Trump begs for money.

Post Reply New Topic

I am puzzled by people being oblivious to the fact that there are a lot of dirtbags on either side of the political divide.
Politics attracts a lot of self-serving egomaniacs, after all.

You don't have to be a psychopath to be a politician...
But it helps.

I'm not in the US and Trump makes me want to vomit but I don't find it hard to see why people like/support him.

I mean the stolen election thing. My feeling is, that was probably a lie. I have no difficulty believing Trump lied about that. But I don't know. If I think I know, then I have to make a leap of faith in the messaging of the Democratic party and the media that supports it. Because I don't have access to primary sources of information. That's not much different to the leap of faith Trump supporters have to make to believe that the election was stolen.

Does Trump lie? Yes, I think he does.

Does the Democratic Party and supporting media lie? Yes, I think they probably do.

Are they lying about this specific incident? Who really knows. To have any opinion I have to choose what to believe.

And how am I choosing who to believe? I'm choosing based on the side that most closely aligns with the world I want to see. And the people who I find most acceptable. A world that values people over profits, the environment over industry, societal protections over individual protections. And my belief is that people aren't very good at making these choices for themselves and need to be told sometimes what's best for everyone.

But what if my belief was only slightly different, what if I believed that people were quite capable of making choices for themselves and that personal freedom is sacrosanct? These don't seem to be awful beliefs. Would I then also believe that if you protect business and profits then it automatically follows that people's lives get better, societies benefit overall and market forces will ensure that the environmental issues we face will be overcome. I can see the logic in that thinking. It doesn't seem stupid. But would I also then see the Republican Party as a force for good? Would I find it easy to overlook their lies and trust Trump when he says the election was stolen? I think I could, quite easily. Could his attempt to get money from his supporters look like a crusade, not a grift? Maybe.

I think the problems start when we pretend that Trump supporters are stupid, or mentally deficient. When we pretend that their motivations aren't understandable. To me they seem very understandable, because ultimately I'm making the same leaps of faith, just over a different logical chasm.

All politicians lie to some extent. The catch is the amount of them.

Trump’s record of lies in office has been well documented. It is part of his legacy. He should go to work in a candy factory because he sure can make Whoppers.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarko ... -or-obama/

Trump is the only person who can say he didn't say something-----when what he said was recorded on tape.

And some people actually buy this!

Trump is actually a really good salesmen. He sells BS and people buy it!

If (and may G^D forbid it) Trump gets elected president in 2024, you can expect another four years of being led by that inescapably narcissistic sociopath who surrounds himself with equally malevolent lunatics and grifters.

By people who you have to trust to tell you the truth. Or at least not distort it by cherry picking facts that support their bias.

And if you don't trust them, you can find an alternative news source which tells a different story, by cherry-picking different facts.

What is the prime objective of news media? To disseminate accurate reporting? To make money for its shareholders? To promote the political objectives of its owners? These are valid questions.

You could argue that Trump supporters are less sheep-like than historical Republican supporters because they do question the motives of the established news media outlets - they're very aware that the news has an agenda too. They just choose the ones they question and the ones they trust, same as Democratic supporters.

 Link to Official List of Trump's Atrocities 

To be clear (in case it isn't):

I've no interest in defending Trump. I think he's terrible. All I'm trying to do is to point out that as individuals we likely have no experience of him. We rely on reports, opinions and curated information. We have to trust those sources. Our reasons for trusting them are our own, and may seem irrefutable to us, but rarely is that the case objectively. It's the same for the Trumpsters. They just trust different sources of information.

You can call them stupid, call them cultists, call them sheep but I think there are far too many of them to be dismissed so easily and I think it's worth trying to understand them, and one of the ways we can do that is by looking at our own biases and leaps of faith.

"Trust different sources of information" seems like saying "Good people on both sides" -- people and opinions on opposite sides cannot both be correct; in a two-sided discussion, there must be one side that denies the truth and one side that relies upon it.  In this case, the truth is well-documented, and Donald J. Trump is a bald-faced liar.

Trump and his minions used many "documented" Big Brother tactics-----right out of 1984!

And that just scratches the surface.

I never felt a threat to our Democracy more acute than what I felt under Trump.

(Yes, of course our Democracy is flawed---but it's a heck of a lot better than what's going on in places like Belarus).

No, it's nothing like that. It's an acknowledgement that nobody is working with a full set of facts. Unless you are personally overseeing the electoral process and ruling out fraud, you have to trust somebody to tell you that it either is or isn't happening.

Somewhere along the line, we all made a choice and a leap of faith. I think it's important to be aware of that when we judge people who made a different choice.

Until someone comes out with undeniably solid evidence that someone cheated, the only conclusion to be drawn is that no cheating occurred.  For instance, let us examine a hypothetical situation involving two competitors in a race...

Several people run a footrace, and only one of them crosses the finish line first.  When the second-place runner accuses the first-place runner of cheating, the onus is on the second-place runner to prove that the cheating occurred, because the default conclusion is that the person who crosses the finish line first is the winner of the race.

The second-place runner then approaches his favorite race officials and demands that they find a way to declare the second-place runner as the winner.  The officials, being ethical people of high moral standing, dismiss the second-place runner's demands and uphold the default conclusion that the person who crosses the finish line first is the winner of the race.

The second-place runner then files lawsuit after lawsuit claiming that his victory was stolen and that the second-place runner 'obviously' won the race.  In courtroom after courtroom, the cases are dismissed or thrown out due to lack of evidence, and the default conclusion is still that the person who crosses the finish line first is the winner of the race.

So all of the video from all along the racecourse is examined, and no evidence of cheating is found.  The second-place runner then claims that every camera was somehow 'doctored' to record only that the first-place runner was ahead of everyone else.  Again, no proof of claim is presented, and the default conclusion is still that the person who crosses the finish line first is the winner of the race.

All the while, the second-place runner is making such a nuisance of himself with the Media that several media outlets stop publishing his claims, while the first-place runner uses his victory status to promote improvements in education, health care, and infrastructure projects that will benefit not only the people who cheered him on, but also those who cheered on his opponent as well.

Now, does the second-place runner finally admit defeat?  No, he does not.  Instead, he arranges to have certain parts of the course of the footrace re-routed to his advantage.  He also declares that if he is not proclaimed victor of the last footrace, then those who cheered him on should not attend any more footraces for the next two or three years.  Finally, to pay off all expenses he incurred from his endless protests, he starts a GoFundMe campaign and begs his loyal fans to contribute.

Does any of this seem plausible to you?

Trump lost by about 7 million votes.

His own Attorney General (one of his minions) could not find any plausible evidence of fraud.

It is on tape that he called a Georgia election official and asked him to "come up" with some tens of thousands of votes. This conversation is available for all to hear.

The Capitol was attacked on the day that Biden would have been officially declared the winner

Agrees with the above observations ........!