You might want Trump to be the president of all the people, and even the majority of the voters who did not vote for him should want that, but what does the Donald want?
Seriously, aren't you wondering which of his contradictory positions and statements is what he really thinks? If he thinks any of them. Some sources say that he just repeats whatever he last heard.
If Trump's first policy is to tell all people whose names start with G to jump off a bridge, would you still want to give him the chance?
I'm most concerned with his debts. Not just the financial ones. Not even the legal liabilities in all those lawsuits he has to clear away now. I'm most concerned about the debt he might feel towards the FBI for the big helping hand. What if Comey was manipulated by a Russian mole in the FBI? Maybe Trump's biggest debt is to Vladimir Putin? Still sure about giving him the chance to pay off his debts on your nickel?
The so-called Republican Party has come a LONG way since that staunch conservative John Wayne said about JFK, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my President, and I hope he does a good job." Did you express the same kind and gentle sentiments when you heard about the "My number one priority is making sure President Obama's a one-term president" meeting?
If I ever got a mod point, that deserves a funny. Also an insightful. Actually, if there were more mod points it would almost be a kind of election to see if people think it is more funny than insightful. The score could even be logarithmic...
Oh wait. Now I've gone back to those delusions about trying to improve Slashdot, and next thing you know I'll be suggesting that the trolls should be less visible.
I used to think a better financial model would help. Perhaps a system whereby nice people would be able cover the costs of Slashdot while paying for the development of new features to make it even better. Cost recovery, if not massively profitable.
Reflecting on the election of Trump, I now think it is pointless. The not-nice people (and their sock puppets) would be secretly funded to support counter-features. There's a quote that says something like "You can't win, you can't tie, and you can't even quit the game", though at this point quitting Slashdot is beginning to look like the winning strategy.
I don't think your analysis is adequate. Your first example is incitement and your second example could be snipped, thus "proving" you made the direct threat.
At least you had the intestinal fortitude to put your name on your comment. Or perhaps you correctly analyzed the lack of privacy on Slashdot?
I'm more interested in analyzing "trumpicide", which I propose as a generic name for a new category of Trump-related crimes. The prior definition is obviously obsolete. Some people thought that the Donald was committing political suicide by saying vile, thoughtless, and even crazy things, but the election results say otherwise.
I propose three degrees of trumpicide. First-degree trumpicide is analogous to suicide or homicide. There has to be a dead body and a causal linkage to Trump. You have probably already heard that calls to suicide prevention hotlines have surged since the election, but if anyone killed himself while on Trump-related hold, then I would suggest that is first-degree trumpicide. For the homicidal version, I'm sure you've heard of arguments related to Trump, and if any of those arguments escalated and someone died, then it should qualify as first-degree trumpicide. The victim might be on either side, though the Trump supporters have more guns. However, in another obvious example, if the so-called Republicans now repeal ObamaCare (and I predict they will), then the number of first-degree trumpicides will go WAY up.
Second-degree trumpicide should be for personal injury short of death, and third-degree for property damage. The relationships are actually likely to get complicated, per this partly hypothetical example: You may have already read that Trump stiffed the primary caterer of his second wedding. When she presented her bill for the job well done, Trump told her that he wasn't going to pay it because the publicity value of having catered his wedding was larger than the bill. As I heard the story, she didn't sue him, but I don't know if that was because Trump accurately assessed her as too afraid to fight him or because she decided she didn't have the financial resources. Doesn't really matter since it's already 3rd-degree trumpicide, but maybe the financial damage was so large she went bankrupt and became depressed, and now we're at 2nd-degree trumpicide. If the story ended with her killing herself, then we've achieved 1st-degree trumpicide.
By the way, I seem to attract a lot of trolls these days. Possible that Slashdot has simply been overrun, but if you are not a troll, then I ask you not to feed the trolls with my food for thought. I'll try to respond directly to any questions directed at me, but I'm not going to waste a lot of time with such nuisances. I would still prefer to help fund features to make them less visible on Slashdot. (Did you read about Twitter's latest laughable efforts? Talk about draining the sewer with a thimble.)
When jokes are outlawed, only outlaws will have jokes.
I'm taking him at his word that it was a joke, and I can easily imagine many contexts where such a joke could be made. None of them are public.
Actually, this isn't an example of the Email Inquisition, since the joke reportedly started on Facebook (though many people communicate more via Facebook than via email). Really hard to imagine how the CEO of a cybersecurity company could regard ANYTHING on Facebook as secure or private. Already quite sufficient reason for him to be fired, eh? He didn't even know how to control his own so-called privacy settings?
I have a theory about humor. I think we need it to be human. It's intimately linked to our nature as learning machines, quite possibly our deepest and most instinctive motivation for learning new things. Think of how easily babies are amused. Think of how funny your greatest teachers were, though of course they used humor selectively. You can even think of slapstick, where the humor is in the pain of someone else, and whereby you learn not to do that.
I call it the General Theory of Relatively Funny Stuff.
In closing, let me remind you not to attempt any jokes in an airport. A friend of mine once did that and it cost him a lot of money and several days of his time. The joke also contributed to some of your personal inconveniences if you ever travel with an electronic device, but 'nuff said.
Is that supposed to be one of those fake apologies? Or just evidence of narrow-minded American thinking of the sort that elected Trump?
I am not wrong, and you are a liar to say you are not making that accusation. I simply chose the stronger word because of your rudeness.
There is a VERY thin basis for continuing this discussion. First, you need to acknowledge that you don't know something. Then you need to ask POLITELY for the missing data.
An apology would be nice, too, but I don't think you're big enough for that.
I do not appreciate being called a liar. I saw the ballot. I filled in the ballot and mailed it.
Or do you somehow think the third option on my ballot, the option of voting the straight party ticket, should be counted as a third race?
I suppose we could have discussed the matter further. If you had asked politely I would have even explained the details that apparently aren't obvious to you. Instead, you started out by calling my veracity into question.
Ergo, I've decided to mark this so-called discussion as pointless and closed.
Just another example of why Slashdot is dying (or walking dead).
I read your [DRJlaw's] comment several times trying to figure out why it was rated as insightful. I'd be glad if you can clarify your insight, but I can't decide if it was obscured by your confrontational inline style or it's just another bad mod on today's Slashdot. (Yes, it could be fixed, but I've already wasted too many keystrokes pointing out obvious approaches.)
I do want to seek some insight, but first I want to clarify some possible problems with your Reply. Most importantly, my own ballot only had two races on it. As part of their ongoing campaign of voter disenfranchisement, the dictators of Texas only allowed me to participate in two races this year, and in both cases the outcomes were predetermined. The state was going for ANY so-called Republican presidential nominee over ANY Democratic candidate, and my district for the House of so-called Representatives is totally gerrymandered with carefully selected voters. In Congress McCaul is a worthless tool and idiot as regards technology, but he still has major influence on technology policies. [I just tried to confirm his reelection, but no one has bothered to update his Wikipedia page, though I was surprised to find out how wealthy he is.]
Some years ago, it was actually reported that the election boards in Texas did NOT count the absentee ballots unless there were enough of them to potentially change the outcome of some race. Of course, in those days there were far fewer absentee ballots, and I was also allowed to participate in more races, so maybe I got counted anyway. I don't know about this year's election. I think they had to at least open my ballot because the ID number wasn't visible on the carrier envelope, but I think it is quite possible that two-race ballots like mine were then set aside and never actually counted in the individual races. The vicious narrow-minded politicians in Texas would write the law that way if they thought it makes their gerrymandered "mandates" look better. Look up Louie Gohmert if you have doubts. Yes, I could write the election board, but I wouldn't believe anything they said after the battle I went through just to get my worthless ballot.
Now about the fake news. Doesn't matter if it's fake if it's what they want to believe.
Yes, the Internet has given us theoretical access to the truth, but that is NOT what most people want. Most people prefer to stuff their eyeholes and earholes with pleasant stuff, not ugly and disagreeable things, even if those things are true. The REAL crime of today's super-EVIL google is personalized search that helps people brainwash themselves automatically and without effort. By their clicks, the google learns what annoys and makes the annoyances, such as the truth, go away. The better to stuff their eyeholes and earholes with the ads, remember?
There are solutions, but at this point I'm dismissing them as theoretical. The funniest theory of all would be that Slashdot could help make the world better and better informed.
Well, hey! Yours was one of the three insightful-moderated comments that actually struck me as slightly insightful. You hit a couple of key issues. Not deeply, but brevity is supposed to be wit's soul, eh?
None of the funny ones were funny. Didn't waste the time with informative or interesting, though I did some browser-level searches for the key terms related to what I would regard as actual insight on this issue. Came up completely dry. And of course the entire article and discussion have effectively timed out now, so making any comment is moot, eh?
What I was looking for was some discussion of how the international force vectors have been changed by this election. Seems obvious that Russia's international leverage will be greatly increased, and Iran benefits, too. If Trump delivers on a small fraction of his promises, then America's influence will drastically decrease, but I suppose we can hope he's just lying, as usual.
That sets the stage for considering China's response to the election. Insofar as the Chinese have any international ambitions (and I am certain they do), then their economic ties to America are now a disadvantage. They would much prefer to redirect their focus towards growing economies and perhaps even do what they can to push America into recession.
But what about the economic damage to China? If you think about it for a second, you'll realize it is NO problem now. They'll just blame Trump for any and all problems and gladly stoke the nationalistic fires within China. The better not to buy your inferior American goods.
Time to rethink your investment strategies. Obviously makers of wife beater t-shirts, anti-anxiety meds, and for-profit prisons should be hot stocks. However the big word is not "plastics". How can I get in on the ground floor of big poverty?
Will the Chinese even bother to compete in those areas? Maybe, but I bet they demand hard cash, and they probably won't even accept dollars.
I absolutely would dispute your absurd claim that "Trump is a force for change." Trump thinks he is a colossal winner. He thinks he has been winning for his entire life and this is just his biggest win. Why would he want anything to change?
The primary lesson of Trump's entire life is that lies are effective. Objectively, he's a loser. Based on his inherited assets, he should be roughly three times wealthier than he is, even allowing for the inflated valuation of his so-called brand. Lying about his business acumen is just a starting point. He lies to ALL of his supporters, but EACH of them manages to delude himself into believing that some tiny part of what Trump said that personally applies to him and which might help him is actually what Trump believes.
It is absolutely clear that that America has walked off a cliff. It doesn't seem to matter if the rocks at the bottom are fascist rocks, less authoritarian rocks, kleptocratic rocks, or perhaps even royal rocks. I can easily imagine Trump dumping Pence in 2020 and making Ivanka his VP in the expectation of her becoming president in 2024. After that Trump's other kids could take turns. His youngest son won't even be old enough to run for president until around 2040. Of course by that time the office of president will be purely symbolic, doing nothing but supposedly standing for America's "greatness". Assuming the nation still exists in any recognizable form.
Yeah, change, but certainly not because of Trump's intentions or promises. Change happens. Deal with it.
Anyway, since you are resorting to inlined and trivial hacking at out of context extracts, it seems pretty clear that this discussion is reaching its terminus. Perhaps you simply have no independent thoughts to organize and present? I really had to scrape the barrel to find anything worth responding to in your last so-called reply. I confess that I have actually been trying to figure out if you're a sadder-but-wiser Trump apologist, a cunning Trump supporter and propagandist, or just a paid troll, most likely working for Putin or some Alt-Right billionaire.
I don't think their strategy is "create chaos, chaos leads to goodness" I think their strategy is "create chaos, people with plenty will put pressure on government to share resources more equitably to stop having these guys wanting to create chaos". So less entropy, more MAD
I'm having trouble following your interpretation of their reasoning there. It seems more likely, even obvious, that the "people with plenty" will simply invest slightly more of their excess in protecting themselves from the angry losers. Your mob with pitchforks against my machine gun nest. I probably win. Even if your mob overruns my machine gun nest, the wealthy estate protected by the machine gun will probably get burned down in the melee, so everyone winds up with nothing.
Currently reading Putin's Kleptocracy (with gloves). Makes the interesting claim that Russia has extremely large income disparity now. I hadn't been following those statistics for Russia, though I have been seeing a lot of information about the growing disparity in America. The key in Russia appears to be the transformation of the criminals into quasi-legitimate enterprises, whereas most American companies seem to be evolving in the opposite direction. My money would be on America under Trump to become more like Russia than vice versa.
Is there such a crime as trumpicide? First degree would be where someone dies, perhaps driven to suicide by thoughts of Trump?
I'm not actually disagreeing with you I think, but I definitely think nihilism is a losing strategy almost all of the time. The more chaos you stir up, the less likely you're going to get an orderly state at the end. Entropy doesn't work that way, and I even think that someone who thinks it does deserves mocking at a minimum. Then again, I'm not sure that I'm even mocking them. If I lived among them, I would be scared of their increased anger when things just get worse under Trump.
Then again, I do feel like we've been living in an era of superabundance, but we're headed for near scarcity.
Not exactly, but it might have something to do with a so-called Republican Party that pledged to stop him from accomplishing anything from the day he was sworn into office.
However, before I "invest" any more keystrokes, convince me you aren't a racist troll. It's possible, but I bet you can't.
Perhaps I should explicitly clarify that I divide the bulk of Trump's voters into three groups. No sense worrying or even thinking about the ones that just vote R (or D) because they don't worry or think either. The cold-blooded haters are nasty, but I don't think there are that many of them. The critical voting bloc is the angry losers who rallied around Trump because they think he is going to make some radical changes and they are going to benefit from them. I think they are basically the same kind of suckers that Trump has exploited in most of his career, and I'm unconvinced Trump has suddenly become an altruist.
There is going to be change. That's just a given. Some changes are going to make things better for some people, and others make things worse. The long-term average, at least since civilization got on the roll, is for things to get better, though there are occasional dips in the road. I think that evolutionary change is better, but maybe America really has reached a point where things are too broken to fix without a big revolution. The remaining problem is that the revolution may not make things better, and we've even reached the point where we could exterminate the human race in the attempt...
I actually think that infrastructure spending is good, but that's why President Obama has been pushing for more of it for the last 8 years. Basically the same Congress, still representing the same minority of the actual voters, but I predict they I'll suddenly find the cash now that Obama can't get any credit. That could even be a good thing if Trump doesn't put the wall first.
Returning to the original story, the infrastructure they're going to need first will be dykes around Florida.
The article is so non-newsworthy that I have NO reaction except "Of course." Alt-Right has the Trump card and they are going to play it hard until the rest of us drown.
I'm only reminded of a prediction webpage I wrote when Dubya staggered into the White House. My predictions were kind of broad, divided into the categories of education, federal courts, economy, environment, military, war, Internet, and public trust in government. No details, but just probabilities and some wild estimates of recovery times. Back then I though I was just being a gloomy Gus, but looking over the predictions after 15 years, it now makes me look like a Pollyanna with rose-colored glasses. Is it worth making such an effort for the Donald?
Right now a question of some interest to me is how long it will take the angry losers to learn they are still losers. Might make them angrier, but of course no one really cares about losers, especially losers who were stupid enough to believe silly promises for a vote. Even more obviously, no one cares about the mindless always-R (or always-D) voters. It's the cold-blooded haters who worry me.
Slashdot Mirror
You might want Trump to be the president of all the people, and even the majority of the voters who did not vote for him should want that, but what does the Donald want?
Seriously, aren't you wondering which of his contradictory positions and statements is what he really thinks? If he thinks any of them. Some sources say that he just repeats whatever he last heard.
If Trump's first policy is to tell all people whose names start with G to jump off a bridge, would you still want to give him the chance?
I'm most concerned with his debts. Not just the financial ones. Not even the legal liabilities in all those lawsuits he has to clear away now. I'm most concerned about the debt he might feel towards the FBI for the big helping hand. What if Comey was manipulated by a Russian mole in the FBI? Maybe Trump's biggest debt is to Vladimir Putin? Still sure about giving him the chance to pay off his debts on your nickel?
The so-called Republican Party has come a LONG way since that staunch conservative John Wayne said about JFK, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my President, and I hope he does a good job." Did you express the same kind and gentle sentiments when you heard about the "My number one priority is making sure President Obama's a one-term president" meeting?
Z^9
Z^3
If I ever got a mod point, that deserves a funny. Also an insightful. Actually, if there were more mod points it would almost be a kind of election to see if people think it is more funny than insightful. The score could even be logarithmic...
Oh wait. Now I've gone back to those delusions about trying to improve Slashdot, and next thing you know I'll be suggesting that the trolls should be less visible.
I used to think a better financial model would help. Perhaps a system whereby nice people would be able cover the costs of Slashdot while paying for the development of new features to make it even better. Cost recovery, if not massively profitable.
Reflecting on the election of Trump, I now think it is pointless. The not-nice people (and their sock puppets) would be secretly funded to support counter-features. There's a quote that says something like "You can't win, you can't tie, and you can't even quit the game", though at this point quitting Slashdot is beginning to look like the winning strategy.
I don't think your analysis is adequate. Your first example is incitement and your second example could be snipped, thus "proving" you made the direct threat.
At least you had the intestinal fortitude to put your name on your comment. Or perhaps you correctly analyzed the lack of privacy on Slashdot?
I'm more interested in analyzing "trumpicide", which I propose as a generic name for a new category of Trump-related crimes. The prior definition is obviously obsolete. Some people thought that the Donald was committing political suicide by saying vile, thoughtless, and even crazy things, but the election results say otherwise.
I propose three degrees of trumpicide. First-degree trumpicide is analogous to suicide or homicide. There has to be a dead body and a causal linkage to Trump. You have probably already heard that calls to suicide prevention hotlines have surged since the election, but if anyone killed himself while on Trump-related hold, then I would suggest that is first-degree trumpicide. For the homicidal version, I'm sure you've heard of arguments related to Trump, and if any of those arguments escalated and someone died, then it should qualify as first-degree trumpicide. The victim might be on either side, though the Trump supporters have more guns. However, in another obvious example, if the so-called Republicans now repeal ObamaCare (and I predict they will), then the number of first-degree trumpicides will go WAY up.
Second-degree trumpicide should be for personal injury short of death, and third-degree for property damage. The relationships are actually likely to get complicated, per this partly hypothetical example: You may have already read that Trump stiffed the primary caterer of his second wedding. When she presented her bill for the job well done, Trump told her that he wasn't going to pay it because the publicity value of having catered his wedding was larger than the bill. As I heard the story, she didn't sue him, but I don't know if that was because Trump accurately assessed her as too afraid to fight him or because she decided she didn't have the financial resources. Doesn't really matter since it's already 3rd-degree trumpicide, but maybe the financial damage was so large she went bankrupt and became depressed, and now we're at 2nd-degree trumpicide. If the story ended with her killing herself, then we've achieved 1st-degree trumpicide.
By the way, I seem to attract a lot of trolls these days. Possible that Slashdot has simply been overrun, but if you are not a troll, then I ask you not to feed the trolls with my food for thought. I'll try to respond directly to any questions directed at me, but I'm not going to waste a lot of time with such nuisances. I would still prefer to help fund features to make them less visible on Slashdot. (Did you read about Twitter's latest laughable efforts? Talk about draining the sewer with a thimble.)
When jokes are outlawed, only outlaws will have jokes.
I'm taking him at his word that it was a joke, and I can easily imagine many contexts where such a joke could be made. None of them are public.
Actually, this isn't an example of the Email Inquisition, since the joke reportedly started on Facebook (though many people communicate more via Facebook than via email). Really hard to imagine how the CEO of a cybersecurity company could regard ANYTHING on Facebook as secure or private. Already quite sufficient reason for him to be fired, eh? He didn't even know how to control his own so-called privacy settings?
I have a theory about humor. I think we need it to be human. It's intimately linked to our nature as learning machines, quite possibly our deepest and most instinctive motivation for learning new things. Think of how easily babies are amused. Think of how funny your greatest teachers were, though of course they used humor selectively. You can even think of slapstick, where the humor is in the pain of someone else, and whereby you learn not to do that.
I call it the General Theory of Relatively Funny Stuff.
In closing, let me remind you not to attempt any jokes in an airport. A friend of mine once did that and it cost him a lot of money and several days of his time. The joke also contributed to some of your personal inconveniences if you ever travel with an electronic device, but 'nuff said.
What part of "pointless and closed" were you unable to understand?
ZZ
Z^8
Z^7
Is that supposed to be one of those fake apologies? Or just evidence of narrow-minded American thinking of the sort that elected Trump?
I am not wrong, and you are a liar to say you are not making that accusation. I simply chose the stronger word because of your rudeness.
There is a VERY thin basis for continuing this discussion. First, you need to acknowledge that you don't know something. Then you need to ask POLITELY for the missing data.
An apology would be nice, too, but I don't think you're big enough for that.
You failed to convince me. Yet another so-called discussion on Slashdot to be marked "pointless and closed".
I do not appreciate being called a liar. I saw the ballot. I filled in the ballot and mailed it.
Or do you somehow think the third option on my ballot, the option of voting the straight party ticket, should be counted as a third race?
I suppose we could have discussed the matter further. If you had asked politely I would have even explained the details that apparently aren't obvious to you. Instead, you started out by calling my veracity into question.
Ergo, I've decided to mark this so-called discussion as pointless and closed.
Just another example of why Slashdot is dying (or walking dead).
Z^6
I read your [DRJlaw's] comment several times trying to figure out why it was rated as insightful. I'd be glad if you can clarify your insight, but I can't decide if it was obscured by your confrontational inline style or it's just another bad mod on today's Slashdot. (Yes, it could be fixed, but I've already wasted too many keystrokes pointing out obvious approaches.)
I do want to seek some insight, but first I want to clarify some possible problems with your Reply. Most importantly, my own ballot only had two races on it. As part of their ongoing campaign of voter disenfranchisement, the dictators of Texas only allowed me to participate in two races this year, and in both cases the outcomes were predetermined. The state was going for ANY so-called Republican presidential nominee over ANY Democratic candidate, and my district for the House of so-called Representatives is totally gerrymandered with carefully selected voters. In Congress McCaul is a worthless tool and idiot as regards technology, but he still has major influence on technology policies. [I just tried to confirm his reelection, but no one has bothered to update his Wikipedia page, though I was surprised to find out how wealthy he is.]
Some years ago, it was actually reported that the election boards in Texas did NOT count the absentee ballots unless there were enough of them to potentially change the outcome of some race. Of course, in those days there were far fewer absentee ballots, and I was also allowed to participate in more races, so maybe I got counted anyway. I don't know about this year's election. I think they had to at least open my ballot because the ID number wasn't visible on the carrier envelope, but I think it is quite possible that two-race ballots like mine were then set aside and never actually counted in the individual races. The vicious narrow-minded politicians in Texas would write the law that way if they thought it makes their gerrymandered "mandates" look better. Look up Louie Gohmert if you have doubts. Yes, I could write the election board, but I wouldn't believe anything they said after the battle I went through just to get my worthless ballot.
Now about the fake news. Doesn't matter if it's fake if it's what they want to believe.
Yes, the Internet has given us theoretical access to the truth, but that is NOT what most people want. Most people prefer to stuff their eyeholes and earholes with pleasant stuff, not ugly and disagreeable things, even if those things are true. The REAL crime of today's super-EVIL google is personalized search that helps people brainwash themselves automatically and without effort. By their clicks, the google learns what annoys and makes the annoyances, such as the truth, go away. The better to stuff their eyeholes and earholes with the ads, remember?
There are solutions, but at this point I'm dismissing them as theoretical. The funniest theory of all would be that Slashdot could help make the world better and better informed.
Well, hey! Yours was one of the three insightful-moderated comments that actually struck me as slightly insightful. You hit a couple of key issues. Not deeply, but brevity is supposed to be wit's soul, eh?
None of the funny ones were funny. Didn't waste the time with informative or interesting, though I did some browser-level searches for the key terms related to what I would regard as actual insight on this issue. Came up completely dry. And of course the entire article and discussion have effectively timed out now, so making any comment is moot, eh?
What I was looking for was some discussion of how the international force vectors have been changed by this election. Seems obvious that Russia's international leverage will be greatly increased, and Iran benefits, too. If Trump delivers on a small fraction of his promises, then America's influence will drastically decrease, but I suppose we can hope he's just lying, as usual.
That sets the stage for considering China's response to the election. Insofar as the Chinese have any international ambitions (and I am certain they do), then their economic ties to America are now a disadvantage. They would much prefer to redirect their focus towards growing economies and perhaps even do what they can to push America into recession.
But what about the economic damage to China? If you think about it for a second, you'll realize it is NO problem now. They'll just blame Trump for any and all problems and gladly stoke the nationalistic fires within China. The better not to buy your inferior American goods.
Time to rethink your investment strategies. Obviously makers of wife beater t-shirts, anti-anxiety meds, and for-profit prisons should be hot stocks. However the big word is not "plastics". How can I get in on the ground floor of big poverty?
Will the Chinese even bother to compete in those areas? Maybe, but I bet they demand hard cash, and they probably won't even accept dollars.
I absolutely would dispute your absurd claim that "Trump is a force for change." Trump thinks he is a colossal winner. He thinks he has been winning for his entire life and this is just his biggest win. Why would he want anything to change?
The primary lesson of Trump's entire life is that lies are effective. Objectively, he's a loser. Based on his inherited assets, he should be roughly three times wealthier than he is, even allowing for the inflated valuation of his so-called brand. Lying about his business acumen is just a starting point. He lies to ALL of his supporters, but EACH of them manages to delude himself into believing that some tiny part of what Trump said that personally applies to him and which might help him is actually what Trump believes.
It is absolutely clear that that America has walked off a cliff. It doesn't seem to matter if the rocks at the bottom are fascist rocks, less authoritarian rocks, kleptocratic rocks, or perhaps even royal rocks. I can easily imagine Trump dumping Pence in 2020 and making Ivanka his VP in the expectation of her becoming president in 2024. After that Trump's other kids could take turns. His youngest son won't even be old enough to run for president until around 2040. Of course by that time the office of president will be purely symbolic, doing nothing but supposedly standing for America's "greatness". Assuming the nation still exists in any recognizable form.
Yeah, change, but certainly not because of Trump's intentions or promises. Change happens. Deal with it.
Anyway, since you are resorting to inlined and trivial hacking at out of context extracts, it seems pretty clear that this discussion is reaching its terminus. Perhaps you simply have no independent thoughts to organize and present? I really had to scrape the barrel to find anything worth responding to in your last so-called reply. I confess that I have actually been trying to figure out if you're a sadder-but-wiser Trump apologist, a cunning Trump supporter and propagandist, or just a paid troll, most likely working for Putin or some Alt-Right billionaire.
Z^5
Z^4
I don't think their strategy is "create chaos, chaos leads to goodness" I think their strategy is "create chaos, people with plenty will put pressure on government to share resources more equitably to stop having these guys wanting to create chaos". So less entropy, more MAD
I'm having trouble following your interpretation of their reasoning there. It seems more likely, even obvious, that the "people with plenty" will simply invest slightly more of their excess in protecting themselves from the angry losers. Your mob with pitchforks against my machine gun nest. I probably win. Even if your mob overruns my machine gun nest, the wealthy estate protected by the machine gun will probably get burned down in the melee, so everyone winds up with nothing.
Currently reading Putin's Kleptocracy (with gloves). Makes the interesting claim that Russia has extremely large income disparity now. I hadn't been following those statistics for Russia, though I have been seeing a lot of information about the growing disparity in America. The key in Russia appears to be the transformation of the criminals into quasi-legitimate enterprises, whereas most American companies seem to be evolving in the opposite direction. My money would be on America under Trump to become more like Russia than vice versa.
Is there such a crime as trumpicide? First degree would be where someone dies, perhaps driven to suicide by thoughts of Trump?
Z^3
I'm not actually disagreeing with you I think, but I definitely think nihilism is a losing strategy almost all of the time. The more chaos you stir up, the less likely you're going to get an orderly state at the end. Entropy doesn't work that way, and I even think that someone who thinks it does deserves mocking at a minimum. Then again, I'm not sure that I'm even mocking them. If I lived among them, I would be scared of their increased anger when things just get worse under Trump.
Then again, I do feel like we've been living in an era of superabundance, but we're headed for near scarcity.
Not exactly, but it might have something to do with a so-called Republican Party that pledged to stop him from accomplishing anything from the day he was sworn into office.
However, before I "invest" any more keystrokes, convince me you aren't a racist troll. It's possible, but I bet you can't.
Perhaps I should explicitly clarify that I divide the bulk of Trump's voters into three groups. No sense worrying or even thinking about the ones that just vote R (or D) because they don't worry or think either. The cold-blooded haters are nasty, but I don't think there are that many of them. The critical voting bloc is the angry losers who rallied around Trump because they think he is going to make some radical changes and they are going to benefit from them. I think they are basically the same kind of suckers that Trump has exploited in most of his career, and I'm unconvinced Trump has suddenly become an altruist.
There is going to be change. That's just a given. Some changes are going to make things better for some people, and others make things worse. The long-term average, at least since civilization got on the roll, is for things to get better, though there are occasional dips in the road. I think that evolutionary change is better, but maybe America really has reached a point where things are too broken to fix without a big revolution. The remaining problem is that the revolution may not make things better, and we've even reached the point where we could exterminate the human race in the attempt...
I actually think that infrastructure spending is good, but that's why President Obama has been pushing for more of it for the last 8 years. Basically the same Congress, still representing the same minority of the actual voters, but I predict they I'll suddenly find the cash now that Obama can't get any credit. That could even be a good thing if Trump doesn't put the wall first.
Returning to the original story, the infrastructure they're going to need first will be dykes around Florida.
The article is so non-newsworthy that I have NO reaction except "Of course." Alt-Right has the Trump card and they are going to play it hard until the rest of us drown.
I'm only reminded of a prediction webpage I wrote when Dubya staggered into the White House. My predictions were kind of broad, divided into the categories of education, federal courts, economy, environment, military, war, Internet, and public trust in government. No details, but just probabilities and some wild estimates of recovery times. Back then I though I was just being a gloomy Gus, but looking over the predictions after 15 years, it now makes me look like a Pollyanna with rose-colored glasses. Is it worth making such an effort for the Donald?
Right now a question of some interest to me is how long it will take the angry losers to learn they are still losers. Might make them angrier, but of course no one really cares about losers, especially losers who were stupid enough to believe silly promises for a vote. Even more obviously, no one cares about the mindless always-R (or always-D) voters. It's the cold-blooded haters who worry me.