Well, that was rude.
One would have no reason to suggest, based on the brief comments such as were offered, that a poster has to be - or is willingly accepting - "being told what to say". One could feel safe in assuming that had the post been sourced from Info Wars (or the like) and held an opposite point of view, the post would have been lauded for is original (and blindingly brilliant) thought.
I have heard quite a number of Trump speeches. Been to his rally when he was in town during the campaign. Watch/listen to a lot of C-SPAN. Take in many different points of view. Read books and everything. All that is much more than most can say.
I feel comfortable in saying that I have an extremely good idea what Trump has to say.
However, it seems you are implying that 1) I must not have listened to him live and all the way through, because anyone who would dare find him incredibly uninformed, self-induligently crass, embarrassingly thuggish, and morally empty could not possibly mock him for being thus, and/or 2) that listening to his extended "comments" would illuminate me in a completely different way than reading or listening to his selected "insights" as regurtated to me by a slavish press. A press that, I might add, if it had any self-respect or some other god than money & ratings would completely ignore his disrespectful banter and helecopter-drowning locations and instead report on what he says and - much, much more importantly - what he does.
I have found that, with very few exceptions, I would in retrospect have rather saved myself the pain of listening to his extended remarks and instead either read the transcript or been bludgeoned with yet another brief "example via excerpt" of his stunning - yet somehow by now not at all surprising - personal inadequacies.
Put another way, he is surrounded by vast - and perhaps unparalleled - means of informing himself (about even basic data points such as "where did I order troops to go two days ago?" or "do we have american citizen-soldiers in a war zone?"). Yet he makes it plainly obvious that he either doesn't know, cares too little to find out, or finds being truthful so inconvenient or unnecessary that he knows these facts but just says whatever is in his best interest at any given moment in time.
Perhaps more chillingly, Trump (and a bigly number of his followers I have met) revel in both their lack of knowledge and ability to seamlessly pretend that "uninformed opinions" are as good as - if not better than - "informed opinions" or "known facts".
A person who, like Trump, prizes ignorance over knowledge doesn't surprise me - it is much easier to acquire opinions and support them with a simple "Well, that's what I believe" than it is to acquire facts and build opinions from them (facts are pesky things, as they dont always support the conclusions you want them to. Very inconvenient).
No, that doesn't surprise me. But it truly frightens me that a man with those qualities had a political/social system available with just enough ignorance and anger and desperation that he could exploit to allow him access to the levels of power he has stumbled into.
That a man like Trump - purposefully ignorant, ethically ambiguous, morally bankrupt, financially & politically compromised, authoritian-minded, and psychologically damaged - could gain the presidency, even against such a horrible candidate and flawed person such as Hillary Clinton, should worry all amerikans. Trump is a symptom of a horribly damaged, desperate, and disillusioned society. He knew the state this country was in and took advantage of that fact for personal gain. That he would do so, and that there would be large parts of society that would continue to support his action given all he has displayed is, to put it mildly, disappointing.
Capitalism in amerika is dying. Left with nothing more to fuel its appetite for profit, it has begun eating government services like incarceration, education, infrastructure, social services, and the like. Soon, instead of going to Comerica Park or watching the Valero Alamo Bowl, people will visit the Exxon Department of Motor Vehicles and receive their monthly IHOP/Betty Crocker social security check. Because soon - much sooner than you imagine - corporations won't just be buying politicians and running the government through them, they will get rid of the middle man and just run government themselves.
I get it. Times are tough. Foreigners are different and strange. It is harder and harder to get ahead (let alone keep one's current position). Two men kissing in public is kinda gross (two women, not so much). Things are getting worse and worse financially. And seriously, we all know we are getting eff'ed by the system. It hard not noticing the dick up our collective ass while rich little 18-year-old snots who did nothing other than be born to a rich family drive around in BMW's they didn't pay for and talk to us like we exist to serve them. They wouldn't know how to survive without mommy & daddy's money, yet they look down their sergurically-corrected noses at all of us. AND they get all the chicks.
But immigrants are not the problem. Gays are not the problem. Liberals and socialist and communists (the dozen or so that are left) are not the problem. Even government isn't even really the problem...They are just playing the game by the current rules.
No, wealth is the problem. Corporations are the problem. Unlimited campaign contributions are the problem. Under-regulated capitalism is the problem.
That corporations and the wealthy have been able to pit regular citizens - liberals and conservatives - against each other to the point of hating or wanting to kill each other...That's a huge problem.
Make sense? That is as plainly and as simply as I can put it.
NOTE: If I had used factual information I had to look up, I would have cited it. I didn't. Besides, this is a conversation and these are mainly ideas. Anything I stated about Trump I consider prima-facie true, if one is making judgements objectively. For example, it has been repeatedly established by more sources than I know that Trump misrepresents the truth, creates "facts" from whole cloth, or purposefully lies quite often (several times a day publically. That has been prove ad infinitum and is "common knowledge", or should be. Honestly, if I have to prove Trump misrepresents or creates the truth - either unknowingly or intentionally - with bunches of article citations, there is no point in further discussion.
AI
