09-27-2017, 08:30 PM
(09-27-2017, 06:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It seems to me that Trump is diving into another controversy. It's the NFL now. As an ordinary mortal, you can buy into the notion that there is no bad publicity. You want to be in the public eye, the more the better.
As a politician, people usually choose their targets more carefully.
Still, careful has never been a strong point for Trump.
Reckless, ruthless, amoral, selfish, arrogant, impulsive, spiteful... none of that fits a leader or manager. I wouldn't hire someone with those characteristics as an assistant manager for a convenience store.
Quote:This one has been twisted by what gestures mean. Between institutional hatred, lack of training and cheap military equipment, police culture is less than ideal. I've always supported BLM's original message, though I haven't made it anything like a primary cause.
You need the police. But giving the police military weapons is like giving a sports car to a 16-year-old who just got a driver's license. Maybe our educational system no longer exposes the potential leaders to the classic Greek tragedy in which an unready person gets power that he can't handle, goes too far, and destroys much including himself.
Quote:However, the gesture chosen has been converted in some people's mind from a gesture against the police to a gesture about the military and the nation. Free speech is wonderful, but choosing to deliberately misconstrue what the other guy is saying is not free speech.
If I never presented loyalty to the personality of Barack Obama as a necessary attribute of loyalty to America, then I see justification in not seeing Donald Trump as the greatest thing to have ever happened to America, especially when the President acts in ways that I can see no other president behaving. I still have tests of logic and recognize objective reality as the definitive proof of... practically everything.
The same people who disparaged Barack Obama for differences from them expect the rest of us to give unqualified support to this terribly-flawed President. I see patterns that have turned tragic in other countries. But supporting Donald Trump means suspension of the usual judgments of ... just about everything.
Quote: I guess that puts me with the players, but perhaps not for the usual reasons.
Is life really worth the struggle?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.