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The Idiocracy of Donald J. Trump


chasfh

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2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Well, we hope so, but it's continually depressing to see how willing most of the MSM remains to normalize his behavior.

I think they’re doing that for business reasons, rather than promotional reasons. 

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4 hours ago, chasfh said:

Assuming this is a justification for the idea that Trump is flying under the radar to the majority of Americans who continue to know nothing about him other than his charming You’re Fired schtick, and thus he will win in November thanks to an electorate largely ignorant of the worst of him, I think where this breaks is that Trump’s worst antics even while firmly ensconced in the bosom of MAGA gatherings are easily accessible to the rest of us through the mainstream media, which are still the most highly-consumed. Trump’s not hiding anywhere anymore. We can all see him, one you would have to be assiduously avoiding him to never see it. 

He's never been hidden.  It has always been obvious.  but there is a lot of competition trying to get the attention of the American public.  Why is it that I have no clue who Taylor Swift or Kanye West are, but it seems the whole country knows everything about them?  It is because I don't give a **** about them and they are not part of the media which I consume.  It's the same thing with people not knowing about Trump.  There is so much media and social media that people can carve out what they pay attention to and ignore everything else.   There are millions of people who simply don't see Trump as the psychopath that he is, because the media that they consume do not portray him that way.  In fact, there is very little of that kind of portrayal in the media, because they need him and want him to win.   

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44 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

There is so much media and social media that people can carve out what they pay attention to and ignore everything else.

I think society has been slow to recognize how completely the landscape has changed. Our traditional understanding of needing  a 1st amendment to protect the ability of people to speak needs updating to a recognition that in the current world, the greater problem is not being denied access to add to the infosphere, is the need to protect it from a level of pollution so deep that the public cannot becoming accurate informed by it.

I'm not sure how you get there, but it's an issue the US needs to start thinking about more seriously. I think dumping the 'actual malice' requirements for public figures (which is actually everyone in a viral internet age) to enforce slander/libel would be one place to start. The rest of world seems to function without that level of (over)protection for public falsehoods.

Edited by gehringer_2
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Posted (edited)
15 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I think society has been slow to recognize how completely the landscape has changed. Our traditional understanding of needing  a 1st amendment to protect the ability of people to speak needs updating to a recognition that in the current world, the greater problem is not being denied access to add to the infosphere, is the need to protect it from a level of pollution so deep that the public cannot becoming accurate informed by it.

I'm not sure how you get there, but it's an issue the US needs to start thinking about more seriously. I think dumping the 'actual malice' requirements for public figures (which is actually everyone in a viral internet age) to enforce slander/libel would be one place to start. The rest of world seems to function without that level of (over)protection for public falsehoods.

The tricky part about protecting people from the pollution is, what is determined to be the pollution and who gets to determine that. Once a society decides to tackle an issue like this, it opens the door to litigable value judgments about what constitutes pollution or even malice, and as we can see from the school library controversies, different people and communities have different values and judgements about that. It’s why the argument for letting everyone have access to everything and figuring out for themselves what’s pollution or not is so seductive, even though that itself has tremendous potential down sides. There is no perfect solution, which I guess is in part why the Constitution strives for the practicality of “a more perfect Union”, rather than the illusion of “the perfect Union”.

Edited by chasfh
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47 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The tricky part about protecting people from the pollution is, what is determined to be the pollution and who gets to determine that. Once a society decides to tackle an issue like this, it opens the door to litigable value judgments about what constitutes pollution or even malice, and as we can see from the school library controversies, different people and communities have different values and judgements about that. It’s why the argument for letting everyone have access to everything and figuring out for themselves what’s pollution or not is so seductive, even though that itself has tremendous potential down sides. There is no perfect solution, which I guess is in part why the Constitution strives for the practicality of “a more perfect Union”, rather than the illusion of “the perfect Union”.

I'm generally not a fan of the libertarian concept that we don't need regulation, we only need liability because with most types of products the damage is long since done before anyone gets to court and monetary damages don't help the victim much. But ironically, I think media is a place where simply increasing liability and letting juries make decisions about when claims are reasonably supported is at least a step in the right direction. A  court that was moving left overreacted in the Civil Rights era out of fear that MSM media would be afraid to expose racism, but in this era the unintended consequence of protecting scurrilous/irresponsible media I believe is the more pressing problem.

Edited by gehringer_2
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Today's JVL and the TikTok change of heart...

Quote

As it happens, President Trump nearly did force the sale of TikTok during the summer of 2020. This was one of the few helpful ideas he had as president, yet he cocked it up because he was trying to play at being a gangster.

Trump attempted to force the sale via executive order and he further intervened to make Microsoft the buyer. And then, Trump said that the U.S. should get a taste of the action: He told Microsoft that the company should pay the government a “finder’s fee” for brokering the deal.³

Because Trump was bad at governing, the TikTok sale never happened. And now, just like with Infrastructure Week, it’s Joe Biden who’s getting the job done.

But there is a hitch: Trump has now turned against forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok. Here’s Josh Rogin explaining:

Earlier this month, Trump spoke at a conference of the influential conservative organization Club for Growth, after a request by its main benefactor and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, and announced an end to his feud with the [Club for Growth].

Yass’s firm, notably, has a stake in ByteDance worth more than $20 billion. Yass’s offer of a détente is of direct benefit to Trump and his campaign, as the Club for Growth is now expected to spend millions in the 2024 cycle in support of Trump. That could relieve the financial burden on the former president, who owes more than $400 million in legal penalties.

This is how politics works: Jeff Yass has a financial stake in ByteDance. If ByteDance is forced to sell TikTok, it will harm Yass’s financial prospects. Yass gives a lot of money to the Club for Growth, which has opposed Trump. So Yass has the Club for Growth repair its relationship with Trump. And then Trump turns against the sale of TikTok.

Everyone gets their backs scratched.

But this is also how capitalism works: Jeff Yass is a useful idiot. 

 

Everything he touches...

adding link to above

https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/tiktok-trump-capitalism-and-the-facts?r=45wcm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Edited by CMRivdogs
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34 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

That's more or less a loss for the Trump legal team in the Georgia case....

I'm a little surprised she didn't get DQ'd

one assumes they were prepared for the latter outcome but there seems to be enough legal incompetence in the US anywhere you look, and why would anyone think there wouldn't be in a profession where Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are two of the Nation's top exemplars?

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LOL imagine being a strict constitutionalist and also citing Sir Matthew Hale in a SCOTFS decision and also believing judicial review exists in the constitution

Edited by pfife
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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, mtutiger said:

That's more or less a loss for the Trump legal team in the Georgia case....

I'm a little surprised she didn't get DQ'd

Honestly, I'm not even sure what the actual problem is regarding Fani and Wade. How does their relationship prejudice the case against Trump?

EDIT: Seriously, tell me how.

Edited by chasfh
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2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Honestly, I'm not even sure what the actual problem is regarding Fani and Wade. How does their relationship prejudice the case against Trump?

EDIT: Seriously, tell me how.

Trump wouldn't have thought twice about having lawyers with this degree of ethical swampiness.  I think of Rudi Giuliani for one.

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3 hours ago, chasfh said:

Honestly, I'm not even sure what the actual problem is regarding Fani and Wade. How does their relationship prejudice the case against Trump?

EDIT: Seriously, tell me how.

Really? Pull Dump out and put a normal american citizen in this situation. The DA HIRES their side piece to prosecute them, that seems like a fair trial? 

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