7 ms·

Hillary => no change. Trump => change. Positive or negative? Who knows...

by tomp 10y ago

DougN7 10y ago
I personally think Clinton will be worse than Obama or Bush when it comes to any issue involving ethics.
pavlov 10y ago
What do you mean, "who knows"? Seriously, I have no idea how you can listen to anything Trump says and come away with the idea that he represents positive change. Granted, most of Trump's output is not even properly formed sentences, so maybe he's doing a malformed data denial-of-service attack on voters' senses?
- daveloyall 10y ago
  That's an excellent way to describe it. Most of his verbal quirks appear to be designed to get around various filters.
- freehunter 10y ago
  The general idea is Trump will be so negative that everyone will swing so far away from that brand of politics that even Hillary Clinton will be toxic to support. That everyone will wake up and see that xenophobia isn't a joke, our foreign policy isn't as productive as it could be, and that we've been wrong all along. If Clinton gets elected, nothing will change. If Trump gets elected, the hope is that it will dip negative for a few months, he gets impeached and removed from office, and at the next election we vote in Jill Stein or something.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    "We've been wrong all along" -- does a nation ever just wake up like that, except perhaps Japan after Hiroshima? The Weimar Republic was broken in many ways, and many Germans essentially voted against it in the 1933 elections... That example of "creative destruction of a democracy using its own tools" didn't work out great.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Australia had a mass shooting with 35 people dead in the mid 90s and basically the very next day they all handed over their guns and went almost completely gun-free. One example of a nation deciding overnight that the way they've done things in the past was not the way they wanted to continue.
- tomp 10y ago
  He seems to be interested more in internal issues. Less wars abroad and de-escalation of tensions with Russia. He also seems to be quite anti-globalization, anti-TPP etc. Slapping Wall St banks would be cherry on top. In any case a change of "elites" (if not economical, at least political) would be welcome. Probably won't be less corruption, but different corruption instead. Re: Trump's speeches - mostly non-sensical, yes, but at least he's not pretending to be truthful. Personally, I don't have any trust in what Hillary says either - even though her lies are much more sophisticated and eloquent.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    He seems to be interested more in internal issues. It seems extremely generous to characterize Trump as being interested in anything at all except himself. All accounts suggest that he doesn't read. On his private plane he watches his own TV appearances. He has put his name on a hundred products, but he's not an entrepreneur and doesn't care at all about developing the actual products. Trump claims to be an expert on taxes, at least... But his former accountant Jack Mitnick says he did all the work, and when Trump visited once a year, his wife was actually asking more questions than Trump himself. Really the best-case scenario for a Trump presidency is that his quantum-sized attention span moves to something else and he leaves the United States to run itself, like he did with the Trump University. That means Vice President Mike Pence would be the effective president, supported by a Republican Congress... And you can look at Pence's track record to see whose interests he represents: ultraconservative fundamentalist Christian Republicans. Pence is as much part of the establishment as Clinton. Is that really the change America needs? Trump's speeches - mostly non-sensical, yes, but at least he's not pretending to be truthful. What do you mean by that? He is definitely pretending to tell the truth. For example, since last week he has been saying that the election is rigged against him and there will be widespread vote fraud. There is not a shred of evidence of this. Republicans all over the country are actively countering the notion that the election is somehow being rigged. Yet Trump persists. That's not a harmless white lie -- no candidate has questioned the legitimacy of US elections since before the Civil War.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    > Less wars abroad and de-escalation of tensions with Russia. Pretty certain Trump called for US troops to be used in both Syria and Libya. He's also called for an escalation of bombing of ISIS, and supported torture. And he's made intemperate remarks about reacting to provocation - Russian planes shot down for flying over US ships, Iranian ships shot at if the crew make rude gestures. I would say it's at least arguable to say there will be fewer wars under Trump. Personally I find it quite difficult to follow that line of argument. I'd expect Clinton to be more hawkish than Obama, but Obama has been one of the US Presidents most keen on diplomacy and de-escalation for decades.

Hillary => no change. Trump => change. Positive or negative? Who knows...

by tomp 10y ago

Hillary => no change. Trump => change. Positive or negative? Who knows...

DougN7 10y ago

I personally think Clinton will be worse than Obama or Bush when it comes to any issue involving ethics.

pavlov 10y ago

What do you mean, "who knows"? Seriously, I have no idea how you can listen to anything Trump says and come away with the idea that he represents positive change. Granted, most of Trump's output is not even properly formed sentences, so maybe he's doing a malformed data denial-of-service attack on voters' senses?

daveloyall 10y ago
That's an excellent way to describe it. Most of his verbal quirks appear to be designed to get around various filters.
freehunter 10y ago
The general idea is Trump will be so negative that everyone will swing so far away from that brand of politics that even Hillary Clinton will be toxic to support. That everyone will wake up and see that xenophobia isn't a joke, our foreign policy isn't as productive as it could be, and that we've been wrong all along. If Clinton gets elected, nothing will change. If Trump gets elected, the hope is that it will dip negative for a few months, he gets impeached and removed from office, and at the next election we vote in Jill Stein or something.
- pavlov 10y ago
  "We've been wrong all along" -- does a nation ever just wake up like that, except perhaps Japan after Hiroshima? The Weimar Republic was broken in many ways, and many Germans essentially voted against it in the 1933 elections... That example of "creative destruction of a democracy using its own tools" didn't work out great.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Australia had a mass shooting with 35 people dead in the mid 90s and basically the very next day they all handed over their guns and went almost completely gun-free. One example of a nation deciding overnight that the way they've done things in the past was not the way they wanted to continue.
tomp 10y ago
He seems to be interested more in internal issues. Less wars abroad and de-escalation of tensions with Russia. He also seems to be quite anti-globalization, anti-TPP etc. Slapping Wall St banks would be cherry on top. In any case a change of "elites" (if not economical, at least political) would be welcome. Probably won't be less corruption, but different corruption instead. Re: Trump's speeches - mostly non-sensical, yes, but at least he's not pretending to be truthful. Personally, I don't have any trust in what Hillary says either - even though her lies are much more sophisticated and eloquent.
- pavlov 10y ago
  He seems to be interested more in internal issues. It seems extremely generous to characterize Trump as being interested in anything at all except himself. All accounts suggest that he doesn't read. On his private plane he watches his own TV appearances. He has put his name on a hundred products, but he's not an entrepreneur and doesn't care at all about developing the actual products. Trump claims to be an expert on taxes, at least... But his former accountant Jack Mitnick says he did all the work, and when Trump visited once a year, his wife was actually asking more questions than Trump himself. Really the best-case scenario for a Trump presidency is that his quantum-sized attention span moves to something else and he leaves the United States to run itself, like he did with the Trump University. That means Vice President Mike Pence would be the effective president, supported by a Republican Congress... And you can look at Pence's track record to see whose interests he represents: ultraconservative fundamentalist Christian Republicans. Pence is as much part of the establishment as Clinton. Is that really the change America needs? Trump's speeches - mostly non-sensical, yes, but at least he's not pretending to be truthful. What do you mean by that? He is definitely pretending to tell the truth. For example, since last week he has been saying that the election is rigged against him and there will be widespread vote fraud. There is not a shred of evidence of this. Republicans all over the country are actively countering the notion that the election is somehow being rigged. Yet Trump persists. That's not a harmless white lie -- no candidate has questioned the legitimacy of US elections since before the Civil War.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  > Less wars abroad and de-escalation of tensions with Russia. Pretty certain Trump called for US troops to be used in both Syria and Libya. He's also called for an escalation of bombing of ISIS, and supported torture. And he's made intemperate remarks about reacting to provocation - Russian planes shot down for flying over US ships, Iranian ships shot at if the crew make rude gestures. I would say it's at least arguable to say there will be fewer wars under Trump. Personally I find it quite difficult to follow that line of argument. I'd expect Clinton to be more hawkish than Obama, but Obama has been one of the US Presidents most keen on diplomacy and de-escalation for decades.