Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Falsely proclaiming a 'stolen election' having for months rolled the pitch for making exactly that bogus claim, the point blank refusal to concede or do a transition, the vexatious legal moves & procedural chicanery, the pressurizing & intimidation of key officials, all culminating with the deliberately whipped-up Jan 6th attack on the Capitol, this without a shadow of a doubt was a concerted attempt to retain power regardless of how the American people voted.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. When Trump’s name is mentioned, the Red Mist appears for many. But he is essentially an America First President. Where I would disagree is that his policy was a failure because there were no tangible results - I actually think it was the lack of international crises (certainly when it came to Russia, North Korea and China) that shows its success. Interestingly, with Russia, they invaded the Crimea when BO was President, did nothing for four years and are now rattling again when Biden is President. Unless you believe the horse shit that Trump was a Russian spy, there is a logical explanation for that.
However, if we are going to talk about evil / amoral Presidents, the most egregious example certainly post WW2 from a personal actions point of view was JFK - almost certainly a rapist, leveraged off Mafia connections in the 1960 election, treated women generally like shit including Jackie Kennedy etc. Have I missed anything?
America First was an antisemitic movement whose leader Lindbergh was, at best, an appeaser of the Nazis. So an interesting parallel to draw.
What’s interesting is that you immediately jumped to a comparison with an anti-Semitic organisation for a President whose son-in-law is Jewish.
On Astra Zeneca it the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to a company with little experience in vaccines may well come to be seen as one of the worst mistakes of the pandemic, from a global point of view. AIUI it AZ weren't their first choice, and they were unfortunately pressured into giving it to AZ by the British government.
Not quite. The UK government insisted it was manufactured in the UK but beyond that didn’t have a view. Merck was unwilling to commit to that.
Yes, there was a legitimate fear that Trump would block exports at the last minute and screw everyone over. I don't think anyone can begrudge the UK government taking out an insurance policy against that either.
I'm pretty sure that the German government made blocking investments in Biontech and Curevac to prevent a US takeover and IP transfer for the very same reason.
Not one losing Democratic candidate has instigated a coup since 1988 (possibly even before then, haven't checked)
They had a good go in 1861, and it caused a fair amount of trouble. In fairness, Breckinridge was not directly involved and did swear in the new Veep, although he later became Confederate Secretary of War.
That incarnation of the Democratic Party bears no real relation at all to the current one.
Can I take a wild swing at which current party it does bear some relation?
On Astra Zeneca it the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to a company with little experience in vaccines may well come to be seen as one of the worst mistakes of the pandemic, from a global point of view. AIUI it AZ weren't their first choice, and they were unfortunately pressured into giving it to AZ by the British government.
That is a factor (although the U.K. has other pharma companies) although trying to say that this was a bigger factor than European leaders such as Macron and Merkel trashing the vaccine in public plus the US authorities’ actions is wrong.
Quasi-ineffective, anyone?
People here massively overestimate Macron's influence outside of France (and Britain it seems). Hardly anyone in Germany has even heard of Macron's "quasi-ineffective" remarks.
No, they heard the remarks of that German newspaper from which Macron's remarks were based.
Yes, and the German newspaper report was based on a misinterpretation of AZ's sloppy trial results.
Even in English-speaking countries, where his remarks seem to have been given endless publicity (going by how often they are repeated here), how many people were persuaded not to take AZ by Macron's remarks? In the UK maybe less than were encouraged to take it to annoy the French.
A dangerous misinterpretation, given the documented effects on confidence in the vaccine.
And really, there were loads of reports of people turning down AZ. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Because of Macron?
Can you explain how Oxford partnering in a full commercial value deal with Merck would have been better than partnering with AZ who agreed to an at cost provision?
No, but are you sure they were actually the only 2 options?
That's what was on the table. The government tried to partner them with GSK but they were already locked in with Sanofi. The other major pharma companies already had in house candidates or were partnered up (see Pfizer and Biontech).
Yes, it's perhaps regrettable that GSK didn't take it up given their long experience in vaccine development, but I think it's wrong to criticise either the government or AZN on this.
In the end they did a damn good job despite a few problems along the way - which are far from unusual in novel vaccine development.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
You can do better than that Farooq.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
On Astra Zeneca it the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to a company with little experience in vaccines may well come to be seen as one of the worst mistakes of the pandemic, from a global point of view. AIUI it AZ weren't their first choice, and they were unfortunately pressured into giving it to AZ by the British government.
That is a factor (although the U.K. has other pharma companies) although trying to say that this was a bigger factor than European leaders such as Macron and Merkel trashing the vaccine in public plus the US authorities’ actions is wrong.
Quasi-ineffective, anyone?
People here massively overestimate Macron's influence outside of France (and Britain it seems). Hardly anyone in Germany has even heard of Macron's "quasi-ineffective" remarks.
No, they heard the remarks of that German newspaper from which Macron's remarks were based.
Yes, and the German newspaper report was based on a misinterpretation of AZ's sloppy trial results.
Even in English-speaking countries, where his remarks seem to have been given endless publicity (going by how often they are repeated here), how many people were persuaded not to take AZ by Macron's remarks? In the UK maybe less than were encouraged to take it to annoy the French.
A dangerous misinterpretation, given the documented effects on confidence in the vaccine.
And really, there were loads of reports of people turning down AZ. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Because of Macron?
Can you explain how Oxford partnering in a full commercial value deal with Merck would have been better than partnering with AZ who agreed to an at cost provision?
No, but are you sure they were actually the only 2 options?
That's what was on the table. The government tried to partner them with GSK but they were already locked in with Sanofi. The other major pharma companies already had in house candidates or were partnered up (see Pfizer and Biontech).
Yes, it's perhaps regrettable that GSK didn't take it up given their long experience in vaccine development, but I think it's wrong to criticise either the government or AZN on this.
In the end they did a damn good job despite a few problems along the way - which are far from unusual in novel vaccine development.
Agreed. However, one poster has claimed the whole issue with AZ was the fault of the U.K. Government and that is what has kicked off the debate.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. When Trump’s name is mentioned, the Red Mist appears for many. But he is essentially an America First President. Where I would disagree is that his policy was a failure because there were no tangible results - I actually think it was the lack of international crises (certainly when it came to Russia, North Korea and China) that shows its success. Interestingly, with Russia, they invaded the Crimea when BO was President, did nothing for four years and are now rattling again when Biden is President. Unless you believe the horse shit that Trump was a Russian spy, there is a logical explanation for that.
However, if we are going to talk about evil / amoral Presidents, the most egregious example certainly post WW2 from a personal actions point of view was JFK - almost certainly a rapist, leveraged off Mafia connections in the 1960 election, treated women generally like shit including Jackie Kennedy etc. Have I missed anything?
America First was an antisemitic movement whose leader Lindbergh was, at best, an appeaser of the Nazis. So an interesting parallel to draw.
What’s interesting is that you immediately jumped to a comparison with an anti-Semitic organisation for a President whose son-in-law is Jewish.
The comparison had been drawn already in the post you approvingly replied to. That is literally what America First was.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. When Trump’s name is mentioned, the Red Mist appears for many. But he is essentially an America First President. Where I would disagree is that his policy was a failure because there were no tangible results - I actually think it was the lack of international crises (certainly when it came to Russia, North Korea and China) that shows its success. Interestingly, with Russia, they invaded the Crimea when BO was President, did nothing for four years and are now rattling again when Biden is President. Unless you believe the horse shit that Trump was a Russian spy, there is a logical explanation for that.
However, if we are going to talk about evil / amoral Presidents, the most egregious example certainly post WW2 from a personal actions point of view was JFK - almost certainly a rapist, leveraged off Mafia connections in the 1960 election, treated women generally like shit including Jackie Kennedy etc. Have I missed anything?
America First was an antisemitic movement whose leader Lindbergh was, at best, an appeaser of the Nazis. So an interesting parallel to draw.
What’s interesting is that you immediately jumped to a comparison with an anti-Semitic organisation for a President whose son-in-law is Jewish.
"But he is essentially an America First President." Your words.
If you didn't know the provenance of "America First", that's your problem, not Nigelb's for pointing them out.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
You can do better than that Farooq.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
Not one losing Democratic candidate has instigated a coup since 1988 (possibly even before then, haven't checked)
They had a good go in 1861, and it caused a fair amount of trouble. In fairness, Breckinridge was not directly involved and did swear in the new Veep, although he later became Confederate Secretary of War.
That incarnation of the Democratic Party bears no real relation at all to the current one.
Don't tell them that, it annoys them. They're obsessed with proving the Dems are the world's oldest political party and if you point out the current incarnation actually came from the Douglas faction that split at the 1860 convention they get very hot and bothered.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. When Trump’s name is mentioned, the Red Mist appears for many. But he is essentially an America First President. Where I would disagree is that his policy was a failure because there were no tangible results - I actually think it was the lack of international crises (certainly when it came to Russia, North Korea and China) that shows its success. Interestingly, with Russia, they invaded the Crimea when BO was President, did nothing for four years and are now rattling again when Biden is President. Unless you believe the horse shit that Trump was a Russian spy, there is a logical explanation for that.
However, if we are going to talk about evil / amoral Presidents, the most egregious example certainly post WW2 from a personal actions point of view was JFK - almost certainly a rapist, leveraged off Mafia connections in the 1960 election, treated women generally like shit including Jackie Kennedy etc. Have I missed anything?
America First was an antisemitic movement whose leader Lindbergh was, at best, an appeaser of the Nazis. So an interesting parallel to draw.
What’s interesting is that you immediately jumped to a comparison with an anti-Semitic organisation for a President whose son-in-law is Jewish.
"But he is essentially an America First President." Your words.
If you didn't know the provenance of "America First", that's your problem, not Nigelb's for pointing them out.
You mean Stodge’s? Probably because I misread his reference to America First. I was agreeing with his point that Trump is an American Nationalist.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. When Trump’s name is mentioned, the Red Mist appears for many. But he is essentially an America First President. Where I would disagree is that his policy was a failure because there were no tangible results - I actually think it was the lack of international crises (certainly when it came to Russia, North Korea and China) that shows its success. Interestingly, with Russia, they invaded the Crimea when BO was President, did nothing for four years and are now rattling again when Biden is President. Unless you believe the horse shit that Trump was a Russian spy, there is a logical explanation for that.
However, if we are going to talk about evil / amoral Presidents, the most egregious example certainly post WW2 from a personal actions point of view was JFK - almost certainly a rapist, leveraged off Mafia connections in the 1960 election, treated women generally like shit including Jackie Kennedy etc. Have I missed anything?
America First was an antisemitic movement whose leader Lindbergh was, at best, an appeaser of the Nazis. So an interesting parallel to draw.
What’s interesting is that you immediately jumped to a comparison with an anti-Semitic organisation for a President whose son-in-law is Jewish.
By coincidence, or not, so is his daughter. Ivanka converted.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. When Trump’s name is mentioned, the Red Mist appears for many. But he is essentially an America First President. Where I would disagree is that his policy was a failure because there were no tangible results - I actually think it was the lack of international crises (certainly when it came to Russia, North Korea and China) that shows its success. Interestingly, with Russia, they invaded the Crimea when BO was President, did nothing for four years and are now rattling again when Biden is President. Unless you believe the horse shit that Trump was a Russian spy, there is a logical explanation for that.
However, if we are going to talk about evil / amoral Presidents, the most egregious example certainly post WW2 from a personal actions point of view was JFK - almost certainly a rapist, leveraged off Mafia connections in the 1960 election, treated women generally like shit including Jackie Kennedy etc. Have I missed anything?
America First was an antisemitic movement whose leader Lindbergh was, at best, an appeaser of the Nazis. So an interesting parallel to draw.
What’s interesting is that you immediately jumped to a comparison with an anti-Semitic organisation for a President whose son-in-law is Jewish.
"But he is essentially an America First President." Your words.
If you didn't know the provenance of "America First", that's your problem, not Nigelb's for pointing them out.
See point to Nigel - I misread Stodge’s comment. I was agreeing with him that Trump is an American Nationalist.
On Astra Zeneca it the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to a company with little experience in vaccines may well come to be seen as one of the worst mistakes of the pandemic, from a global point of view. AIUI it AZ weren't their first choice, and they were unfortunately pressured into giving it to AZ by the British government.
That is a factor (although the U.K. has other pharma companies) although trying to say that this was a bigger factor than European leaders such as Macron and Merkel trashing the vaccine in public plus the US authorities’ actions is wrong.
Quasi-ineffective, anyone?
People here massively overestimate Macron's influence outside of France (and Britain it seems). Hardly anyone in Germany has even heard of Macron's "quasi-ineffective" remarks.
No, they heard the remarks of that German newspaper from which Macron's remarks were based.
Yes, and the German newspaper report was based on a misinterpretation of AZ's sloppy trial results.
Even in English-speaking countries, where his remarks seem to have been given endless publicity (going by how often they are repeated here), how many people were persuaded not to take AZ by Macron's remarks? In the UK maybe less than were encouraged to take it to annoy the French.
A dangerous misinterpretation, given the documented effects on confidence in the vaccine.
And really, there were loads of reports of people turning down AZ. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Because of Macron?
Can you explain how Oxford partnering in a full commercial value deal with Merck would have been better than partnering with AZ who agreed to an at cost provision?
No, but are you sure they were actually the only 2 options?
That's what was on the table. The government tried to partner them with GSK but they were already locked in with Sanofi. The other major pharma companies already had in house candidates or were partnered up (see Pfizer and Biontech).
Yes, it's perhaps regrettable that GSK didn't take it up given their long experience in vaccine development, but I think it's wrong to criticise either the government or AZN on this.
In the end they did a damn good job despite a few problems along the way - which are far from unusual in novel vaccine development.
I'd go farther: they did an absolutely fantastic job. We were looking at scores of vaccines in late 2020, and most of those failed in various ways. Not only did Oxford and Astra Zeneca produce a cheap, effective and easy to distribute vaccine, they did it quickly and allowed the world to produce it.
Without them, we'd be in a much, much worse place.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
You can do better than that Farooq.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
You condemn the actions of God? Brave.
Comma before and after God, not just after, so obviously the vocative.
Just listened to the 4 hour podcast “the coming storm” by Gabriel Gatehouse (R4, World Service, BBC Sounds)
Not a lot new to those of us who haven’t been living under a rock for the last six years, but worth a listen anyway, imo.
A few points;
Lots of dead ends and interviews which go nowhere. Cf Ambrose Evans Pritchard.
To Gabriels credit, he does take seriously the rape allegation against Bill Clinton. It’s quite possibly true, and the media/political establishment did hush it up for political expediency.
Also, his conclusion, while not really backed up by the evidence in the rest of the podcast, is quite powerful; perhaps Qanon shouldn’t be taken literally. It’s best understood as a metaphor. A figurative tale through which to understand the massive socioeconomic shifts that are going on in America (and, well, everywhere).
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
You can do better than that Farooq.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
If you think critical commentary is equivalent to a coup, then you must see coups everywhere. Which is a useful thing if you want to defend the indefensible.
FWIW I don't think claiming the an election was unfair is a coup. But if it is, then Trump is guilty of that AS WELL AS sending a mob to attack congress.
But nobody really thinks that saying you were hard done by is a coup. Not even you are really that silly, you're just bluffing that same old busted flush of false equivalence.
On Astra Zeneca it the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to a company with little experience in vaccines may well come to be seen as one of the worst mistakes of the pandemic, from a global point of view. AIUI it AZ weren't their first choice, and they were unfortunately pressured into giving it to AZ by the British government.
That is a factor (although the U.K. has other pharma companies) although trying to say that this was a bigger factor than European leaders such as Macron and Merkel trashing the vaccine in public plus the US authorities’ actions is wrong.
Quasi-ineffective, anyone?
People here massively overestimate Macron's influence outside of France (and Britain it seems). Hardly anyone in Germany has even heard of Macron's "quasi-ineffective" remarks.
No, they heard the remarks of that German newspaper from which Macron's remarks were based.
Yes, and the German newspaper report was based on a misinterpretation of AZ's sloppy trial results.
Even in English-speaking countries, where his remarks seem to have been given endless publicity (going by how often they are repeated here), how many people were persuaded not to take AZ by Macron's remarks? In the UK maybe less than were encouraged to take it to annoy the French.
A dangerous misinterpretation, given the documented effects on confidence in the vaccine.
And really, there were loads of reports of people turning down AZ. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Because of Macron?
Can you explain how Oxford partnering in a full commercial value deal with Merck would have been better than partnering with AZ who agreed to an at cost provision?
No, but are you sure they were actually the only 2 options?
That's what was on the table. The government tried to partner them with GSK but they were already locked in with Sanofi. The other major pharma companies already had in house candidates or were partnered up (see Pfizer and Biontech).
Yes, it's perhaps regrettable that GSK didn't take it up given their long experience in vaccine development, but I think it's wrong to criticise either the government or AZN on this.
In the end they did a damn good job despite a few problems along the way - which are far from unusual in novel vaccine development.
I'd go farther: they did an absolutely fantastic job. We were looking at scores of vaccines in late 2020, and most of those failed in various ways. Not only did Oxford and Astra Zeneca produce a cheap, effective and easy to distribute vaccine, they did it quickly and allowed the world to produce it.
Without them, we'd be in a much, much worse place.
Yes, if there is a “greatest mistake of the pandemic” it’s that the OX-AZ vaccine was so widely traduced and for reasons that were inherently selfish and / or bigoted on the part of the parties involved. Macron, for one, really is a c*nt.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
Again, the Red Mist descends.
Hilary Clinton, and the claims that Trump was a Russian plant poisoned the electoral well in the US to the point we now have many Democrats saying that the Republicans can never legitimately win an election and any win will be proof of cheating.
However, if you truly do want to see the lengths one candidate went to fix the election, you should be paying far more attention to the Dunham Special Counsel investigation into Russiagate. It is increasingly becoming clear that the 2016 HRC deliberately used sources they need to be false to obtain the FISA warrants to spy on the opposing campaign. The evidence is all out there in the criminal charges that are being brought.
If one were to ignore absolutely every other allegation against Trump, the 6th January 2021 is slam-dunk sedition.
It’s not a stretch to believe it was funding Trump either directly or indirectly.
And, more importantly, seeding messages of intolerance on both sides of any divide. Trump/Clinton, Leave/Remain, ScotsIndy/Union. We can become paralysed through mutual hatred.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
Yep, false equivalence is a common form of truth denial and it's rife with MAGA people.
“Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. You’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Trump on Jan 6th.
There are equivalents but they aren't the ones they ever advance.
Mr. Walker, perhaps it was also pleased by Clinton's description of half the electorate as a basket of deplorables as well.
Probably. Hilary Clinton was a terrible candidate, totally atrocious. The Democrats were asking to be trounced.
(Having said that, the deplorables comment itself was pretty innocuous; it got inflated out of all proportion because it talked to the larger truth of Hilary’s complete disconnect with heartland USA).
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
"if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever" It didn't succeed because one man, Mike Pence, refused to do Trump's bidding. He wanted to and consulted Dan Quayle (of all people) and was told he didn;t have any option but to do his ceremonial duty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIGik9MJzcs
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
You can do better than that Farooq.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
If you think critical commentary is equivalent to a coup, then you must see coups everywhere. Which is a useful thing if you want to defend the indefensible.
FWIW I don't think claiming the an election was unfair is a coup. But if it is, then Trump is guilty of that AS WELL AS sending a mob to attack congress.
But nobody really thinks that saying you were hard done by is a coup. Not even you are really that silly, you're just bluffing that same old busted flush of false equivalence.
“Critical commentary”? LOL.
HRC’s campaign deliberately falsified evidence pre the 2016 campaign to justify the FBI spying on the Trump campaign in order to dig up dirt. But, that’s “critical commentary”…ok…and that’s just for starters.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Taking a knife edge result to the SCOTUS or carping that although Hillary won the popular vote she did not become POTUS is one thing. Inciting an armed mob to storm the Capitol Building to overturn a conclusive result, an adventure which took the lives of five American Citizens, is somewhat different.
Five fatalities is going to be a drop in the ocean next time Trump seizes power.
It's the false equivalence that galls me. The fact that Al Gore took the legal process to its conclusion and then stopped when it ran out of road is one thing. You can argue that he should have stopped earlier or that he was within his rights. But here: I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Trump did not say anything even remotely close to that. Instead, he had a mob fatally attack Congress in a bid to stop the process. These are opposites, not equivalents. Mr.Ed likes to claim that he condemns Trump for his January 6th actions, but minimises and normalises them by pretending that very different behaviour is similar enough that it deserves to be raised as an coda to any condemnation of Trump. These are wildly different events in the most categorical and definitive sense. To believe you have been wronged and to say so is a million miles away from trying to stop via a mob your victorious opponent from taking power. How does this even need to be pointed out?
You can do better than that Farooq.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
You condemn the actions of God? Brave.
Bernard Montgomery, briefing his staff officers:
'Now, as our Lord said unto Moses, and in my opinion quite rightly...'
It’s not a stretch to believe it was funding Trump either directly or indirectly.
And, more importantly, seeding messages of intolerance on both sides of any divide. Trump/Clinton, Leave/Remain, ScotsIndy/Union. We can become paralysed through mutual hatred.
I mean, they have been successful, or if they have not, social media has.
We are profoundly divided. Both unions are at decent risk ( > 10%) of either dissolving or surrendering basic tenets of democracy.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
"if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever" It didn't succeed because one man, Mike Pence, refused to do Trump's bidding. He wanted to and consulted Dan Quayle (of all people) and was told he didn;t have any option but to do his ceremonial duty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIGik9MJzcs
Don’t get me wrong, I think if, in some parallel universe, the rioters miraculously managed to complete overturn the results, get Congress to somehow confirm Trump as President and face down the authorities, Trump would have said “no, this is wrong”. He totally would have grabbed it . But so would have HRC in my opinion. She’s a power maniac. The fact she is even considering a 2024 run shows that. My point - again - is that grabs for power come in different forms. The view of Trump as uniquely evil is dangerous because it blinds people to others’ bad intentions and actions. Deliberately lying to get a FISA warrant to spy on your opponents campaign should be considered dangerous behaviour not overlooked because “it’s not Trump”
Not one losing Democratic candidate has instigated a coup since 1988 (possibly even before then, haven't checked)
They had a good go in 1861, and it caused a fair amount of trouble. In fairness, Breckinridge was not directly involved and did swear in the new Veep, although he later became Confederate Secretary of War.
That incarnation of the Democratic Party bears no real relation at all to the current one.
Don't tell them that, it annoys them. They're obsessed with proving the Dems are the world's oldest political party and if you point out the current incarnation actually came from the Douglas faction that split at the 1860 convention they get very hot and bothered.
The Conservative and Unionist Party dates from only 1912. Discuss...
On Astra Zeneca it the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to a company with little experience in vaccines may well come to be seen as one of the worst mistakes of the pandemic, from a global point of view. AIUI it AZ weren't their first choice, and they were unfortunately pressured into giving it to AZ by the British government.
That is a factor (although the U.K. has other pharma companies) although trying to say that this was a bigger factor than European leaders such as Macron and Merkel trashing the vaccine in public plus the US authorities’ actions is wrong.
Quasi-ineffective, anyone?
People here massively overestimate Macron's influence outside of France (and Britain it seems). Hardly anyone in Germany has even heard of Macron's "quasi-ineffective" remarks.
No, they heard the remarks of that German newspaper from which Macron's remarks were based.
Yes, and the German newspaper report was based on a misinterpretation of AZ's sloppy trial results.
Even in English-speaking countries, where his remarks seem to have been given endless publicity (going by how often they are repeated here), how many people were persuaded not to take AZ by Macron's remarks? In the UK maybe less than were encouraged to take it to annoy the French.
A dangerous misinterpretation, given the documented effects on confidence in the vaccine.
And really, there were loads of reports of people turning down AZ. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Because of Macron?
Can you explain how Oxford partnering in a full commercial value deal with Merck would have been better than partnering with AZ who agreed to an at cost provision?
No, but are you sure they were actually the only 2 options?
That's what was on the table. The government tried to partner them with GSK but they were already locked in with Sanofi. The other major pharma companies already had in house candidates or were partnered up (see Pfizer and Biontech).
Yes, it's perhaps regrettable that GSK didn't take it up given their long experience in vaccine development, but I think it's wrong to criticise either the government or AZN on this.
In the end they did a damn good job despite a few problems along the way - which are far from unusual in novel vaccine development.
I'd go farther: they did an absolutely fantastic job. We were looking at scores of vaccines in late 2020, and most of those failed in various ways. Not only did Oxford and Astra Zeneca produce a cheap, effective and easy to distribute vaccine, they did it quickly and allowed the world to produce it.
Without them, we'd be in a much, much worse place.
Yes, if there is a “greatest mistake of the pandemic” it’s that the OX-AZ vaccine was so widely traduced and for reasons that were inherently selfish and / or bigoted on the part of the parties involved. Macron, for one, really is a c*nt.
I'd say that accusing other countries of vaccine nationalism while engaging in exactly that was also a pretty low point. South Africa selling millions of AZ doses at the height of the pandemic based on absolutely nothing was another low. The whole saga of not using AZ for over 60s was also ridiculous because there seemed to be real political pressure to punish AZ and the regulators bent to the politicians and ignored basic science that a high efficacy vaccine would work for over 60s the same as under 60s.
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
Falsely proclaiming a 'stolen election' having for months rolled the pitch for making exactly that bogus claim, the point blank refusal to concede or do a transition, the vexatious legal moves & procedural chicanery, the pressurizing & intimidation of key officials, all culminating with the deliberately whipped-up Jan 6th attack on the Capitol, this without a shadow of a doubt was a concerted attempt to retain power regardless of how the American people voted.
See my response to Alistair.
Ed, my natural inclination is to admire somebody pushing on here a tough & unpopular cause against all comers. Sadly I can't in this case. Why? First because the cause is so rotten. Second because I don't think you engage in good faith on it. You're too bright not to know that this equivalence you continually float between Trump's determined attempt to subvert the democratic process and stuff like HRC having a moan about Russian influence or Al Gore lawyering up in Florida is quite ludicrous. Not just a bit off, ludicrous.
Just man up ffs and tell the truth. You know Trump is a clear & present danger to democracy in America but you hate the Dems and the "libs" so much that you'll not only take it but cheer him every step of the way as he carries on fighting the good fight against them.
Not one losing Democratic candidate has instigated a coup since 1988 (possibly even before then, haven't checked)
They had a good go in 1861, and it caused a fair amount of trouble. In fairness, Breckinridge was not directly involved and did swear in the new Veep, although he later became Confederate Secretary of War.
That incarnation of the Democratic Party bears no real relation at all to the current one.
Don't tell them that, it annoys them. They're obsessed with proving the Dems are the world's oldest political party and if you point out the current incarnation actually came from the Douglas faction that split at the 1860 convention they get very hot and bothered.
The Conservative and Unionist Party dates from only 1912. Discuss...
Something to do with Irish Nationalism propping up Liberal government?
Actually, I tried to avoid this in my longer post but I do think Trump is properly evil. It doesn't suit my argument to say it, but there we are. I wouldn't use that word for very many people. I'm struggling to think of other living politicians that it applies to. Possible Duterte, but I don't know enough about the Philippines to be sure about that. Obviously I'm excluding undemocratic countries here. Evil rises easier when the consent of the people is not a determinant.
I disagree.
I don't consider Trump to be "evil" - an appalling individual in many respects but his worldview is that of the American Nationalist. There's a hint of Lindbergh ("America First") and also of Nixon (only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could go to North Korea).
He represented a reversal of decades of "global" presidents going back to FDR. From FDR to Obama, all Presidents were global leaders whose primary purpose was the furthering of American values (call them "Western" if you want) and confronting the other non-American ideologies whether Communism or Islamic fundamentalism or Juche or whatever.
Trump saw (rightly you can argue) America had taken on this burden and was carrying a whole lot of other countries (the one thing Trump did get right was shaming European countries on defence spending and their contribution to NATO). Oddly enough, he chose the financial argument in terms of influence just as Thatcher did in the early 80s within the EEC,.
The other side of this was whether the approach of successive Presidents had been in any way effective either in promoting American (and by definition western) security or whether America was just pouring money down a big hole with little to show. Trump took a very different approach - he reached out personally to Putin, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and others offering the hand of economic friendship in exchange for a toning down of the confrontational rhetoric.
Voters like politicians who put their country first - it's obvious but it's worth saying. There aren't many votes in overt internationalism. Trump's failure was, I would argue, he didn't have a single tangible success to show for four years of this direction. You can argue some of what he was trying to do would take decades to come to fruition but in truth, and perhaps he was frustrated by the establishment in the State Department and elsewhere, he achieved almost nothing.
It isn't Trump's prioritisation of America that leads me to put him in the "evil" category. You'd catch far too many people in the net doing that. It's the fact that he's a user, a bigot, a selfish, self-aggrandising fool who breaks little people on the wheel of his narcissism, a corrupt, democracy-threatening arsehole, a self-pitying, whining crybaby, a fat lump of flesh with a cruel streak as wide as the Hudson and a penchant for petty revenge. He has nothing good in his soul.
“Let he who is without sin…”
...cast the first stone. I've thrown no stones, I've used words.
Or are you implying that I'm somehow just as bad? You're probably wrong, but happily I've never stood for election and have no intention of doing so. I know that every time I go to cast a ballot there are multiple people on the ticket who are better than me. I do not think Trump is better than me, though. So even if I am AS BAD as Trump, I'm better by virtue of recognising my own unsuitability for public office.
TBH, I don’t really care. My concern is whether someone governs well, and well means a wide spectrum of affairs. Labelling people as “evil” should be reserved for those who are truly evil such as Hitler and Stalin. Otherwise it becomes cheap.
I mean, if you'd read the whole lead up to that you'd see that I have said as much. I do not throw the word about liberally. It's sort of interesting that some people want to cancel the word "evil" as if humans these days are incapable of being evil any more. That can't be true. We haven't evolved past that.
It’s a matter of opinion. I don’t see Trump as evil - he’s got mainly bad qualities but he doesn’t cross that line. Not do I see Biden as evil, even though he waved off Afghans falling to their deaths from planes “yes but that was 5 days ago.” People do distasteful things but it’s not evil.
Biden continued Trump's plan - probably the wrong thing to do. Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election - as shown by the recounts and court cases. That's a coup attempt in the world's most important democracy where 5 people died. If that's not evil would you perhaps describe it as 'naughty'?
The Red Mist around Trump is descending again.
My comment on Biden and Afghanistan was around his waving away of people dying in an horrific way as a minor detail. It was the behaviour one might expect of a sociopath. The wider Afghan policy is a separate issue
Re the election, I’m sure there’s an element here you’d love me to describe as a Jan 6 loving Trumpist. But, as the records on here state, I condemned both his attempts on Jan 6th and in the states, and was the first on here to flag his tactics.
FWIW though, I don’t think Jan 6th was an insurrection and neither does the FBI. No one has been charged with insurrection and treason. Trump was stupid, irresponsible and dangerously reckless but, if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever.
You raise an interesting point though. No losing Democratic Presidential candidate since 1988 has said they lost fair and square. Gore, Kerry, Clinton all said they were cheated. gore went to the SC, Clinton was caught on camera in 2019 for saying she was cheated out of the election. On the latter, what responsibility does she bear for contributing to the poison in the US? Or is it ok because she’s a Democrat and tried to undermine Trump by claiming he was a Russian plant as opposed to a riotous assembly?
"if it was a planned coup, it was the worst one ever" It didn't succeed because one man, Mike Pence, refused to do Trump's bidding. He wanted to and consulted Dan Quayle (of all people) and was told he didn;t have any option but to do his ceremonial duty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIGik9MJzcs
Don’t get me wrong, I think if, in some parallel universe, the rioters miraculously managed to complete overturn the results, get Congress to somehow confirm Trump as President and face down the authorities, Trump would have said “no, this is wrong”. He totally would have grabbed it . But so would have HRC in my opinion. She’s a power maniac. The fact she is even considering a 2024 run shows that. My point - again - is that grabs for power come in different forms. The view of Trump as uniquely evil is dangerous because it blinds people to others’ bad intentions and actions. Deliberately lying to get a FISA warrant to spy on your opponents campaign should be considered dangerous behaviour not overlooked because “it’s not Trump”
One doesn't have to turn a blind eye to the actions of others, or see Trump as a unique evil, to think arguments that lean toward suggesting an equivalence are wholly wrong. There may well be a spectrum of wrong doing or ill intent, but it is surely uncontroversial to note not all will be at the same point on that spectrum. Not all will agree about Trump's place there, but those thinking he is at the very extreme end are not, by doing so, ignoring any others.
Comments
https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/backfire_5.jpg?w=1024
In the end they did a damn good job despite a few problems along the way - which are far from unusual in novel vaccine development.
What’s actually galling is those who are so vehemently banging on about Trump - and, God, whose actions I again condemn on Jan 6th and before - turning a complete blind eye to how his opponents delegitimised his Presidency.
I’m applying a single standard - all coups are wrong. You are applying a double standard - a coup is wrong only if my opponent does it.
And, as I have pointed out above, coups come in different forms. HRC’s attempts to delegitimise Trump post-2016 was a planned coup, just executed in nice Upper East Side apartments and through the dissemination of a message rather than tanks on the streets .
That is literally what America First was.
Your words.
If you didn't know the provenance of "America First", that's your problem, not Nigelb's for pointing them out.
Without them, we'd be in a much, much worse place.
It’s not a stretch to believe it was funding Trump either directly or indirectly.
Not a lot new to those of us who haven’t been living under a rock for the last six years, but worth a listen anyway, imo.
A few points;
Lots of dead ends and interviews which go nowhere. Cf Ambrose Evans Pritchard.
To Gabriels credit, he does take seriously the rape allegation against Bill Clinton. It’s quite possibly true, and the media/political establishment did hush it up for political expediency.
Also, his conclusion, while not really backed up by the evidence in the rest of the podcast, is quite powerful; perhaps Qanon shouldn’t be taken literally. It’s best understood as a metaphor. A figurative tale through which to understand the massive socioeconomic shifts that are going on in America (and, well, everywhere).
Interesting listen. 7/10
Which is a useful thing if you want to defend the indefensible.
FWIW I don't think claiming the an election was unfair is a coup. But if it is, then Trump is guilty of that AS WELL AS sending a mob to attack congress.
But nobody really thinks that saying you were hard done by is a coup. Not even you are really that silly, you're just bluffing that same old busted flush of false equivalence.
“Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. You’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Trump on Jan 6th.
There are equivalents but they aren't the ones they ever advance.
Hilary Clinton was a terrible candidate, totally atrocious. The Democrats were asking to be trounced.
(Having said that, the deplorables comment itself was pretty innocuous; it got inflated out of all proportion because it talked to the larger truth of Hilary’s complete disconnect with heartland USA).
It didn't succeed because one man, Mike Pence, refused to do Trump's bidding. He wanted to and consulted Dan Quayle (of all people) and was told he didn;t have any option but to do his ceremonial duty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIGik9MJzcs
HRC’s campaign deliberately falsified evidence pre the 2016 campaign to justify the FBI spying on the Trump campaign in order to dig up dirt. But, that’s “critical commentary”…ok…and that’s just for starters.
'Now, as our Lord said unto Moses, and in my opinion quite rightly...'
We are profoundly divided. Both unions are at decent risk ( > 10%) of either dissolving or surrendering basic tenets of democracy.
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But so would have HRC in my opinion. She’s a power maniac. The fact she is even considering a 2024 run shows that. My point - again - is that grabs for power come in different forms. The view of Trump as uniquely evil is dangerous because it blinds people to others’ bad intentions and actions. Deliberately lying to get a FISA warrant to spy on your opponents campaign should be considered dangerous behaviour not overlooked because “it’s not Trump”
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Just man up ffs and tell the truth. You know Trump is a clear & present danger to democracy in America but you hate the Dems and the "libs" so much that you'll not only take it but cheer him every step of the way as he carries on fighting the good fight against them.