Trump's remarks | Imamother

↑ 33055 ↓

Sat, Aug 19 2017, 10:03 pm

WhatFor wrote:

Squishy- his first remarks said there were bad ppl on both sides which angered a lot of people because only one group showed up with the stated goals of ultimately committing genocide and killed/severely injure people. His second remarks, made after ppl were outraged, were the ones you posted. They were not made over the weekend but on Monday evening. In his third set of remarks, made after the ones you posted, he said there were fine people on both sides in the march in Charlottesville. That was when I started this thread.

I can go broken record over here. Fine people don't drive or fly for miles show up to rallies organized by white supremacists where one of the stated goals of the rally is to take the country back from Jews. Fine people don't march with armed people holding torches chanting "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us."

The president said that fine people could join such a march. That is outrageous.

I thought about what you wrote over Shabbos. I took his remark to mean there were fine people on both sides of the question rather than there are fine people marching.

Was HRC's mentor Senator Byrd a fine person? What of the fact he was was an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK and started a chapter and recruited 150 members? Bill Clinton, Obama, the NAACP praised him.

If those marching dissociate themselves from their activities like Senator Byrd did, then are they fine people also?

You said DT never condemned White Supremacists. What you really meant to say is that he didn't condemn them on your time table.

↑ 33055 ↓

Sat, Aug 19 2017, 10:12 pm

Jeanette wrote:

You are cherry picking polls that support whatever narrative you want to spin. Fact is, if we governed by NPR opinion polls Trump wouldn't be president. The Charlottesville statue was removed by a democratic process. There's no need for a national referendum on whether a single locality is permitted to erect or remove statues as they see fit.

I also think it's disingenuous to pretend that this protest had anything to do with preserving history.

Nope. I didn't cherry pick any polls. I simply read the news. NPR is one of the most trusted news sources.

If you have a poll that says different, please post it. I read about the polls in several news sources and then read the poll itself. I didn't read anything that makes the data suspect.

I think the results would even have been less in favor of removal if the question was more inclusive rather than just limited to removing confederate leaders.

When 2 out of 3 are not in favor of an action, that is not democracy at work.

Last edited by 33055 on Sun, Aug 20 2017, 12:13 am; edited 1 time in total

↑ 33055 ↓

Sat, Aug 19 2017, 10:19 pm

QueenBee3 wrote:

Great post. Especially in the bolded print.

Thanks. The people on the left are acting like those in the Salem Witch trials. They are out of touch with their hysterical Stalinist purge. The result will be the 94% Republicans who and the 2/3 of the general pop who are against this will find their voices in the far right media.

Scott Adams writes of this mass hysteria.

SCOTT ADAMS' BLOG
TOP TECH
How To Know You’re In a Mass Hysteria Bubble
Posted August 17th, 2017 @ 12:36pm

History is full of examples of Mass Hysterias. They happen fairly often. The cool thing about mass hysterias is that you don’t know when you are in one. But sometimes the people who are not experiencing the mass hysteria can recognize when others are experiencing one, if they know what to look for.

I’ll teach you what to look for.

image
A mass hysteria happens when the public gets a wrong idea about something that has strong emotional content and it triggers cognitive dissonance that is often supported by confirmation bias. In other words, people spontaneously hallucinate a whole new (and usually crazy-sounding) reality and believe they see plenty of evidence for it. The Salem Witch Trials are the best-known example of mass hysteria. The McMartin Pre-School case and the Tulip Bulb hysteria are others. The dotcom bubble probably qualifies. We might soon learn that the Russian Collusion story was mass hysteria in hindsight. The curious lack of solid evidence for Russian collusion is a red flag. But we’ll see how that plays out.

The most visible Mass Hysteria of the moment involves the idea that the United States intentionally elected a racist President. If that statement just triggered you, it might mean you are in the Mass Hysteria bubble. The cool part is that you can’t fact-check my claim you are hallucinating if you are actually hallucinating. But you can read my description of the signs of mass hysteria and see if you check off the boxes.

If you’re in the mass hysteria, recognizing you have all the symptoms of hysteria won’t help you be aware you are in it. That’s not how hallucinations work. Instead, your hallucination will automatically rewrite itself to expel any new data that conflicts with its illusions.

But if you are not experiencing mass hysteria, you might be totally confused by the actions of the people who are. They appear to be irrational, but in ways that are hard to define. You can’t tell if they are stupid, unscrupulous, ignorant, mentally ill, emotionally unstable or what. It just looks frickin’ crazy.

The reason you can’t easily identify what-the-hell is going on in the country right now is that a powerful mass hysteria is in play. If you see the signs after I point them out, you’re probably not in the hysteria bubble. If you read this and do NOT see the signs, it probably means you’re trapped inside the mass hysteria bubble.

Here are some signs of mass hysteria. This is my own take on it, but I welcome you to fact-check it with experts on mass hysteria.

1. The trigger event for cognitive dissonance

On November 8th of 2016, half the country learned that everything they believed to be both true and obvious turned out to be wrong. The people who thought Trump had no chance of winning were under the impression they were smart people who understood their country, and politics, and how things work in general. When Trump won, they learned they were wrong. They were so very wrong that they reflexively (because this is how all brains work) rewrote the scripts they were seeing in their minds until it all made sense again. The wrong-about-everything crowd decided that the only way their world made sense, with their egos intact, is that either the Russians helped Trump win or there are far more racists in the country than they imagined, and he is their king. Those were the seeds of the two mass hysterias we witness today.

Trump supporters experienced no trigger event for cognitive dissonance when Trump won. Their worldview was confirmed by observed events.

2. The Ridiculousness of it

One sign of a good mass hysteria is that it sounds bonkers to anyone who is not experiencing it. Imagine your neighbor telling you he thinks the other neighbor is a witch. Or imagine someone saying the local daycare provider is a satanic temple in disguise. Or imagine someone telling you tulip bulbs are more valuable than gold. Crazy stuff.

Compare that to the idea that our president is a Russian puppet. Or that the country accidentally elected a racist who thinks the KKK and Nazis are “fine people.” Crazy stuff.

If you think those examples don’t sound crazy – regardless of the reality – you are probably inside the mass hysteria bubble.

3. The Confirmation Bias

If you are inside the mass hysteria bubble, you probably interpreted President Trump’s initial statement on Charlottesville – which was politically imperfect to say the least – as proof-positive he is a damned racist.

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble you might have noticed that President Trump never campaigned to be our moral leader. He presented himself as – in his own words “no angel” – with a set of skills he offered to use in the public’s interest. He was big on law and order, and equal justice under the law. But he never offered moral leadership. Voters elected him with that knowledge. Evidently, Republicans don’t depend on politicians for moral leadership. That’s probably a good call.

When the horror in Charlottesville shocked the country, citizens instinctively looked to their president for moral leadership. The president instead provided a generic law and order statement. Under pressure, he later named specific groups and disavowed the racists. He was clearly uncomfortable being our moral lighthouse. That’s probably why he never described his moral leadership as an asset when running for office. We observe that he has never been shy about any other skill he brings to the job, so it probably isn’t an accident when he avoids mentioning any ambitions for moral leadership. If he wanted us to know he would provide that service, I think he would have mentioned it by now.

If you already believed President Trump is a racist, his weak statement about Charlottesville seems like confirmation. But if you believe he never offered moral leadership, only equal treatment under the law, that’s what you saw instead. And you made up your own mind about the morality.

The tricky part here is that any interpretation of what happened could be confirmation bias. But ask yourself which one of these versions sounds less crazy:

1. A sitting president, who is a branding expert, thought it would be a good idea to go easy on murderous Nazis as a way to improve his popularity.

or…

2. The country elected a racist leader who is winking to the KKK and White Supremacists that they have a free pass to start a race war now.

or…

3. A mentally unstable racist clown with conman skills (mostly just lying) eviscerated the Republican primary field and won the presidency. He keeps doing crazy, impulsive racist stuff. But for some reason, the economy is going well, jobs are looking good, North Korea blinked, ISIS is on the ropes, and the Supreme Court got a qualified judge. It was mostly luck.

or…

4. The guy who didn’t offer to be your moral leader didn’t offer any moral leadership, just law and order, applied equally. His critics cleverly and predictably framed it as being soft on Nazis.

One of those narratives is less crazy-sounding than the others. That doesn’t mean the less-crazy one has to be true. But normal stuff happens far more often than crazy stuff. And critics will frame normal stuff as crazy whenever they get a chance.

4. The Oversized Reaction

It would be hard to overreact to a Nazi murder, or to racists marching in the streets with torches. That stuff demands a strong reaction. But if a Republican agrees with you that Nazis are the worst, and you threaten to punch that Republican for not agreeing with you exactly the right way, that might be an oversized reaction.

5. The Insult without supporting argument

When people have actual reasons for disagreeing with you, they offer those reasons without hesitation. Strangers on social media will cheerfully check your facts, your logic, and your assumptions. But when you start seeing ad hominem attacks that offer no reasons at all, that might be a sign that people in the mass hysteria bubble don’t understand what is wrong with your point of view except that it sounds more sensible than their own.

For the past two days I have been disavowing Nazis on Twitter. The most common response from the people who agree with me is that my comic strip sucks and I am ugly.

The mass hysteria signals I described here are not settled science, or anything like it. This is only my take on the topic, based on personal observation and years of experience with hypnosis and other forms of persuasion. I present this filter on the situation as the first step in dissolving the mass hysteria. It isn’t enough, but more persuasion is coming. If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble, you might see what I am doing in this blog as a valuable public service. If you are inside the mass hysteria bubble, I look like a Nazi collaborator.

How do I look to you?

—

↑ Jeanette ↓

Sat, Aug 19 2017, 11:01 pm

Squishy wrote:

Nope. I didn't cherry pick any polls. I simply read the news. NPR is one of the most trusted news sources.

If you have a poll that says different, please post it. I read about the polls in several news sources and then read the poll itself. I didn't read anything that makes the data suspect.

I think the results would even have been less in favor of removal if the question was more inclusive rather than just limited to removing confederate leaders.

When 2 or 3 are not in favor of an action, that is not democracy at work.

Again: we don't govern by NPR opinion polls. If we did, Trump wouldn't be president.

↑ 33055 ↓

Sat, Aug 19 2017, 11:18 pm

Jeanette wrote:

Again: we don't govern by NPR opinion polls. If we did, Trump wouldn't be president.

Because polls can't predict future actions, does not mean they can't report how people currently feel about an issue.

All polls will have a certain percentage they are off. 2/3 is not close. The polls were not so wrong when you talk of the popular vote either for that matter.

Your refusal to accept the majority of the population is against removing the statues of confederate leaders is willfully blind.

↑ Blue jay

Sat, Aug 19 2017, 11:43 pm

Squishy wrote:

This article is very interesting, thank you for sharing ( my dh just printed the same article out to share with me!) President Trump is doing the best he can to protect our country and personal freedoms. He has denounced racism and hatred and continues to lead. I do believe he is the moral leader of this country (based on his policies) and proves this through his actions not empty words. He could improve on the words department however ...but most of us Trump supporters have learned to live with it.

↑ marina ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 2:34 am

sushilover wrote:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Which part of the 14th amendment states that living your life free of racism is a fundamental right?

look, swastikas, for example, are abhorrent symbols. But they are protected under the first amendment and if a community votes to have a swastika up for any reason, that doesn't violate the 14th amendment or any fundamental right. I can protest, boycott, etc. But you can't argue that their votes should be disqualified simply because there are few Jews and Blacks in that community. (The same cannot be said if a community votes to ban bris milah.That violates a fundamental right of religious freedom, so the federal govt can step in and declare the ban illegal)

The last part of the amendment - due process and equal protection have been interpreted all along to bar discrimination against all protected groups. That clause is the reason a government agency can't fire a black person or a Jewish one.

Swastikas are protected from government interference as free speech, part of the First Amendment. The same First Amendment protects bris milah in the exact same way, just under the Free Exercise clause not the free speech clause. Both are protected, but only from government interference and there are some exceptions where neither would be protected, like if the government had a good enough reason, they could cancel bris milah actually.

↑ marina ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 2:43 am

Squishy wrote:

I didn't say the majority want all historic symbols to stay. Only a quarter of the adults are for removing the statues honoring the leaders of the confederacy. The where does it end argument is powerful even if the left refuses to recognize it. 86% of republicans are against their removal. Only 6% of the Republicans are for their removal! I think serious thought should go into this rather than reactionary hysteria.

What of the statutes that don't honor the leaders, but honor the sacrifices of the fallen solider or the women won lost everything?

I don't find either the statistical support or the "where does it end" argument particularly powerful.

What percent of Americans, do you think, supported Brown v Board of Education when it first came out? How many of them said "oh, where will it ever end" in response?

We don't always rule by majority because the majority is sometimes wrong. This is not a left or right thing. No matter, for example, how many right or left people vote to end Nazi marches, peaceful protest will always be legal.

↑ WhatFor ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 3:30 am

Squishy wrote:

I'm not sure why you took his remarks to mean there were fine people on both sides of the equation. Earlier you stated that I don't read the news. This is inaccurate, but I'll elaborate. I actually watch Trump's speeches when he talks. I don't rely on the news to tell me how to feel about what they want to focus on. I have been following his tweets and his speeches since the incident, so I could hear it from the president himself.

This is his exact quote when he said that fine people showed up to a rally that was organized by white supremacists. Yes he's saying neo- Nazis are bad, but that there are still good people who would show up to a rally that was organized by a group of white supremacists.

Quote:

Q: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides?

Trump: I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame object both on both sides. I have no doubt about it. You don't have doubt about it either. If you reported it accurately, you would say that the neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville. Excuse me. They didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis. You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group -- excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me. Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him. Good. Are we going to take down his statue. He was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue? It is fine. You are changing history and culture.

You had people and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally. You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. The press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.

↑ 33055 ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 7:38 am

marina wrote:

B v B was decided by the Supreme Court where there is a legitimacy with even unpopular decisions. This is hardly the same thing as the reactionary politics destroying our heritage today.

The city is searching for “symbols of hate on city property,” de Blasio announced Wednesday, and will eliminate any offending marker or sculpture. It was a reaction to violent protests against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va.

http://nypost.com/2017/08/19/a.....lock/

Activists have identified offending marker to include the following:

Theodore Roosevelt

Henry Ward Beecher

Ben Franklin

Christopher Columbus

George Washington

Fiorello La Guardia

Dr. Simms - invented techniques in use today tu prevent millions of child birth injuries

Peter Stuyvesant

General Sherman

Samuel Sullivan Cox - supported postal workers nationally. They contributed to put up this statue of him.

Daniel Webster

Henry Hudson

Pilgrims

Netherland Monument

The Jungle Book - Kipling

Juan Pablo Duarte - father of the Dominican Republic

↑ 33055 ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 7:58 am

WhatFor wrote:

This is what he said.

If you reported it accurately, you would say that the neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville. Excuse me. They didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis. You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides

The neo-nazis took their permit out for the purpose of protesting the statue of Lee being taken down the park being renamed. There are many fine people who understand history and that Lee was against slavery.

Lincoln and Lee articulated similar opinions about the slaves. Lincoln was a white supremacist.

During his famous debates with Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln explained to the crowd: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

So, do we take down the Lincoln Monument?

↑ Jeanette ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 8:44 am

Squishy wrote:

Only poll that counts is the ballot box.

We don't govern by opinion polls.

↑ 33055 ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 9:02 am

Jeanette wrote:

Only poll that counts is the ballot box.

We don't govern by opinion polls.

Sure we do. Maybe not in this case, but candidates and officials often tailor their positions to what their constituents want or they lose the election. Why do you think we have so many opinion polls?

If ignore 2/3 of the voters, it is at your own peril.

↑ PinkFridge ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 9:53 am

WhatFor wrote:

Something that people seem to be overlooking, it's not about an individual's failure to condemn an extremist group. It's not about one person, what Jo Shmo would condemn.

It's about a president's walk-back on condemning Nazism after white supremacists marched and killed/injured people. The president of the United States said that fine people would show up to a white supremacist rally. Not Jo Shmo. Not a wealthy businessman. Not your local politician. The President of the United States.

.

I just heard a prominent local Democratic congresswoman laud President Bush for how he pulled the country together in healing after 9-11, and she would have liked to have seen something similar from the current president.

Like I said, there was a sandwich of statements. Had he stuck with the filling, it would have been good. Had he said, at the later press conference, I gave a statement, please refer to that, let's stick to the subject at hand which is business, that would have been good too. But as Hugh Hewitt said, in dissecting the press conference (I heard a rerun snip this AM) at the point where the president called someone fake news, that's when politics as we know it totally broke: it was the straw of all the straws in that press conference that broke the camel's back.

↑ PinkFridge ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 9:57 am

Squishy wrote:

Yes. Once he was rehabilitated, Clinton, et al, could praise him. I don't get when some of the low-info RW talk show hosts bring up Byrd. It could be I'm not fully informed and maybe he wasn't a choir boy once he recanted. But they seem to neglect to mention the fact that he "did teshuva."

↑ PinkFridge ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 10:03 am

Squishy wrote:

Yeah, but people who held their noses over his morality thought, ok, we've had other philanderers in high office before, and he is a bit of a brash bully (though people who know him well seem to see a kinder side, and I've heard stories about his chesed myself) but surely on the macro, on social issues, he has some common sense. No one can really think that way, right? Or maybe he just meant Antifa is a nasty piece of work. If that was the case, then if he would have limited it to that, he wouldn't have dug such a deep hole either.

↑ Jeanette ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 10:36 am

Squishy wrote:

Politicians pay attention to their constituents, and more so their donors and special interest groups. National opinion polls don't play much of a role, especially on a relatively minor issue like this one. Think of how close BRCA came to passing despite 17% approval. And healthcare is a lot more core to people's lives than confederate statues.

↑ marina ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 12:17 pm

Quote:

The city is searching for “symbols of hate on city property,” de Blasio announced Wednesday, and will eliminate any offending marker or sculpture. It was a reaction to violent protests against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va.

Another piece of this is that the sculptures and monuments that are on city property are considered the government's own speech. Which the government has full authority to regulate as it pleases. It really does not have to ask the voters for anything. Just like Trump doesn't have to ask for a national referendum on what he tweets.

↑ 33055 ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 12:25 pm

Jeanette wrote:

The poll is more nuisanced than the headlines report. Patriotism, racism, and the destruction of our national identity are not minor issues. Our national identity is a core value.

Additionally, these actions cause reactions. Because the media is left leaning, when the large majority of the silent right want to be heard they find their voices in the far right. The rebound of the leftist policies is a strengthening of the right. MAGA is a reaction of the policies of BO.

The rise off the Mafia was because of prohibition.

MAGA2.0 is going to be the result of this hysteria. The statues being destroyed in the cities are threatening all Americans.

↑ 33055 ↓

Sun, Aug 20 2017, 12:31 pm

marina wrote:

Quote:

I have no doubt these statues will be pulverized also. It is a shame.

But in the interests of equality, we should pulverize the Lincoln statutes in Prospect Park, Union Square, and the NY Historical society. After all, he was white supremacist.