[FRIAM] Trump Support

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -

Thanks for your analysis.

I suffer mightily on the axis of over-simplification to 
over-complication.   I suffer it personally (making bad choices, mostly 
biased toward complification) and by proxy (suffering friends and 
colleagues who operate on some other region of that axes, often barely 
overlapping (in a fuzzy distribution kinda way)).

Once Trump was in and his shenanigans started coming home to roost on 
all of us (including the joke about Trumpsters shoothing themselves in 
the dick because liberals hate it so much) I quit talking politics with 
my Trumpsketeer friends.  Some of it is simple embarrassment for them.   
When Trump was all promises (threats) and no action and even when his 
actions hadn't produced (negative nor positive) results, I felt inclined 
to debate the issues with them if only a little.  Now that the obvious 
(and not so obvious) results are starting to hit the floor (like the 
proverbial "other shoe" but from a millipede, not a biped), I guess I 
recognize that I would be throwing good energy after bad to do so.

I DO occasionally debate (discuss?) with my friends/colleagues who I 
know not to be taken in in any way at all by the Donald and his Cronies, 
some of the unexpected consequences and some of the possible alternate 
paths to a brighter future that nobody in their right mind could have 
positioned us for as well as our Lunatic in Chief has.

I used to think of Trump as "a loose cannon on deck" and while I was 
(mildly) happy to see *some* of the junk on deck cleared off by his wild 
careening, I was worried about him snapping the masts, destroying the 
wheelhouse, hulling and then knocking all the lifeboats overboard, etc.  
I still worry a bit about all of that, but am finding him to be a much 
"lighter weight" cannon than I feared.  He seems completely incapable of 
picking a good enough strategy to get ANYTHING he seeks and he doesn't 
have the followthrough to actually cash in on his occasional 
(accidental/blundering?) successes.

For example, does our Brinksman in Chief puffing his chest and waving 
his tiny fist at the Kleptocrat in Chief (Putin) and the WhackJob in 
Chief (Kim Jung Un) somehow set the stage for a global nuclear 
disarmament (or at least de-escalation)?   We have been running on (n 
times over) MAD for many decades and we are finally faced with at least 
one MAD actor with nukes whose use of same would trigger not Mutual 
Destruction but Unilateral Destruction and Regional Disaster (wherever 
Kim Jung might hurl his one (or two) Nukes?)  I'm pretty sure the Donald 
(with the support of the Joint Chiefs) wouldn't blink at the prospect of 
vaporizing the capitol and a few other choice locations with only the 
mildest concession for not immediately harming SoKo or Japanese or 
Chinese citizens.  Kaesong and Sinuiju being likely exempt due to their 
proximity to these countries?

Another example is his rabid "tear down ObamaCare" leading us toward a 
confrontation where Medicare-for-All or another version of Single-Payer 
health care becomes inevitable?

And is his flat-earth Climate Denial scaring even those who believe in 
it but won't acknowledge it for their own personal/business greed 
interests?   Might the torch for this movement move significantly out of 
Government hands?    Will there be a huge backlash swing as soon as the 
Blue/Green folks can get control over the legislative branch again?   
Trump can cause a LOT of trouble in 4 years perhaps, but the backlash to 
his nonsense might very well recover greater than if he'd never mucked 
things up?

Reminds me of the trick when arm-wrestling someone who is well matched, 
of "pretending" to give way just a tiny bit and being able to overcome 
the opponents dynamic strength more effectively than their static 
strength.   It has been noted that the previous 8 years trained the 
Republicans to be entirely reactive and obstructionist, and are now 
having a huge problem doing anything actually constructive (especially 
while watching their own back from the Trumpster and company).

I'm probably just singing my usual Pollyanna song here, but I guess I 
really like the tune!

- Steve


On 8/3/17 1:54 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
> I'm inclined to call that articlet "fake news". 8^)  YouGov has a good rating with 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/).  But I can't help but wonder about the one-sidedness of the articlet.  Why only include those 2 (or 7 ... or 8, or whatever it was) questions?  Where's the fine-print link to the poll and its analysis?  Maybe I missed it.  Etc.
>
> Regardless, I have 2 reactions:  1) Excellent! The more the flat-earthers flock together and reinforce their batsh!t delusions, the more obvious it becomes to anyone how delusional they are.  Maybe they'll even go all "Heaven's Gate" and suffocate themselves from all the methane[†].  2) It's not so much self-defeating on the R's part as it is our (every one of us) inability to think about complex things.  I posit the tendency to trust Trump will correlate with the tendency to prefer oversimplification. [‡] But the same would apply to any chant you might hear at a liberal march/rally.  Anyone who enjoys those stupid chants is enjoying oversimplification.
>
>
>
> [†] https://youtu.be/BPC7e8W8u18
> [‡] I feel the same way about "tl;dr" and people who overvalue the disgusting concept of 'pithyness' and/or sayings like "brevity is the soul of wit".  No, it's an indicator of ADHD you aphorism-obsessed @#$%. >8^D
>
> On 08/03/2017 12:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>> The Economist sez:
>>
>> We asked YouGov, a pollster, to survey 1,500 Americans about Donald Trump
>> and several national media outlets. When Republicans were asked whether
>> they trusted Mr Trump more than the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN,
>> 70% sided with the president each time. Republicans now loathe these
>> outlets so much that nearly half would be glad to see unconstitutional
>> means used to silence them, writes our data team
>>
>>
>> https://goo.gl/Xmfqcr
>>
>>
>> I've wanted to know if Trump voters hang onto him after all the harm he's
>> done to them. Apparently they are like this tweet:
>> [image: Inline image 1]
>