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I didn't say it gave an accurate impression of his personal ideas, I said that reading it would help people understand his appeal, since it convinced many of hi
by tlb 10y ago
I didn't say it gave an accurate impression of his personal ideas, I said that reading it would help people understand his appeal, since it convinced many of his supporters.
It's usually a mistake to focus too much on the personal limitations of the front man. Like assuming that because Robert Plant wasn't a good guitar player, Led Zeppelin must not be a good band. It's better to understand the ideas in the book (and campaign generally) as belonging to his team, which includes intellectuals who do read books and have very clear ideas. Some of them are now policymakers in the administration, so those ideas will affect our future whether or not Trump came up with them.
- jacobolus 10y agoCan you give an example of who you consider to be the “intellectual” with “very clear ideas” behind Trump’s team’s ideology/agenda? Are we talking about Bannon and Miller here? Kushner? Priebus and Ryan? Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani? Vladimir Putin? The Koch brothers? Anyhow, nobody in Trump’s new administration had anything to do with writing his book. In practice most of Trump’s policy agenda is going along with the standard GOP playbook of deregulating environmental pollution, cutting funding to reproductive healthcare, eliminating taxes on the wealthiest, restricting labor rights, slashing funding for scientific research, privatizing infrastructure and public institutions, boosting weapons spending, and so on. There has been a lot of thought put into these (it’s worth billions of dollars to donors) but I wouldn’t really call it intellectual per se: intellectually dishonest obfuscation of the intended outcomes is half the purpose of these plans. Trump’s “signature ideas” like deporting all Muslims, imposing a 20% tariff on imports, “bringing back” all the coal jobs, growing the economy by 4% per year, and building a wall and making Mexico pay for it are pretty much all Trump, and are doomed to fail.
- jacobolus 10y agoOr maybe Alex Jones? https://news.vice.com/story/infowars-alex-jones-says-he-and-trump-talk-on-the-phone https://news.vice.com/story/infowars-alex-jones-says-he-and-...