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Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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  • Replies: 12K
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  • Politics 
Zoo_View said:
No Democratic President has ceded executive power.

One thing is certain about the Imperial Presidency - it doesn’t give back or give away power.

Trump’s Second Presidency will assert executive power as no other has. Will the right-wing SCOTUS try to assert its power?
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Donald Trump GIF by GIPHY News
 
StrangePackage said:
I'm pretty comfortable saying anyone who is defending Elon's Nazi salute is a shit human.

If that was accidental or unintentional, then my fist connecting with their face would likewise be excused, yes?

And before anyone tries to equivocate on the issue of harm, a Nazi salute is a threat of violence, because Nazism is state violence against disfavored minorities on a massive scale. Point blank, that is what a Nazi salute means - "I will kill people given the chance."
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ADL says ‘awkward’ Musk gesture ‘not a Nazi salute’: ‘This is a delicate moment’​

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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a nonprofit focused on combating antisemitism, defended tech billionaire Elon Musk’s “awkward” gesture during a Monday celebratory event which some critics panned as a fascist salute.

“This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety,” the ADL wrote in a Monday post on Musk’s social platform X. “It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.”

 
ZenMode said:

ADL says ‘awkward’ Musk gesture ‘not a Nazi salute’: ‘This is a delicate moment’​


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Shit humans. Cowards who are afraid of Musk because he threatened them with a lawsuit for when they previously pointed out the rampant antisemitism he enabled on Twitter.

If you believe their excuse, then go ahead and repeat that gesture at work tomorrow, twice. Do it at a sporting event. Take a video of you doing it and put it on your social media.

Let us know how that goes for you.
 
farce© said:
Not to dismiss the tasteless attempt at humor, but I believe OGtruthurts was responding to callatoroy’s comment “Then you don't know what the definition of political conservative is.” which Kingpin had quoted in the previous post.
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Thanks — I was confused 🤔
 
Callatoroy said:
Fair enough. I'm not questioning your opinions and respect your views as you stated them. I believe for whatever reason you are sincere and am in no way attempting to change your opinions.

1. we are in complete agreement. I want my sons to be the opposite of trump.

2. I gave up on my naive belief that character mattered for potus during the Clinton years. It was difficult for me and I fought it but it seemingly didn't matter to others so I learned to accept it and focus way more on what the candidate was planning to do vs the candidate. I'm not saying i'm right and you are wrong. Just that I had to look at what direction I thought was right for the country and nothing else. Would I like to have a potus with Carter's ethics and decency? Certainly but I don't think we have had that since W (and I struggle with the idea he knew there were no WMD in iraq.) That is a debate for another thread.

3. We view MAGA differently. I see it as the most radical supporters (10% of his votes). I see the rest as people like me who see him for what he is but see it as the vehicle to restore what's important to me (us). I view conservatism in terms of real world issues. Not broad terms that can be manipulated or applied to any argument. I don't see that trump has hijacked any of the conservative issues that seemed important in the election.

These comments weren't intended to debate. You gave me a foundation for what you believe and I did the same. Understanding why someone believes what they do is generally helpful.
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Thank you for this response. I also wrestle with how much character matters, just as much as I wrestle with how much intelligence matters - for people in politics. More than anything, however, empathy matters to me. And that is where I believe that we, as a country, have failed the world in electing Trump.

Although I didn’t vote for either of them (not that I could have voted for Sr., as the 2000 election was the first I could vote in), I found both Bushes to be empathetic men. I felt the same way about Romney and Dole. I don’t see any empathy in Trump. If we are being honest, I think Trump views empathy as a weakness, a flawed character trait.

At my heart, I am very much an “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” man. I believe that that statement should be at the core of who we are as a nation. It is one of four maxims that I hold dear as it relates to my experience as a United States citizen.

The second one is at the base of the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The third comes from early in the colonial era, and is a from a sermon by John Winthrop: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

Those three statements have defined much of who I am and how I choose to identify myself, as a citizen of this country.

Trump strikes me as a man who will never understand that first statement, scoffs at the second, and only views Winthrop’s City Upon the Hill through the lens of power.

For the first time in the course of my nearly half century on earth, I am no longer certain that any of those three quotes represents where this nation is going. And I don’t know what to do with that, other than assume that the fourth American maxim that I hold dear, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” means something very different to Trump supporters than it does to me.

We can debate policy until the cows come home. But goodness should not be up for debate. Yes. We have had corrupt politicians in the past. Yes, I even voted for some of them. But Trump just hits different.

There is a level of cruelty and vindictiveness to him that is a malignant cancer, and it is spreading across America.

That is where I’m coming from. And I believe that others on here agree with me, particularly those who were once a part of the Republican Party, but left because of a man who views the world through a lens that many of us thought died with WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, at least in this country: one of conquest (personal, political, and global).

Add in Elon Musk, a man who is so wealthy that he will probably die having bought and sold several countries, and I honestly don’t know where we go as a society - not only over the next four years, but for the next 40.

That’s not a perspective that I have ever entertained before, and certainly not to the degree that I do now.

Something wicked this way comes.
 
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sringwal said:
I honestly don’t know where we go as a society - not only over the next four years, but for the next 40.
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We will likely go to a place with significant bloodshed. Historically, economic disparities like we’re seeing now result in mass violence, and it typically starts with the state against its citizenry. With ttump’s recent EOs, we’re not only seeing rampant racism, but what appears an intentional targeting of working and lower-middle class households. He’s also in the early stages of turning military guns inward, and he’ll use them.
 
Beyond that, though. How do we build empathy, as a society, moving forward? integrity? From what source will those come?
 


“… when you’re a rich person and you like to take a shower …”
 


Some weirdo recorded himself losing $300k of his grandpa's money (inheritance?) in real time on DJT calls.

America is busting at the seams with easy marks.
 
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Callatoroy said:
I don't think he is intent on destroying the institutions and systems in our g'ment.
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He is literally doing that as we speak. Immigration is unlawfully shut down, apparently. The CDC, NIH can't communicate with the outside world, meaning they can't do their jobs. He is putting the biggest enemy of public health in the history of the Republic in charge of the public health agencies, with intent to destroy. Putting a compromised foreign asset in the position of national intelligence. Firing all the career professionals in the DOJ. Decimating the Foreign Service. The intelligence agencies are about to get completely fucked. The FBI will lose everyone competent.

You are on the threads where this is documented. You know this. Yet you conclude that he's not "intent" on doing the things he's actually doing? And please don't respond with some ludicrous about how he's just "reforming" those agencies. That just uses the word "reform" as a tautology. For the idea of reform to have any merit or substance, there has to be a value judgment as to whether the change is good or bad. And that's a complex question in the abstract, but easy in this situation: of course this change is bad. It's incontestably bad. Government by paranoiacs is extremely dangerous.
 
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