Oh, it’s from The Intercept. It would have been simply to post, “Hey, here’s some rationalizing bullshit.”
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Umm, I think what’s getting missed by some is that the statement is not, “In a way, Donald Trump is not so bad.” It is saying that Trump is openly saying things that no politician, or the American media, on either side, would ever, ever say. Truths about how things actually work. That has real value. It is not Trump’s intent to provide this value, and both Republicans and Democrats are probably horrified when he says these things. He is also inadvertently providing a lesson about how much power the president actually has, how much damage can be done, and how few mechanisms are in place to easily stop him. I find it quite eye-opening. He is way beyond just a “bad President”. He’s like a malevolent anti-guru.
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On a closely related theme, have a listen to Baldwin describing Nixon:
(cued to relevant bit, 11:04)
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If I grok what some of what is being said here in/by the OP… kinda boils down to…
(NFSW):
vs
by Ben Parker, Kelsey Ronan, and Stephanie Steinbrecher
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45 is to morals as black holes are to space…
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He’s just asking questions! Just telling it like it is!
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Just… no. Stop.
Part of what keeps civilization going–what keeps any relationship going between human beings–is understanding what needs to be said and what doesn’t. Of course we make decisions with some manipulative intentions sometimes, frequently even. And decisions are made by others towards us with the same intent constantly. It’s a very serious game nations play, and until Donald, the face of America was a poker face.
Opening your stupid yap and giving voice to all the goings-on below decks doesn’t make you brave, smart, honest, or worthy of “credit.” It just shows that you’re a colossal idiot. Donald is an obnoxious child playing an adult’s game, and failing.
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What always bothered me about that argument, is that the logical outcome is basically that he destroys the system, which would be a “good thing” since then we could rebuild it better… the problem is always who would end up being on the front line of the destruction. It’s RARELY the people who advocate for that path of fixing our collective problems, women, people of color, LBGQT people, immigrants (documented and undocumented)… and lo and behold, what is happening - those are precisely the people who are seeing a rise in attacks on their communities from a variety of sides - in the discourse, in laws being passed or executive orders, and physically.
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Selective reveals for one’s own sociopathic ends isn’t honest. At best, his relationship to the truth could be described as “Chaotic Nuetral”
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And who would get to call the shots in rebuilding it.
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In a weird way, Donald Trump is the most honest American president in history
Given his still-growing mountain of lies and the rare self-serving “truths”, I don’t think that “weird” is the right word. In fact, I think “most honest” should be carefully reconsidered. Truth… the entire article should never have seen the light of day.
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I get the feeling that most of the comments here are missing the point of Cory’s post.
Trump is not “honest” in the sense of integrity or habitual truthfulness.
He is “honest” in the sense that he, mostly unintentionally, reveals the true nature of the American empire. And that empire is not a thing that was created by Trump; it has been there for a very long time.
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The only way to stop a Dostoievskian Idiot is a good guy with Chekhov’s Gun (you know he’ll us it).
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He is not honest, by any stretch of the word. Even when he makes truthful statement, there is no intention of honesty behind them. It is mere pandering to a crowd with no consideration of what is right or wrong.
The man is a huckster, a con artist. He is incapable of being honest. If he does speak the truth, then he does so with dishonest intent, to sully that truth and poison all debate.
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One great thing about Trump is that he and the three older children of his whom he likes and the people he attracts all put the lie to any innate superiority of the extremely wealthy and, a little more generally, America’s leadership class. Just proves for the slow witted that Hemingway was right: The very rich are different from us only in that they have more puny than us. Or, put this way, no matter how wealthy Trump is, he’s still a punk ass stupid, ignorant, vile human being.
Probably the exact same people who got us in this mess in the first place…
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You can’t really reveal an open secret though. That’s not honesty, it’s merely bluntness.
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