The Trump Presidency

Bannon's whole thing about Satan and Darth Vader being cool is twice as obnoxious when being violently opposed to him is probably what he wants.

i miss yossy and would take a thousand tweets about Obummer voters being dumb idiots over no yossy at all

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Originally Posted by koda

Sure you can. I'm not sure about you, but I'm not aware of a president that's held office in my lifetime that hasn't been a flaming pile of shit at a gas station. I'm not a Trump fan, I certainly don't think he's great, but I also don't believe that Hillary Clinton would have been any better.

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Then I feel like you have no perspective. Would Hillary have made things any better than they were? Probably not. But there's no way her first week could be this bad.

Just waiting for Steve Bannon to appoint himself Chancellor.

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Originally Posted by James

No, I'm not a fan of Hillary. This is a big part of the problem here, in fact. The belief that accepting the lesser of two problems makes you a fan of one, or puts both issues on equal footing. Donald Trump is toxic to America. Hillary Clinton was a Business As Usual candidate when we had the opportunity for something better. That's not equal. Not even close, in fact. The thing I'm honestly angry about is the belief that the two can be put on the same footing when the Trump side so clearly destroys so many things while Hillary simply wouldn't have made anything better. Shitting all over the country vs leaving things as-is is not, by any stretch of the imagination, equivalent.

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To a lot of us, a Business As Usual candidate, when "business as usual" equates to a $20 trillion dollar national debt, was the worse of two evils. There's a possibility that Trump's disruptive brand of politics will do nothing to make it better. With Clinton, it was a sure thing.

Trump is the mystery box from Wheel of Fish.

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Originally Posted by kedawa

Given the pathetic voter turnout stats, I can only assume that there is a significant number of bare feet that don't give a fuck one way or the other.

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Well yeah, those are the people who just buy wal-mart sneakers because they don't like to spend money.

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Originally Posted by Andrew

a $20 trillion dollar national debt

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Serious question: What's the main concern over the debt? I've never cared about the national debt. It's one of those things where I am aware of it and its causes, but don't care and usually ignore anyone who harps on it. I hate personal debt and work to pay it off as quickly as possible so I feel like I should care. It seems like it always goes up regardless of whatever is happening, though, so clearly it isn't a Democrat/Republican thing. Is the concern about it from a sustainability point of view? Or that China owns a lot of it?

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Originally Posted by Andrew

To a lot of us, a Business As Usual candidate, when "business as usual" equates to a $20 trillion dollar national debt, was the worse of two evils. There's a possibility that Trump's disruptive brand of politics will do nothing to make it better. With Clinton, it was a sure thing.

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The problem with this line of thinking is that there's a lot of stuff the government is responsible for that needs to get done. Many systems in place that require a lot of complexity and development that wouldn't have occurred in some world where everyone just did what's best for themselves. It seems irresponsibly privileged to vote for libertarian principles but continue to enjoy all benefits of system that looks out for everyone.

This notion that being (arguably) good at making deals and negotiating translates to managing the welfare of a populace ends up pretty fallacious. Business as usual, even though it includes a lot of negatives, still means incremental improvement and optimization of systems. The Republicans inability to follow up on their promise of replacing ACA is pretty emblematic of that. Talk is easy, especially libertarian talk (especially from a position of privilege); following through practically is the test.

Trump will eliminate the debt by just refusing to pay for shit when the bill comes. That's how he has always operated.

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Originally Posted by Calliander

Serious question: What's the main concern over the debt? I've never cared about the national debt. It's one of those things where I am aware of it and its causes, but don't care and usually ignore anyone who harps on it. I hate personal debt and work to pay it off as quickly as possible so I feel like I should care. It seems like it always goes up regardless of whatever is happening, though, so clearly it isn't a Democrat/Republican thing. Is the concern about it from a sustainability point of view? Or that China owns a lot of it?

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It doesn't really matter. At least not in the way the repub talking heads sell it.

Government is not a business. If it was, they would not provide anything to anyone, tax the shit out of people and print money and then sit on all of it.

The Government's relationship to capital, resources, and money is completely different from a private business. I'm undecided on if the debt is really bad, but if it is, it will be for some other reason than why me and you shouldn't run up our credit cards.

Arguments presenting the debt like money you owe on a house are scare tactics. Telling you to worry about china owning our debt are scare tactics. China would fuck themselves just as hard if they fucked us with it. They have little faith in their own money and their own people convert their money to USD and buy properity in the US to protect their wealth.

The big thing that the debt can do is to spark inflation when it gets too high.