What are your predictions? Will he end up a dictator, manipulating the masses into defiling our constitution? Will he be the man to bring manufacturing back to the US, stripping the business-world of needless bureaucracy and enabling the entrepreneurs among us? Will he enact a registry of muslims in the US and where does that sort of thinking stop? Will he put you up against a wall?
Or... is he actually a kind man?
Did he troll the lesser among us to gain the presidency? Or is he an evil man?
What do you think? I'll share my thoughts in the comments. Let's talk...
I'll share with you what I've predicted since he entered the race... back when he "really didn't have a chance": I predicted that he will be impeached inside of 90 days. Not for anything tyrannical, or over-the-top-crazy... but for something fairly minor and administrative. I mean - we initiated impeachment on President Clinton for lying about getting some extra-marital action... does anyone think Trump has lied about less? That was my prediction. But that was back when I believed in a balance of power. That was when I thought congress might have a backbone. Now.... I believe that my prediction is still partially accurate: He will do something that could invite impeachment, but congress won't have the balls. I believe, if given enough latitude, he would/could do terribly tyrannical things... but honestly, I have more faith in his bumbling idiocy when it comes to the little things. I think he'll violate some rule of law, some small statute, or hell - he might just start grabbing pussy. But nothing will be done about it. And like a child consistently pushing on his/her parents, the "rules" will slide a bit. He'll get away with more and more... So yah... my greatest fear isn't actually singularly Trump. It's Trump and a brow-beaten congress, and a hand picked echo-chamber of a cabinet, with a Secretary of Offense, a Secretary of Private Education, a dude running a department that he committed to shut down, and a Supreme Court that may or may not challenge anything. I don't think it will be catastrophic in the nationalist dictator way... but in 4 years time, we're all going to know some one personally (or be someone) who has been catastrophically affected by this administration's missteps.
I also worry that extremely partisan politics has gutted our legislature of statesmen and stateswomen, and has left us with spineless pond scum. I think this has happened on both sides of the aisle, but more so on the GOP side, simply because of the effects of gerrymandering that has played toward their extreme right base, and the need to say anything, no matter how ugly it might be, for more than a decade. Boehner was hardly a moderate, and Ryan knows what he has to do to stay in power. IMHO we are really fucked. When the stage is set like this, historically speaking, the play is pretty bleak.
I think he doesn't want the job. More than that, I think he's surrounded himself by people who don't want the job either. Trump is going to spend a lot of time enriching himself personally and putting himself in front of sycophants. I don't know if anyone else filled out that "first 100 days" survey of his; I did, which means I'm on his mailing list. And, I mean... I've been on presidential mailing lists. Obama, Bush. None of them tried to sell me trinkets twice a week. Trump? Beer steins, lapel pins, hats, shirts, plaques, it's been kind of amazing. Literally twice a week. The official communications arm of Donald J Trump Inc. is singularly interested in having me visit the gift shop. That's it. Despite my enrollment for policy reasons, no policy has been discussed. Not even once. Which is not to say that bad stuff won't get done. I mean, let's build a wall to go with our fence and Mexico will pay us back. But if you look at the Wall as a microcosm of the Trump presidency, it's all there: singular focus on something we don't need, utter lack of vision as to how to accomplish it, unrealistic and nebulous view of the resources necessary. Say it in front of a rally, though, and you get the requisite cheers. Which, historically, should allow the party in power to sweep through massive changes. But the party in power is focused on gutting the ethics office except when they get caught. Or on passing amendments that single out the salaries of individual government employees. There's a power vacuum, everybody sees it, everybody is trying to jump into it, and nobody has the intelligence/gravitas/charisma/skill to withstand the vortex. I'm not a fan of Reagan. I think he set science back decades and brought us to the brink of nuclear war all while bankrupting our future. But he was a charismatic man who led easily and knew how to read a room. And for most of his second term, he had Alzheimer's and the country was being run by apparatchiks and petty bureaucrats with their own ideas about how to get things done and that's how you get the S&L crisis and the Iran Contra scandal and "Just Say No." I think we're in for 2nd term Reagan, only with a bitter and vainglorious kleptocrat instead of a grandfatherly-if-forgetful former actor. It's gonna be a bunch of "oh well"s and "well, that happened"s. And I think in the end we're mostly going to be okay. Except for Appalachia and the midwest. They're fucked.
When I see the word "prediction," I think of something like this: I don't see many clear, measurable, falsifiable predictions here. Some of the predictions are already true. How will we know if we had any understanding of current events if we can't check our hypotheses later? Saying "it's going to be a disaster" and claiming validation every time something bad happens is too easy. Bryan Caplan has recorded a number of bets, some concerning Trump. Scott Alexander has published a list of predictions for 2017 and keeps a scorecard. He also made ten specific predictions about Trump. Some paraphrased examples: The U.S. Muslim population will increase throughout Trump’s presidency. The Trump cabinet will be at least 10% minority. No large demographic group will be forced to sign up for a “registry.” Other sources make some predictions, but the ones I saw were often fuzzy and unclear, like talk of "impeachment" without specifying whether Trump would be removed from office. Here are my guesses. In brief, I predict more of the same. The Wall There are now "more than 580 miles (930 km) of barriers in place" along the 1,954-mile (3,145 km) long Mexico-U.S. border. I predict that the wall will be improved, but will remain less than half the length of the border. I predict that Trump will not force Mexico to pay construction costs (talk perhaps, but not actions like garnishing money transfers or withholding aid). Aid obligations in 2015 were $586 million, mostly for drug enforcement. The number varies a lot by year, but I predict it will not drop below the 2012 reported value of $215 million during the next four years. Jobs There were 12,265,000 employees in U.S. manufacturing jobs in October 2016. The trend has been downward since the 1980s, though there has been some recovery since 2010. I predict that this number will be lower than 12,265,000 by the end of 2020. Other Twitter will still exist and annoy in 2020. Trump will remain president for a full four-year term. The number of abortions induced, as measured by the CDC, will continue to decline as it has for years, with no conspicuous change in the next four years. The U.S. will remain a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement. The number of mosques in the U.S. not be less than the 2,106 counted in 2011 during the next four years. U.S. GDP growth will be positive for at least three of the four years from 2017 to 2020, and not lower than -2% in any year. Which of these do you think I got wrong? What are your concrete predictions?"It will be a very dramatic change in the sky, as anyone can see it. You won't need a telescope to tell me in 2023 whether I was wrong or I was right," Molnar said at the presentation
Total hate crimes incidents will be not more than 125% of their 2015 value at any year during a Trump presidency.
I don't think I am well-informed enough to have a confident opinion. My default expectation is that things will go on about the same as they have been going, which seems to mean that cooperation and bonhomie will be roughly proportional to visibility: conspicuous coordination in space, begrudging tolerance and sniping in official channels, rivalry and maneuvering in proxy war states, and unrestrained battle in arms racing and cyberwarfare. While I was bottom-feeding on music videos and dashcam highlights recently, YouTube recommended something a little different: a speech Putin gave to some wonks at an economic forum. I was rather surprised to see the evil empire cartoon strongman speak in calm, measured tones, telling a version of history from the other side of the curtain. It's hard to know how to parse a prepared talk from a KGB man, but if his goal was to unsettle the audience with the image of a reckless bully upsetting delicate balances and toying with disaster, it worked; I was unsettled. (There is some analysis here and there and at that other place, all at standard Internet quality.) We don't worry about the Bomb very much anymore. Well, most of us. It's hard to judge the risk of unlikely events with very large consequences. I haven't seen good evidence that our next commander in chief is more likely than his opponent to stumble into apocalypse. It's hard to know how to parse bluster and bloviating too. If there is any signal to read amid all the noise, it seems to indicate that Russian leadership favored this outcome. I don't know if there was a "personal beef" (as was certainly true among many voters) or if Trump seemed more friendly, or manageable, or if it was thought that he would weaken a superpower rival. Maybe they thought it would be good for a laugh (or лулз?). We haven't had a world war all century and it would be nice to keep it that way. What do you think?
I, myself, am not quite well-versed in the matter, hence asking the question, but I did see some things around. Ever since I'm in the home city, I keep hearing what the news are saying; not the least amount of airwaves go to Trump these days. The news treat Trump in a defensive tone pretending to be neutral, which itself is unsettling, given the shit the old prez said over various media. I can't give you any examples (mostly because I didn't want to listen closely), but something was said about Trump being "constantly under attack" by his opponents for things he says, as if he's the poor victim of unjustified offences by the evil men and women that he's done nothing to wrong. All of which, I suppose, is to say that official Russian media paint Trump as a friendly figure to the Double-Headed Eagle (which is the Russian coat of arms), much like it was before the election (I remember my groupmate asking me, after I told her the results of the election, "That's good, right? He's good for Russia, isn't he?"). If Trump's to be as bold as his pre-election speeches implied (which seems to be false now that he's in the office), Russia-US trade is going to improve, which would mean lower prices for US produce. For an average Russian, it's an obvious improvement, but I can't see how trading that for a narcissist at the wheel of the country of most powerful military in the world is worth it; I'd rather pay the same and have someone like Hillary - a cold-blooded politician but not sick in the head - in the position. I believe it was rd95 who said in a different thread that people nowadays look for ways to feel safer through validation or assurance because of Trump. I guess I'm looking for the same as far as the two countries' relationships go. I know nothing, and I'd like to know something for certain; or, to put it in better terms that you've used, to have a more confident opinion. No idea how you've found that, but kudos. (or лулз?)
I happened to stumble on an AskReddit asking: Russians of Reddit, how is Donald Trump being portrayed in your Media? There were answers from both Russians in the US and in Russia. If you're interested, I'll leave the link. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5ng6fu/russians_of_reddit_how_is_donald_trump_being/
Some of the better quotes: "Fellow Russian (ukranian, actually) here. My family all voted trump too. My parents told me it's because Clinton and the democrats were trying to rebuild the soviet union but in america." "A lot of communities of legal immigrants sympathize him because he says that legal immigration is OK and illegal immigration is not OK." "Some chose him because of the belief that Hilary would start a war with Russia. Others chose him because of his business background, and feel like he would improve the economy. Many chose him because they hate obamacare. I'm not saying the Russian community loves him or anything, but given the two options, almost all chose trump."
Man, that's some solid logic right there. Russia does have a problem with illegal immigrants, though: people from the poorer southern countries (Azerbaijan, Tajikistan etc.) come to work in Russia illegally en masse. There's a certain disdain for "churka" (a derogative term for people of skin more brown than that of a typical Russian; plural "churki") among the general population, and many people want them gone out of the country because they take jobs that most would scoff at anyway (street sweeper, janitor etc.). There are even measures to make illegal immigration from those countries more difficult. ...wait."A lot of communities of legal immigrants sympathize him because he says that legal immigration is OK and illegal immigration is not OK."
Thanks. Some of the replies were interesting, like the Mongolian guy getting Russian news in his country. Mostly everything I expected to hear, otherwise. Clinton's bad, Trump's good. Clinton = war, Trump = good businessman = good economy (somehow).
Woah. Why have abortions steadily declined? Had we hit some zenith in the nineties? I thought the number of abortions would stay steady or increase. Have all the TRAP (targeted regulation against abortion) laws been working? Is this a result of the preaches and calls for abstinence?
I mean, some of these things are already happening. Trans rights are already being restricted in red states, as are the rights of women who have had an abortion - That's right, you just need to have had an abortion and a doctor can refuse service. But this comment highlights the true problem going in to the next 4-8 years and onward: Trump's not the problem. The president doesn't have that much clout when it comes to lawmaking. However the US now has - - A republican senate - a republican house - A mildly conservative supreme court that has seats to be filled, making it eventually a very conservative supreme court. ^^^ These are the people who really make the laws in your country, and they're the real worry and fear when it comes to the near future. Trump may be setting the standard for bad behaviour, but the real problems will come when all of these people follow his lead. All I can say is good luck, and that I have a very comfortable futon for my LGBT friends south of the border should things become so bad that they feel they need to emigrate. If things turn out to be as bad as they look right now, my long term plan is to become familiar with what one needs to gain permanent residency in Canada. We are not a perfect country - in some ways we are terrible - but at least lgbt people don't have to fear for their lives and livelihoods.
I agree on all points. But the most important thing is that people will die due to a Trump presidency. A small number will die because hate crimes are OK now, but a large number will die due to a total lack of healthcare and the scarcity of good health information. It won't be Stalin-bad, but it is going to be 3rd world bad. And we will have the "terminal generation". A generation of kids that are 0-2 years old when Trump takes the seat, and all children born during his administration, and for at least 5 year after. That's 11 years of kids, mostly poor, who will have terrible heathcare, and terrible health information, and their bodies and minds will be weak and damaged. That will be an enduring burden of care and monetary expense that the rest of us will carry for the rest of our lives. See: Polio.
Of course it will be awful, every Republican president leaves the world worse than he found it. Whether it will be worse than the ones that came before, I don't know. I don't think he believes half the shit he spews, but I think enough of the teabaggers in congress and nutjobs on his staff do that some amount of horrible shit will happen anyway. May the bulk of the harm be done to the people who voted for him.
May the bulk of the harm be done to the people who voted for him.
The irony is that they will all believe that it was someone else that bestowed it upon them. I was talking with insomniasexx tonight and we both agreed that the lengths that his supporters will go to in order to believe that he is infallible is unprecedented. The cognitive dissonance is astounding. I'm a christian that believes in the sanctity of marriage.... Oh, but Donald is born again..
Trump supporter on my facebook: 2 posts later... This is like cognitive dissonance on crack. This is like...I don't know what it is. Pure and utter stupidity. Pure and utter belief in any narrative that spins their way regardless of how ironic it makes them or how fake it is? I simply cannot understand how and why people go to the lengths they go to to defend his actions, excuse his actions, or place the blame elsewhere. If it were anyone else, they wouldn't. Even if it were a republican, they wouldn't. What the fuck does he do that makes otherwise judgmental people who hold people to the highest standards not give a single fuck because it's Trump? sidenote: my favorite conversation about cognitive dissonance is from the below....specifically this quote: I watched her speech twice, and the bulk of it was pointing out that American movies were including non American born actors, as if that was somehow now in danger, or mattered. Trump isn't even in power yet and people are losing their minds about how he's going to be a racist bigot homophobe xenophobic insert your own phobe. It's ridiculous. And what does that even mean? Yes, it's fear based. That's all fear based. Fuck trying to scare people.
Anyone who thinks that being fisted and called a bitch is empowering has gone through some mental gymnastics to get there.
The best explanation I've ever seen of cognitive dissonance is in Dan Pink's Drive. He makes the point that climate skeptics and vaccine skeptics are similar but on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and that considering both allows you to recognize that cognitive dissonance is not specifically affiliated with any political mentality, but is decidedly political. The mechanism is pretty simple: 1) You align with a group of people. This always involves aligning against a group of people. 2) You subscribe to the ideas your tribe subscribes to. This always involves aligning against the ideas your tribe eschews. 3) Facts and science call your ideas into question. This always involves calling your tribe into question. Vaccine skeptics don't just think vaccines cause childhood illness. They also buy organic, consume homeopathic remedies, avoid electromagnetic radiation, cloth-diaper their children, buy Priuses, read mothering.com, use cloth grocery bags, etc. And mentally, when vaccine skepticism is under attack their tribe is under attack. It's not just vaccines, it's the whole shopping-at-whole-foods constellation of green granola goodness being assaulted and they identify deeply with that culture. That's not just their impression, either; the science-based blogs that are best at assaulting vaccine skepticism routinely pummel the shit out of every lifestyle choice and marker followed by the granolas, from Gwynneth Paltrow to Tesla (solar is usually bad because it doesn't make room for nuclear, for example). The result is it's easier to cherry-pick for tiny little morsels of questionable data to prop up the edifice of your belief system than it is to accept an attack on one corner of your psyche. Because cognitive dissonance can be physically painful. And because it's like Jenga - pull one tile and the whole thing may come crashing down. A lot of people who should know better back Trump now when during the primaries they wanted anything but. Why? Because he's "Republican." That means he's for small government, fiscal conservatism, state's rights, freedom of religion and all the rest of the shit that he's demonstrably not about because your choice is simple: accept Trump or reject conservatism. What you're watching is an entire political party grappling with cognitive dissonance. We're going to observe a country's worth of good, kind human beings discover, slowly and painfully and against their will, that their ideology is toxic. Some of them will never learn and will end up further militarized - there are lots of people that didn't give a fuck about "secret Muslims" until their tribe started baying at the moon. Some of them will bail - I mean, the fact that George F. Will didn't vote Republican is truly something. Some of them will skate on obliviously because they've always been oblivious and now is the time when obliviousness is a viable and efficient defense mechanism. But all of them are along for the ride.This is like cognitive dissonance on crack. This is like...I don't know what it is. Pure and utter stupidity. Pure and utter belief in any narrative that spins their way regardless of how ironic it makes them or how fake it is?
Is that the lesson that's going to be learned? I was a fundie, and if there's one thing the fundies do really well, it's shift blame. It's not their fault that their pure, sinless daughter got pregnant, it's those damn liberals giving her the idea that she's allowed to make decisions on her own, this sinful world that made her trip and stumble from the path of the faithful. It's certainly not the fact that nobody ever sat the young woman down and explained to her 'If a boy shoots a load of sperm in you, you can get pregnant.'We're going to observe a country's worth of good, kind human beings discover, slowly and painfully and against their will, that their ideology is toxic.
I accept this as a fact. Not ALL Republicans are fundamentalists. I'm positing that the republican party, those who vote republican, is mostly composed of dogs, while various other species of mammal actually run the show.I am arguing that not all Republicans are fundamentalists.
What you're calling "elitism" is just simply not being ignorant. We don't have our heads shoved up Jesus's ass. And when the left gets angry because of how fucking dumb some of the shit coming out of rural and red mouths is, we're told we need to understand what they believe. No, we're just gonna say that stupid is stupid.
What I'm most worried about is the fabric of our society, not necessarily what policies the Grand Wizard in Chief ends up putting in place. Truth no longer matters. How the hell can we debate and have a contest of ideas when no one can agree on the same set of facts? There are going to be some huge cultural shifts in the next few years. I take comfort in the fact that conservatives and chosen to side with the uneducated, culturally backwards population of our country. It is not a coincidence that the more educated you become, the more you are exposed to other ideas and cultures (read: if you live in a city), the more liberal your thinking becomes. You cannot win if you pride yourself on anti-intellectualism.
Here's an off-the-wall idea: I think Trump will kill Twitter. Twitter has pretty much always been useless. I've been in marketing for over 10 years, and there has never once been an ounce of data that backed up any sort of Twitter campaign. But people kept doing it because... well... people kept doing it. (And FOMO.) Now the essential uselessness of Twitter is illustrated every single day by Trump tweeting out things that are so entirely baseless and childish, that the entire platform is beginning to look like a joke, even to diehard fans of it. It will be funny when Twitter finally does go tits up, and The Donald doesn't have that outlet any more... I expect he will begin raging around the White House, hurling lamps at paintings, because he has no other outlet for his tiny-dick rage.
The thing about twitter, is that corporations take it very seriously. So it's my go-to place to go vent any frustrations I have. And tweet at some minot celebrities in hopes to attract their attention. And spongebob memes. I have a friend that's been branding himself a "growthhacker" and his twitter is basically automated, replying to people, re-tweeting, re-posting. He's gaining followers by the minute but how many of these people are even real? So useless...
And this is the key thing. Once you start digging into Twitter, you find that there are isolated pockets of users who are very active. Black Twitter. Customer Service. Affinity circles. But more than 80% of the activity on Twitter is never seen by human eyes. The people who actually use Twitter as a communications medium use it as a tertiary or even fourth-level platform. Twitter is already an afterthought. Trump's presence and bloviating will further diminish the last remnants of "business tool" sheen that Twitter has, and it will slide quickly into irrelevance. See: MySpace. but how many of these people are even real?
Don't they do it because of how ubiquitous Twitter is in many people's lives? The same thing happens on Facebook now, with companies replying to real people who comment on what they've posted. Point is - corporations will find an Internet social communication apparatus; the name doesn't matter.The thing about twitter, is that corporations take it very seriously.
Eh, I bet they do it because it fits well in some corporate checklist and it's easily quantifiable. You don't see that many corporations active on reddit (in an official way, not saying they're not trying to sneak in corporate shills) in comparison.
That might be because Twitter is faceless (it has no identity of its own) and tolerates even worst of humanity's traits being published uncensored. Facebook is similarly faceless: it, like Twitter, is just a platform to post stuff. Reddit, on the other hand, is a subculture with defined traits, one of which is disdain/hatred for corporations. Posting there is as much political (in the sense of being defined by common external interest - Zeitgeist, in this instance) as it is personal.
Everyone's twitter is basically automated. "corporations take it very seriously" means that there are keywords and metrics and they can measure if your hate-fest about their bad customer service gets retweeted enough for them to give a shit. But that's about it. Seriously. get up on Hootsuite and create some original content with keywords in it. You'll gain about a dozen followers in an hour. Keep it up and you'll gain an extra dozen every time you post. None of them are human - they're automated bots to add to link networks. I forget the statistic but if you have over 100 followers you're in the top 1% of Twitter users. I can't wait for it to die.
I think that Donald Trumps opinion of someone is going to become a matter of importance if it's not already. People will suck up to him to attempt to gain influence within the US Government both during and after his presidency, if they haven't already. I can't even begin to fathom what changes are going to be made during the next four years that will persist for the next few decades. This is a point of flux, of change, of massive opportunity for those willing to be ruthlessly pragmatic. Confidence rules over everything. Salesmanship. Making others believe in your version of reality.