Slashdot Mirror
How Donald Trump Uses Twitter As a Weapon of Fear
HughPickens.com writes: Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman write in the NYT that with his enormous online platform of six million followers, Donald Trump has used Twitter to badger and humiliate those who have dared cross him during the presidential race, latching on to their vulnerabilities, mocking their physical characteristics, personality quirks and, sometimes, their professional setbacks. Trump has made statements that have later been exposed as false or deceptive — only after they have ricocheted across the Internet. For example, Cheri Jacobus, a Republican political strategist, did not think she had done anything out of the ordinary: On a cable television show, she criticized Donald J. Trump for skipping a debate in Iowa in late January and described him as a "bad debater." Trump took to Twitter, repeatedly branding Jacobus as a disappointed job seeker who had begged to work for his campaign and had been rejected. "We said no and she went hostile," Trump wrote. "A real dummy!" Trump's campaign manager told the same story on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." For days, Trump's followers replied to his posts with demeaning, often sexually charged insults aimed at Jacobus, including several with altered, vulgar photographs of her face.
(continued)
This week, Trump sent out a menacing message on Twitter about the Ricketts family, a wealthy clan of Republican political donors, after it was reported that Marlene Ricketts donated $3 million to a group opposed to Trump's candidacy. "They better be careful," Trump wrote of the family, "they have a lot to hide!" "It's a little surreal when Donald Trump threatens your mom," Marlene Ricketts's son, Tom, later told reporters.
It is not just that Trump has a skill for zeroing in on an individual's soft spot and hammering at it. It is that he sets a tone of aggression against the person, and his supporters echo and amplify it. Jacobus sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump and his top aide, citing electronic messages that showed the Trump campaign had courted her and not the other way around. "I have been trashed and ruined on Twitter," Jacobus says adding that Trump's lawyers had responded to her letter, but that they had not yet reached a resolution. "At what point does it cross the line into something that's defamatory and might be actionable?" says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who leads the Internet safety group WiredSafety. "At what point does it cross the line into encouraging violence against groups and individuals?"
It is not just that Trump has a skill for zeroing in on an individual's soft spot and hammering at it. It is that he sets a tone of aggression against the person, and his supporters echo and amplify it. Jacobus sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump and his top aide, citing electronic messages that showed the Trump campaign had courted her and not the other way around. "I have been trashed and ruined on Twitter," Jacobus says adding that Trump's lawyers had responded to her letter, but that they had not yet reached a resolution. "At what point does it cross the line into something that's defamatory and might be actionable?" says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who leads the Internet safety group WiredSafety. "At what point does it cross the line into encouraging violence against groups and individuals?"
since everyone makes fun of Trump's hair at least
wusses
Mod articles as trolls?
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
Isn’t a ‘weapon of fear’ what terrorists use?
In today's politics news:
A blond raccoon was caught lying on the internet. Here's Bernie with the weather.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
It's been my theory all along that Trump is trolling the Republican party. I am also not much surprised that this has been an effective method for gaining support from some of their followers.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
This is the Century of Fear. Everybody promotes fear. It's what they use to make us willingly offer up our dignity and our freedom.
What's being described here is use of media not as a "weapon of fear", but as an all-out weapon of attack.
Trump has made statements that have later been exposed as false or deceptive â" only after they have ricocheted across the Internet.
Oh, NOW you complain about this. Is this not in fact the way the internet has worked since day one? Is this not in fact the very premise the entire news industry is based on?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was hoping that this kind of article wouldn't be showing up any more on the "new" Slashdot. I'm digging the new DICE-less Slashdot (and I even downloaded something from SourceForge for the first time in years!), and while this is obviously not a democracy, MHO is that if I want to read superficial and partisan social networking commentaries, I would seek them out (or not!) somewhere else--not on slashdot.
What the hell is this snot-blob doing as a FP article?
Do you really think the Germans in Weimar Germany really thought it was going to end up in humiliating defeat, division or Gas Chambers when they elected Hitler?
Nope.
... would responding to a person putting up $3 million dollars to a PAC specifically to smear your candidacy be judged as bullying. Are we really supposed to believe that negative campaign ads are ok because they're being carried out by someone's poor defenseless billionaire mother?
Oh, but we're supposed to hate Trump because he has money...
Do you ameritards even fathom the level of effort the rest of the world goes trough to not laugh the planet out of orbit ?
So you're saying that Trump is just like Anita Sarkeesian?
A pathological narcissist, a skilled liar, and possibly a sociopath.
But an eloquent speaker who so far hasn't actually shown any concrete plans on how he plans to guide america.
But very good at spewing mindless rhetoric that people seem to eat up, or at least enjoy watching the clown-car circus that the debates have devolved into.
I fear a showdown between him and Clinton for the highest power in the land. Or in the words of Alien vs. Predator "No matter who wins, we lose"
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
WTF...biased comments are expected (and sort of desired) but can we at least pretend try to keep the initial articles about the technology and not biased.
Oh and when is the new mgmt going to fire timothy
We should never allow speech to become 'actionable'. If you want to act, do it against the followers, they are the more dangerous part of the equation.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
>> Donald Trump has used Twitter to badger and humiliate those who have dared cross him
Er, I suppose, but when's the last time anyone actually read their Twitter feed? Or is this story about people dumb enough to read and react to what this guy says?
So he's a rich white businessman, he doesn't practice what he preaches and he's a liar. Yeah, he's totally the opposite of everything Washington stands for.
I would rather have a jerk trying to run the country than a puppet for Koch and friends, I'm really interesting to see if the RNC will let him actually represent them or if something will happen on the way to the convention. Now that the Koch brothers are pushing Rubio I expect him to get better coverage but I think that Trump would make for an interesting 4 years. I don't think that 4 years under Trump would be as bad as 4 years under the Koch brothers.
( http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/top-koch-brothers-official-jumps-marco-rubio-s-campaign-n524336 )
Is this not considered libel? Is that legal now?
So this is clearly a subjective, politically motivated posting. For example, we don't hear the other side of the story, etc. Love or hate Trump, I come to this site for news for nerds, not clap trap about the actions of some candidate. Frankly they all suck, and so holding one higher--or lower as the case may be--is vapid at best. Drop the slanted political "news" and get back to what we come to Slash Dot for.
I don't want a jerk -or- a corporate puppet. Sadly, the GOP doesn't appear to be all that concerned with finding someone that doesn't fit into at least one of those categories. I almost think they purposefully encourage candidates like Dr. Carson to apply to make the jerks and puppets look that much more appealing.
When it comes to the position of the President of the United States, I don't believe a "lesser of two evils" strategy should ever be presented as an option.
So what I'm getting is that Trump is using Twitter in the exact same way the SJWs use Twitter, but because it's Trump doing it, now it's bad.
Mm-kay.
The problem Twitter has is that it's become a platform for building outrage. People use retweets as a weapon to get their followers to harass people they disagree with. They'll post small, out of context quotes solely for the purpose of building rage. When it's SJWs or the likes of [only] Black Lives Matter doing it, that's fine, and Twitter is all about how cool activism is on their platform.
When Trump does it, now it's the end of the world and we've got to stop those evil people by blocking them.
Uh, no. Either ban both, or ban neither.
No wonder kids nowadays are such pussies, it turns out that the adults that raised them might be even bigger pussies. "Oh no! Someone said something nasty about me on Twitter!!! What shall I do!?!" Has the world come to the point where someone bad mouthing them has such horrible effect on their lives that they live in fear? If Trump publishing a libel, then sue him. Starting lies that damage one's career or incites another to commit violence is a crime.
I thought that leftists and social justice supporters (who generally oppose Trump) were fully in support of public shaming, especially when it's done online using social media platforms. It is one of their preferred tactics, after all. I mean, there was all that Kony 2012 nonsense, that incident where a couple of programmers were harassed for using the word "dongle", then the faux outrage over "manspreading", and numerous other incidents.
Maybe this is just another example of them being dirty hypocrites, where they're willing to do something to somebody else, but are totally against it happening to them too?
Does Trump even know what Twitter is? Last I checked, Twitter was run by SJW fascists. Nice to see those guys now posting on slashdot 24/7. Slashdot is becoming a sewer for leftwing propaganda. If I wanted propaganda written by 12 year old kids who scream Nazi and Kosh every 10 seconds, I'd just go to MSNBC.
If only Twitter could appoint a committee with Anita Sarkeesian in charge to ban all those nasty conservatives who abuse their "free speech" to say things good liberals find offensive.
Oh wait, they already have.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And here people complain all too often about politicians who don't understand technology. Well, you got what you wanted. Are you not entertained?
And slashdot is trying again?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
(I notice the highly commented article is conspicuously absent from the "you might also like to read" list)
"Oooh, he's such a meany.. he's so mean, like gamer gater mean... only Democrats can be so mean to Republicans on twitter so Trump should be bannnnnned"
You're arguing for anti-bullying speech on one post while simultaneously posting articles calling for the heads of other "non-slashdot" approved persons on others using the exact same bullying tactics being decried here (or have you read your own comment sections? (Including this one)
Stop this free speech for me not for thee crap.
I hope the new owners of slashdot can still be swayed. Talking about politics is a small industry, with many radio programs, and a few cable channels. The professional pundits and news junkies tend to know where they stand, and be more knowledgeable. Discussion about tech, is a fringe topic.
I don't want to see geeks talk about politics. The people on dedicated political websites, like www.democraticunderground.com and www.freerepublic.com tend to be more knowledgeable on politics, and do a better job talking about it, than the people at slashdot. Politics is also a very polarizing topic.
A pathological narcissist, a skilled liar, and possibly a sociopath.
Ya know, you're right. After reading your post, I've had a realization that Trump is everything YOU say he is, and am switching my support to $YourCandidate.
It works if you're an insider, because other insiders are the ones who give you campaign money. If a politician says something slightly controversial, the press takes it to an unreasonable extreme and spashes it everywhere, your big-money donations dry up, and you end up spending less on your campaign. And the candidate that spends the most money wins the election(*).
Unreasonable extreme? Trump is compared unfavorably to Hitler, he's the "nightmare scenario", his presidency is "too terrible to contemplate". I just read an article that started "Trump will be elected, and this will start humanity's dark final chapter".
Trump is a populist candidate, his support comes from the people, not the elites. He plays the media like a violin, using it for free advertising and otherwise ignoring the insiders.
(I read an article where one of the Koch brothers was quoted "You’d think we could have more influence".)
His statements are not "mindless rhetoric", they're just ignored, pushed out of context, and ridiculed. No one *anywhere* posts a discussion of why building a wall is a bad idea, or whether having a temporary ban on muslims from conflict areas can't be done, or whether simplifying the US tax code is a good idea.
You think he's Alien vs. Predator? Call him Cthulhu for all we care.
No one cares what you say.
(*) True to a high degree of probability in the high-level elections, less so at the state and local level.
Meh. It's not like the IRS is auditing them or anything.
Here's how to fight the Donald:
"I hear that Trump fucks goats. I don't say that, others have. People keep asking me, 'is it true that Trump fucks goats?' This is a serious question and it's going to be a problem for Trump. I think that Trump should get a directed opinion from the courts that he does not fuck goats. Trump has to deal with this and he should answer to why he's not dealing with this. Americans want to know, does Trump fuck goats?"
Why do his opponents, both inside and outside his party, not understand this? Trump raises fake issues but disclaims any responsibility or role in raising the issue. Then he gets his opponents to talk about the fake issue. Thus Trump controls the agenda and discussion.
There are other tactics as well, for dealing with such a character. None of Donald's opponents seem to know the first thing about survival tactics in such a situation.
one big difference between Republicans and Democrats is that by and by, most Democrats tend to like their party. Most Republicans barely stomach their own party.
In other words, Democrats by and large are delusional and Republicans by and large are realists.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ad hominem attacks instead of reasoned debate are considered NORMAL on every internet forum now. So much so, that I'm sure someone on /. will just call me names instead of citing trustworthy sources to refute my argument. Apparently, on the 'net, arguments are won by the biggest dick, with the most spare time to repeatedly post insults... yeah, that does sound like Trump, doesn't it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
latching on to their vulnerabilities, mocking their physical characteristics, personality quirks and, sometimes, their professional setbacks.
I didn't realize Trump was a Twitter SJW.
timothy, the SJW poster, strikes again.
Big suprise it is politically bigoted, and anti-free speech.
You're comments have no credibility when all you do is swear at someone from behind the cloak of anonymity.
FWIW I completely agree with GP. This article has no place on slashdot. There are millions of blogs to read about Trump's tweets, Hillary's misstatements, etc., etc. You want to scream at people endlessly about the day's political stories? Go somewhere else.
That is a question very much open for debate.
You seem to think his rhetoric is mindless but not all of it is.
Or in the words of Alien vs. Predator "No matter who wins, we lose"
At least with Trump we may be farmed for sport instead of wholly harvested on the spot for our valuable chest cavities.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Twitteer is a washed up service used by the washed up.
While we're out here promoting our opinions on the subject of slashdot's Politics section, I'd like to throw my dissenting opinion into the ring.
... but seriously :P)
While you're certainly right that many stories under the Politics section indeed have little to nothing to do with news for nerds, oftentimes they still focus on stuff that matters. Many slashdotters come here not for the tech-focused stories [see also: rtfa], but to enjoy reasoned discussion with their nerdy brethren. See, for example, I cite a post I made the other day, about an admittedly controversial subject: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That subject is no better of a fit for the themes slashdot tends to focus on than is this Trump story, but check it out. That discussion went on for days while staying shockingly civil, levelheaded, objective (particularly the thread with Sun, for which I'm still working on a conciliatory reply). I don't know of many other forums for online discussion where this is even plausible, and that is the reason I encourage the new ownership to not abandon one of the few remaining outlets for such dialog.
tl;dr: Politics on slashdot is awesome because it's still possible to have discussions rooted in reason. At least until the libertarians come out. (I kid, I kid...
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
For days, Trump's followers replied to his posts with demeaning, often sexually charged insults aimed at Jacobus, including several with altered, vulgar photographs of her face.
You mean like the left did to Katherine Harris, Monica Lewniski, and Linda Tripp?
It is not just that Trump has a skill for zeroing in on an individual's soft spot and hammering at it. It is that he sets a tone of aggression against the person, and his supporters echo and amplify it
You mean like how the Clinton's, the democrat party machine and the media targeting all the women Bill Clinton raped?
Seems a little late to get your panties in a twist over these tactics.
Or is this story about people dumb enough to read and react to what this guy says?
Curiously, a lot of hay has been made about Trump's support from uneducated voters, largely from this poll, page 36, which puts percent of supporters with "college degree" at 46%.
The press, of course, is quick to point out that 46% is less than half, so they proclaim far and wide that his supporters are "mostly uneducated".
What the press doesn't note, however, is that 70 % of Americans don't have a degree.
Trumps supporters are more educated than the population average.
Feel free to call us dumb, it helps us change our vote to $your candidate!
(Oh, hey! Want to go out behind the trailer and shoot at beer cans with my .22?)
Just amazing. Any other season and the "Ricketts family" are a bunch of filthy 1%'ers exploiting their privilege to steal us all blind. Now suddenly their sympathetic figures we must commiserate with against teh ebil Trump. Any other time a Republican political strategist such as Cheri Jacobus would be pilloried as the enabler of planet wreckers that should be in a gulag with the rest of the racist climate deniers that pay her. Today, however, she is a "victim", because Trump tweeted about her.
Sue him. Give him another target to beat on and another couple points in the polls.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The difference is that politicians in the past would stretch, spin, and skew the truth, but tried to stop short of outright breaking it.
If you really, really believe that I feel extremely sorry for you.
Trump does this less than most. His main deal is just that he's abrasive and doesn't shy away from "forbidden" topics which most professional politicians will not issue real statements about, just vague words than mean nothing.
No other candidate does so poorly on this rating, but Trump simply doesn't care about truth at all.
No, Trump simply doesn't care what you and others think. The difference is that in your own mind you are creating lies where really there is only your own burning hatred, that is consuming you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I see with this election is the complete loss of civility. Nothing of substance is being said, it's simple mud slinging.
Candidate X: "Mr. Trump, your idea is a bad one and here's why"
Trump: "You're a dummy and your mother wished she'd aborted you with a coat hanger"
Crowd: "*cheers*"
Candidate X: "But what about your idea..."
Trump: "Did I mention you're ugly too!"
Candidate X: "I'm leaving... this is pointless"
Trump: "Yup, there's goes a loser!"
Crowd: "You're the best!!!"
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I personally take the harden the fuck up stance usually but when its coming from a potential world leader.. sigh
fix your shit america its getting out of hand
To me this is like the end of Blazing Saddles where the large fight spills over into the studio cafeteria. Now there's nowhere to escape electioneering and the many minions pulling strings left and right.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's fairly simple to deal with this, just handle it the way you handle any insurgency.
I find you non-mil people amusing sometimes, you don't get how everyone hates the Elitists.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Trump up 10 points in polls.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Politicians are expected to lie. But that's half the reason why we want an outsider - we want someone that IS NOT a politician. That means we can sue them for lying.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I still vote that election time should be used more importantly as a fucktard census in which we single out groups of complete retards, who will willingly identify themselves ad nauseam by backing a similarly retarded candidate, and exile or kill them. Sorry. It should happen.
...only there's no teacher to show up and rescue his victims, no adult to punish him for abusing the other kids. Wait, isn't this what "The Lord of the Flies" was about? In any event, he acts more of a like a angry boss than a visionary leader. In government I thinks that's called a "dictator."
You do the same to him and he whines and cries like the spanked little bitch that he is.
>> Or is this story about people dumb enough to read and react to what this guy says?
I.e anyone actually participating in the façade of the electoral process. I believe you answered your question. No one with a political identity and an idea what needs to happen would even consider reading twitter.
Nine out of ten people enjoyed gang rape.
Of course, this was accused of being a rape joke rather than a blatantly obvious example of why argumentum ad populum is a completely shit idea, and why you need a government that will protect the minority from the majority view.
"They better be careful," Trump wrote of the family, "they have a lot to hide!"
It is wrong for him to do investigations of political opponents, and could be used to get the case thrown out.
It was wrong for the IRS to be misused in this way under Obama.
It was wrong for the IRS to be misused this way under Nixon.
It was wrong, when S&P downgraded the US's bond rating, for Obama to announce a redoubled effort investigating them to see if there was anything they could tag them with as punishment.
This is the purpose of warrant requirements, and the banning of general warrants, so those in power could not go fishing around for something illegal to tag uppity oppoonenta with.
Boo Trump.
Boo Obama.
Boo Nixon.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Trump is a racist blame-and-excuse machine
So is that based on your own direct reading of Trump's work, or on the blame-and-excuse machine that is left leaning media?
Because your terms and words and phrases all seem to echo awfully closely to a party line, without any evidence to be seen... we are just supposed to believe what you say is true why again? Because of a bunch of people who think just like you said the same thing?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm a libertarian but have voted for candidates of all parties,
I stand looking in both goldfish tanks from the outside. Whenever one of you claims the slime in one tank is better than the other, I call you out.
It's quite telling you assumed I was a Republican simply because I said something you didn't like - how much more insular can you get? There are only people who agree with you and The Other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So when a social justice warrior does it, this is fine, but politics - notoriously the province of rough personal behavior, this is just terrible? I'm sensing a real double standard here.
Trump supporters have brought shame and embarrassment upon the entire United States of America. Two cycles ago Howard Dean did a goofy yell and his campaign collapsed. Trump has said so many bad things it is a wonder he still is standing.
Other politicians would be afraid of financial ruin from slandering so many.
Core Bush administration lackeys aren't in jail, and I don't care what side of the aisle you are on, if you're an honest person you have to believe that a great many should be. In light of that to claim then that the Obama administration uses its power to punish people it doesn't like is insane.
The Tea Party existed in the minds of leftists as a boogeyman. Similar to Hillary Clinton's "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" a paranoid delusion.
Up to 2010, we saw the huge protests, and for a short time I actually thought it was a real movement. Those disappeared and no protests since then, once Boehner got elected, so clearly it was a "Elect Boehner Speaker" movement and not really there.
The movement has disappeared and is dead. There are many R's who say they are TP but they're TPINOs.
For example the "new speaker" is allegedly a Tea Party type, but quickly acted just like Boehner. "
Here is the new boss, same as the old boss.
There is no Tea Party. It is dead.
Whatever you think of Trump he had forced leftists into the position of sometimes having to defend Reps like Rubio and Cruz. The apple cart is not upset, it's rolled all the way down the hill.
If Trump somehow managed to become president, I would worry about his brash nature flippantly deciding to launch WW3.
Simply put, Trump is a "demagogue", as were Hitler and Stalin, that doesn't mean he is inherently evil, it means he is using the same psychological tools to gain power. He has already divided and conquered the GOP with an old fashioned xenophobic wedge, it will take them decades to recover their solidarity. Right now the rest of the planet are just crossing their fingers hoping the American people will stop humouring this wannabe tyrant BEFORE he gets to the whitehouse and starts pushing buttons just to see what happens.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Clinton has been for then against ant then for anything she talks about, to a vastly greater extent than any other candidate of any party.
Her points are equally vague if you examine them at all. Look at what happened when in an interview she was asked the simple question "Would you lie to the American people", she hemmed and hawed and would not say yes or no. That is Clinton to the core, never giving a real answer when an implication will do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lefty leftists lefting leftily. Nothing new to see here...
How "anyone" uses "anything" as a weapon of "something" by some "random" person.
Out of all the Americans, I have yet to see anyone say "we as a Country need to sit down and come to an understanding that everyone is different, everyone needs something and we are all in this together", until that happens, the USA will always remain divided.
I kinda hope Trumps wins the republican nomination, if only for the fact that he would instantly rename everything to TRUMP and change the party color to gold or purple.
He is just loud, self funded and he is not a career politician and this year that's all it takes to excite people. When it comes to his twitter put downs, they aren't in any way masterful or really even all that useful, they just ensure that his name constantly gets bumped from his tweets and then of course the media coverage on this tweets. Trumps use of the already established GOP key issues and the fact that he is not one of them is his winning combination, being self funded clearly helps/allows such a rather risky strategy, which does not seem likely to pay off in the general election since we have most of the top conservative money donors opposing Trump. If Trump does win those rich GOP string pullers are going to keep attacking him like they did Obama and much of GOP congress will obstruct him when told to by their sponsors. The question is what happens after the first 2 years of Trump and GOP/Dem obstruction. Well, if I know my American's, they will want to blame Trump, but I don't think it would be hard for Trump to actively deflect the blame to congress because of the long term obstruction strategy. Trump is a direct result of the GOP obstruction policy against Obama and for that matter all liberals. Refusing to play ball is not a valid political strategy than anyone can market for very long and the GOP did it too long. Now 50% of their base hate them so much they've abandoned any real concern for the core conservative issues of abortion, gun control. Trump was pro-choice and pro assault weapon ban back in 2000, so right before 2001 Donald was a liberal. Sometimes around 2011 he re-invents himself as a republican. He is using the hate to legitimize himself as a conservatve because he has to in order to get his foot in the door, it's a sacrifice play of sorta. In all reality he wants as much of the hispanic vote as he can get, but he needs to defend himself from the obvious line of attack... Donald is not a real conservative. If he wants he can even come clean in the general election and admit that he just said that to win the primary because it was cheaper/easier than going Independent right from the start. If the GOP tries to block him at the delegates he can go Independent and claim to basically be running against the entire government. In those scenarios he might do even better against Hilary. If the GOP attacks Trump for the entire rest of the primary it's going to hurt him more than it helps. Being the outsider is great, but long term spending on hate ads is almost always effective and it leaves Trump with nobody to attack back because it's not even a candidate that is going after him. I'm not sure they can stop Trump, but every conservative state is going to try and along with millions in attack against from the conservative party Trump will come out with to face Hilary with a lot more secrets exposed and then face the DNCs attack line. Trump is a better speaker and attack artist than Hilary, but Trump has never been attacked like he be over the remainder of the primary and general election. Being rich all his life will have helped very much to keep his secrets secret, but some will play out badly for him in the media. Oddly enough the GOP and the DNC will have similar attack ads this year. For Democrats it's mostly a win win situation. Trump is far left of anyone we've seen come close to winning as the GOP candidate since Reagan or perhaps even before and that's great for overall reform of the US because the GOP is clearly the party that needs the most reform and it's where the dumbest and most racist BS almost seems to originate. Trump can't push through legislation if he wins, but he has already created the most serious debate about reforming the GOP since Goldwater. Even if Trump attacks Congress with his all it's unlikely he'd see anything resembling a Trump friendly congress withing 6 years, that's just how voting works in the US. It is not possible to thoroughly sweep congress in just one election and voters almost always give up when they don't get what they want in the first two years. I d
When politicians scream that he has no plan, or has been vague, or cannot be trusted to do what he says... typical politicians do not seem to notice that these attacks fail PRECISELY because THEY have no actual plans, have been vague, and have not follwed-through on what they previously said.
When they freak out and point to his wacky ways with social media, it only highlights THEIR less-competent social media activity.
When establishment Republicans try to scare the base of their party by pointing at Trump and shrieking that he's "not a real conservative", they seem oblivious to the fact the about 70% of the base of the party now rejects the idea that the Republicans in DC are in any way conservative.
When politicians in both parties exclaim that he's just an entertainer and has been on a reality show, the Republicans do so in apparent envy and the Democrats do so in between appearances on Ellen, fundraisers with Spielberg, and hanging out with the Kardashians etc.
The Washington DC/New Your City corridor has become America's palace of versailles where a completely incompetent and fully out-of-touch political and cultural elite are ruining the nation while being so isolated that they cannot even comprehend a reason why the populace might be upset. ALL of them, Democrats AND Republicans continue to do whatever Wall Street pays them to do, without regard to the damage being done to the average citizen or to the nation. There are reasons why Hillary is willing to take all the hits for hiding her e-mails, hiding the transcripts of her speeches to bankers,etc rather than letting the public see them. There are reasons why Democrats have campaigned for universal single-payer healthcare since the 1920s but then when they had total super-majority control of the government they implemented Obamacare which forces all Americans to buy very expensive insurance from the big insurance companies. There are reasons why the GOP in DC who always campaign as small-government and national-security conservatives keep passing muti-trillion dollar Obama budgets that fully-fund all the government growth and failing to do the most-basic element of national security (securing the border). Neither party has the interest of the public at heart any more; they get their money from the very same Wall St investor class. They are all running the same play: Lie to the voters to get elected and then do the bidding of their paymasters, then energize the base voters for the next fight by claiming some shadowy conspiracy has prevented them from doing what they promised.
The Trumpster has them all flumoxed because he's actually a very sharp guy who seems to have done what any good businessman does: see a ripe market that is unfilled, and step into with a product that might be less-than-ideal but is superior to what the existing providers have been offering the consumers. I'm not a Trump supporter....I currently see myself as opposing everybody else, but not quite ready to support a Trump. Like many people, I am uncertain about whether he means half of what he says and what direction he would go if elected. What I am certain of is that he is at least as honorable and honest and principled as all the other politicians (ha ha) and unlike the rest he seems to have a brain and a strategy for his own success. This is going to be a very entertaining campaign year as long as Trump is in the running, so I'm firing up the popcorn. Can't wait for this fall's Trump/Clinton venom-fest where the billionaire and the politician he purchased each try to convince the public that the other is a dirtbag, and the GOP establishment tries to understand how the election system they rigged to work this way bit them in the collective butts. Reminder: after the 2012 Romney debacle, the GOP leaders re-aligned all the rules for 2016 so the election calendar and the way certain states would be proportional and others winner-take-all in order to guarantee Jeb!, as a guy with a huge war chest full of cash, would be able to quickly grab the nom
1. Most of the voters for famous Democrats Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK and LBJ were not college educated, so by your metric THOSE guys were all losers too. Without the less-educated and the completely uneducated, no Democrat could win an election. The Democrats are importing poor uneducated people into the US as fast as they can under Obama for a REASON: they want a permanent poor-and-uneducated ethnic population guaranteed to vote for them - and they keep bragging that the demographic shift they are creating will make Republicans a permanent minority in politics - effectively converting America into a one-party-state like China.
2. The highly-educated (by which one means those who have soaked their brains longer on a college campus, which is generally run by adults who have spent much of their lives hiding from the real world in their ivory towers) are often very foolish. Wisdom has little in common with either intelligence or education. This is part of why so many intellectuals have so enthusiastically supported the most evil and bloody regimes and ideologies in world history.
3. The New York Times is a slimy outfit that famously hid, and knowingly lied about, Stalin's massacre of MILLIONS of innocent people (which dwarfed the evils of the evil 3rd Reich) because they agreed with Stalin's communist ideology.
4. You leftists always chat-up communism ans socialism which are built on the idea that the stupid uneducated masses should be in control of everything (though, secretly, leftists always presume THEY and their college-frat buddies will be an elite group in control of the masses)
5. All you people who clamor about democracy and want to eliminate the Electoral College (as un-democratic) and embrace socialism are the VERY LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH who should be upset that somebody appeals to the "uneducated masses". You are HYPOCRITES.
It was hillarious to see Trump poke fun at his opponents on election night by loudly announcing that he won among so many groups including the "less educated" and then announce that he loved the "less-educated" voters; THEIR votes, which everybody else insult and oddly seem to say do not matter or are not respectable, are every bit as valid and count just as much as the morons with PhDs who supported the idiot currently in the White House. His supporters who are used to being called stupid were in on the joke, which was why they cheered when he said it. Somehow, all the less-educated voters were just GREAT when they voted for Obama. Obama, for example, won by turning-out over 90% of the Black vote - and certainly SOME of that vote was less-educated (NOT cited here for skin color reasons, but because THAT population uniquely turned-out at that high percentage and NO population is 90% highly-educated - so it works to expose the issue)
On a cable television show, she criticized Donald J. Trump for skipping a debate in Iowa in late January and described him as a "bad debater."
That's completely untrue. I saw and listened to him, and felt that he proved himself as a master in this area.
It is all as foretold in the gospel of Neal Stephenson, 1992: Snow Crash:
When Hiro pulls, what's left of the guy's head twists around, but the antenna doesn't come loose. And that's how Hiro figures out that this isn't a headset at all. The antenna has been permanently grafted onto the base of the man's skull. Hiro switches his goggles into millimeter-wave radar and stares into the man's ruined head. The antenna is attached to the skull by means of short screws that go into the bone, but do not pierce all the way through. The base of the antenna contains a few microchips, whose purpose Hiro cannot divine by looking at them. But nowadays you can put a supercomputer on a single chip, so anytime you see more than one chip together in one place, you're looking at significant warez. A single hair-thin wire emerges from the base of the antenna and penetrates the skull. It passes straight through to the brainstem and then branches and rebranches into a network of invisibly tiny wires embedded in the brain tissue. Coiled around the base of the tree. Which explains why this guy continues to pump out a steady stream of Raft babble even when his brain is missing: It looks like L. Bob Rife has figured out a way to make electrical contact with the part of the brain where Asherah lives. These words aren't originating here. It's a pentecostal radio broadcast coming through on his antenna.
Stephenson quaintly describes a small computer wired into the brain with a Motorola phone rubber ducky to communicate with the hive mind. When this was written In 1992 the human race had yet to enter the Information age. CompuServe and AOL were not even connected to Internet. It was generally believed that unless specialized hardware was used it would be impossible to subvert our natural desire to think and act independently, attentive to the world around us. How could Stephenson have known?
Computers and networks did exist in 1992 but people still considered 'computer time' to be an activity separate from life itself. Computing was a visceral act. Turning on a computing lamp, we approached the computer --- it never approached us. We'd pick it up, feeling its familiar weight and thumping its spine and crack it open, slowly leafing through pages of compute. More ardent computerers preferred the 'scroll', where the words moved up or down... but always in whole-line jumps, not the jarring and unnerving smooth scrolling of today. But the Tumblr was years in the future. Those ancient scrolls had a beginning and an end and you could clearly see them and operate the cranks. And when you reached the end you went straight to bed. The phones of 1992 were smarter than some people but stupider than most. They did not get along with computers very well, not without hoots and whistles and occasional cursing. Even then computers were smarter than most people but few felt threatened by this, and those who did could easily walk away. There was no need to run, and the computer did not follow them.
What also happened during this time on phones is now only spoken of in a whisper, SMS messaging. SMS left permanent scars on the virtual landscape, whole burnt-out cities of wasted business potential and personal financial ruin. It is impossible to assess the damage. It was and still remains a financial success for communications providers, because people take what's given to them and ask for more. It fostered a ruthless and heartless corporate culture, and utterly destroyed the perception of communications providers that had built slowly over time --- even cherished --- that of the Friendly Postman. Now all communications companies are ruthless fucks, and it cannot be undone... because we remember what those marauding orcs did to us in the early days of cell and SMS messaging. They shattered the taboo that the receiver should never pay, even as they reduced "music on hold" to Tortured Screams of Hell, and dulled the senses with a laughable parody of email. Like a cuddly teddy bea
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
C'mon, this is a nonsense post attacking speech as a "weapon."
I don't like Trump, but the desire to control who can speak worries me even more and it's all the rage these days.
I cannot wait until Trump is president and all of you pussies lose your fucking minds.
I don't even like him, but you morons hate him, so he has my vote.
In what universe is Donald Trump considered an "eloquent speaker"? Please provide some evidence, in the form of transcript or links to video, that shows Donald Trump speaking eloquently.
Adam Carolla --- whom Slashdotters will remember fought against the patent troll Personal Audio ("Adam Carolla Joins Fight Against Podcast Patent Troll" March 25, 2014, at http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/03/25/1222210/adam-carolla-joins-fight-against-podcast-patent-troll ) -- has an interesting conversation with Dr. Drew regarding Donald Trump about this very issue:
{
Title: "Adam Carolla & Dr. Drew: Donald Trump"
Published on: November 15, 2015
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG8QX5SEtMU
View Count: 20, 288
(More specifically at 4 minutes and 16 seconds (https://youtu.be/HG8QX5SEtMU?t=4m16s ) Carolla specifically addresses the "eloquence" issue, but the entire video post is interesting)
}
Likewise, an interesting clip from 1988 (twenty eight years ago) with talk show host Oprah Winfrey:
{
Title: "Donald Tump Teases 1988 oprah Show | The Oprah Winfrey Show|OWN"
Published on: June 25, 2015
Posted by: OWN
LInk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI
View Count: 1,353,919
}
Compare with Trump sitting with the Chicago Tribune editorial board last year in 2015:
{
Title: Donald Tump discuses Presidential run with Tribune editorial board
Published: June 29, 2015
Posted by : Chicago Tribune
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m91vEm9kAsY
View Count:: 201,654
Oh, and "News for Nerds": There's eye candy in that video at 4 minutes and 20 seconds (https://youtu.be/m91vEm9kAsY?t=4m20s).
}
Those View Counts look low. Maybe the "Slashdot effect" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect) is impotent ?
When you typed "...Trump is a racist blame-and-excuse machine..." what criteria were you using? Was it the usual dishonest leftist troll criteria that "anybody who disagrees with me is a racist/sexist/homophobe"? Were you claiming that he is a racist because he thinks we have a legal right to defend the nation from a decades-long invasion and colonization by people breaking our laws aided by employers breaking our laws and politicians breaking their oaths of office? If your argument is that in opposing ILLEGAL immigration, he is a RACIST, then please consider that perhaps the REAL racists are the defenders of illegal immigration who simultaneously push-down the wages of many black and hispanic AMERICAN CITIZENS by importing poor minorities from the third world who they assume will work for slave wages and eventually become permanent Democrat voters - based on purely racist assumptions.
Tell me: were you outraged when Democrat Senate leader Harry Reid said Obama was electable because he was "clean" and lacked a "negro dialect", or when Democrat Vice President Joe Biden announced that you cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts if you don't have a slight Indian accent, and then clarified, saying "I'm not joking"???
The selective faux outrage by leftists over supposed racism is always fascinating to behold. Personally I could never be a member of the political party that has been fixated on skin color for its entire centuries-long history:
(a) Every single black slave was owned by a Democrat or an independent - no Republican in US history owned a slave of any color.
(b) Republican President Lincoln led the war to kill enough Democrats to get them to give up their slaves - and they then assasinated him.
(c) Democrats created the KKK and its founders were honored guests at Democrat national conventions. Early KKK posters and leaflets called for lynchings for BOTH "negros" AND Republicans.
(d) Democrats created the "Jim Crow" laws and every black child blocked from a white school was opposed by a Democrat governor.
(e) Famous Democrat "Progressive" president Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of the US federal government along racial lines. Before he was sworn-in in 1913 the federal government had NEVER been so segregated.
(f) As the public tide was turning against them the Democrats simply changed their tactics for owning and controlling blacks; they offered them enough free stuff to survive - as long as they destroyed their families and moved back onto the plantation (in the form of government housing which you only remained eligible to stay in as long as you never tried to save money or start a business - the thresholds were low enough that you'd get booted out if your economic situation improved but before it improved enough that you might become independent). LBJ was an obnoxious racist
who simply wanted to lock-in the Black vote this way, and Democrats at the time were not willing to pass his voting rights act - he needed the Republicans in congress to pass it.
(g) in the post-sixties decades, they have attempted to keep blacks on their plantation by claiming all the redneck racist Democrats mysteriously punished the Democrats for the civil rights bills.... by joining the Republicans who pushed those bills over the finish line. It's mostly liberal Democrat educators speaking to ignorant young kids who push this non-sequitur
(h) Democrats allocate political jobs and even tickets to their national conventions with racial quotas, and then they attack Republicans as "racist" for NOT being willing to play that game.
(i) After decades of taking blacks for granted and doing nothing to improve their situation, the Democrats are now shifting to hispanics and using them to push down the wages of blacks ---- whatever skin-color-groups they need to have power will do and with hispanics having greater numbers, the blacks can go under the bus that Democrats used to demand they occupy the back seats of.
Disgusting
Barack Obama is the biggest example ever in US history. If you disagree with him - you're a racist who only obstructs because of his skin color.
If you disagree with his Iranian nuke policies it's NOT because you think it unwise to give the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism a hundred billion dollars and a path to nukes - oh, NO.....you disagree because Obama is BLACK!
Disagree with Obama's trade treaty because all these treaties only further depress the American middle class? RACIST! your "real motivation" is that Obama is BLACK!
Disagree with his open-borders? Your'e a RACIST who hates hispanics AND Obama (because he is black of course) and it has nothing to do with economics or national security concerns.
Nobody who supports Obama has ANY legitimate claim to point at ANYBODY else and deploy the term "demagogue"
lobste.rs for the next 20 years!
How else could someone make smearing, insulting, and spreading falsehoods about people (like the girl in TFA) his sole ideological platform and campaign strategy, and then say this?
"One of the things I'm going to do if I win... I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money," Trump said during a rally in Fort Worth, Texas.
O_o
A persistent opponent becomes 'fair game'
First of all, folks, "Twitter" is in the headline, so it does enjoy some STEMy goodness.
/. into two differently (though similarly) named sites, akin to the successful Stack Exchange website. (Admittedly, I haven't given this much thought beyond this post...)
Secondly, I've always thought it was obvious that "...stuff that matters" meant a tongue-in-cheek "Nerdy news is stuff that matters to us, even though it is not interesting to the vast majority of people." Whereas stating "...stuff that matters" in the general sense is such an empty statement, it's not even worth saying. (It was never "News for nerds AND stuff that matters".)
Thirdly, I agree that what draws me here is the mental kinship - I like seeing what the more thoughtful posters have to say. However, my logical brain does not appreciate the blurring of those topical lines, and knows it only a matter of time before those with a political rant, etc., know that Slashdot has the most eyeballs to troll. So my knee-jerk thought was to break
How Obama uses: Drones to kill The NSA to spy on Americans The IRS to intimidate The Dept of Justice to intimidate and incarcerate Executive Orders to circumvent the Constitution Executive Privilege to obfuscate and hide Etc
Well, the old saying applies here... just look at their fruit. Meaning, of course forget about what he says and instead look at his actions. Those are a better indicator of how he'll behave as president. And to me, they're a pretty damning indictment of thoughtless and harsh actions. On one level, of course it doesn't matter who becomes president as the actions continue unchanged.. but internationally, it DOES matter.. and , given Don's penchant for sticking his polished patent leather shoes right uo his mouth, along with his classic rudeness, he could easily set off world war 3 (and 4, and 5, and ...). And certainly his approach to domestic crises could make matters insoluble with one word.
He may talk a good game, and that is what you need in his line of "work", but it is actions you have to look at, and his actions betray him.
He didn't actually do that. He repeated and he said he was repeating something a woman had said. That was the pussy remark. To give Trump credit for calling an opponent a pussy is too much. Unless we can find out if he had put the woman up to it in the first place.
They're right, however. The Republicans are all wusses. Trump is really not a Republican. Same with the Democrats, they are all wusses too. Hilary, well she'll be like a divorced wife. I think we all have no doubt - she'll lie and be a real bitch. Whatever suits her. Remember in the 1990s when the analysts in Bill Clinton's white house found that she should never be a leader, of anything.
That's all we'll have. Packaged polished political end products. Obama himself was a real turd. We saw none of that. Not his college papers, college financing, political views up to 2008 and he would never vote on anything as a junior senator unless he was very sure nobody could object to it. What would he do as Prez? Oh, hope and change. He has a plan, though he never showed it to us. Any bad news - announce it Friday, after 5:00 PM. The truth? They think we can't handle the truth. They're probably right.
The wealthy person with the big toy airplane and the bullying insulting demeanor will be on his knees asking the IRS for time to steal the money from the investors to pay off the IRS debt, so that this wealthy person can keep his gravy train.
Which wealthy person am I describing.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Like anyone else who uses the Twitter Platform to harass or belittle someone else which is a violation of their terms of service, Twitter should suspend or terminate Trump's account. Is it fair that Trump repeatedly violates these terms of service when others have unintentionally violated terms of service and had their twitter accounts suspended or removed? Twitter should enforce their terms of service regardless of who the account holder is.
Has Slashdot become part of the Establishment?
Trump is a counter puncher. He attacks AFTER he's been attacked. I'm sorry millennial libtards but that's what you do when you have people lying about you and putting words in your mouth. Speaking of liars, I don't hear anything about Hillary and she's the biggest liar of them all. Do you know why millennials are leftist retards? Because they've been indoctrinated not educated. I wear the Slashdot bad karma rating as a badge of courage. It's libtard name-calling that comes when you don't agree with the little commie sheep you've been trained to be. Baaaah Baaaah
She said something unflattering about him, he said something unflattering about her but when he says it, it sticks so she's crying about that.
I once saw a kid taunting a lion in the zoo. When the lion finally got annoyed and roared, he pissed his pants. The difference is, that kid didn't complain about the lion. He was stupid, just not that stupid.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
Ah, the hypocrisy. One of the things that appeals to many people about Trump is his refusal to play "the game" of nicey-nicey. He says what he thinks and he hits hard. Isn't that what the twits of Twitter do? They try to flame the people they target into cinders: no sophistication, no nuances, no excuses, no concern for feelings, no appreciation or care about the complexity of the situation. Who cares - just GET the other guy! Trumps behavior mightily offends liberals. To them he is evil incarnate. But wait - don't liberals do the same to those who disagree with them? Merely to doubt the gospel of human-caused global warming is to open yourself to accusations of being in league with the devil. Merely to question the motives and honesty of feminists and their advocation of anti-male policies casts one into the very pit of hell. Merely to say the above means I will be accused by liberals of loving Trump and approving EVERYTHING he says or does. Nothing would be farther from the truth. But when did the truth ever matter?