the bigot vote (which, again, don't underestimate white fragility), but a whole lot of mainstream Rs who'd vote for a literal necrotic scrotum as long as there was an "R" by its name on the ballot.  I already mentioned the geographic advantage the electoral college gave him.   You're really overestimating both Trump and a lot of the people in this country.

[Yukle]

5 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Do you believe in representative democracy? If that's how things turn out, I'm not sure why you would. John Stuart Mill wrote that, while the average person obviously doesn't possess great intelligence and insight, they have an awareness of their own best interest, and an ability to recognise good leadership. These arguments helped pave the way for greater voting rights. If these principles don't hold true, why are we letting the average man choose our leaders?

Sure, I believe in it. I also believe in the separation of powers, though, and the prevention of too much executive power being in the hands of too few people. I think federalism is a better idea than unitary democracies, again to separate powers, and I believe in equally empowered branches of equal government.

All to prevent the entirely likely problem that it is a frequent occurrence that an idiot is elected. Trump isn't the first idiot in power, although perhaps the most idiotic to specifically be President.

Unfortunately, it seems that systems that the USA put in place to ensure equal branches of government don't work.

[Mexal]

6 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Do you believe in representative democracy? If that's how things turn out, I'm not sure why you would. John Stuart Mill wrote that, while the average person obviously doesn't possess great intelligence and insight, they have an awareness of their own best interest, and an ability to recognise good leadership. These arguments helped pave the way for greater voting rights. If these principles don't hold true, why are we letting the average man choose our leaders?

This may hold true most of the time, but clearly not this time because the people who voted him in are the ones getting screwed the most, they just don't recognize it because their leadership is gaslighting them to obscene lengths. The people who are supposed to provide oversight are enabling and contributing to the gaslighting and care way too much about their own power to do their jobs and no one is holding them accountable. We will see if the voters do but I'm not holding my breath.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

You're getting towards my point. Maybe all of us should spend less time self aggrandising by thinking about how much more intelligent we are than all these other people. Just because people aren't intellectual, doesn't they don't have something to offer society, or that they can't be smarter than you in some form. 

If you're saying I'm being elitist by preferring a president that possesses a certain level of intelligence and knowledge so as to inform her decisions and behavior, then yes, color me elitist.

 

[davos]

Quote

Not trying to get off topic, but you aren't saying Hitler was an idiot, are you? 

Lets not go down the false dichotomy route here, saying he isn't an idiot is not the same as saying he's brilliant. 

Despite some a good instinct for manipulating the public, Hitler was an idiot, at least in the common sense of the term (rather than the specific sense that Ormond talks about above).  In 12 years he lead Germany into utter ruin, with the whole of the nation occupied by foreign powers, many of its major cities bombed out or otherwise in rubble from fighting, somewhere over 3 million of its armed forces members dead from the war along with at least a million more civilians, and the country bearing responsibility for one of the worst atrocities in history.  Nazi Germany lacked anything resembling a coherent system of government or a sustainably viable economic system.  Its successes, and those are dubious at best, came from hiding over economic flaws by constant expansion first of the military and then by conquest, taking advantage of a public that was willing to accept authoritarianism after years of deep political turmoil, and a military that was primed to embrace new doctrines that best took advantage of emerging technologies that granted a temporary advantage on the battlefield.  He was just profoundly lucky, to the great misfortune of his country and the world.  

 

[Darth Richard II]

You assume he did all this himself as opposed to hiring others to do it for him.

[James Arryn]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It’s pretty ironic that Roseanne lost her show for making a racist comment when she previously said her character’s support of Trump was meant to highlight that Trump supporters aren’t racists.

Very few racists think they’re racist.

[Darth Richard II]

4 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Very few racists think they’re racist.

Shit that sums up America perfectly.

[Zorral]

If he's so damned smart then, how come his base doesn't get any bigger than it always has been, and in some ways, in some places, has actually shrunk?  If he was so damned smart even I should be a true believer by now.

 

[Jace, Extat]

@davos thank you for taking care of that one for me. Hitler was a stupid, racist thug who got more breaks than Donald Trump climbing 2 flights of stairs.

There was nothing exceptional about the fucker but his penchant for stumbling dick first into the most surprisingly advantageous situation imaginable. The dude got like 5 years for attempting a goddamn coup! HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT HAPPEN!?! Well, there was other shit going on and nobody took the blathering idiot seriously until he was put in power by a minority in a crowded political field.

Sound a bit familiar?

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

No, they aren't ten a penny like this.  No one else was stoking bigotry like he was.  He went well beyond the dog whistle, and instead sobs white MRA tears over a megaphone, telling all these similar fragiles sweet nothings about how everything wrong in their lives is someone else's (i.e. brown people's) fault, that being white is super duper special, and de-stigmatizing bigoted speech.  to name just a few things here.    He's the only candidate to have completely transgressed those boundaries.   

ETA:  seriously-- do not underestimate white fragility, gender resentment, and whatever else bigotry you can conjure in the US.  

It's easy to say that now that he has won, but why do you think nobody tried the same approach before him? We know these are not his deeply held, lifelong views -- the last time he tried to run for President, his platform was something along the lines of fair trade and universal health care. That obviously didn't work for him so he found something that did. I've never met him so I can't judge his intelligence, but he certainly drew a correct conclusion that practically everyone else missed and this is almost never the mark of anyone below or even at the average level of intelligence.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I agree, and should have limited it to just Twitter. What I was trying to get at is history is filled with examples of shaky politicians who make it further than they should do their understanding of a new way of communication. I'm often reminded of this podcast about Hitler's rise, and one of the many things that jumps out to me is how they break down Hitler's ability to master the microphone. Most politicians were bad at it at the time because it was still relatively new, but he crushed it. Absent that, he likely would not have risen the way he did. 

The podcast in it's entirety is pretty creepy. I'm not saying Trump is the same as Hitler, but their ascension have so many similarities. 

Isn't most political success style over substance? Charisma over character? And moreso when you are competing for the throne? I don't think Bill or Barak got elected because of the policies they were promoting. The got elected because they were young and hip and good-looking and got people excited. I don't fully understand how old dudes score style or charisma points, but on the Republican side that does seem to kind of be the thing that floats people's boat. 

Thinking about the Democratic presidents in the last 50 or so years you have Kennedy: young attractive dude who got people excited. LBJ, coat tailed on Kennedy. Carter, still relatively young (53 when elected) but I don't know much about him leading into that election, and how much Viet Nam played in his win. Clinton, young attractive, charismatic. Obama, young attractive charismatic. It almost seems like the Democrats have a particular formula that they need to follow for their candidate to get elected. Hillary Clinton pretty much did not conform to the formula for Democratic success. Recognising that people are significantly influenced by superficial things, one's electoral strategy should definitely take these things into account. I democrats think they can beat Trump by having better policies and exposing and mocking him for what he is, they have failed to understand what got him elected and how to actually counter it. 

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Altherion said:

he certainly drew a correct conclusion that practically everyone else missed and this is almost never the mark of anyone below or even at the average level of intelligence.

This assumes his approach was the only way a Republican nominee could win in 2016, which is an incredibly faulty assumption.

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Not trying to get off topic, but you aren't saying Hitler was an idiot, are you? 

Well when it came to military strategy, yes he was. It would seem many German Generals (or at the really good ones, like Manstein and so forth) didn't have a really high opinion of his military abilities. And once in office he wasn't known to be a very diligent worker, but was kind of lazy. In fact, if I recall correctly, OKH or maybe it was OKW or whatever had to wait several hours before moving reinforcements to Normandy, shortly after the allied invasion begun, because Hitler was getting his beauty rest. Nor was he known to be very good with details. So he was kind of a lazy idiot.

[OldGimletEye]

2 hours ago, dmc515 said:

If you're saying I'm being elitist by preferring a president that possesses a certain level of intelligence and knowledge so as to inform her decisions and behavior, then yes, color me elitist.

 

I think on a couple of occasions I've thought to myself, "You know, Rush might be wrong about this."

That probably makes me an "elitist" too.

[OldGimletEye]

8 hours ago, mankytoes said:

We can get into semantics about the meaning of "intelligence", he certainly doesn't have conventional intelligence, but you can't in any honesty call him an idiot. 

I'd call him a very prolific and a very good bullshit artist. But, when it comes to policy substance he shows an extreme amount of ignorance and adds a lot of laziness with it.

7 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

No, they aren't ten a penny like this.  No one else was stoking bigotry like he was.  He went well beyond the dog whistle, and instead sobs white MRA tears over a megaphone, 

This is the crux of it with Trump. There is a lot of evidence that Trump ditched the kind of run of the mill dog whistle politics that's been par for the course in US politics for several decades now and instead just grabbed a bull horn and didn't even pretend to be subtle about it. And it worked for him.

And the fear is, by many, is that even after Trump is gone politics may not revert to the mean of dog whistle politics as usual, but may instead trend off into something far nastier and insidious, particularly if unscrupulous politicians, noting Trump's success, try to emulate him.

[Altherion]

5 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

This assumes his approach was the only way a Republican nominee could win in 2016, which is an incredibly faulty assumption.

It was certainly not the only way a generic Republican could win, but I can't see another that would allow somebody like Trump to win. Remember, at the time he ran, there had never been a President without either military or political experience at a fairly high level. Also, he had done things which would ordinarily disqualify any candidate outright. For example, he cheated on his wife and his "locker room talk" comments go far beyond contemporary political incorrectness (the latter was the core of his strategy) and well into a violation of much older and more universal mores.

2 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

And the fear is, by many, is that even after Trump is gone politics may not revert to the mean of dog whistle politics as usual, but may instead trend off into something far nastier and insidious, particularly if unscrupulous politicians, noting Trump's success, try to emulate him.

Indeed. The scary possibility is not somebody like Trump, but somebody younger, more charismatic, more qualified and without any of Trump's baggage.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Altherion said:

It was certainly not the only way a generic Republican could win, but I can't see another that would allow somebody like Trump to win.

This seems to be somewhat of a tautological argument:  Trump won by developing an approach no one else thought of (or at least was employing), and someone like Trump wouldn't have won using any other approach.  Ok, I suppose, but that doesn't make him intelligent.

[Altherion]

14 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

This seems to be somewhat of a tautological argument:  Trump won by developing an approach no one else thought of (or at least was employing), and someone like Trump wouldn't have won using any other approach.  Ok, I suppose, but that doesn't make him intelligent.

I suspect a lot of people thought of the approach, but nobody in a position to use it thought it could win. And yes, there is an element of necessity being the mother of invention here, but it was still quite an insight.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

I suspect a lot of people thought of the approach, but nobody in a position to use it thought it could win. And yes, there is an element of necessity being the mother of invention here, but it was still quite an insight.

Alternatively, nobody in a position to use it needed to exploit it to such an extent in order to win.  Bush I used Willie Horton, but obviously he didn't center his whole campaign around racial resentment.  That Trump had to go that well so much to win makes him adaptable, sure, but I'm failing to see how it demonstrates any particular insight or intelligence.