The Trump presidency.

[Little John]

Liberalism is dead. Trump is an effect, not a cause.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOMOHjr-Zw8

[emordnilap]

Trump is an effect, not a cause.

That's right.

I know what you're getting at. I'm just saying that, on the timescale ordinary people think about, while Obama was diabolical and his atrocities were ignored, Trump is going to be outrageously diabolical and he's going to crow about it, so he'll be perceived as the cause.

[Mark]

Obama was diabolical and his atrocities were ignored, Trump is going to be outrageously diabolical and he's going to crow about it, so he'll be perceived as the cause.

As the saying goes..., power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely
However, I think that Obama was less corrupted than any other POTUS in my time....
Clinton, George Bush, George W, Carter, Reagan and defo Trump...
He had his faults, but I wouldn't describe Obama as diabolical.

[johnhemming2]

I remain of the view that Obama was the best US president of my life.

[kenneal - lagger]

The problem with being POTUS is that you are perceived to have absolute power but the constitution and Congress severely limit that power as Obama and his supporters found out.

Trump is finding that now with his order to limit immigration, effectively, by religion.

[Lord Beria3]

Agree Little John.

Liberalism is dead. I've been recently debating with a closed facebook group of faux radicals on the Left and I have brought up the issue of peak oil and resource scarcity.

With the partial exception of one contributor, my links have been completely ignored and the implications disregarded by everybody.

Even the one individual who accepted that there were limits to growth refuses to consider the possibility that economic globalization is unsustainable! I have given up trying to point out the implications of peak oil and the end of economic growth as nobody wants to know.

I am staggered by the utter refusal by so many intelligent people to accept that our economic system is basically screwed.

[johnhemming2]

Liberalism is dead.

As someone who self describes as a Liberal I don't think I am dead nor is the ideology that the rule of law and democracy is a good thing is dead.

There is a lack of concern about resource depletion, but that is normal human stupidity rather than a flaw in the concept of liberal democracy.

[kenneal - lagger]

I don't think that there is "a lack of concern about resource depletion", John, there is a complete inability to even countenance the possibility in most people. Even on this forum we have people who argue that economic growth can carry on in the future but "in a different way"!

[johnhemming2]

Some growth as measured in units of GDP can occur with fewer natural resources being consumed. Most involves more natural resources and a geological (or other) constraint on extraction will impact economic activity levels.

[emordnilap]

Obama was diabolical and his atrocities were ignored, Trump is going to be outrageously diabolical and he's going to crow about it, so he'll be perceived as the cause.

As the saying goes..., power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely
However, I think that Obama was less corrupted than any other POTUS in my time....
Clinton, George Bush, George W, Carter, Reagan and defo Trump...
He had his faults, but I wouldn't describe Obama as diabolical.

I'm with Little John on this. He was elected using oily words alone. I was fooled, too, at the very beginning but it was very clear early on that he was as bad as, in fact worse than, his predecessors. He managed, through a combination of charm and subterfuge, to maintain a glossy image.

How very heartening to see, over the last few days, the various women's marches in America and other countries in the West where they have found sufficient issue with the boorish, misogynistic personality of Donald Trump that they feel compelled to take to the streets about it.

How very disheartening they never felt similarly compelled to take to the streets to protest against the mass murderer who just left the Whitehouse and who personally ordered the dropping of 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone - mostly indiscriminately from unmanned drones, killing many thousands of innocent men, women and children, not to mention the financing and organising of a neo-fascist coup in Kiev and the head-chopping, throat-cutting, woman-hating lunatics in Syria.

Oh, and lest we forget, selling arms on an industrial scale and providing political cover for one of the most-woman hating, barbaric countries on the planet - namely Saudi Arabia - who are, as we speak, using those same Yank (and British) arms to commit genocide in the Yemen. Nor do I recall recall seeing any of these women marching outside of the Saudi Arabian embassy when it became known that Hilary's Clinton Foundation received between 10 million and 25 million dollars in "donations" from Saudi Arabia in the lead up to the election.

One can only presume Maddona's and the rest of these women's reluctance to criticize Obama is because, despite being the mass-murdering friend of woman-hating despotic regimes that he is, he talked nice and looked cool. As for their similar reluctance to criticize the war-monger Hilary Clinton, one is also forced to conclude this must be due to the fact of her being in possession of a vagina.

[raspberry-blower]

Another interesting article that highlights how the MSM are negatively portraying Trump vis-à-vis other recent US Presidents and their misdemeanours:

should be noted that Hillary not only condoned Bill’s actions but has often slandered those who would dare speak out against them. The fact that the media have not managed to inculcate into the public consciousness the alleged crimes of Bill Clinton in the way they have in relation to Trump, almost certainly explains why, during Bill’s presidency and impeachment trial 20 years ago, no protests occurred.

So fake news is as much about the ability of the media to censor by omission as it is about the actual production of deliberately false information intended to deceive. In turn, it’s these distortions that provide the catalyst for the ideology of ‘post truth politics’ exemplified by the emergence of a discourse that appeals to emotion and where personal beliefs dominate. The media’s preoccupation with Trump’s seemingly sexist and misogynistic attitude to women intended to evoke an emotional response, was to be the starting point for what was to follow. The media’s anti-Trump agenda, in other words, had been cast.

Very much a case of the dog that didn't bark here.
This isn't a case of saying that Trump is going to be a great US President or is a "great man" - far from it. In fact it could well be argued that his boorish manner and his arrogant playground bully style has, inadvertently, shown the world the true face of the Corporate owned USA:

Why are a series of war criminals and war apologists seen fit to be interviewed about their disparaging views on Trump and are allowed to pass comment unchallenged? Why were the public told that Western civilisation was under threat from Islamist terrorists from the same countries who the elites are now criticising Trump from wanted to put travel restrictions on? Could it be Trump is unknowingly exposing the lie to their own propaganda?

The fact that these questions are never asked of the powerful and that a mass of well-meaning liberal protesters uncritically fall into line like a herd of cattle, is a testament to the hold the media has on great swaths of the population.

Daniel Margrain: Cajoling of the Herd

[johnhemming2]

There are limits as to what good politicians can achieve, but they can do quite a bit of harm. Trump falls in to the doing harm category.

[kenneal - lagger]

I am quite happy to accept that there is a double standard involved in the reporting of Trump's actions, as there is with Corbyn, but I disliked him intensely long before he became the Presidential candidate. His bullying of his neighbours around his Scottish golf course and of the Scottish government over wind turbines put him in my bad books long ago.

[Little John]

I am quite happy to accept that there is a double standard involved in the reporting of Trump's actions, as there is with Corbyn, but I disliked him intensely long before he became the Presidential candidate. His bullying of his neighbours around his Scottish golf course and of the Scottish government over wind turbines put him in my bad books long ago.

To the extent that democracy itself is now being put under severe test such that a soft coup is being attempted by a globally orchestrated MSM? We can state this irrespective of our dislike of the man and, arguably, we should be concerned about it irrespective of our dislike of the man.

[Mark]

I'm with Little John on this. He was elected using oily words alone. I was fooled, too, at the very beginning but it was very clear early on that he was as bad as, in fact worse than, his predecessors. He managed, through a combination of charm and subterfuge, to maintain a glossy image.

Worse than Vietnam ?
Worse than the Gulf War ?
Worse than the Iraq War ?
Worse than covert death squads in S. America ?
LJ/LB and their like wish to paint Obama in a bad light, so that Trump seems like just more of the same...., he isn't....,
I predict there'll be much more conflict/war/terrorism on Trump's watch - but only time will tell if I'm correct...