Trump - I don't wanna go!

[Ajarn Philip]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th5uVIhQ8VY

Forgive me for lowering the tone of the forum, but...

It's only 5 minutes, but if you're really short of time, for God's sake don't miss the last minute!

[rockfreak]

The trouble is Phil that in spite of all this satire there still appear to be significant numbers of hillbillies, white supremacists, anti-vaccers, anti-lockdown libertarians, anti-antifas, evangelical religious loonies, gun nuts, KKK, Incels, more hillbilies, lots more hillbillies....(cont P94). Where do they all come from? What moves these people? We think we've got it bad over here with Bumbling Bozza the Bullingdon Buffoon about to push us off the cliff into third world status on 1 January, but the Americans appear to have it twice as bad.
My British cousin who moved to America many moons ago and now lives in Pittsburgh where his residential area is overwhelmingly Democrat, tells me that if you motor a few miles out into the farmland you will see nothing but Trump placards, and one poster that caught his eye said: "Government: Get Your Hands off my Social Security!" Work that out. How do you govern a country like this?

Mentioning Incels, who now appear to have joined a kind of complaining-about-everything right-wing cult, I've written a limerick about them:

The Incels all started to whinge
About their perceived lack of min*e
They all got quite stroppy
'Bout having no totty,
And felt they'd been pushed to the fringe.

(PS: I've put the asterisk into the second line to fool the designers and moderators of this site who appear to be the kind of people who have knitted covers around the piano legs at home).

[Ajarn Philip]

@rockfreak - stroppy and totty? Really? hmmm...

[loringa]

Thanks Phil - excellent clip and sadly appears to be the way it is going over there!

The trouble is Phil that in spite of all this satire there still appear to be significant numbers of hillbillies, white supremacists, anti-vaccers, anti-lockdown libertarians, anti-antifas, evangelical religious loonies, gun nuts, KKK, Incels, more hillbilies, lots more hillbillies....(cont P94). Where do they all come from?

Except, of course, these are just a highly visible minority. Most Americans who voted for Trump, this election as much as the last, are not wide-eyed loons any more than most Brexiteers are; they are ordinary, decent people who see the American dream slipping away from them and have voted for the man who promised to put it back in reach. The fact that he cannot deliver on these promises any more than Mr Farage and Mr Johnson can give us an extra £350M a week for the NHS, and Mr Johnson's 'oven-ready deal' simply isn't, doesn't detract from the fact that he has seduced large swathes of the American public just like Farage and Johnson did. He offered these people hope and they bought in to it. I think it unlikely but he could still stay on for a second term though, quite frankly, we'll have quite enough troubles of our own.

[sejintenej]

re than Mr Farage and Mr Johnson can give us an extra £350M a week for the NHS, and Mr Johnson's 'oven-ready deal' simply isn't, doesn't detract from the fact that he has seduced large swathes of the American public just like Farage and Johnson did. He offered these people hope and they bought in to it. I think it unlikely but he could still stay on for a second term though, quite frankly, we'll have quite enough troubles of our own.

I cannot claim to be content with either of them. How "in" with the average American is either? Do they really understand the needs and wishes of the average person? One has a poor financial background so is he financially savvy? Are they young enough to rule? CAN they rule when you have apparently bitter contests between the Senate and house, both apparently attempting to make the President useless?

Then we have the poisonalities. One who has sworn not to allow anyone else to be President and the other is a supporter of the party behind the bloodshed in Ulster.

No. The entire system seems cockeyed but are our politicians any better? Then we have the press asking for the exact date when covid is finally defeated and we can return to normal. We have a date in December but I suspect any sensible person realises that after that date there is a danger of subsequent increases in infections and that further measures will be needed.

One silver lining to all this. Flu has always been a far greater danger to life than even covid. Australia has come out with earlier 2020 statistics showing that cases of flu have fallen from an average of over 20,000 to well under 1000. The figures for New Zealand show an even greater fall. Reason? well, the two are related but there is a hypothesis which they are adamant in stressing is a guess is that the precautions people take to avoid covid also prevent the spread of flu.

Another curse on our bosses. They terrorise us with the numbers of people who have died within 28 days of being tested for covid. I assume those figures are correct BUT they include those killed in car accidents, from heart attacks, strokes, meningitis, flu, simple old age .............with no covid influence so they do not indicate the honest covid deaths which will be a fraction of the published figures. You can't trust some people.

[rockfreak]

@rockfreak - stroppy and totty? Really? hmmm...

Now I check the original limerick which I once posted on another site, I see that I said: "They all got quite snotty about having no totty", so apologies for that. I'm sure Edward Lear didn't get the old boys of Christ's Hospital picking holes in his limericks.
Regarding the Incels, I don't see why they've embraced right-wing politics. Is it a general sense of grievance? Maybe it's more difficult for right-wing people. Perhaps Socialists are more generous regarding legover. Spread it around a bit more. I seem to remember reading once that after the French Revolution the courtesans of the court at Versailles were spared the guillotine but were told they had go out into the streets and sell their favours to Pierre Citizen for a few francs.

[rockfreak]

An outgoing Presi called Trump
On the golf course did quite get the hump.
He found it quite tough,
Lost his balls in the rough,
And kicked old Fox News up the rump.

[Ajarn Philip]

Trump yelled “I’m a victim of fraud!
The election results are all flawed!
I’ll get the Supreme Court,
Whose judgement I’ve bought,
To have all the counting ignored.”

[Foureyes]

loringa wrote: "Except, of course, these are just a highly visible minority. Most Americans who voted for Trump, this election as much as the last, are not wide-eyed loons any more than most Brexiteers are; they are ordinary, decent people who see the American dream slipping away from them and have voted for the man who promised to put it back in reach."

I fully agree with that. I have a number of American friends, whom I would describe as fitting in with loringa's definition of 'ordinary decent people..' Many of those voted for Trump in the 2016 election, not only for the the reasons given by loringa, but also because they hated and/or mistrusted Hillary Clinton (before anyone comments on that, I should add that the loudest condemnations came from women). I am sure that many of those voted for Trump in this election also.

I have very grave personal reservations about Trump and would certainly be extremely concerned if he was commander-in-chief in a nuclear confrontation with either Russia or China. I also think that he is a very unpleasant man. Despite all that, he has some significant achievements to his credit. He has not initiated any foreign wars and has tried to wind-down many of those already in existence involving overseas campaigns. He has made some major advances towards peace between Israel and some Arab states. He also went far out of his way to try to coax Kim Jong-un into joining the international community. On a different level, I could not fault his demands that many NATO countries should meet their financial obligations. I worked in NATO several times and know that the USA poured huge amounts of money, manpower, resources and expertise into NATO, which many countries use to reduce their own commitments - and often accompanied by oral condemnation of the USA! I am NOT (repeat NOT) a supporter of Trump, but I can see why many 'ordinary, decent' Americans might vote for him.

I doubt very much that there is any political party anywhere that does not include on its fringes, people whom its opponents would describe as 'wide-eyed loons.'

David

[loringa]

... but also because they hated and/or mistrusted Hillary Clinton (before anyone comments on that, I should add that the loudest condemnations came from women). I am sure that many of those voted for Trump in this election also.

I have never quite understood why Hillary was so unpopular; I know she played quite an up-front role in the Billary presidency but Bill Clinton had promised 'two for the price of one' when he was elected. Obviously there was the e-mail scandal which demonstrated a degree of arrogance and some people blamed her, a little unfairly I think, for the 2012 Benghazi atrocity, but for the life of me I can't see why she is so intensely disliked by so many. Ironically, it seems to me that the only other person of similar standing to attract such loathing from his opponents is President Trump himself.

I have very grave personal reservations about Trump and would certainly be extremely concerned if he was commander-in-chief in a nuclear confrontation with either Russia or China. I also think that he is a very unpleasant man. Despite all that, he has some significant achievements to his credit. He has not initiated any foreign wars and has tried to wind-down many of those already in existence involving overseas campaigns. He has made some major advances towards peace between Israel and some Arab states. He also went far out of his way to try to coax Kim Jong-un into joining the international community. On a different level, I could not fault his demands that many NATO countries should meet their financial obligations. I worked in NATO several times and know that the USA poured huge amounts of money, manpower, resources and expertise into NATO, which many countries use to reduce their own commitments - and often accompanied by oral condemnation of the USA! I am NOT (repeat NOT) a supporter of Trump, but I can see why many 'ordinary, decent' Americans might vote for him.

I too find Mr Trump to be a particularly unpleasant individual and I suspect that his attempts to get into bed with the likes of Kim Jong-un are as much to do with his admiration for what he sees as strong man leaders as a desire for any more admirable outcomes. Nonetheless, he has had some successes in the foreign policy arena, particularly on trade with China, though I do not support his moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem nor his recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory nor, indeed, his unequivocal support for the war in Yemen.

I also agree wholeheartedly with you over NATO; the failure of some of our allies to pay their way does them no credit whatsoever. If they sign up for something, in this case to spend 2% of GDP on Defence, then they really should meet their obligations. It's a classic case of consent and evade; if they don't want to pay their way then they should be more honest about it, especially those that can relatively easily afford it.

[Ajarn Philip]

There are ordinary, decent people on both sides of the divide in the USA. Some Americans, however, have a tendency to think it's all about them. Apparently several media outlets announced that Guy Fawkes night fireworks and bonfires around the UK were to celebrate Biden's victory...

[J.R.]

Why doesn't the man get some common sense and GO

[sejintenej]

Why doesn't the man get some common sense and GO


Because he has to prove that he is bereft of common sense, presumably. Remember that until he is really replaced (and he claims he has not been replaced) he can do almost anything he likes. I'm waiting for him to take the desk from the Oval Office to his home and then auction it

[Katharine]

I’m very worried just what he can wreck in the next 11 weeks.

They need to bring their election systems up to date - I know, I know it’s each State doing it’s own thing etc etc but ... no way for any so called leader in a so called democracy to behave.

[rockfreak]

I have to take issue with Foureyes' post about Trump trying to bring peace between Israel and "some Arab states". The Arab states concerned are the ones like Saudi Arabia that America bought off many years ago with a promise that America would take care of the Saudi Royal family (which had its enemies in the Middle East) as long as the Saudis stopped fomenting attacks on Israel and kept pumping the oil steadily. The Saudis have been good as gold in that respect ever since. Book to read on this particular subject: "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by one John Perkins who was part of the American dirty tricks brigade back in the 1970s along with better known ones like the CIA.
As far as the poor old Palestinians go, they are now faced not only with an expansionist Israeli settler movement but also the indifference of the West and also the Gulf states (Egypt included - a long way from Colonel Nasser's one-time support). But the West's dickheaded foreign policy has now legitimised and strengthened Iran's influence in the Middle East, and of course the Palestinians will take support from wherever they can find it. Hamas and Hezbollah and, interestingly, the followers of Celtic FC who have taken up their cause.