Trump Derangement Syndrome - Orange man bad. Read the OP! (ᴛʜɪs ᴛʜʀᴇᴀᴅ ɪs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴋɪᴡɪ ғᴀʀᴍs ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡs ɴᴏᴡ) 🗿🗿🗿🗿

[Tanner Glass]

Am I supposed to know who this guy is?
View attachment 617477

Ah, a guy who ran a Jerry Springer-style talk show. Clearly a good person to judge if other people have souls or not. We can ask Maury Povich if we aren't sure and want to make it unanimous though.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Am I supposed to know who this guy is?
View attachment 617477

Ah, a guy who ran a Jerry Springer-style talk show. Clearly a good person to judge if other people have souls or not. We can ask Maury Povich if we aren't sure and want to make it unanimous though.

Oh, that's the guy who'd invite the scamming "psychic" bitch Sylvia Browne on his show like once a week or so to look at people's photographs where they believed they saw their dead loved one in as well as make predictions on how they died/where the loved one will find the body.

 

[Commander X]

“Voting for policies and reforms are racist and sexist! Vote for VAGINA! Fuck white men!”

View attachment 617218

View attachment 617219

Oh, such choice bits from the replies

 

[damian]

Oh, such choice bits from the replies

Amy Siskind, anti-Semite confirmed.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

OMG, "No, I'm jewish" is such a bullshit response to that. So he's saying yeah, white men suck, but I'm actually jewish, so I get some oppression points.

His first paragraph totally undercuts his second one. You spend a paragraph on "MY RACE MATTERS! I'M NOT WHITE!" when the next paragraph says "Why you judge by race though?" Clearly he thinks race IS important, or he wouldn't have led with his racial credentials.

 

[Vlad the Inhaler]

It wasn't until U.S. v. Lopez that that argument stopped holding water. Yes, the case about handguns in schools.

Oh, I'm well aware of the pretzel logic behind Wickard. It's the logical end of the incrementalism that started 100 years before in Gibbons v. Ogden (1823) where the court expanded interstate commerce to mean interstate *intercourse* (insert giggling like a school girl here). Which is where the DOT, FAA, and FCC came from.

By the time we got to Lopez, the USSC had already considered a bookie in NYC as interstate commerce, so fuck, why not Gun Free School Zones? Thomas called it himself - the concept of enumerated powers is a fucking farce. The police powers of the states mean nothing. The power of the feds is effectively unlimited. (You do know the GFSZ Act was simply passed again by congress with some handjob language about only applying to guns that have moved in interstate comm., which means, really, all of them.)

This is what happens when you keep saying, okay, just a little more, okay, just a little more, okay, what the fuck have we done? "At the end of the day, it's their war. They have to fight it." - JFK, 1963. Less than five years later, after Tet, fuckhead Westmoreland is asking LBJ for 268,000 *more* troops, on top of the half million already there! By the time you realize how badly you've fucked up, it's too late to do jack shit about it.

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

OMG, "No, I'm jewish" is such a bullshit response to that. So he's saying yeah, white men suck, but I'm actually jewish, so I get some oppression points.

His first paragraph totally undercuts his second one. You spend a paragraph on "MY RACE MATTERS! I'M NOT WHITE!" when the next paragraph says "Why you judge by race though?" Clearly he thinks race IS important, or he wouldn't have led with his racial credentials.

No. He replied to the dumb cunt's "says a white man" remark with that, to show that she was "judging a book by its cover". He isn't saying "white men suck", he's saying that his group integrated with the white man more, almost ceasing to be a separate demographic entirely.

 

[Ghostse]

Maybe I’m just not seeing the writing on the wall, but I honestly don’t see Trump having an amazing chance of winning 2020. It’s hard to tell how much the public really approves of him when everything is run through the TDS filter 17 times, but I think if the Dems put up an actually charismatic candidate...oh, maybe he will win.

You aren't wrong, but incumbent candidates enjoy a huge advantage. The only presidents in the past 100 years to lose reelections are
Hoover to FDR in 1932 (Great Depression)
Ford to Carter in 1976 (Ford was appointed for internal political reasons. He was never elected, and could never wash the Nixon taint off of him, and the economy was shit)
Carter to Reagan in 1980 (The Oil Crisis & Generally Cuckery)
Bush Sr. to Clinton in 1992 ( Perot siphoning republican support)

In contrast: FDR, Truman, Ike, Kennedy LBJ, Nixon, Regan, Clinton, Dubya and Obama all got reelected.

Basically if the economy isn't completely in the shitter (and thanks to Obama we seem to have found the lower limit on how shitty the economy can be), the only thing that knocks out an incumbent is a well-funded dark horse candidate that splits the incumbent's base; if Perot hadn't run, Slick Willy would have never gotten in.

THAT SAID:
Trump's support from his base is showing signs of flagging and its not just you. Trump hasn't managed a big victory; he's done a bunch of small things, but he's going to be facing an openly hostile House in January. Its going to be hard to get anything done in the next year and a half before the campaign season starts. Small, sensible victories are going to be harder for Trump to sell on the reelection trail because he's all about bombast.

Agreed. There's no strong Democrat candidate who go against Trump and survive. Sacrifice someone who doesn't have anything to lose like Biden, then run when Trump is out of office.

Biden has plenty to lose. As mentioned, he's got a ton of skeletons in his closet and is out of sons to kill to keep reporters from digging too deep.

 

[Keystone]

You aren't wrong, but incumbent candidates enjoy a huge advantage. The only presidents in the past 100 years to lose reelections are
Hoover to FDR in 1932 (Great Depression)
Ford to Carter in 1976 (Ford was appointed for internal political reasons. He was never elected, and could never wash the Nixon taint off of him, and the economy was shit)
Carter to Reagan in 1980 (The Oil Crisis & Generally Cuckery)
Bush Sr. to Clinton in 1992 ( Perot siphoning republican support)

In contrast: FDR, Truman, Ike, Kennedy LBJ, Nixon, Regan, Clinton, Dubya and Obama all got reelected.

Basically if the economy isn't completely in the shitter (and thanks to Obama we seem to have found the lower limit on how shitty the economy can be), the only thing that knocks out an incumbent is a well-funded dark horse candidate that splits the incumbent's base; if Perot hadn't run, Slick Willy would have never gotten in.

This certainly didn't help, either.

 

[Ghostse]

Less than five years later, after Tet, fuckhead Westmoreland is asking LBJ for 268,000 *more* troops, on top of the half million already there!

Hold up there my nigga. fftopic: Tet misinformation a personal pet peeve of mine.
Tet was a complete fucking disaster for the North Vietnamese in everyway except for PR. They were unable to hold any of their gains, within weeks they'd lost anything they'd gained, and lost hugely disproportionate men and material in the assault and subsequent counter-attack. Militarily, they were in really bad shape after Tet. The NV generals also burned through a lot of their hardened VC partisans by trying to use them like normal infantry with bad results once the surprise wore off.
South Vietnamese troops, by contrast, were showing that almost a decade of "advising" was finally starting to pay off and they were able to fight the northern troops in straight engagements. Had congress approved the additional troops & equipment, it is likely North Vietnam would have been unable to do much to stem a counter invasion, and probably would have been pushed to the point they'd have had to accept a Korea-like situation.
(In all likelyhood they could have been overrun and defeated with requested troops and material, but the Soviets wouldn't have stood for that; the Chinese reaction (which is what turned Korea from a UN victory to a truce) is harder to extrapolate: there key differences in Vietnam as they were on the outs with Soviets at the time, and didn't feel a "kinship" with the Vietnamese like they did the Koreans. The Chinese government also had secured its grip on the country; in 1950 they feared that the UN wasn't going to stop and keep going into China and possibly take Manchuria away, nearly 20 years later, in a better place internationally and internally, they might not have felt a need to respond.)

Westmoreland was completely right tactically, and if he'd gotten what he wanted, Vietnam would have been a victory. The optics were terrible; instead of a request for a conquering army to finish a weakened foe, it looked like a panicked request for troops to stem a retreat (especially since he'd wanted them as quickly as possible, to be able to hit before the North could be resupplied by the Soviets).

But, then the question to ask is: What sort of victory? What would 50,000 more american lives and who knows how many wounded have gotten us in the long run? Whatever hundred of millions of dollars... what would America get for that?
South Vietnam's government was pretty shit. The corrupt politicians wouldn't call themselves communists, and that would be about that.

 

[Vlad the Inhaler]

Hold up there my nigga. fftopic: Tet misinformation a personal pet peeve of mine.
Tet was a complete fucking disaster for the North Vietnamese in everyway except for PR. They were unable to hold any of their gains, within weeks they'd lost anything they'd gained, and lost hugely disproportionate men and material in the assault and subsequent counter-attack. Militarily, they were in really bad shape after Tet. The NV generals also burned through a lot of their hardened VC partisans by trying to use them like normal infantry with bad results once the surprise wore off.
South Vietnamese troops, by contrast, were showing that almost a decade of "advising" was finally starting to pay off and they were able to fight the northern troops in straight engagements. Had congress approved the additional troops & equipment, it is likely North Vietnam would have been unable to do much to stem a counter invasion, and probably would have been pushed to the point they'd have had to accept a Korea-like situation.
(In all likelyhood they could have been overrun and defeated with requested troops and material, but the Soviets wouldn't have stood for that; the Chinese reaction (which is what turned Korea from a UN victory to a truce) is harder to extrapolate: there key differences in Vietnam as they were on the outs with Soviets at the time, and didn't feel a "kinship" with the Vietnamese like they did the Koreans. The Chinese government also had secured its grip on the country; in 1950 they feared that the UN wasn't going to stop and keep going into China and possibly take Manchuria away, nearly 20 years later, in a better place internationally and internally, they might not have felt a need to respond.)

Westmoreland was completely right tactically, and if he'd gotten what he wanted, Vietnam would have been a victory. The optics were terrible; instead of a request for a conquering army to finish a weakened foe, it looked like a panicked request for troops to stem a retreat (especially since he'd wanted them as quickly as possible, to be able to hit before the North could be resupplied by the Soviets).

But, then the question to ask is: What sort of victory? What would 50,000 more american lives and who knows how many wounded have gotten us in the long run? Whatever hundred of millions of dollars... what would America get for that?
South Vietnam's government was pretty shit. The corrupt politicians wouldn't call themselves communists, and that would be about that.

I disagree, but not by much. Westmoreland and Harkins before him overplayed their hands. They misrepresented the reality of the war to LBJ. Neither understood how the villagers viewed us as occupiers and the Saigon gov't as puppets. And that was before free-fire zones, indiscriminate bombing and forced relocation from the land of their ancestors. Neither man understood it was a political, not military struggle. The communists never saw the struggle as divisible. The guerillas, the regulars, shadow gov't, propaganda, all played their part, all indispensable. And the communists never had any trouble leading Westy around by the nose. They got him to move troops to the border and leave the cities open for Tet. A military defeat, yes, but the communists were supposed to be on the ropes. That's what Westy said. They obviously weren't. He said in 1967 he saw "light at the end ofnthe tunnel." Then came Tet. Then the NY Times reported he wanted to expand draft call-ups for 268,000 more troops. Game, set and match, Hanoi.

The last CO's of MACV, Abrams and Weyand understood the war better and how to properly employ US troops to give the ARVN the breathing room to pacify the villages, not with airstrikes, but with rural development. (The Phoenix Program also made this a realistic possibility by then.) But LBJ had exhausted his political capital. His decision not to run in '68 was more devastating to the war effort than Tet. The US public finally turned against the war when LBJ cut and ran. They had believed in his conduct of the war, and when he lost faith so did they. Johnson should have followed his instincts. He should have known if S. Vietnam couldn't stand on their own, US troops were just postponing the inevitable. Vietnam cost us $25 billion. By 1968 it was eroding our military's ability to respond to other global crises as the Pueblo incident showed. It's not that the war was unwinnable (that's a laughable rookie idea) but it wasn't *worth* the cost of winning. Look, it's 2018. The Vietnamese are more dependent on us for trade than China, their fucking allies during the war.

The lesson of Vietnam is simple, but brutal. Half-assing things is where true misery lies. 2.5 million dead, all that money that should have been spent on LBJ's "great society" programs, and we have fuck all to show for it. Either do it to win, and if you don't think it's worth it, then just don't do it at all. Westmoreland should have been fucking fragged.

 

[not william stenchever]

My read of Johnson is that he was too much of an egotist to risk NOT leaving at a high water mark, lest his legacy be marked by failure. Leave that to the next guy. He who dares wins, but he who cuts his loses is often not forever known as a loser.

 

[Vlad the Inhaler]

My read of Johnson is that he was too much of an egotist to risk NOT leaving at a high water mark, lest his legacy be marked by failure. Leave that to the next guy. He who dares wins, but he who cuts his loses is often not forever known as a loser.

Possible, but you've still got the fact that all those protesters at the White House chanting, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids didja kill today?" broke him psychologically. The draft was the least popular aspect of the war, and the request for so many more troops to win was never going to happen. He didn't quit while ahead, he quit when he realized that nobody had any fucking idea what we were doing.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

I disagree, but not by much. Westmoreland and Harkins before him overplayed their hands. They misrepresented the reality of the war to LBJ. Neither understood how the villagers viewed us as occupiers and the Saigon gov't as puppets. And that was before free-fire zones, indiscriminate bombing and forced relocation from the land of their ancestors. Neither man understood it was a political, not military struggle. The communists never saw the struggle as divisible. The guerillas, the regulars, shadow gov't, propaganda, all played their part, all indispensable. And the communists never had any trouble leading Westy around by the nose. They got him to move troops to the border and leave the cities open for Tet. A military defeat, yes, but the communists were supposed to be on the ropes. That's what Westy said. They obviously weren't. He said in 1967 he saw "light at the end ofnthe tunnel." Then came Tet. Then the NY Times reported he wanted to expand draft call-ups for 268,000 more troops. Game, set and match, Hanoi.

The last CO's of MACV, Abrams and Weyand understood the war better and how to properly employ US troops to give the ARVN the breathing room to pacify the villages, not with airstrikes, but with rural development. (The Phoenix Program also made this a realistic possibility by then.) But LBJ had exhausted his political capital. His decision not to run in '68 was more devastating to the war effort than Tet. The US public finally turned against the war when LBJ cut and ran. They had believed in his conduct of the war, and when he lost faith so did they. Johnson should have followed his instincts. He should have known if S. Vietnam couldn't stand on their own, US troops were just postponing the inevitable. Vietnam cost us $25 billion. By 1968 it was eroding our military's ability to respond to other global crises as the Pueblo incident showed. It's not that the war was unwinnable (that's a laughable rookie idea) but it wasn't *worth* the cost of winning. Look, it's 2018. The Vietnamese are more dependent on us for trade than China, their fucking allies during the war.

The lesson of Vietnam is simple, but brutal. Half-assing things is where true misery lies. 2.5 million dead, all that money that should have been spent on LBJ's "great society" programs, and we have fuck all to show for it. Either do it to win, and if you don't think it's worth it, then just don't do it at all. Westmoreland should have been fucking fragged.

I pretty much agree with both of you. I don't think Westmoreland was wrong considering his position. He was wrong in his political understanding, but that wasn't his expertise or his job. He was leading the military solution. From that perspective, I think he was pretty on the ball with what constraints he had. He was right, too, after Tet. Tet critically weakened the NV and VC. I think the ARVN were still a couple of years away from being at all useful, but they were getting there. If Westmoreland had gotten his erm.... surge... I think a Korean-like solution would have been inevitable within months. With the Soviets, the Chinese, and guys like Giap, I think going for anything more than a Korea style solution would have also been a disaster.

At the end of the day, Tet was a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war for the NV and VC. They were so badly over-extended by it. The US simply failed to capitalize on it, which was militarily a mistake. A political one? I'm not sure either way.

 

[Cubanodun]

And that’s part of the reason Trump won. People were lulled into a false sense of security that overlord Hill-Dawg was a sure shot, so they didn’t even go out and vote. I think the Dems have learned from that at least a little bit, and adapted their message for the mid-terms, with the whole “blue wave” thing. I think I had more people telling me to vote (aka vote Democrat) during the mid-terms than I actually did in 2016. If they can stir up that level of voting frenzy again (and I think they can if they offer up the possibility of getting Trump out of office) they’ll have a pretty powerful voter base. I don’t see the Republicans being able to make the same marketing push. They don’t have Hollywood or the media on their side and their voter base is older and tends not to be swayed by these types of things as much.

Doubt it because the Hardcore Democrat base is still selling the Russia lie and their hopes of getting Trump out dwindle day by day by getting absolutely no results they still believe that democracy is dead and voting is pointless, the blue wave never came and they still don't have a candidate that can top the frenzy that Hillary had behind her, it doesn't help that the joke favorite candidate is Cortez a Champagne socialist that don't know where she is standing

Maybe I’m just not seeing the writing on the wall, but I honestly don’t see Trump having an amazing chance of winning 2020. It’s hard to tell how much the public really approves of him when everything is run through the TDS filter 17 times, but I think if the Dems put up an actually charismatic candidate...oh, maybe he will win.

He did not have a chance either 2 years ago and here we are, the silent majority is there but they prefer to not say anything to avoid jackasses liberals on the streets you know like the kind of idiots that make Thanksgiving day a political statement? They just want to work and get food to the table

The ironic thing of all of this is that Trump did not do anything incredible to get elected he just let the other side using all their money and power to behave like maniacs monkeys because the orange man was going to make the tiranny of king Washington real, he just had to point them and say "see that? Do you want that people in power ?" And after people saw the idiots with pussy hats and sperging about the handmaiden tale for the 1000000 time they say "lol no"

 

[rocknrollmartian]

He did not have a chance either 2 years ago and here we are, the silent majority is there but they prefer to not say anything to avoid jackasses liberals on the streets you know like the kind of idiots that make Thanksgiving day a political statement? They just want to work and get food to the table

Seriously, I still can't admit in my friend/acquaintance group that I voted for Trump. Whenever I've made it clear that I didn't vote for Hillary (without people knowing whether I voted at all), I get disgusted stares and serious side-eye. And I was judged for not being a good braindead "feminist" and attending the Women's March when I lived in a hyper-liberal town, though I would never attend such a thing even if I believed in it.

Obviously there are lots of people out there who hide or minimize their support for Trump. I want to wear a MAGA hat but don't feel like being harassed or accosted by people in my now-liberal state. The most ballsy I've gotten is to say that I've yet to see what Trump has done that's so bad or wasn't already in place before he took office. The tamest acceptance of Trump ("he's not so bad") is considered taboo and evil.

 

[ChurchOfGodBear]

Seriously, I still can't admit in my friend/acquaintance group that I voted for Trump. Whenever I've made it clear that I didn't vote for Hillary (without people knowing whether I voted at all), I get disgusted stares and serious side-eye. And I was judged for not being a good braindead "feminist" and attending the Women's March when I lived in a hyper-liberal town, though I would never attend such a thing even if I believed in it.

Obviously there are lots of people out there who hide or minimize their support for Trump. I want to wear a MAGA hat but don't feel like being harassed or accosted by people in my now-liberal state. The most ballsy I've gotten is to say that I've yet to see what Trump has done that's so bad or wasn't already in place before he took office. The tamest acceptance of Trump ("he's not so bad") is considered taboo and evil.

What you say at the end is a really good point. Since Trump, objections to the President have quietly started to include stuff they did before they took office-- or even before they ran for office. I struggle to see the sense in this, because even a political idiot should be able to see there's no value in enforcing such a standard... but some people are so desperate to invalidate the Trump administration that they'll become speds in order to do it.

 

[rocknrollmartian]

What you say at the end is a really good point. Since Trump, objections to the President have quietly started to include stuff they did before they took office-- or even before they ran for office. I struggle to see the sense in this, because even a political idiot should be able to see there's no value in enforcing such a standard... but some people are so desperate to invalidate the Trump administration that they'll become speds in order to do it.

While I definitely don't think this is a new phenomenon, it seems most egregious now when people talk about "kids in cages" for example but pretend that many pictures of kids in those exact same conditions weren't from 2014 under Obama; plenty of pro-immigration sites still have detailed stories about family separation during the Obama years as well. Or the fact that Hillary was always firmly against lax immigration and open borders and has said that plain as day in interviews that are still on Youtube.

Also Trump is "literally Hitler" for supporting and protecting the country that he was elected to lead while vocal Hillary supporters like Linda Sarsour are active anti-Semites who would love to see another Holocaust.

The biggest offense, though, is calling a free election "fascism" solely because your ghoul in a smart pantsuit didn't win.

There's just so much moral relativism and revisionism right now.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Establishment Democrats are for whatever will get them elected. Bernie Sanders dragged Hillary more progressive, and there are videos of Hillary, Bill, Obama, Harry Reid, etc. saying things that would have you think they were Republican.

 

[Tanner Glass]

The only way Trump could possibly lose a re-election is if the Democrats had a candidate or a message worth giving a shit about; and they don't. They've had years to try and figure this out and haven't and have instead fragmented their base even further while the Republicans have solidified theirs for the most part.