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I guess I'll just use this thread to say: I fucking hate this election.
I hate my choices. I hate having to choose which shitty option might taste slightly less like shit. I hate choosing from two stupid, bumbling mediocre embarrassments and knowing one of them is going to be the fucking President of the United States of America. "Vote for the lesser of two evils" has been a motto representing resigned acceptance of political reality my entire life (I have the Cthulhu for President t-shirt and everything), but never have I felt it so keenly. They're both bad and repulsive, and I honestly don't know which of them will actually be worse for the country because I expect either of them to be terrible. I have said before I probably won't even vote, for the first time since I turned 18. (At least for president; I'll still probably vote for local/state candidates.)
And it's entirely the fault of both parties for putting us here. The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything. And both of them, for turning us into a gerontocracy that very effectively shuts younger candidates out before they can even sniff a primary.
If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I guess it would be Kamala. But I might take the bullet instead.
I think Trump will be more damaging to the economy, and I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world. I think he will be an embarrassment who fails to accomplish any of the things his followers think he will (just like last time) and what he does accomplish he will fuck up. I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast. She's a midwit mediocrity who should never have come within line of sight of the Presidency, and I cannot believe how quickly I watched people in real time shift vibes to Kamala-enthusiasm, Kamalanation, Kamala is brat (W. T. F????) and pretend they had always been enthusiastic about her. Way back in 2019, when she was being floated as a Democratic candidate and I knew little about her, I admit I was tepidly favorable towards her because she seemed like maybe the least bad of a mediocre lot, but nothing she's done since has impressed, and she seems like Generic Extruded Political Product.
But, you know, Trump. I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have. He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft. This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.
This sucks.
So I will repeat what I said a few weeks ago: my only consolation is going to be breaking out the popcorn and watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth post-election night. If Kamala wins, I will read the Motte and other places for the rage, the futile fist-waving, the impotent Internet tough-guy promises to Res1st and Retrn and start a civil war or some shit. If Trump wins, I will read Twitter for the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the hordes of smug, self-righteous fucks driven to existential despair, and I will drink their tears.
This is not nice, it is not charitable, it is not noble. It is petty and mean and beneath me. It is my coping mechanism, because this election sucks.
That's just TDS with extra steps. You think Donald Trump doesn't love America? You think he wants to become a dictator? The man is pretty open and forthcoming in recent podcasts and interviews, he talks about not wanting to charge Hillary for precedent it would set, not wanting to replace the Secret Service with his own bodyguard, how the assassination attempt has made him reconsider his relationship to God, etc.
I cannot possibly imagine what your definition of "skilled politician" would be that completely excludes Donald Trump. Ten years ago the man was a political laughingstock and he now leads one of the most significant political movements in American history.
Before Trump, we were wailing about wokes and the death of civilization and riding the decline. Now a significant part of the country not only believes in Making America Great Again, but Greater Than Ever Before. Trump managed to add to this coalition a literal Kennedy, working class blue collar union workers, tech CEOs, evangelicals, and the long-forgotten spirit of American endeavors.
I can't convince you to believe the things I believe, I guess, but I think it's your attitude that's wrong with America today, not Trump's. Win or lose Trump is doing glorious things and awakening a spirit that wants to build America and make it great again. You will never do anything glorious.
How much can I dislike Trump without it being TDS?
I don't care or expect you to agree with my criticisms of him, but if anyone who thinks he's a con, a huckster, and yes, corrupt enough to become dictator if handed the opportunity has irrational TDS, fine- I can only ask if you have BDS or ODS or CLDS?
I've actually believed in America my entire life. Not without cynicism and skepticism, and I'm not going to give you my credentials to prove myself to an Internet rando (and get doxxed), but I've taken an oath more than once and meant it, and much of my disgust over the Discourse today is that I don't think you guys (and by that I mean partisans on the right and left) do.
Dude, I'm sure you really believe that and having read your posts over the last few months, there isn't much else I can say that would be charitable, but I will say that if Trump becomes president I will genuinely wish for him to prove you right and me wrong.
Maybe not. And what is your glory? Chanting "MAGA" at doubters?
Yes, thinking that Donald Trump is going to become a dictator is TDS. Likewise, in the fields of construction reality TV politics business and marketing he's probably one of the most successful Americans ever. The guy redefined construction in Manhattan and turned his properties into a billion-dollar empire, spending a life constructing properties and projects all around the world, synonymous with luxury, just the ones in the public consciousness, then he got bored and did reality TV and dated supermodels and became President of the United States in his 70s -- sure, he's a conman because he did Steaks or whatever. Yeah, Trump really didn't do anything all that interesting really, and you're perceptive to see right through his little deception game.
We have rockets that can land on towers in the air now. We are going to build a spirit of building things again, we are going to make America great again, greater than ever before. We have the capacity, we have the smartest people in the world, we have factories lying empty ready to turn on, we have so much potential, nobody has ever had potential like we have. America is the New World, the Classical era and the Renaissance have nothing on what we can do.
My friends and I are some of the smartest people in the world, and some of those people are even here on this forum, and I believe we can all move forward onto great and glorious things.
I don't think he's going to become dictator. I think he wouldn't turn it down. I don't think he has a plan to become dictator, because that would be too much planning.
I could possibly be wrong about him, but it's based on what I have seen him do and how he acts. This is not "derangement" or irrational fear or hatred of the man. I don't think he's Hitler. I don't think he's a fascist, and I don't think he wants to kill Group X. I think several other presidents would have been willing to become a dictator if given the opportunity.
Honestly, if there is any Trump-related derangement going on, your hagiographic description of him as if he's one of the greatest Americans to ever live strikes me as far more detached from the reality of the man.
I mean, that's all great, but the "we" that did that is not you, and it's not Trump. I'd love to see Trump bring about this new Golden Age you're smoking, but it's certainly not here. Right now it's words.
Maybe you are the genius you say you are, but bold words are not accomplishments, or glory. It's nice to believe things.
Go listen to the Joe Rogan interview or something, the career Donald Trump has had requires oodles of planning, the man is simply smart enough that he can plan and improvise on the plans and execute faster than most of the people around him. The idea that Trump can't plan or won't plan out of some personal foible is TDS. The man is one of the most successful people on the planet, that doesn't just happen.
The man took his father's modest real estate business in Queens and turned it into a premire luxury empire in New York. He convinced dozens of successful men to back his moonshot Trump Tower project, which he turned into a symbol of strength that revitalized the entire city. He built a tower at the city at the center of the world and put his name on it. Celebrities lined up to live there. The Trump name became synonymous with luxury all over the world. How many people could do that? There is not a single person having this discussion, here, twitter, TV, cable news, blogging -- capable of doing any of that, and Trump had a big enough vision to see it all from the beginning.
Trump turned that into an incredibly lucrative real estate empire, doing constant deals, being involved in projects all over the world, synonymous with luxury. He dated supermodels, consecutively, raised a family with them. Did business all over the world, went bankrupt a few times, reinvented himself in reality TV, casinos. The man is involved in hundreds of projects that don't reach
Fine, none of that means anything, he's just a businessman at this point, and we have lots of those. But within that world he's been incredibly, exceptionally successful, one of the richest men in the world, objectively loaded with one of the most interesting biographies in American history. His uncle had the Tesla patents and was a professor at MIT. His third wife was a Slovenian supermodel.
Then he gives all that up to run for President, and he runs on the message that the American dream is dead, and nobody believes in it anymore, but that's wrong, we're the greatest country on earth, and we're going to be greater than ever before, we have the people and the factories and the talent and the work, and that's what America is, and it's so easy, I've done it myself and I will teach you.
I don't think this is being hagiographic: The man is so ludicrously competent and successful that few people are even capable of judging it. Nobody wants to believe it, everyone has to be cynical and above-it-all. The man is just constantly working on hundreds of projects that nobody hears about, and so we just hear about Trump steaks or the University or some other silly throwaway remark he didn't consider important at all, and we talk about these trivial nothings. It's so much easier to believe that he's a conman, or that cynicism is warranted and valid and always good -- and it sounds ridiculous to say: Actually, Trump is good, and that doesn't come with qualifications or criticism, because he's right. He's right about everything, we have the capacity to be great and he's done it before and he's going to show us.
Donald Trump is literally rewriting history, this is how people are going to think about it in the future. In 2015 he started the primary with 1%, and he took that and grew it into one of the most successful political movements in American history, he reignited the imagionations of millions of people. Nobody fifty years from now is going to remember Trump Steaks, or Stormy Daniels, or whatever the controversy du jour that cynics are talking about in the corner. People are going to remember that this man saved his country, he got shot in the head and chanted "Fight, fight, fight!," you don't know how to win but I will teach you, we can be greater than ever before, you're not ordinary, we are the greatest people on Earth. We talk like he talks now, we think about him constantly, some of his worst enemies have become his greatest allies. If Naruto Uzumaki was real and in the world, I woudln't sit around saying, gee, this Naruto guy has a lot of flaws, I need to be rationally critical of him, maybe he's done some cool things but he's not that great, really. I would say, wow, amazing, how can I be more like this guy? And this is what Trump is, this is what he does, he's the main character. That's the world he's creating, and instead of sitting on the sidelines scoffing at how at least I'm not a sycophant, I'm rational, look at me, I can say something negative about Trump -- I'm going to admire everything the man is capable of and figure out how to be more and more like him. That's actually the only way to Make America Great Again, to dream bigger than ever before because we are the greatest people of all time, ever, in the whole history of the human race, and it's our task to build the new world.
If he sold said business and put the money into the market, or indeed just handed it to any of the major other family owned real estate companies in that region (the Dursts, the Kushners, whatever) he’d have made more money (so much more that he could build the Trump tower and not have to lease out a single floor), I don’t know that that reflects well on him.
I think this was a made-up attack line from cynics right when Trump ran, it's very obviously not true, very silly, and reflects badly on the people who believe it. It doesn't work like that, you can't just liquidate your whole net worth and invest in stocks and sit around earning money.
https://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/
Here's one estimate from 2015. They claim that Trump would have made money if he'd invested everything after 1988 -- yeah no, that's silly, he'd already turned his father's business into a major real-estate empire by then. You can't just play this game by picking any arbitrary year. Now that you've been massively, phenomonally, unbelievably successful, you're really a failure because the stock market beats you after this arbitrary date.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2021/10/11/its-official-trump-would-be-richer-if-he-had-just-invested-his-inheritance-into-the-sp500/
Here's one where Forbes concludes that Trump had beaten the market significantly, up until corona. Which means, at this point, we get to point and laugh at the failure of Donald Trump: haha, you lost valuation while you were president of the United States. You shluld have cashed it all in and bet on black Donald.
Since 2015 the market has 3x’d though, so you can likely push the 1988 date back significantly. In addition, Trump was in NYC real estate, which from the nadir in the 1970s has seen valuation growth far exceed equities. The fact remains that his business performance is pretty poor, everyone in NYC real estate made huge money because valuations have in many cases risen 40x or more since the trough.
Yes you can, especially in a relatively liquid market like NYC real estate. Investments are always judged against the broader market, what’s your point?
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