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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.
Democrat here.
I actually mostly agree with you that Trump would spend the majority of the time doing nothing and passing whatever Republicans put in front of him. From a D perspective that's bad of course, but not unexpected. Though expected or not, his court nominations have had lasting consequences. I think a lot of it is his propensity for impulsive or poor decisions, such as trying to pull out of NATO.
I think a lot of it is his norm-shattering ability to be a complete and utter hypocrite and/or corrupt and for it to be excused. He's a "Christian" that cheats on his wife and no one cares. He calls for locking up Hillary over emails, then has a bathroom full of classified documents and no one cares. Hunter must be punished over corruptly using family connections, but Trump businesses getting a bunch of business and business deals in other countries is a nothingburger. Let's also not forget Jared Kushner.
I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.
I think his false elector scheme was a massive attempt at overturning democracy. I don't know how he could do it again since a two-term limit doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. But I also don't want to give power to the kind of person who seems to love trying to see how he can lawyer his way out of anything, especially when Republicans seem to go out of their way to excuse him.
The laptop had some really nasty things on it... It was the cover up that got me.
And why not just compare how both families were treated? That seems more 1-1...
The cover-up certainly was bad, but it seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation. When more evidence came out that it was real, most serious outlets reversed their stance, and Twitter and Facebook stopped censoring it.
You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?
Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?
When it comes to Blinken, there's a decent shot he might've known it was real and was trying to help cover it up, given he was an advisor to Biden's campaign. But I think there's also a decent shot he thought it had a high chance of being Russian disinformation or real information but a Russia-led operation. Now, could Hunter have told Joe who could tell Blinken that the laptop was real? Very possibly. I'm not going to say with high confidence that Blinken was entirely acting in good faith on the matter. But I think most of the other parties probably were.
For starters, here is the meat of the original letter:
So, to be clear, they carefully hedge the letter to say that it is very possible all of the emails are real. They say "information operation" rather than "disinformation operation", they say they do not know if the emails are genuine or not, they say they have no evidence of Russian involvement, and they refer to one of Russia's tactics being "the dumping of accurate information".
The rest of the letter states past alleged examples of passing of information from Russian intelligence officials to Giuliani and that
This letter was somewhat irresponsible but not that irresponsible. Many of the intelligence officials who signed off on it probably didn't and don't even like Biden or Democrats. It turned out that Russia appeared to have no involvement in it and all the emails were real, but it wasn't ridiculous to assume they could've been involved.
From some quick research, it appears none of the intelligence officials have retracted their signature or said they regret signing it, as recently as a few months ago. Some have explicitly said they don't regret it.
Yes this is how the deep state / PMC lie.
They were careful to tell technically the truth while still creating the impression in the media that this was Russian disinformation. Providing cover for the various social networks to limit / censor the story. They certainly would have known the claimed provenance of the laptop as being abandoned by Hunter at a repair shop. I don't recall their letter rebutting this very directly. Maybe this just means Hunter is a Russian agent leaking his own emails and dick pics.
I'll admit I've very little generosity left for these people. They're the same sort to produce 'intelligence' about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or Russia blowing up their own pipeline, etc.
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