[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi] I do like his $1 trillion infrastructure spending, however.[/quote]

I do, too, depending on how it’s done.

If taxpayers pay private contractors, and those private contractors make $500 million in profits and pay minimum wage to all the workers, that won’t be so good.

If we’re able to pay a living wage to all the workers, that would put a lot more money into the economy (while fixing the infrastructure).

[zk]

It means lie.

[zk]

Oh. My. God.

Alternative facts? We’re in the Twilight Zone here.

Just lie, lie, lie, and lie some more. And when you’re caught in your lies, repeat your lies, and call them “alternative facts.” As if “alternative facts” were different from “lies.” As if “alternative facts” are ok.

What kind of idiots fall for this stuff? Oh, yeah, 63 million Americans.

I remember in the ’80s reading about TASS in the USSR. My recollections are that they were a state-run news agency that would basically print what they wanted regardless of the truth, and that that was all the news that Soviet citizens were able to access. I remember thinking how horrible it must be to not have access to the truth. Well, if the news media and the people don’t respond to this administration’s lying and “alternative facts” with the ferocity that this fight deserves, we might end up knowing first hand what that feels like, and we might end up watching it ruin our country.

Don’t let them do this to us, people. Our country is at stake.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/22/how-kellyanne-conway-ushered-in-the-era-of-alternative-facts/?utm_term=.c36c3214c680

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.[/quote]

The hits keep coming. Pathetic.

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]ZK, please keep on updating us. Im counting on you for news. Please share what is most salient about Trump. Im following the news less now, so I might miss something.

I’m smelling the roses more these days.[/quote]

I’m trying to do the same, Brian. Obviously I’m not having all that much success. I keep telling myself, “there’s nothing you can do about it, and reading the news only makes you angry and disgusted. So don’t do it.” But I feel like I can’t just ignore such an important problem.

I saw a great cartoon the other day. A guy is walking down the street with a friend, and he says something like, “nowadays, I find myself having to choose between staying informed and staying sane.” That’s exactly how I feel.

[zk]

[quote=njtosd]

Love the hypothetical

[/quote]

Lame sarcasm? You have no reasonable response to my hypotheticals, so you respond with lame sarcasm? Weak. Very weak.
[quote=njtosd]

Here you go – I will admit that some people are gullible and some people use denial to deal with their problems. And I can think of a very famous example that loosely follows your hypothetical: Hillary Clinton – if you make the condom receipt the blue dress.
[/quote]
That would only be denial if Hillary didn’t believe Bill was messing around with Monica. Do you have evidence that she didn’t believe it? Your “logic” fails again. Again, one might disagree with Hillary’s decision to stay with Bill after he fooled around with Monica (or any of the other women he had). And one could say she was gullible if she didn’t believe it. But I’ve seen no indication that she didn’t believe it.

[quote=njtosd]
I think by your analysis you would decide she was gullible, but I’m not sure because, frankly, it was sort of rambling and weird.
[/quote]
As I’ve shown you, your logic is faulty, and I wouldn’t decide she was gullible based on that.
[quote=njtosd]

but I’m not sure because, frankly, it was sort of rambling and weird.
[/quote]
Rambling and weird? Or above your reading level? The hypotheticals were an attempt to get you to see the difference between “I disagree with you” and “you’re gullible.” In the married-friend scenario, the friend is a trump voter (if she believes her husband). You are somebody observing a trump voter and clearly seeing that they’re gullible. Do you “disagree” with them? Or do you think they’re gullible and not dealing from truth? It’s an important question, one that goes to the heart of your assertion that I think people are idiots because they “disagree” with me, when in fact I think they’re idiots because it’s obvious that they’re gullible, and not dealing from truth. Maybe that’s why you keep ignoring that question.

[quote=njtosd]
Do I believe that gullibility and/or denial are used more often by members of one political party versus another? No.
[/quote]
I would make a distinction. I agree that one party’s members are not more gullible than another’s. In fact, I’ve said as much earlier in this thread. But I would say that there is vastly more misinformation out there aimed at emotionally manipulating people to believe right-wing propaganda than left.
[quote=njtosd]

Do I think you are hypocritical? Yes
[/quote]
But you can’t back it up. So it means nothing. You make empty, unbacked (and unbackable) assertions, and expect them to fly. Well, they don’t fly. The fall flat on their face and make you look like a desperate fool.
[quote=njtosd]

– but you don’t want to believe it

[/quote]
Why would I if there’s no evidence of it? Do you have evidence of it? I suggest you show evidence, or shut the hell up.
[quote=njtosd]

(I think that makes you like the wife that doesn’t believe her husband is cheating – but again, rambling and weird).

[/quote]

It only makes me seem that way to you because you have this idea in your head that I’m hypocritical (and in denial about that). But, again, you present exactly zero evidence of any hypocrisy on my part.
[quote=njtosd]

Do I have the time or inclination to address each of your (many) points? No. So I guess we will just have to agree to “disagree”.
[/quote]
Ah. The old, “I have lost every argument in this debate, so I shall just call you names and quit” trick. Showing your true colors, nj.

[zk]

On his very first full day in office, all this happened:

I was going to post snippets from the article that illustrated his lying, scatterbrainedness, narcissism, vengefulness, and ignorance, but that ended up being most of the article, so I’ll just post the whole thing. God, what a loser. It’s going to be a very long 4 years.

If the press starts to cower at his aggression toward them, it’s all over. Because after that, everybody will be reading fake news, because that’s all there will be. Then you’ll have an entire country of manipulated people and god knows what could happen then. I love this country, and I never thought I’d consider leaving it, even with as horrible a president as trump. But that’s a scenario where I might actually move to another country.

————————————–

WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first full day in office on Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd.
In a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency designed to showcase his support for the intelligence community, Mr. Trump ignored his own repeated public statements criticizing the intelligence community, a group he compared to Nazis just over a week ago.
He also called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” and he said that up to 1.5 million people had attended his inauguration, a claim that photographs disproved.
Later, at the White House, he dispatched Sean Spicer, the press secretary, to the briefing room in the West Wing, where he delivered a scolding to reporters and made a series of false statements.

Mr. Spicer said news organizations had deliberately misstated the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Friday in an attempt to sow divisions at a time when Mr. Trump was trying to unify the country, warning that the new administration would hold them to account.
The statements from the new president and his spokesman came as hundreds of thousands of people protested against Mr. Trump, a crowd that appeared to dwarf the one that gathered the day before when he was sworn in. It was a striking display of invective and grievance at the dawn of a presidency, usually a time when the White House works to set a tone of national unity and build confidence in a new leader.
Instead, the president and his team appeared embattled and defensive, signaling that the pugnacious style Mr. Trump employed as a candidate will persist now that he has ascended to the nation’s highest office.
Saturday was supposed to be a day for Mr. Trump to mend fences with an intelligence community he had publicly scorned, with an appearance at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va. While he was lavish in his praise, the president focused in his 15-minute speech on his complaints about news coverage of his criticism of the nation’s spy agencies, and meandered to other topics, including the crowd size at his inauguration, his level of political support, his mental age and his intellectual heft.

“I just want to let you know, I am so behind you,” Mr. Trump told more than 300 employees assembled in the lobby for his remarks.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has questioned the intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia meddled in the United States election on his behalf. After the disclosure of a dossier with unsubstantiated claims about Mr. Trump, he accused the intelligence community of allowing the leak and wrote on Twitter: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
On Saturday, he said journalists were responsible for any suggestion that he was not fully supportive of intelligence agencies’ work.
“I have a running war with the media,” Mr. Trump said. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, and they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.”
“The reason you’re the No. 1 stop is, it is exactly the opposite,” Mr. Trump added. “I love you, I respect you, there’s nobody I respect more.”
Mr. Trump also took issue with news reports about the number of people who attended his inauguration, complaining that the news media used photographs of “an empty field” to make it seem as if his inauguration did not draw many people.
“We caught them in a beauty,” Mr. Trump said of the news media, “and I think they’re going to pay a big price.”
Mr. Spicer said that Mr. Trump had drawn “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” a statement that photographs clearly show to be false. Mr. Spicer said photographs of the inaugural ceremonies were deliberately framed “to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall,” although he provided no proof of either assertion.
Photographs of Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009 and of Mr. Trump’s plainly showed that the crowd on Friday was significantly smaller, but Mr. Spicer attributed that disparity to new white ground coverings he said had caused empty areas to stand out and to security measures that had blocked people from entering the Mall.
“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Mr. Spicer said. He also admonished a journalist for erroneously reporting on Friday that Mr. Trump had removed a bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office, calling the mistake — which was corrected quickly — “egregious.”
And he incorrectly claimed that ridership on Washington’s subway system was higher than on Inauguration Day in 2013. In reality, there were 782,000 riders that year, compared with 571,000 riders this year, according to figures from the city’s transit authority.
Mr. Spicer also said that security measures had been extended farther down the National Mall this year, preventing “hundreds of thousands of people” from viewing the ceremony. But the Secret Service said the measures were largely unchanged this year, and there were few reports of long lines or delays.
Commentary about the size of his inauguration crowd made Mr. Trump increasingly angry on Friday, according to several people familiar with his thinking.
On Saturday, he told his advisers that he wanted to push back hard on “dishonest media” coverage — mostly referring to a Twitter post from a New York Times reporter showing side-by-side frames of Mr. Trump’s crowd and Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But most of Mr. Trump’s advisers urged him to focus on the responsibilities of his office during his first full day as president.
However, in his remarks at the C.I.A., he wandered off topic several times, at various points telling the crowd he felt no older than 39 (he is 70); reassuring anyone who questioned his intelligence by saying, “I’m, like, a smart person”; and musing out loud about how many intelligence workers backed his candidacy.
“Probably everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re all on the same wavelength, folks.”
But most of his remarks were devoted to attacking the news media. And Mr. Spicer picked up the theme later in the day in the White House briefing room. But his appearance, according to the sources, went too far, in Mr. Trump’s opinion.
The president’s appearance at the C.I.A. touched off a fierce reaction from some current and former intelligence officials.
Nick Shapiro, who served as chief of staff to John O. Brennan, who resigned Friday as the C.I.A. director, said Mr. Brennan “is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of C.I.A.’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.
“Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself,” Mr. Shapiro added.
“I was heartened that the president gave a speech at C.I.A.,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency. “It would have been even better if more of it had been about C.I.A.”
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he had had high hopes for Mr. Trump’s visit as a step to begin healing the relationship between the president and the intelligence community, but that Mr. Trump’s meandering speech had dashed them.
“While standing in front of the stars representing C.I.A. personnel who lost their lives in the service of their country — hallowed ground — Trump gave little more than a perfunctory acknowledgment of their service and sacrifice,” Mr. Schiff said. “He will need to do more than use the agency memorial as a backdrop if he wants to earn the respect of the men and women who provide the best intelligence in the world.”
Mr. Trump said nothing during the visit about how he had mocked the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies as “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” He did not mention his apparent willingness to believe Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who is widely detested at the C.I.A., over his own intelligence agencies.
He also did not say whether he would start receiving the daily intelligence briefs that are prepared for the president. The agency sees the president as its main audience, and his dismissal of the need for daily briefings from the intelligence community has raised concerns about morale among people who believe their work will not be respected at the Trump White House.
Since the election, hopes at the C.I.A. that the new administration would bring an infusion of energy and ideas have given way to trepidation about what Mr. Trump and his loyalists have planned. But the nomination of Mike Pompeo, a former Army infantry officer who is well versed in issues facing the intelligence community, to lead the C.I.A. has been received positively at the agency.
“He has left the strong impression that he doesn’t trust the intelligence community and that he doesn’t have tremendous regard for their work,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a retired C.I.A. analyst. “The obvious thing to do is to counter that by saying, ‘I value you, I look forward to working with you.’”
“He called them Nazis,” Mr. Lowenthal added, referring to Mr. Trump’s characterization of the intelligence community. Mr. Lowenthal said Saturday’s visit should have been “a stroking expedition.”

[zk]

[quote=zk]
I predict that his selection of morons like Ben Carson, scary fucks like Jeff Sessions, lunatics like Michael Flynn, and other assorted jackasses/losers, along with his reliance on family and those who have been loyal to him (regardless of their other merits – or lack thereof) will result in a general condition of infighting, incompetence, conflict, and malevolence in the trump administration.

[/quote]

Am I the only one who feels like maybe he’s trolling us – or the media – with these picks? Picking the worst possible people in order to get a rise out of, say, the Washington Post?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/19/donald-trump-has-assembled-the-worst-cabinet-in-american-history/?utm_term=.45f4692a6497

Mattis actually seems like a pretty good pick, though.

[zk]

[quote=svelte]Jesus Christ!

Get a life people!

So much more important things to do in life than trade ASCII jabs in cyberspace!

Whose mind do you think you’re changing anyway!

Wasted keystrokes…[/quote]

Meh. Mostly on my breaks at work (yes, it’s a 24/7 operation). Sometimes not much else to do on break. It’s brain exercise. You know how they say doing crossword puzzles and whatnot can help keep you sharp as you get older? A more recent study says that mental exertion will keep you sharp, but not relaxing, enjoyable things such as crosswords. You have to really put some effort into something, push yourself.

But, yeah, not changing anybody’s mind.

[zk]

[quote=njtosd]
More importantly, I find zk to have a significant streak of hypocrisy.
[/quote]

Bullshit. I shall explain why that’s bullshit below. And I defy you find a single instance of my being hypocritical in the decade plus that I’ve been on this forum.
[quote=njtosd]

I especially take issue with the hypothetical from the perspective of some unidentified (probably zk – like) smart guy trying to prevent the rube from Iowa being duped in NY. This post DRIPs with prejudice and bias, which I thought was what everyone was accusing the Trumpers of.

[/quote]

You say I’m hypocritical and your only justification is I suggested a guy from Iowa might be a rube? It was a device. I thought that was pretty obvious. I guess I have to spell everything out for you. I was trying to paint a picture of a not-streetwise person, so I made up somebody from Iowa who’d never been to the big city. And you think that means I’m biased and prejudiced against people from Iowa? It’s like in the movies, where they give the dorky guy red hair. They’re not saying “all red-haired guys are dorky.” But they know it’s a stereotype that will inform the audience as to how the director wants them to see that character. I’ll spell it out further, in case you still don’t get it. I don’t think people from Iowa are any smarter or less smart than anybody else. It was just a device. You’ve ignored the substance of my post and tried to attack me based on a silly, insignificant little device I used. Sounds pretty desperate to me. It doesn’t matter where they’re from. What matters is the question that that scenario raises: Do you just disagree with them, or do you think they’re gullible? And that question that was not rhetorical.

That post “DRIPs with prejudice and bias?” Bullshit. Show me. You are constantly reading things into my posts that aren’t there. And then when I point out your erroneous inferences, you ignore that. And then you proceed to make more erroneous inferences. Do you feel that your arguments against mine are too weak to stand up without making nonsensical inferences about my posts? Or do you really have that much trouble understanding what I’m saying?

[quote=njtosd]

The people on this board seem to think that simply being in favor of the Democratic candidate makes them smart guys
[/quote]
Another nonsensical inference. It’s not being in favor of the democratic candidate. It’s seeing through Donald Trump’s con artistry. Seeing his bullshit. His lying, cheating, stealing, misogyny, racism, islamophobia, ignorance, thin-skinnedness, anger, unstable temperament. Et cetera. And seeing through the bullshit that is the right-wing noise machine’s attacks on Hillary Clinton over the past 30 years. A friend of mine is convinced that Clinton was disbarred and that she was kicked out of her party at one point. These are just a couple of the dozens of not-true things that people who feast on fake news believe.
[quote=njtosd]

– and that those who disagree with them or question them are dumb. I would think those who despised prejudice would know better.
[/quote]

There you go, ignoring it when I point out the nonsensical inferences that you’ve made. It’s not a matter of disagree, as I said before. It’s their refusal to believe what the evidence shows them. Namely, that trump is an ignorant, lying, cheating, stealing, misogynist, racist, islamophobic, thin-skinned, unstable con artist. And Clinton, while not perfect, was never disbarred, was not kicked out of her party, her associates do not run a child-sex ring, she does not wear a defibrillator, there is not a picture of her grabbing a man’s crotch, she did not unilaterally approve a uranium deal with the Russians based on donations to the Clinton Foundation. That list goes on for miles. And there are millions of trump voters who can’t see any of it.

If they acknowledged all of the above – all of which there is undeniable evidence for – and still wanted to vote for him, then I would agree to disagree. But, at this point, it’s not a matter of agree or disagree. It’s a matter of them dealing from falsehoods. It’s a matter of them living in an alternate reality for which there is no evidence. It’s a matter of them having been duped.

So, as I said, the question I asked wasn’t rhetorical, and I’m curious what your answer is. If it was you in New York, not some hypothetical person, and your friend (wherever he was from) wanted to play three-card monte, despite you having explained to him how it works (which is that a shill will “win” money from the dealer for a number of games, making it look easy when, in fact, it’s virtually impossible), would you think he was gullible, or would you think he just disagreed with you about not playing?

Let me take my analogy a step further, since you had trouble with it the first time. Let’s say you – not some hypothetical person – you – have a friend, and your friend is married. You catch her husband cheating on her. You tell her about it. You give her all the details. And there’s more evidence. It was a woman he’d had his eye on, he came home late that night smelling like somebody else’s perfume, she found a receipt for some condoms, etc. There was also more graphic evidence that we won’t go into here. The evidence is overwhelming. She confronts her husband, and he denies it. Now, if she believes that he was cheating on her, and wants to stay with him even though you think it’s a bad idea, that is disagreeing. But if she believes her husband, despite overwhelming evidence, and you know that he’s lying because you saw him cheating with your own eyes, that’s a whole other matter entirely. So, if she didn’t believe you, would you call that “disagreeing,” or would you think she was being gullible (and believing what she wanted to believe) for believing her husband?

[zk]

Is this what you trump voters wanted?

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52357/betsy-devos-hearing/

Big money buying big things. Well done, trump voters. The swamp is getting deeper.

[zk]

[quote=njtosd]

You seem to be congratulating yourself on having the clear sightedness to see that people who disagree with you are stupid.
[/quote]
I do use the word “idiot,” and by that I mean gullible and credulous and easily manipulated. So, if by “stupid,” you mean, “gullible and credulous,” then, yes, I do feel that I’m more clear-sighted (on this issue) than them. Not sure where you get “congratulating yourself” from, though.

And it’s not that they “disagree”with me that makes me think I’m more clear-sighted than them:

Say you’re walking down a street in New York with a friend. Your friend has never been out of Iowa before, and you’ve seen him be duped before. Your friend watches another guy win at three card monte, and your friend insists he can win money at three-card monte, and he gets out his money to bet. You are virtually certain that the guy who just won is a shill. You know that that’s how that works. You try to explain it to your friend. Your friend doesn’t believe you and insists that he can win. Is your friend gullible and credulous, or do you just disagree with him? Would you feel clear-sighted for seeing what was happening, and think that your friend was being less than clear-sighted?

While this situation isn’t quite as simple as that one, it’s really not much different. Trump has a very long history of behavior that indicates his lack of concern for anybody or anything but himself, he has a very long history that indicates his willingness to lie, cheat, and steal, he has a very long history that indicates that he has a thin-skinned, angry, unstable temperament… and the list goes on. To bet the future of this country on a “man” like that is foolish. Is that just my opinion? Yes. Same as your opinion that your friend shouldn’t play three card monte. Do I think I’m more clear-sighted (on this subject) than someone who can’t see what a loser trump is? Absolutely. Just like you (would/should) feel more clear-sighted than your friend when it comes to three card monte.

[quote=njtosd]
It reminds me of the title of my favorite book: “A Confederacy of Dunces”. The title is taken from the following quote by Jonathan Swift: “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” The humor is that the main character believes himself to be intellectually superior, which he is in many ways, but he has significant shortcomings.
[/quote]
If I were the only person who felt this way, that might be a valid comparison. (But probably not, because there are many other differences between that character and someone who thinks almost everybody who voted for trump is a gullible dolt.) If I were the only person who felt this way, I’d take a harder look at it (than I already have, which is pretty hard). I’m far from the only person who feels this way. So that comparison doesn’t hold any water.

[quote=njtosd]

When are people going to get tired of feeling so self righteous? I think the ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state is someone who wants very much for others to think that s/he is good, but does not care whether it is true. Not to beat a dead horse, but the Germans are pretty bright, and you know what happened there. And I won’t start on the Cultural Revolution.
[/quote]
I honestly don’t understand any of that paragraph or how you’re relating it to this discussion. I would like to respond, though, so if you could expound a bit, that would be great.

[quote=njtosd]

And here’s the other thing, and I’m not a Trump lover, but if intellectual good hearted people were guaranteed to make good presidents, Carter’s administration would not have been such a debacle – and if the opposite were true, the Reagan years would have been much worse.
[/quote]
That’s like saying, “sometimes people who wear seatbelts are injured worse than they would’ve been if they weren’t wearing seatbelts. Therefore, wearing seatbelts isn’t a guarantee that you’ll have less injury than if you don’t wear a seatbelt. Therefore, I’m not going to wear a seatbelt.”

“There have been intellectual, good-hearted people who were bad presidents. So electing an intellectual, good-hearted person isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get a good president. So it’s ok to vote for a hateful, exceptionally selfish, simple-minded person.”

Is that what you’re saying?

Reagan, by the way, might not have been “intellectual.” But he generally thought before he spoke, and stuck to what he knew most of the time. Neither of those can be said for trump. Trump’s lack of intellectualness isn’t the biggest problem. In fact, that problem, isolated, is buried deep under other concerns I have about trump. But combined with his lack of impulse control and so many other problems, his lack of intellect is, to me, a big problem.
[quote=njtosd]

I do not believe that I can predict the future – those of you who believe that you can are either lucky or misguided.

[/quote]

If someone said, “I can predict everything that’s going to happen in the future with 100% accuracy,” then clearly they’d be delusional.

If someone says, “I predict trump will be a horrible president,” that’s not saying, “I can predict the future, and what I predict will come true.” It’s just a prediction, and obviously there’s no certainty that it will happen. As I’ve said before, I desperately hope that my predictions about trump are wrong.

You make predictions about the future – and take action based on those predictions – a hundred times a day: “That guy has his left turn signal on. I predict he’s going to turn left, and I’m going to adjust my driving accordingly.” “It’s 5:30 and the garage door just opened. I predict my spouse will walk in in about 20 seconds, and I’m going to get up and go to the door for a hug.” “Two jehovah’s witnesses are walking up my driveway. I predict they’ll ring my bell and want to talk to me. I’m going to pretend I’m not home.” “My derelict sister asked me to lend her money. I’m not going to, because I predict she won’t pay me back, and I predict it won’t help her in the long run anyway.” “I’m going to buy stock in company x because I predict that will be more profitable than a CD.” “I’m going to vote for Smith for congress, because I predict she’ll be better for my district/the country than Jones.” Etcetera.

[zk]

This article was written 5 years ago. It’s only gotten worse since then.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/03/20/age-of-ignorance/

In it, the author says,

“The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state…is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit.”

And

“The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth:

Christians are persecuted in this country.
The government is coming to get your guns.
Obama is a Muslim.
Global Warming is a hoax.
The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
Schools push a left-wing agenda.
Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
Obama hates white people.
The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
The safety net contributes to poverty.
The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.

One could easily list many more such commonplace delusions believed by Americans. They are kept in circulation by hundreds of right-wing political and religious media outlets whose function is to fabricate an alternate reality for their viewers and their listeners.”

I’m not going to say all trump voters are racist or bad people. But I do think that virtually all of them are “gullible dolt[s] unable to tell truth from bullshit.”

[zk]

Not sure whether this falls under one of my predictions or not, but it’s pretty easy to predict that this won’t be the last time this happens.

“This” being trump saying something off the cuff and the thing he said having repercussions his simple, narcissism-addled brain couldn’t possibly foresee. Some of these things will be bad for his agenda (and therefore probably good for the country), while others will be bad for the country.

Hopefully there will be more of these:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/16/donald-trump-may-have-just-destroyed-the-republican-effort-to-repeal-obamacare/?utm_term=.b454c00174af

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
Of course, as nice people, we welcome all immigrants, foreign and domestic. … I don’t really care what goes on in the red states. [/quote]

Those seem contradictory. If we’re nice people, we care what goes on in the red states.

You seem to want to believe that coastal elites and immigrants are superior to red staters. That is contradictory to your claim of being a nice person. Humans are humans, and, to a very large extent they have what they have, both materially and culturally, due to where and when and under what circumstances they were born. Don’t be so sure you wouldn’t be a trump-votin’ redneck if you were born in an Alabama trailer park to a gun-totin’, confederate-flag-wavin’ pick up truck-drivin’ daddy and a church-goin’, fox news-watchin’ breitbart-readin’ mama. Daddy and mama have been regurgitating the propaganda they see on tv to you your whole life. All your friends and neighbors (and probably your governor and your senators and your congressman) hate Obama and liberals and gun-taking-away Clintons. All your life you’ve been told government is the enemy. Government is keeping us down. Godless poindexters trying to tell you how to live your life. You sure you’d bust right out of that and head for the coast and start dressing fancy and drinking lattes and voting for Sanders? Probably you wouldn’t, maybe you would. But your average person, and even most smarter-than-average people, wouldn’t. Not because they’re bad people. Because they are who they are and have what they have largely due to when and where and in what circumstances they were born.

The problem isn’t the people of the red states. They’re human beings same as the rest of us, and they are who they are mostly due to circumstance. The problem is that they’ve been emotionally manipulated (mostly by the right-wing noise machine) for over a generation. The problem is that the manipulators get away with it.

Sure, I call trump voters idiots. And I do believe that they are. But that doesn’t mean that they’re different from or worse than most humans. Most humans are idiots in that they believe what they want to believe rather than what they can see with their own eyes. Most humans are idiots in that it’s easy to manipulate them to want to believe (and therefore to believe) whatever you (the manipulator) want them to believe.

I wouldn’t know how to go about changing or eliminating that manipulation. But, if you are a nice person and you want to help people, the way to go about helping people in red states, in my opinion, would be to do something about the manipulation that makes people vote against their own interests (if you can figure out a way to do that).

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