Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 13:31 last edited by
That's not an answer.
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@Horace said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
point to the riots and say "this is Trump's America". Even jon buys into that tribal mantra. As ideas go, it is not a rational one.
Well, to be fair I use that phrase to point out the absurdity of Trump calling it ‘Biden’s America’.
Having said that, surely presidents will differ in where they fall on the (as W might put it) “uniter vs divider’ scale. Surely presidents differ in how they respond to widespread protests, from taking steps to lower the pressure on one hand to publicly antagonizing and threatening on the other.
Honestly I think people here say to themselves “but these rioters aren’t by and large Trump supporters” and from that facile comment completely absolve him from any causal role.
wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 13:36 last edited by@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
Honestly I think people here say to themselves “but these rioters aren’t by and large Trump supporters” and from that facile comment completely absolve him from any causal role.
What I say, and what I have said repeatedly, is that Trump-the-Great-Divider is an all time great self fulfilling prophecy. When one side of the aisle hates the guy a priori because of his human phenotype, the division is baked in. Everything else is retconning that division to be the fault of the guy with the repellent phenotype.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 13:43 last edited by
Which presidential power should Trump wield to halt the cycle of white cop shoots black guy on video->everybody becomes as hysterically outraged as they can be because hysterical outrage is a virtue signal->rioting?
Which power could CNN wield? Which power could the democrat political leaders of the cities being rioted against wield? Who's wielding their power appropriately and nobly in this situation? To whom are we to look, other, of course, than people who miraculously are able to find fault with both sides? (Wow what an intellectual feat! So special!)
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 13:50 last edited by jon-nyc
Both of you are essentially arguing that he couldn’t have prevented the outbreak of protests ergo how they ran their course was out of his hands.
Like nothing else he could do or say could matter in how the protests/riots unfolded.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 13:56 last edited by Mik
You said he had a causal role. Do you have anything to back that up other than you don't like him?
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 13:56 last edited by
@jon-nyc Again, like the Weimar comparison that so disappointed you that nobody discussed, you are complaining of a lack of viewpoints that you yourself seem unwilling to provide. What do you think Trump should do to stop the riots?
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You said he had a causal role. Do you have anything to back that up other than you don't like him?
wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:24 last edited by jon-nyc@Mik said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
You said he had a causal role. Do you have anything to back that up other than you don't like him?
I didn’t mean literally the proximate cause of the initial protest, obviously that was the Floyd death. I mean that he personally as well as his actions and words were a key part of the very complex set of circumstances that has fueled their intensity and duration.
His divisiveness obviously played a role in the political tensions leading up to it (Horace agrees here with the causal chain, but assigns moral responsibility for his divisiveness to the outgroup).
But once they started you could think of myriad ways he could have dialed down the temperature or tried to give the protesters a voice. Heck, even inviting some of them to join a bipartisan group to make recommendations for municipal, state and federal rule changes. Presidents do that kind of thing all the time. It’s kind of what politics is. Instead he antagonized with words and deeds.
It just didn’t have to be this way.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:29 last edited by
To be clear jon, you're claiming that had Trump invited a few representatives from the rioter side to discuss possible solutions after the Floyd shooting, the Blake riots would have been mitigated?
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:38 last edited by
As others have pointed out jon, if there were political solutions to these issues, the democrat high melanin politicians and police chiefs necessary to enact them would have already enacted them locally. They have all the power in these places locally.
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@Mik said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
You said he had a causal role. Do you have anything to back that up other than you don't like him?
I didn’t mean literally the proximate cause of the initial protest, obviously that was the Floyd death. I mean that he personally as well as his actions and words were a key part of the very complex set of circumstances that has fueled their intensity and duration.
His divisiveness obviously played a role in the political tensions leading up to it (Horace agrees here with the causal chain, but assigns moral responsibility for his divisiveness to the outgroup).
But once they started you could think of myriad ways he could have dialed down the temperature or tried to give the protesters a voice. Heck, even inviting some of them to join a bipartisan group to make recommendations for municipal, state and federal rule changes. Presidents do that kind of thing all the time. It’s kind of what politics is. Instead he antagonized with words and deeds.
It just didn’t have to be this way.
wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:40 last edited by@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
His divisiveness obviously played a role in the political tensions leading up to it (Horace agrees here with the causal chain, but assigns moral responsibility for his divisiveness to the outgroup).
And you simultaneously revel in the TDS orgy while taking no moral responsibility for it, because well of course good people hate Trump, I mean duh, it shouldn't need justification.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:40 last edited by
Here’s what I’m not doing, largely because it’s impossible:
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laying out a specific causal chain from Trumps actions to the behavior of several million protesters and a few thousand rioters.
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claiming that I know what the mitigation effects would be for particular actions that trump could have taken
What I am doing is saying that
(1) his general divisiveness feeds this
(2) his words and deeds have served to fan the flames
(3). Different words and deeds could have cooled the flames or at least fanned them less
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:43 last edited by
"He could have done better" is vacuous. And his divisiveness is an all time great self-fulfilling prophecy that you gladly participate in and take no personal responsibility for.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:45 last edited by
jon, it's ok and par for the course that you actually have no interesting points to make here, and are really only attempting to establish the phenotype of a clear headed calm appraiser of the situation. We are all as impressed with it as you are. Now please feel free to go eat lunch.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:47 last edited by jon-nyc
I agree it’s vacuous. Stop saying that.
Maybe phrase it as ‘Trump fanned the flames in word and deed because he’s not up to the job of being presidential. He’s just the leader of a tribe’.
And then maybe take some responsibility for why you guys elected someone like that.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 14:54 last edited by
So it is all the things you can think of that he MIGHT have done but did not that is the causal relationship. Got it.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 15:01 last edited by
sigh
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 15:06 last edited by Mik
Look, Jon, it's very simple. You made an assertion you cannot support other than with your own biases. The truth is the protestors are much more akin to the brownshirts than anything on the right.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 15:09 last edited by
No you misunderstood the assertion.
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wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 15:09 last edited by
Yeah, that must be it. I misunderstood
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I agree it’s vacuous. Stop saying that.
Maybe phrase it as ‘Trump fanned the flames in word and deed because he’s not up to the job of being presidential. He’s just the leader of a tribe’.
And then maybe take some responsibility for why you guys elected someone like that.
wrote on 29 Aug 2020, 15:15 last edited by@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
I agree it’s vacuous. Stop saying that.
Maybe phrase it as ‘Trump fanned the flames in word and deed because he’s not up to the job of being presidential. He’s just the leader of a tribe’.
And then maybe take some responsibility for why you guys elected someone like that.
Yes please let me join in on the flurry of good willed responsibility taking as proposed by responsibility taker in chief jon-nyc. It's not his fault that he's never done or thought anything wrong, it's just how perfect people are. Why can't TNCR and WTF understand that?