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March 29, 2024, 12:21:48 AM

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TRUMP No. 9: A weird fucking bumble hex

Started by Pearly-Dewdrops Drops, September 11, 2019, 05:30:56 AM

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Fambo Number Mive

I find it fascinating how Trump (rightly) criticises Biden for voting for the Iraq War while having stood as a candidate for the party which gave America the Iraq War. I imagine a lot of Trump's supporters who cheer him on whatever he says were also members of the party under Bush and cheered on the Iraq War then. Just shameless hypocrisy.


rjd2

https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1303077741621850112

LOL. These are the suburban republican knobs that Biden is pandering to .

Trump is correct on the MIC and its good he might spark a debate because Joe Biden most certainly won't ,,,although obviously Trump sadly has been anything but a dove either.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

https://twitter.com/rabrowne75/status/1303044146953965568?s=19

Occasionally being such a blabbering egotist is useful, such as here where Trump essentially blows apart the US military industrial complex in one tweet.

You can kind of see why he has a fanbase when he's dumb enough to say shit like this and no-one (so far) can stop it.

SpiderChrist

Isn't someone who goes off to fight in a war a sucker by definition?

Fambo Number Mive

Torygraph claims that Johnson said in a meeting that Trump was doing "fantastic stuff" and "making America great again". I presume a lot of Tory voters are big Trump fans then. Trump's retweeted this saying "Thank you Boris, working great together!".

Prick praises prick.

Listened to most of the new Chapo Trap House about Trump's comments.

Five years in and people nominally on the Left are still falling for this Trump-as-isolationist/anti-military bullshit? Have they never encountered a conman in their life? No wonder this country has zero effective left-of-center political movement.

idunnosomename

again, darren grimes, the most transparent grifter of them all, has been tweeting praise of trump. maybe tory supporters will go with that, but probably not most tory voters.

quite frankly though i hate the democrat ticket so much i dont give a shit who wins. a laugh either way


Old Nehamkin

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on September 08, 2020, 09:11:01 PM
Listened to most of the new Chapo Trap House about Trump's comments.

Five years in and people nominally on the Left are still falling for this Trump-as-isolationist/anti-military bullshit? Have they never encountered a conman in their life? No wonder this country has zero effective left-of-center political movement.

I've just listened to the episode and I'm not sure any of the participants actually take the position you're describing. The furthest they really go in this direction is to characterise Trump's foreign policy instincts as "conflict averse", but in making this argument they explicitly acknowledge that he has embraced and expanded Obama's drone programme and will happily sign off any "tactictal" potshot that's put in front of him as long as as he doesn't perceive it as committing him to any kind of prolonged engagement with domestic political ramifications. I broadly agree with this and I think that the hosts are perfectly correct in pointing to Trump's fundamentally transactional worldview, his unique immunity to the accepted laws of political ritual and his basic lack of attention span as factors which make him incapable of upholding the key ideological premises which the American military machine expects of its commander in chief.

One thing I've found incredibly illuminating - and terrifying - about Trump's administration has been seeing how readily the ostensibly liberal media have lined up to praise him as "statesmanlike" on the rare occasions that he's managed to soberly deliver some imperialist screed from an autocue and, conversely, the level of palpable discomfort and fury from these same institutions when his unfiltered style leads him to inadvertently hit on some point of conflict with the orthodox mythology of American interventionism - even if it's just asking a question as simple and obvious as "were we the good guys in World War I?"

None of this is to say that Trump is not a callous lunatic who could quite easily blunder his way into a war (the Chapo guys themselves were hardly flippant about any of this when they covered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani). Just that when people on the left point to Trump's presidency as serving to highlight or reveal certain aspects of institutional rot in the American state, it really shouldn't be taken as some sort of wide-eyed endorsement of the man himself or any of his professed values.

evilcommiedictator

"conflict adverse" like remiving the need for the CIA to get presidential sign off on acts in foreign territories leading to the assassination of General Sulemani and very fucking close to a war with Iran?

That kind of adverse?

Old Nehamkin

#1149
Quote from: evilcommiedictator on September 11, 2020, 05:34:46 PM
"conflict adverse" like remiving the need for the CIA to get presidential sign off on acts in foreign territories leading to the assassination of General Sulemani and very fucking close to a war with Iran?

That kind of adverse?

I mentioned the assassination of Soleimani in my post and it is also referenced in the episode in question (as well as being covered more extensively in earlier episodes of the show). I don't think that anybody involved is seeking to absolve Trump of operating an even more trigger-happy iteration of the perpetual remote warfare which was normalised under Obama. When the Chapo hosts talk about Trump being "conflict averse" in a foreign policy context, they are saying that his basic personal cowardice as well as his crude corporate conception of cost and reward (not to mention his ADHD and his fuzzy understanding of global affairs) make him particularly enamoured of this abstract, button-pushing mode of combat - for which he knows he will never receive any mainstream media opposition or be required to justify politically - while maintaining an evident distaste for pursuing the kind of coherent, long-term military project which he would actually need to sell and defend in the domestic political arena over the remainder of his presidency and stake his legacy upon.

Again, the argument is not that Trump is Actually Good or that he's anti-interventionist or anti-war. Nobody who is seriously on the left believes any of that. I will say though that I personally feel more worried about the long-term foreign policy ramifications of a Biden administration stuffed with re-emboldened Bush-era neocons than another four years of this, as grim as the choice is.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Given the level of discourse Trump has dragged everything down to what's to stop Biden just saying TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DEAD ON HIS HEADSTONE over and over and over until victory.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on September 11, 2020, 02:34:58 PM
I've just listened to the episode and I'm not sure any of the participants actually take the position you're describing. The furthest they really go in this direction is to characterise Trump's foreign policy instincts as "conflict averse", but in making this argument they explicitly acknowledge that he has embraced and expanded Obama's drone programme and will happily sign off any "tactictal" potshot that's put in front of him as long as as he doesn't perceive it as committing him to any kind of prolonged engagement with domestic political ramifications. I broadly agree with this and I think that the hosts are perfectly correct in pointing to Trump's fundamentally transactional worldview, his unique immunity to the accepted laws of political ritual and his basic lack of attention span as factors which make him incapable of upholding the key ideological premises which the American military machine expects of its commander in chief.

One thing I've found incredibly illuminating - and terrifying - about Trump's administration has been seeing how readily the ostensibly liberal media have lined up to praise him as "statesmanlike" on the rare occasions that he's managed to soberly deliver some imperialist screed from an autocue and, conversely, the level of palpable discomfort and fury from these same institutions when his unfiltered style leads him to inadvertently hit on some point of conflict with the orthodox mythology of American interventionism - even if it's just asking a question as simple and obvious as "were we the good guys in World War I?"

None of this is to say that Trump is not a callous lunatic who could quite easily blunder his way into a war (the Chapo guys themselves were hardly flippant about any of this when they covered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani). Just that when people on the left point to Trump's presidency as serving to highlight or reveal certain aspects of institutional rot in the American state, it really shouldn't be taken as some sort of wide-eyed endorsement of the man himself or any of his professed values.

This is a great post by the way. They have installed someone who is powerful enough - and egotistical enough - to occasionally call out 'institutional rot' as you characterize it. The advantage of having a career politician in power is they will nearly always defer and demure to finance and to the military and to tech, 3 key areas vital to understanding modern life, and 3 areas in which politicians are generally poorly-informed of and easily intimidated by. Not Trump, an old transactional cynic and egomaniac.

His big foreign policy moment so far with Kim Jong Un was a classic example of how Trump understands the mindset and mentality of tinpot dictators because he basically is one. He believes the Presidential Office is the highest station on Earth, bigger than the Pope, than the head of the UN (by far) and so unlike others who have "respected the dignity of the office", that great Obama term, he treats anyone who approaches him as a challenge and as a usurper. Respecting the 'dignity of the office' in modern parlance is doing el zilcho to stop mass shootings, big pharma, extrajudicial killings or expedient military adventures.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 11, 2020, 09:33:03 PMHis big foreign policy moment so far with Kim Jong Un was a classic example of how Trump understands the mindset and mentality of tinpot dictators because he basically is one.
I think he wishes he was one, a Dictator at least, but he actually lacks the brains to be even in the bottom rung there, given Kim was the one who probably got the most out of that particular incident.

Up against yer actual full-on world-stage dictators (Putin, the bod in China whose name I can't be arsed looking up), he's always likely to stumble because he envies them to the point of infatuation.


Gulftastic

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on September 11, 2020, 10:14:06 PM
I think he wishes he was one, a Dictator at least, but he actually lacks the brains to be even in the bottom rung there, given Kim was the one who probably got the most out of that particular incident.

Up against yer actual full-on world-stage dictators (Putin, the bod in China whose name I can't be arsed looking up), he's always likely to stumble because he envies them to the point of infatuation.

If he gets a second term, he'll start ordering murders. I bet the CIA will pretend they are carrying out his orders like Woody Harrleson's pursuers at the end of 'White Men Can't Jump'.

steve98

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on September 11, 2020, 10:14:06 PM
the bod in China whose name I can't be arsed looking up

It's Xi (pronounced She
(as in "Xi may be the mirror of my dreams
A smile reflected in a stream,
Xi may not be what he may seem
Inside his shell..."))