:D

This said, what we all suffer are the infamous filter bubbles where different people end up thinking the same and recognizing the same (fictional) reality. — DiegoT

How do you tell in which bubble someone is in? What bubble you're in? How do you reach people in bubbles other than your own? I think that background is key.

Trump is a proto-hitler: he's maniac enough, but has none of the other necessary qualities. — tim wood

Just how, really, is Trump a "proto-Hitler"?

I don't find anything similar with Hitler when looking at Trump. Has Trump had any kind of ideology and even written a book about it? No, and the art of the deal was written by a ghostwriter who isn't proud of it. War veteran? No. Somebody who has huge megalomaniac visions for his country? No.

Even to say that Trump is the American version of Berlusconi would be far more appropriate, yet Silvio actually came from a middle class family and didn't inherit his wealth.

This is just slapping a term used as a swearword on Trump without any thinking behind it. Just like people put the label "Marxist" on leftist politicians on the other side without any contemplation on what actually Marxism is about.

Drink the Kool Aid peasants!

I don't find anything similar with Hitler when looking at Trump. Has Trump had any kind of ideology and even written a book about it? No, and the art of the deal was written by a ghostwriter who isn't proud of it. War veteran? No. Somebody who has huge megalomaniac visions for his country? No. — ssu

How do you know that Trump has no megalomaniac visions? This type of person keeps one's visions a secret. That's how deception works, by hiding one's intentions. Trump does it by throwing up a wall of confusion, casting the image that there are no specific goals underneath, that he's confused, will let others lead, and he'll just go with the flow. Don't let that fool you, the goals are there. He's done this all his life.

All the vile shit is surfacing and now needs to be flushed down the drain. I'm actually glad we have Trump as president so this cult of fear and paranoia can finally be adequately addressed by the appropriate governing entities like the FBI and a slumbering and rudderless intelligentcia of the nation.

I hope this festering sore cult group of Trump supporters get a much needed reality check.

Oh, yeah, and the racism needs to be evacuated also.

Just how, really, is Trump a "proto-Hitler"? — ssu

I will accept your criticism as a general criticism of imprecision on my part. But you have not addressed any of the substance of it, or the rest of the post: I think you did not read it with much care, merely responding to a word. I suggest too that you look up "proto-."

Trump is clearly an authoritarian - in the bad sense - racist, fascististic bully-boy of whom the kindest and gentlest thing that can be said of his performance as president is that he simply does not have a clue. No clue at all. He speaks, for example, of his rights as president: "I have a right to pardon...," "I have a right to declare a national emergency...," and so on. What he has, as president, are duties, obligations, and certain powers to carry out those - no "rights." And of course his "style" of government is by the lie. HItler, of course, was a master - genius - of the big lie. And he had the setting. Trump is that way, he just doesn't have any of critical personal mass required to be an actual Hitler. But it leaves an interesting question: who runs him? Who is providing his ideas and his texts?

Perhaps you will accept this challenge. Trump commuted the life sentence of Alice Johnson - a good thing. A very good thing which likely could be replicated thousands of more times, pardoning people who have been in prison for too long under mandatory drug sentencing guidelines.

A good thing. He did a good thing. Name another good thing Trump ever did. Can you?

the two things I most like about Trump, is that he prevented Clinton from being president; and also his sense of humour. I totally love sense of humour in people who are under huge pressure; it tells me that they are intelligent and rational. Not sarcasm and vitriolic insults to prompt "yes, me too hate who you hate", but real humour. Trump has a sense of self-deprecating humour that I find very civilized.

Yeah, you have to also remember his joke on his supporters about shooting someone in broad daylight and them still glorifying and praising him even after the fact.

It really goes to show what a likeable and caring person he is.

Perhaps you will accept this challenge. Trump commuted the life sentence of Alice Johnson - a good thing. A very good thing which likely could be replicated thousands of more times, pardoning people who have been in prison for too long under mandatory drug sentencing guidelines. — tim wood

I mean even Hitler helped Bloch and some other Jews he personally knew and liked.

that comment was not a call to shoot anybody. If you go to the original quote in context, it was a mere use of exageration (the basis of humour together with irony) to express how loyal was his electorade. If you remove the context and the human faculty for communicating and understanding humour, yes, it is horrible!

All presidents have showed some sense of humour, and that´s something very commendable about the U.S.A. presidential institution.

You're not the first person have asked to list even one good thing Trump has done. But not one thing has been mentioned. Everyone sidesteps or evades.

I don't find anything similar with Hitler when looking at Trump. — ssu

Then you must simply not be looking hard enough. Hmm, what possible similarities could there be between a white, male, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian-style leader, with a penchant for hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric, and who calls the media the enemy of the people, and Hitler?

Yes, isn't he just adorable? Don't you just want to go over and ruffle the little lad's hair like that? What harm could he possibly cause?

:roll:

Then you must simply not be looking hard enough. Hmm, what possible similarities could there be between a white, male, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian-style leader, with a penchant for hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric, and who calls the media the enemy of the people, and Hitler?

Are you serious S? White is a colour, like the skin of albino types in Africa that are killed to perform traditional African rites. Trump´s skin is not exactly that colour. Perhaps you mean he looks European? Like Hitler, but also like Einstein or Erasmus of Rotterdam or Marion Cotillard or Rafa Nadal? Male is a sexual condition, that Trump shares with half of our species (and many other species). We must need males, or Mother Nature would not make that huge investment. Racist means nothing, like xenophobic. These are words that don´t describe reality, they are only a stone thrown at people. Authoritarian-style is one possible style of management, perfectly legal and acceptable so far as it is carried out under the law. As for hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric; in comparison with whom? Who do you think, among the politicians and communicators criticizing Trump today, is moderate and conciliatory?

Hitler was vegetarian, had a taste for classical music, believed in protecting natural parks with laws, and like Walt Disney or myself, loved Bavaria. What do we say to people who share these interests with the ultimate evil dictator? Are they suspicious? S, please do not use reductio ad hitlerum. It´s not a rational argument.

So much wrong, here. Exhausting to correct - and very likely you're not interested. Resemblance is not identity to be sure, but resemblance is common coin of the world, both formal and informal. You can always destroy any idea or claim of resemblance in any case by reverting to resemblance being not equal to identity. That certainly destroys the argument, but it also destroys the ground. What ground? Understanding "ground" as a metaphysical term, your kind of violence destroys all of it, including any ground you stand on. I commend to you a review of your own post for its flaws in reasoning. You're the only one who will benefit, and who can benefit. You can also review Kelly Ann Conway and Sarah Saunders for more examples of this kind of absolute and total warfare.

If I have flaws in reasoning I do want to know; it´s obvious I have failed in detecting them. What is "my kind of violence"? I have not defended any kind of violence in any post.

Trump is clearly an authoritarian - in the bad sense - racist, fascististic bully-boy of whom the kindest and gentlest thing that can be said of his performance as president is that he simply does not have a clue. No clue at all. — tim wood

And this is a huge issue here. You see, Trump started with the dream any President would have, a Congress that his party dominated, which itself was totally shellshocked from his candidacy and election victory and totally. Imagine what a authoritarian who wasn't as inept could have done.

Even the whole Russia debacle would have been confined to a scandal pondered among the intelligence circles and later historians would likely not have become an issue if moron Trump wouldn't have personally made it an unavoidable result with firing Comey and then personally admitting that he did because of the Russia investigation. The fact is that otherwise the FBI would have made a report that, Yep, Russia was active, and that would have been end of that and ended a year ago or so.

Hence the inability of Trump makes the Hitler reference, even if you talk about a Proto-Hitler, highly dubious in my view. Or simply just uninformative. Bush Jr came and went and got us the Patriot Act, but that didn't turn the US into the Anglo-version of the Third Reich. Basically Trump's narcissist egotism and ineptness makes it impossible for someone like Dick Cheney to operate behind the curtains.

Perhaps you will accept this challenge. Trump commuted the life sentence of Alice Johnson - a good thing. A very good thing which likely could be replicated thousands of more times, pardoning people who have been in prison for too long under mandatory drug sentencing guidelines.

A good thing. He did a good thing. Name another good thing Trump ever did. Can you? — tim wood

UUUuuuhhh.... that's a hard one, Tim.

A person with so little of agenda of his own (except his egotism and self promotion) is a hard one, especially if it's even so that "the Wall"-thing was basically made up by his staff to get him to remember to talk about border security. The ignorance of Trump can be seen from his suprise that the chant "Drain the swamp" gathered so much support for him. The thing is, this person is very clueless.

Anything positive? Basically when he got to power, the generals he took to his cabinet with the exception of Flynn weren't such a bad option. Typically a GOP President would have picked lobbyists and clueless neocon politicians to the positions (which actually fill the seats now), but Trump picked highly appreciated generals to the spots for some unknown reason. Kelly for the position of secretary for homeland security (and not the Chief-of-Staff-Nanny) wasn't actually a bad pick, because Kelly had prior been the commander of SOUTHCOM, hence he understood well the situation in Latin America. Mattis was a respected general and McMaster had actually written a book "Dereliction of Duty" how the Joint Chiefs of Staff went along with LBJ and McNamara to the Vietnam war. These generals were basically nonpolitical government employees, naturally favouring the "normal" geopolitics that the US armed forces is for.

Are you serious, S? — DiegoT

Yes, are you? I can barely believe the lengths to which you're willing to drag your apologetics.

(By the way, you can quote someone by highlighting the text, then clicking the 'quote' button that pops up).

All right. But you have proved your youth. In being asked to apply yourself, you reflexively asked someone else to do it. And we, a member of the compliant and helpful generation, god help us, comply. I commend for your consideration membership in a zen buddhist dojo. There you will have the benefit and privilege of being beaten with a stick if your mind wanders - but not too hard, so they say.

Anyway, let's lay it out. Comparisons - resemblances - are for reasons other then themselves. We don't say of someone or something just that it looks like or resembles something; we say what it is it resembles. Without that, it's a pointless exercise.

Let's say we're going to compare A and B. Because both A and B are Aristotelian substances, they cannot be compared directly, but rather by their qualities and characteristics - their accidents. These accidents can be enumerated (for present purpose) as A1,2,...,n and B1,2,...,n.

So we say A resembles B as to 1,2,...k,.. This grounds an enthymeme, a rhetorical syllogism. Roughly, A resembles B in qualities 1,2,...,k.... Therefore, certain things that are true of A are true of B. An argument like this can be reasonably attacked for lots of different reasons. The problem lies in how you attacked it.

And we may well note that argument is intended to be a constructive process/activity. If it isn't, it's just a fight, and most fights being destructive, are a waste of time.

To be brief, rather than attending to the sense of the comparison, to see if it had merit if it were justified or lacked it if it didn't, you did the destructive thing, hence "violence."

Then you must simply not be looking hard enough. Hmm, what possible similarities could there be between a white, male, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian-style leader, with a penchant for hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric, and who calls the media the enemy of the people, and Hitler? — S.

White is a colour, like the skin of albino types in Africa that are killed to perform traditional African rites. Trump´s skin is not exactly that colour. Perhaps you mean he looks European? Like Hitler, but also like Einstein or Erasmus of Rotterdam or Marion Cotillard or Rafa Nadal? Male is a sexual condition, that Trump shares with half of our species (and many other species). We must need males, or Mother Nature would not make that huge investment. Racist means nothing, like xenophobic. These are words that don´t describe reality, they are only a stone thrown at people. Authoritarian-style is one possible style of management, perfectly legal and acceptable so far as it is carried out under the law. As for hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric; in comparison with whom? Who do you think, among the politicians and communicators criticizing Trump today, is moderate and conciliatory? — DiegoT

White is a color. Indeed it is. Is that what it meant in S's post? Or that he looks European. Is that what it meant in S's post? Male is a sexual condition. Is that what it meant in S's post? Racist means nothing? Authoritarian-style is just one possible style of management. Is that what it meant in S's post? Hyperbolic and inflammatory rhetoric, Trump must be ok because maybe somebody else (unnamed) may also be inflammatory and hyperbolic?

The answer to all these is no. Your assertions are correct, but they have nothing to do with the argument - the comparison. As such they're not just a red herring, they're a red whale. Are you getting the idea?

If you thought S. was mistaken, then argue against his argument. The argument you made, being silent on the merits of S.'s argument, concedes, the principle being that silence - when one could have spoken - consents.

And it is more than a little disturbing - to me and should be to you - that you are pretty good at it, apparently intuitively. Where did you learn it? Who taught you it was a good skill to have, as against reasoned argument.

Basically when he got to power, the generals he took to his cabinet with the exception of Flynn weren't such a bad option. Typically a GOP President would have picked lobbyists and clueless neocon politicians to the positions (which actually fill the seats now), but Trump picked highly appreciated generals to the spots for some unknown reason. — ssu

Point to you. Deduct a fraction of a point for the "unknown reason." I think it matters. Trump may accidentally do some good, but that doesn't make his action good. Just as in all of his lies there may be some truth, but not that he intended to speak anything true. Or to nail it down, even a broken watch is correct twice a day.

As such they're not just a red herring, they're a red whale. Are you getting the idea? — tim wood

But what about all the other big mammals? Elephants, hippos, giraffes. And red isn't the only colour. There are other colours too. My favourite colour is blue. Also, whales aren't as pretty as flamingos.

thank you, I did not know how to do it!

A word, in my understanding, is defined by the use in context that speakers of a language apply; its meaning is not derived from entries in dictionaries, and that is why with most of the words we use, we never had to look them up. If an alien doing ethnographic research tried to find out what white, racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, fascist, ableist actually mean when humans use these words in context, he´d probably report that they are all different ways of saying "shut up! you have no right to say what you think!"; and the choice of one or another would be determined by how a person looks; in similar fashion to how we choose to say lunch, dinner or supper depending not on the content of the meal itself, but the orientation of the Earth in relation to its star.

We can do this experiment: ask an Artificial Intelligence program to guess what those words mean, without official definitions, only by how they are used in real contexts.

I think it is better to talk about what Trump does or doesn´t and explain why we think is wise or unwise to follow that path, and what we would do instead, and why is a better option.

What a person says reveals how a person thinks, and how a person thinks gives us an insight to how they behave or how they might behave. When I described Trump as a racist, my meaning wasn't to tell him to shut up. Funnily enough, my meaning was in line with the meaning you can find in a dictionary. But I suppose that that's just a coincidence.

Now given, for example, Trump's comments about Mexicans, and about African countries, I think that there's a basis for accusing him of racism. And given, for example, his sharing on social media of islamophobic propaganda videos by a far right British political party, I think that there's a basis for accusing him of islamophobia, and given...

You get the point, I think. Though I'm sure you'll be able to find a way to explain it all away. But I say there's no smoke without fire.

It is a risk to have such a person as president. I am wary of his judgement on important matters for these reasons and others.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/white-house-rejects-supremacist-label-no-one-has-done-more-than-trump-to-prove-white-people-are-not-superior?fbclid=IwAR0oSiDcy5OO8EYTWZkOjaCrbzWQ2uHK8RVK6ur58qsSeMGErp9V1XrOYVE

:grin:

You get the point, I think. Though I'm sure you'll be able to find a way to explain it all away. But I say there's no smoke without fire. — S

Can you use another term instead of "racism"? It does seem to imply that "Mexican" is a race, "Muslim" is a race, and "illegal immigrant" is a separate race too. Perhaps you mean Trump wants to filter out people who don´t have the level of civilization (democratic values, respect for secular Law, respect for human rights, and the abstract thinking skills required to understand those notions) that is required to live in a civilized society; and people who try to enter the U.S. illegally. Leave races for Indianapolis I recommend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVKpM6d3xow

would you be okay with restricting immigration from regions where cannibalism and human sacrifice is still practiced frequently? My point is if you agree that a nation should set and enforce standards to foreigners willing to apply for citizenship.

https://www.deviantart.com/saint-tepes/art/Cannibalism-World-Map-284854822

Can you use another term instead of "racism"? — DiegoT

No. This is an example of racism. It's a fitting word to use.