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


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6 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Bigots are ten a penny. Why did he get the top job, and none of the others? 

Because he's good at self-promotion, and his entire life he's been getting assistance from smarter people. His dad's money and real estate properties, dirty tricks lessons from Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, indulgence from sold-out legal authorities in New York, cash bailouts from Russian plutocrats who needed a place to launder money, willingness by New York high society to humor him despite their putative loathing for him, a platform from NBC to portray himself as a competent and decisive leader when he's an impulsive coward, complicity from media because he's good for ratings, and then the king-making assistance of the whole right wing bullshit apparatus when the election kicked off.

He's slithered through the cracks of all our institutions. He's a con man who was highly placed enough that America's coddling of rich white assholes carried him farther than should have been possible in a sane society.

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24 minutes 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. 

 

18 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Bigots are ten a penny. Why did he get the top job, and none of the others? 

I most certainly can say in all honesty he's an idiot.  You seem to be operating under the premise that someone has to be smart to get elected president.  This notion in itself is rather idiotic.

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There's also a difference between being intelligent and being successful, and the former is not a prerequisite for the latter. 

Being a popular and successful public speaker - especially one willing to cater to fear and disgust emotions - is not particularly something that requires intelligence. It's been tried in the US many times before. The big difference is that this was the first time where it was so wildly and brazenly successful since world war 2. 

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44 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Bigots are ten a penny. Why did he get the top job, and none of the others? 

Because -- politics -- using racism and hatred.

Not the first time an idiot has been put into this office for those reason.

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2 hours ago, Week said:

Um, what horrible statements?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/01/media/disney-ceo-bob-iger-trump-advisory-board/index.html

Wowww! Damn, son -- Iger really let Trump have it. "I deeply disagree" -- the nerve to use that kind of language.

Anyone find a link with any actual edge to any comments Iger has made? I have not found any after a cursory search.

Well...the WH has now had Sanders come out with a list of 'double-standard' comments made on ABC.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/sarah-sanders-goes-bonkers-rant-blaming-keith-olbermann-trump-demands-apology-rosanne-firing/

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well...the WH has now had Sanders come out with a list of 'double-standard' comments made on ABC.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/sarah-sanders-goes-bonkers-rant-blaming-keith-olbermann-trump-demands-apology-rosanne-firing/

On the flip side, for some reason there was a child in the press gallery today and he told Sanders about his experiences with anti-shooter drills in school and asked her what the Administration was doing about it. She was legitimately shook.

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Quick comment about Roseanne’s ambien excuse. I’m no doctor by any means but I’ve been on ambien for over a decade and read lots of stories, and even in the weird extreme cases...ambien does not change your personality. If anything, it brings your true personality out by bypassing your normal inhibitions. So, yeah, she’s full of shit.

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3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Trump is a world class marketer and an elite used car salesman who understood an emerging communications medium better than all the other candidates.

Even this is overstating, IMO. His 'understanding' of digital media reportedly begins and ends at Twitter. His understanding of traditional media is better, but still limited. However, his weakness there is also his strength: he's the first Presidential candidate who was truly part of, and at home with, tabloid culture. GWB pretended to it, so did Bill Clinton, but they weren't natural attention-seekers with decades of manipulating the tabloids (sometimes successfully, sometimes not).

Twitter, it just so happens, has a huge crossover with that culture. What works in one, largely works in the other. They're both about getting attention, and screw facts, details, truth, or anything else.

In other words, Trump was in the right place at the right time, and even then could easily have lost. He's not some genius, he's just lucky. Some people may view this as complacency or arrogance. They may be right. But I'll take their bet.

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Hitler was just fucking lucky too. 

Success does not equate brilliance or intelligence unless you actually, y'know, display said intelligence or brilliance.

The urge to think he's brilliant at something is normal, it's your brain trying to rationalize against the reality that Americans are gross and lazy pigs who liked a stupid liar who was born with a silver spoon up his ass.

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@Holy Sith!

Quote

 

My wife, who is normally much more of a glass-half-full person than I, pointed out that dumping Roseanne might be as much of doing the right thing for Disney-ABC as just doing the right thing.

They didn't want to lose their advertisers, she said. That brings back the old monetary considerations that motivate nearly everything in American society.

Roseanne has efficiently poisoned her own brand by letting her racist personality out on Twitter. (thank you, Ambien?). Unlike members of Congress, private corporations do respond to the potential reactions of their supporters.

Despite the ratings of the show, I don’t think it’s likely to be picked up by anyone else -- not even a network with the low standards of Fox.

Roseanne should get together with Mel Gibson to compare self-destructive abilities.

 

The silver lining here is that at least overt public racism is still enough of a concern to the network and advertisers to cancel it.  In other words, I share in the cynical view that they basically only did it to appease advertisers - but at least advertisers still believe that Rosanne-type behavior won't sell well in the general US public.  If they didn't think it'd hurt, who knows, but at least we're still in a place where it did.     

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The real problem with calling Trump an "idiot" is that the word "idiot" itself is so poorly defined. Originally, it was one of the three categories of mental handicap or retardation, and meant that one had a "mental age" of two years old or less. By that original definition, Trump is certainly not an "idiot". You can perhaps say he is emotionally an "idiot", but the term really didn't apply to emotion originally, and he obviously has a vocabulary and intellectual capacity greater than that of the average two year old.

But of course no one uses the term "idiot" to really mean "mental age of less than 2 years" any more. It's just an insult we fling at people who have done something we think is "stupid." It's no longer a meaningful comment about someone's overall intelligence, just an expression of amazement or outrage at particular instances of poor behavior or lack of understanding. I call Trump an "idiot" all the time in my head myself, but it's not a useful term to use to understand him either in terms of politics or his own personality and capacities. 

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33 minutes ago, S John said:

@Holy Sith!

The silver lining here is that at least overt public racism is still enough of a concern to the network and advertisers to cancel it.  In other words, I share in the cynical view that they basically only did it to appease advertisers - but at least advertisers still believe that Rosanne-type behavior won't sell well in the general US public.  If they didn't think it'd hurt, who knows, but at least we're still in a place where it did.     

What's really interesting here is not only did this firing happen fast, but social media played a big part in making it happen. We've seen many examples lately of social media spreading racism, islamophobia, and fake news. It's good to know that it's an effective tool to counter racism. 

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46 minutes ago, mormont said:

Even this is overstating, IMO. His 'understanding' of digital media reportedly begins and ends at Twitter. His understanding of traditional media is better, but still limited. However, his weakness there is also his strength: he's the first Presidential candidate who was truly part of, and at home with, tabloid culture. GWB pretended to it, so did Bill Clinton, but they weren't natural attention-seekers with decades of manipulating the tabloids (sometimes successfully, sometimes not).

Twitter, it just so happens, has a huge crossover with that culture. What works in one, largely works in the other. They're both about getting attention, and screw facts, details, truth, or anything else.

In other words, Trump was in the right place at the right time, and even then could easily have lost. He's not some genius, he's just lucky. Some people may view this as complacency or arrogance. They may be right. But I'll take their bet.

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. 

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Virginia poised to expand Medicaid

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/30/virginia-medicaid-expansion-578513

Quote

 

The Virginia Senate on Wednesday approved Medicaid expansion for hundreds of thousands of low-income adults, putting the state on the verge of becoming just the second to approve the major Obamacare program in the Trump era.

Once Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signs the bill, a top priority of his new administration, Virginia will become the 33rd state to adopt the Obamacare program, which is expected to cover as many as 400,000 people.

 

 

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4 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.  

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

3 hours ago, dmc515 said:

I most certainly can say in all honesty he's an idiot.  You seem to be operating under the premise that someone has to be smart to get elected president.  This notion in itself is rather idiotic.

I can't think of anyone who has been elected President of a major country who hasn't shown they are smart in some way.

1 hour ago, mormont said:

In other words, Trump was in the right place at the right time, and even then could easily have lost. He's not some genius, he's just lucky. Some people may view this as complacency or arrogance. They may be right. But I'll take their bet.

I mean, he's certainly lucky. Luck is essential for political success, however intelligent you are. 

So the lesson is, lets just put it down to fluke and go acting the same way and expecting different results? I'm pretty sure that's what Einstein defined as insanity. 

1 hour ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

Hitler was just fucking lucky too. 

Success does not equate brilliance or intelligence unless you actually, y'know, display said intelligence or brilliance.

The urge to think he's brilliant at something is normal, it's your brain trying to rationalize against the reality that Americans are gross and lazy pigs who liked a stupid liar who was born with a silver spoon up his ass.

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. 

He's played the game, and he's played it well. Learn from history or repeat it.

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2 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

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

He's played the game, and he's played it well. Learn from history or repeat it.

Again, him playing the game well doesn't make him not an idiot. Hell, lots of folks were well aware this was a failure mode of the US, and had predicted someone like this coming up - Heinlein, Roth, Brin, Frum, etc. 

I mean, if you're going to ignore his lack of general intelligence, curiosity, and ability to keep things in his mind, how are you going to learn from the history when the next useful idiot comes along? 

The lesson that we should be learning is that just because someone is a dumbass does not make them invalid for POTUS, as much as many of us would like that. And just because we can tell how much of a dumbass someone is does not mean that the majority of the US will care in the least. That's a pretty sobering realization for me, but one we should have already figured in 2004. 

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53 minutes ago, Ormond said:

It's just an insult we fling at people who have done something we think is "stupid." It's no longer a meaningful comment about someone's overall intelligence, just an expression of amazement or outrage at particular instances of poor behavior or lack of understanding.

Well, I think you said it right there.  It is a meaningful comment on someone's intelligence - it's just that it's synonymous with stupid.

25 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I can't think of anyone who has been elected President of a major country who hasn't shown they are smart in some way.

Define "in some way."  That seems like a qualifier that could open the floodgates.  Hell, I could find "some way" most anyone is smart.  In general, however, there have been plenty of POTUS' that I would describe as not smart or intelligent.

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38 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I can't think of anyone who has been elected President of a major country who hasn't shown they are smart in some way.

I can: Donald Trump. He's an idiot. And not smart in any way.

That's a reflection of American society. Half of all Americans are stupider than average (it's the same of any society). And more or less all of the stupid people elected one of their own, rather than splitting their vote between candidates.

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37 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Again, him playing the game well doesn't make him not an idiot.

I mean, if you're going to ignore his lack of general intelligence, curiosity, and ability to keep things in his mind, how are you going to learn from the history when the next useful idiot comes along? 

You think it's easy playing the game and getting elected President? You think it's something an idiot can do?

I get that you're trying to turn this around on me, but it doesn't make sense, because I'm not remotely saying that. I'm just trying to add a bit of nuance to the general Trump criticism, to which I am a part of, not saying he's flawless. 

14 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Define "in some way."  That seems like a qualifier that could open the floodgates.  Hell, I could find "some way" most anyone is smart.  In general, however, there have been plenty of POTUS' that I would describe as not smart or intelligent.

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. 

2 minutes ago, Yukle said:

I can: Donald Trump. He's an idiot. And not smart in any way.

That's a reflection of American society. Half of all Americans are stupider than average (it's the same of any society). And more or less all of the stupid people elected one of their own, rather than splitting their vote between candidates.

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?

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