Donald Trump - Nuts? Troll? Hallucinating?

Maxinquaye

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And I will not blame "the voters" or "the public" for any of this, because the pressures on people are simply outrageous now, and the ordinary person, the working father/mother, the ones unemployed or struggling or even succeeding (barely) are not the architects of the mess we are in.

I totally agree with this. I think it's childish and self-serving to do so. It is about generalising misanthropy onto a large body of people. But you hear the charge “voters are stupid” often enough from both sides of the aisle.

If I lived on your side of the pond, I'd definitely campaign for Bernie Sanders. Not because I think anything useful would come of it because it would be campaigning for a four year lame duck one term presidency. But at least it would be throwing a spanner into the works of the party machines. In a way, it would be about serving notice on the establishment.

That said, without a concurrent drive to elect Sanderista congresspeople and senators, people like Dianne Feinstein will still be the ones in charge. I would just hope that they're self-preserving enough to accept a mandate to Sanders.

That said, over here a Bernie Sanders-like character did win a primary fight and is now party leader of the Labour party. The establishment have done everything to undermine him, and that includes the nominal left-wing media of The Guardian and The Independent. Sanders would face the same thing over there. The current masters will not go gently into that good night, at all.
 

dawinsor

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Politics is always a struggle, and the powerful are always problematic for democracy.

But I don't want the things Donald Trump has been saying to be buried in a general discussion. He's encouraging hatred toward Muslims. Once you let that genie out of the bottle, it's hard to put it back. I believe we're obligated to speak up and say "no" in whatever forum is available to us.
 

Cyia

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I'm wondering now what it would be like if Trump actually gets elected President. It's pretty freaky to think about.

The first day-one impeachment in US history?

(most likely, it's going to come to him running independently and splitting the vote)
 
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Barbara R.

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Trump has changed from a joke to a serious threat. It's fascinating to watch a Hitler in the making---and I don't say this lightly. The other day, at a rally, he called on followers to eject a black protester and didn't intervene when the man was beaten by Trump's brownshirts---I mean followers. His attempts to incite hatred and violence against Muslims, Mexicans, Afro-Americans and other assorted "riffraff" could have been plucked from the pages of Mein Kampf. There are vile, hateful people in all societies, and if it were just Trump, one could shrug and move on. The trouble is, Trump has become a rallying point for Americans who share his racism, xenophobia, and sexism; and there are a hell of a lot of such people around.

I don't think he's electable. But people didn't think Hitler was, either.
 

Sheryl Nantus

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I don't think he's electable. But people didn't think Hitler was, either.

People do tend to forget their history - Hitler was voted into office; he didn't get there via a coup. He won the "hearts and minds" of the German people and played his cards right to get legally elected.

Trump is, in a word, dangerous. And those who follow him are just as much so when they denounce basic human rights while waving guns in the air and beating those who express an opposing opinion.
 

Kylabelle

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Trump has changed from a joke to a serious threat. It's fascinating to watch a Hitler in the making---and I don't say this lightly. The other day, at a rally, he called on followers to eject a black protester and didn't intervene when the man was beaten by Trump's brownshirts---I mean followers. His attempts to incite hatred and violence against Muslims, Mexicans, Afro-Americans and other assorted "riffraff" could have been plucked from the pages of Mein Kampf. There are vile, hateful people in all societies, and if it were just Trump, one could shrug and move on. The trouble is, Trump has become a rallying point for Americans who share his racism, xenophobia, and sexism; and there are a hell of a lot of such people around.

I don't think he's electable. But people didn't think Hitler was, either.

Yeah.
 

Myrealana

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I keep telling myself that, regardless of how hateful their rhetoric, the Republican party couldn't possibly put him up as their candidate, right? RIGHT!?!?!?
 

Kylabelle

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Clearly, the only solution is to kill all the stupid people.












oh, wait.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Is that actually possible, though? I mean - is that possible? I'm married to an American and he keeps worrying about it, and I keep saying Oh come on!

I know you don't have mandatory voting, so I'm wondering if the people who like him would actually vote.

I might be missing some nuances here. I'm not up on the American voting system. All I know, I learned from Sorkin.

ETA: #blamesorkin
Mandatory voting? Wow.

Here in the US voting is not mandatory. Very rarely does even a significant minority of eligible voters vote, and discouraging people from voting is a popular political strategy (like the Republican group that handed leaflets out in a Democratic area reminding people to vote on "Wednesday" -- the day after the election).

Many Americans do not bother to vote in off-year elections (those with no Presidential race). That is how we in Illinois got our horrible right-wing Governor Bruce Rauner, a vicious union-buster who has slashed or eliminated funding for social services, education, health, and public transportation, raised taxes on the poor and capped them on the rich, and who has joined the embarrassing barking mob of anti-Syrian refugee goons.
 

KTC

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Trump had his wig washed. Clearly, it's just a tich too tight. It'll stretch out and he'll be back to his more conservatively nutjob self soon enough.
 

Shadow Dragon

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Yeah but I don't want to boil the frog nor make it jump.

And I will not blame "the voters" or "the public" for any of this, because the pressures on people are simply outrageous now, and the ordinary person, the working father/mother, the ones unemployed or struggling or even succeeding (barely) are not the architects of the mess we are in.
High pressure on the voters isn't new. It's not isolated to our current timeframe. Sorry, but I do have to blame the voters. They vote based on 'who they'd want to have a beer with' and based on who's putting on the best show. Had the voters decided en masse that they simply wouldn't touch a candidate taking corporate money or one saying racist/homophobic/sexist things then we wouldn't have this situation. There's only so many times you can watch voters fall for the same dog and pony show over and over again before you have to put some of the blame on them. If the same con man tricks you ten times in a row then it starts being your fault for continuing to trust him.
 

Kylabelle

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Yeah but not trusting basically means not voting anymore, for many people. And as I said above and many have said elsewhere and elsewhen, if it were a simple matter of majority vote, the story would be different, but that ain't the circus we got. YMMV.
 

Kylabelle

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If you haven't seen this character, it's worth watching.

Adam ruins everything - voting and voting.

My internet, especially anything on AW, is very slow to load this morning. I will definitely check these out but have to wait.

Just got that first one loaded. Yep, good old Electoral College. Quite important, the popular vote. Yessir.
 
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raburrell

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I vote demagogue with a dangerously receptive audience.

In this early days, when people were still playing the game of 'no this is the comment that'll definitely sink him', I had a pretty strong feeling that what's happened would happen. Mostly because what I couldn't see was the emergence of some reasonable counterforce that'd eventually come in and balance things out.

The racists and their ilk are out of the woodwork and currently in a mode of letting their freak flags fly. For all their baloney about being anti-establishment, they're desperate to protect the status quo at any cost.

Scary Stuff.
 

Don

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Agorism FTW!
If the same con man tricks you ten times in a row then it starts being your fault for continuing to trust him.
Not if he has control of the rulebook and makes sure his is the only game in town.
 

Cyia

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I wonder if his supporters realize that most of the things he's advocating are illegal on a constitutional level. You can't clear out/close down mosques or any other place of worship, even if you're the president.
 

KTC

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I wonder if his supporters realize that most of the things he's advocating are illegal on a constitutional level. You can't clear out/close down mosques or any other place of worship, even if you're the president.

Unless, of course, he intends on entering them.
 

shadowwalker

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Trump is the consummate Leader. He knows, as did Hitler and McCarthy, how to feed on the fears of the people he wishes to dominate. These folks gave people who were uncertain and scared for themselves and their families and their futures scapegoats. Then he gives them solutions based on the anger those fears produce, and they accept and agree to any actions because they're angry and afraid and at least someone will do something (see GW after 9/11).

It's nothing new, and unfortunately it tends to work. And it doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum one is on (see liberals and gun control).
 

clintl

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I think that eventually, the Republican nomination is going to come down to Trump vs. someone else. It's pretty clear at this point that Trump is in the top tier to stay. So who is that someone else?

Right now, "someone else" looks like Ted Cruz to me.

So what the Republican establishment do then, considering it despises them both?

(By the way, the Republican anti-establishment vote appears to pretty stable at around 55-60%, if you add up the numbers for Trump, Carson, and Cruz. And the support for the establishment candidates - Rubio, Bush, Kasich, Christie - seems to be eroding for all but Rubio, and his rise has stalled. So we're really in weird territory here.)
 

raburrell

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It's nothing new, and unfortunately it tends to work. And it doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum one is on (see liberals and gun control).
Sorry, but huh? Are you actually equating Trump's xenophobic race-baiting with calls for gun control or am I misreading this?
 

robjvargas

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I am a staunch conservative. I will never vote Democrat NOT because of the party, but because Democrats don't even want to hear what I have to say, much less earn my vote.

But NOTHING the Democrats have ever said or done rises to the level of filth coming from Donald Trump. From the MSN reporting of the Trump rally in Birmingham:
...Trump had warned the audience that Islamic State fighters might recruit their children online and called for an impenetrable wall along the southern border, prompting the crowd to chant: “Build a wall! Build a wall! Build a wall!” In his nearly hour-long speech, Trump listed graphic details of killings committed by people who had entered the country illegally, promised to bar Syrian refugees from living in the United States because they might be terrorists and called for heavy surveillance of “certain mosques.”
I am, quite literally, sick to my stomach.

I've applauded the TEA Party movement and other grass roots efforts inside the GOP to light a fire under the establishment of that party. But if this is result of grass roots activism within the GOP, then I'll vote DNC five times over before I'll ever vote GOP again.

Now who is the Libertarian candidate?

...