Leo

Well-known member
I've never understood how any self-identified Christian could view Trump with anything other than loating.

tea, haven't you learned by now? it's because lots of them are huge fucking hypocrites who pretend to be pious but are full of shit. or they are willing to horse trade: look the other way at trump's authoritarian actions in exchange for some pro-life judges.

also, both my late mom was and living sister are devout catholics. they both thought/think trump is a horrendous person and president, disagree with nearly everything done by the administration, and they aren't alone. evangelicals are a large force in some parts of the country but do not represent all -- or even most -- people of faith. not all religious people are hypocrites.

sincerely.

A lapsed catholic
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh I get all that, of course - I suppose I was being a bit disingenuous, or rhetorical, or something. America is full of contradictions like this (it seems to me, looking in from the outside) - Evangelicals who are paranoid about sinister Jewish conspiracies but who are also diehard Zionists; so-called libertarians who worship Trump even as he calls in the military to suppress legal protests...
 

version

Well-known member
The thing with Trump is he's so blatantly the opposite of what Christians claim to be about that you feel even the worst of them shouldn't be able to look past it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The thing with Trump is he's so blatantly the opposite of what Christians claim to be about that you feel even the worst of them shouldn't be able to look past it.
This is basically what I getting at, except you've put it a bit more articulately.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
it's because lots of them are huge fucking hypocrites who pretend to be pious but are full of shit. or they are willing to horse trade: look the other way at trump's authoritarian actions in exchange for some pro-life judges.

Indeed. But to pick up version's point: how obsessed with the immorality of abortion have you got to be to look past a president who's been accused of assault or rape by 25 women, one of whom was 13 at the time? And if literally all you care about is abortion, then how many women must Trump have knocked up, paid to have abortions and then paid again to keep quiet about it?

I guess these people would just insist they were all lying bitches who've been bribed by the Democrats or whatever, on the basis that any piece of information you don't like is "fake news" these days.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Hatie Kopkins was trending today cos she made some thing about being a white conservative Christian... I was thinking that I don't remember the bit in the Bible where Jesus is celebrating the death by drowning of helpless refugee children.
 

Leo

Well-known member
everyone's wearing winter coats and hats, so I assume this wasn't taken recently but still great.
 

droid

Well-known member
Optimisitic, and though I would agree with some of it, Sharp's analysis has been heavily criticised from the left - but fingers crossed!
 

Leo

Well-known member
yeah, there have been way too many "this is a bridge too far" moments with trump that inevitably just roll off his back as we make a mad dash to the next outrage. very cautious optimism is the best I can muster but at least it's a ray of hope.

can you briefly summarize the critiques of Gene Sharp?
 

version

Well-known member
I was reading a Hunter Thompson thing about Bush last night. You can swap "Bush" for "Trump" and the current state of America and most of it's just as applicable...

//

No. Nonsense. The president cannot be a Fool. Not at this moment in time, when the last living vestiges of the American Dream are on the line. This is not the time to have a bogus rich kid in charge of the White House.

Which is, after all, our house. That is our headquarters, it is where the heart of America lives. So if the president lies and acts giddy about other people's lives, if he wantonly and stupidly endorses mass murder by definition, a loud and meaningless animal with no functional intelligence and no balls.

To say this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon.

Whoops! Did I say that? Is it even vaguely possible that some New Age Republican whore-beast of a false president could actually make Richard Nixon look like a Liberal?

The capacity of these vicious assholes we elected to be in charge of our lives for four years to commit terminal damage to our lives and our souls and our loved ones is far beyond Nixon's. Shit! Nixon was the creator of many of the once-proud historical landmarks that these dumb bastards are savagely destroying now: the Clean Air Act of 1970; Campaign Finance Reform; the endangered species act; a Real-Politik dialogue with China; and on and on.

The prevailing quality of life in America-by any accepted methods of measuring-was inarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today in this evil year of our Lord 2020.

The Boss was a certified monster who deserved to be impeached and banished. He was a truthless creature of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a foul human monument to corruption and depravity on a scale that dwarfs any other public official in American history. But Nixon was at least smart enough to understand why so many honorable patriotic U.S. citizens despised him. He was a Liar. The truth was not in him.

[...]

When Muhammad Ali declined to be drafted and forced to kill "g**ks" in Vietnam he said, "I ain't got nothin' against them Viet Cong. No Cong ever called me N***er."
I agreed with him, according to my own personal ethics and values. He was right.

If we all had a dash of Muhammad Ali's eloquent courage, this country and the world would be a better place today because of it.

[...]

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world-a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us... No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you.

Well, shit on that dumbness. Donald Trump does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn't vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today- and we will not vote for them again in 2020. Or 2024. Or ever.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like Donald Trump? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill "g**ks". They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are racists and hate mongers among us-they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Bolton book alleges Trump asked China's Xi for re-election help
Former national security adviser John Bolton alleges in his upcoming book that President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to increase agricultural purchases from the U.S. in order to improve his electoral prospects in farm states, the New York Times and Washington Post report, citing advance copies of the book.
The big picture: The book, which the Trump administration is suing Bolton to block, alleges several episodes in which the president's dealings with foreign leaders reflected an apparent single-minded desire to be re-elected. On several occasions, Bolton claims Trump expressing willingness to intervene in criminal investigations "to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked."
Highlights:
  • In May 2018, Bolton writes that Turkish President Erdogan handed Trump a memo claiming that the state-owned bank Halkbank, which was under investigation by the Justice Department, was innocent. "Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people," Bolton writes.
  • In the advanced copy of the book obtained by the Times, Bolton claims that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Bolton a note during Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un that commented on Trump, saying: “He is so full of shit.” Pompeo reportedly dismissed Trump's North Korea diplomacy as having "zero probability of success.”
  • In an essay adapted from his book published in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton writes: “One highlight came when Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him. Xi said the U.S. had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly."
  • "These and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency," Bolton continues. "Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different."
The bottom line: “I am hard pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes, according to the Post.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The National Security Council declined to comment.
 

version

Well-known member
... on the 30th anniversary of China’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Trump refused to issue a White House statement. “That was 15 years ago,” he said, inaccurately. “Who cares about it? I’m trying to make a deal. I don’t want anything.” And that was that.

One of Trump’s favorite comparisons was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the historic Resolute desk in the Oval Office and say, “This is China.” So much for American commitments and obligations to another democratic ally.

He recalls Trump asking Kelly if the nation of Finland is part of Russia

"...Trump says journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources: 'These people should be executed. They are scumbags,' Trump said."

Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool” and that the South American nation was “really part of the United States.”
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
So now Trump is making it explicit that his re-election strategy is based on using the courts to cause voter suppression:

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told Politico. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”
Basically they are gonna fight tooth and nail from now until November to minimise mail voting in the hope that the virus and other access issues will keep voter turnout low. As we knew I suppose but a surprise to hear him literally say it. Trump is so dumb... I understand the strategy, and I understand that it makes sense for him to give statements saying "Mail votes are susceptible to fraud"" - but to so explicitly say "I need to win these legal cases to win" seems foolish.
 
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