Trump Consciousness

In my opinion the disagreement between leftists and rightists about Trump come down to a fundamental difference in morality being employed and reflects more often than not our tribalist tendencies. The difference I see that is employed is that people on the right are okay with Trump if he 'wins' in the end despite how he got there, while the left will despise him for his methods.

It is the left that is using underhanded means, abusing the power of the government, to accomplish their political goals of overturning a valid election - disenfranchising millions of US voters. They falsified interview reports with General Flynn, They used the fake dossier to falsify surveillance warrant applications to get information to use against Trump. Now they have a fake Ukraine hoax and are trying to impeach Trump for typical actions of many past presidents that the left is now calling impeachable. The left is trying to change our form of government with three independent branches to one more like a parliamentary system where the prime minister serves at the pleasure of the legislature. If they want to do that they should do it through legal means of amending the constitution instead of fake accusations, fake evidence, and false prosecutions.

This is moral competition between Deontology (How you do things matters) and Consequentialism (how you do things doesn't matter if the end result is good). Now to get back to tribalism, I think we see people play by one of the two standards when their team is the one being challenged. When Obama was under fire he was attacked for the ethics of his actions, when he was defended the consequences of his actions were relied upon. Then with Trump we have the same thing, but reversed by the parties, the democrats will attack his ethics (he's sexist, racist, imperialistic) while the republicans will point to the wins (no war in syria, de-escalation of N.Korea, no war in Iran). This is not to say that this distinction is writ in stone, but the majority of either party will follow one of these strategies depending on if they're playing offense or defense. So we see the two sides are playing two seperate games, however I would argue that we should actually be judging world leaders by their ethical temerity and not primarily by what trophies they win us, especially when we're on the same 'side'.

I hope we can all agree here that Trump does many things that are bad and many things that are good, some of those bad things outweigh much of the good, while some of the good things outweigh much of the bad.
What do you consider the bad things Trump has done? Why are they bad?

There are a lot of things the left thinks are bad that I think are good:

Restricting entry to the US from countries that produce terrorists and where it is impossible to do background checks,

Fighting illegal immigration The US has millions of legal immigrants. Illegal immigration makes it harder for poor Americans to find jobs and it lowers their wages, It also allows criminals, drugs, and terrorists to enter the country.

Lowering business taxes and reducing unnecessary government regulation causes economic growth which increases wages, improves working conditions, and lowers unemployment. This helps poor people the most.

Trump allowed new oil and gas pipelines which lower energy and fuel costs and are safer for the environment than transporting oil by train. This reduces the cost of gasoline, heating homes, and the prices of manufactured goods - it helps poor people most.

Selecting judges that follow the intent of the law as written and not their personal whim. Trump is not selecting conservative judges that interpret the law according to their conservative values. The left does select judges that interpret the law according to progressive values. The judges Trump selects interpret the law according to the intent when the law was written. This seems like an obvious solution to rule by whim between left and right. Each side should be glad to have a judge that will interpret the law objectively rather than a judge that will interpret the law according to partisan objective. However the left acts like the fair compromise is an outrage.





While it is impossible to quantify ethics, and easy to quantify results I personally feel that the three things I cited as wins from Trump earlier (no war with Syria, Iran, N.Korea de-escalation) are very good things which outweigh much of the bad. I am sure at this point thanks to the Oded Yinon plan and the report from general Wesley Clark, as well as the constant attempts at framing the Syrians for gas attacks that the military industrial complex of the USA desperately wants to draw us into more forever wars which I find to be the greatest moral abomination a country can suffer, so I am very thankful Trump hasn't started war with any nations... however, he has still committed horrible acts of war against many countries. At this point in time, we know that sanctions kill untold thousands of civilians. We know that drone bombing kills civilians yet he continues to do both, furthermore the assassination of a General for arming guerilla fighters (a crime we are equally guilty of) is a horrific act of war and a war crime which will surely go unpunished.

On sanctions, 40,000 Venezualans killed http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf
potentially 500,000 Iraqi children killed according to Unicef https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/mar/04/weekend7.weekend9
2/3rds of sanctions fail to achieve their purpose https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/seven-fallacies-of-economic-sanctions/

I can think of no act more cowardly and disgusting than waging war against a foreign nation by attacking its civilian populace. I do not support Trump, but no more than I detest the entirety of our current political atmosphere here in America, where we are economically squeezed to tacitly accept the indiscriminate slaughter of foreign populations on behalf of a handful of oligarchical interests within the military industrial complex. Our entire leadership has shown they are ethically unfit to represent the population, and if they are accepted? So too is the blood on their hands on all of ours as well.

I don't know any reason to think Trump is worse on the subject of war and sanctions than any of his political opponents and there are good reasons to think he is better.

More here:
What did Trump do that merits impeachment, and what is the evidence?

What does "white supremacist shit" have to do with Trump's immigration policy?

Can you say what actions Trump has taken that show he is Putin's puppet? Because there are a number of things he's done that seem to contradict that view.

Trump:
  • Approved sale of weapons to Ukraine (which Obama would not do).
  • Trump is exporting natural gas to Poland to reduce Russian influence in Europe.
  • Trump approved oil pipelines in the US that will supply export facilities. (Obama would not approve them. US exports of oil hurts Russia because Russia also export oil.)
  • Massacred Russian mercenaries in Syria
  • Trump authorized a cruise missile attack on Syria, an ally of Russia
  • US shot down a Syrian military jet.

I like most of what Trump is doing as President. Many of these are things a Democrat would not do and some another Republican would not do. All those things you say make him unfit may not actually be relevant to performance as President, or if they are relevant, maybe they are not true.

Trump:
  • Lowered business taxes (helps poor US citizens by stimulating economic growth: jobs, wages, working conditions all improve)
  • Reducing government regulation (encourages economic growth)
  • Trying to stop illegal immigration (helps poor US citizens by reducing competition for jobs etc)
  • Forced Mexico to police their border.
  • Renegotiated the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico - helps the poor citizens by keeping jobs in the US
  • Trying to stop unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft by China
  • Wiped out ISIS
  • Decertified the "Iran Deal"
  • Banned travel from terrorist producing countries.
  • Moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem - Trump makes US policy based on domestic considerations, rather than kow-towing to world opinion.
  • Terminated TPP
  • Withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord.
  • Approved new oil pipelines in the US (which Obama would not do)
  • Forced NATO allies to contribute more to the alliance.
  • Appointing judges who believe the law should be interpreted according to the intent when it was passed rather than according to their personal preferences.
  • Tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium to protect domestic industries vital to US national security.
  • Reversed restrictions on coal powered electricity production helping to keep electricity prices low - high energy costs hurt the poor the most.
  • Veterans Administration: - incompetent hospital employees can be fired.
  • Criticizes the news media for false reporting.
  • Refuses to submit to political correctness. (Political correctness is used to censor free speech.)
 
People who are not interested in this thread don't have to read it. That is a much fairer solution than trying to censor people.
 
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...s-case-against-trump-is-built-on-5-misquotes/


House Democrats are fond of saying there is no dispute about the facts in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. They are right, in this sense: Republicans are dealing in facts, and Democrats in fantasy.

After two marathon question-and-answer sessions in the Senate on Wednesday and Thursday, it became clear that the Democrats’ case against President Trump is essentially based on five misquotes.

They are as follows:

1. Ukraine call misquotes. The investigation of the president began with a “whistleblower” complaint that claimed “the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The complaint was inaccurate, but the “whistleblower,” at least, admitted he had not heard the call first-hand. After Trump released the transcript, Democrats were deflated, but House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) had an answer: he just made up a better version, faking a mob movie dialogue as he opened the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry.

2. Fake Trump quote. After a series of inaccurate leaks from closed-door meetings in Schiff’s “basement,” Democrats finally voted to authorize the inquiry and hold public hearings. Once the Intelligence Committee was done, the proceedings moved to the Judiciary Committee, where Democrats presented a misquote of the president, complete with deceptively-edited video, claiming “I can do whatever I want” under Article II of the Constitution. Trump was referring to his right to fire executive officials, not his power in general. But the misquote became central to Democrats’ argument that Trump risked becoming a “dictator” if not removed.

3. Fake Dershowitz quote. Once the House impeached the president, and the Senate began its trial, the White House had its first chance to defend itself. Liberal Democrat Alan Dershowitz, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but is passionate about the Constitution, presented the argument that a president could only be impeached for “criminal-like” conduct, but not for legal conduct that happened to be in his own political self-interest. Democrats, from Schiff on down, twisted that into the claim that Dershowitz though a president “cannot be impeached for a “quid pro quo,” and it “doesn’t matter how corrupt that quid pro quo is.”

4. Fake Philbin quote. The president’s most effective lawyer in the impeachment trial has been Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin — who, naturally, became the next target. When he was asked if it would violate campaign finance law for the president to accept foreign information about a rival, Philbin answered, correctly, that it would not. Democrats then claimed the president and his lawyers thought it was “okay” to “seek or welcome foreign interference in our elections,” bolstering their case for Trump’s removal.

5. Fake Sondland/Mulvaney quotes. Finally, as moderate Republican Senators began to make up their minds about whether to vote for new witnesses, Schiff misled Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) about whether there was any evidence that Trump had directed anyone to withhold aid until Ukraine investigated the Bidens. He misquoted Sondland, claiming that Trump had told him, “Zelensky has to announce these investigations.” But Sondland told Schiff’s committee directly: “My testimony is I never heard from President Trump that aid was conditioned on an announcement of [investigations].” Schiff also claimed Mulvaney had told reporters that the president withheld aid to prompt an investigation — but Mulvaney never mentioned the Bidens.

 
If someone started a thread on "Sanders Consciousness" and spent endless hours linking posts from Twitter and other sources, would that be appropriate?

Lol. Try it! It would be an interesting test of the even-handedness of forum moderation.
 
In my opinion the disagreement between leftists and rightists about Trump come down to a fundamental difference in morality being employed and reflects more often than not our tribalist tendencies. The difference I see that is employed is that people on the right are okay with Trump if he 'wins' in the end despite how he got there, while the left will despise him for his methods. This is moral competition between Deontology (How you do things matters) and Consequentialism (how you do things doesn't matter if the end result is good). Now to get back to tribalism, I think we see people play by one of the two standards when their team is the one being challenged.
Surely Trump got there by winning a series of primaries, and then wining the election? What 'methods' were wrong?
I hope we can all agree here that Trump does many things that are bad
Well I don't - give me your best example of what he has done wrong (bear in mind that I am not American).
While it is impossible to quantify ethics, and easy to quantify results I personally feel that the three things I cited as wins from Trump earlier (no war with Syria, Iran, N.Korea de-escalation) are very good things which outweigh much of the bad. I am sure at this point thanks to the Oded Yinon plan and the report from general Wesley Clark, as well as the constant attempts at framing the Syrians for gas attacks that the military industrial complex of the USA desperately wants to draw us into more forever wars which I find to be the greatest moral abomination a country can suffer, so
You write a bit obscurely, but I think you are chalking all of that as a plus to President Trump - and I totally agree. Remember, there are plenty of Americans who watch MSM channels and are not aware of the true nature of those gas attacks.
I am very thankful Trump hasn't started war with any nations... however, he has still committed horrible acts of war against many countries. At this point in time, we know that sanctions kill untold thousands of civilians.
If you pit deaths from sanctions against the possible deaths if a rogue nation acquired a nuclear weapon, I guess you have to go with Trump on this too.
We know that drone bombing kills civilians yet he continues to do both, furthermore the assassination of a General for arming guerilla fighters (a crime we are equally guilty of) is a horrific act of war and a war crime which will surely go unpunished.
Previous US policy had been to weaponize opponents of a regime and then give them actual weapons. This in effect created ISIS. Given where we were when Trump came to power, I really do not see what alternative he had.
Venezuela may be a different matter - I am not completely sure - Jim might like to respond.
I can think of no act more cowardly and disgusting than waging war against a foreign nation by attacking its civilian populace.
Well if the rulers of that nation, is it really better to let them continue until they get one? I would say that Trump is personally extraordinarily brave to stand up to the hawks.
I do not support Trump, but no more than I detest the entirety of our current political atmosphere here in America, where we are economically squeezed to tacitly accept the indiscriminate slaughter of foreign populations on behalf of a handful of oligarchical interests within the military industrial complex. Our entire leadership has shown they are ethically unfit to represent the population, and if they are accepted? So too is the blood on their hands on all of ours as well.

Well this is what President Trump is fighting against.

David
 
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Can you clarify one point here? Are these transcripts prepared in some explicitly tamper-proof way - I have never been clear about this.

David

They do have some form of security on those kind of government documents. They are stored electronically and any changes and who made them are recorded. For example the interview transcripts with General Flynn were falsified and this was revealed when his defense attorney demanded copies of the documents and all drafts. Of course no matter what safeguards you put in place there is the possibility that they will be insufficient. But in some cases witnesses to the events can testify as to the veracity of the transcripts so in some situations, opportunities for fraud are limited because of that.

The "whistleblower" / leaker's source (Vindman) was someone who listened to the call and he did not deny the accuracy of the transcript.

https://www.npr.org/2019/11/07/775456663/who-was-on-the-trump-ukraine-call
Who Was On The Trump-Ukraine Call?​
 
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"Total Black Voter Approval for Trump has doubled from 1 yr ago to 42% from 21%"



https://humanevents.com/2016/07/26/black-votes-matter/
If Republicans could get 20 percent of black votes, the Democrats would be ruined.​


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...-reform-working-blacks-benefit-overwhelmingly
Feds: Kushner’s criminal justice reform working, blacks benefit overwhelmingly​
...​
The first report of the impact on the bipartisan criminal justice reform package pushed by top Trump aide Jared Kushner shows that it is working to cut sentences, especially for black prisoners.​
 
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/feds-...-documents-show-how-govt-lied-and-framed-him/
Feds Reconsider Jail Sentence for Michael Flynn After New Documents Show How Gov’t ‘Lied’ and ‘Framed’ Him​
Voters are not going to make the world a better place by electing Democrats who think it's a good thing to use fake evidence to justify false prosecutions to obtain false convictions. They will use the same tactics on their supporters whenever they feel it's convenient.

And voters are not going to make the world a better place by voting for a party that rigs it's primaries. They will rig whatever they can and will use those tactics against their supporters whenever they feel it's convenient.

https://www.americanthinker.com/art...stole_the_2008_primary_with_help_of_dnc_.html
Down the Memory Hole: Obama Stole the 2008 Primary with Help of DNC​

https://soapboxie.com/us-politics/Y...he-Primary-and-Bernie-Would-Have-Beaten-Trump
Yes, Hillary Did Steal the Democratic Primary in 2016​

The fact that Trump could win the Repbulican primary despite the entire Republican establishment (and the entire world establishment) being against him tells you something important about the Republican party.
 
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/feds-...-documents-show-how-govt-lied-and-framed-him/
Feds Reconsider Jail Sentence for Michael Flynn After New Documents Show How Gov’t ‘Lied’ and ‘Framed’ Him​
Voters are not going to make the world a better place by electing Democrats who think it's a good thing to use fake evidence to justify false prosecutions to obtain false convictions. They will use the same tactics on their supporters whenever they feel it's convenient.

And voters are not going to make the world a better place by voting for a party that rigs it's primaries. They will rig whatever they can and will use those tactics against their supporters whenever they feel it's convenient.

Agreed, and let's not forget poor Bret Kavanaugh. The Dems produced a witness at his confirmation hearing with not enough time to investigate her claim properly, then accepted a delay of one week while the FBI tried to corroborate anything in her story, then pretended that was not enough time.

That woman hasn't (correct me if I am wrong) filed any complaint against BK with the FBI. The whole thing was a stunt to try to prevent Trump picking a supreme court judge in the normal way.

That act showed the brutal state of the Democrats. Imagine being accused of sexual assault live on TV, probably with your whole family listening - a claimed assault that is supposed to have taken place decades earlier. All that as yet another political stunt

As if that were not enough, they see no harm in harassing a President with the Mueller investigation for 3 years, and when that fails simply moving on to another stunt.

This makes the point very clearly:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/laura-ingraham-rips-rabid-democrats-and-bitter-romney

There is a saying that all anger is anger at yourself. I am not sure that is always true, but it seems to apply to the Democrats, who have allowed their once great party to decay into a vindictive mess.

David
 
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There’s nothing poor about Brett Kavanaugh with the exception of his morals imo.

I wasn't too impressed by this - analysis too far!

1) His Baysean analysis didn't include the motivation that she was a Left supporter of the Democratic party, a party that had set its heart on stopping the president appointing senior judges.

2) If you go public on an accusation like this, you don't time it to hurt the guy as much as possible, you get your facts together and then make the accusation. She managed to leave it so late that no effective enquiry could be performed, and the Dems hoped they would gain enough votes to get a majority in the Senate. If you cynically time your announcement to try to trip the man up, it is hardly surprising you are not believed.

3) As far as I can see BK was a drunkard at that time, but is there any evidence that he got anywhere with girls? As far as I know, nobody came forward to claim they were his girlfriend. Does that mean he would attack a girl like that? No, it means that back then he was painfully shy with girls.

If he was as claimed, how come he didn't attack any other women. By comparison, Weinstein has had number of accusers, and you can bet your arse that the Dems searched hard for someone else.

I have the feeling that if there is enough money available for pruriently researching someone's past, something will turn up that - maybe bulked out with some make-believe - can bring just about anyone down. The Soviets had show trials in which anyone who was inconvenient to the regime would be convicted of essentially bogus charges and executed.

Bret would not have faced quite that, but I doubt if he could have continued in the Law with an accusation like that hanging over him, and he might have lost his family, and maybe he would have decided to end it there.

If you allow people in a senior position to face a grilling like that in public on charges with no evidence, that will quickly degenrate into an efficient form of blackmail.

David
 
Anybody can do anything they like where the Palestinians are concerned, including Trump the perfect. Surely you don‘t expect any critical viewpoints on this topic from Trump supporters?
Well what did any of the previous presidents do for the Palestinians?

David
 
Regarding pointing "the moral finger" -

I am 62 years old. When I was 6 years old, I became quite an unhappy kid. I then developed behaviors I am still embarrassed about to this day. I took my first serious personal inventory when I was in my early 20s. Some things changed for the better, not all. Only when I reached age 54 (and experienced a true, deep dark night of the soul) can I honestly say today, did I draw a clear line between a severely compromised being and one who, began to take the high road with consistency in every matter of my life. Not perfect, but night and day different.

Thankfully, I don't care who knows my story, reads my blog or my posts on forums where I have shared much of the details of my life (the good, the bad and all in between). I am retired now too. So I don't have to worry about any of "my truth" (as it evolved through history) costing me a job or preventing me from getting one because if my past (when I have clearly made a transformation) prevents me from any opportunity, I look at that as "what it says about the purveyors" of the opportunity. They should have held back the tactics they used against Kavanaugh because the failure made the "Bolton bombshell" a dud... We have seen this too many times before and the usage of the tactic with Kavanaugh killed the effectiveness of such a tactic.

I predict Avenatti will come out with a NEW Blower" who has devestating info before Wednesday.

Anyways, you can see the moral finger being wagged by all sorts of folks on all sides of the political spectrum... but what stands out in the era of the rise of Donald Trump is that using this tactic has become an over abused act of desperation by the very people whose closets are filled with skeletons and who protect their 'comrades in arms' whose closets are bursting open even when a complicit, fully entrenched corporate controlled media tries to keep it shut or minimize the perceptions projected by such spillover.

Trump is no saint.

None of 'em are.

get a clue.
 
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I wasn't too impressed by this - analysis too far!

He lied his ass off. In my book that ought to be enough to prevent him getting a job as a judge - for life! Still, no-one appears to care whether people in authority are liars. Trump certainly is one.
 
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