sebastian_dangerfield |
02-09-2018 10:51 AM |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
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Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
(Post 513154)
Hey, Sebby. Read the first six or seven paragraphs of this. And then tell me that Trump isn't really doing anything different from what Obama did, he's just doing it moreso. Tell me you really believe that.
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It's probably best to respond to the centerpiece quote there:
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Trump is] basically openly mocking the idea that words in politics mean anything at all.
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Agreed. I'm not going to get all Safire on you here, but this is part of a much bigger conversation of the abuses and limitations of language generally.
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Say what you want about calling your opponents traitors and wanting it taken seriously, at least it’s an ethos. But then, that’s the subversive, somewhat cleansing but ultimately corrosive part of Trump’s brand of political performance art: he’s talking to people who by and large think that politicians never mean anything they say, and he’s out there telling them, you’re right.
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Have you worked in politics? Half of the time, politicians are lying. There's no way to satisfy all of the public, and you have to triangulate every issue. You have to lie, constantly, to survive and get anything done.
Most of the voters shouldn't be allowed to vote. You can't give 100% of the truth to these people. Talk to ten random "everymen" on the street and ask them some questions about policy. Fuck that.... Just watch Jimmy Kimmel do it in his "man on the street" bits.
Trump is right. The question is whether it is dangerous to tell the public they're being lied to a lot of the time.
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We can say anything we want and none of it matters. It’s all a racket.
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This is where Trump may go too far. To be a politician gives you a limited license to lie as necessary. He grossly abuses the privilege for whatever expedient ends he desires in the moment. Much more so than his exclamations about everything being fake news, this plunges us into a vacuum where there is no way to ascertain facts from fiction. This is truly dangerous and unique -- unlike all predecessors in his office.
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Hey, how ’bout you and I call each other traitors and then punch the clock at the end of the day and get a drink together? Maybe our political class really has earned being treated this way, but every time Trump does it, he makes it harder to rebuild the broken norms he inherited and has treated with such contempt.
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What Trump is doing is potentially dangerous, but entirely rational. If you're faced with numerous adversaries, and at an insurmountable power disadvantage within a game, but you have the power to potentially flip the entire board, scatter the pieces, and start a new game, you have to attempt to do so.
Past Presidents have lied in limited manners, usually with plausible deniability, out of necessity. That was within the accepted rules of the game. You are correct that Trump is a new thing. He is lying with the intent of blowing up the game. You might say this is treasonous. And it might be. But from another angle, it might just be a natural expansion of the game. When the rules make winning as you desire impossible, what else is a player to do? And who gets to decide what rules may not be broken? The people who were previously winning?
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