Why Trump is Terrifying

[Pallas]

Trump is terrifying because he is showing everyone that the highest elected official in the most powerful country on Earth has no power. But then, who's really controlling things? I mean, the President doesn't autocratically control the government anyways, but the President is supposed to control the executive branch for "balance of powers". If he has no say, then that can't be how things are working, at all, and that raises the question of how things are really working. Trump's presidency isn't some comic relief to having some shady figure like Hillary Clinton or Mike Pence in control. It's a mockery by whoever is really running things (which has to be corporations).

[Raver]

Governments and corporations are just a front behind who's really controlling the world. The two work hand in hand though as a team almost. Government influences corporations by creating laws to benefit corporations to increase profit and corporations influences the government through lobbying to get what they want.

I'm not going to pretend to know what really goes behind the scenes because I don't, but there are theories floating around online. All I know is that it's definitely not the president of the U.S. as he has some power, but not as much as you would think. This is why changing political parties and/or presidents is not going to do anything when they're both controlled by the same entity behind the scenes IMO.

[DavidH]

This is covered in Government courses and Political Science courses. The United States is a democratic republic. The people control the government with political representatives enacting the will of the people.

[Adam Strange]

Power flows from money.

Corporations aren't running things. They merely enable the men running them to control huge amounts of money, and the money is used to alter the environment in favor of the corporations and the men running them.

Different corporations have different goals, which means that there are differences of opinion as to which laws should be passed and which way the field should be tilted.

The country is really being run by a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires who buy influence with politicians.

If your government "representative" doesn't vote the way you want (if 95% of the population thinks we should be out of Afghanistan, why are we still in Afghanistan? If most of the population wants single-payer health care, why do we not have it?), then just ask yourself how much you've contributed to his re-election campaign fund. If the answer to that question is "nothing", well, why should he listen to you?

[Nanooka]

I think a huge element of what makes Trump dangerous, beyond the disaster inherent in his policies, is the nature of his rise to power and his movement. The thread's touched on this some.

This is a movement based first and foremost not around issues, but around a charismatic figure seen as strong and "like us." Actual policy issues were de-emphasized in his campaign, in favor of personal attacks and vague sloganeering. Criticisms of him were dispelled through proliferation of memes from the Infowars-Drudge-Roger Stone smear mill, whataboutist water-muddying, and an unnerving semi-postmodernist "post-fact society" outlook where you can't even have a rational discussion because there's no agreement on basic events. All of this combines to make for a pretty rabid and dangerous, though thankfully shrinking and likely to continue to absent some large terror attack, cult of personality around one individual.

It does nothing to solve real and pressing issues that legitimately do threaten people "like us," and that do exacerbate oligarchic control over our system. It's completely distracted from efforts towards a constitutional amendment ending Citizens United, which would allow us to take the kind of legal bribery Adam Strange mentioned out of politics. It's actively counterproductive to tackling climate change before atmospheric feedback mechanisms make it out of our hands, our President is a man who believes it's a myth made up by China. It's gutting protections against depredation through healthcare policies that amount to a return to the prior status quo, which will only further inflame class tensions and lead to exactly the kind of demagogic far-left movements that the right fears. It does nothing to solve security state overreach, considering Trump promised the NSA increased powers over the Apple/San Bernardino situation and has promised to execute Edward Snowden.

[trumpvoter]But nah, he's likable and says he's going to make us great again, whatever the hell that means. And look, Hillary Clinton opposes him, and she's obviously inhumanly more corrupt than every other bought and paid for politician alive. Issues don't matter, all is right with the world as long as some random unstable billionaire who makes me feel good stays in the White House. And people just stop criticizing him and let him screw me over even faster than the rest of them would, of course.[/trumpvoter]

[Bertrand]

Trump signifies a radical attack on democratic values, and attacks on the legitimacy of information, apolitical agencies and positions, checks and balances, are symptomatic of a return to a more basic idealogical front opening up. it used to be we could agree on democratic values and argued about the secondary values stemming from that base. now the discussion is about the ideological foundations we used to take for granted. if you watch fox news you will see a radical revaluation taking place where things like the value and even existence of unbiased information is questioned (fake news), where law enforcement is viewed as an extension of executive subjectivity not above it (entertainingly we got to see the switch in real time when it was Hilary -> Trump on the pointy end), where checks and balances are not honored for their own sake but pushed to their limits on the basis of pure power [1] (Merrick Garland, etc). What's going on seems to be a discussion that centers on differing base values but that play themselves out along surface issues because people have yet to realize the full implications of what's happening.

This is probably a long time coming, because the US has gone a very long time on momentum, and its about time we forgot why we do the things we do because we take for granted the benefits those values and methods have achieved for us. In the end every epoch has to decide for itself how it will rule itself and what it will value and thus become self aware. the US is not very self aware right now, but depending on how this goes, is about to get a powerful wake up call. like Jung says, "mass hysteria calls for mass therapy" and I feel like a big dose of mass therapy is on the way

Trump himself probably least off all understands this, he's just giving the people what they want. in many ways he's just the expression of democracy that has lost confidence in (and self knowledge of) itself

[1] we got to witness checks and balances get revalued as not limitations on power but as power being the only limitation. I.E. "power is limited by definition" to "limits are defined only by power" which is in effect, there are no limits in principle, only power relations which is the diametric opposite from the state as envisioned by the founding fathers (who were setting up a system in an explicit effort to limit power and not let power define limits--now we are on the other side of the cycle)

[Nanooka]

Really solid post, Bertrand. I agree that the risks inherent in political dialogue that's "post-fact"/an unbridgeable screaming match, and a strongman with a movement skeptical of our basic republican principles filling a presidency that has already become imperial in executive power, is a wake-up call for the checks and balances of our system. It can be either the death of the American Republic, or cause for a rejuvenation of the tree of liberty.

Two quotes that I think are fitting:

"I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve." - Gary Hart paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran, often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson

[Pallas]

This is a movement based first and foremost not around issues, but around a charismatic figure seen as strong and "like us."

Unfortunately, Trump is like all of us. He can do nothing but rant and scream and make a fool of himself, and so can all of us.

Power flows from money.

I've observed something personally a bit deeper than that that can control even money, but I need to hypocritically be quiet about it for the time being. Well, not quite hypocritically, since I said quiet rather than silent Really, there are two levels below money that money needs as a foundation. They might both be based in the same thing, like yin and yang on one level and I'm just considering yin as the lower, but that's irrelevant.

[DavidH]

No one I know cares about any of this. Hahaha.

[Pallas]

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran, often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Freemason and ex-Illuminati member (like most of the Founding Fathers)

"You think you have rights? You have no rights. Governments just say that." - My old history teacher, who doesn't call anyone "American" if they seem vaguely intelligent to her because "people don't belong to countries just due to having been born land some people claimed"

I'm considering just writing my philosophy somewhere instead of going to all the trouble to express ideas through fiction now, since it'd be enough to change things (which is pretty much a self-centered desire but everyone else hates the world too so why not). I still don't think that's really a good idea, since beliefs tend to really be expressed through myth rather than formula (the living organism vs. the dead, dissected organism), but I'm weakly considering it.

[Singu]

I'm sure some people have already heard of the "Deep State"...

The so-called "Deep State" is just another way of saying that the bureaucrats (aka the "specialists") are starting to have more control than the government or the actual elected representatives, which isn't really anything new. The government and the elected representatives are starting to lose their power over to them. Sure, the bureaucrats are hired by the government and they're supposed to be under the control of the government, but with their sheer technical prowess and their all-encompassing access to data and information in a society, the power could easily revert and they would be the actual power-wielders of the government. It takes a special kind of a politician to take control of them and work together with the bureaucrats, and not against them or be controlled by them. In France, the bureaucrats are a highly respected profession, and it took someone like de Gaulle to clean things up a little bit and the balance of power would be more tipped towards the government and the elected representatives. But the politics becoming complacent and the government being nothing but a farce and the people having no actual control or dictates over policy-making, while the "technocrats" becoming auto-pilots of the decision making seems to be a common problem in modern, complex societies.

So yes, the unelected representatives could easily have actual power over the elected representatives, whether that be the faceless bureaucrats or the billionaires behind the scenes. That's really when democracies start dwindling.

I don't even think that Trump is the problem. All these problems didn't somehow arise the moment Trump became the president. The problems and symptoms were already there, and the entire situation necessitated someone like Trump to rise up. I think Trump signifies the wrestling of power between the government and the bureaucrats. The take-over of the American government has been a long time in the making, and it's no wonder that the people are becoming apathetic and apolitical because they feel that they have no actual control over it and they can't affect anything in a meaningful way.

Speaking about the dangers of "fake news" and how we can no longer have any rational discourse or be reliant on objectivity is rich coming from a forum that is dedicated to who can talk the most New-Age nonsense in the most convincing way . I think this forum has abandoned any rational discourse a long time ago, or it was never there in the first place. The entire forum is a gigantic Fake News. But that is off-topic, I guess...

[Skepsis]

I hope our Republic is strong enough to survive Trump, but he is the embodiment of what our founding fathers feared and why we have a republic and not a democracy. They were familiar with Plato's Republic, and the stages of regimes, where tyrants arise out of democracies. Most people aren't educated enough about the ideas behind our government and certainly don't seem to care as long as they have their guns and God is kept in the pledge. His supporters seem to have very narrow interests and they are easily manipulated by the news and talk radio.

[silke]

Trump is terrifying because he is showing everyone that the highest elected official in the most powerful country on Earth has no power. But then, who's really controlling things?

Dunno, I feel like the Earth has been managing itself for billions of years, ever before human beings appeared and started to create these delusions of having power and control, that essentially scale back to our reproductive hierarchy. I'm not seeing what is so terrifying about all of this.

[Adam Strange]

Dunno, I feel like the Earth has been managing itself for billions of years, ever before human beings appeared and started to create these delusions of having power and control, that essentially scale back to our reproductive hierarchy. I'm not seeing what is so terrifying about all of this.

Depends on how committed you are to intelligent life on Earth.

[The Reality Denialist]

He shows how is your future will be like or at least one scenario of that.

Grab you by the head.

[Adam Strange]

Here is a pretty good article on Trump. You can decide for yourself how terrifying he is.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...like_this.html

Incidentally, the State of Maryland and District of Columbia sued Trump on Monday for breach of constitutional oath, because...
You can have all the laws you want, but if there is no enforcement (by congress, in this case), the laws don't matter at all.
Perhaps the judicial branch will take action, because a Republican congress has turned a blind eye to Trump's alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

[Singu]

Trump is terrifying because he is showing everyone that the highest elected official in the most powerful country on Earth has no power. But then, who's really controlling things? I mean, the President doesn't autocratically control the government anyways, but the President is supposed to control the executive branch for "balance of powers".

Well, it seems like things will only really start to look scary when Trump starts passing some bad laws that would expand and encroach his powers. But then that would require extraordinary loyalty from the Congress (who actually make the laws), which he doesn't seem to have due to his general unpopularity among Republicans, and not to mention the general public. He could use the "bully pulpit" to convince the people that the country needs to be heading into a certain direction, but again, that won't likely be successful due to his unpopularity.

What's more scary is when the Congress members are merely bought out by the corporations, billionaires and what have you (including the military industries), and by also making "you scratch my back and I scratch yours" deal with the bureaucrats and the Cabinets. They would make laws that are only beneficial to the corporations and the people in power, and not the general public which the laws are supposed to protect and benefit. And then the President merely becomes a complacent figurehead who signs "yes" to whatever laws that are passed by the Congress. And then even the Supreme Court becomes complacent and does not reject laws that are unconstitutional. Isn't this what has been happening since Obama, Bush and the like with passing of the PATRIOT Act laws and such? With the pretense of "fighting terrorism"?

THAT'S when things really start to get scary, because then the authority would be just "following the law" "following orders". And you know what? That's already been what's happening in the US for a fairly long time now...

The President can do either a lot or very little, depending on how popular he is or how skilful he is. It doesn't seem like the president has much control over the situation anymore.

How the US government works: https://www.usa.gov/branches-of-government

How scary will Trump turn out to be, seems to depend on how crazy and insane the Republicans really are. Luckily, there still seems to be some small amount of sanity left among Republicans. But it's not just the Republicans that are crazy, but it's also the Democrats, who became complacent in being "bought out". It's also up to the Democrats to bring the Republicans back to sanity, and vice versa. But unfortunately, that's not likely be happening any time soon. Trump just single-handedly blew up the Republican party and showed the rest of the world for what it really is: An insane party that is seriously out of touch with reality. So I think, that's a start to "resetting" the Republican party and getting it back to its roots, of becoming the party of "good, sane conservatives".

[Adam Strange]

@Singularity, I think you got it.

[Pallas]

I don't even think that Trump is the problem. All these problems didn't somehow arise the moment Trump became the president. The problems and symptoms were already there, and the entire situation necessitated someone like Trump to rise up. I think Trump signifies the wrestling of power between the government and the bureaucrats. The take-over of the American government has been a long time in the making, and it's no wonder that the people are becoming apathetic and apolitical because they feel that they have no actual control over it and they can't affect anything in a meaningful way.

I didn't say that he was the problem, just that he was terrifying due to being an obvious and ineffectual sign of a problem and no one seeming to realize that ("Trump is good because he's pathetic! Imagine if Mike Pence took over! That'd be terrifying!").

Speaking about the dangers of "fake news" and how we can no longer have any rational discourse or be reliant on objectivity is rich coming from a forum that is dedicated to who can talk the most New-Age nonsense in the most convincing way . I think this forum has abandoned any rational discourse a long time ago, or it was never there in the first place. The entire forum is a gigantic Fake News. But that is off-topic, I guess...

"Fake News" is a bad idea. It's like asking "How often do you beat your wife?" to someone who doesn't. People should be able to evaluate whether or not news is real for themselves, and the idea of "Fake News" implies that they can't just from the name and they have to have someone else think for them. If someone else is thinking for you, it doesn't matter what they're thinking. I've found that the key to evaluating information is looking at the motivations of the person giving it to you (isn't this what they teach in high school with "critical thinking" anyways?), but that requires the kinds of cognitive skills that the Internet is just happening to decrease in the general population.

But this is a forum on a "pre-scientific" typology that isn't "pre-scientific" from a lack of ability to rigorously test it (I say this as a nod to things like plate tectonics that were pretty much crank theories that got accepted a long time after and worked as theories on some sort of off chance). I'm pretty sure that's why people complain about my "logic" or whatever (aside from the fact that I've done plenty of things that people get mad at in general and it turns into personal attacks fast from there).

Your name is Singularity and a lot of people would think that's nonsense, but if you (as in, general people) try to point out any aspects of New Age as being nonsense, apparently you don't really understand it and just get laughed out as someone who doesn't understand anything meaningful. Cosmetic features don't make your philosophy more worthy of discussions than everyone else's philosophies, especially if yours is a hyper-normative philosophy in disguise as a non-normative philosophy (like in Chae's paper on BDSM). If you meant your "spirituality" as anti-philosophy, then you should be able to say that when people don't get the point, but if it is anti-philosophy, that's hyper-normative. "Spirituality" is mostly just a buzzword anyways at this point. I'll stop before I drag us even more off-topic (although I think this is where all the topics come from).

[DavidH]

This discussion is strange.

[Skepsis]

[End]

Trump is in no way terrifying. Though I will say @Singularity, the "sane" Republicans you refer to are about to get primaried good and hard in the next midterm elections. We are in the middle of a paradigm shift and during those times the "moderates" get slaughtered. This is also explained by r/K selection. When the shit hits the fan both sides quadruple down and go all in. Thus, the ONLY winning strategy is to either go full rabbit or full wolf. Pick your side and go down with the ship if that's how the wind blows. Half measures just won't cut it. Compromisers will be seen as either pussies or cucks. Neither of those stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected into high office by the way...

[Nanooka]

Contra the claims of "race realist"/alt-right bloggers, r/K selection theory is basically outmoded and is rife with issues in application to humans. Even outside of homo sapiens, selection tendencies are far more complex, adaptive, and varying based on the specific environment a species finds itself in than this oversimplistic theory from the '70s accounts for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_se..._theory#Status

Basically this kind of thing is a result of laymen thinking something they vaguely remember from their high school science textbook fits their preconceived political biases about how the world works (plus it helps them feel macho; "rabbit/wolf" and all), unaware of what developments have been found since said textbook was written.

I agree that there's currently a heavily increasing polarization. Which I see as a hugely bad thing since it impedes constructive dialogue, fosters the rise of demagogues on both sides who threaten our basic republican processes, and risks eventual civil war. It has nothing to do with r/K selection or rabbits and wolves or cucks or whatever half-baked explanation /pol/ is tossing around today. It's mostly related to technological changes, economic development has unfortunately led to a dangerous growing class divide as automation triggers the bottom falling out on the blue-collar class. This feeds the growth in discontent-driven extremist movements, some with legitimate concerns and most without, as well as authoritarianism-skirting police-state measures in response. All further exacerbated by America's declining superpower status, foreign powers tossing kindling into the fire of the divide to hasten the fall through sophisticated social media machinery. Sputnik-originated stories get sourced by Infowars gets picked up by Breitbart, and then the story filters around as a meme for a good cycle.

Also given the President's downward approval trend and all historical data going back decades related to Congress' swing in the midterms, 2018 absent a major terror attack (which could make it more like 2002) is likely to be a good year for the opposition to the ruling party. In swing districts a non-moderate Republican is likely to lose, the party leadership knows this and probs won't devote any funding to primary challengers. Further impeding that kind of challenge, the Democratic base is also likely to be far more galvanized than the Republican one as they were in 1982, 1986, 1990, 2006. Republicans have been galvanized in 1994, 1998, 2010, and 2014; a.k.a. when a Democrat was in power. The hardliners who will keep their seats will most likely be from solid red regions regardless.

[Singu]

Well, it seems like the direction that this is heading is that Trump will likely be impeached.

Or at any rate, this whole "Russian hacking scandal" will be so constant and relentless that it will "suck out the air" of any productive discussion so that Trump will not be able to achieve anything.

Although some of the people that want him to step down as a president may have good intentions, I don't think that there's any legitimacy to this. Rather, it will only mean that the CIA, the FBI, the "Deep State" etc., with the cooperation of the media, will have the power to decide who gets to be the president or not, depending on whether the president's aims and policies will collude with their interests or not. It's pretty obvious that the Trump's attempt at normalizing relations with Russia colludes with the military-industrial complex's interests of requiring an "enemy" to keep its arms industries going.

As for the "Russians", which is basically a yesteryear's third-world country, "hacking" the election of what is effectively the "most powerful nation in the world" to implant a "puppet" president to take control of it... well, that's pretty ridiculous. You're telling me that Hillary lost not because she's a terrible candidate, and Trump won not because people were tired of the "business as usual" and simply wanted change, any change for that matter, but because of the "Russian hacking"... right.

I think that people should rethink over this, not that that will ever happen anytime soon until it's too late. What will likely happen is that the US will have at least a decade or more of rotating "weak" presidents who will go along with whatever that is approved by the FBI/CIA and the interests groups, or they will risk their presidency. There will be scandals after scandals for the presidents who will not toe the line with those groups. It's already happening with Trump. If you don't think that the same thing wouldn't have happened with someone like Bernie Sanders... then you're pretty naive. The president of the United States are no longer chosen by the people, but by a few elites, whether that be the FBI/CIA, the military or the corporations/billionaires. Democracy is dead, and that's not because of someone who was actually democratically elected, but because people want to undemocratically bring him down, and have the ability to do so.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/06/...-trump-coup-2/

[Bertrand]

inasmuch as they uphold the law consistent with the spirit of the constitution they get to "decide who gets to be president or not" as a matter of law enforcement. this is as it should be. the president is not an autocrat, which seems to be confusing for a lot of people

[Nanooka]

If he violated the law, there's legitimacy in prosecuting that, full stop.

I'm as concerned with the unchecked growth in the surveillance state as anyone, I'm in favor of a pardon for Edward Snowden. (Where our current President is in favor of his execution.) That some wings of said surveillance state oppose Trump does not make the growth in the imperial presidency that Trump promises, or allowing Trump to get away with violating the law, a good thing. The impression I get is that they dislike Trump not because he's some great anti-bureaucratic reformer, explicitly and repeatedly promising an increase in warrantless spying authority to the NSA is the furthest thing from a threat to their power. They seem to dislike him, first and foremost, because he's unstable and fosters increased national instability through pouring a ton of oil on the already-ignited fires of polarization. With regard to the CIA in particular, he's also near-killed America's strategic alliance with Europe which weakens cooperation against common threats. Nothing is more toxic to continuation of the prevailing system than instability, so destabilization is legitimately on many levels a threat to the bureaucracy's power. Unfortunately, that "prevailing system" also includes our basic republican processes and America's standing in the world community.

So, I'm not taking this as a black-or-white, either-or proposition of "Trump or the FBI's leadership" where we have to pick sides. Both are dangerous. Considering Trump aired the idea of jailing journalists who publish leaks, I do consider him currently the more pressing threat to our republic. http://thehill.com/homenews/news/333...jail-reporters This does not mean that the FBI can't also reach into dangerous territory, as they did in the days of J. Edgar Hoover. They're just a currently-lesser cancer on our system, one that should also be challenged when (not if) they overstep their legal bounds. The Senate's Church Committee did good work on that in the 1970s amid a climate of scrutiny on the CIA overstepping its bounds, there's no need for this kind of civil war-stoking destabilization or slash-and-burn gut-the-EPA authoritarianism-skirting government in pursuit of it.

With regard to the "military industrial complex," I can't think of a figure better emblematic of it than Henry Kissinger. He's driven the Russian rapprochement and has been a top adviser to Trump on foreign policy concerns, it's seen as a means of isolating China just as rapprochement with China isolated the Soviet Union. (ex. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...a-putin-232925 and https://www.the-american-interest.co...w-world-order/) These Hollywood-esque narratives peddled by Infowars and RT of "Trump vs. some monolithic 'establishment'" just don't hold up to scrutiny. "The establishment" consists of various groups, with various interests, often conflicting. Some consider Trump a danger for various reasons, others consider him a useful tool.

Also whether Russia committed espionage by hacking into a candidate and her campaign manager's email servers to phish for info weakening the standing of the odds-on likely incoming President (Putin claims he thought Clinton would win, I believe it since most people did), or even help the chances of a candidate who was more favorable to them (e.g. who will lift the sanctions), is not the same proposition as whether or not it was the primary cause of a given candidate's loss. That's a non sequitur, and has no relation to whether or not a potential act of high-profile cyberterrorism should be investigated. Based on the data-tracing results available at the time, his pattern of hacks consistently being against targets the Russian government has stated opposition to, and the hacking-related intelligence leaks that have recently come out from the awesomely named Reality Winner, Guccifer 2.0 very likely is a Russian intel cut-out. The current investigation should provide a more definitive answer though.

[Bertrand]

if all these "outsiders" want to achieve whatever it is they thought they were getting when they voted Trump, what they really want is a constitutional convention, which would be achieved by voting for state representatives. if the system is rigged such that they feel change of that magnitude is impossible it raises the question of how Trump got elected to begin with. If they really are in the majority, then Trump should be a symbol of hope (that change they can believe in is possible), and then democracy can do its thing in the local elections which ultimately could lead to radical reforms that could, in theory, result in the autocrat they deserve

the real problem is the people they call "insiders" is entirely selective and determined by just a different sect of opposing mass-manipulators. for whatever reason they ignore that flavor of "insiderdom" because presumably that particular brand is more palatable. they call it insider or outsider but the only real "outsiders" are the people who consistently get victimized by the system (hint: its not major corporations). the truth is most Trump supporters are "outsiders" in that sense, they've just equivocated on the notion and allowed themselves to be duped resulting in voting for policies that favor "insiders" (mainly self serving interests of big business) on the failure to recognize that trump is an "insider" in the sense that would victimize the poor and an "outsider" in the sense of "has a history of consistent and informed law making" (Bernie or somesuch). Thus he's an "outsider" in the sense that is important that he be an "insider" and an "insider" in the grand union of unethical corporate exploitation. The great swindle was propoganda outlets appealed to people's natural and ignorant fears along lines of race and sexuality and the basest forms of religion (their collective PoLR, so to speak) to get people to vote against their own interests and the interests of democracy all under the auspices of progress ("drain the swamp!"--stacks executive branch with corporate cronies) when it was exactly the opposite

our secretary of state is the "former" CEO of exxonmobil

and not in some ancient history where he then went into civil service, it was until 2016

edit: I think this really raises the question of what do they actually want. I think the argument could be made they don't actually want an autocrat--they just want the pain to stop, which they feel has taken such a strong hold on the system that only an autocrat can fix it. that is likely incorrect, but the dream is still compelling and that desire was co opted by forces to enact legislation that just drives the pain deeper. in that sense, for all these outsiders, Trump was merely a wolf in sheeps clothing. the only real solution here would be to elevate their consciousness, because its precisely their vulnerability to manipulation along the lines of sex/race/abortion/guns/religion, which are all rooted in deficiency-motivation, that need to be addressed before they can move forward. those issues amount to a species of mass hysteria, and like Jung says "mass hysteria calls for mass therapy" it seems like voting for trump was a version of social request on the same lines as the germans electing ******. the medicine was awful though, but it worked, but not at all in the straightforward way they thought it would--rather it brought on catastrophe which was, in essence, the real cure (a kind of shock therapy) for such deeply rooted cultural and national neuroses (the American civil war is another example of this)

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

I just think he's terrifying because he's confident and outgoing, and that's the only thing stoopid middle america cares about or something. I mean it's amazing when stupid people are easily led astray by confidence, how far they will go to fuck everything up because daddy told them to do it. He's confident like a tiger and they are gaslighted by it. I would honestly prefer to be ruled by a genuinely timid person that was actually compassionate and not a bully but... that's not really how the world works. I mean this issue is bigger than Trump, and we all need to look in the mirror. Sorry but a lot of you on this very forum were easily led astray by the dark triad str8 males™ on this forum just because they said things in a confident way. We give all these grand speeches about how toxic masculinity is wrong and how people like that should never have power because it's bad for everybody else, but how many of us really practice what we preach with that in a realistic way mmmhhmmmmmmmmmm? People are just easily CCed by str8 male confidence especially Americans lol.

I know for myself I have empowered str8 male assholes. I have been part of the problem. Why? Because it was easy. Because everybody else was doing it. Because I wanted protection, no matter the price. Because I was cowardly. Because it's hard to do the right thing a lot of the times. If you wanna make the world a better place you gotta look inside yourself and make that chaaaaaange.

No president really made my life that much better or worse though in the grand scheme of things that I can think about though. I went through some of my most depressed and worst times in life under Presidents who were very liberal and not like Trump, at least not to your face. Trump is just... a new kind of horrible but, they have all been horrible in their own special ways. I'm not saying they were all equally bad or anything but I don't really feel like rating them now of how awful they were.

[Suz]

I just think he's terrifying because he's confident and outgoing, and that's the only thing stoopid middle america cares about or something. I mean it's amazing when stupid people are easily led astray by confidence, how far they will go to fuck everything up because daddy told them to do it. He's confident like a tiger and they are gaslighted by it. I would honestly prefer to be ruled by a genuinely timid person that was actually compassionate and not a bully but... that's not really how the world works. I mean this issue is bigger than Trump, and we all need to look in the mirror. Sorry but a lot of you on this very forum were easily led astray by the dark triad str8 males™ on this forum just because they said things in a confident way. We give all these grand speeches about how toxic masculinity is wrong and people like that should never have power because it's bad for everybody else, but how many of us really practice what we preach with that in a realistic way mmmhhmmmmmmmmmm? People are just easily CCed by str8 male confidence especially Americans lol.

No president really made my life that much better or worse though in the grand scheme of things that I can think about though. I went through some of my most depressed and worst times in life under Presidents who were very liberal and not like Trump, at least not to your face. Trump is just... a new kind of horrible but, they have all been horrible in their own special ways. I'm not saying they were all equally bad or anything but I don't really feel like rating them now of how awful they were.

on a smaller scale I've seen this happen every day throughout school and at work.
stupid careless people that get touted as "good" simply because they act more confident.

[darya]

Obama and every other president comes off as confident, too...

[Bertrand]

Obama and every other president comes off as confident, too...

I don't know, I seem to remember a lot of claims of Obama being seen as supplicating and weak, most of which were just dog-whistling racist or Islamophobic claims, but still. I feel like its disingenuous to say its not confidence because, on some level, every president is "confident" and Obama may have indeed been confident, but not in the minds of the people who voted for Trump because he was confident. At the end of the day I think Bullets is right that they got manipulated by being susceptible to certain facile imagery which Trump exploited to the fullest and Obama was consistently on the wrong side of, so to sum them up as roughly equivalent is wrong, imo.

[Nanooka]

In layman's terms, while Obama exudes a cool charisma and carries himself with confidence, in the minds of a certain subset of the population he's a "quiche-eating effete beta mancuck" based on his "academic leftist" political views and a perceived lack of strength.

Meanwhile, to said people, Trump is a manly man alphadog shitlib-culling HB10-bagging cuck-repellent tall strong daddy this isn't homoerotic at all is it man's man man.

That's not to say the voters didn't get taken in at varying times by both styles of unwarranted confidence, they did. Obama's 2008 campaign ran on little substance too, there's little red meat in "hope and change." It wasn't until 2012 when he had to run on his own record that he had to actually offer anything substantive besides "I'm Obama and I was against the Iraq War." But Trump took the style over substance trend and put it into hyperdrive, in a now particularly dangerous brew as it's centered around a strongman (e.g. more likely to go authoritarian) figure, with even the slightest attempt at substance being derided as fake news perpetuated by the shitlib mancuck globalists or whateverthefuck.

[Singu]

Trump isn't popular... his approval rating is at an all-time low at around 35%. So I don't think that the average Americans are taken in by Trump. But approval ratings are usually decided but how well the media portrays them. One of the key features of a dictator is that they have phenomenally high popularity and approval ratings, because they control the entire media. I don't think that Trump will become a dictator any time soon.

[Nanooka]

He won't, because he isn't unchecked. Thank god. Judging from his explicit statements on journalists' right to publish, which is protected under the First Amendment even if one wants to punish the whistleblowers sending out the leaks (I absolutely don't and see what they're doing as in the public interest), he would if he could.

He was able to take in a very large minority of Americans, and then that approval fell as rapidly as it rose when he proved he's actually pretty shittacular and erratic as a manager. Which you should have been able to see just from looking at the history of his companies and what those he's dealt with as a business leader have said about his management style, but anyway.

[darya]

I don't know, I seem to remember a lot of claims of Obama being seen as supplicating and weak, most of which were just dog-whistling racist or Islamophobic claims, but still. I feel like its disingenuous to say its not confidence because, on some level, every president is "confident" and Obama may have indeed been confident, but not in the minds of the people who voted for Trump because he was confident. At the end of the day I think Bullets is right that they got manipulated by being susceptible to certain facile imagery which Trump exploited to the fullest and Obama was consistently on the wrong side of, so to sum them up as roughly equivalent is wrong, imo.

Oh I understand what you mean where the difference lies in their presentation, I would just word it differently - not necesarilly as confident, but more as agressive, impulsive/peaceful,thought-through or something. Just didn't like the use of word confidence as "only the confident people win", as obviously all presidents carry themselves with confidence, even if it's of the cooler sort. Like do Merkel or Macron or Clinton come off as unconfident people, who get bullied by others? I don't think so. But I get what you mean.

[Suz]

Obama and every other president comes off as confident, too...

well they all DID win elections, didn't they?

Luckily Obama and most other presidents (if not all) have been more competent.

The point is, many people can get smoke-mirrored into thinking someone is competent simply from a display of over-confidence.
Maybe it's human nature... idk...

[darya]

well they all DID win elections, didn't they?

Luckily Obama and most other presidents (if not all) have been more competent.

The point is, many people can get smoke-mirrored into thinking someone is competent simply from a display of over-confidence.
Maybe it's human nature... idk...

It's true that people are smoked-mirrored by confidence, I'm just saying that 90% of presidential candidates are overly confident and bullshitting people, he's just a more extreme example. That's just nature of politics. You're getting smoked-mirrored any way, almost no matter who you vote. Le Pen didnt win in France for example, if we're going by comparison with Trump and in my country the most overly confident candidate (the one or two that could obviously get diagnosed with NPD) get laughed at and never have majority of votes. Its maybe just the harsh truth that lots of americans are racist/sexist or a bigger percent are uneducated and blindly believe that they're going to get a job handled by Trump.

[strangeling]

It's not Trump that I find terrifying; it's the foundation of the political system. I think Socrates explained it best:

[Suz]

It's true that people are smoked-mirrored by confidence, I'm just saying that 90% of presidential candidates are overly confident and bullshitting people, he's just a more extreme example. That's just nature of politics. You're getting smoked-mirrored any way, almost no matter who you vote. Le Pen didnt win in France for example, if we're going by comparison with Trump and in my country the most overly confident candidate (the one or two that could obviously get diagnosed with NPD) get laughed at and never have majority of votes. Its maybe just the harsh truth that lots of americans are racist/sexist or a bigger percent are uneducated and blindly believe that they're going to get a job handled by Trump.

Yes indeed. Hate and racism blinds people and leads to societal decay.

[End]

Yes indeed. Hate and racism blinds people and leads to societal decay.

I'd actually say that they are the result of societal decay. Fact is everyone loves a scapegoat. Rather than face up to their own personal failings they'd rather play victim and blame some outside factor they have no control over. The worse things get the more we hate everyone who ain't like "us" as it were. If the economy was doing great nobody would give a fuck about trivial things like skin color and such. It's not though, so everyone is getting very racist and very hateful.

I mean hell, if this crap gets carried to its logical conclusion you'll get "Aryan" hardcore 1488 Nazis killing their own reflexively because some of em' spent a week in Cancun and got a nice deep tan before making the "mistake" of going home during an alt-right rally that got a wee bit violent because the Antifa types decide it was time to bash the fash with bullets and pipe bombs. Likewise, you'll get "mixed" people massacred by both sides for not being "pure" enough for their tastes. Mulattoes helped the black and native Haitians push out the French colonialists. Their reward? Genocide. Why? Because they weren't "us" enough to the other factions and were part "white devil" despite the fact they helped out the side that's lining them up against a wall! This is where all the "purity spiraling" ends, allies slaughtering each other for no good fucking reason. I forget who said it but this quote embodies the problem: "The Revolution Eats Its Own".

This has been the ultimate problem in the West since the French Revolution. Without "Christianity" to define a "baseline" of "being of upright and proper moral standing" by "not being a filthy heretic" there is no end point. The purity spiral continues without end, reason, or logic from both ends of the political spectrum. It was a fate Nietzsche foresaw. With "God" dead, the only fate we descendants of the West face is wild swings between radical Communism and radical Fascism and all the blood and horror that entails. For only the "ideal" perfect commie or fascist could ever hope to be but a pale facsimile of the "dead" Christian God... A "God" so foundational to our own soul and spirit as a people that we'll grasp at anything in its absence. ANYTHING!

I think we'll see a revival of that God thankfully. Jung believed we could revive dead gods after all, that the archetypes could be perhaps "forgotten" or "suppressed" in some way for a time, but that they could and indeed would come back at the moments they were most needed by us all. I pray I'm right about this interpretation. For if the "gods" can be killed permanently than we are sure to follow in their footsteps as karma demands...