Splinter: Priority and Par

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Jun 12, 2018.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #pathologicalcorruption | #WhatTheyVotedFor

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    Brian McFadden, The Nib, 12 June 2018
     
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  3. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Pathological buffoon, maybe, but for abject corruption you'd have to look to Hillary.

    You don't get that the buffoon was elected rather than the criminal?
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Let's see -

    After over a year of investigation, and millions of dollars spent, charges against Hillary and her team - zero.

    After over a year of investigation, charges against Trump and his team - four. Pled guilty - three.

    Yep, the criminal AND the buffoon were elected.
     
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  7. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    The right is happy with character assassination, so long as it's against the left.
     
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  8. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Except, among "right-wingers" there are those who think any of Bill and Hillary's serious accusers were made to not be. I don't know of any conspiracy theory that suggests Trump to be a murderer.

    I don't carry a torch for the fool, something that seems to go over the unremarkable heads of the professed liberals here, but at the same time, I wouldn't cross the street to piss on Hillary if she were on fire.
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yep. People will believe any shit they read nowadays.
    Yep. Just a serial rapist and an agent of Russia. (Except, of course, there is actual evidence for those things.)
    So we had a choice between:

    - a woman you hated
    - a buffoon and a criminal.

    The longer Trump is in office, the more it looks like right winger hate might have been less of a problem than incompetence and criminality.
     
  10. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Dr. Toad, you mean nobody on the left is so maniacal that they'll be willing to promote specious claims of murder.
     
  11. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Of course not. People of both stripes are just as likely to be murderers, I think. People of both stripes have proven it before.

    billvon: Some are more likely than others.
     
  12. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Swooshed you, didn't I.
     
  13. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Did you now? Carry that coin.
     
  14. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    And you'll never change.
     
  15. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Not at my age, damned straight. Two wives tried over twenty years to do that, with no luck...
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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  17. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    With whom? Why assume something not in evidence?
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Doesn't take much to trigger them these days.
     
  19. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    "Them" is pretty undefined, and therefore safe, right?
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That, folks, is not a Colbert joke. It is a sincerely meant sentiment.
    These guys are looking directly at Trump and not seeing what's directly in front of them.

    Seriously: they honestly believe that Trump is less corrupt than Clinton. They aren''t joking, they aren't being ironic, they aren't parodying a cult believer on purpose, they are looking at Trump and genuinely not seeing what he's doing. And Trump is right there - hidden tax returns, family business in the White House, casino bankruptcies and anonymous real estate deals, Russian sleazeballs and mob figures on the phone contacts of his lawyers, a hotel deal in every dictator's port, milking the taxpayer for resort and club business, nobody can pass a security clearance without do-overs and amendments and second, third, fourth chances.

    Qatar refuses the mordida, the US military and allies bring the bombs. China buys into the hotel, sanctions on security risk phone assemblers are suddenly lifted. Canada offers a big trade surplus but only doing honest business, tariffs slapped on. NK offers real estate development, the President of the United States pulls back the muscle. Hello?

    And then there's the people around him. Those guys. A bunch of people about every one of whom one could say what the blogger said about Scott Pruitt when he heard about the mattress deal: "That guy, that fucking guy". To amend the great:
    "The first method for estimating the intelligence corruption of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him."
    -- Niccolo Machiavelli,​

    Trump is less abjectly corrupt than nobody in American public life.
    The level of willful obliviousness necessary to not see that is normal in oldstyle TV sitcoms and nowhere else. In real life, it's deranged.
     
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2018
  22. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    i must have missed that on the news.
    what did she do ?
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    So, the first thing is burying behavior. Maybe that doesn't work for a toad, but in another part of my life it would go very well with an unfortunate dog metaphor some people call upon themselves. It happens a lot in social media, when combative, often pointless posts bury something someone doesn't like by spacing out discussions.

    Nobody participating in the discussion at this point ought to be utterly unfamiliar with the idea. To the other, in my time at Sciforums, I've known a journalist who knew precisely nothing about journalism; I also I admit I'm no longer surprised when I encounter a particular phenomenon having to do with people who work with or in social media, but have no idea what goes on with social media. I suppose it's possible to believe people are completely gobsmacked by the idea that online behavior can include the disingenuous, but we can also acknowledge that some of it is instinctive, to just fire off when one is upset.

    I remember not long ago, I think in the wake of some indictments, a family friend I don't hear much from turned up in my Facebook feed, and quite literally the conversation he was in started with, "Can you imagine how much corruption we'd be facing if Hillary was elected? God bless Trump!" And that sort of stuff turns up now and then in my Twitter feed, and if it was all contained to trolls chasing Caroline Orr, and maybe Noah Berlatsky, that would be one thing. But it's just all over, like a reflexive response.

    Such as it is, the post about the buffoon and abject corruption is desperate, unoriginal balbutive.

    And, to the next, we might note that while there is always room for discussion, this is just more about voicing your hatred than actually discussing any useful point. To wit, your posts at #2 (2114)↑, 5 (2117)↑, and 8 (2120)↑ are generally disconnected and incoherent; the first two are stitched by abject hatred, while the third makes as clear as Scotch tape there really isn't any other point. But, seriously:

    I mean, how much thought did you put in over the course of nine minutes? Especially coming off that barnburner of a post↗ in the nutsack thread?

    But like I said, it's not just you; I really am curious about this behavior when it comes up. If, for instance, you followed President Trump's lawyer in recent weeks, then, well, right; we're at the point where Donald Trump's own attorney is hanging him every other day or so. Or, at least, was, until Trump settled on multiple foreign policy disasters for the sake of distraction.

    Eventually, the big mystery becomes whether and how one believes the trumped up gas they're spewing, or what they hope to accomplish by humiliating themselves for no good sake.

    And something about it, I admit, fascinates me. There is a real issue, here, and the hardest thing is figuring out what it is insofar as while self-reporting studies are inherently complicated by the people who answer the surveys, it becomes considerably more difficult when the respondents are unable to actually answer the questions.

    It's just the weirdest totemization, a neurotic logjam.

    I don't know, it's a combination of the priority chosen as par for the course. Which, in turn, is the third thing, of sorts. I mean, sure, burying a discussion is common, largely instinctive and therefore not necessarily particularly calculated, and can be done in many ways. Such as it is, why would anyone choose this course?
     

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