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As a place where you can get rich? Sure. But he also seems to sneer at military service. Remember his attacks on McCain? As for being a dictator, depends on your definition of dictator. I think he's used to getting his way, though his wants tend to be more impulsive and pettier than most dictators.
He spent a significant amount of time where he did in fact want to go after Hillary. According to the Mueller report he tried to get Sessions to go after Clinton but Sessions refused (pdf page 319). It would easily fit that he wasn't actually able to go after Hillary and is under investigation himself, so of course now he's going to say investigating former presidents is bad. Similarly he's running as a Republican, so mentioning the assassination and using it to talk about religion is pretty much what I'd expect any politician to do.
Credit where credit is due, few manage to be President. Obama was a politician with barely any record but knew how to give a speech. Trump knew how to channel the sorry state of the Republican field and frame himself as an outsider. Once in office, I think those same Republicans in Congress called the shots and he signed his name on things. Most of the things he tried on his own initiative didn't seem to go anywhere.
Wokeness arguably accelerated in response to Trump. I'm not sure how much of its decline is due to Trump as opposed to the left themselves. And both candidates are arguably among the most disliked in history
Wokeness accelerated before Trump and under actual policies followed by Biden, Harris and the kind of people they promoted and excluded. Trump actually tried to ban DEI ideology in his goverment. Even in terms of the supreme court, the appointments of Trump hasn't been that greatly conservative while Biden's appointments and Harris future appointments would destroy freedom of speech and the first amendment.
There has also been the supreme court decicion against Affirmative Action. Which wouldn't have happened if the supreme court was staffed by the kind of people that are selected by Clinton, Biden and would be selected by Harris.
We have also seen the rise of right wing opposition to wokeness. To be frank some of the people opposing it also agree with elements of it.
Without Trump as a unifying force on the right if instead of him we had someone who compromised (much more) with such policies, the reaction would have been even weaker. An appeasing right would be itself woke. Elon Musk capture of twitter is also an obvious factor in the decline of elements of wokeness although there are elements of cultural far leftism such as mass migration that Elon himself doesn't oppose, although the change in ownership has lead to more speech in that direction too which is a good thing. And Musk does not appease Kamala in the way you suggest he ought to.
And there might also be left wing fatigue.
This idea that people who do X should be appeased while people who sort of oppose X but not sufficiently should be opposed because they are to blame to X has always failed when it comes to the cultural left losing influence and it is is a manipulative argument.
Somehow this bad advice that liberals offer is not given to the left. The self destructive course that you win by losing is freely given to the right.
The answer can be nothing but a No. But also in itself there is something "bellow the belt" in trying to manipulate people to vote against their interests by presenting what is blatantly self destructive course as helping them win on the issue.
The right should oppose more strongly wokeness and keep the politicians they elect more in check because they actually have been appeasing cultural/identity far left, too much and sharing too much of its perspective. No, this doesn't mean they should elect leftists who would be far worse on these issues.
For example, Trump on wokeness is better than Harris, Biden and Clinton would have been, but he is still the guy who promoted the platinum plan which gave specific 500 billion investment to blacks. Like the Biden administration gave disproportionate funds targeting even in general economic help bills, its progressive stack demographics.
And if one examines Bush, Reagan, Nixon, they would find worse examples of this than Trump's platinum plan. So, in addition to this bad advice that is one sidedly given, the part of the problem of rising of wokeness is that the left is in fact extremely biased in favor of its favorite groups and against its hated groups. The right which does sort of oppose this and isn't as bad, often both appeases them and doesn't do enough to oppose them and does some similiar things. And there are also elements within right wing movements who are much more false opposition and on team liberal and are four step back for any limited hangout pretension of opposition. And others who are one step forward, one step back, or two steps forward, one step back.
So, if you got to elect someone else than Trump to oppose wokeness more effectively, it ought to be someone who is more antiwoke than Trump is, not Harris who is far, far more woke. And while electing leftists is a worse option, it is good to criticise those who claim to oppose wokeness but either do not, or are two steps forward, one step back types. That is they compromise too much in certain areas which probably applies to Trump, who is still much better on wokeness than Harris would be, based on what we have seen from their rule.
Maybe if the people who demoralize right wingers put effort at demoralizing liberals, cultural leftists, woke types, and joined the rising movement against the cultural and identity left, things would be worse for woke types and we would see stronger decline on policy by organizations and the goverment.
The much advertised decline of wokeness can't be just sentiment change that we ought to be satisfied with but sentiment must be used to change policies.
For one example, to effectively oppose wokeness, if Trump is elected, the Trump administration must use the department of justice to go after companies violating the civil rights of their employees by choosing to discriminate against hiring white employees over blacks and other by default "diverse" demographics, following BLM's direction. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/
Another facet of this can be Soros prosecutors who not only promoted but still promote decriminalization policies.
Exercising power to restrict it rather than electing its supporters who use their power to support it, is the only way for the "woke" agenda to genuinely lose. And since this is a big deal that includes significant violations of the most basic civic rights, especially of nation forming people in their own homeland, and there is also an issue of the criminality involved and further escalation in abuse of rights as those who have been getting away with this get more arrogant, it really is an issue that must be seen from the perspective of criminal and civic rights violations that is a priority to stop people from doing, and to punish.
Same with the moral obligation of prosecutors to prosecute crime. The state and media, corporations can not be run by any sort of ideologue, who does as they please to screw over non progressive favored groups but there are both laws, precedent, the constitution, and certain virtues, moral obligations and even professional traits that must be part of the system. In practice there has been an usurpation of such system by the new left shadow constitution, of which wokeness is a continuation and expansion of, and which has a continuing trajectory towards more South Africa type of polices and governance. Whether we are talking about bureaucrats, journalists, CEO's. These people have a duty not to follow the progressive stack ideology, and it is possible to even interpret laws against the shadow constitution already in the books to go after them. But not reason not to institute new laws and revoke bad past ones where necessary.
The supreme court interpreting disparate impact as unconstitutional which there is no chance happening by Harris appointments can be one way things can move closer to the direction of limiting wokeness. But like the AA decision, which by it self was helpful but not sufficient to stop it, there must be follow through both by the goverment and the development further of real journalists exposing such violations, and a lobby, including law proffessionals willing to sue and go after them. The kind of movement that even wants to do anything like this is is not going to comprise of liberal nevertrumpers.
For context for the low, I consider myself center-left and anti-woke.
I think wokeness is both cultural and political. My starting point I would say is this survey, which I think puts a major shift at around 2014. I do wish there was a more up-to-date chart, but I can't find one. Anyway, I don't think it means that wokeness is defeated if we get a Republican President for 4 years, then a Democrat brings it back. I think it has to be defeated culturally.
I was disappointed in Biden in that he was probably the most centrist of the 2020 candidates, and, well, we see the results. As far as Trump goes, there's a concept called reciprocal radicalization. That is, something that drives recruitment for X also drives recruitment for opposition to X. Trump was also a uniting force on the left. Even as a Dem I'm not excited for a potential Harris win, I simply find Trump's behavior completely disqualifying.
As far as the Supreme Court goes, Barrett has actually been pretty good. As has Jackson overall, even I oppose the reason she was picked. I do support their affirmative action ruling, though that has been overshadowed by my strong dislike of their presidential immunity ruling.
The problem with having the DoJ go after anti-racist companies is the same as the difficulty going after racist companies - dog whistles. They can always just say that promoting diversity is innocuous free speech and that it just happened to work out that the best candidates aligned with their diversity goals. You have to prove something like them saying they're not hiring you because you're white, and no intelligent person would do that.
The polls have noted a dramatic rightward shift for young men. My hope is that Dems will learn from that.
No, this isn't that big of a problem, because they openly say it. Because it was allowed without sufficient backlash, plenty of not very intelligent and intelligent people in journalism, media, politicians, presidents, CEOs, NGO leaders and even people who run corporations and other institutions that are able to bully and nudge people around like Blackrock, openly supported, and continue to support racist discrimination against whites, men, etc. There have also been plenty of intelligent people who haven't been organized and didn't openly oppose it, but will more strongly oppose it with a political environment that is more hostile to this. You could even have some who in the madness of group thing might have went along with it in 2020s and BLM was more active, but now would be enthusiastic in working together with those who wish to crush this. Or do so, because of wanting to raise through the ranks.
Making DIE policies taboo and to be (accurately) treated as racist while making opposing it the non taboo position can be done.
Some have started hiding their power level though after the affirmative action ruling.
There has been no problem in the political establishment to openly condemn pro white discrimination and even exaggerating and making shit up. There is a lot of opportunity to crash those who obviously do antiwhite racism, which is not anti-racism, which requires to just not be guilible.
Forcing companies to fire pro diversity ideologues and to enforce controls to make sure these kind of people don't decide, is something that can be done.
You could even reward whistelblowers and make it open season for people alleging to have been discriminated to sue them. This is already happening with the disparate impact, except people who haven't been discriminated are getting massive payments over nothing. It is feasible to even take into consideration studies evaluating performance, IQ differences, and the specifics in each case, and i am not suggesting we enforce a system that is guilible in any accusation, but one that stops the blatant antiwhtie discrimination happening today.
Much of modern politics is based on the demand for the right and associated ethnic groups to be guilible pushovers in a self destructive manner. When you don't behave in a gullible manner, the possibilities of what can be done open up. They can't get away with it just by pretending they aren't doing so, if there is sufficient effort to keep them accountable.
Why not force companies suspected in engaging in discriminatory practices, such as companies that have engaged with ESG, Woke, policies, or followed AA policies, to demonstrate they have change course. To actually hire people who openly condemn such policies past and present a demosntratable record of taking measures within company to ensure that such practices are condemend and people who support following them and are to violate the law (what will be bolstered with additional legislation too). Suing companies will also helps things. The idea that the company's duty is to its shareholders.
These things can be polled. A field that is very lopsided to the left is going to engage in these because this the ideology of the left today.
I would also add that the agenda that favors massive waves of mass migration that would demographically change the country that makes whites a minority and claims that is a good thing to demographically change the country is another woke policy. One that Biden bragged about before becoming president and executed when he was president. Again, Trump's numbers on mass migration aren't good but Biden's were at least twice as bad, while in terms of rhetoric the first was wishy washy on mass migration and openly opposed illegal migration while the Democrats effectively are for open borders and illegal migration. Trump might also have reduced illegal immigration more if other politicians, judges, etc were more willing to share his vision.
And of course, the policies of the goverment in regards to these issues are enormously influential. It does matter if an administration promotes DEI policies and ideologues as Biden's did and Harris will do. Or if it passes executive orders against it.
It's like dealing with someone who might not be sufficiently effective in fixing a problem but at least tries to fix facets of it, vs those who strongly support making it worse and doubling down on it.
There is no reason to have hope in the Dems changing from their trajectory. The ideologues are running the show and Kamala Harris who is especially woke even for Democrats woke standards is part of that. If someone hopes that Dems learn from that and change and have demonstrated their change in ideology and deserve support, only after they have changed a case can be made.
Since it is their ideology and also they expect to benefit electorally by mass migration and pandering to their progressive identity coalition, they are unlikely to change.
Voting for someone who is super woke today under the hope that they will change is not a wise course to follow.
Jackson has ruled a dissenting opinion in favor of retaining affirmative action. So there would have been a different rulling if the Democrats picked supreme corut justices.
She also responded to the case of the Biden administration pressuring Twitter to censor speech with supporting it and claiming:
snip
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/19/note-ketanji-brown-jackson-first-amendment-should-hamstring-government-thats-entire-point/amp/
The Democrats want to put supreme court justices that would bring hate speech laws. Kamala and her running mate has been pretty outspoken about their view on freedom of speech and misinformation and hate speech. The Democrats flipping the courts will escalate things in a worse direction on such issues.
The evidence is pretty overwhelming that Democrats are far worse on wokeness/intersectional progressive ideology, than Trump. Which is why we observe the very strong trend of supporters of wokeness who care enough about the issue support the Democrats because they see them as woke and opponents of it, who also care about the issue, oppose them. I guess someone could argue that some of supporters of aspects of the general woke ideology tree who genuinely oppose other aspects of wokeness might oppose Democrats, while supporting Trump. But these people, still oppose the Democrats because they are too woke.
Being anti-woke is not consistent with supporting the Democrats on the issue of wokeness over Trump. This inconsistency is there, however someone wishes to identify as.
To be about X you need to have standards about X and follow them through when evaluating when someone passes or doesn't pass standards.
Rather than trying to square a circle, teaching the Democrats a lesson and holding them accountable for being so woke should be the path for the anti-woke to do.
It seems that that among some people here there is some emotional attachment to belonging in the team, and party that isn't associated with being right wing. For people who have voted for them, expecting to be something better, or voted them in the past before they moved as far to the left as they did now, it doesn't mean you need to have as a permanent part of own identity to be a Democrat. Since you consider yourself anti-woke, and they fail the test, you don't need to defend them on this issue. They aren't entitled to your support.
Anti-discrimination laws already forbid basing hiring decisions on race or gender (with exceptions for specific jobs). White is a race and male is a gender. But to have standing you have to have a person who didn't get a job, and you have to prove that person specifically would have been hired if not for DEI.
This can be done culturally, but to attempt legally would be likely illegal (with maybe some exception for state-run universities) and I would never support it. Sorry I'm not up for "government should not exceed its authority, except when I really feel like it." Not having a totalitarian government is more important to me than beating annoying people.
I think you need to get off the internet a bit. Progressives want to help poor people, to the extent that they're willing to let a bunch of people in from other countries, legally or otherwise. You want to think this a bad idea? Absolutely fine. But it is not "We are doing this to ethnically cleanse white people." I oppose illegal immigration (but don't hold it against the kids brought along by their parents) and want people to culturally assimilate, but I'm going to blunt that I don't give a flying fuck what the racial makeup of America is, now or in the future. I want everyone to stop making a big deal over what race someone is.
Fair. I was mostly thinking in overall terms. Jackson has a bent against prosecutor and administration overreach, to the point of ruling in favor of some of the J6 people because the government was taking creative liberties on what to charge them with. I wasn't remembering some of her specific actions.
Welcome to the two party system. I am not a single issue voter and quite frankly, believe Trump should be in jail for election fraud and to a much lesser extent obstructing the return of classified documents. Any chance of me flipping parties was toast the moment he was nominated again. There is no path for me to "follow through" on opposing wokeness without also sabotaging other principles and beliefs I hold more important.
Dems are no more a monolith than Reps. There are plenty of Republicans even here in this thread that despise Trump but are voting for him anyway because to them the alternative is worse. That's me with Kamala. I don't care to dig it up, but I remember an old survey that claimed that progressives were only like 8% of the population. That's a minority even among the Dems, but just big enough that if they don't vote then you end up with a Republican in that seat. And Dems are currently in an awkward position where usually the party supports a first-term President for the renomination. Biden should have dropped out, and had to be forced out too late that the Vice President was the only real pivot they had. And said pivot was a pointless diversity pick because Vice Presidents don't really do anything.
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The guy has done dozens if not hundreds of events with vets and their families, he loves them, they love him, what are you talking about? He got attacked for going to Arlington and all of the vets there defended him. The Atlantic ran that story about Trump refusing to pay for a Mexican soldier's burial and the sister of the guy called it insulting and said that Trump was deeply moved. There are stories like these happening all the time, but these are two from just the last week.
McCain was a horrible person!
The guy has been in business for sixty years, that involves doing a lot of business, a lot of deals. Supposing that Trump is just this manchild-lik baby who is "used to getting his way" is TDS.
Obviously Trump is a political actor so we can't take his word at any sort of face value, but Robert Mueller, the esteemed Robert Mueller, not at all a political actor, his report says that Trump is bad! And we have to believe that.
You sound like someone who hasn't actually watched Trump speak. Go watch any of his recent podcasts or interviews. He talks about it. He feels genuinely saved by God. He talks about religion in terms he didn't talk about before. It's not that cynical.
North Korea, ISIS, border wall, tax cuts, border security, tariffs, NAFTA renegotiations, deregulation. The political class in DC spent years fighting this guy, he got a lot done, and now everything that the politicians spent years kicking and screaming trying to fight gets counted as a flaw of Trump's because we can't admit that Trump was actually competent. You just linked me a document written by Robert Mueller as part of a 3-year hoax meant to completely undermine Trump's presidency, and then rhetorically throw up your hands, gee, boy, Trump couldn't get a lot done, must because he's not a get-a-lot-done kind of guy.
He got attacked for using cemeteries for photo-ops, which is the opposite of respecting the military.
I'm not referring to your or Trump's general impression of McCain as a person. I'm referring to Trump's comments on McCain's military service. Coming from a guy who couldn't serve due to "heel spurs."
I'm not referring to his business deals, I'm referring to the way he treats his staff. Trump is unusually unable to retain staff. And they have a lot to say about him in return. Could they be lying? Sure, but so could Trump. And to me the accusations they are making seem consistent to me with observed behaviors about Trump that I would at least consider them circumstantial evidence.
It sounded to me like you were in fact taking his word at face value. Mueller is a political actor, sure. But this also wasn't something like Mueller giving his opinion. This was Mueller conducting a government investigation and publishing his finding in a report. That comes with penalties for lying. We know that Trump campaigned on "locking up" Hillary. Then after being in office he stopped. We're not in dispute about that, are we? Trump claimed he didn't want to hurt the Clintons, which makes no sense. Was he previously confused about what "locking her up" implied?
Mueller reports allegations that Trump on multiple occasions attempted to persuade Sessions to go after Hillary, and that Trump made several public comments on Twitter and to the New York Times that would align with said attempts. For instance:
breaking up subjects
Trump is good at lying and has speechwriters to help. Religious belief is unfalsifiable and something many politicians who cheat on their wives (including Trump himself) claim.
North Korea I don't think he got anything done. ISIS I don't recall anything but a continuation of government policy and Obama era drone strikes. Border wall I guess some sections were added though if I recall he wanted across the entire 2,000 mile border (which is a stupid idea because that would cost an insane amount of money and getting past a fence with delusions of grandeur is easy). I suppose I'll grant you tax cuts, border bills, tariffs, and USMCA, though I would argue that a lot of that was more due to Republicans in Congress (a.k.a. the elites) than Trump.
You accuse me of TDS and then turn around and definitively state the Mueller report is a hoax. If I have TDS then you have the opposite.
Guy goes to a funeral for families of veterans killed during the current administration. You have to dismiss this as a "photo op" because it's very good evidence that Trump has respect for the military. Oh no, he didn't follow some stupid rules about the correct official procedure for comforting grieving families, he just went to the funeral and spent time with the families, it's just a photo-op.
McCain was a horrible person who used his military service as a rhetorical shield to make war anywhere the MIC could make money. Trump rightly points out that McCain's service wasn't even all that honorable, he was a rat. Insulting McCain as a scumbag is no more disrespecting the military than mocking Rosie O'Donnell is hatred of women.
Name a person you think would not have been fired except for Trump being a manchild. The reason Trump got rid of so many people is that so many of them were horrible. The reason so many of them were horrible is that DC is full of them.
You are naive.
It's also good evidence that a guy running for President is going to go to places that make him look good to a target demographic
There are ways to do that without saying that getting captured as a soldier is worthy of scorn.
I just posted a public tweet where Trump complains about Sessions not investigating Hillary, 2 months before Sessions was out. You know, that thing we were talking about that Trump supposedly dropped the investigation out of the kindness of his heart? Any response to that?
We have years of Trump being in office and speaking with veterans and their families and they all come away talking about how much love Trump gave them. If you aren't familiar with Trump's well-documented love of the average soldier, you are either misinformed or uninformed.
Sure, what's the actual wording of Trump's tweet:
This is not some blanket call to prosecute Hillary: this is the observation that, far from being a Justice Department that claims to be neutral, they are seriously investigating Trump while not touching amyone else. Hillary ran her own classified email server, Trump did not collude with Russia, which did Jeff Session's FBI investigate? Remember that Sessions was coerced into recusing on the logic that since he participated in Trump's campaign he couldn't be a neutral observer. Thankfully, after that, the FBI was totally politically neutral throughout the Trump presidency.
Jeff Sessions recused himself because he's a good man and was following ethical guidelines. He was then replaced in this capacity by Rod Rosenstein, a person who is one of the most conflicted people in the executive branch who was actively involved in the whole ordeal as to be a witness to much of it himself, who then appointed an aging, out-of-it old man Mueller (and, tbh, a scumbag with a history of lying and coverups) who could be made the face of the team for the media to gush over while agenda-driven partisans filled its pews and Andrew Weissman, a Democrat operative, actually controlled the day to day activity of.
Jeff Sessions and Mike Flynn were early, blaring warning signs about what was to come, and cowardly actions in both situations by Trump&Co caused enormous damage.
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Yes, and "touching anyone else" in this context meaning investigating Democrats. Such as Hillary Clinton, who is mentioned twice in this tweet ("deleted emails" and "Clinton Foundation"). The same Clinton who he ran on prosecuting. Investigations being the first step of prosecuting, particularly when your boss has already publicly stated the desired outcome. And when Trump did not get what he wanted, Sessions was out. And now that Trump ended up never getting it, he claims he didn't want it in the first place.
The Mueller Report was based on George Papadopoulos letting slip that he had Russian contacts, then lying about it to investigators. He eventually took a plea deal admitting to the above but claiming that he acted alone. But since he lied about it, they had to investigate the people he was in contact with, meaning the Trump campaign. A bunch of other people lied to investigators, including Manafort having a connection to Russia-aligned elements in Ukraine.
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