Trump is just a symptom and not the disease

[agent00f]

Donald Trump recently gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy and proclaimed that life was unfair, with his life in particular as the unfairest of them all because the media coverage he gets is so negative.

Now I'm a pretty fair person willing to give any argument a fair shake, and in all fairness must agree that it's true the media have unjustly targeted him so personally. It would be like the good ol' boys shooting the shit about the ethnic folks when one of them goes on a popular rant about mexicans always be rapin', and somehow he gets the spotlight when it could be any one of them.

Similarly it would be hard to argue that if some typical trump/gop fan would put in his shoes they wouldn't do the same things, eg try to ban muslims, build a wall against mexicans, take healthcare away from the most needy, obstruct justice, be overwhelmed by the presidency, and the list goes on. In that case it would only be natural in a democratic society for them to choose one of their representative own, so it's easy to see Trump's perspective that he's just the scapegoat for all these popular ideas.

In sum the point here is that fair-minded people should remember the Donald Trump being picked on in the media is just a symptom of conservatism, and not the disease itself.

 

[Homerboy]

Donald Trump recently gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy and proclaimed that life was unfair, with his life in particular as the unfairest of them all because the media coverage he gets is so negative.

Now I'm a pretty fair person willing to give any argument a fair shake, and in all fairness must agree that it's true the media have unjustly targeted him so personally. It would be like the good ol' boys shooting the shit about the ethnic folks when one of them goes on a popular rant about mexicans always be rapin', and somehow he gets the spotlight when it could be any one of them.

Similarly it would be hard to argue that if some typical trump/gop fan would put in his shoes they wouldn't do the same things, eg try to ban muslims, build a wall against mexicans, take healthcare away from the most needy, obstruct justice, be overwhelmed by the presidency, and the list goes on. In that case it would only be natural in a democratic society for them to choose one of their representative own, so it's easy to see Trump's perspective that he's just the scapegoat for all these popular ideas.

In sum the point here is that fair-minded people should remember the Donald Trump being picked on in the media is just a symptom of conservatism, and not the disease itself.

Meh - The higher the stage, the bigger the target and the further the fall. He put himself in the position to be picked apart and I have no empathy for him on any level.
He has made himself the posterboy for assholes so he's going to be be made the example of in return.

 

[woolfe9998]

I would agree that he's just a symptom of a larger problem. But he's one helluva symptom. If the underlying disease is a cancer, then the election of Trump was its metastasis. Not trying to be glib here. Just pointing out the Trump's election has greatly accelerated this problem, and it didn't have to happen.

 

[Amused]

Yes, he is kinda like a symptom. More like the most egregious end result symptom.

The disease is 35+ years of right-wing cult propaganda mills programing their listeners into fully believing everyone else is lying to them. Programing them to be anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-fact. Expertly blurring the wide line between fact and opinion.

Make no mistake, he's the end result of right wing cult media and the post fact world it created.

 

[firstalltheway]

Let's not forget that he is also an enabler of the disease he is a symptom of.

 

[interchange]

I agree with your title and generally your description of the problem, but I wonder about your attribution to the underlying cause.

 

[firstalltheway]

Have you read this? https://newrepublic.com/article/124803/donald-trump-not-liar

 

[1sikbITCH]

Donald Trump recently gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy and proclaimed that life was unfair, with his life in particular as the unfairest of them all because the media coverage he gets is so negative.

Now I'm a pretty fair person willing to give any argument a fair shake, and in all fairness must agree that it's true the media have unjustly targeted him so personally. It would be like the good ol' boys shooting the shit about the ethnic folks when one of them goes on a popular rant about mexicans always be rapin', and somehow he gets the spotlight when it could be any one of them.

Similarly it would be hard to argue that if some typical trump/gop fan would put in his shoes they wouldn't do the same things, eg try to ban muslims, build a wall against mexicans, take healthcare away from the most needy, obstruct justice, be overwhelmed by the presidency, and the list goes on. In that case it would only be natural in a democratic society for them to choose one of their representative own, so it's easy to see Trump's perspective that he's just the scapegoat for all these popular ideas.

In sum the point here is that fair-minded people should remember the Donald Trump being picked on in the media is just a symptom of conservatism, and not the disease itself.

What you are saying is that Trump harnessed the hate that was already there.

Yup.

 

[Blue_Max]

Make no mistake, he's the end result of right wing cult media and the post fact world it created.

What would that be? Fox? Among allllllllllllll those other right-wing stations like....... um.......?

 

[HomerJS]

I'd say the symptom are the people who voted for Trump. Most of us knew who he is and didn't vote for him.

There were a minority of people who were willing to put someone into office who is wholly unqualified mostly by temperament but also experience. Those people had a massive temper tantrum and it worked.

 

[TheVrolok]

Trump is a millennial.

 

[Jhhnn]

Yes, he is kinda like a symptom. More like the most egregious end result symptom.

The disease is 35+ years of right-wing cult propaganda mills programing their listeners into fully believing everyone else is lying to them. Programing them to be anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-fact. Expertly blurring the wide line between fact and opinion.

Make no mistake, he's the end result of right wing cult media and the post fact world it created.

And the problems people suffer from that make them susceptible to demagoguery are the direct result of trickle down economics, aka top down class warfare. The more after tax profit for right wing billionaires, the more they can afford to spend on media outlets, media personalities, think tanks & politicians to advance their agenda of Power & Greed.

 

[Zorba]

What would that be? Fox? Among allllllllllllll those other right-wing stations like....... um.......?

Media includes far more than TV.

 

[soundforbjt]

What would that be? Fox? Among allllllllllllll those other right-wing stations like....... um.......?

Which "news" network has the most viewers that righties always love to tout?
Not to mention their domination of talk radio...

 

[Thebobo]

Yes, he is kinda like a symptom. More like the most egregious end result symptom.

The disease is 35+ years of right-wing cult propaganda mills programing their listeners into fully believing everyone else is lying to them. Programing them to be anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-fact. Expertly blurring the wide line between fact and opinion.

Make no mistake, he's the end result of right wing cult media and the post fact world it created.

Amen brotha!

 

[Amused]

What would that be? Fox? Among allllllllllllll those other right-wing stations like....... um.......?

So you think media only means TV?

Seriously?

 

[Jhhnn]

Media includes far more than TV.

Max knows that & is trying to avoid that fact. I mean, Limbaugh isn't Media, is he? Breitbart? World Nut Daily?

Not to mention the way that the right wing directs the national conversation via Judicial Watch, the NRA, anti-abortion crusaders & an endless string of empty Birther/Benghazi scandals dating back to Whitewater & beyond. It's all wedge issues all the time.

 

[Amused]

Max knows that & is trying to avoid that fact. I mean, Limbaugh isn't Media, is he? Breitbart? World Nut Daily?

Not to mention the way that the right wing directs the national conversation via Judicial Watch, the NRA, anti-abortion crusaders & an endless string of empty Birther/Benghazi scandals dating back to Whitewater & beyond. It's all wedge issues all the time.

I thought the only media was floppy?

 

[SMOGZINN]

Now I'm a pretty fair person willing to give any argument a fair shake, and in all fairness must agree that it's true the media have unjustly targeted him so personally. It would be like the good ol' boys shooting the shit about the ethnic folks when one of them goes on a popular rant about mexicans always be rapin', and somehow he gets the spotlight when it could be any one of them.

But he is not just some good ol' boy. He is the President of the United States. The media has justly targeted him because he is literally the leader of the good ol' boys. Notice how no one really cared that Trump was a misogynist, racist, or unsophisticated idiot before he ran for office, and he was a already celebrity so they could have. No, it was not until he decided to represent those qualities as the leader of America that the media started to target him.

 

[soundforbjt]

Max knows that & is trying to avoid that fact. I mean, Limbaugh isn't Media, is he? Breitbart? World Nut Daily?

Not to mention the way that the right wing directs the national conversation via Judicial Watch, the NRA, anti-abortion crusaders & an endless string of empty Birther/Benghazi scandals dating back to Whitewater & beyond. It's all wedge issues all the time.

And now churches can get in the act...

 

[trenchfoot]

Trump is a nice big fat bulbous boil on the nose of America. He's there for all to see, and some folks, actually, millions of them, they like the looks of it because they put that boil there for the attention it draws to themselves, for the recognition that their voices were heard loud and clear. That's it, that's all.

No matter what happens to the nation from thereon in is of no consequence to them. They did their part to have this boil exist and fester and now they are resting on their laurels, so impressed at the size of the boil, how shiny it looks, how they can't wait for it to pop so they can admire the horrible grizzly mess it's going to make of the nation. Retribution in all it's horrific glory.

These folks were suffering from the consequences of their own making. Yet, they saw no fault of their own in their suffering because some other conniving folks saw their suffering and they gave these folks somebody else to blame, somebody to heap all of their frustrations and hatred on. It didn't matter at all what the truth of the matter was. It was a way to relieve these folks' angst about the choices they made in the past. It was a way to confirm to them that the mistakes they made was no fault of their own and that they should keep making those mistakes because it is the right thing to do. Well, it's either do the "right thing" or watch the nation get taken over by the terrorists, the gays, the perverts, the heathen, the "outsiders" who wish to come in and then destroy the nation from the inside out.

Typhoid Mary lives in the basement at RNC Central. They let her out incognito among the masses whenever the GOP feels like the infection is about to recede, especially when the scent of elections are wafting in the air.

The disease is effective in the deceptive way it presents itself, in the way it conceals itself under the epidermis, the way it spreads itself, the way it disguises itself.

Trump the Boil came right out and declared that Typhoid Mary v 2.0 is the disease that could be used to clean out the existing version of typhoid that had infected the "establishment" in DC and the fvcking idiots who believed his bullshit gave him the chance to do just that.

Well I guess these folks are really happy that Trump got rid of the previous established disease and replaced it with a much more potent and sickly version of it.

Yay.

 

[Humpy]

In sum the point here is that fair-minded people should remember the Donald Trump being picked on in the media is just a symptom of conservatism, and not the disease itself.

A fair-minded person would recognize that "conservatism" does not exist in a vacuum.

 

[NesuD]

A fair-minded person would recognize that "conservatism" does not exist in a vacuum.

Agreed. I think the more important question is why so many people actually voted for him. What brought them to that point? Calling them a stupid minority is sticking your head in the sand. Very nearly half of the voters in the election voted for him. That is a number that shouldn't be ignored by intelligent people. I'm sure a lot of them held their noses when they did it but it still begs the question what brought many people in this country that had elected its first black president 8 years before to that point?

 

[agent00f]

Meh - The higher the stage, the bigger the target and the further the fall. He put himself in the position to be picked apart and I have no empathy for him on any level.
He has made himself the posterboy for assholes so he's going to be be made the example of in return.

The greater point is that even if as a result of various efforts Trump gets impeached or whatever it wouldn't change much, because the sort who identify with what he stands for all still remain. We can see this plain as day with his fans & other assorted right wing apologists right here, they'll all still be doing what they do for the next Trump likeness without the treason baggage.

Yes, he is kinda like a symptom. More like the most egregious end result symptom.

The disease is 35+ years of right-wing cult propaganda mills programing their listeners into fully believing everyone else is lying to them. Programing them to be anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-fact. Expertly blurring the wide line between fact and opinion.

Make no mistake, he's the end result of right wing cult media and the post fact world it created.

There's a popular liberal narrative that somehow these right wingers were created out of whole cloth by some diabolical almost comic book villain, but that's not really how conservatism works. It's by definition people who want to keep everything as it was, which wasn't all that great. Rather what actually happened was western liberalism progressed on from that sorry previous state of things, eg racism is not longer an acceptable social position. Most people back in day weren't exactly scientifically minded intellectuals, and it was only in the last century or half that we've seen accelerating college enrollment rates, esp for women/minorites, etc. Conservatism is fundamentally the ingrained inbred hatred of this change.

So in sum, the world changed and keeps on changing; the conservative "delusion" if there's any is that they can keep living in the past if they elect backwards enough leaders.

 

[agent00f]

But he is not just some good ol' boy. He is the President of the United States. The media has justly targeted him because he is literally the leader of the good ol' boys. Notice how no one really cared that Trump was a misogynist, racist, or unsophisticated idiot before he ran for office, and he was a already celebrity so they could have. No, it was not until he decided to represent those qualities as the leader of America that the media started to target him.

That he's turned into a punching bag is largely a side-effect of the coincidental attributes of the office. The tapes didn't surface earlier because he wasn't enough of a celeb for anyone to dig hard enough. For example, when Billy Bush's remarks about women made news, he was fired from access hollywood or whatever and that was that. But there's nobody really to do that to the president so we're stuck with him for a while (except I guess impeachment but the gop isn't going to do that even if Trump literally took russian bribes or murdered someone in broad daylight).