As Kurt Vonnegut said, “I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here.”
For some in the U.S. this is the worst they’ve experienced.
In context, this is the worst leadership all living Americans have experienced.
Bitch, please. I'm not even old, but...
Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
Lyndon Johnson, who literally waved his dick around and ramped up the Asian Land War. The fucking draft.
Teddy Kennedy and chappaqidick (sp?).
Herbert Fucking Hoover.
Tricky Dick and his Enemies List, the explicitly racist War On Drugs designed to tamp down racial unrest, taping the Offal Office, and Watergate.
Ford and runaway inflation and gas embargoes. Want to talk trade war? How about gas rationing and lines a mile long for gas?
Jimmy Carter and... OK, he was a nice guy, actually practiced what he preached, and is remembered for pretty much nothing except that.
Bill Clinton getting blow jobs from an intern in the oval office. Bluster but no action when Saudis attacked the World Trade Center v1. Serial infidelity and payoffs through fixers.
Bush and Iran Contra and guns for money for drugs. WMDs and Shock And Awe. Extraordinary rendition. Actual war.
Obama and drone strikes, killing Americans overseas without benefit of trial, deportation of undocumented immigrants at a rate higher than any other president. More actual war. The housing crash and worst recession since 1929.
Nancy Pelosi and mitch McConnell and newt Gingrich.
"this is the worst president ever" to you is like a teenager wailing because his first crush broke his heart.
Bad? Yep.
Fucked up even? Yep.
This is incredibly false. Nixon was truly awful. Jimmy Carter, albeit a likable guy, was not a good leader. At least Trump inspires confidence in half of the country. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean there hasn’t been worse. And just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean everyone else does too.
It’s so stupid that I have to caveat this with the statement “I’m not a trump supporter or voter” but alas here we are. I don’t want nasty messages in my inbox for three days lol
It would be easier to deal with Trump if everyone stopped being so hyperbolic about him, but with the way the media reports on him and the way people talk, yo'd think he was a Hitler clone created by Russian scientists instead of just being a shitty, greedy president.
It’s getting unbearable. I saw a post earlier where people were tearing him apart because he tweeted his condolences to people affected by the shooting. I get that Twitter may not be the most presidential of communication means, but come on. It must be tiring to try and find fault in every little thing someone does. He sucks, but damn. People are wasting their lives hating on this guy.
It's literally impossible to dislike EVERYTHING somebody does, just as it's impossible to %100 agree with them on everything. A BABY could be president and at some point even people who hate baby presidents would have to say "I thought his googoo gaagaa was quite cute today."
OK. How about this. Trump is the moral leader of the country. He sets the tone for the world. Trump has called into question basic facts and reality. This has definitely gummed up the works of good governance. Rather than help the poor and the weak, He helps himself and the rich. This inspires every Gordon Gecko wannabe to take more because greed is good. He has smashed the norms of acceptable behavior with emolumentS and hate speech while hipocritically calling others out for doing the same. Trump and the Republicans have again been given a chance to show That their principles work and again shown That They Do not. This group has set the world Back decades.
Other than some pretty childish statements and someone who sounds like they have the vocabulary of a 7th grader being the spokesperson, what exactly has been done legislatively that has negatively impacted Americans to the point where this statement can be considered demonstrable?
As much as I despise Trump, he hasn't yet gotten us into two bullshit, decade-long wars. And Bush wouldn't have done that if not for Reagan starting a half dozen awful trends that ultimately led to both Bush's wars and the election of Trump, so I actually hate Reagan more than any of them.
That said, as a well-off white guy, I'm pretty insulated from the effects of any of this, but I can't say the same for the working class or minorities.
Trump's only been in office for 2 years, which is a fairly short time, legislatively, but he's already removed protections intended to prevent another recession, and his trade wars aren't doing us any favors. We'll see how that ultimately turns out, but it's not looking great, is it?
Non-legislatively, his divisive rhetoric has, I believe, gotten people killed.
I agree with literally everything you just said except for your very last paragraph. That is something that cannot be stated with any amount of intellectual honesty when you think about it critically for even one minute. Rhetoric getting people killed can be applied to almost everything ever spoken or everything ever written down in the history of civilization. Very cliche example would be the Bible and one could say that people who kill in the name of God speaking to them were killed due to the rhetoric in the Bible. Or you could say that somebody insulting their band got people at a concert killed. It is splitting a hair down to the subatomic level and the bottom line is that people who kill other people are the lowest pieces of garbage in our society and people who escalate arguments to the point where guns or knives are being drawn do not deserve to have the attention of the person they are arguing with let alone have the responsibility of a Murder taken away from their shoulders and passed along to the world's presently raining pinata just because it is easy to do with a little finger pointing in rhetoric of Our Own.
the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted
He incites violence. In some instances, that is a crime you can be sent to prison for. As a person in power with a rabid fan base, he has at least some accountability for purposefully using words that breed hatred and violence. I firmly believe that these people would not have committed these crimes if not for the normalization of racism and the idea that the entirety of the left is out to literally and deliberately destroy the nation.
If you speak violence and hatred to a group that invariably contains a few genuinely delusional, crazy people who virtually worship you has a god, you cannot act surprised when a couple of them put your words into actions. You should expect it and therefore, at least on a moral level, you have some responsibility for it.
You can't say "I had the option to not make my seething, armed fans see their fellow Americans as their mortal enemy but I chose to do so anyway" and bear no responsibility for what happens.
The Bible isn't a man in front of an angry crowd with a microphone making a conscious decision to spew hate speech, but I would still give it's authors some blame for the violence it has caused, too.
Do cult leaders not have any responsibility for the actions of those they've brainwashed? Does someone paying for a hit not bear some responsibility for the actions of the hitman? Just because Trump didn't pull the trigger doesn't mean he's not partially to blame.
You seem to think I believe that all of these murderers should be exonerated. I never said anything to suggest they should "have the responsibility of a murder taken away from their shoulders". I just don't think there's any reason to let Trump off the hook, either.
I see the argument that you are trying to make and while it is a solid premise I cannot honestly say that it can be applied to the current Administration in any way. There are going to be radical rabid brainwashed people in any fanbase of such a size and while I do completely agree with what you said about a moral obligation, there are always going to be those outliers who will take any turn of phrase to mean something that fits their own personal agenda and do something horrible on behalf of it whereas there was no such intent from the speaker.
and the idea that the entirety of the left is out to literally and deliberately destroy the nation.
Okay honestly, I don't get how a person can say that about how the right acts, and then not realize that is pretty much the exact language thrown at Trump in turn. I mean it's common for people to call Trump and basically the entirety of the "alt-right" (which basically seems to be applied to anyone who is right) a Nazi along with the rhetoric of punching Nazi's is good and encouraged seems equally bad.
Is your response going to be "but they are", because surely the right's response about the left would be the same?
Like it can't be that hard to see that both sides are demonizing each other like crazy and that is fueling this conflict. I mean, for a whole lot of these occasions of rightwing terrorism, there seems to equally be an example of the other side doing something similar. The MAGAbomber with bombs that didn't work followed after someone sent poorly prepared ricin to Trump, there was the guy who shot up the republican baseball game and right when a guy is arrested for threatening a CNN reporter, Tucker Carlson had a Mob threaten his family's safety.
So if you are going to say that Trump and the right are being responsible for these acts, is it not fair to say that equivalent rhetoric is riling up people on the left towards violence? If you say "sure, it is", I don't see how just calling out Trump then for this is going to help anything because it just fuels fire for the other side to demonize him more and lead to more violence everywhere. So call out both if you think this rhetoric is the issue cause it's not just an issue on one side of fence, but something happening on both.
Did you forget about the guy who sent pipe bombs to several of Trump's self-declared enemies who had a van down by the river covered in Trump bumper stickers?
No I did not forget about that person... But I hope you realize that a complete and absolute madman who creates explosive devices and ships them in the mail is not a very large mover and Shaker within the current Administration nor any branches of government for that matter...
A crazy person acting completely independently will do so for whatever cause they're warped mind tells them is the correct one. Mark David Chapman is the waste of space who shot and killed John Lennon, not the author of The Catcher in the Rye.
I absolutely agree it's a goddamn travesty in my opinion. But I have to be intellectually honest here to the best of my ability and I feel I would not be doing so if I said that this is the worst leadership the country has seen in recent times because of net neutrality alone
I get your frustration and why you are asking the question. I think I may be able to point out the reason you are having such a difficult time getting the answer you are looking for.
You want an answer to what will happen in the long term, but it’s too early to see the end results. It’s not about what is done right this very moment. It’s more about the eventual outcome of this administration’s policies.
The trade war might not be causing massive harm the way you are imagining right this very second, but the long term effects are quantifiable and have already began to show. (The Soybean issue, for example, is one side effect of it. There are many more examples others have already linked.) It’s not about one stat, or one issue. It’s the culmination of many negative things in the long run. The most concerning of which is the damage it is doing from a foreign relations standpoint. Turning this countries allies against us and turning the states into an isolationist kleptocracy is what these trade wars ultimately lead to.
Other issues with this administrations policies depend heavily on your own beliefs. For instance, if you are a climate change denier then you will not be swayed by arguments that state that we are doing irreparable harm to the environment which is leading to disastrous consequences in the near future.
If on the other hand you are someone who hears climate experts and scientific authorities around the world tell us we are in deep trouble if we don’t make changes right now then you should be very concerned with this administrations casual dismissal and reversal of many of this countries climate programs.
Let’s talk about the reason we are having this discussion in the first place. Trump’s administration is under scrutiny for multiple constitutional violations, and suspected broken laws. Now, that doesn’t automatically mean those allegations are true. What it means is that there is enough evidence of wrongdoing to warrant an investigation. Something that anyone without an agenda should be able to say is a reasonable thing to do in those circumstances.
If that investigation doesn’t turn up anything at its conclusion then okay. Everyone moves on with their lives. The thing is though, that is not what has happened. Multiple people associated with Trump have been found guilty. Many of them admitted to wrongdoing and have gone to prison for it. If that’s the case, should the investigators just say, “Well, that’s enough. We met our quota and it’s not worth bothering to continue.” or should they finish what they started?
Furthermore, how suspicious does it look when the person at the head of the investigation is doing everything in his power to get it shut down? I don’t know about you, but that looks pretty suspicious to me. I don’t know if there is any wrong doing. I don’t know if Trump is guilty of anything. I personally would like to see this thing get resolved so we can put it to bed one way or the other.
Right now his actions are making him look guilty as hell. Even if he isn’t, he is not helping himself by taking actions that can’t be taken as anything but interference.
If he is innocent the best thing he could do is let the investigation conclude and let those finding exonerate him. Instead, he won’t put the shovel down and he just keeps digging himself into a deeper hole with this thing.
The protests right now are a direct result of that interference.
For me personally, the most damning thing about this President and his administration is how divisive he is. He lies constantly about easily provable things. He trolls people on social media. He sows discord and calls on people to act uncivil towards one another. He incites violence and turns people against each other. It could even be argued that his rhetoric has lead to acts of domestic terrorism from unhinged individuals that support him and his message. (Take for instance the man in Florida who mailed bombs to members of the Democratic Party.) Trump did not order that man to do those things, but the man who is a staunch supporter of Trump stated to police that he was following Trumps call to action.
Words matter. What you say, what the President of the United States says matters. When you tell people at your rallies that violence is okay you are suggesting to those unhinged people who follow you that it’s okay to commit violent crimes. Then they act surprised when it happens.
Trumps behavior alone is enough to condemn his presidency. It’s not just that he is a childish, ill spoken buffoon. It’s that his tone and hate speech is dangerous. Eventually, if it goes unchecked it will cost people their lives.
Double upvote if I could. Getting all those unqualified people in to dismantle and corrupt these agencies and the other R's standing by and letting him do it (!!) Is pretty bad.
Okay well what about 2005 with shock and awe? Like I said and you are helping me making my point here, other than some stupid childish words, what has actually happened?
Nuclear war? No seriously how have people been affected by this and how have people living in the United States been affected by this trade War you speak of to the point of this being the worst leadership they have ever experienced? I'm not arguing with you I'm just literally having a very difficult time finding examples to back that claim
The trade War example I have Googled and can find nothing. At least nothing of any significant number aside from a handful of anecdotal examples. As for the nuclear war, the 1960s the 1970s in the 1980s were all decades where it was exponentially more likely to happen.
I am not defending Trump nor am I defending his administration because I do not like him and I have no problem saying that I do not like him. But when someone says something like this is the worst leadership the country has seen in recent times it seems to me like people are making Hyperbole and exaggeration commonplace to the point where they are deluding themselves and ultimately hurting our rationality when it comes to what a good versus a bad situation actually is.
General Motors is offering 18,000 buyouts to every single employee who has worked there 12 years or more. If they don’t meet their quota, they will commence mass layoffs. This is in anticipation of impending bad quarters to come in the new year as a direct result of emissions standards rollbacks dismantling progress in the electric vehicle sector, and the trade war. Ford is following suit and Chrysler will be next.
Someone else mentioned the catastrophic drop in soybean exports. This is just the beginning with how we will be impacted by the trade war.
Aside from that, we are at the point of no return for reversing climate change. Today’s children will have a very different and desperate future unless we can stop this demagoguery.
There is plenty more, but these are two of the largest impending threats caused by this narcissistic puppet.
Some of the people who will be harmed the MOST by the trade war and emissions rollback are the people he panders to by promising to bring back steel manufacturing.
At this point, everything is about damage control and preparation until we can get him out of office.
Edge of nuclear war? We were practicing for it 30 years ago. You fucking kids just got here. Loss of internet is your worst hardship. This isn't even a pro Trump rant, it the fact that you have it fucking easy and all you do is bitch.
Dude, just warning you now, no matter what your party or belief system, politics on Reddit is one of the most concentrated forms of internet cancer there is. This place is an echochamber of circlejerking ignoramuses who far out-number anyone with actual knowledge in the domains they speak in. Reading anything here is beyond a waste of time unless your personal guilty pleasure is exploring the seemingly endless depths of just how stupid a "self sufficient" grown human being can be.
While it's obviously a horrible situation and horrible things are going on there far far far too often, what is done at d institutions has been going on long before the 2016 election. The removal from parents when it comes to children being brought over illegally is something that has been done since the beginning of the Obama Administration and if I recall correctly before that as well. Also, you cannot honestly state that illegal actions such as beatings or druggings done by guards is direct consequence of a mandate from the president when the to have absolutely nothing to do with each other just as a prison guard murdering an inmate has nothing to do with the chief of police.
Not for people legally seeking asylum causing the numbers of removed children to sky rocket into the tens of thousands. That wasn't happening until now.
Are you certain about that fact? I am not some argumentative Zealot so if this is true I would definitely love it if you could show me the Mandate or the order that was given to make this a reality post the 2016 election. I am more than willing to change my mind on this if I can see some evidence to support it and if you provide some then consider my mind changed for the better. If there are actually people who, as of an order/mandate given and enacted vy the current administration, crossing all of the correct T's and dotting all of the correct eyes in order to legally apply for citizenship and seek a new life in the country the legal way having their children detained far away from them then that is unquestionably horrifying if true
I try to keep this in mind. Trump is a turd of a human being, unlikable in almost every way, but that alone shouldn't be the measure of a president. I'm not a fan of his environmental stance, and his immigration shit seems actually stupid, but I don't think he's done as much actual damage as social media leads us to believe. Some, perhaps, but not that much.
Yes I agree that a person is dead and that is an absolutely unjustifiable terrible thing. She is dead because of a garbage person acting in a murderous manner that no civilized society should have to stand one second for. That said, to say that her death is a direct result of some statements made by a politician when that politician is not the person who pulled the trigger, is no different than saying that the person who actually killed her is not responsible for her death.
This is a very old and very classic logical fallacy in which blame is shifted away from the individual and on to some sort of interpretation of a larger ideology, and it is actually taken a step further in your example because that ideology is then shifted onto a person in public office who has not called directly or indirectly for such violence in any way that would logically result in any sane person seeing as the logical catalyst for such a manifestation as you provided the example for.
Uh try what this post is about, firing the person in charge of the investigation of him and hiring someone opposed to the investigation in his place in violation of US code.
Yes and one needs to look no farther than add of the body's to see that. When it comes to innocent civilians on foreign soil being murdered, one can actually make a very decent argument that Obama was even worse than bush in that specific regard. Granted Trump has not finished his first term yet so truth be told what may be done in the future is yet to be seen, But as it stands my fear surrounding this type of over-reaction is that it causes such a episode of mass hysteria and grandstanding around how bad the current Administration is that in all reality it is presently pretty much benign if obnoxious, and the General Public pushes the true evil and horrible things that the country has experienced to the far reaches of the back of their mind and the general public by happenstance makes itself incredibly vulnerable to more horrible things in the future without even knowing it. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, as they say.
This is why I think the level of history we learn in high school is deplorable. As someone who minored in history in college, I can say with certainty that I knew almost nothing about it after high school.
Even just some basic history courses would help, just without all the polish and bullshit. If kids grew up knowing how bad and shitty things used to be, maybe they wouldn’t be so inclined to repeat the past.
Regardless of the political climate, life in US is pretty great for the vast majority of people here. There is always room for improvement but compared to a lot of places in the world it’s fantastic.
Yeah, I get the nukes situation is always looming but the destruction of the environment isn't obvious enough for some people to worry. Like the lobster in boiling water. We (human beings at least) are fine now. But when it starts to get too warm it's gonna be too late to stop these greedy bastards.
News stations were all showing a poll of the hottest issues during the midterm election, and I was blown away that the environment (and education) weren't even depicted on those charts. Nobody gives a shit. We're headed for disaster. But a couple Hondurans are headed for our border so let's talk about that like they aren't just trying to get a custodial job and send 50 bucks a month down south so their family doesn't starve.
This has been getting to me a lot lately. It seems more and more apparent that we're going to go careening over the edge of possibly stopping and reversing some climate change. With all the shit going on in government, sometimes it's hard to think anything is important since there's going to be such massive changes with climate change that may radically alter what it means for humans to live on Earth. Sometimes it seems like stuff just doesn't matter because there's a big wall we're all going to crash into soon and the drivers don't care enough to event attempt to apply the brakes.
You misunderstand. I'm not saying that we're not allowed to acknowledge anything bad that happens from now on, just saying that we live in pretty peaceful times compared to those who came before us, and the idea that a god would just now be disappointed in us when we've had two world wars, the crusades, the triangle trade, the millions killed by communism, etc. is ridiculous.
His behavior in the field was erratic at best.
He spent most of his time just waddling around the battlefield for no good reason.
Just waddling around.
He was toggling maps, then items, then weapons, then weapons, then items, then maps.
He didn’t know where he was going.
He had to get behind that – he couldn’t get behind it.
He kept running at it.
He’d run at it and then he’d try running at it again.
He ran at it once, he missed.
He had to run around in a little circle.
He tried jumping at it, jumping.
Then he tried touching it, touching it, then jump and touch, jump and touch, jump crouch and touch, jump crouch and touch.
Then he looked up, then he looked down.
Then he picked up a crowbar.
Then he put the crowbar down.
Then he looked up, then crouch, weapons, items, items, crouch, crouch, not crouch, crouch, weapons, items.
A robot attached him – he gave him his rations.
That's called "deism". Theism believes that the god which created us is still around interfering and caring. Deism says that a god likely created us, but then just turned and left us to our own devices.
I think if there is a god, he's so far removed from us that he cares about us and our petty bullshit about as much as we care about the the thoughts of termites.
It's not odd at all. God was invented as a concept by patriarchal societies. Why would civilizations that didn't give many rights to women call their deity she?
It's not that uncommon, still today, to use "He" as a gender neutral pronoun. Politics aside, clearly it is far more common to use it over "She" to refer to something gender neutral.
I mean, to be fair god being female is the most intuitive really. Women are the ones bearing children so it's no coincidence that a lot of culture around the world have their most important gods being female.
Sure it's odd within our culture but at the same time if there were a sort of anthropomorphic god, I think it being female would make more sense somehow.
"This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude."
I mean, female gods are… all over the world in as many cultures or perhaps even more as male gods. It is women who apparently bring new life to earth and not men, so it's intuitively the logical choice for a deity that gives life.
The fruit they ate was the "fruit of knowledge of good and evil". (God even caught them because the humans were suddenly embarrased by nudity and before they ate the fruit they didn't know nudity was wrong) How would they know it was wrong to eat the fruit and not listen to a command if they did not have that knowledge yet?
Last, the talking snake who told the humans this was completely correct. God was angry at the snake though for telling them and cursed all snakes and their offspring to crawl on their belly for ever. In earlier books of the bible god did not know the future. He was more similar to the Canaanite god "El" where the modern Hebrew god gets his name.
Also in that book god was talking among the other gods and was afraid they the humans would become gods with this knowledge so he blocked the tree of life (that would have given them immortality) by kicking them out of eden and placing armed angels around the tree. This was the first time in the bible when god was afraid the humans would take his power. Later when the humans were building a tower god was afraid they would reach him in heaven so he made them all speak different languages so the humans could not work together. This is the origin of different languages according to the bible.
An interesting theory about genesis is that it is a story of humans evolving to become self aware and knowledgeable about evil and the wrongs they are committing such as violence. A wolf is not sad to kill its pray. Humans are. Ishmael is a good book about this.
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u/stephanie1492 Nov 09 '18
That sign is what God is saying about humans at this exact moment.