Lock Her Up

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Expand view Topic review: Lock Her Up

Re: Lock Her Up

by Octavious » Fri Dec 07, 2018 12:16 pm

The Flat Earth Society is a rather fun example :). Strangely enough I've been a member for 20 years or so. Don't tell anyone, but it's kinda a joke. Watching people get into serious arguments against it is hilarious.

But for the benefit of the discussion, let's pretend that members of the flat earth society are true believers. Trump would not pretend to agree to gain their support because that would paint him in a very bad light with many of his supporters. It's not a lie he would tell.

As for truths he has told that matter to people, the list is a long one. He has said that the Paris climate deal was a bad deal for traditional American industry. He is undeniably right. Paris was a bugger for all sorts of American industry, coal miners high amongst them. He promised to help fix the damage by pulling out of the deal, and he followed through despite huge opposition from the US establishment and the international community. You can argue that this is bloody stupid from a climate change perspective, but to an American miner you're being listened to and respected for the first time in years. It's huge.

Similar with tax cuts, similar with the courts, similar with trade deals, similar with bombing ISIS, similar with taking a tough stand on immigration.

Re: Lock Her Up

by flash2015 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:46 pm

Octavious wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:30 am
flash2015 wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 4:54 pm
I don't understand - why would you even try and defend this lie as it is so blatant? At least Octavious will accept that sometimes Trump lies like this, but he argues that what he lies about isn't important. Why is holding onto this obvious lie so important to you?
Not really. Some things Trump lies about are not important to anyone. A lot of the things he lies about are important to people, but crucially they are important to people who are not important to Trump. To the people who are important to Trump he rarely, if ever, tells a lie. Or at least something they'd interpret as a lie.

That's what Trump is really good at. He knows, better than the vast majority of his rivals, what people really care about. He uses that to appeal to his supporters, whose experience of Trump is overwhelmingly positive. He also uses it to deliberately enrage his opponents on issues that matter deeply to them, but not or very little to the majority of Americans.
Let's start with the second paragraph. I absolutely agree - he does know better than his rivals what people really care about. And I think he is much smarter than what people give him credit for....but he is definitely not a "details" guy. And I know he deliberately says crazy stuff to troll his opponents...and they too often take the bait (and it also helps the ratings/clicks of many news organizations to play up this stuff).

What I don't understand though is when you say "To the people who are important to Trump he rarely, if ever, tells a lie.". I am not sure I am understanding. Let me give a theoretical example of how I see it - If Trump went to a flat earth society convention and gave a speech explaining that he agrees the earth is flat and the round earth theory is all a conspiracy, the people in the audience would likely believe that someone, FINALLY, is speaking the truth and they would believe Trump is honest. This is the type of "honesty" that I believe Trump is giving his supporters. Is this the type of honesty you are meaning? If not, can you be more specific and give some examples of how he is being so honest, not telling a lie to his supporters?

Re: Lock Her Up

by Octavious » Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:30 am

flash2015 wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 4:54 pm
I don't understand - why would you even try and defend this lie as it is so blatant? At least Octavious will accept that sometimes Trump lies like this, but he argues that what he lies about isn't important. Why is holding onto this obvious lie so important to you?
Not really. Some things Trump lies about are not important to anyone. A lot of the things he lies about are important to people, but crucially they are important to people who are not important to Trump. To the people who are important to Trump he rarely, if ever, tells a lie. Or at least something they'd interpret as a lie.

That's what Trump is really good at. He knows, better than the vast majority of his rivals, what people really care about. He uses that to appeal to his supporters, whose experience of Trump is overwhelmingly positive. He also uses it to deliberately enrage his opponents on issues that matter deeply to them, but not or very little to the majority of Americans.

Re: Lock Her Up

by flash2015 » Wed Dec 05, 2018 4:54 pm

ND wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 10:01 pm
Let's dissect this.
1. His crowd probably was the biggest ever. Perhaps not in person on the national mall, but when you factor in streaming services.. yes it was. Like, I was planning on going, but it was raining and I didn't want to drive to D.C. so I livestreamed it. So, yeah he is telling the truth on that point.
But that is not what he said or meant. You can see that he explicitly meant the in person crowd size because of the way Sean Spicer defended it:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-mete ... trics-don/

Snopes goes into more detail explaining TV audiences were less than Obama's and there is no evidence that streaming numbers were higher:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump ... iewership/

I don't understand - why would you even try and defend this lie as it is so blatant? At least Octavious will accept that sometimes Trump lies like this, but he argues that what he lies about isn't important. Why is holding onto this obvious lie so important to you?
2. Not sure about the muslims in NJ cheering during 9/11. It's possible because I do remember when I was young hearing something about that. Not sure, so that's a 50/50 I think. If he is lying it's not intentional. He probably just mixed up where they were cheering because there is documented evidence that some people in the Middle East did cheer the attacks. I remember that footage for sure.
Throughout the campaign a big theme of his campaign was to demonize immigrants and demonize muslims. There is a **big difference** between saying some people in Palestine cheered 9/11 and muslims in NJ cheered 9/11 from the rooftops. In the first case, we know many people overseas don't like the US so whilst it is sad it isn't a surprise that some people may have cheered it (especially since the US is a strong supporter of Israel). In the second case, Trump is claiming that Muslims (many being US citizens) are largely all traitors. That is quite a nasty and very divisive thing to say, especially without a shred of evidence. Given how it was consistent with his campaign, I would argue he knew exactly what he was doing.
3. Your last point isn't about a 'lie' it's about President's entering the fray. Well, that has always happened. In a modern context it started with Obama who was an extreme partisan that routinely insulted and demeaned Republicans. Obama was way worse then Trump in this regard.
Can you provide some examples on how Obama was worse than Trump? If anything Obama's problem was that he was too idealistic, he believed that if everyone sat around the circle and sang kumbaya he could solve problems when others in the past failed. He was wrong.
4. Conspiracy theories? Not sure where you are going with that one.
Where have you been? He claimed that Democrats were artificially inflating the Puerto Rico death toll to make him look bad. He said that China created the Global Warming hoax to attack US competitiveness. He claimed that democrats were trying to steal the election in Florida to try to disrupt vote counting (he also claimed voters were wearing disguises). Ted Cruz's father was involved in JFK's killing. Several million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. Obama's birth certificate, Vince Foster's death. And this is just off the top of my head.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but democracy doesn't function if we can't at least agree on what reality is.

Re: Lock Her Up

by Randomizer » Wed Dec 05, 2018 4:04 am

I'm more concerned about Trump denying saying something where there exist video or audio recordings of the statements. Or much later saying the recordings were altered when the statements contradict his new position or could lead to civil or criminal cases. This becomes important when it affects political policy and may be for personal gain and not just a negotiating strategy.

Best undisputed example is Trump University where his pre trial deposition contradicted all his statements promoting it and to the press.

Trump's personal involvement in costing taxpayers more to renovate the FBI building rather than the cheaper option of a new and more secure building in order to increase profits at his nearby hotel.

Re: Lock Her Up

by flash2015 » Wed Dec 05, 2018 1:58 am

Octavious wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 10:54 am
@flash

It's about priorities, about what you consider to be important. From my perspective as a foreigner observing the US, what I consider important varies significantly from a native Yank. Regarding post Brexit trade deals Trump has been rather more open and honest than our own politicians, although you'd be hard pressed to identify an actual lie. On climate change I strongly disagree with Trump's policies, but I've never been in any doubt what those policies are. He has pulled out of the truly awful Iran deal whilst European politicians continued to pretend it was worth having. He has been extremely lenient with Saudi Arabia because of US business interests, which is what all US Presidents do, but he's the only one I recall being open about it.

Look at Obama, and you see repeated lies told about Guantanamo Bay closing. You see lies told about Syrian red lines that were crossed and then conveniently forgotten. Those lies stick firmly in my mind because they were about things that matter to me. As for how big an inauguration was, I couldn't care less. Trump telling a lie about that will be as meaningful as someone saying good morning when it clearly isn't. Bothered I am not.

What Trump is exceptionally good at is identifying what really matters to people. To the people that matter to Trump, he is very careful not to appear dishonest. To the people who don't matter to Trump, he couldn't care less, and at times seems to deliberately taunt.
It is a question of how you define "honesty". It seems like you are defining honesty as telling people what they want to hear. Like Trump going and telling people in the midwest that their manufacturing jobs were lost only because of bad trade deals...or telling his supporters that immigrants are either rapists/murderers or terrorists. And all the solutions to all the US's problems are simple but the "global elites" are leading us astray. I don't call that honesty. I call that pandering.

Who do you think is lying to you exactly on Brexit? Making Brexit actually happen is going to be incredibly hard - even though I probably don't see eye to eye with many conservative politicians, I don't envy the position May and her team are in. It is easy to throw stones here when you have very little skin in the game (like Trump). Are you again saying the only people truthful here are the ones with the easy answers?

I can agree to disagree with you on the Iran thing so I won't bring that up here. On the Saudi Arabia thing, he is not only prioritizing business interests over human rights but he is lying about Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in the whole affair directly contradicting what US intelligence has told him and congress. On climate change, it isn't just a different policy but Trump goes off into conspiracy land and says that climate change is all a Chinese plot to make the US less competitive. How is this honesty?

I am not here to defend Obama. He may he a wonderful motivational speaker but he was a weak and ineffective president. But do you really believe he was intentionally lying in his promise to close Guantanamo (on his second day in office he created an executive order to close Guantanamo within a year)? The defense department didn't want to close it. To close it it also meant he had to bring some of the prisoners to the US...which faced massive political opposition (Republicans even got a law passed making it illegal to do this). He didn't have the political will and capital to get it done. Again on the Syria thing, I think this showed weakness more than anything else.

I mentioned the inauguration lie, not because it was terribly important, but as an example of the sheer "OMG are you kidding me?" nature of Trump's lying. We have clear evidence that the crowds were far smaller...but Trump and his staff still kept repeating the lie. This is not normal and is only one of hundreds of occurrences of this in the last couple of years. I never saw a past president engage in such behaviour. I really can't believe how you can not see that this is taking lying to a whole new level.

Re: Lock Her Up

by ND » Tue Dec 04, 2018 10:01 pm

flash2015 wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:21 am
Octavious wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:52 pm
ksako, in what sense is Trump unique in this? All politicians, and all people lie. I'd argue quite strongly that a person incapable of lying would make an incredibly poor politician.

It is entirely possible, on the other hand, for ND to believe that Trump has been honest with him. Indeed, considering how closely Trump and NDs political opinions seem aligned, this may well be accurate.

Honesty is heavily dependent on your point of view. A person who considers himself perfectly honest may say that Columbus discovered America. An equally honest person with a different point of view may say not as there were already people there, and a more literally minded honest chap will say it's impossible as there's no cover big enough to conceal the Americas.
Octavious, are you a closet postmodernist or something? Are you trying to say that there is no such thing as objective facts?

Sure, Trump is not unique in lying...but he takes it to a whole new level. He will tell the most blatant of lies (e.g. biggest inauguration crowd, muslims in NJ cheering from the rooftops on 9/11 etc.) and keep on repeating them even when they are most obviously false. In the past presidents would try to "keep above the fray" of conspiracies and negative BS. Now Trump is the fray. He repeats conspiracy theories and creates his own. He hires media advisors which do the same (e.g. Bowling Green massacre, lest we forget).

I really don't understand how you can equate Trump with past politicians without being willfully blind.
Let's dissect this.
1. His crowd probably was the biggest ever. Perhaps not in person on the national mall, but when you factor in streaming services.. yes it was. Like, I was planning on going, but it was raining and I didn't want to drive to D.C. so I livestreamed it. So, yeah he is telling the truth on that point.

2. Not sure about the muslims in NJ cheering during 9/11. It's possible because I do remember when I was young hearing something about that. Not sure, so that's a 50/50 I think. If he is lying it's not intentional. He probably just mixed up where they were cheering because there is documented evidence that some people in the Middle East did cheer the attacks. I remember that footage for sure.

3. Your last point isn't about a 'lie' it's about President's entering the fray. Well, that has always happened. In a modern context it started with Obama who was an extreme partisan that routinely insulted and demeaned Republicans. Obama was way worse then Trump in this regard.

4. Conspiracy theories? Not sure where you are going with that one.

Re: Lock Her Up

by Octavious » Tue Dec 04, 2018 10:54 am

@flash

It's about priorities, about what you consider to be important. From my perspective as a foreigner observing the US, what I consider important varies significantly from a native Yank. Regarding post Brexit trade deals Trump has been rather more open and honest than our own politicians, although you'd be hard pressed to identify an actual lie. On climate change I strongly disagree with Trump's policies, but I've never been in any doubt what those policies are. He has pulled out of the truly awful Iran deal whilst European politicians continued to pretend it was worth having. He has been extremely lenient with Saudi Arabia because of US business interests, which is what all US Presidents do, but he's the only one I recall being open about it.

Look at Obama, and you see repeated lies told about Guantanamo Bay closing. You see lies told about Syrian red lines that were crossed and then conveniently forgotten. Those lies stick firmly in my mind because they were about things that matter to me. As for how big an inauguration was, I couldn't care less. Trump telling a lie about that will be as meaningful as someone saying good morning when it clearly isn't. Bothered I am not.

What Trump is exceptionally good at is identifying what really matters to people. To the people that matter to Trump, he is very careful not to appear dishonest. To the people who don't matter to Trump, he couldn't care less, and at times seems to deliberately taunt.

Re: Lock Her Up

by flash2015 » Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:55 am

TrPrado wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 1:59 am
What I gathered was an argument that honesty may very well be divorced from fact, not that fact simply is not a thing.
Perhaps, but I thought the last paragraph went further and suggested that Trump isn't lying, he is just giving an alternative perspective of the facts, just like his hypothetical question about who discovered the Americas.

Re: Lock Her Up

by TrPrado » Tue Dec 04, 2018 1:59 am

What I gathered was an argument that honesty may very well be divorced from fact, not that fact simply is not a thing.

Re: Lock Her Up

by flash2015 » Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:21 am

Octavious wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:52 pm
ksako, in what sense is Trump unique in this? All politicians, and all people lie. I'd argue quite strongly that a person incapable of lying would make an incredibly poor politician.

It is entirely possible, on the other hand, for ND to believe that Trump has been honest with him. Indeed, considering how closely Trump and NDs political opinions seem aligned, this may well be accurate.

Honesty is heavily dependent on your point of view. A person who considers himself perfectly honest may say that Columbus discovered America. An equally honest person with a different point of view may say not as there were already people there, and a more literally minded honest chap will say it's impossible as there's no cover big enough to conceal the Americas.
Octavious, are you a closet postmodernist or something? Are you trying to say that there is no such thing as objective facts?

Sure, Trump is not unique in lying...but he takes it to a whole new level. He will tell the most blatant of lies (e.g. biggest inauguration crowd, muslims in NJ cheering from the rooftops on 9/11 etc.) and keep on repeating them even when they are most obviously false. In the past presidents would try to "keep above the fray" of conspiracies and negative BS. Now Trump is the fray. He repeats conspiracy theories and creates his own. He hires media advisors which do the same (e.g. Bowling Green massacre, lest we forget).

I really don't understand how you can equate Trump with past politicians without being willfully blind.

Re: Lock Her Up

by Greg_the_republican » Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:37 pm

Pretty much all politicians lie in order to push their agendas and/or gain supporters. That’s just the way things are nowadays.

Re: Lock Her Up

by ksako8 » Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:29 pm

@Octavious
ND stated that Hillary is a liar ( I agree ) and Trump is not. That last part is obviously false.
BTW: Trump lies a lot more than most other politicians do.

Re: Lock Her Up

by ND » Sat Dec 01, 2018 6:39 pm

I agree 100% with what Octavious just said.

Re: Lock Her Up

by Octavious » Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:52 pm

ksako, in what sense is Trump unique in this? All politicians, and all people lie. I'd argue quite strongly that a person incapable of lying would make an incredibly poor politician.

It is entirely possible, on the other hand, for ND to believe that Trump has been honest with him. Indeed, considering how closely Trump and NDs political opinions seem aligned, this may well be accurate.

Honesty is heavily dependent on your point of view. A person who considers himself perfectly honest may say that Columbus discovered America. An equally honest person with a different point of view may say not as there were already people there, and a more literally minded honest chap will say it's impossible as there's no cover big enough to conceal the Americas.

Re: Lock Her Up

by ksako8 » Sat Dec 01, 2018 7:09 am

ND, Trump is a proven liar. If you can't even admit that, you are beyond any reason.

Re: Lock Her Up

by ND » Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:32 pm

Good one

Re: Lock Her Up

by Jamiet99uk » Thu Nov 29, 2018 3:22 pm

You're sick, ND.

Re: Lock Her Up

by ND » Tue Nov 27, 2018 9:57 pm

I don't even remember what I was trying to type earlier. OH, it was "hillary is a liar and Trump isn't" somehow that corrected to 'a list' I guess google doesn't want me to type Hillary is a liar. Sorry for that mistake.

Re: Lock Her Up

by Jamiet99uk » Tue Nov 27, 2018 7:41 pm

ND wrote:
Tue Nov 27, 2018 5:04 pm
Well Hillary is a list and Trump isn't. I would trust him NY day of the week over Hillary.
So you actually admit that you automatically assume those on your side are beyond reproach, and those you don't agree with are guilty until proven innocent.

You have no integrity whatsoever.

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