[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 ..."

[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.

[Quincy Lehr]

Charlie--

I know that a lack of formal education is a point of pride to you, but a few history classes, particularly focusing on the early twentieth century, would benefit you a great deal. The notion, too, that academia has been leading the charge from the left might work for the humanity and social sciences in recent decades (sort of). Less so for business programs, and the sciences had a lot of government contracts in the Cold War. In my own field, I can think of plenty of leading figures in the last 125 years--W.A. Dunning, Ulrich Phillips, the consensus guys, off the top of my head--who weren't lefties, while real innovators like Herbert Aptheker couldn't get jobs due to the Red Scare. So I'm calling bull$#!t.

[Charlie Southerland]

All I can say to that Quincy, is that it will be my pleasure to meet you soon.

[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.

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

You can only backfire if you fire.

Amen.

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

For me this thread has been informative.

I hope I didn't sound as though I'm against keeping each other informed. I only meant to share research suggesting that arguing about Trump is a waste of time or even counterproductive.

You make a good point. I shouldn't let the trolling or the responses to the trolling keep me from following the thread. I might learn something from the posts aimed at helping us watch what our president is doing.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Max,
Is this a serious theory, that Charlie's deep clinging to, for example, the preposterous definitions of the Left, Patriotism, Trump, and Believers in his last post is created by sharp confrontation? Or are you saying that it is only when you try to challenge the fabricated myths of ideologues (as opposed to less artificial myths along the lines of Cassirer's Myths of the State vs. those described in his early work) that you see their true inability to think without them? Or are you just saying this is a waste of time. I don't buy A. B is the only reason I have been trolling along. And C may in fact be the truth.

Charlie,
You may believe that the sheer size of the sheep pen you hunker in gives you the right to claim ownership of the religion you assume to speak for but I find more content in the "believing" done by individuals like Dorothy Day, Simone Wiel, Jacques Ellul, Romero, Berdyaev, and Heschel that is on the same trajectory as your founder than in all the sheerings of your more "faithful" masses combined. These are but a few names. I know personally hundreds of Christians who I have walked through all manners of tight spots that would find your views of both God and their own deeply active faiths repulsive even if so immature as to be comical.

Even C.S. Lewis had the sense to realize how far a patriotism like yours is from any defensible notion of love. As for your fascinating idea of what your text is and the equivalency of your reading with the intents of its many human authors all I can do is think of the many Christianities that would dissent from most of what you say above and wonder if you have ever actually looked at the politics and techniques that gave you the cannon you are so at ease in trusting. The authority you claim to speak for your texts seem based only in the strict limitations you put on any real questioning of their claims and manifestations, a blinder you confuse with Faith. I find it unlikely that you have studied any more of these texts, their possible meanings, and the history of the discussion around them than I have so I always find your claim to authority to speak for them with anymore at stake in the game or sense of pesonal consequence than I have, so you will forgive if I laugh at your strange explanation above about the Left (permutations of which you imagine even less of than of theologies).

As for "our" freedoms and "our" way of life and the so called progressive hate for them, I again appreciate the underlining of the resiliency your indoctrination into the Feed gives you against all evidence to the contrary.
The hatred of "our" foundations are another matter. If you mean the very real genocide manifest for our destiny, or the many other betrayals of the state principles of the documents then maybe so. If you mean everything from Thomas Paine to Shay's Rebellion than you are, as usual when you pretend to have any idea what my "Left" believes, deeply confused.

[Jim Moonan]

On Face the Nation this morning:

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/cbs-ne...eks-in-office/

Very instructive.