I’m going out on a limb and guess you didn’t come here to discuss the issue or make a valid point.
Surely you have something more important to do with you life than be a trolley.
When hosting SNL, Donald Trump ‘struggled to read,’ says former cast member. Can the President read?
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What’s so hard to believe about that? In a democracy the people vote for the candidate who best represents them, and for nearly half of America that person was a functionally illiterate narcissist.
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They are his own family, as danegeld notes. So of course they are amazing. How can you not see that? /s
(Of course, they are also, at the same time, ‘astounding’, and more in the way you use that term than the more positive sense.)
(ET fix stray punctuation)
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I’m sorry, I clearly failed to make an attempt at wry humour and sarcasm work. Of course racism has a huge part to play in it; tribalisms of an alarming number of forms are behind a vast array of stupid things happening in the world. Probably always has been, since humans are not notably different today than 10000 years ago.
And yes, I have lived in the US, as well as UK etc and now Canada. Sadly I have to report finding nasty, thuggish, fuck-witted, evil, bastards everywhere. It’s what drives me to make the effort to act better despite borderline sociopathy.
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Oh dear! No, my bad! Carry on in this important work!
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Over here: https://www.theguardian.com/discussion/p/68gh5?page=3 - which are the comments on an article about speed reading - I came across this comment:
“Rather than all that faffing about, why not use text to speech.
It should be possible now to build that into what looks like a normal pair of glasses.
Directed to where the eyeball is looking, it would literally be your reading glasses, providing assisted and adjustable accelerated reading, and probably relying on the bone coupling technique for sound, rather than boring old ear buds.”
I think 45 really, really needs this to be invented. (And for the definition of “to read” to be updated accordingly.)
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In the U.S, which is a republic, people vote for the candidate they believe is least likely to harm their interests and who is on the ballot where they live. Stop pretending the poor fucking electorate has much control in these matters. They are relentlessly lied to, denied access to the full range of options, subject to asinine registration hurdles, and expected to somehow scrounge up some time to vote while holding down multiple gig jobs and trying to have a life.
Down punching = the favorite parlor game of our well-credentialed, upper 10%.
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My father was on some level illiterate. I’m not sure what the technical diagnosis would be, but I know he struggled with anything more than a menu. He could make his way through a menu or an invoice, but anything longer than that just wasn’t going to happen. He was born in the 30s, and was just passed up to the next grade in school. He still made it to a regional manager at Pepsi back in the early 80s. Only lasted a couple of years - I was too young then to know if it was the reading or something else that caused him to lose that job.
I guess all that is to say that I’m very sympathetic to anyone who makes it to adulthood without those skills. It always struck me as odd how natural Dad was at math given his reading problems. He could help me with my trig homework no problem when I was a kid. I mean, obviously different skills, but the contrast was so stark.
But his limits were real, and they limited what kinds of jobs he would be good at. Same with Trump. I more have problems with his apparent lack of curiosity than how literate he might be.
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Psuedo cum laude.
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I sense this topic has really struck a nerve with a certain crowd. It’s not normal that we see so many sockpuppet accounts coming out the woodwork to defend Heir Hairpiece. Haven’t seen this many trollies since the movie came out.
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They’re amazing in the sense that they make us feel we’re lost in a maze.
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It was my understanding that they had to be up all night satisfying the partners of cucks.
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While I generally agree, I think there’s an important distinction here. If FDR had challenged Hitler to a 100 yard dash, the winner ruling the world, it would very much be in the public’s interest that FDR was paralyzed from the waist down. Likewise, the fact that Trump is essentially bluffing his way through the presidency is not just his personal disability; it could mean the end of human civilization. He is not qualified for this job for a number of reasons, and this is one of them.
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That makes it not awful. 
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And yet they still managed to overcome both party establishments to elevate an overtly racist and grossly incompetent demagogue who discussed putting Muslims in internment camps, thinks climate change is a hoax, brags about sexually assaulting women, wants to dismantle the healthcare system and build a giant wall along the border as a fuck you gesture to Mexicans. I’m sorry, but that reflects upon their character. Many of them are good people who are confused or misinformed, but there’s also no denying the widespread stupidity and bigotry that led us here, and we need to stop making excuses and look that in the face.
I wouldn’t know. I’m not part of the well-credentialed upper 10%. I grew up at the end of dirt road in upstate NY surrounded by guns, muscle cars and creationism, and until recently I was one of the stupid, lazy Obamacare recipients dragging down society. I’m just tired of getting punched by people who have never once made any effort to understand politics from my point of view. Punching back is more than a parlor game for me.
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In the U.S, which is a republic,
Holy Fucking Shit! You’re right. That blows my mind…
The United States, unlike so many of the European Monarchies, does not have a king. This is revolutionary stuff, man…
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I don’t believe Trump can’t read, per se. I think, at age 70, he’s extremely nearsighted and just too vain to wear glasses. He seems to do OK if they make the words big enough on his TelePrompTer… and keep them to 5 letters or less.
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Let me relate something my high school history teacher pointed out about that. The US is a republic founded from a revolution. Funny thing about revolutionary republics: they tend to institutionalise what they’re revolting against.
The US is notable in that it has a palace (the White House), and that, present regime excepted, there’s a tendency to treat presidents and their families like eighteenth century royalty.
I’m in Canada, so just to compare: we’re a constitutional monarchy. The Queen’s main job is to appear on our money and postage stamps, and anyway she doesn’t have an official residence here.
That leaves the PM, whose official residence is 24 Sussex Drive, but since it rarely comes up in the news that’s almost pub-night level trivia. I have no idea what it looks like. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve seen a photo since I was a kid, and I’m into this stuff.
The PM sits in Parliament and has to deal with Question Period same as any other MP. There’s no special event speeches like the President gives to Congress.
Overall there’s less pomp and circumstance around the PM, mostly because all that gets sucked up by the monarchy.
So yeah, the US is totally a democratic republic, but looking from the outside in, a peculiarly royalist one.
The same history teacher liked to point out the US President started as “first among equals”, a mostly honorary position, but has gained more and more power over time… until it’s closer to about what King George had around the time of the American Revolution.
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I am pretty sure old people are typically farsighted.
At least that’s how my eyeballs are explaining it to me these days.
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Usually starting in their 40s people get presbyopia. It’s not a focusing error the way near- and farsightedness is, but a hardening of the lens of the eye so it can’t be squished into focusing close-up. As Wikipedia helpfully/depressingly notes, ‘The word is from the Greek πρέσβυς (presbys) meaning “old man” and ὤψ (ops) meaning to “see like”.’
I get that no one likes putting on their reading glasses, but if that’s the reason Trump refuses to read his intelligence briefings etc, then we have a problem.
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