kurtster wrote: 
Because I could then measure him on your yardstick. It would be kind of nice to know what the vision is behind all of these moves. What sort of society do you want to create?
Then we could compare the tools used to the stated goals, analyse their suitability, measure their effectiveness, etc. even if we don't actually share these goals.

But by refusing to state the goals, you deprive us of measuring the performance of the project under its own terms of reference. 
If your stated goal is just to tear it all down, then it would be nice to know what you mean by that. Demolish all hospitals, schools, government infrastructure?  Surely not.. But if not that.. what exactly do you want to tear down? And what do you want to replace it with? There will always be some sort of state. The question is what kind?

 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
Why ?

 kurtster wrote: 
Pity. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

My apologies. Thought you might want to have a discussion based on facts, seeing as how our country is going to be unmoored from those pesky things for the next four years. 

Here, let me make up for my awful transgression! 

http://www.trumpsimulator.com

(requires Flash):

http://www.crazygames.com/game/punch-the-trump

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
I'll take a moment to respond to you before all hell breaks lose when Trump announces his pick for SCOTUS, which will be deemed reprehensible regardless who it is.

I do understand your interest as someone from another country who is genuinely interested in what an actual American who supports Trump is looking for and getting it first hand.  I value what you have to say in similar regards.  But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  The more I try and articulate my thoughts and expectations the deeper the hole I dig with those who are deeply offended by my very presence here.  I could write volumes on my hopes, but why at this point.

So once again, I'll just say for now that I will sit back and let things unfold.  I don't know what's coming for sure anymore than those who oppose Trump do, though they state they do with tremendous confidence and certainty.  I trust that your interest is sincere and will answer eventually cuz I do want to answer your concerns.  Now is just not the time. 

 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

 kcar wrote: 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

According to a Pew Research Center report, "Mexicans made up 52% of all unauthorized immigrants in 2014, though their numbers had been declining in recent years." 


From a New York Times piece: "Since the housing bubble burst and construction jobs dried up, more unauthorized immigrants have left the United States than have come in. Careful estimates by the Pew Research Center show that the number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States shrank by roughly 1.1 million by 2012, from its peak in 2007.  The same piece also notes that the age 15-24 demographic group of Mexicans, the group most likely to try to illegally immigrate, has declined dramatically in number and may not ever rise to previous levels again. 

According to this Wikipedia entry on illegal immigration to the US, which relies on a 2006 Pew Research Center report and  a 2006 NPR report, almost half of illegal immigrants to the US enter the country legally with visas but become illegal by overstaying once their visas expire. This group of illegal immigrants is not jumping the border and wouldn't be stopped by The Wall. 

Border walls have other issues. They are expensive to build and maintain. They don't remove the need for border guard personnel to monitor for scaling over or tunneling under the wall. They create environmental problems related to water flows and interruption of animal migrations. They can become points of contention between the nations on either side of the wall over maintenance costs and determination of country borders. Border walls don't stop illegal entry via water or air. Also, increased restrictions on illegal immigration and deportation of illegals have had a perverse effect: illegals who might have crossed the border casually or periodically to work in seasonal agricultural jobs are now staying here because they realize it could be much harder for them to get back in. 

Finally, recent illegal immigration to the US has had a neutral-to-positive effect on the American economy. It's had a slight impact on the wages of low-skill native workers and IIRC even that impact has been limited to a few regions of the country. 

Once again, Trump's outlook on an issue and his proposed policies are incorrect and/or outdated. There have been no terrorist attacks in the US caused by people entering the country illegally through Mexico. Illegal immigration in the country has been declining since the Great Recession. Illegal immigration has actually boosted our economy. Low-skill native workers (the group most hurt by illegal immigration) have faced tough times recently, but that's due less to illegal immigration than the Great Recession, the decline of such jobs in the US independent of economic downturns and the overseas outsourcing of jobs. 

@Rogue POTUS Staff

 miamizsun wrote: 
Well, as you know, I live in Germany and am very familiar with the place and its history. Yes, there are parallels between the US today and the Weimar Republic, but there are also some enormous differences, which I think are comforting to ponder and make me confident that this latest renaissance of fascism won't succeed. 

The most glaring parallels (and differences) are:
A disaffected populace feeling increasingly left out/left behind and disenfranchised. In Germany it was the crippling reparations and also the sheer moral shock of coming out of the worst war the world has known. In America, it is currently a general malaise in the American Dream that so many generations of poor immigrants aspired to. A comfortable life has become the status quo for many but the ceiling feels low and few have much hope of upward social mobility. Moreover, the new benchmarks to break through that low ceiling are impossibly high..set by a club of billionaires. So you have a huge gap between them and us. As  a result there is a feeling of vacuity to modern society born of massive inequality. However, this is very different to Germany in the Weimar Republic. The Germans were suffering from wounded pride, the loss of an entire generation of young men in the trenches and the feeling of being very unjustly dealt with by the reparations (including all middle-class wealth being wiped out by hyper-inflation). The divide was not an internal one between rich and poor.  And this wounded national pride was extremely fertile ground for nationalism for people of all social classes. I just don't see the same fertile ground in the States at the moment. It's more a general suspicion of government in general and doubt in the very values that hold it together). Actually i think Trump might be just the catalyst the US needs to rediscover just how valuable its founding values are once he starts trampling all over them.

The other big difference is that Hitler had a level of charisma and tapped into a much deeper vein of national pride than the US is capable of. The one ideal the US has that can unite it in a comparable fashion is the constitution and when you throw that out the window, all you have left is white racist cronyism. Sorry, I just can't see Bannon in the same league as Hitler. On that benchmark, he is a total failure.. Hitler ignited something really powerful that Trump and Bannon have not yet been able to achieve, nor will they in future. The US is far too diverse, far too well educated, to fall for a demagogue like Germany did in the 1930s. Sure, there will be groups, maybe even paramilitary groups flourishing under his protecting hand but all this will do is turn the US into another struggling or failed American state like so many other Latin American states. It's not going to become Nazi Germany that was gripped with what amounted to religious fervour. Also, the Nazis tapped into old Germanic pagan rituals (most of them actually invented or reinvented) but what is the US going to tap into? The KKK? Fear of Islam is not going to be enough on its own. What is going to be the one inspiring vision? Sorry I just can't see one.. just a pathetic nostalgia for a past when the US accounted for half the global economy. There are so many internal contradictions in the vision posted by the new regime I believe its going to end up chewing itself apart.
(PS.. and the US is never going to return to economic dominance like in the 50s - not because it is a weak economy, because it isn't. But because the rest of the world has had a chance to catch up. All the US can do now is learn how to be part of the global village.. this retreat into protectionism is doomed to failure on purely objective grounds).

Scapegoating
yes, here there are parallels. The Nazis scapegoated the Jews and the Alt-right are scapegoating Muslims. However, here too are differences. The Nazis fuelled the legend that Jews controlled global finances (they don't and never did, even if individual Jews might be very wealthy). The Muslims, with all due respect, are not accorded that degree of control. The risk they pose is of a different nature. What they possibly do, is hold up  a mirror and the radical Christian elements in society don't like what they see. But that is about it.

I could go on.. 
 

PPS - one other very important difference is the fact that the Nazis, like the Communists, were radical social experiments born in an age when people were naive enough to believe you could actually engineer a utopia. I doubt anybody thinks like that now.

 Steely_D wrote: 
:slowclap:

 kurtster wrote: 
That's a shame Kurtster.

My personal belief is that economies flourish best in more equal societies with open borders and free trade. Given that Trump is against all these things there is no way I can judge his success on my terms for he is already a failure before he even does anything... But I thought I might be able to judge his success at least on your terms, one of his supporters, but to be frank I actually do not know exactly what these are apart from vague promises he made on the campaign trail, such as make our borders secure, make America great again, bring jobs back to the USA, etc.

ok, some of those we can actually quantify, I guess. But are these your goals too? Rather than something quantifiable like this you claim you voted for someone who is going to tear it all down.. Given that destruction only takes a few seconds and construction can take centuries, that is a pretty low goal to be aiming for.. Come on, tell us. What is your vision? What is it exactly that you are optimistic about? What sort of society do you want to live in? Even if that society doesn't equate with the society I want to live in, at least I can start measuring it on your terms. At the moment I am just stabbing in the dark.

You are all so very welcome.

TrumpDonald

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
impressively splendid

Deep Thoughts from a friend:

"Since most of our illegal immigrants don't originate in Mexico, it would make a lot more sense to negotiate with Mexico to build the wall along their southern border. It would be much shorter and cheaper. We could then negotiate with Guatemala for still shorter and cheaper wall on their southern border. Then Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The real beauty of this plan is that when we get to Panama, we don't need a wall at all... we already have a moat." 

 rhahl wrote:
Despite his obvious influence on Bush's presidency, Karl Rove was never allowed into NSC meetings. 

 Red_Dragon wrote:
That position is sometimes held by the Chief of Staff but not always (e.g. Rove = "Bush's brain"). At this point there are still two opposite ways to interpret Trump's moves.

Weak and Incompetent Leaders act like Strong Leaders Tom Pepinsky.(via Naked Capitalism)

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
i'm not a randian by any stretch,but i have read some objectivist stuff and watched a few films

and it's no surprise that i have some serious philosophical disagreements with some of the material

however some of the pieces i read i thought were somewhat relative

here's something (an observation) from peikoff in 1982

i also know it's not as important who penned it as what it said

have a look

 
Each of the philosophic principles essential to the rise of Nazism in Germany has a counterpart in present-day America.
Is the freest country on earth moving toward totalitarian dictatorship? What were the factors that enabled the Nazis to seize power in pre-war Germany? Do those same conditions exist in America today? These are the questions raised — and answered, with frightening clarity — by Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's intellectual heir, in his powerful book The Ominous Parallels. "We are drifting to the future, not moving purposefully," Peikoff warns. "But we are drifting as Germany moved, in the same direction, for the same kind of reason." Some of the "ominous parallels" between pre-Hitler Germany and the United States that Peikoff identifies are:

• Liberals who demand public control over the use and disposal of private property — social security, more taxes, more government control over the energy industry, medicine, broadcasting, etc.
• Conservatives who demand government control over our intellectual and moral life — prayer in the schools, literary censorship, government intervention in the teaching of biology, the anti-abortion movement, etc.
• Political parties devoid of principles or direction and moved at random by pressure groups, each demanding still more controls.
• A "progressive," anti-intellectual educational system that, from kindergarten to graduate school, creates students who can't read or write — students brainwashed into the feeling that their minds are helpless and they must adapt to "society," that there is no absolute truth and that morality is whatever society says it is.
• A student radical movement (from the 1960's through the violent anti-nukers and ecology fanatics of today) who are, Peikoff maintains, the "pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected." The radicals are nature worshippers who attack the middle class, science, technology, and business.
• The rise of defiant old-world racial hatreds disguised as "ethnic-identity" movements and "affirmative action."
• A pervasive atmosphere of decadence, moral bankruptcy, and nihilist art accompanied by the rise of escapist mystic cults of every kind — astrology, "alternative medicine," Orientalists, extrasensory perception, etc.

In an introduction to Peikoff's book, Ayn Rand describes The Ominous Parallels as, "the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than myself" and goes on to say that, "If you do not wish to be a victim of today's philosophical bankruptcy, I recommend The Ominous Parallels as protection and ammunition. It will protect you from supporting, unwittingly, the ideas that are destroying you and the world."

 In brilliantly reasoned prose, Peikoff argues that the deepest roots of German Nazism lie not in existential crises, but in ideas — not in Germany's military defeat in World War I or the economic disasters of the Weimar Republic that followed, but in the philosophy that dominated pre-Nazi Germany. Although it was mediated by crises, Peikoff demonstrates that German Nazism was the inevitable climax of a centuries-long philosophic development, preaching three fundamental ideas: the worship of unreason, the demand for self-sacrifice and the elevation of society or the state above the individual.

"These ideas," Peikoff says, "are the essence of Nazism and they are exactly what our leading universities are now spreading throughout this country. This is the basic cause of all the other parallels."