Back to my reality, do any of you hot shot historians, etc., know if the Greeks had a temple for ignorance or a god of ignorance?
If not the movie of a temple for Trump, what about a monument in D.C. for ignorance? There could be pillars in front with Archie Bunker lookalikes holding up a massive arch made of scales that are tilted, the walls could be decorated with quotations like "Alternative Facts," "Truth is not Truth," "Women are never good at math," "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is", all the slogans of Big Brother, and endless light shows of Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. I could go on but Krugerrand's cat is funnier.
I have pointed out that Trump is essentially Archie Bunker, but most Millennials wouldn't get the reference. My father had a friend who was like Archie Bunker and I think he liked All in the Family because Archie reminded him of his friend.
Though the quote about the definition of "is" doesn't really belong there. My SO (an attorney) was paying close attention to the whole thing with Clinton and the testimony as she was a law clerk at the time (some states allow people to do an apprenticeship to become an attorney rather than go to law school, Washington is one state and California does it, I think there are others too). She said within the context of the rulings from the judge and the other wranglings of the case, Clinton was making an actual legal argument, though out of context it just sounds ridiculous.
Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, but the judge had already defined "sexual relations" in the context of the proceedings and under the definition the judge had given, Clinton did not have sexual relations with Lewinsky and was technically telling the truth.
So much in court cases hangs on the definition of terms. Lots of people have claimed Trump committed treason if he colluded with Russia. In common understanding of the term, if he did what we think he did, it's treason, but not under the constitution and law of the United States. The US constitution has one of the narrowest definitions of treason in the world and SCOTUS has further narrowed it.
Russia is a hostile power to the United States and it could be argued that their interference in the 2016 election was an act of war, but the United States is not at war with Russia and technically never has been. Therefore aiding Russia in attacking the 2016 election is not treason, however it's a violation of a number of other laws including helping a foreign power influence a US election and contributing to a conspiracy against the United States. The conspiracy laws are basically a back door treason statute. It doesn't carry the death penalty, but it's otherwise a treason law.
So technically nobody in this mess can be charged with treason.
I've been learning a lot about the fine points of the law lately...
Does anyone know? Are Trump's arithmetic skills as poor as his reading and speaking skills? I haven't mentioned math skills, since it seems apparent that he has no logic skills.
There was an article I read a few months back. I forget where. The author had lived next door to a retired Warton economics professor. He said the professor died a few years ago, but whenever Trump came up in the news the professor would start telling tales of Trump's college days. He claimed Trump was the dumbest student he ever had and suspected Trump only made it through by paying other people to do his work for him, but the professor could never prove it.
Someone smarter than me said once "When a person speaks you get a window into their mind" Since Trump speaks a lot we all get a great view into his....um....lumpy grey mass...and it is not a encouraging sight.
So no I would guess he has no math skills....or any skills really. He is just loud and obnoxious and apparently that is enough.
Trump has one talent and one talent only. He knows how to sell anything to a certain demographic of people. I listened to one of his speeches when he spoke off the cuff. First I listened to the words and it was all word salad. It's obvious if you read any of the transcripts of his speeches. However, I then tuned out the words and just paid attention to the way he was speaking. If you listen to his tone, he sounds supremely confident. He projects everything he is saying is 100% the truth. In large part this is his malignant narcissism speaking. In his mind everything that comes out of his mouth is 100% the truth, even if it's 180 degrees opposite what he said 10 seconds ago. He would pass a polygraph with flying colors.
For people who listen to the words people say, he's a babbling idiot. But for people who don't really listen to the words, but go by gut feel of the presentation, he sounds like he has all the answers.
We should be grateful that Trump is as dumb as he is. If he was the least bit intelligent the United States would be well on the way to becoming the next Nazi Germany. I am very, very cautious about invoking Nazis in any conversation. I have read a lot of history and know exactly what they were about. Nothing has come closer to the 1930s/40s Nazi party as the modern Republican Party under Trump since WW II.
We had/have communism, but that is a different ideological animal. Some of the outer behaviors are the same, but the underpinnings are different. Fascism is fundamentally a very nationalistic movement. Its roots are conservative in nature. It's an us vs them attitude about the world taken to extremes.
Communism, at its roots, is an extreme liberal movement. The ideology is about lifting up the poorest and eliminating socioeconomic barriers between people. Putting everyone on the same footing. A lot of western liberals of the 20s and 30s had rather positive attitudes about communism. In practice it never worked that way. There was always a ruling "class", though they never called it that. And anyone who disputed the central government's plans were/are brutally suppressed.
The fad with communism in democracies died quickly in 1945 when the Soviets essentially raped eastern Europe after defeating Germany.
During the 30s the FBI infiltrated most communist groups in the US to keep an eye on them. They discontinued most of the program in the early 1950s because some groups had more FBI agents than actual communists and some communist groups were being run by FBI agents because there was nobody else willing to run them. McCarthy's communist witch hunt of the 50s was really like demonizing people who use typewriters instead of computers today. Or even more ridiculous, demonizing people who once used a typewriter.
In any case, I've been watching the rise of fascism within the Republican Party since the early 1990s. My family were all Republican when I was a kid, but the philosophy was more Eisenhower Republican than what it became. Basically my father is a rational fiscal conservative (don't spend money you don't have) and a social libertarian. The rest of the family followed his lead. By the late 1980s I saw those philosophical ideals were gone. George HW Bush tried to reign in the spending and raised taxes, but he paid dearly for it politically.
I left the Republicans and spent about 12 years outside of both parties. Around 2000 I saw the real fascism starting to come ot the fore with the neocons and started voting mostly Democrat because they were the only thing that could stop these clowns. The party has since continued to become more fascist, concluding (incorrectly IMO) that the reason Bush II failed was because he wasn't conservative enough rather than he took a bad idea to what I thought was going to be the most illogical extreme. I was wrong there, Trump is a doubling down on the stupid in ways I never thought possible.
I have heard people say "this election is the most important in our lifetimes" before. I often had my doubts about that, but this year I wholeheartedly do believe it to be the case. These midterms have a number of issues on the table, but the big one front and center is whether the US constitution is going to hold or whether we rip it up and become something other than a constitutional democracy.
For all their faults, the Democrats have demonstrated a commitment to following the constitution. Democratic administrations have tried to push boundaries here and there, but when the courts said, "you can't do that", they backed off. Previous Republican administrations have largely done that too. This administration does not care about the rule of law (the president doesn't even understand what that is).
This election is about stopping a rogue administration from destroying the republic. This isn't the hair on fire fake news right wing media pushed during the Clinton and Obama administrations to get their base riled up about offenses that never happened. This is real, verifiable instances of an administration doing things way beyond the bounds of what any administration ever thought of.
Every president before Trump had some love for the United States. Some were power mad and some had some crazy notions, but all followed the rule of law for the most part. There are exceptions to that, but most of the time all presidents thought they were making things better, even if it was misguided. The current president loves nothing and nobody but himself. The universe is made up of Trump and unimportant things that aren't Trump. He will gladly raise the country and the world if it makes him feel better. He is incapable of feeling guilt or regret. It served his ego need at the time and that's the only justification needed.
To people who are not narcissists, it's very difficult to understand that anyone can be that way. There is a book written by an engineering professor at a Michigan university about her sister who had a Borderline Personality Disorder called Evil Genes. Even though she's not a Psychological professional, she explored the depth of personality disorders in an attempt to understand how her sister ended up the way she did and her other siblings didn't.
She said she got one of two reactions when she tried to explain her sister to people: either "that's impossible, nobody is that way", or "let me tell you my story..." Personality disorders are something someone needs to experience first hand to really believe they exist because the way people with personality disorders think is so very different from the way neurologically normal people think that it's hard to comprehend.
I would have doubted personality disorders too until I crossed paths with a Borderline in my 20s. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is different from Borderline, but there are similarities and both live in very warped universes that are all about them.
