6 ms·

One of the first moves of any tin-pot dictator must be to suppress all sources of truth, and if that's not possible, discredit them. That is absolutely require

by scholia 10y ago

One of the first moves of any tin-pot dictator must be to suppress all sources of truth, and if that's not possible, discredit them. That is absolutely required if he is to lie with impunity, and Donald Trump has been a pathological liar for years. It's sad to see the USA in this state, but it's what a sufficient number of citizens voted for....

sqeaky 10y ago
There are ways to get rid of him, but are we sure the vice president would be better? As it stands now all the Democrats and many of the republicans in the House and Senate will be against anything he does. He has uphill battles to win to make lasting changes.
- scholia 10y ago
  I confess that I find Pence very scary as well, but he's not obviously mentally ill. [1] I assume the good old GOP will throw Trump under a bus when he has outlived his usefulness. However, as a non-American, I don't have a good understanding of how the House and Senate actually work. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greene/is-donald-trump-mentally_b_13693174.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greene/is-donald-trump...
  - fooey 10y ago
    The US is basically under 1 party rule at the moment. The minority party has virtually no power to initiate action or legislation, and very little power to block actions by the majority party. The right wing base of the Republican party just picked Trump over all the standard establishment candidates they put forward, so the establishment leaders in Washington are not going to want to risk alienating their voters in order to take down Trump.
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    The house has to vote to impeach anyone in the Executive branch, such as the president. The act of impeachment is not "firing them", but the trial to determine if they are guilty and need to be removed or not. The senate then listens to the case and votes with a simply yay or nay on if they are guilty or not. Realistically, this means you'll need support from both the Senate AND House of Representatives to impeach a sitting president. It would also meant they'd likely not win the re-election in four years and as a result would be somewhat political suicide. Since the Republicans control both the house and senate majorities along with the president... They're unlikely to do anything other than sit back eating popcorn while Trump wrecks things.
- paulmd 10y ago
  Well, don't shoot the messenger here, I'm going to be honest... A lot of this probably boils down to partisanship. Pence is as generic a Republican as you can get. He'll make transsexuals use the wrong bathrooms, he'll roll back abortion protections, he'll crack down on marijuana legalization, he'll push military conflicts overseas, etc. But he'll be a boring corporate Republican all the while. Trump, on the other hand, is a manbaby who is psychologically incapable of accepting that he doesn't have the yugest, the biggliest, the greatestest everything. If Obama's inauguration was more attended, he'll send the press secretary out to attack the press. If Obama had a cool cake, he'll have an identical one (even if it's made of Styrofoam). If you haven't picked this up from his nightly rants on Twitter, the man is psychologically incapable of letting anything go. He's not even capable of letting an insult from a D-list celebrity go. And that's even before we get into the whole "with every moment in office he's violating the Emoluments Clause" thing. He honestly, legitimately, doesn't give a rat's ass about rule of law, as long as he wins, and gets to face a roaring crowd. And the truth is Republicans are 100% ideologically driven right now and will not do anything to police their own if it means they win. Frankly at this point I wouldn't be surprised if he just blatantly violated the law however he felt and then pardoned himself on the way out of office (or Pence does). Our system is not built to handle a leader who literally doesn't feel shame in this fashion, especially with the backing of a party that doesn't either. Honestly it would be better for the nation if Trump was cut loose. At this point, it's a perfectly legitimate question what happens if he comes into real conflict with another world leader. That kind of baby isn't going to back down, he's going to throw a tantrum, and the US can throw a hell of a tantrum when it comes down to it. Literally the Navy alone could beat every single other military power on Earth combined, even before we bring nuclear weapons into it. Pence will be generic evil dude, and he will be a lot more successful at pushing his agenda, all of which I disagree with. So in a purely partisan sense, it's better to have Trump in office. But Trump is fucking nuts, so in terms of what's better for the country I have to say Pence. The question is when Republican congresspeople are going to realize that Trump is a millstone around their necks in many respects. I think many of them do already, but the problem is that Trump wields immense populist favor right now - much more than they do. Republicans overall are a minority, and they are only getting deeper into that hole, but Trump represents a majority of Republican voters and he's only going to keep pushing ahead. Sadly, we seem to have slipped into the Actual Fascist Timeline.
hackuser 10y ago
It's not just Trump. The conservative movement has been actively discrediting all sources of information but themselves for many years. During the election, some of the conservative opinionators (bloggers, radio, etc.) who opposed Trump observed that they had no way to credibly contradict Trump in the eyes of their readers, as they had delegitimatized all other sources of information.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's not just the Republicans that are eager to cut scientists off from the media and the public. The Conservative party in Canada did exactly the same thing, much to the dismay of scientists and the public: http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/when-science-goes-silent/ http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/when-science-goes-silent/ They also infamously shut down a climate research centre that was keeping ice-core samples frozen. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tories-cutting-vital-climate-science-critics-say http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tories-cutting-vita... Anything that contradicts the messaging of a modern "conservative" party is something that must be destroyed.
- scholia 10y ago
  Yes. BI ran a good story on this: http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudge-coulter-2016-8 http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudg...

by scholia 10y ago

sqeaky 10y ago

There are ways to get rid of him, but are we sure the vice president would be better? As it stands now all the Democrats and many of the republicans in the House and Senate will be against anything he does. He has uphill battles to win to make lasting changes.

scholia 10y ago
I confess that I find Pence very scary as well, but he's not obviously mentally ill. [1] I assume the good old GOP will throw Trump under a bus when he has outlived his usefulness. However, as a non-American, I don't have a good understanding of how the House and Senate actually work. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greene/is-donald-trump-mentally_b_13693174.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greene/is-donald-trump...
- fooey 10y ago
  The US is basically under 1 party rule at the moment. The minority party has virtually no power to initiate action or legislation, and very little power to block actions by the majority party. The right wing base of the Republican party just picked Trump over all the standard establishment candidates they put forward, so the establishment leaders in Washington are not going to want to risk alienating their voters in order to take down Trump.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  The house has to vote to impeach anyone in the Executive branch, such as the president. The act of impeachment is not "firing them", but the trial to determine if they are guilty and need to be removed or not. The senate then listens to the case and votes with a simply yay or nay on if they are guilty or not. Realistically, this means you'll need support from both the Senate AND House of Representatives to impeach a sitting president. It would also meant they'd likely not win the re-election in four years and as a result would be somewhat political suicide. Since the Republicans control both the house and senate majorities along with the president... They're unlikely to do anything other than sit back eating popcorn while Trump wrecks things.
paulmd 10y ago
Well, don't shoot the messenger here, I'm going to be honest... A lot of this probably boils down to partisanship. Pence is as generic a Republican as you can get. He'll make transsexuals use the wrong bathrooms, he'll roll back abortion protections, he'll crack down on marijuana legalization, he'll push military conflicts overseas, etc. But he'll be a boring corporate Republican all the while. Trump, on the other hand, is a manbaby who is psychologically incapable of accepting that he doesn't have the yugest, the biggliest, the greatestest everything. If Obama's inauguration was more attended, he'll send the press secretary out to attack the press. If Obama had a cool cake, he'll have an identical one (even if it's made of Styrofoam). If you haven't picked this up from his nightly rants on Twitter, the man is psychologically incapable of letting anything go. He's not even capable of letting an insult from a D-list celebrity go. And that's even before we get into the whole "with every moment in office he's violating the Emoluments Clause" thing. He honestly, legitimately, doesn't give a rat's ass about rule of law, as long as he wins, and gets to face a roaring crowd. And the truth is Republicans are 100% ideologically driven right now and will not do anything to police their own if it means they win. Frankly at this point I wouldn't be surprised if he just blatantly violated the law however he felt and then pardoned himself on the way out of office (or Pence does). Our system is not built to handle a leader who literally doesn't feel shame in this fashion, especially with the backing of a party that doesn't either. Honestly it would be better for the nation if Trump was cut loose. At this point, it's a perfectly legitimate question what happens if he comes into real conflict with another world leader. That kind of baby isn't going to back down, he's going to throw a tantrum, and the US can throw a hell of a tantrum when it comes down to it. Literally the Navy alone could beat every single other military power on Earth combined, even before we bring nuclear weapons into it. Pence will be generic evil dude, and he will be a lot more successful at pushing his agenda, all of which I disagree with. So in a purely partisan sense, it's better to have Trump in office. But Trump is fucking nuts, so in terms of what's better for the country I have to say Pence. The question is when Republican congresspeople are going to realize that Trump is a millstone around their necks in many respects. I think many of them do already, but the problem is that Trump wields immense populist favor right now - much more than they do. Republicans overall are a minority, and they are only getting deeper into that hole, but Trump represents a majority of Republican voters and he's only going to keep pushing ahead. Sadly, we seem to have slipped into the Actual Fascist Timeline.

hackuser 10y ago

It's not just Trump. The conservative movement has been actively discrediting all sources of information but themselves for many years. During the election, some of the conservative opinionators (bloggers, radio, etc.) who opposed Trump observed that they had no way to credibly contradict Trump in the eyes of their readers, as they had delegitimatized all other sources of information.

astrodust 10y ago
It's not just the Republicans that are eager to cut scientists off from the media and the public. The Conservative party in Canada did exactly the same thing, much to the dismay of scientists and the public: http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/when-science-goes-silent/ http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/when-science-goes-silent/ They also infamously shut down a climate research centre that was keeping ice-core samples frozen. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tories-cutting-vital-climate-science-critics-say http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tories-cutting-vita... Anything that contradicts the messaging of a modern "conservative" party is something that must be destroyed.
scholia 10y ago
Yes. BI ran a good story on this: http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudge-coulter-2016-8 http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudg...