In a way, he’s a dostoievskian idiot…
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The more accurate way to state this would be:
Insulting asshole will use anything available (truth or lies) to attack others.
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I genuinely don’t think he even knows the difference; in his mind, whatever makes him feel good = ‘true’, and whatever makes him feel bad or angry = ‘false.’
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Politicians will use a small truth to tell an even bigger lie.
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Exactly, “honesty” is hardly the word I’d use for what comes out of his mouth.
He says whatever he thinks will either A) benefit him personally or B) hurt his enemies from one moment to the next. Whether those things happen to be objectively true or not doesn’t concern him one bit.
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Yes, that is true when he is evaluating what others have said.
But the algorithm when he is speaking is: What will most effectively hurt the subject. Sometimes the truth is the the best weapon. Sometimes a lie is the best weapon.
So I would say the title of the post is flat out wrong. An honest person speaks the truth regardless of the outcome for themselves.
Trump speaks the truth only when it will in someway benefit himself otherwise he defaults to lieing at all other times. That is not an honest person.
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Or in the very least avoids outright lies.
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in short, the most “a-” president in history.
amoral
atruthful
a-hole.
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A stopped clock, etc etc.
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In a weird way, the zodiac killer was the most merciful serial killer. He only killed 7 people and left the whole rest of the world alone.
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but in another weird way he’s an evil narcissistic shitbag.
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I know it’s tough for the BoingBoing crowd to in any way give Donald Trump credit for anything, but I’ve been saying this from the beginning. As much of a liar as he is, he is the only one who says things the nation has never been willing to say. In those cases it is honesty–he admits to the terrible things and awful realities of this nation. In a selective way, of course. And only if it serves his purposes.
We admitted China to the WTO, ignoring and therefore excusing Tienanmen Square. Remember that George HW Bush sent his defense secretary to China soon after that event to reassure the butchers that there would be no real repercussions regardless of what criticisms Bush voiced publicly.
On Khashoggi, the proscribed way to handle an offense by an “ally” like Saudi Arabia would be to criticize them publicly but privately reassure the Saudis that nothing with teeth would be done. Never in a million years would a President publicly say “hey, they did a bad thing, but we need their business.” That gives away what our foreign policy–under all Presidents–is really about.
And what’s the difference between stating it and hiding it? Not much, really. Those who say “people looking to us as a bastion of freedom will be disapointed!” don’t realize that no one actually thinks of us as a kind, fair nation. They see us as a bundle of CIA missions and military interventions, and perhaps as a land of economic opportunity. Not a shining city on a hill. Trump only voiced what the world has known about us and accepted for a long time.
Trump has just let the cat out of the bag, once and for all, on the lie that we value human rights more than oil. In that way, he was honest, the first President to be so.
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But he is definitely not a 3 Stooge or even one of Iggy’s.
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Translation, he is a bigoted piece of crap who openly panders to that crowd without hesitation or shame.
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Note that the title says “most honest” rather than “honest”.
It isn’t a statement in praise of Trump; it’s a statement of condemnation for all of the others.
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I wasn’t talking about his bigotry and shitty statements; that’s a whole other matter, and he still tries to hide his racism so he isn’t being honest about that. I am talking about his admissions about how foreign policy is determined in an almost solely “pragmatic” way with little regard for human rights (unless it’s a clear enemy).
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That would be burying the lede. Even his supporters claim that is his strong point is “telling it like it is”. Meaning willing to make open bigotry a political platform. He doesn’t even try to hide his racism. He just has a legion of apologists who deflect or ignore this sort of thing.
His “admissions” are garbage. He openly shows affection to dictators and has a disdain for his own democratic allies. This is a guy who picked a fight with Canada for shits and giggles.
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The “most honest American president in history” used a deliberately and obviously doctored video to attack the reputation of a member of the press in what can only be described as a libelous manner.
Then he flat out lied about it being doctored, despite totally being doctored
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