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I know it's an extremely antisocial position but I can't help but feel like most of Trump's immigration policies and outrageous tweets are just bait to keep our
by rcpt 10y ago
I know it's an extremely antisocial position but I can't help but feel like most of Trump's immigration policies and outrageous tweets are just bait to keep our attention away from big money legislation that the 1% wants to get through.
For example, the Keystone XL and Dakota access pipelines were heavily debated, protested, and ultimately rejected under Obama but Trump just signed orders to have them built and Sam's post doesn't even mention it. Seeing Sam write about the accusations of voter fraud instead brings this quote to mind:
> The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....
- Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
- oh_sigh 10y ago> are just bait to keep our attention away from big money legislation that the 1% wants to get through. I really doubt that, considering a vast majority of the 1% supported Hillary.
- rcpt 10y agoI'm not sure that Hillary "public and private positions" Clinton is much better in this regard. Don't get me wrong I'd much rather she won. But even with her in power I think I'd still be concerned that wealth inequality and climate change would continue to get sidelined in favor of never ending battles about racism, lgbt issues, and misogyny.
- jack9 10y agoI don't think that's true. I don't think you hear from the "vast majority" of the 1%
- burkaman 10y agoI've heard the exact opposite, people saying Trump's orders on highly controversial but minor-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things pipelines are cover for his less tangible but much more damaging moves on immigration and refugees. As to your last point, it is not unreasonable to ask the president for evidence when he challenges a core pillar of our society. It is good that hugely significant yet baseless opinions are not considered acceptable, especially for people in power.
- rcpt 10y agoI have not heard that. It doesn't even make sense to me given what's actually getting covered in the press is immigration, his crazy tweets, and gross comments on a bus.
- burkaman 10y agoWell, neither of these ideas make sense. He's just going through his list of priorities and trying to do what he promised to do. Maybe his tweets are a deliberate smokescreen, but his executive orders are not.
- lordnacho 10y agoMaybe it's a lot simpler: Shoot off a whole barrage of policies that are all controversial, and watch the opposition implode as they are unused to debating more than one large matter at a time.
- geofft 10y agoIt's both. He knows that if he does a million outrageous things, some fraction of them will get through. Everything is there to distract us from everything; there isn't anything he's doing that's particularly less serious.