Phase One: Push a phony condition

Phase Two: Get people talking about it.

Phase Three: Call legitimated concerns Trump derangement syndrome.

Mass straw-man is deployed and hyperbolic stereotype is engaged.

So you didn't mean truth, you meant non-PC.
— praxis

I meant truths. — frank

Okay, what truths?

It is not a real condition, so I am not sure why it should be treated as such. — Jeremiah

To try giving some semblance of credibility to the narrative, I suppose.

It is just a ploy to distract people from real concerns. If nothing else Trump plays the 24 hour news cycle well and he rather people be talking about nonsense like this than the Helsinki summit or the children he had caged.

Okay, what truths? — praxis

This was my statement:

One facet of it is that Democrats are thought of as the compassionate, intelligent, more civil part of the American culture. The term "elite" expresses angst about that. Republicans are the pragmatic, less PC folks who are capable of "handling the truth," as Jack Nicholson's character screams in that movie. — frank

So obviously I was talking about perception. Do you want to venture from this topic to the question of what truths liberals have historically been blind to?

I asked you for a context for your question. I won't ask again.

Do you want to venture from this topic to the question of what truths liberals have historically been blind to? — frank

Yes, if you don't mind.

What time frame? The last 50 years? The last 200?

Practicality is relative.

Isn't there a rational self-interest in voting in a demagogic bully at this stage in the US story? And so even if Trump turns out to be ineffective because of his weak character, at least he is destroying the previous state of order. It is a start, in his supporter's eyes.

So what is playing out here. Isn't it americans wanting the US to assert its power rather than its intellect at this point in history? Less negotiating, more telling.

The US has led an era of economic globalisation that made it rich. It was a rational self-interested move. But it also hollowed out its own middle and working class by exposing them to open global competition. And it also allowed the future rivals to US hegemony to emerge, particularly China.

So it has become clear that intellectualism results in losses as well as wins. And the US still has all this actual brute power it can simply capitalise on. In the voter's eye, it just needed a leader willing to exert that power. The US might have written the rules of the globalised era, but it could now rip those up and who could resist?

Waving good-by to globalisation seems sane as energy and resource constraints are coming on. The world economic system is on the brink of collapse anyway. The US could retreat within its own borders to create a new localism in terms of energy and economics, bunker down for climate change.

So a lot of actually rational thinking could be in the backs of voter's minds. Bunkering down would hit China and other rivals harder. And globalisation has in fact created its own stateless intellectual elite, not beholden to any particular national base. Who would care if they got cut adrift?

Trump may reflect that accurate assessment of changing times. His bull in a china shop mentality may be what is needed to shatter the globalism paradigm - exit that market ahead of the game.

The problem with Trump is that he is a crude bully. A fake strong man. A cartoon version of power. It seems crazy that voters would put him in charge and be sticking with him still.

But maybe there is also a clear-eyed view that the US needs him as a wrecking ball to usher in the change in the world order that many people think they want because they fear the sudden collapse of the globalised economic system, the start of the naked resource wars.

Trump derangement syndrome would be the aghast horror of the prevailing globalised elite who have benefited from the way the world is, and who are out of touch with what it might quickly become.

It would be no surprise at all if the next GFC hits and Trump has prepared the ground for whatever is this century's incarnation of a fascist authoritarian state. His administration already has the makings of a junta with all its generals.

The intelligence services and other aspects of fascist control would be a problem. They still seem pretty much wedded to the paradigm of the globalised elite. And it would take cleverness and time to take over that. But the playbook on that is well understood. Manufacture an existential crisis - like a war on terror, immigrants, or whatever. Create the conditions where the population demands repressive powers be used. After all, the US has built up that internal security apparatus too.

The good thing about Trump is it doesn't seem possible he could organise anything as coherent as that next step. But at the moment, he serves rationally to undermine intellectual globalism, turn the world towards brute power politics and a bunkering down.

The interesting question is now what kind of figure and regime will follow him. Does anyone expect business as usual will resume in terms of the US again returning to the intellectualising, globalising, mindset it has had for the last 30 years or so?

Remember that the Right was so upset with Obama's election that they tried to deny he was even an American. In fact Trump was a big part of that effort.

I doubt Adams himself would claim that Trump was elected "just by having policies people like." — praxis

Actually IIRC he's been fairly consistent about that.

The animus against Trump really is quite insane.

50

I doubt Adams himself would claim that Trump was elected "just by having policies people like."
— praxis

Actually IIRC he's been fairly consistent about that. — gurugeorge

Populists don't rely on mere policy positions to get elected.

The problem with Trump is that he is a crude bully. A fake strong man. A cartoon version of power. It seems crazy that voters would put him in charge and be sticking with him still. — apokrisis

I think the last few days have shown what a fake strong man he is.

:up: Thanks for that, well said. I’ll just add the obvious fact that for someone to be elected POTUS they of course must get hundreds of millions in donations. So doesn’t that make them the employee of the largest donors? Or any other trillionaire who wants a favor? Who’s really calling the shots? Sorry to stray into Alex Jones conspiracy territory, but who does the POTUS (whether Republican or Democrat) answer to? The American people? Yea, the same way I answer to my cats... “it’s ok snookums!”

And here I thought that the Trump Derangement Syndrome was a condition that Donald Trump suffered from. If he isn't deranged, then he is certainly in the prodromal phase of the condition. I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up for a press conference in diapers, Derangement will follow, no matter what.

50 — praxis

In the 1970s, during a wave of liberalism, Western Electric was prevailed upon by the federal government to hire incarcerated felons to work in their Columbus OH factory. The expectation was that with a clear path of entry into society and assured income, these felons would surely turn their lives around and become good citizens.

The felons subsequently wouldn't work, frightened the labor already in place, and except for one individual, declined to return. Neither the government nor the criminals were harmed by the experiment, but the labor was later found to have developed a sense of alienation from the company. They felt they had been treated like guinea pigs.

This experiment displays the tendency of liberals to want to do social engineering. Their blindness is manifest in a lack of respect for what evolves naturally. This is typical of liberals.

Sure, that aligns with liberal progressive values.

Is privatize the "natural" evolution of the prison system?

Anyway, where are the truths in this that liberals are blind to?

Anyway, where are the truths in this that liberals are blind to? — praxis

One should have respect for what evolves naturally.

BTW, I'm a liberal, so I'm having to think backwards a little bit to answer your question.

People who can't manage to see the faults in their own tendencies are more likely to develop the syndrome you mentioned.

Haven't got round to watching the video yet. Adams might be worth listening to. I find Dave Rubin to be lazy and clueless though so it puts me off a bit. — Baden

He's a bit of a limp biscuit but at least he has interesting guests from time to time (though he would never dare to ask a confrontational question).

For a laugh:


I remember watching the Adams' interview when it came out. He has an easily misunderstood perspective, which is, for various/whatever reasons, that trump is extremely persuasive. IIRC the gist of what he said panned out. Trump really could shoot an American man, in the pussy, with a Russian pistol, in the capitol hill conservatory, live on twitter, and his staunch base would barely (but reliably) twitch a single eyelash.

It’s said that Rubins’ gets a lot of $$ from a Koch bros think tank fund, and he’s all about the $$, incidentally.

Anyway, where are the truths in this that liberals are blind to?
— praxis
One should have respect for what evolves naturally. — frank

If you could be less abstract and general I might be able to appreciate your claim.

I’ll just add the obvious fact that for someone to be elected POTUS they of course must get hundreds of millions in donations. — 0 thru 9

Good point. But weren't they a group of conservative billionaires making the mistake of thinking they were buying themselves a controllable stooge?

Trump would ride his populism to get in. Then deliver the kind of tax breaks, market deregulation, small government, policies they expected once he was surrounded by solid grown-up Republican advisors.

Those like Thiel and Mercer have been expressing buyers remorse - despite getting a lot of that legislation implemented.

Don't forget the Mercer family installed Bannon too. So the "bunker down" alt-right agenda was what some of the billionaires wanted. However that became too alarmingly red-neck and conspiratorial even for them.

Conservative megadonor Rebekah Mercer, owner of a partial stake in the alt-right outlet Breitbart News, wrote Wednesday that the publication’s former chief, Steve Bannon, “took Breitbart in the wrong direction.”...

“Some have recklessly described me as supporting toxic ideologies such as racism and anti-Semitism. More recently I have been accused of being ‘anti-science,’” wrote Mercer, whose family donations have previously backed controversial conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. ...

She declared her support for “a kind and generous United States, where the hungry are fed, the sick are cared for, and the homeless are sheltered” and one “that welcomes immigrants and refugees to apply for entry and ultimately citizenship.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/15/rebekah-mercer-op-ed-411276

So the rich elite didn't back Trump to be a wrecking ball of the globalist economic paradigm. Mostly the reverse. And why would they even expect that of him, given he more than anyone was an incompetent who got lucky from the financial system, the elite social structure, as it is?

My argument is thus that Trump is a rational phenomenon that reflects "the wisdom of the crowd".

There are dark forces in play in that many ordinary folk have it in the back of their minds that rough and turbulent times are coming. So let's provoke the crisis that is going to bring it on ... because we know we have the power when it comes to the show-down.

It is a cool calculation at that level. And there is no downside to that view because you might get what you want because everyone else just caves in to your demands. China, Russia, Europe and the rest might have to keep the globalist charade going as their best available option. No one will call in their debts. Other countries will have to punish their own populations financially and ecologically.

The worst thing that could happen is the US is tipped into such domestic turmoil that there has to be a big social clamp-down. All the names on the watch list need to be rounded up in black SUVs and taken to the FEMA internment camps for the duration. :)

What percent of the US population coolly and rationally thinks that might not be such a bad thing? Bring it on.

So Trump's billionaire backers certainly hoped they were buying something - the usual kinds of things, but delivered by someone who would cut through all the intellectual bureaucratic Washington bullshit that stops them just getting everything they want it, the moment they ask for it.

However, even if Trump voters are comparatively unworldly and illiberal by the standards of the prevailing intellectual elite, they are quite capable of assessing their reality in this gut rational fashion - "What's in it for me and my kind; what do I care about the consequences for others; if we have the power, why not use it; if the current game is tipped on its head, how am I not going to be a winner?"

And Trump is captive to that mood because he doesn't have the character to rise above narcissistic populism. He is a helpless mirror of the masses as he only truly cares about hearing them cheer at that week's stadium rally.

The billionaires miscalculated in thinking they could buy a stooge. Trump hasn't got the focus to be that organised and stick to some strategic agenda. He is just a mouthpiece for a rumbling discontent and anxiety expecting things to turn nasty, but also feeling fairly cocky about the heat it is packing.

Practicality is relative. — Jeremiah

Not usually. A devotion to practicality usually follows the possession of real responsibility and some experience with the folly of hubris.

If you could be less abstract and general I might be able to appreciate your claim. — praxis

I don't know what you're looking for. Sorry.

Yes, it is. When you judge what is "practical" you are judging that state based your personal standards.

If your best summation of the difference between the Left and the Right is overly simplistic ambiguous colloquialisms then you are not being very practical.

If your best summation of the difference between the Left and the Right is overly simplistic ambiguous colloquialisms then you are not being very practical. — Jeremiah

By nature I'm maximally impractical. ..off wondering what it's like to be a cloud...

You are evading.

The truth is, you have a shallow and narrow perspective, in which you stereotype and generalize people based on your subjective interpretations.