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I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.
It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.
Would Trump do many harmful things in office? I am sure. Harris would as well. Which one would do more, who knows? I do not see a clear-cut answer to that question. He certainly would be no angel, I am sure of that. But it also seems to me that often, vehement anti-Trump sentiment has little to do with a clear-eyed assessment of the possible harms that he would cause.
What explains the particular mind-shattering power that Trump somehow inflicts on so many of his political opponents? Interestingly, it largely do not seem to be his actual political counterparts among the Democrat elite who view him as an eldritch destroyer of worlds... the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.
Lest someone think that I come only to shit on the Democrats, unfortunately no. Would that I actually supported either of the two main parties... my political life would be easier. But the Republicans, too, deserve some questioning on this topic. Republicans' reaction to Bill and Hillary Clinton, at one point, was a sort of precursor to the mental shattering caused by the concept of Trump. Interestingly, despite often being accused of being racist, from what I recall Republicans did not actually react to Obama quite as hysterically as they reacted to the Clintons. Sure, there was a lot of vitriol against Obama, such as Birtherism, but it was probably half as vehement as what was thrown at the Clintons.
Yet even though Republicans were in many ways mind-melted by the Clintons, including to the point that Republican forums back in the day teemed with theories about the Clintons literally being a murderous and pedophilic crime family, I still do not think it quite matches up to the new standards of psychological devastation that Trump has wreaked. That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.
Why does Trump have this effect? Is it just that there is a large number of people in this country who fail to agree with me that Trump's chances of becoming a dictator are extremely small, that a man who has most key institutions against him, has the top military brass against him, and lives in a country where the military rank and file are probably not about to try to overthrow civilian authority, has very little chance of ending American democracy?
I am not sure. The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.
I think the thing with Trump is that like or hate him, he’s not beholden to traditional politics or norms. He’s the guy who wants to get things done and build things. Whether or not he’s right about all of this, I think is up to personal opinion. But what scares people is that he sees those norms and systems as obstacles to be overcome rather than rules to obey at cost of doing the thing.
I am sort of perplexed that you would consider this some kind of statement that one and all would agree with. Does he particularly get things done and build things? I tend to think of him as pure surface and not actually concerned with what he builds at all except insofar as it confirms his self-regard.
He has metaphorically build a multi-billion dollar organization, and literally built numerous hotels, golf courses, etc -- say what you like about the methods he uses to accomplish these things, but 'GTD' and 'TCB' are not weak points for him.
I think his motive is attention and the obeisance of others. He has since learned he can get those things without building anything.
He pretty much had that figured out by the time he started doing TV stuff, if not well before -- are you familiar with his 80s persona? I'm sure he likes those things (don't we all), but looking at the link in the other comment it's pretty clear that he also really likes building things. You can like more than one thing, y'know?
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But he did all of that in the 80's. He did basically nothing during his time as president. I mean, he did annoy the hell out of libs on social media. But he didn't actually build anything.
https://www.trump.com/timeline
Didn't he go hands-off on Trump org once elected for COI reasons? Seems a bit unfair to complain that he wasn't personally building stuff during this period; I hear the President is pretty busy?
Anyways it looks like... quite a lot of stuff got built/renoed post-80s, and I'd expect him to do more once he's done with politics in the event that he doesn't get sent to Gitmo or something -- if only more golf courses for him to play on, he thinks golf courses are super-cool.
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