[Charlie Southerland]

I don't know, Andrew. I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I said the pledge of allegiance, sang the national anthem, God Bless America, and dove under my desk during Thermonuclear war drills. I love baseball and apple pie. Not grits though. I hold onto that America. I am a hunter, a grower, a Christian. America seems far removed from what it was. I played and fought with black kids and white kids alike. I've worked my whole life with the same.

Andrew M. can barely contain himself from outright calling me things, derogatory things that are barely covered by his hyperbole and rhetoric. I saw that kind of hate from the Commie Unions in the steel mill in East Chicago where I worked. I detested it then and I detest it now. So no, not all of us are America. So, if you hate this country, hate the people who work, go to church, pay their bills and taxes, vote for love of country instead of being a Commie sympathizer whose warped ideals are totally unrelatable out here in fly-over country, then it's pretty hard to find common ground with such.


I thought I had answered you early on but here goes.

Any Person in charge of anything can be catastrophically bad in their given or elected position. Trump is no different than anyone else. My job is to keep an eye on him personally, through my elected representatives and through my prayers to God. Not necessarily in that order. Why do you wish for more than that? Do you wish him ill to the point of destroying the country just to prove your point? I hope not.

Just what is it do you want, Andrew?


I only know Pound through his poems, his Cantos. I like his trimeters. I don't want to know his politics. He's dead.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Charlie Southerland

Trump is no different than anyone else.

I couldn't disagree more, Charlie. That's exactly the point: this really is different, it's a different order of dangerous than we've had with various administrations. Bannon's a symbol of that (though far from being the only perpetrator), and the hateful rhetoric spewing from Trump's mouth or his Twitter feed is the daily reminder. As many conservatives have said, Trump is not really a conservative. He insults even the best among conservatives--McCain for instance. Why would you overlook that or let it slide? I urge you to set aside ordinary conservative expectations/politics to look at this squarely for what is developing before our very eyes: an attempted hijacking and betrayal of U.S. democratic (note the small 'd') values.

I only know Pound through his poems, his Cantos. I like his trimeters. I don't want to know his politics. He's dead.

I have mixed feelings about Pound. I like some of his poetry, find much of it dull or self-indulgent, but overall I think he made a significant contribution to poetic idiom. The politics unfortunately do run through some of the Cantos as well.

[Charlie Southerland]

Yes, Andrew, we like in extremely dangerous times. We face Islamo-fascism extremism, Globalists who would have us in chains, Communists, low information nabobs, infrastructure deterioration and several other threats to mankind. Those are all things we have faced since the 1972 Olympic Games where Palestinean terrorists killed the Israeli team.


America is the most well armed and well trained populace in the entire world. We are not France or Germany or Italy or the UK. We are as prone to revolution now as we have always been. It is what separates us from everyone else. If politicians get out of control, rebellion is in our blood.

Yes Andrew, we are dangerous, very very dangerous, all the time.


McCain hears voices. He would have been scary as president.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Rant and polemic won't fix the situation, Charlie, dangerous or otherwise. You know that I gave McCain as one example among many to illustrate that Trump doesn't represent conservative values or politics. Trump's own pick for Supreme Court nominee, who seems an excellent example of an honorable and conscientious conservative, expressed alarm about Trump's dismissal of leading U.S. judges. As I recall, Trump also dismissed his own intelligence community when it didn't agree with his agenda. That's a betrayal of what a president is hired to do. Your rant and polemic skirts around that as a way to avoid addressing the details. As Blake said, we're idiots when we generalize about important shit like this.

[Jim Moonan]

Charlie: "Trump is no different than anyone else."

If you can't see how he's different than anyone else than you've got a problem. It's fixable. Please examine the man himself, the entire panoply of his adult life, and re-imagine who he is and why he is the wrong person at the wrong time to lead our nation.
(Obama was the right person to lead our nation who, in hindsight, came at the wrong time. Such a tragedy.)

Charlie, you seem to me to be a fatalist. I think most religious paradigms (if not all) require that of individuals looking for answers. There are no answers. As long as you shield yourself with religion I don't think you will grow as a person through to the end. Religion can play an important referential part of life, but not, in my opinion, the guide for all my life.

Tell me, what do you think of Obama?

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

What people imagine their gods are saying doesn't come from their texts as much as from their own needs.

Here is a link to a guy, same god but different need...

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

If you can't see how he's different than anyone else than you've got a problem. It's fixable.

No, it's not. At least not the way you and others here are going about it.

This thread (which I admit I have stopped following in detail) seems a great illustration of the "backfire effect," "the effect in which corrections actually increase misperceptions ..."

[Gregory Palmerino]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

No, it's not. At least not the way you and others here are going about it.

This thread (which I admit I have stopped following in detail) seems a great illustration of the "backfire effect," "the effect in which corrections actually increase misperceptions ..."

Max,

Thanks for that link.

Greg

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

No, it's not. At least not the way you and others here are going about it.

This thread (which I admit I have stopped following in detail) seems a great illustration of the "backfire effect," "the effect in which corrections actually increase misperceptions ..."

Actually, you should speak for yourself. You can only backfire if you fire. But there's been no backfire for me thank you very much.

For me this thread has been informative. I took the thread's title at face value: a running account of Trump's early days in office and samplings of grassroots thinking on the matter. I've learned some of what a few verbally inclined people are thinking on these topics, and being outside the U.S. but American that has been a help.

[Charlie Southerland]

Andrew and Jim, Politicians aren't to be trusted. None of them. That is not fatalism. Power does wonky things to them. It takes a good man or woman and defiles them. It takes bad men and women and makes them badder.

We've had very few populist leaning presidents in our history. We certainly haven't had one in the mold of Trump. I think Teddy Roosevelt was the last one. Teddy would say and did say that he was a Progressive. Progressivism has taken sharp turns to the left in the political arena. It was always meant to do so. The turn always goes toward the government can do more for you than you can do for yourself. Its proponents are almost always rich and aloof.

I suspect Trump will head in that direction and please the Left before he is out of office. I'm surprised at how the Left has went after him so hard. He is not a Republican, he doesn't seem to be a deeply spiritual man, does not seem to be intellectually curious, and he seems to shun war like the plague. Does he love the country? I believe so, which is where he deviates from the Left, in that, they, Progressive Democrats, are always hating our founding, our way of life, our total freedom to do as we please. They think that humanity must be regulated and controlled by the State because the people are too stupid to govern themselves.

To be honest, the Left has a good many unwittingly willing sycophants. This is borne of ease, not sacrifice of self to achieve better things. Academia leads this charge, has nearly always led it in the past 125 years. Most of Academia hates the very thought of God, the supreme higher power that claims control over mankind's destiny. It is a doctrine filled with pride and hubris. It has been taught now, this Godless pride and hubris for many years, indoctrinating children from an early age well into their twenties. This has always been the fight for the country. Nothing else is so important. Those of us who are Believers in God follow a book that foretells our end and our eternity. Those who don't believe this Way scoff and fight tooth and nail to destroy the faith. I understand why, it's no mystery. Believers follow a God that cannot be seen or proven to exist. That makes no sense to the Left, for the most part. There are a few Believers scattered among them but few who are hardcore about it. I believe God is Sovereign. That does not make me a fatalist, contrarily, it makes me an eternal optimist in the most literal sense. It is what drives some of you crazy. I get it. If I were in your shoes, I'd be right there with you.

Jim, I can tell you in a few short words what I think of Obama. I think he was mostly true to his Leftist beliefs which have been detrimental to this country. It doesn't matter what I think of the man personally, since I never met him.

It's the same with Trump. I don't have the luxury of looking back on a Trump administration. I haven't met the man to get a grasp on who or what he truly is.

I have no more or less concerns with him than I did Obama or Bush or Clinton or any other president. History permits me to opine. It seems what is going on here is that you guys want to prevent history from taking place as it was meant to be. Tsk,tsk. That is always the way the Left Progressive mindset works when they have an itch.