not that i care for trump since hes just another actor/insider but the liberal media has gone full political and no longer reports news. It more like liberal propaganda now and you can easily see this everytime something "off narrative" happens. They mobilize into full demonization mode. Its mostly fake and heavily biased.
They are liars, deceivers and hypocrites. You shouldn't trust anything they say, though the best lies do contain some amount of truth. Don't trust the internet either. Most of that is also controlled opposition as well.
The United States pretty much had to impose sanctions. Yes, they bring a lot of collateral damage, both to businesses and to humans. And yes, the situation is hurting people in Ukraine, in Russia, and in a lot of other places around the world that rely on trade with either of them. But the alternative of not imposing sanctions would be even worse.
If Russia rolled to an easy victory, then Putin would conclude that invading Ukraine was a good idea, and would move on to invading the rest of Georgia, or Azerbaijan, or Latvia, or somewhere else. Most of the countries that border Russia have good reason to fear that Russia will invade.
And it's not just about Russia, either. Plenty of other dictators pondering their own bad behavior are watching to see how this plays out. China considering an invasion of Taiwan is merely the most obvious. If it looks like Putin comes out ahead and the rest of the world doesn't do much in response, then that's a green light for more wars that bring more collateral damage.
Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that sanctions will convince a chastened Putin to order the Russian army to retreat in humiliation. Even if that would be the best option for Russia, it would be personally disastrous for Putin, as it would leave him politically wounded. Dictators need to look invincible. Once a dictator starts losing and people think that he is likely to be overthrown, people are far more likely to act to make that happen.
As such, I only see three ways that this can end:
1) Russia successfully subjugates Ukraine and Putin gets to do whatever it is that he wanted to Ukraine. 2) Putin gets killed or overthrown. Unless he flees into exile, if he gets overthrown, he'll probably get killed in the process. 3) Some deal gets worked out that allows Putin to claim victory and withdraw, thus allowing Ukraine to also claim victory.
If the war is clearly going badly for Russia, then (2) likely ends it. Whoever succeeds Putin likely isn't personally invested in his invasion of Ukraine and can end it in exchange for sanctions being dropped. This doesn't require Putin's successor to be benevolent; it could just as well work that way even if he's more evil than Putin.
Either (1) or (2) could easily take years, which would be devastating for the people involved. Most of the world's economy can adjust in time to not trading with Russia or Ukraine, but Ukrainians would suffer tremendously, and Russians would also suffer quite a bit, too.
Option (3) could happen quickly, but will take some real creativity, and the more time passes, the harder it will be to pull off. War is always a net loss for the world, and bigger wars are bigger net losses, making it harder for both sides to simultaneously have a colorable claim for having come out ahead.
The American assassination of Qasem Soleimani is perhaps the best example of (3) that I have. Iran has long been the world's main state sponsor of terrorism, so Trump ordered the assassination of their top military official who had been responsible for much of the mischief.
Iran pretty much had to retaliate, but needed to do so in a way that didn't force America to further escalate the situation. So they launched a number of missiles that landed in the desert near an American military base in Iraq. The immediate reaction from America was, ha ha, they missed, everything is fine. So America didn't need to escalate the situation.
But Iran's leaders needed to be able to claim for their domestic audience that they had won the confrontation and avenged Soleimani's death. Merely launching some missiles that land harmlessly in the desert doesn't do that.
Shortly after that, there were some bizarre stories in American media to the effect that those Iranian missiles that didn't hit anything had somehow caused horrible brain injuries to a bunch of Americans who had to be evacuated. Weirdly, this wasn't followed by a bunch of hand-wringing commentary. After publishing the stories claiming that it had happened, American media all across the political spectrum basically acted like it hadn't and the stories had never existed.
This is my speculation, but I think that the stories were made up to give Iranian leaders something that they could publicly point to in order to say, see, we avenged Soleimani. Meanwhile, they'd quietly take home the intended lesson that they had pushed too far, which got Trump to smack them in a creative way that they cared about.
Of course, then came COVID, which prevents us from knowing what would otherwise have happened in subsequent months. But after that quick exchange, both sides were able to drop the matter without further escalation. Of course, it's much harder to quietly drop an invasion involving more than a hundred thousand troops.
OR the Western media will erase anything positive Trump did.
Occam's Razor? What's more likely some mastermind under table play by Trump to save face for Iran or the media just ignoring positive press for Trump?
If this happened under a progressive Democrat and the media wasn't shouting everything positive from the rooftops then maybe your theory would seem more plausible.
If the MSM ever gives positive credit to anything Trump has done, or ignores something he did negatively then yeah, that would be very abnormal.
Interestingly enough a recent study of 200K posts on Reddit by Harvard researchers points to evidence that dropping the "T" word or saying "shit" may stop online conversations more frequently than Godwin's law.
Perhaps it isn't the media who stop conversations or fail to acknowledge the accomplishments of past Presidents, rather it's everyone else who just prefer not to talk about them on forums or even news sites which aren't related to political discussions?
The Absolute H-Word.. how many "The (Letter) Word" are we going to F-word have in our society?
What the Actual (F-Word) is the T-word?
Oh.. you got me.. is saying "the T word" the actual red herring conversation stopper, because that totally worked on me.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
The United States pretty much had to impose sanctions. Yes, they bring a lot of collateral damage, both to businesses and to humans. And yes, the situation is hurting people in Ukraine, in Russia, and in a lot of other places around the world that rely on trade with either of them. But the alternative of not imposing sanctions would be even worse.
If Russia rolled to an easy victory, then Putin would conclude that invading Ukraine was a good idea, and would move on to invading the rest of Georgia, or Azerbaijan, or Latvia, or somewhere else. Most of the countries that border Russia have good reason to fear that Russia will invade.
And it's not just about Russia, either. Plenty of other dictators pondering their own bad behavior are watching to see how this plays out. China considering an invasion of Taiwan is merely the most obvious. If it looks like Putin comes out ahead and the rest of the world doesn't do much in response, then that's a green light for more wars that bring more collateral damage.
Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that sanctions will convince a chastened Putin to order the Russian army to retreat in humiliation. Even if that would be the best option for Russia, it would be personally disastrous for Putin, as it would leave him politically wounded. Dictators need to look invincible. Once a dictator starts losing and people think that he is likely to be overthrown, people are far more likely to act to make that happen.
As such, I only see three ways that this can end:
1) Russia successfully subjugates Ukraine and Putin gets to do whatever it is that he wanted to Ukraine. 2) Putin gets killed or overthrown. Unless he flees into exile, if he gets overthrown, he'll probably get killed in the process. 3) Some deal gets worked out that allows Putin to claim victory and withdraw, thus allowing Ukraine to also claim victory.
If the war is clearly going badly for Russia, then (2) likely ends it. Whoever succeeds Putin likely isn't personally invested in his invasion of Ukraine and can end it in exchange for sanctions being dropped. This doesn't require Putin's successor to be benevolent; it could just as well work that way even if he's more evil than Putin.
Either (1) or (2) could easily take years, which would be devastating for the people involved. Most of the world's economy can adjust in time to not trading with Russia or Ukraine, but Ukrainians would suffer tremendously, and Russians would also suffer quite a bit, too.
Option (3) could happen quickly, but will take some real creativity, and the more time passes, the harder it will be to pull off. War is always a net loss for the world, and bigger wars are bigger net losses, making it harder for both sides to simultaneously have a colorable claim for having come out ahead.
The American assassination of Qasem Soleimani is perhaps the best example of (3) that I have. Iran has long been the world's main state sponsor of terrorism, so Trump ordered the assassination of their top military official who had been responsible for much of the mischief.
Iran pretty much had to retaliate, but needed to do so in a way that didn't force America to further escalate the situation. So they launched a number of missiles that landed in the desert near an American military base in Iraq. The immediate reaction from America was, ha ha, they missed, everything is fine. So America didn't need to escalate the situation.
But Iran's leaders needed to be able to claim for their domestic audience that they had won the confrontation and avenged Soleimani's death. Merely launching some missiles that land harmlessly in the desert doesn't do that.
Shortly after that, there were some bizarre stories in American media to the effect that those Iranian missiles that didn't hit anything had somehow caused horrible brain injuries to a bunch of Americans who had to be evacuated. Weirdly, this wasn't followed by a bunch of hand-wringing commentary. After publishing the stories claiming that it had happened, American media all across the political spectrum basically acted like it hadn't and the stories had never existed.
This is my speculation, but I think that the stories were made up to give Iranian leaders something that they could publicly point to in order to say, see, we avenged Soleimani. Meanwhile, they'd quietly take home the intended lesson that they had pushed too far, which got Trump to smack them in a creative way that they cared about.
Of course, then came COVID, which prevents us from knowing what would otherwise have happened in subsequent months. But after that quick exchange, both sides were able to drop the matter without further escalation. Of course, it's much harder to quietly drop an invasion involving more than a hundred thousand troops.
OR the Western media will erase anything positive Trump did.
Occam's Razor? What's more likely some mastermind under table play by Trump to save face for Iran or the media just ignoring positive press for Trump?
If this happened under a progressive Democrat and the media wasn't shouting everything positive from the rooftops then maybe your theory would seem more plausible.
If the MSM ever gives positive credit to anything Trump has done, or ignores something he did negatively then yeah, that would be very abnormal.
Media bias doesn't work as an explanation here. If the stories about a bunch of American soldiers being evacuated with brain injuries were true, then there would be a colorable case that the US lost that exchange. At minimum, left-wing media could easily have spun it as Trump's aggression getting a bunch of American soldiers wounded or worse. But they didn't. They just dropped it entirely and moved on.
Meanwhile, the left-wing corporate media are hardly the only media sources in America. It's not just Fox News on the right. Political talk radio is predominantly right of center. There are a handful of conservative newspapers, and some conservative magazines, and a whole lot of conservative web sites, some of which were (and are) very pro-Trump. Yet everyone all across the political spectrum dropped the story about the brain injuries as if it had never happened--likely because it didn't.
Political bias can explain the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR coming to the same conclusion. It doesn't work as an explanation if Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Times, National Review, City Journal, Reason, and a number of other media sources with very different biases from the left-wing corporate media also come to that same conclusion.
Trump got hate from almost all sides because he said and did stupid and insulting things. He was an idiot who thought he knew better than everyone else. That's it. There is no conspiracy. He was a dumbass jerk who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that's why he got a lot of extra critique.
That's a ridiculous take. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to be really, really good at something relevant to getting elected. It's kind of like saying that whoever wins Wimbledon has to be really good at tennis. You can argue about flukes or circumstances or whatever, and maybe the champion isn't actually the very best. But the ten thousandth best would never win it.
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
Thats kind of a strange take though, because the problem is, it's not possible for people to believe there's such a thing as an unbiased news outlet.
Because if someone reported factually on a situation and it was perceived positively or negatively on a candidate, it automatically becomes a left or right piece of propaganda.
You can't win anymore, because nobody cares what the truth is, they just want their opinion reaffirmed, so it doesn't matter if a right or left outlet has actual factual information, people just tune it out as an opposite political agenda, even if factual data reinforces it, or if others from the same outlet report the same information.
There's no such thing as trust in the media when everything can be faked and reported from any random Twitter and facebook account.
Trump got hate from almost all sides because he said and did stupid and insulting things. He was an idiot who thought he knew better than everyone else. That's it. There is no conspiracy. He was a dumbass jerk who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that's why he got a lot of extra critique.
That's a ridiculous take. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to be really, really good at something relevant to getting elected. It's kind of like saying that whoever wins Wimbledon has to be really good at tennis. You can argue about flukes or circumstances or whatever, and maybe the champion isn't actually the very best. But the ten thousandth best would never win it.
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
I'm disappointed in your comment. You are far too intelligent and rational to actually believe what you typed. And to your analogy, the more apt comparison is someone winning Wimbledon because of how they motivated/polarized the crowd; not because of any talent/skill/intelligence related to the actual game. At best you can argue that Trump has charisma which clearly does have a role in political office, but that alone certainly does not make someone a good fit for it.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
Thats kind of a strange take though, because the problem is, it's not possible for people to believe there's such a thing as an unbiased news outlet.
Because if someone reported factually on a situation and it was perceived positively or negatively on a candidate, it automatically becomes a left or right piece of propaganda.
You can't win anymore, because nobody cares what the truth is, they just want their opinion reaffirmed, so it doesn't matter if a right or left outlet has actual factual information, people just tune it out as an opposite political agenda, even if factual data reinforces it, or if others from the same outlet report the same information.
There's no such thing as trust in the media when everything can be faked and reported from any random Twitter and facebook account.
The details of exactly how a top politician gets attacked depend a lot on the details of the politician. But the fact that the other side of the political spectrum needs to attack him for political reasons doesn't. Without Trump's penchant for over the top hyperbole or confidently asserting that whatever he'd like to be true actually is, the details of a lot of the attacks on him would have been different.
But that's hardly true of all of the attacks on Trump. For example, the whole Russiagate fiasco had basically nothing to do with anything that Trump ever said or did. "Anonymous sources" made up scurrilous claims out of whole cloth and left-wing media ran with them, then never bothered to go back to burn their anonymous sources who had been lying all along. The Charlottesville scandal in which a video was edited to make it look like Trump had said the opposite of what he actually said is also something that absolutely any politician at all is vulnerable to.
It's not possible for any media source to be unbiased. If nothing else, deciding that one story is interesting enough to publish and another is not is a source of bias. This site has decided that news about MMORPGs is more interesting than most other media sources think it is. That's not a bad thing, and the site is very upfront about it, but it is a bias.
It is possible for media sources to care a lot about whether the stories that they choose to cover are factually accurate and in context. Factual claims should be true, but that's insufficient. An honest media source shouldn't intentionally try to convince people of things that they know are false without quite explicitly saying anything that is technically false. They shouldn't splice comments out of context to try to make it look like someone said something that in context, he didn't say. They shouldn't quote someone making an obvious joke as if it's his real opinion.
For the most part, Americans on the political left never trusted right-wing media sources. Most of the old media sources are politically on the left, and unless they suspect that they're being lied to by the sources they trust or some such, they likely won't go out of their way to read right-wing media.
Americans on the political right have complained about bias from the left-wing media for decades, though with a lot more right-wing media sources available now than there used to be, they too have a lot less reason than before to read left-wing media.
It also makes a big difference that left-wing media in the last several years have heavily hyped a number of supposed scandals that turned out to be pretty much entirely fake news. The most prominent example is Russiagate, a long series of stories in which they claimed that Trump colluded with Russia to, well, in true conspiracy theory fashion, it was never clear exactly what. After about three years and all sorts of supposed bombshells, the only one that panned out at all was that some Trump campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer once who promised dirt on Hillary. You can't have a three year steady drumbeat of a narrative that is almost entirely, objectively false and expect people to still trust you after that.
And that's far from the only example. See, for example, the fracas last year about Georgia's "Election Integrity Act". There were a bunch of left-wing media claims that it did all sorts of nefarious things. Meanwhile, the full text of the bill was posted online where absolutely anyone can read it. Those who did had compelling proof that a lot of media stories were complete lies. And if they're willing to brazenly lie about simple, objective facts that anyone can easily verify for himself, then do you really trust them to tell the truth about things where lies would be easier to cover up?
Part of the problem is that if some media sources are willing to make up lies and others aren't, it's hard for people to keep score. It's not just one side of the political spectrum will and the other won't. If the New York Times makes up a story that is completely false and other media sources quote it without independently verifying the claims, does that mean that all of the other sources that quoted it are now lying?
It's a lot easier to just assume that because some media sources on the other side of the political spectrum are willing to publish lies sometimes that they all are all the time. And so that's what a lot of people do. Stories like CBS's botched Publix/vaccine hit job on DeSantis that are readily traced to egregious malfeasance by a single news source aren't that common, even if that one did pretty much end CBS News's reputation for being an actual news source.
Trump got hate from almost all sides because he said and did stupid and insulting things. He was an idiot who thought he knew better than everyone else. That's it. There is no conspiracy. He was a dumbass jerk who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that's why he got a lot of extra critique.
That's a ridiculous take. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to be really, really good at something relevant to getting elected. It's kind of like saying that whoever wins Wimbledon has to be really good at tennis. You can argue about flukes or circumstances or whatever, and maybe the champion isn't actually the very best. But the ten thousandth best would never win it.
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
I'm disappointed in your comment. You are far too intelligent and rational to actually believe what you typed. And to your analogy, the more apt comparison is someone winning Wimbledon because of how they motivated/polarized the crowd; not because of any talent/skill/intelligence related to the actual game. At best you can argue that Trump has charisma which clearly does have a role in political office, but that alone certainly does not make someone a good fit for it.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
Trump got hate from almost all sides because he said and did stupid and insulting things. He was an idiot who thought he knew better than everyone else. That's it. There is no conspiracy. He was a dumbass jerk who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that's why he got a lot of extra critique.
That's a ridiculous take. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to be really, really good at something relevant to getting elected. It's kind of like saying that whoever wins Wimbledon has to be really good at tennis. You can argue about flukes or circumstances or whatever, and maybe the champion isn't actually the very best. But the ten thousandth best would never win it.
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
I'm disappointed in your comment. You are far too intelligent and rational to actually believe what you typed. And to your analogy, the more apt comparison is someone winning Wimbledon because of how they motivated/polarized the crowd; not because of any talent/skill/intelligence related to the actual game. At best you can argue that Trump has charisma which clearly does have a role in political office, but that alone certainly does not make someone a good fit for it.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
A used car salesman and a snake oil purveyor can be very good at things, without that being particularly positive for anyone other than them. They are usually pretty good at playing the room.
Oh, and "... but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016." -- you pretty much contradict yourself. The Republican establishment did think he was an idiot. Of course, some other folks thought he was a useful idiot.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Trump got hate from almost all sides because he said and did stupid and insulting things. He was an idiot who thought he knew better than everyone else. That's it. There is no conspiracy. He was a dumbass jerk who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that's why he got a lot of extra critique.
That's a ridiculous take. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to be really, really good at something relevant to getting elected. It's kind of like saying that whoever wins Wimbledon has to be really good at tennis. You can argue about flukes or circumstances or whatever, and maybe the champion isn't actually the very best. But the ten thousandth best would never win it.
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
I'm disappointed in your comment. You are far too intelligent and rational to actually believe what you typed. And to your analogy, the more apt comparison is someone winning Wimbledon because of how they motivated/polarized the crowd; not because of any talent/skill/intelligence related to the actual game. At best you can argue that Trump has charisma which clearly does have a role in political office, but that alone certainly does not make someone a good fit for it.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
A used car salesman and a snake oil purveyor can be very good at things, without that being particularly positive for anyone other than them. They are usually pretty good at playing the room.
Oh, and "... but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016." -- you pretty much contradict yourself. The Republican establishment did think he was an idiot. Of course, some other folks thought he was a useful idiot.
The world's best used car salesman is really, really good at what he does. That doesn't necessarily make him a good person. (Or a bad person, for that matter; maybe he's really good at figuring out which used cars will be reliable and not buying junkers.) But it does mean that he shouldn't be dismissed as an idiot who lucked into his success.
The word "idiot" does not mean "person who holds opinions that I disagree with". Part of Trump's success in the 2016 primary was due to his success in diagnosing issues in which most Republican politicians were out of step with a large chunk of the Republican base.
We've had a substantial realignment in the last several years, with rural and working class people moving toward the Republican party while suburban and college educated people moved toward the Democratic party. Trump figured out how to cobble together a winning coalition that most "experts" didn't previously believe was possible and then went out and did it. The genuinely nutty candidates like goodspaceguy never come remotely close to that.
This isn't a moral judgment of saying that Trump is a good person or a bad person. It's only saying that he has considerable skill at American politics. So do Biden, Obama, both Clintons, Romney, and some others who have been successful at the highest level of American politics.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
None of that precludes him being a transparently awful person, or an idiot about government, its role, morality, or the average American's experience. Tapping into base negative emotions like anger in an audience is a skill a reality TV star would learn, and did learn. It provides zero qualifications for holding office in any sane country.
You seem to argue Americans wouldn't elect bad people or that someone elected President cannot be any of those things by virtue of getting elected, and that's a truly ridiculous take.
Edit: Keep in mind that the post was made in the context of someone complaining that Trump had the most negative press. That's because he was all of those things I listed above, not because of some conspiracy against conservatives. Him getting elected does not change any of that, it only catapults him into the spotlight and highlights those flaws.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
None of that precludes him being a transparently awful person, or an idiot about government, its role, morality, or the average American's experience. Tapping into base negative emotions like anger in an audience is a skill a reality TV star would learn, and did learn. It provides zero qualifications for holding office in any sane country.
You seem to argue Americans wouldn't elect bad people or that someone elected President cannot be any of those things by virtue of getting elected, and that's a truly ridiculous take.
You're arguing against a bizarre straw man that I never claimed and do not believe. Skill at winning elections is not at all similar to virtue. For that matter, I've argued in the past (not on this thread) that the advantage of democracy is not that it gives you good leaders, but that it gives you a peaceful way to be rid of unusually bad ones, as well as deterring a lot of politicians from becoming unusually bad for fear of losing the next election. And "unusually bad" in this context doesn't just mean "someone you personally dislike".
Even if you believe that someone is evil incarnate, if he's demonstrably very good at what he is trying to do, then I say that you shouldn't dismiss him as an idiot and not take the challenge he presents seriously.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
None of that precludes him being a transparently awful person, or an idiot about government, its role, morality, or the average American's experience. Tapping into base negative emotions like anger in an audience is a skill a reality TV star would learn, and did learn. It provides zero qualifications for holding office in any sane country.
You seem to argue Americans wouldn't elect bad people or that someone elected President cannot be any of those things by virtue of getting elected, and that's a truly ridiculous take.
You're arguing against a bizarre straw man that I never claimed and do not believe. Skill at winning elections is not at all similar to virtue. For that matter, I've argued in the past (not on this thread) that the advantage of democracy is not that it gives you good leaders, but that it gives you a peaceful way to be rid of unusually bad ones, as well as deterring a lot of politicians from becoming unusually bad for fear of losing the next election. And "unusually bad" in this context doesn't just mean "someone you personally dislike".
Even if you believe that someone is evil incarnate, if he's demonstrably very good at what he is trying to do, then I say that you shouldn't dismiss him as an idiot and not take the challenge he presents seriously.
So it's okay if someone is a self-demonstrative bigot and racist that has no understanding of government or oddly enough, economics, as long as they are really good at it?
You're arguing against a bizarre straw man that I never claimed and do not believe. Skill at winning elections is not at all similar to virtue. For that matter, I've argued in the past (not on this thread) that the advantage of democracy is not that it gives you good leaders, but that it gives you a peaceful way to be rid of unusually bad ones, as well as deterring a lot of politicians from becoming unusually bad for fear of losing the next election. And "unusually bad" in this context doesn't just mean "someone you personally dislike".
Even if you believe that someone is evil incarnate, if he's demonstrably very good at what he is trying to do, then I say that you shouldn't dismiss him as an idiot and not take the challenge he presents seriously.
You originally brought the straw man here by ignoring the context of my comment.
Someone complained he got more negative press than other presidents. That's because of all the things I listed. That's just the reality. It's not hard to find examples of all of those things. At all. Like... 30 seconds of Googling. That's it.
Him being good at tapping into conspiracy-mongering and anger does not change that, and it does not change that these are the reasons he got more negative press than other presidents of the modern age.
He did get more intensely negative press, and lots of it. There are contributing factors other than the man himself, but the main and primary factor was the man himself. He could not shut up, especially on Twitter until his ban, and it created lots of opportunities for negative press.
You're arguing against a bizarre straw man that I never claimed and do not believe. Skill at winning elections is not at all similar to virtue. For that matter, I've argued in the past (not on this thread) that the advantage of democracy is not that it gives you good leaders, but that it gives you a peaceful way to be rid of unusually bad ones, as well as deterring a lot of politicians from becoming unusually bad for fear of losing the next election. And "unusually bad" in this context doesn't just mean "someone you personally dislike".
Even if you believe that someone is evil incarnate, if he's demonstrably very good at what he is trying to do, then I say that you shouldn't dismiss him as an idiot and not take the challenge he presents seriously.
You originally brought the straw man here by ignoring the context of my comment.
Someone complained he got more negative press than other presidents. That's because of all the things I listed. That's just the reality. It's not hard to find examples of all of those things. At all. Like... 30 seconds of Googling. That's it.
Him being good at tapping into conspiracy-mongering and anger does not change that, and it does not change that these are the reasons he got more negative press than other presidents of the modern age.
He did get more intensely negative press, and lots of it. There are contributing factors other than the man himself, but the main and primary factor was the man himself. He could not shut up, especially on Twitter until his ban, and it created lots of opportunities for negative press.
To get slightly less off-topic, Vladimir Putin is not an idiot, either. He's evil, yes. But that's exactly why he should be taken seriously and fought against rather than dismissed as an idiot.
I'm specifically arguing against your calling Trump an idiot, not whether he does (or should) get a lot of negative press.
To get slightly less off-topic, Vladimir Putin is not an idiot, either. He's evil, yes. But that's exactly why he should be taken seriously and fought against rather than dismissed as an idiot.
He isn't an idiot he should be taken very seriously unlike some social media posts saying he is off his rockers they are wrong he knows what he is doing and he is in to deep to quit nothing will stop him from getting what he wants or the backlash of his legitimacy and competency will be questioned which for a leader like him isn't good
Also swift blocks and other shit isn't gonna stop Russia from joining china's CIPS, they are making people buy their oil in RMB now so they essentially have said fuck you to america and all of europe saying we don't care, most countries around russia depend on russia for their oil so if you think they wont buy it you clearly need to give me what your smoking cuz I want what you got
They will do what they have always done bypass any blocks or trade bans we put out in other ways, the only thing we have done is give oil and gas companies a reason to hike prices expect to see $7-$10 a gallon in the USA cuz of ideocracy and hypocrisy and expect china's and russia's economy because of their bond to get stronger while ours gets weaker
In the end there was no right or wrong because in the end even by doing action we've brought harm to ourselves not that it could be avoided
Lol you must be smoking something yourself if you think China wants to trade the US and the west for Russia.
To get slightly less off-topic, Vladimir Putin is not an idiot, either. He's evil, yes. But that's exactly why he should be taken seriously and fought against rather than dismissed as an idiot.
He isn't an idiot he should be taken very seriously unlike some social media posts saying he is off his rockers they are wrong he knows what he is doing and he is in to deep to quit nothing will stop him from getting what he wants or the backlash of his legitimacy and competency will be questioned which for a leader like him isn't good
Also swift blocks and other shit isn't gonna stop Russia from joining china's CIPS, they are making people buy their oil in RMB now so they essentially have said fuck you to america and all of europe saying we don't care, most countries around russia depend on russia for their oil so if you think they wont buy it you clearly need to give me what your smoking cuz I want what you got
They will do what they have always done bypass any blocks or trade bans we put out in other ways, the only thing we have done is give oil and gas companies a reason to hike prices expect to see $7-$10 a gallon in the USA cuz of ideocracy and hypocrisy and expect china's and russia's economy because of their bond to get stronger while ours gets weaker
In the end there was no right or wrong because in the end even by doing action we've brought harm to ourselves not that it could be avoided
Lol you must be smoking something yourself if you think China wants to trade the US and the west for Russia.
And yet russia still hasn't stopped its invasion despite its economy going to shit, its like they don't plan to have a back up plan, even if I'm wrong putin in the end will get what he wants he is to deep into this to quit half way
It's simply because he doesn't care. He didn't need a backup plan and if his people struggle for 20 years he'll squash the media coverage of it and expect everyone to turn a blind eye. Even if China wasn't complicit he wouldn't stop.
He'll get what he wants but people will suffer. In the grand scheme of things history will wash it all away no matter which way it goes. China on the other hand will straddle the line. They want to be the world's largest economic power but they can't do it without the world's largest consumer, so they will straddle that fence and play both sides to make it happen.
Trump got hate from almost all sides because he said and did stupid and insulting things. He was an idiot who thought he knew better than everyone else. That's it. There is no conspiracy. He was a dumbass jerk who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that's why he got a lot of extra critique.
That's a ridiculous take. Anyone who gets elected president of the United States has to be really, really good at something relevant to getting elected. It's kind of like saying that whoever wins Wimbledon has to be really good at tennis. You can argue about flukes or circumstances or whatever, and maybe the champion isn't actually the very best. But the ten thousandth best would never win it.
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
I'm disappointed in your comment. You are far too intelligent and rational to actually believe what you typed. And to your analogy, the more apt comparison is someone winning Wimbledon because of how they motivated/polarized the crowd; not because of any talent/skill/intelligence related to the actual game. At best you can argue that Trump has charisma which clearly does have a role in political office, but that alone certainly does not make someone a good fit for it.
You can readily argue that the skills it takes to do well once in office are very different from the skills that it takes to get elected. But anyone who gets elected president has to be extremely good at something (and likely a lot of things) in order to get there.
Yes the previous US president was really good at communicating his values to attract the matching crowd.
From a political history POV, it is interesting to see how everything went more on the right since one or two decades. Yes, there is an extreme left in the democratic party, but they lost to Biden. To beat Trump, democrats had to go more on the right, and so did the right which turned into the extreme version of itself way before that.
It is a general trend you can witness across the world, with the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil, the election of Viktor Orbán (who was a good Putin's friend until the war) in Hungary, the election of Boris Johnson in UK, the revival of the extreme right in most western countries and especially in Germany, which is interesting to say the least.
You can add to this the very well being of dictatorships disguised as democracies, such as Turkey or Russia.
Now people that live in democracies should realize they are not the norm but the exception, and that they should defend what left is of their freedom. How? First realize the problem is not the media (left or right), but what people in position of power do, such as attacking democracy itself by exploiting its weaknesses or just full frontal assaults to its institutions.
The very nature of the article is political, yet I think it likely that one or maybe two posters have had a ban (hopefully temporary) due to the political nature of their posts.
Politics is actually against the site rules and as I hate seeing bans can I ask posters to turn down the political dial. Especially if you have started to have a political slanging match with another poster it is possible you will get banned and quite fairly in fact when you consider the rules. Just because a thread goes on for a few pages with such posts does not mean this will not happen.
Comments
They are liars, deceivers and hypocrites. You shouldn't trust anything they say, though the best lies do contain some amount of truth. Don't trust the internet either. Most of that is also controlled opposition as well.
Good times...
What the Actual (F-Word) is the T-word?
Oh.. you got me.. is saying "the T word" the actual red herring conversation stopper, because that totally worked on me.
Meanwhile, the left-wing corporate media are hardly the only media sources in America. It's not just Fox News on the right. Political talk radio is predominantly right of center. There are a handful of conservative newspapers, and some conservative magazines, and a whole lot of conservative web sites, some of which were (and are) very pro-Trump. Yet everyone all across the political spectrum dropped the story about the brain injuries as if it had never happened--likely because it didn't.
Political bias can explain the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR coming to the same conclusion. It doesn't work as an explanation if Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Times, National Review, City Journal, Reason, and a number of other media sources with very different biases from the left-wing corporate media also come to that same conclusion.
Most discussions that end do so shortly after someone uses the word "the".
And yes, that applies to Joe Biden, too. It's common to assume that the politicians on the other side are idiots because you personally disagree with so much of what they do. It's also common to lose elections because your side doesn't take the other side seriously enough. You can argue about exactly what Trump (or Biden, Obama, Bush, or whoever) are extremely good at, but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016.
Trump got attacked a lot because top politicians in countries with a free press get attacked a lot. The 95% negative press depends tremendously on how you count and was specifically referring to a collection of left-wing media sources. An analogous study that looks exclusively at right-wing media sources would have a very different number.
Because if someone reported factually on a situation and it was perceived positively or negatively on a candidate, it automatically becomes a left or right piece of propaganda.
You can't win anymore, because nobody cares what the truth is, they just want their opinion reaffirmed, so it doesn't matter if a right or left outlet has actual factual information, people just tune it out as an opposite political agenda, even if factual data reinforces it, or if others from the same outlet report the same information.
There's no such thing as trust in the media when everything can be faked and reported from any random Twitter and facebook account.
But that's hardly true of all of the attacks on Trump. For example, the whole Russiagate fiasco had basically nothing to do with anything that Trump ever said or did. "Anonymous sources" made up scurrilous claims out of whole cloth and left-wing media ran with them, then never bothered to go back to burn their anonymous sources who had been lying all along. The Charlottesville scandal in which a video was edited to make it look like Trump had said the opposite of what he actually said is also something that absolutely any politician at all is vulnerable to.
It's not possible for any media source to be unbiased. If nothing else, deciding that one story is interesting enough to publish and another is not is a source of bias. This site has decided that news about MMORPGs is more interesting than most other media sources think it is. That's not a bad thing, and the site is very upfront about it, but it is a bias.
It is possible for media sources to care a lot about whether the stories that they choose to cover are factually accurate and in context. Factual claims should be true, but that's insufficient. An honest media source shouldn't intentionally try to convince people of things that they know are false without quite explicitly saying anything that is technically false. They shouldn't splice comments out of context to try to make it look like someone said something that in context, he didn't say. They shouldn't quote someone making an obvious joke as if it's his real opinion.
For the most part, Americans on the political left never trusted right-wing media sources. Most of the old media sources are politically on the left, and unless they suspect that they're being lied to by the sources they trust or some such, they likely won't go out of their way to read right-wing media.
Americans on the political right have complained about bias from the left-wing media for decades, though with a lot more right-wing media sources available now than there used to be, they too have a lot less reason than before to read left-wing media.
It also makes a big difference that left-wing media in the last several years have heavily hyped a number of supposed scandals that turned out to be pretty much entirely fake news. The most prominent example is Russiagate, a long series of stories in which they claimed that Trump colluded with Russia to, well, in true conspiracy theory fashion, it was never clear exactly what. After about three years and all sorts of supposed bombshells, the only one that panned out at all was that some Trump campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer once who promised dirt on Hillary. You can't have a three year steady drumbeat of a narrative that is almost entirely, objectively false and expect people to still trust you after that.
And that's far from the only example. See, for example, the fracas last year about Georgia's "Election Integrity Act". There were a bunch of left-wing media claims that it did all sorts of nefarious things. Meanwhile, the full text of the bill was posted online where absolutely anyone can read it. Those who did had compelling proof that a lot of media stories were complete lies. And if they're willing to brazenly lie about simple, objective facts that anyone can easily verify for himself, then do you really trust them to tell the truth about things where lies would be easier to cover up?
Part of the problem is that if some media sources are willing to make up lies and others aren't, it's hard for people to keep score. It's not just one side of the political spectrum will and the other won't. If the New York Times makes up a story that is completely false and other media sources quote it without independently verifying the claims, does that mean that all of the other sources that quoted it are now lying?
It's a lot easier to just assume that because some media sources on the other side of the political spectrum are willing to publish lies sometimes that they all are all the time. And so that's what a lot of people do. Stories like CBS's botched Publix/vaccine hit job on DeSantis that are readily traced to egregious malfeasance by a single news source aren't that common, even if that one did pretty much end CBS News's reputation for being an actual news source.
Oh, and "... but they didn't win a primary because their party thought they were idiots. In Trump's case, he had to run against the Republican establishment to win a primary in 2016." -- you pretty much contradict yourself. The Republican establishment did think he was an idiot. Of course, some other folks thought he was a useful idiot.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
The word "idiot" does not mean "person who holds opinions that I disagree with". Part of Trump's success in the 2016 primary was due to his success in diagnosing issues in which most Republican politicians were out of step with a large chunk of the Republican base.
We've had a substantial realignment in the last several years, with rural and working class people moving toward the Republican party while suburban and college educated people moved toward the Democratic party. Trump figured out how to cobble together a winning coalition that most "experts" didn't previously believe was possible and then went out and did it. The genuinely nutty candidates like goodspaceguy never come remotely close to that.
This isn't a moral judgment of saying that Trump is a good person or a bad person. It's only saying that he has considerable skill at American politics. So do Biden, Obama, both Clintons, Romney, and some others who have been successful at the highest level of American politics.
You seem to argue Americans wouldn't elect bad people or that someone elected President cannot be any of those things by virtue of getting elected, and that's a truly ridiculous take.
Edit: Keep in mind that the post was made in the context of someone complaining that Trump had the most negative press. That's because he was all of those things I listed above, not because of some conspiracy against conservatives. Him getting elected does not change any of that, it only catapults him into the spotlight and highlights those flaws.
Even if you believe that someone is evil incarnate, if he's demonstrably very good at what he is trying to do, then I say that you shouldn't dismiss him as an idiot and not take the challenge he presents seriously.
Someone complained he got more negative press than other presidents. That's because of all the things I listed. That's just the reality. It's not hard to find examples of all of those things. At all. Like... 30 seconds of Googling. That's it.
Him being good at tapping into conspiracy-mongering and anger does not change that, and it does not change that these are the reasons he got more negative press than other presidents of the modern age.
He did get more intensely negative press, and lots of it. There are contributing factors other than the man himself, but the main and primary factor was the man himself. He could not shut up, especially on Twitter until his ban, and it created lots of opportunities for negative press.
I'm specifically arguing against your calling Trump an idiot, not whether he does (or should) get a lot of negative press.
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
He'll get what he wants but people will suffer. In the grand scheme of things history will wash it all away no matter which way it goes. China on the other hand will straddle the line. They want to be the world's largest economic power but they can't do it without the world's largest consumer, so they will straddle that fence and play both sides to make it happen.
The people suffer... but... we always do.
Yes the previous US president was really good at communicating his values to attract the matching crowd.
From a political history POV, it is interesting to see how everything went more on the right since one or two decades.
Yes, there is an extreme left in the democratic party, but they lost to Biden. To beat Trump, democrats had to go more on the right, and so did the right which turned into the extreme version of itself way before that.
It is a general trend you can witness across the world, with the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil, the election of Viktor Orbán (who was a good Putin's friend until the war) in Hungary, the election of Boris Johnson in UK, the revival of the extreme right in most western countries and especially in Germany, which is interesting to say the least.
Politics is actually against the site rules and as I hate seeing bans can I ask posters to turn down the political dial. Especially if you have started to have a political slanging match with another poster it is possible you will get banned and quite fairly in fact when you consider the rules. Just because a thread goes on for a few pages with such posts does not mean this will not happen.
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light