Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

[Mav]

There’s an incredibly high bar, it seems, when it comes to assessing provocative behaviour in the US. And no doubt the impressive right-wing capacity to forget outrages will mean no long-term damage will be done.

[Gointocarlton]

In my life time Obama is the only president who hasn't been a joker.

And yet I have US friends and colleagues (not Trumpets) who say he was one of the worst. I don't follow US politics at all, he seemed like a very smart and personable guy to me. Some of the others have come across as jokers as you say.

[Macca37]

What I find most depressing is the fact that when faced with the clearest choice at the election between a candidate promising to restore normality to the country and a self absorbed, lying, narcissistic president clearly prepared to tear up the constitution to remain in power, more than ninety million voters could not be bothered getting off their backsides to cast their vote.

When that number is added to the seventy million angry white, gun toting, illiterate and semi-literate Trumpers , the magnitude of the task facing Biden appears almost insurmountable.

[madbluboy]

[/quote]

What I find most depressing is the fact that when faced with the clearest choice at the election between a candidate promising to restore normality to the country and a self absorbed, lying, narcissistic president clearly prepared to tear up the constitution to remain in power, more than ninety million voters could not be bothered getting off their backsides to cast their vote.

When that number is added to the seventy million angry white, gun toting, illiterate and semi-literate Trumpers , the magnitude of the task facing Biden appears almost insurmountable.

It's not a clear choice, that's the problem.

I post on an American sports forum and last election a poster there who was one of the first members of the BLM group shocked the whole forum by saying he couldn't vote for Hillary as she was despicable and that he wasn't voting. Another member asked gun to your head Trump or Clinton and he said Trump.

[LP]

It's not a clear choice, that's the problem.

In an absolute frame perhaps it's a lesser of two evils, but in a relative frame between those two candidates there is no contest.

So I'm clearly in agreement with [member=40]Macca37[/member]‍.

That is the problem with Trump's apologists, they claim one is just as bad as the other but that would be relative to what or who, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, etc., etc..?

Claiming Trump's behaviour is equivalent to anybody, is clearly an absurdity that makes further debate moot, like comparing the murder of Victor Chang to that of Muammar Gaddafi

[madbluboy]

Unless you live there really what would you know?

[LP]

Unless you live there really what would you know?

I know injecting disinfectant is deadly without needing to try it!

I wasn't alive during WW-II but I know Hitler was an a55hole, or is that just more fake news!

I also know all perspectives, opinions and opposites are not equal.

[DJC]

What I find most depressing is the fact that when faced with the clearest choice at the election between a candidate promising to restore normality to the country and a self absorbed, lying, narcissistic president clearly prepared to tear up the constitution to remain in power, more than ninety million voters could not be bothered getting off their backsides to cast their vote.

When that number is added to the seventy million angry white, gun toting, illiterate and semi-literate Trumpers , the magnitude of the task facing Biden appears almost insurmountable.

There's also the very determined campaign by the GoP to discourage and/or disqualify folk from voting and the US system  makes it hard for folk to vote.  Prior to COVID, almost all voting had to be done in person and that means taking time off work (or other pursuits) and standing in a line for a couple of hours.  The increased voter turnout this time was probably due as much to greater ease of voting as it was to getting your man elected ... or the other bloke defeated.

[Mav]

It's not a clear choice, that's the problem.

I post on an American sports forum and last election a poster there who was one of the first members of the BLM group shocked the whole forum by saying he couldn't vote for Hillary as she was despicable and that he wasn't voting. Another member asked gun to your head Trump or Clinton and he said Trump.

That just shows we can’t treat subsets of the population as monoliths. There’ll be complexity and surprises. As an example, Muhammad Ali would have been at the head of BLM marches if he’d been around and yet he met with the Ku Klux Klan and accepted awards from them. Anti-Semite Christian Identity believers are strong supporters of Israel (if only because they long for the start of a race war). In this last election, it was noted that young black men were flirting with the idea of voting for Trump as they felt the Democrats were taking the black vote for granted.

Then you have the tendency for far left and far right activists to go to war with the moderates on their wing. The Tea Party and Trumpists have tried to kill off moderates like Flake and Romney while in  Australia the Greens are always on the lookout for the chance to bring the ALP to its knees. When they voted against Kevin Rudd’s ETS scheme, they killed his government and set the stage for a decade of Liberal governments which have done nothing on climate change. Maybe there was an aspect of the Greens letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, but I think this was just a pathetic political ploy.

I could definitely see why a BLM activist would have been underwhelmed by Hillary. Only in the US would she be seen as left-wing. She’s probably a US version of Johnny Howard or Maggie Thatcher and was a Republican before she met Bill. Her election would have brought progress for women but she probably wouldn’t have gone out of her way for the black community. That was pretty well demonstrated by her safe VP pick: Sen. Tim Kaine, a largely unknown moderate southern white guy. It probably was better for BLM to have an arch-nemesis in Trump who exemplified the racism they were fighting rather than Hillary sweeping the issue under the carpet.

And we have to accept that the constant smears spread by the Republicans probably did make Hillary unelectable for many. We’ve seen that Trump managed to persuade 30% or so of the US population that the election was stolen from him even though there has been absolutely no evidence of it. You look back in wonder that the Republicans were able to paint Hillary as corrupt with a bunch of concocted scandals from Benghazi to her emails to the Clinton Foundation to innuendo she was a serial killer. But bullshite works.

[PaulP]

I generally agree Mav. The internet is full of individual opinions which get construed as broadly held beliefs, or justifications for disliking someone. Someone on the other side hates the same person you hate, so you must be right.

I'm not really a fan of the Bill/Hilary/Obama/Biden faction of the Democrats. I've been reading about Biden's pledges and policies, and it all sounds pretty good. If he can carry them out, the US will be the better for it. But my concern is that we saw this under Obama - pretty rhetoric, but very little genuine action to wrest power and wealth away from Wall Street and back into Main St.

There's little in Biden's history to suggest he has even a mildly progressive agenda. I'll be watching with interest.