Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

(09-29-2018, 05:48 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-27-2018, 03:40 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-27-2018, 08:35 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Trump is a dotard, but for some reason the MSM call him "childish" :/ This is an insult to children. Children are typically naively idealistic, but what they want is good. Trump is a heartless cynic, who wants only money, power and sex. This makes him a sort of living dead:

He is also a disgusting, palaeolithic embodiment of toxic masculinity. He sees himself as a warrior, but the only sword he can use is the pork sword.

Finally, Trump is an American version of Stalin - a brutal strongman who pretends to represent the working class. It's no coincidence that both make heavy use of the national identity concept.

The one side note that needs to be added: Trump sounded like this in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and ever since.  He's more like Bubble Boy -- never in the real word, only the one of his own creation.

Paul Craig Roberts is very much a product of the bi-partisan political consensus of another era and hardly a libertarian.  I like reading him since he provides some rather interesting insights without descending into the lunacy that pervades the establishment mentality of both major parties.  In his latest article on the Donald he provides two hypothesis into what his administration is doing.

You are correct that Trump has been saying pretty much the same things for decades and even into his 2016 campaign.  It was also pretty clear to me that he was trying to carry out his campaign promises early in his administration.  Frankly, something that I am not used to seeing elected officials, particularly the President, actually do.  It also seems to me that the permanent bureaucracy is doing everything it can to maintain the status quo.

First, Roberts believes that the current actions of the administration will break Pax Americana.  In this it would appear that he is correct.  Given the number of thing going on, excessive public and private debt is but one, that look like late stage empire this outcome is probably inevitable even without Trump.

Second, he also believes that Trump is unaware of this going on.  This presumes that Trump is an idiot and in my experience idiots do not maintain business empires lasting the better part of half a century.  Maintaining any amount of wealth requires considerable foresight and idiots just can't manage that.  Also, he has had to have dealt with recalcitrant employees through the years in his own businesses and in the private sector it is much easier to get rid of such people.  If he is that bad a judge of people he would have went under years ago since he would have systematically surrounded himself with yes men and sank himself that way.  This did not happen.

In playing devils advocate Roberts came up with a second hypothesis which I find more persuasive.  It is that Trump is pulling the destruct switch in order to create a less dysfunctional situation.  If this is true than I am impressed because this is a very Xer thing to do and Boomers seem to only be capable of the destruction part.  Much of what Trump is doing now is preserving his long term goals while getting his opponents to destroy themselves.

I and some Xers did something very similar to the LPO twice from the nineties to the early twenty first century.   The Boomers never knew what hit them because they never understood that I wasn't playing the same game they were.  The short story is that the Boomers who held all the cards couldn't or wouldn't get anything useful done.  I reasoned that if the LPO could not or would not achieve its stated goals then its destruction would be no loss and the rest of the Xers agreed with me that we were in the no-win scenario.  That was when they turned me loose.  The second time was even worse for them because an even more ruthless Xer came along who was even better at this game.  I do respect competence.  As a result the LPO is now doing much better.

I know what getting people to destroy themselves looks like because of the many times I have done it myself.  Given how the Dims [sic!] seem to be currently going insane it looks like Trump has found their psychological weak spot and is going for the kill.  Just not in the usual way.

The Boomers who hold all the cards are those who wield the wealth and institutional power. They follow oil billionaire H. L. Hunt's dictum "he who owns the gold makes the rules". The Lost (like Hunt) were as rapacious as any generation, but they could never get away with what Boomer elites get away with easily. America used to be prone to tax conspicuous consumption heavily and have a tax system that favored small business over monopolized, vertically-integrated firms. That is over.

Have you watched the Kavanaugh hearings? I saw Cory Booker cut him down with language of mathematical precision. I don't see Booker as one to create a Boomer/X divide any more than Obama did. Booker has found the weak spots of Trump.  He will not be alone at that.