“Would you rather have someone whose tongue is maybe a little wild, but has incredibly good policies that make your life better?” he asked the congregation. “Or someone who has a silver tongue and says all the right things and has terrible policies which ruin your life and those of your children and grandchildren?”
Partly out of confirmation bias as I’ve been saying this since before his victory in 2016 and highlighting it as the thing lefty/intellectual/“elites” don’t get about his appeal. Trump hits the “right” buttons while his wildness, lack of “refinement” and apparent sense-making are all features. So many want “change” … Trump is “change”, right from his personal nature and demeanour.
Another …
And he said that the decline in church attendance over time had meant that many of those who considered themselves religious were less influenced by spiritual leaders and more by right-wing media and politicians - Mr Trump foremost among them.
Oh … JFC!! I suppose this is a good predictor of how the west collapses. Deepening class separation across all spheres of civil life allowing chaotic manipulation by demagogues. Can’t help but think of the fall of the Roman Republic and Dune here. Also can’t help but think that the whole Hitchens/Dawkins anti-religion thing, which feels like it got a bit old for the mainstream, really has an essentially important fundamental point … as a whole type of institution and cultural phenomenon, it may simply not be worth it on the whole.
So many want “change” … Trump is “change”, right from his personal nature and demeanour.
Back in 2016 when Trump as sill “new” I fell very squarely into this. I was still too young to vote and had just started learning about politics. Looking at both major parties all I saw was people who didn’t care about normal people, politicians that seemed too involved in the political game to actually get anything done. I remember seeing Trump as a kinda of wild card that would hopefully stir things up enough to hopefully get something done. That someone removed from the traditional nepotism in politics could make real changes.
Unfortunately that’s not what happened, and not really how any of this works. It seems like his presidency just made new problems, and all the old ones still persist.
On the new and old problems front, in-line with the article … I wonder how many don’t see it that way. Getting the Supreme Court to take down abortion for instance seems like a big one for some conservatives , like maybe “best president in our life time” big. Not just because of the decision itself, but also knowing that the Court is now on “their side”.
Informally many people do speak in half sentences, zig zagging on tangents, especially schizophrenics. It takes a lot of energy to follow if you are not used to it and Republicans think we are the stupid ones for not being able to follow.
Try to follow his much derided nuclear uncle speech. It isn’t that hard when you give it a go.
Yea. And in a way, Trumps greatest political achievement may be that he proved or materialised the “elitism” facade around US Democracy and Government. While previously, to many, especially urban and higher/“educated” class types, it might have just been a Fox News culture war wedge, with Trump and how “no one” saw him coming or understood his appeal, the whole elitist facade and the safe bubble many had taken for granted was revealed.
To be fair, Bernie Sanders did see his appeal. He came from the same down-to-earth angle (even more so, not being a billionaire) and addressed many of the same issues except offering a genuine solution rather than a scam.
The Democratic party did not like that because they are part of the elite, playing good cop to GOP’s bad cop. USA is screwed until it eliminates its backward two-party system.
Oh for sure, and this was known at the time IIRC, when some polling it something revealed that “Bernie bros will vote for trump”. And, IIRC, the mainstream media response was that it made little sense.
The best description I’ve heard, is: “finally a politician who speaks his mind!”
What people don’t realize, is that Trump doesn’t really “speak his mind”, like a schizophrenic would. His longer rambling tirades are actually rehearsed, while the shorter ones he’s been practicing for decades since becoming a professional con man, to the point where they’ve become second nature.
It’s all a smoke screen, very effective at fooling those less experienced. He’s particularly talented at saying something, and the opposite, plus a tangent. Which is something an actual schizophrenic would never do, but a con man can use to first get people to only hear whatever each one prefers, then over time cherry pick those same words and spin them into any narrative that’s best for themselves.
Or in other words, but the same, don’t you love words:
The best and worst description I’ve heard, because hearing is important, is: finally, at the beginning of it all, when someone changes things, a politician like you and me, running the country like a business, who speaks his mind then shuts up, because respect is important, I respect that!
He started quite eloquent and on point, then went on adding trick upon trick. I don’t think he’s gone out of character for a long time, as demonstrated by the infamous “grab them by the p🙊” private-ish conversation.
As a better test of his abilities, I propose you pick any of his speeches and see how many rhetorical devices you can spot:
“selectively enforces its policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment, hires professors who support anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda, and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection”
The problem with this statement is it is completely subjective and not at all objective. The first one is reasonable if Jewish students are being verbally harassed walking through campus with complaints being ignored. That might very well be happening. However, the other ones sound a whole lot like, “you hired professors who don’t 100% support Israel no matter what the country does.” One person’s “spread antisemitic propaganda” is another person’s “shared a story from a reputable news source that didn’t show 100% support for Israel.”
This is one of the more fascinating space stories. The modeling for such an object should be (relatively speaking), rather simple. Something isn’t going to speed up or slow down without a force being applied to it. So NASA should be able to model this quite accurately.
You would think that NASA has an ongoing project monitoring it after spending millions crashing a spaceship into it. Not sure why we’re hearing this from some high school students.
The DART science team is continuing to analyze their data, as well as new information on the composition of the asteroid moonlet and the characteristics of the ejecta to learn just how much DART’s initial hit moved the asteroid, and how much came from the recoil.
But now another group of researchers, led by Taylor Gudebski and Elisabeth Heldridge, used the 0.7m telescope at the Thacher Observatory located on the campus of The Thacher School in Ventura County, California to make their observations.
They quite likely already know of this and just have not reported any findings yet, likely as they want to collect more data first and have another launch planned to study this further:
Additionally, another spacecraft will launch in 2024 to study Dimorphos even closer. ESA’s Hera mission should arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos in December 2026. Hera will undertake a detailed study of Dimorphos to understand more deeply how the impact affected it.
Just so happens these students published their work first. That does not mean the team behind DART are not monitoring it any more and have nothing further to report or have moved on to other work. Even if that is what the OP article seems be be hinting at.
smaller pieces which fell off are hard to track while their effect on the trajectory might still be substantial. Small change to the orbit early on makes a big difference after a while.
Nothing matters to most Burgerlanders but the treats. Threaten the treats, and they’ll get weird and maybe even get violent. We saw that during covid restrictions making sit-in restaurants less convenient. grill-broke
Sometimes I’m surprised very little of them are upset about climate change and capitalism because it threatens recreation.
Oceans filled with plastic? Rent and house price alike are both too expensive to live anywhere near the beach? Hiking trails become littered with plastic? Hell, walkable cities are filled with amenities giving someone a lot of ways to spend their time. Granted, I don’t think neither nature nor architecture qualifies as “treats” let alone something burgerlanders care that much about.
Climate change and wage theft are very hard to prove and bring consequences for by design of the system, but if your burger is too small that’s pretty easy to sue over for false advertising.
bbc.co.uk
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