BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

pirana6 wrote:

I don't respect him for WHAT he says. I respect him for the fact that he says it given the current state of politics.

You can have respect for a person without knowing every detail about them right? Then you can probably respect a person in different ways, not just "I respect them or I don't" with an all-encompassing respect placed on them. It's not 100% or 0%. You can admire someone for some things they do but not for others.
Therefor, I respect him for speaking what he thinks is the truth (for the sake of this argument, we'll say he DOES think it). Thankfully I have an IQ well into the double digits unlike his voters so it's going to take more than just He-speaks-his-mind-so-I'm-voting-for-him to get me to vote for someone.

Imagine somebody you don't know comes up to you on the street and yes "I just quit my job to follow my dreams." You think "wow I respect that" even though you know nothing about him. And what if later you found out his dream was to become something stupid. You'd still respect him for following his dreams, but you wouldn't respect his dream.

What I'm saying is it's possible for people to have respect for others in different facets of their personality rather than just all-or-nothing.

i understood what you are saying. i am saying that it is stupid. trump is a bully and a bigot. i get that you aren't particularly sympathetic to his political 'message' or 'content': it's the 'form' that he presents it in (i won't ennoble it with the term 'rhetoric' because the only term from classical rhetoric that applies to the guy is 'non sequitur').

it's basically a variation on that theme of: "i'm just brutally honest, LOL!" which is a coded alibi for 'i broadcast my stupid opinions and offend people'. being 'honest' is not a virtue in itself – not unless you're a saint or aiming to be canonised as one. the form of trump's politics is basically unfiltered rage, anger, bitterness, bigotry, narcissism bordering on a DSM-5 textbook definition. again: the guy is a bully. to say that he strays into personal attacks and ad hominem would be to imply that he makes reasoned arguments the rest of the time. he doesn't. he just bulldozes his way through the political process – a process that may be riddled with corporate/lobbyist influence, corruption, venality, hypocrisy, etc., but a process that was evolved over hundreds, if not thousands of years, to temper peoples' hot-headed views into rational exchange. trump is throwing the baby out with the bathwater of democratic proceedings. he's not 'honest', he's tyrannical. what you see is what you get: a demagogue that genuinely IS the closest thing america has come to fascism, despite the term being bleated by pundits for decades to the point of irrelevancy.

friendly reminder that trump raped his wife and used to regularly beat on people. the guy is odious. stop valorising his way of address as if he's a breath of fresh air. his shit stinks.

Last edited by uziq (2016-01-28 10:39:30)

Fascism without the racism and gas chambers sounds like an interesting idea. We should at least kick around the thought.

Well at least the fascist offer universal healthcare, protection from foreign trade, and investment in education.

pirana6 wrote:

I don't respect him for WHAT he says. I respect him for the fact that he says it given the current state of politics.₁

You can have respect for a person without knowing every detail about them right? Then you can probably respect a person in different ways, not just "I respect them or I don't" with an all-encompassing respect placed on them. It's not 100% or 0%. You can admire someone for some things they do but not for others.₂
Therefor, I respect him for speaking what he thinks is the truth (for the sake of this argument, we'll say he DOES think it).₃ Thankfully I have an IQ well into the double digits unlike his voters so it's going to take more than just He-speaks-his-mind-so-I'm-voting-for-him to get me to vote for someone.

Imagine somebody you don't know comes up to you on the street and yes "I just quit my job to follow my dreams." You think "wow I respect that" even though you know nothing about him. And what if later you found out his dream was to become something stupid. You'd still respect him for following his dreams₄, but you wouldn't respect his dream.

What I'm saying is it's possible for people to have respect for others in different facets of their personality rather than just all-or-nothing.

₁That's what's been tripping me up. I don't think I have a hard time understand what you are saying. I have a hard time understanding why you are saying it.

₂Yes, yes, yes, and yes. ₃But you're respecting Trump for saying stupid stuff while claiming you don't respect the stupid stuff he says? That and the fact that you're trying to soften the impact with stretches and exceptions previously listed hint at mental gymnastics that blow my freaking mind.

₄No, because for all I know that someone's dream in your example could be to follow in the footsteps of David Berkowitz.

Would you respect Trump for wearing a toupee but not for the toupee he wears? o.O

zeek wrote:

stop valorising his way of address as if he's a breath of fresh air. his shit stinks.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

zeek wrote:

stop valorising his way of address as if he's a breath of fresh air. his shit stinks.

That's just it, it IS a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately his shit DOES stink.

Would you respect Trump for wearing a toupee but not for the toupee he wears? o.O

well this is quite the metaphor but... If everyone in the field didn't wear a toupee because it helped them get elected, but he said "fuck it, I'm wearing one". Yes I'd respect that. If the toupee made him look like a rat (more so than currently... somehow), then yes I'd think his choice of toupee is stupid, but that wouldn't have an affect on the fact that he decided to wear one.

Last edited by pirana6 (2016-01-28 18:00:30)

pirana6 wrote:

"Fuck his method because of the end result"

is what I'm seeing you guys saying.

Let me ask you this, would his method be okay if the end result was something that was actually good for the us/world instead of trumps garbage?

What if a candidate didn't collect a single dollar from an organization to pay for an election, instead all of it was from single citizens. Would you go, "oh thats a noble way of going about it"? Or would you say that's fucking stupid?

no i am saying fuck his method because it is inappropriate and a sign of serious character flaws. it is intrinsically undemocratic. he is a demagogue and a populist in the worst possible way. his mannerisms and rhetorical mode of address is almost akin to mussolini. all the fake braggadocio and the making a display of bigotry and chauvinism. and i'm saying that after spending 99% of my time on d&st debunking inane and fatuous fascism comparisons.

i am not talking about the end result. the end result in this context is his policies, the 'meat' of the matter, the concrete politics. the end result is his hypothetical presidency. i'm not even talking about that. if the means that he uses to achieve that end are so odious, it should disqualify him well enough. democratic politics is about process – due process. it is not simply and only about end result. the process has been centrally important ever since psephocracy and the ostracon.

there's a critique to be made about immigrant labour and it's the same critique that could have been made regarding polacks and standard oil in 1915.

donald trump isn't even at that level. he is just purely xenophobic. he is obviously not reasoned about the use of immigrant labour or the deleterious effects of business driving down wages. this is the same guy who says he is 'going to make america great again' and then gets his luxury apparel made in a chinese sweatshop. he doesn't give a shit about these social issues.

sorry but if you think a rich man buying his way into the american presidential race using enormous privilege, networks of pre-established power, and media manipulation is somehow 'counter-cultural' or 'revolutionary' then you need to do a fucking research, noob.

uziq wrote:

there's a critique to be made about immigrant labour and it's the same critique that could have been made regarding polacks and standard oil in 1915.

donald trump isn't even at that level. he is just purely xenophobic. he is obviously not reasoned about the use of immigrant labour or the deleterious effects of business driving down wages. this is the same guy who says he is 'going to make america great again' and then gets his luxury apparel made in a chinese sweatshop. he doesn't give a shit about these social issues.

My hometown actually had a large riot by Poles against Standard Oil. I understand how many of the arguments resemble each other but I think this time of high automation makes it different from back when we were feeding Irish and Poles to our factories.


But yes, I have zero hope of Trump actually understanding the argument regarding wages or caring. And the people who care most about the immigration issue only care about it because of racism and not because they care about wages or the average American worker. The people who want the Mexicans out don't care about the black 11th generation American kid in Baltimore who should have been working those low wage jobs in the first place instead of sitting around in the hood all day.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

there's a critique to be made about immigrant labour and it's the same critique that could have been made regarding polacks and standard oil in 1915.

donald trump isn't even at that level. he is just purely xenophobic. he is obviously not reasoned about the use of immigrant labour or the deleterious effects of business driving down wages. this is the same guy who says he is 'going to make america great again' and then gets his luxury apparel made in a chinese sweatshop. he doesn't give a shit about these social issues.

My hometown actually had a large riot by Poles against Standard Oil. I understand how many of the arguments resemble each other but I think this time of high automation makes it different from back when we were feeding Irish and Poles to our factories.


But yes, I have zero hope of Trump actually understanding the argument regarding wages or caring. And the people who care most about the immigration issue only care about it because of racism and not because they care about wages or the average American worker. The people who want the Mexicans out don't care about the black 11th generation American kid in Baltimore who should have been working those low wage jobs in the first place instead of sitting around in the hood all day.

are you from bayonne? i've read about it quite a lot before. that's what my 1915 was a reference to.

Last edited by uziq (2016-01-29 14:15:48)

uziq wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

there's a critique to be made about immigrant labour and it's the same critique that could have been made regarding polacks and standard oil in 1915.

donald trump isn't even at that level. he is just purely xenophobic. he is obviously not reasoned about the use of immigrant labour or the deleterious effects of business driving down wages. this is the same guy who says he is 'going to make america great again' and then gets his luxury apparel made in a chinese sweatshop. he doesn't give a shit about these social issues.

My hometown actually had a large riot by Poles against Standard Oil. I understand how many of the arguments resemble each other but I think this time of high automation makes it different from back when we were feeding Irish and Poles to our factories.


But yes, I have zero hope of Trump actually understanding the argument regarding wages or caring. And the people who care most about the immigration issue only care about it because of racism and not because they care about wages or the average American worker. The people who want the Mexicans out don't care about the black 11th generation American kid in Baltimore who should have been working those low wage jobs in the first place instead of sitting around in the hood all day.

are you from bayonne? i've read about it quite a lot before. that's what my 1915 was a reference to.

Yes i live in bayonne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonne_r … %80%931916

that was it. there is still a decent sized polish community. they are on the decline though.

I was born in NYC. I only live here.

I think this is ultimately a reaction against Bush and perceived Washington insiders. The oft-repeated assertion is that politicians only care about enriching themselves at the public's expense - see: Cheney, Halliburton and Iraq. The fact that Trump is self-funding his campaign is winning him tons of votes (nevermind that every penny was earned via cronyism). The same is true for Sanders.

Every other asshole on that stage aside from Rand Paul is up there saying the same message: bomb syria, stack the supreme court and overturn social judgements, etc. It's disingenuous focus group bullshit and people are tired of it. Nearly any asshole with a bit of charisma could've filled Trump's place as long as he was perceived to be "real" rather than polished and rehearsed. Polished guys automatically come off as disingenuous and slimy - see: Ted Cruz and his immensely punchable face.