• Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    They keep saying "let the voters decide" but the entire problem is caused by Trump not wanting to let the voters decide.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The more I see interviews with Trump supporters at Trump rallies the more disturbed I get. They seem to care more about the narrative than facts. They hold signs that say "Live Free Or Die" while at the same time they cheer Trump when he praises Kim Jong Un, quotes Vladimir Putin, and jokes about being a "Day One Dictator." They cheer on his authoritarian leanings, and so in my mind they encourage him in this direction. Yet, that would end up taking away their own freedoms in the long run. That's the thing about enabling an authoritarian or supporting expanding the powers of the executive branch... In the short term, you may support it because it is being used against your political opponents (liberals, RINOs, etc.) but in the long term it may erode your own rights and freedoms. Trump supporters don't seem concerned by this, or even cognizant of it. When interviewed about why they support Trump, they say vague things like "Trump cares about us" or "Drill, baby, drill" but there don't seem to be a lot of specifics. It's more like buying into an "us versus them" narrative about Trump being a heroic figure fighting against evil: Democrats who get equated with communists, antifa, globalists, Satanists, pedophiles, the Deep State, and fill in your favorite conspiracy theory here. It's definitely like a cult or fast growing and popular religion. I see a lot of fervor, but not a lot of critical thinking, in this MAGA movement. If you are a Republican and critical of Trump, you get cast out as an apostate RINO or even accused of being a traitor and receive death threats. Scary times!
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I have zero sympathy for Giuliani. He went from being America's mayor to being Trump's stooge. He pushed the "election was stolen" narrative when he knew it wasn't true. You can get away with claiming they stole the election as long as you never define who "they" are. The problem is once you start naming names -- which you have to, eventually, to be taken seriously -- it is no longer a generalized conspiracy theory. And there are serious consequences to that if your accusations are untrue.

    What kind of person would do what Giuliani did? You ruined people's lives, and for what? To prove your loyalty to Trump?

    In some ways these kinds of people are worse than Trump, because they know what the truth is, and they know what Trump is all about, but they allow themselves to be corrupted. They made a political calculation to go along with the lies. They know it's wrong, but they do it anyway because they are betting that they will be on the winning side in the long run. This also applies to people like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and anyone else who could see Trump's flaws at one time but then later sold their own souls to become Trump loyalists.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It's painful to read a Trump transcript. To be fair it's often painful to read a Biden transcript, too. Why can't we have leaders who can speak with precision and clarity? What's up with all of this mumble-mouth crap?

    I just reserved the Cassidy Hutchinson book "Enough" from the library. Next up is Liz Cheney's book. I see Adam Kinzinger has a book out, too. One thing I notice is that a lot of the people raising the alarm about Trump are Republicans. They get called RINOs but they've all been more consistent in their political affiliation than Trump has been.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The context was that Hannity was throwing a slow pitch so Trump could reassure people that he doesn't have dictatorial ambitions. Trump could have hit a home run by saying, "No of course I don't want to be a dictator, I respect our democratic form of government and our U. S. constitution, blah, blah, blah." But he didn't. He hit a foul ball by 'joking' (?) about being dictator on day one. If people are concerned about something, joking about it in a tone-deaf and obscure fashion probably isn't the best response. So, I have no sympathy for Trump on this. As usual, Trump is the source of most of his own problems: financial, legal, political, and otherwise.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Truth is often stranger than fiction. Still... Even if Trump hasn't been proven to be guilty of collusion with the Russians, that doesn't mean he's been proven innocent. It's a fact Putin interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf. Why is that? It's also a fact that Trump said “Russia, if you’re listening — I hope you are able to find the 30,000 [Hilary Clinton] emails that are missing" at a news conference. He publicly requested Russia's assistance in interfering with the campaign. It's very clear to me now that Trump loves Putin, Kim Jong Un and authoritarian dictators because he wants to be one of them. Trying to install loyalists at every level of gov't, trying to overthrow the 2020 election results, and even joking about being dictator "only on Day One"... It's very obvious that he wants to be a dictator who won't willingly give up power. If we give him a second chance by voting him in on 2024, I believe he will succeed in destroying our democratic republic as we know it.
  • How wealthy would the wealthiest person be in your ideal society?
    This question always reminds me of hearing about a limitation on how much CEO's can make in relation to the lowest paid employee in the company in some European country, possibly Germany. I could be wrong but I remember hearing a ratio of 20-1. Now, imagine if we expanded that limitation more broadly to an entire nation. What would be the downsides of doing that? What would the advantages be? Would ambitious and talented individuals leave the country? Would the standard of living go up or go down? Would it affect our ability to be competitive with other countries? I suppose there are many facets of this that need to be examined. Do we need the hyperwealthy? Do we need the potential to become hyperwealthy to continue, or to go away, for the best of society? I have more questions than answers on this topic. One thing I don't want to do is a "shoot from the hip" assertion that wealth acquisition is an inherently bad thing, or bad for society. I don't know that. Gross disparities of wealth do seem to correlate with many injustices, but it is often difficult to draw a straight line between them. If I'm wealthy and you are poor, that isn't exactly the same as saying I'm oppressing you, even though I may use my wealth to actively oppress you. I definitely don't like the overly simplistic idea that weatlhy = wicked and poverty = virtuous -- which, by the way, is more Biblically based than most people want to admit. I don't see anything particular virtuous about poverty. To me that always seemed like equating being helpless with being virtuous, and I don't think that is correct.
  • Winners are good for society
    Social winners are naturally selected yet that doesn't always mean they are good for society. Natural selection can be an explanation for why things are the way they are, but that isn't the same as a moral justification for why things are the way they are, or an argument that it is what is best. This is exactly why we discuss and argue over politics. We're in a constant state of review and evaluation. If Trump wins, that could be best explained by a populist movement that he rode in on which is opposed to what you call leftism but that might be overly simplistic. Also: when is the last time a conservative ticket won the popular vote? 2004? I don't necessarily see things heading in the conservative direction, overall. To me, it looks more like with the gerrymandering and attempt to retain power by any means necessary that they are desperate. That makes them dangerous, but isn't by itself evidence that leftism has failed in the sense that it lost the overall popularity contest with the 'people on the ground.' To me it implies the opposite -- that what is resonating with people more is what the Trumpists oppose and want to stop. If you vote against him, he wants your votes discounted or thrown out.
  • What characterizes the mindset associated with honesty?
    I associate honesty with the mindset of maturity or wisdom. To me, a fully mature and wise person realizes the deeper value of honesty that goes beyond short term consequences. People who are dishonest always turn out to be immature, immoral, or criminal in their behavior. Dishonesty is all about being selfish and avoiding unpleasant consequences. Whether a person is honest or not is like shorthand for their character overall. Honest equals honorable. For me, honesty might be the single best determinant for whether I want to associate with a person or not. As soon as I catch someone being dishonest I immediately want them out of my life, or I want to be out of theirs.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The Trump-hater has proven himself incapable of fairness and balance. Justice evades him. It’s all about power and conformity, and moving to control how others think. Unfortunately his power wanes. His double-speak doesn’t have the effect he thinks it doesNOS4A2

    This goes both ways. What I see on the conservative side, with conservative media, is defining liberals and Democrats as evil -- demonizing them non-stop, 24 hours a day. Democrat = Satanic. Once you've done this, then it doesn't matter what the shortcomings of conservatives and Republicans that you've chosen to support are, since they're still better than the opposition which has been defined as pure evil. This is how Christian Evangelicals justify supporting someone like Trump. And then it kills any chance of working across the aisle since that means being a traitor. Anyone who does that gets branded as 'Republican in Name Only' or RINO -- basically an apostate. So, you purge anyone moderate out of your party. People like Mitt Romney are feeling like the Republican party is no longer something they identify with because it has become so radicalized. Being a 'real' Republican now is no longer a set of beliefs or principles, it has been reduced to a single criterion which is passing the loyalty test to Trump.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Never will you mention the forces at work trying to keep people off the ballot, or that state and federal governments are trying to railroad their greatest political opponents, or the routine censorship of dissenting voices.NOS4A2

    These seem to be the common talking points of Trump supporters right now. But I would ask Trump supporters to attempt to be fair and balanced about this. For example, there can be legitimate reasons to keep people off of the ballot, being a political candidate doesn't exempt you from being indicted when you commit crimes, and in some contexts censorship is good -- fact-checking and editing are both an essential part of journalism and gag orders can be appropriate during trials. You can always frame things a certain way. But at least try to see the other side.
  • Convince Me of Moral Realism
    I don't see how one can get from pain to objective morality. Perhaps someone can lay this out in an argument with premises leading to a conclusion. I can accept the reality of pain, and the immediacy of it, and how central it is to our existence, but a lot of what has been stated looks like a Wittgensteinian word salad that I cannot follow to a conclusion of moral reality.

    The way I see it is that morality is real in the sense that once we create it -- or as it emerges organically from our social interactions -- it moderates our behavior as it is intended to. But it is real in an abstract sense, the way laws or speed limits are real. These things exist through a sort of consensus, or consensual understanding, and they aren't simply arbitrary as they have some kind of foundation in our nervous systems. When you feel shame, for example, you blush and you can feel it right down to your bones, it affects you physically. This isn't simply an imaginary or arbitrary phenonemon, and it's not merely about preferences or an intellectual exercise. We can't refrain from creating morality, and it is seemingly necessary to our existence and an unavoidable pursuit. Still, I'm not sure I'm able to make an argument for moral realism or how to get from an is to an ought.
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    I think the opposite: it begs the question how the world can continue to exist independently of the self (or selves)RogueAI

    What makes you think that? From what we can tell, the universe existed long before sentient life or "selves" came into existence. Why would things like stars, galaxies, elements, fire, radiation, and everything that makes up what we call the physical world be contingent upon organic sentient life?
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    I think it comes down to whether you are more justified in believing the world no longer exists when you don't perceive it or if some other explanation is more justified. In almost all examples I think the other explanation is more justified. Fortunately, we perceive the world with not only one sense, but with five, and we also have the faculty of memory. In tandem, these usually give us warrant to continue believing the world exists even when we don't perceive it, or when our perceptions are hampered. Also, it begs the question how the self can continue to exist independently of the world, so that alone may be considered warrant for believing in the objective world even when one cannot perceive it. As far as we know a mind cannot exist independently of a brain, and a brain is physical and requires a physical world to exist in and evolve out of.
  • An example where we can derive an "ought" from an "is"
    The example given is about semantics rather than overcoming Hume's Guillotine. The hit man may glean what the mob boss wants him to do (the ought) from a descriptive statement (the is), but that is more about the nuances of communication in the sense of understanding innuendo. But independent of that there is nothing within the statement "Today is John's last day on earth" that can be causally tied to "You ought to kill John." Even if true, the descriptive statement that John will die today doesn't compel any sort of moral imperative on anyone hearing this statement. It takes some extra-linguistic context (i.e. being able to discern mob culture innuendo) to get to that conclusion.
  • What are the best refutations of the idea that moral facts can’t exist because it's immeasurable?
    People have often claimed that moral facts exist. Many people certainly believe it. But where is there a solid philosophical or scientific argument proving that moral facts exist? What's an example of a moral fact? From what I can tell, the closest you can get are statements or rules that are contingent upon some desired outcome, e. g. human flourishing as Sam Harris puts it. It's true that there are certain behaviors that are more conducive to certain outcomes, and this can be based on what we know about human psychology and measured over time. That might be the closest we can get to something defined as a moral fact.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    There are 44,000 hours of January 6th video footage. Of course you can find footage that wasn't displayed in the January 6th Committee Hearings. Now, either side can cherry pick all they want, but so far I haven't seen anything to change the overall narrative. The protesters pushed past barricades the Capitol police set up to keep them out, and in response they were hit with non-lethal police devices like tear gas, rubber bullets and concussion grenades. They should have stayed on the street.

    The way I see it is: on the street they were protesters, pushing past the police barricades and approaching the Capitol building they were rioters, and breaking into the Capitol building and trying to get into the rooms where Congress was certifying the election results they were insurrectionists. If you want to understand why and where Ashli Babbitt got shot, this is how to frame it. She was attempting to climb through a broken window beside a barricaded door into the Speaker's Lobby while Capitol police were evacuating members of Congress to keep them safe. These people weren't protesting peacefully, they were trying to intimidate and prevent Congress from certifying Biden as the President.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I remember at the time thinking how if the rioters were not predominantly white it would have been more than simply tear gas being shot at them. I was amazed at the level of restraint showed by the Capitol police. Nothing in any new footage released has changed my opinion on that. Why, for example, couldn't the protesters have stayed out on the street? Why advance on the building itself? Why try to enter the building? The idea that the police, FBI informants, Antifa or any other crazy theory is the 'true reason' for the escalation is just a sad attempt to deny responsibility for what we all saw with our own eyes that day. We saw an angry mob fired up by Trump's rhetoric and the Big Lie about the election being stolen! And their purpose wasn't to protest, it was to disrupt, otherwise they would have never attempted to enter the Capitol building itself. None of this would have happened if they had stayed on the street.
  • When Does Philosophy Become Affectation?
    When you wear a scarf and a beret and drink espresso out of a demitasse.
  • The American Gun Control Debate
    I think the nuance here is that guns with the capacity to kill large numbers of people in a very short amount of time are much more readily available in the USA than in many other developed countries. It's true that guns don't kill people, it is people that kill people... But if you are mentally unwell or otherwise motivated to commit homicide in another country such as the UK you may find out a way to commit mass murder but it will be more difficult. And the statistics and data bears that out. I am a gun owner and like and enjoy my guns, plus I obey the law and gun etiquette as I believe the vast majority of other gun owners do. Also, I recognize that in the USA we have a particular history with Britain attempting to disarm us and failing do so which made all the difference in the Revolutionary War, and this figures largely in the American psyche. Our nation was born out of a distrust of government and tyranny, with a deep rooted trust instead in the right of common people able to defend themselves against such things. But I think we also have to consider changes over time and the threats that we are dealing with now, not over two centuries ago, and consider data and facts. As far as limiting what arms American civilians have a right to, we already have limits as it is illegal to have your own chemical weapons, explosive devices, a nuclear device, etc. There are limits to the 2nd Amendment and I don't think it is unreasonable to be able to have a fact-based discussion about where those limits should be. Being able to defend yourself is a reasonable expectation, but I think it needs to be balanced against the realities of public safety. I am hoping that other gun owners (of which I am one) and conservatives (of which I am not one but have many friends and family who are) will join into good faith efforts to come up with solutions on how to deal with the American problem of gun violence, which I personally feel is at unacceptable levels.
  • The American Gun Control Debate
    I own guns and I've always been a supporter of the 2nd Amendment, but I'm also a Democrat and a liberal, so I think I can see both sides of the argument. I think the only path forward is to focus on actual facts and statistics, not kneejerk emotional reactions. Both sides tend to get emotional, very quickly, when the American gun control issue gets brought up. So, I think the first thing to do is to attempt to set aside one's emotions and focus on the numbers and the facts. From what I've read, the US homicide rate with guns is 26 times higher than -- on average -- other high income countries. My first question is posed to other gun owners and supporters of the 2nd Amendment: Do you think this is acceptable, and if not, what do you propose we do to lower it? I really want to hear from gun owners on this.

    https://everytownresearch.org/graph/the-u-s-gun-homicide-rate-is-26-times-that-of-other-high-income-countries/
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The "Russia Hoax" wasn't proven to be a hoax since the conclusion wasn't that Trump was exonerated by the Mueller Investigation. The conclusion was more nuanced than that. Mueller himself said that his report didn't exonerate Trump. I was disappointed that the report failed to establish Trump colluding with Russia, but I admired Mueller for his reticence if that was what was called for due to lack of conclusive evidence. If it had indeed been a witch hunt, Mueller would have "found" the evidence to support the conclusion, whether it actually existed or not. That leaves us with a genuine question mark.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    One way you can know you're on the wrong side if you're a Trump supporter is that Trump is intimating he will, if he becomes President again, use the Department of Justice to go after political opponents by indicting them. Let us say you, as a Trump supporter, think this is what Biden is doing to Trump right now and that it is morally wrong. Well, it doesn't become morally right for Trump to do it to others in the future because it is being done to him now. That's like arguing that when fighting against totalitarians we are justified in becoming totalitarians ourselves. That's what is wrong with the tit for tat mentality: "They impeached our guy so we're justified in impeaching their guy" or "they indicted our guy so we're justified in indicting their guy." You're indignant that something -- you claim -- is being done to your guy that is immoral, but then you turn around and support the same thing being done to the other side's guy.

    I'm not conceding that Biden is using the justice system to go after a political enemy, by the way, I'm merely pointing out that even if this were the case, it wouldn't make Trump's intention to use the justice system to go after political enemies in the future okay. That would be tantamount to doing away with our democracy, and making us like a Banana Republic, Russia, North Korea, or other totalitarian states where elections don't matter or don't occur at all, and where no one has any true power except the dictator who justifies what he does in ways very similar to what Trump is doing now. You aren't "righting the ship" in a democratic republic with a law that is supposed to apply equally and fairly to everyone if you're simply going to adopt the method of your political opponents that you are claiming is "wrong" now but somehow becomes acceptable when you do it later.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump's an idiot, wouldn't be surprised to find forum members who like his style though.Vaskane

    The idiots like that Trump is an idiot. He is their Golden Idiot, and they put him on a pedestal. "He is one of us, he is just like us!" they say, "Except he's a billionaire, and you know, one day I might be a billionaire, too!" A billionaire idiot who is held up as the golden standard of idiocy, that's what Trump is. He gets away with petty insults, rambling speeches, self-aggrandizing, and constant lying -- which is what the idiots do, and they love it. Take that, intellectuals and people with any education or nuance!
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    With this in mind, it is certainly naive and imprudent to protect the right to lie. On the contrary, media that lie, advertisers that lie, estate agents, politicians, scientists, doctors, that knowingly lie and deceive, need to be sanctioned and firmly discouraged from doing so. Ordinary people can be easily deceived and persuaded by ranting demagogues when trust in the general honesty of leaders and professionals is lost. To mistake freedom of speech with licence to lie is to promote a destructive anti-social ideal, and welcome tyranny into the heart of the nation.unenlightened

    You have a point. Fraud, libel and slander are all crimes in my country. Nonetheless, many lie anyway and get away with it protected under the aegis of free speech. It's a problem. What is the solution? I notice a lot of conservatives lately complaining about "fact checkers being bogus" on media platforms, but when I was young if you wanted to publish something, you had an editor, and if you were an academic you had peer review. We used to have standards -- specifically to filter out the bogus stuff.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    This is why Socrates, as reported by Plato, feared democracy as mob rule.

    "If you listen to fools, the Mob Rules." -- Black Sabbath

    Winston Churchill called democracy “the worst form of government … except for all the others”.

    What we're experiencing with Trump, Fox News, Newsmax, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, this whole phenomenon of alt-right, alt-facts, conspiracy theorists, demagogues, etc. is all what I would call the necessary evil of living in an open, democratic society with free speech. Yes, we run this risk that charismatic, popular demagogues can sway the masses to vote in a regime that can undermine the democratic system itself. I guess that is one way that democracies can come to an end, and we might be watching it happen. How do you reasonably debate or convince people otherwise when they willingly vote for someone who wants to suspend the Constitution -- the very document that secures their right to vote in the first place?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It's hard to put any stock in polls when the election is still nearly a year away. Trump detractors may be clutching their pearls, and Trump supporters may be heartened by these polls... But I don't think they mean much. We'll see what effect one or more convictions may have on independent and moderate Republican voters. We know there is a hardcore MAGA base that will support Trump even if he's behind bars in an orange jumpsuit boasting about how he could kill people and still have their support... But what about the others? Will they still Trump as viable a year from now?
  • People are starving, dying, and we eat, drink and are making merry
    I think it is human nature that it is difficult to feel empathy in the abstract and distant versus the physical and personal. This high range empathy is difficult to achieve and sustain. People seem to be able to do it, but mostly only in short bursts. It reminds me of that saying "The tears of strangers are just water." That sounds like a cynical attitude, but it is more like an observation about human psychology. It is also what allows us to demonize the "other" and do horrible things to humans we've never met.
  • What is a strong argument against the concievability of philosophical zombies?
    If you can't establish that they're impossible, then I think that establishes that they are conceivable, if by conceivable we mean things we can imagine that could possibly exist. To me, the more relevant question is: who cares if they exist? If they're indistinguishable from the non-zombies, what does it matter? It's not like we'd be living in the horror genre if they existed... "Night of the Philosophical Zombies." Try to conceive of that movie script.
  • Bravery and Fearlessness.
    I think fearlessness refers to an ignorant state akin to foolhardiness. I often think of young people and young animals in this context since they are daring without considering or being aware of the consequences -- or they just don't care, because they're biologically wired to be more daring. It is with the experiences of pain and other unpleasant consequences that we develop fear, which is a good thing but can also have negative or paralyzing effects. Bravery is the next level where a person overcomes their fear to attempt to achieve a better consequence (e. g. charging into a burning building to rescue a child).

    I don't know of anyone who has no ego, per the OP. That sounds like an ideal from Zen Buddhism or something like that, where the enlightened person gets rid of their ego self or understands there is no difference between the self and other, there is no dualism, that all is illusion... This all sounds good, but it reminds me of the story of the guru who was teaching his students there is no need to fear anything because all of reality is just an illusion. Just then, a tiger jumped into the midst of the group, and the guru ran away faster than any of them.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    This situation keeps making me think of God ordering the Israelites to kill the Canaanites in the Bible: every man, woman and child, and even the animals.
  • Science is not "The Pursuit of Truth"
    Science doesn't purse anything. Science is a tool or a method that we use to acquire facts about the world, or perhaps more accurately, is the attempt to falsify hypotheses we make about the world. Science is the tool of methodological naturalism, and can be used equally by theists and atheists alike, as long as while doing it they agree they are hypothesizing and searching for natural causes. The strength of science is that it is always open to falsification, refinement and improvement -- and thus is not appropriate for making absolute declarations of truth. Still, I would argue, it is the best method we have to acquiring facts -- and theories supported by facts -- about the natural world.

    Truth, I would say, is a philosophical concept. As philosophers we pursue the truth, and science along with logic and reasoning is how we attempt to acquire it. The assumption is that if we can get our beliefs to correspond exactly with how reality is, then we have the truth. At least that is the correspondence theory of truth, which is probably the most prevalent and commonsense definition of what truth is. It doesn't take too much reflection to realize we can seldom if ever get our beliefs to correspond to exactly how reality actually is, or at least we have no way of verifying that. So, we have to be content striving for it, and always admitting the possibility of error.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I am loving the state of Georgia right now. They aren't fooling around.
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    The real question is if it is possible to super-size your nothing burger.
  • Why is rational agreement so elusive?
    I think it is because philosophy is the attempt to think clearly, not a guarantee to think clearly. When we do philosophy, most of us try to be sincerely try to be rational and objective, but we're only human and so we have plenty of biases, emotional motivations, and psychological hang-ups that account for our lack of consensus.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    My guess is that everything is going according to Hamas' plan. They knew Israel would react with overwhelming force and hoped that would create a new humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hamas doesn't care about the Palestinian civilians. Name one thing Hamas has done to help children or civilians in the Gaza Strip since they took power 15 years ago.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I hadn't paid much attention to the Trump Organization civil trail in New York. Seeing how it's going now, I think the consequences might be even greater than those potentially coming from the criminal trials. It never struck me before how big a blow this could be, financially, politically, and psychologically.T Clark

    That's very insightful. This trial gets at Trump for what he fundamentally is, a fraud, who inflates property values to get loans and deflates then when paying taxes. If he has to finally pay the consequences of doing this, it hits at his wealth and the value of his brand. If he has to sell all of these Trump-based properties to pay the fines, then what is he anymore? It strikes down the Trump mythology of being this successful businessman -- what his identity is built upon. I saw Michael Cohen comment that if you want to hurt Donald Trump, hurt him in the pocket book, because that's all he cares about. And if you think about it, he's always trying to avoid spending his own money. Trump raises money, but doesn't like to spend his own money, even on his legal fees. This could be huge.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    So, are you saying Biden is doing what you want, now, since this is what Trump was doing? But you're still not happy because there is no liberal outrage over Biden doing the same thing Trump was doing -- which is hypocritical? I don't know what the solution to the immigration issue is, but I'm not sure it's a border wall. What I found most ridiculous was how Trump claimed he'd get it built and then have Mexico pay for it. He only got a fraction of it built. Then he turned around and asked Congress -- i.e., you and me and the other American taxpayers -- to pay for it! That is what I found outrageous, not the mere concept of a border wall. I'm in favor of enforcing existing immigration laws, and insisting on immigrants following the legal process to get into the country.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I hope everyone here is capable of asking themselves that question seriously from time to time whether they support Donald trump or not, about any of their beliefs, political or otherwise.flannel jesus

    Here, here! I try to do that. I often try to think of what the world would have to be like if my Trump supporting friends are right and I am wrong. For example, if the 2020 election was truly stolen then that means Biden is a mastermind. It also means the Democrats and the "deep state" are far more ingenious and have a stronger hold on power than I ever imagined. For the Trump supporter, this isn't a good thing. Either Trump lost to Biden fairly -- which is is humiliating -- or Trump had his victory stolen from him -- which is also humiliating, since evidently he saw it coming and was unable to stop Biden, the deep state, and the other conspirators. If it was so skillfully stolen from him in 2020, what hope is there for Trump to win in 2024?