Forums → WEPR → Can we try to find some positivity? (Current American Political Landscape)

You forget that FAKE , corrupted, mentally hill, greedy, selfish president Trump is under investigation by the FBI concerning the criminal activities of many of the members of his cabinet.
Your so-called president is possibly a traitor.

I don't know from what planet you're from, it's all over the news! I'm not talking about Fox news which is controlled by the right wing extremists but all the news outlets.

Keep an eye on this page for information about Fake president Trump and his mafia.

https://themoscowproject.org/

I will make the assumption that you are/were a Hillary Clinton supporter, and I could therefore say that all of those qualities you used to describe Trump could also be applied to Clinton. You refer to the president as my "so-called" president, however if you live in the United States he is your president as well. Once again, I made my original post specifically to discourage name calling, and hatred. What I am ultimately trying to say with all of this is that I can find positive things to say about people I do not like (both personally and politically). Also, essentially all MSM is dominated by a handful of companies, and if you call one of these news outlets into question, you should put all of them under scrutiny.

After viewing your profile, I now see that you are Canadian. I retract my claim that Donald Trump is also your president, and I also potentially retract my claim that you are a Hillary Clinton supporter. [Update: After reading several of your posts on the forums, I realize you are a US citizen who did indeed vote in the election, and I therefore reinstate my claims made in my previous post.]

I think at @Unbl has a really good point here. Having lived in the States now for some time and witnessing the campaign, it's understandable why people are upset. Clinton seemed to have certain victory and then everything came apart on election night (at least, for Democrats). The animosity that pretty much defined the campaign continues on. And the media certainly isn't helping quell the fires of this extreme discontent.

Personally, I am disgusted by Trump as a human being. Yes, you need a fair amount of narcissism and ego to run for POTUS in the first place; but Trump takes this to horrifying levels. His tactic of saying whatever comes to mind on Twitter in order to shift the focus away from his subversive political agenda is frustrating and insulting (but also brilliant in that it seems to work).

But Unbl's claim here, as I take it, is that if Trump does a good job, then we will all benefit. I'm worried about long-term things like climate change and the future of healthcare and welfare benefits in this country. But I'm also hopeful that, even in 8 years, Trump can't set us too far back on these issues. Ultimately though, those who want to see Trump fail (and fail hard) are missing the larger picture of what impact this can have on prosperity in the US.

We're also entering an age where information about scandals is becoming more readily available. Both Clinton and Trump seem to me to be full-on corrupt. But it would be too quick to say that this is the first time we've had this level of corruption; it's just that we have more access to the information that identifies the levels and kind of corruption in play. In other words, I have no illusions that this degree of corruption (note: degree, not kind) has been around for quite some time.

I think Unbl sums it up nicely with the following:

... at the end of the day, we are still supposed to all be on the same side. At this point, I just wish we could all at least settle for the common ground of simply being Americans.

So instead of Trump-bashing - which is both easy and ubiquitous - maybe we can focus on the more interesting questions as Unbl suggested. What common ground can we find? Is it an uncontentious claim that we should support the POTUS because his success is our success? Or is it the case that, because of Trump's bigoted policies, there can be no common ground? Is it expedient (i.e. useful) or even possible to separate the man from the position?

So instead of Trump-bashing - which is both easy and ubiquitous - maybe we can focus on the more interesting questions as Unbl suggested. What common ground can we find? Is it an uncontentious claim that we should support the POTUS because his success is our success? Or is it the case that, because of Trump's bigoted policies, there can be no common ground? Is it expedient (i.e. useful) or even possible to separate the man from the position?

The Republicans had plenty of time to make peace while president Obama was in office.
Instead of helping they did everything to stop him and they were disgusting toward him as well.
Now it's time to make them pay for what they did.

Trump is a despicable human being, he doesn't care about the American people and his only goal is to kill all the regulations that protects the workers and the environment so that the rich criminals can get richer and the poor people gets poorer.

The reason why Trump is president is because of the lousy jobs the Republican did and people were fed up with the corruption. Now look at what's happening, more corruption than ever!

Republicans are responsible for this mess.

@Unbl - the answer is, quite simply, no.

Scott Adams actually had quite a good article on this subject.

To put it simply, people that were invested in Hillary Clinton winning convinced themselves that she was some mighty paragon of virtue and that Trump was an evil Nazi that was going to put Mexicans in concentration camps, and that they DESERVED to be in charge of the country.

I am fully willing to admit that Trump is a deeply flawed being and may be a terrible President. He may also be a good President. We'll see where it takes us. Right now his best trait is that he seems intent on actually fulfilling his campaign promises - which is quite refreshing in a politician. He's also said and done some shockingly stupid things. But overall he seems to be moving in the right direction.

On the other hand, you would be EXTREMELY hard pressed to find American liberals willing to admit the many deep flaws that Clinton has and demonstrated as a Presidential candidate, or one that will say that a Clinton presidency would have been anything other than sugar and rainbows raining down from the sky.

SSTG here is a particularly interesting case study in cognitive dissonance because he claims that 'Trump is President because of the lousy job the Republicans did and people were fed up with the corruption'. In other words, SSTG is literally claiming a Republican got elected because people were fed up with the lousy job the Republicans were doing. Does that really make sense, on an objective level? No. But Trump HAS to be evil. Because if Republicans aren't actually evil, then maybe SSTG isn't particularly smart or virtuous. Rather than confront that possibility, SSTG is rejecting any and all information that Trump is anything other than the reincarnation of Hitler.

You can see evidence of this in quite a few places. One particularly illustrative incident was a prominent liberal feminist (whose name escapes me at this time), tweeting out the day of the election something along the lines of, 'regardless of the outcome we should come together after the election to heal the divisions'. When Clinton lost her next tweet was a profane outburst screaming slurs at the evil racist bigots. She didn't want 'tolerance', or 'healing'. She wanted her side to win.

In order to avoid confronting the reality of how bad a candidate and person Clinton was, or how some liberal positions and policies either will not work or are simply not popular, liberals are lashing out and screaming and stamping their feet calling Trump a Nazi, evil racist, bigot, XXXXist, whatever. Because to do anything else would require them to examine themselves and realize the shortcomings of their own party, candidate, and positions that allowed him to be elected in the first place.

I've said several times - Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump. Warren probably would have had a 10 point landslide. But the Democrats didn't have them.

Its quite interesting, actually, that Trump is effectively the same position that Obama was in, in 2008. Trump has both houses of Congress (albeit with a smaller majority than Obama), and has ridden to the election promising significant change. All he has to do now is deliver on a decent majority of his promises and the Republicans will be in power for quite a while.

Obama and the Democrats, in the same manner, rode to victory promising change, and had a golden opportunity to secure their dominance for years simply by delivering. Instead, they failed to deliver what they promised, and what they DID deliver was roundly rejected by a pretty strong majority of Americans. In failing to deliver, they gave the Republicans back the largest majority they have had in quite literally almost 100 years.

Now Trump is in effectively the same position. If he delivers, Republicans will be in charge for a decade or more. If he fails, the Democrats will sweep back to power in the next few years.

Trump seems to be quite aware of this fact, as he is very publicly attempting to deliver on what he promised. Now we'll have to see where the next couple years take us.

In conclusion, there will be no 'politeness', because the people that are emotionally invested in Trump and Republicans being evil are not interested in any rational or logical argument to the contrary.

Right now his best trait is that he seems intent on actually fulfilling his campaign promises - which is quite refreshing in a politician. He's also said and done some shockingly stupid things. But overall he seems to be moving in the right direction.

Hmm, I wouldn't know about that. Depends on what you mean by promises because he has retracted multiple statements, flat out refused to have ever said others. If for example cooperating with Russia is a pre-election promise, that doesn't go so well. No contacts between the White House and Moscow, US-RU relationships at the lowest point since the Cold War, Trump has assumed office for 2 months now and has done nothing to heal that relationship, or resolve the issue of Ukraine, nor does seem intent to.

On the other hand this stance completely contradicts SSTG's notions about being put into office by the Russians. Trump's a lot of things but so far there is no proof or even an indication that he is a traitor. Quite probably is not. And no, Criminal activities for which he is 'under investigation by the FBI' do not constitute treachery.

SSTG here is a particularly interesting case study in cognitive dissonance because he claims that 'Trump is President because of the lousy job the Republicans did and people were fed up with the corruption'. In other words, SSTG is literally claiming a Republican got elected because people were fed up with the lousy job the Republicans were doing. Does that really make sense, on an objective level? No. But Trump HAS to be evil. Because if Republicans aren't actually evil, then maybe SSTG isn't particularly smart or virtuous. Rather than confront that possibility, SSTG is rejecting any and all information that Trump is anything other than the reincarnation of Hitler.

Wow, you have a lot of imagination.

People were fed up with the Republican corruption because they tried and blocked almost everything the Democrats tried to achieve. Some would have voted for Hillary but since they hated her so much, they voted for Trump instead, knowing he is mentally ill.

Why did Republicans do it really? I don't know for sure since I'm not obsessed with money and guns nor pretend to be religious.

Republicans like to pretend to care about people's right.
For example they are offended when we ask for smart gun regulations, claiming we're denying their right to bare arm (machine guns, assault riffles, why not rocket launchers and flame throwers?).
On the other end they deny women the right to decide what's good for their body and try everything to stop minorities from voting. How hypocritical?

I've said several times - Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump. Warren probably would have had a 10 point landslide. But the Democrats didn't have them.

Hey I wanted to vote for Bernie but Hillary was the candidate available so I didn't really have a choice did I? I wasn't going to vote for a crooked Republican so I had to vote for her.

I voted for Bernie during the primary BTW.

Obama and the Democrats, in the same manner, rode to victory promising change, and had a golden opportunity to secure their dominance for years simply by delivering. Instead, they failed to deliver what they promised, and what they DID deliver was roundly rejected by a pretty strong majority of Americans. In failing to deliver, they gave the Republicans back the largest majority they have had in quite literally almost 100 years.

You conveniently omitted to mention that the reason why he failed to keep his promises was in big part due to the fact that Republicans blocked pretty much everything he did.

They pushed for so many amendments to the ACA bill that in the end it didn't do what it was intended to do in the first place.

President Obama was naive in thinking that Republicans would work with him, he forgot how corrupted they were. He should have shoved some bills down their throat while Democrats were in majority but he didn't because he thought that maybe they had a little bit of honor. Boy was he wrong!

BTW, did you notice how much tax payer money dictator Trump has wasted so far with his travels back and forth to his golf/vacation place in Florida?
He already spent more than president Obama did in a year.

Also Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington and what did he do?
He went to the swamp and surrounded himself with the most corrupt people he could find.
Three of them had to step down because of their criminal and unpatriotic activities.

Sure he's my president but not by choice, I would never vote for someone who disrespect the Constitution the way Trump does. I respect the presidency but not the man/child who was elected.

Don't even bother arguing about FBI investigation. Hillary Clinton was under investigation by the FBI during her campaign, to the extent that the FBI released investigation records five seperate times, and the most recent release is 300 pages long. @SSTG if an FBI investigation is so severe and suggests that the individual investigated may be a traitor, why aren't you calling out Clinton?

Why did FBI director James Comey forget to mention that Trump was also under investigation?
Was it because it would have tipped back the balance toward Hillary?

You conveniently omitted to mention that the reason why he failed to keep his promises was in big part due to the fact that Republicans blocked pretty much everything he did.

And aren't Democrats trying to do the same thing with Republican bills? Let's face it, both parties have a very different view on what should be done and what shouldn't. Hence why they are 2 different parties

Why did FBI director James Comey forget to mention that Trump was also under investigation?
Was it because it would have tipped back the balance toward Hillary?

At this point it almost sounds like you are calling out everyone and everything even remotely related to the election. Even an earthquake in China could have changed the outcome, finding every tiny thing that could have and pointing it out does not in any way serve as an indication to any sort of sabotage, election rigging or conspiracy by one side or the other.

Matt asked something different in this case. If what you call 'possible treachery' is criminal charges being investigated by the FBI then both Trump and Hilary are possible traitors, yet you are only directing your fire in both this and other threads towards one of those two as a possible traitor. He asked why.

Bottom line, yes, anyone can have any opinion on anything, in this case I agree with you that Trump is a narcissist that probably everyone would be better off without. But you are firing away in the general direction of him indiscriminately, calling him out for both rightful and wrong reasons. I understand it must be a stressful matter, but it doesn't help in the discussion

All right, I'll tell you exactly why I think Trump won the election.

But first I need to tell you a story.

Lets assume that the average AG members age is 14 or 15 yo.
There's a good chance this scenario apply to some of them.

Let say you're dad is 50 yo and he's been working in a factory for 25 years.
He makes a decent salary, he's married has a nice home, a car and 2,3 kids.

One day the crooked Republican who owns the factory realizes he can make more profits by
moving`his business to China.
Now he doesn't have to follow regulations and can exploit Chinese
workers by paying them a fraction of what he used to pay an American worker.

Meanwhile your dad is out of work and can't afford his insurance because of his age he has to pay
3 times more to be insured.

Now let's say he's lucky enough to be healthy. He decides to take a chance and not get insured.
He uses some of his savings to go back to school and learn a new skill while maybe having a lousy
job on the side.

Despite the age discrimination he manage to find a job at a tech firm.
He works for 2 years and even though he feel awkward working with people half his age which is
most likely the case, he puts up with it because he's working again.

One day the boss calls him and tell your dad he has to let him go because he found out he can
hire some guy from India with a temporary work visa that he could pay half the salary your dad
used to make.

To add to the insult, your old man has to train the Indian guy who's going to take his job.
Now your dad is 54-55 yo and gets some unemployment benefit for a little while.

Meanwhile the crooked Republicans in Congress decides to pass a bill that will shorten your dads
unemployment benefits by half.

What is he supposed to do, work at Walmart?

Then comes along a mentally ill demagogue who promise to bring back jobs to the US.
So he organize rallies because he likes the attention, it flatters his huge ego.
Your dad thinks "Hey this guy's on my side so I'll vote for him (Trump).

What your old man might not know is that Trump doesn't care about the American workers.
All he cares about is himself and make as much money as possible. His dad was rich and he never had to struggle.

Now if you add all the voters who believed in Trumps lies and add the racists, you get enough votes
to win the presidency.

Then FBI director James Comey comes along and tells everybody about Hillary Clinton's e-mail
scandal but forget to tell that Trump is also under investigation for possibly be a traitor.

So people get outraged and vote Republican.

If Comey had told about Trumps investigation and his possible ties to Russia, people would not
have voted for Trump, I can guarantee you that!

Now that he is in power he appoints some anti EPA guy to head the EPA.

The EPA (environment protection agency), for those who don't know about it is there to protect us
from crooked oil company owners who could pollute the environment and make us sick without being
held accountable.

Now this protection is gone and any of us could get sick or die so that some greedy Republican
can get richer.

If you do a research on all the people Trump appointed to his cabinets, you wouldn't believe the
horror that is about to hit us.

So in a nutshell, that's where we are now.

It is very possible that Trump is an involuntary traitor because I don't think he's smart enough
to put together such an elaborate plan. I think it's more about greed.

So he is willing to deal with criminals and terrorists, as long as he makes money out of it.

Since James Comey is among the people investigating the possible Russian-Trump team scandal, it's
very likely he won't find anything because he favors Trump.

I hope I'm wrong because it would be the worst thing that could happen to this country.
Can you imagine if the FBI is also working for a foreign country against our interests?

@MattEmAngel - I would advise you just stop talking to him. Once again, SSTG is a perfect case study in why it is simply impossible to have a logical discussion about issues at this time.

Not once in any of his rantings has he come close to admitting that Clinton was a terrible, unpopular candidate with myriad flaws. No, the ONLY explanation he will accept is that Trump is evil, a traitor, and the people that voted for him are stupid racists.

I'm sure that he actually believes that something is going to suddenly turn up that is going to prove Trump is an evil traitor and he's going to be removed from office. Never mind how ridiculous that belief is.

Because if Trump and the people that voted for him AREN'T evil racist traitors, he might have to actually answer their concerns, and he's simply not capable of doing that.

Nothing you could possibly say will convince him otherwise. I advise you to just leave him to stew in his impotent hate while Trump continues to be President.

Olinser is correct but apparently this is much more interesting than the thread's original purpose

All I can say is good luck America.
I personally do not like Trump, but that is just my feeling about him.
Here in the UK we are never satisfied by our elected Prime Minister (currently not elected by the public), we moan and complain but put up and shut up.
When events such as the loony terrorist attack on Wednesday happen, we pull together, no matter our politics or who our great leader is.
No one can predict how Trump will act, or if he is good for his country.
Be strong guys, rise above it. America is a nation that will not be ruined by one man(woman) in our lifetime.