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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I think the thing with Trump is that like or hate him, he’s not beholden to traditional politics or norms. He’s the guy who wants to get things done and build things. Whether or not he’s right about all of this, I think is up to personal opinion. But what scares people is that he sees those norms and systems as obstacles to be overcome rather than rules to obey at cost of doing the thing.

Yes, Trump is the man who flouts traditional norms night, noon, and day. Like that time his administration pressured Twitter and Facebook to censor truthful news stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. Or when he used the FBI to spy on an incoming President’s campaign. Then used his media connections to concoct an elaborate hoax about Russian influence by his opponent. Or those times his cronies indicted his opponent for process crimes on totally novel and unprecedented legal theories. Or how his inflammatory rhetoric caused his opponent to almost be assassinated twice in two months.

But hey, Trump said mean words about people so…

I think the thing with Trump is that like or hate him, he’s not beholden to traditional politics or norms. He’s the guy who wants to get things done and build things.

I am sort of perplexed that you would consider this some kind of statement that one and all would agree with. Does he particularly get things done and build things? I tend to think of him as pure surface and not actually concerned with what he builds at all except insofar as it confirms his self-regard.

He has metaphorically build a multi-billion dollar organization, and literally built numerous hotels, golf courses, etc -- say what you like about the methods he uses to accomplish these things, but 'GTD' and 'TCB' are not weak points for him.

I think his motive is attention and the obeisance of others. He has since learned he can get those things without building anything.

He pretty much had that figured out by the time he started doing TV stuff, if not well before -- are you familiar with his 80s persona? I'm sure he likes those things (don't we all), but looking at the link in the other comment it's pretty clear that he also really likes building things. You can like more than one thing, y'know?

But he did all of that in the 80's. He did basically nothing during his time as president. I mean, he did annoy the hell out of libs on social media. But he didn't actually build anything.

https://www.trump.com/timeline

Didn't he go hands-off on Trump org once elected for COI reasons? Seems a bit unfair to complain that he wasn't personally building stuff during this period; I hear the President is pretty busy?

Anyways it looks like... quite a lot of stuff got built/renoed post-80s, and I'd expect him to do more once he's done with politics in the event that he doesn't get sent to Gitmo or something -- if only more golf courses for him to play on, he thinks golf courses are super-cool.