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@JC said in US Politics:
@reprobate said in US Politics:
@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
I think history may judge Obama even harsher. He exacerbated the cultural divide in the US, withdrew from the world, and pretty much looked on while whole swathes of US industry disappeared and ignored the social impacts.
You think Obama was more divisive than Trump, and Biden will be more divisive than Trump?
I wouldn’t say he was more decisive than Trump, but I get the sentiment. Obama’s presidency encouraged a arrogant paternalism amongst many of his supporters. I’m not sure that was Obama’s fault, but the event of his election certainly encouraged a whole lot of unelected people to assume they had a mandate for imposing a cultural change without going through the hassle of composing and winning an argument first.
In many ways Obama’s main fault was the same as Trump’s, albeit starting from a different place - a failure to actually lead. Obama was a consensus politician in an environment that had no intention of reaching one. Trump is a myth-builder and an autocrat. He confuses power with leadership, doesn’t tolerate dissent and sees compromise as a weakness. And so he courts sycophants. He’s been telling people how smart he is (and I’ve seen no evidence of him being any better than average) for so long he believes it himself, and why wouldn’t he, because he’s surrounded himself with people who feed his ego.
Obama was pretty successful in navigating a number of difficult issues through the Illinois legislature, but whether it was naivety or shortsightedness, I believe he thought he could take that bipartisanship to the Feds. Was never going to happen.
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@JC said in US Politics:
Trump is a myth-builder and an autocrat. He confuses power with leadership, doesn’t tolerate dissent and sees compromise as a weakness. And so he courts sycophants. He’s been telling people how smart he is (and I’ve seen no evidence of him being any better than average) for so long he believes it himself, and why wouldn’t he, because he’s surrounded himself with people who feed his ego
Any competent leader will not allow public dissent.
And he hasn't done badly if he's unable to lead with only weak agreeable yes men and women in his team. And also doing this all by himself when he's not smart. -
@Winger said in US Politics:
Any competent leader will not allow public dissent.
And he hasn't done badly if he's unable to lead with only weak agreeable yes men and women in his team. And also doing this all by himself when he's not smart.Serious question. Is this satire?
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@MajorRage said in US Politics:
@Ihadit said in US Politics:
@dogmeat If I may, I would like to comment further;
Most if not all the protest in the US are in Democratically controlled cities and they are where lockdown measures have been most strictly enforced.
These Democratic Leaders, quick to fine and even jail average citizens for violating their lockdown edicts, have shown indecisiveness in action, excessive restraint in enforcing laws and protecting the people and their property, and otherwise exhibiting weak leadership abilities in dealing with the criminal arsonists and thieves that have infiltrated otherwise peaceful protesters, thereby emboldening them and making the situation much worse.
You may be right. What Trump has done may be more of the underlying factor than may first appear. It hasn’t just helped the blacks but other races as well including whites.
But...why is it spreading outside the US?
Do you know a single thing about London?
Is there a problem of police brutalising black people in London?
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@JC said in US Politics:
Trump is a myth-builder and an autocrat. He confuses power with leadership, doesn’t tolerate dissent and sees compromise as a weakness. And so he courts sycophants. He’s been telling people how smart he is (and I’ve seen no evidence of him being any better than average) for so long he believes it himself, and why wouldn’t he, because he’s surrounded himself with people who feed his ego
Any competent leader will not allow public dissent.
Who said public? Trump doesn’t allow people advising him to have opinions that don’t coincide with his. And in any case any competent leader, of anything, understands that dissent is part of life and learns to harness it like everything else. if you have hired or appointed someone for their competence and they don’t agree with you on something, chances are they didn’t become incompetent overnight so maybe listening to what they have to say is a good place to start.
And he hasn't done badly if he's unable to lead with only weak agreeable yes men and women in his team.
He has achieved fuck all. Governments don’t create successful economies, businesses and people do. If this administration can take credit for the good times he can take credit for the current huge unemployment too, can’t he, in which case he should do the decent thing and disappear.
“And also doing this all by himself when he's not smart.”
Doing what? Name the things he did, not the things he took credit for, the things he planned and executed, that only happened because he created the executive framework for them. Where’s his New Deal? His Apollo Program, his Reaganomics, or his Civil Rights Act? Nowhere. He’s a blowarse whose rhetoric impresses the kind of people who believe he’s smart based only on the evidence of his self-aggrandisement.
A person who thinks he has achieved something when he tells people what they want to hear is no leader and certainly no thinker. If he found arguments to win over those who disagree with him then I’d be impressed. If he listened with an open mind to those he disagreed with, learned from them and adapted his thinking to incorporate a wider gamut of ideas then I’d be impressed. But this president won’t do any of those things. He’s a stubborn old man with an inflated ego who blagged his way into a job that’s beyond his capabilities.
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@junior said in US Politics:
@MajorRage said in US Politics:
@Ihadit said in US Politics:
@dogmeat If I may, I would like to comment further;
Most if not all the protest in the US are in Democratically controlled cities and they are where lockdown measures have been most strictly enforced.
These Democratic Leaders, quick to fine and even jail average citizens for violating their lockdown edicts, have shown indecisiveness in action, excessive restraint in enforcing laws and protecting the people and their property, and otherwise exhibiting weak leadership abilities in dealing with the criminal arsonists and thieves that have infiltrated otherwise peaceful protesters, thereby emboldening them and making the situation much worse.
You may be right. What Trump has done may be more of the underlying factor than may first appear. It hasn’t just helped the blacks but other races as well including whites.
But...why is it spreading outside the US?
Do you know a single thing about London?
Is there a problem of police brutalising black people in London?
Not relevant to my point.
The answer is no though.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
@Winger said in US Politics:
Any competent leader will not allow public dissent.
And he hasn't done badly if he's unable to lead with only weak agreeable yes men and women in his team. And also doing this all by himself when he's not smart.Serious question. Is this satire?
Disturbingly I think he's being serious
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@JC said in US Politics:
A person who thinks he has achieved something when he tells people what they want to hear is no leader and certainly no thinker.
I think you may have accidentally summed up an awful lot of world leaders in that sentence...
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@JC to be honest, as much as I disagree with @Winger, I can’t sit here and nod along with you most recent post either.
Trump has achieved a lot in a small time. He put USA first and foremost. The Dems were pretty heavy on foreign policy, not so on domestic. Obama talked a lot, achieved not a lot.
People always respond to leadership. Trump took a lot of disheartened yanks and picked them up. The stats are there. He can’t be given no credit for the record unemployment then expect to absorb full blame for what’s happened since Covid. That’s not fair.
Trump has been a catastrophe the last few months, no question. But he does still have a fair bit of goodwill from many sections, and not just because of blind loyalty.
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@MajorRage said in US Politics:
@JC to be honest, as much as I disagree with @Winger, I can’t sit here and nod along with you most recent post either.
Trump has achieved a lot in a small time. He put USA first and foremost. The Dems were pretty heavy on foreign policy, not so on domestic. Obama talked a lot, achieved not a lot.
People always respond to leadership. Trump took a lot of disheartened yanks and picked them up. The stats are there. He can’t be given no credit for the record unemployment then expect to absorb full blame for what’s happened since Covid. That’s not fair.
Trump has been a catastrophe the last few months, no question. But he does still have a fair bit of goodwill from many sections, and not just because of blind loyalty.
I think the point is that his blind supporters want to give credit for before Covid, and no blame for now.
Likewise his blind detractors want to give him no credit before Covid, and full blame for now.
For me, how well the US was doing pre-Covid is very, very debatable. I don't think there is a lot of credit to be taken for that period to be honest - he's been isolating the US from the world and losing much of their historical influence in the process, as well as polarising the shit out of his own country.
As for post-Covid, we can all see he's an idiot blowhard who can't give a consistent message, or reassurance to the public. We all knew in advance that he doesn't really believe in experts or science, rather in his own self-proclaimed very big brain. So when you see a leader who won't follow advice, who doesn't believe in science, and you have the world's most advanced country failing abjectly to deal with something that the majority of other countries have dealt with far better with far less resource, i think you have to ask the question whether there is a bit of blame deserved there. -
@reprobate fair post but not one I agree with entirely.
You could pick up two rags and read them from front to back and paint a completely different picture of the US in your mind. He’s such a polarizing leader.
I believe he just put the US first and foremost. Looked at everything from a business point of view and went for the deals best for his country and openly critiqued those that didn’t. And that worked out for a shit load of people. The s snd p has soared.
I don’t like the guy, never have and never will, but he’s a world leader with arguably the biggest hand to play. He deserves a lot of the criticism he gets, but not all. The same in the opposite direction.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
I think history may judge Obama even harsher. He exacerbated the cultural divide in the US, withdrew from the world, and pretty much looked on while whole swathes of US industry disappeared and ignored the social impacts.
This slightly confuses me although I have seen this pattern of thinking developing over some time.
I am often accused of being a 'leftie' on here. My mindset is, of course, something developed in my youth joined with my natural inclinations. I always had a 'societal' view and was very pro protest, anti-establishment, pro-freedom, internationalist and definitely not fully on board with the Thatcherism/Rogernomics/Reaganomics/let the market decide pot. I could see benefits but also pitfalls.
Now things politically appear to have flipped. A comment like that above gets made by people who thought that when Thatcher wiped out whole livelihoods and caused social problems (that are still rebounding) by not only 'looking on' but driving the collapse of industries, it was a good and necessary thing.
We get 'right wing' protests for 'freedoms' and complaints that the authorities are too 'left'. Although this IMO is often derived from a desire of freedom to be an individual that doesn't want to work as part of a team.
For a 'rightie' to single out and blame a 'leftie' of standing by while industries fail and social impacts are ignored is quite weird.
I would have though, now that my views are such that I look for pragmatic use of liberalism and conservatism, free market and control together, that letting the market decide whether those industries were sustainable, would be something applauded by the 'right' not held out as an example of incompetence.
I do agree that Obama didn't apply his administration enough toward the social impacts of economic change in the US and that has caused a desire for the disruption that is Trump. I can't see where he has fixed any of those problems long term though.
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@MajorRage said in US Politics:
@reprobate fair post but not one I agree with entirely.
You could pick up two rags and read them from front to back and paint a completely different picture of the US in your mind. He’s such a polarizing leader.
I believe he just put the US first and foremost. Looked at everything from a business point of view and went for the deals best for his country and openly critiqued those that didn’t. And that worked out for a shit load of people. The s snd p has soared.
I don’t like the guy, never have and never will, but he’s a world leader with arguably the biggest hand to play. He deserves a lot of the criticism he gets, but not all. The same in the opposite direction.
Which policies of Trump's altered the trajectory of the recovery under Obama? Pump priming Wall St with free money for ticket clippers, stock buy backs to achieve bonuses for C level execs? Increasing wealth disparity? Slackening of environmental protections?
All I see is a continuation of the hollowing out of the middle class and a furthering partisan divide. He hasn't even scaled back the infringements on the Constitution under Obama.
He's a blowhard. And faced with an actual opportunity to show leadership he's been found wanting.
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And just so I'm not partisan - this is the Democrat candidate
If that's the best the two major parties can do, America is fucked.
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@MajorRage said in US Politics:
I believe he just put the US first and foremost.
It's an interesting debate. Obama put US first as well, but just had a different way of going about it.
Trump's strength was his ability to stick to his (at times outlandish) election promises, and actually achieve a measure of success by doing this. Despite people thinking he'd moderate once he won the election, he actually went ahead and pulled out of the TPP and implemented a number of tariffs on foreign imports.
He withdrew the US from a position of global leadership, and focussed time, energy and policy on his own citizens. A bold strategy that you could argue hasn't been broadly adopted since WWII.
The problem is he has done very little to fix the systemic social and economic issues that plague US society. Say what you want about Obamacare, but at least Barry had a crack at it.
So after four years of Trump, America has worsened relationships with pretty much every nation (with the exception of North Korea), widespread social unrest and thanks to the pandemic widespread unemployment.
In a pre-2010 world, Trump loses the election to a mop with a hat on. But that world is long gone, so who the hell knows what is going to happen.
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That's a good video. The crime bill was one of the things I was referring to yesterday when I called his senate legacy gross
I would add to that his involvement in various 'war on drugs' bills in the 80's, an earlier crime bill that helped create the asset forfeiture racket and he drafted an awful anti-terrorism bill in the 90's. That bill was the template for the Patriot Act.. when that shitty law passed he did a victory dance and told people that was "my bill"
He is running on experience and not being Trump. That sort of experience should be a negative
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@MajorRage said in US Politics:
@JC to be honest, as much as I disagree with @Winger, I can’t sit here and nod along with you most recent post either.
Trump has achieved a lot in a small time. He put USA first and foremost. The Dems were pretty heavy on foreign policy, not so on domestic. Obama talked a lot, achieved not a lot.
I don’t think he’s achieved much at all. I also don’t think he put the USA first and foremost, he put Donald J Trump first and foremost. I don’t think he put the United States of America’s second either, because he missed out the “United” bit. He lacks statecraft and dresses the lack up as some kind of virtue, everything boiled down to brinksmanship and confrontation. Of course that may get you a lot of what you want in the short term, but people and states have memories. Even then I’d argue that most of his face offs against other nations haven’t been so much about what’s best for the US either, the pattern is of a thin-skinned man who can’t put perceived personal slights behind him and uses the weight of his state to punish those who have criticised him or, worse, made fun of him.
I accept that he probably puts the US before other countries, but so did every other president before him. But if you lined up him and Ronnie Reagan and had to pick the patriot it wouldn’t be hard.
People always respond to leadership.
Yes they do. So why doesn’t he try some?
Trump took a lot of disheartened yanks and picked them up.
And took a whole lot of other disheartened yanks and said “fuck you” to them. Leadership is about making the right choices, not the easy ones.
The stats are there. He can’t be given no credit for the record unemployment then expect to absorb full blame for what’s happened since Covid. That’s not fair.
That’s just the obverse of what I said: he can’t expect not to take the blame for what’s happened since Covid and take the credit for the low unemployment in the good times. But in fact the truth is he’s not responsible for either. Taking credit for a boom is something all governments do but usually it’s just the good fortune of being there that is closer to the truth. I think you can discount it unless you can show me some policies that made something happen that wouldn’t have happened anyway. Take that away and what’s left?
Trump has been a catastrophe the last few months, no question. But he does still have a fair bit of goodwill from many sections, and not just because of blind loyalty.
Maybe. But IMO blind loyalty is all he’s got left.
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The most frightening thing is how much he sounds like Trump.
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