Trump's Greatest Quotes

[Raxivace]

Serious answer: They're trying to appeal to Republicans. That's their actual strategy. Millions of traditional Republican voters are currently fleeing the GOP like a sinking ship and they're trying to draw them in.

Tbh this is what I was suspecting but I was hoping to get literally any other answer. Like I would have taken "This is all part of an elaborate ritual to summon Satan onto Earth and have him run in November". At least Satan would have the decency to tell me what I want to hear in order to lure me into his eternal hellscape. He wouldn't just openly 2016 me again.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah when it comes to Democratic elites the worst possible answer is almost always the correct one. Evidently they don't consider millennials or progressives or the poor as part of their constituency anymore, since they seem to be trying their very best to alienate us. And they don't care, because they know we don't have anywhere else to go. We're not going to vote third party or stay home when they have a Republican alternative scary enough to make us keep voting D just to stop him. And "lesser evilism" keeps winning out and every year life in this country just keeps getting shittier and shittier.

[Raxivace]

Yeah, its really starting to feel that way for me.

Like I understand arguments for pragmatic voting and compromise in democracy and the like, but man. To not even be promised literally anything we actively want (Instead of being promised to not get something we don't want in Trump) to vote a third time for candidates I have basically no enthusiasm for (And that's putting it VERY nicely) is just incredibly disheartening. Like I'd feel much better about "doing my part" if I were being thrown literally any bones whatsoever.

I hope that even if Biden/Harris do win in November that protests from BLM and other organizations will continue strongly at least but the optimism I had on that front even just a few months ago isn't quite there anymore. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

[Raxivace]

Like if the Dems actually were the radicals that Fox News idiots said they were I would vote for them so hard, you have no idea.

Like sign me the fuck up for the guys metal enough to want to “attack and dethrone God".

[Derived Absurdity]

They're calling Kamala Harris a Marxist, lol.

I support pragmatic voting. I even support "lesser evil" voting to a limited extent. That's why I would have voted Bernie in the general, despite my many problems with him. But it has limits. Where do people think unconditional "lesser evil" voting is going to get us in the long run? Do people ever even bother to think ahead past four years? It's already gotten us fucking Joe Biden/Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump/Mike Pence. What about twelve years from now? Pete Buttigieg vs. Richard Spencer? Not holding your preferred candidate to any set of standards whatsoever and promising to support them unconditionally just because their opponent is always worse gives them carte blanche to be as horrible and reactionary as they want. If you actually want this country to start getting better, at some point you have to put a stop to the madness and threaten to withhold your support if your candidate doesn't meet certain basic requirements.

Right now, I'm not sure progressives are numerous enough or ideologically focused and disciplined enough to make tactical non-voting an effective political strategy. The best we can do at the moment is organize at the local level and work our way up from there, and maybe stop putting so much emotional energy into national politics for the time being, because for anyone with any intelligence and a soul it is soul-crushingly dispiriting.

[Faustus5]

They're calling Kamala Harris a Marxist, lol.

I support pragmatic voting. I even support "lesser evil" voting to a limited extent. That's why I would have voted Bernie in the general, despite my many problems with him. But it has limits. Where do people think unconditional "lesser evil" voting is going to get us in the long run? Do people ever even bother to think ahead past four years? It's already gotten us fucking Joe Biden/Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump/Mike Pence. What about twelve years from now? Pete Buttigieg vs. Richard Spencer? Not holding your preferred candidate to any set of standards whatsoever and promising to support them unconditionally just because their opponent is always worse gives them carte blanche to be as horrible and reactionary as they want. If you actually want this country to start getting better, at some point you have to put a stop to the madness and threaten to withhold your support if your candidate doesn't meet certain basic requirements.

Right now, I'm not sure progressives are numerous enough or ideologically focused and disciplined enough to make tactical non-voting an effective political strategy. The best we can do at the moment is organize at the local level and work our way up from there, and maybe stop putting so much emotional energy into national politics for the time being, because for anyone with any intelligence and a soul it is soul-crushingly dispiriting.

Preach, brother!

[Raxivace]

They're calling Kamala Harris a Marxist, lol.

I support pragmatic voting. I even support "lesser evil" voting to a limited extent. That's why I would have voted Bernie in the general, despite my many problems with him. But it has limits. Where do people think unconditional "lesser evil" voting is going to get us in the long run? Do people ever even bother to think ahead past four years? It's already gotten us fucking Joe Biden/Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump/Mike Pence. What about twelve years from now? Pete Buttigieg vs. Richard Spencer? Not holding your preferred candidate to any set of standards whatsoever and promising to support them unconditionally just because their opponent is always worse gives them carte blanche to be as horrible and reactionary as they want. If you actually want this country to start getting better, at some point you have to put a stop to the madness and threaten to withhold your support if your candidate doesn't meet certain basic requirements.

Right now, I'm not sure progressives are numerous enough or ideologically focused and disciplined enough to make tactical non-voting an effective political strategy. The best we can do at the moment is organize at the local level and work our way up from there, and maybe stop putting so much emotional energy into national politics for the time being, because for anyone with any intelligence and a soul it is soul-crushingly dispiriting.

[Derived Absurdity]

Lol, see, they're literally courting Republicans and giving the shoulder to progressives and millennials. They're not even being subtle or underhanded about it. They're doing it openly.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/dnc-bide ... -democrats" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There's a bunch of racist Republican billionaires and governors speaking at their convention but only three Latinos and no Muslims. AOC gets sixty seconds. Lol.

[Cassius Clay]

I've meditated on this issue over that last 4 years and my overall position is mostly the same, tho this time I'm more sympathetic to folks that believe in abstaining from voting. When Biden somehow "won" the nomination, my first instinct was "there's no way I'm voting for this motherfucker".

But then my pragmatic instincts lead me to ultimately support "lesser evil" voting. As Michael Brooks(RIP) used to say...you organize/build locally and "stop the bleeding" when you can. And if we lack the leverage to hold neoliberal candidates accountable through abstaining(due to not being organized enough, for example), when the choice is between neoliberal fuckery and literal "galloping fascism", you stop the bleeding by voting against fascism.

Part of the problem(which both libs, and surprisingly/frustratingly, leftists are guilty of) is people treating general elections like the Superbowl...like the ultimate championship game...where we lose everything or win everything. And I think the confusing thing for people is that it's half true. We don't have much, if anything, to gain by voting for neolibs, but we do have a lot to lose by not voting against fascism. But we really do need to stop framing the simple, pragmatic act of "stopping the bleeding" like it's this huge winner-take-all championship event. But, again, this time I find myself generally more sympathetic to folks that are like "fuck it" and can't vote. I mean...I guess as long as they aren't abstaining due to delusional treatment of the elections as some sort of Superbowl, or some other misunderstanding of the situation.

[Cassius Clay]

Also, a lot of leftists(and/or abstainers) do this very frustrating/irrational thing where they simultaneously downplay AND overstate the importance of (and/or our influence over) electoral politics. Do elections matter or not? Stop downplaying the wrong things and overstating the wrong things. Overstating how much power/leverage we have to hold neolib candidates accountable through abstaining, while downplaying consequences of a fascist takeover. Clinton lost and they gave us Biden. What makes you think Biden losing won't make them say "we just need to get more racist"? Maybe they don't even care about winning. Is playing this game with neolibs worth allowing fascists to take over? It fucking sucks to give unconditional support to lesser evil candidates...obviously that won't get us anywhere...but if we are in a situation where we don't have any electoral leverage to hold them meaningfully accountable, and the other option is fascism, I think it's a very stupid thing to pretend we do. We should exercise more rational cynicism.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah... I saw someone make the point that if Biden/Harris loses, they (the Dem establishment and whatnot) probably say it was because they moved too far left. LOL. It'll be hard to figure out whether they'll actually believe it or whether they'll say it out of purely self-interested reasons. And Democratic voters will eat it the fuck up, because apparently they did last time. Or at least all the ones above fifty did.

Although I don't know. Apparently they actively courted Republicans at the convention by literally promising Biden won't go too far left. If Biden somehow loses, and he spent the entire campaign courting Republicans and pissing off everyone to his left, I don't see how even the elites could manage to convince themselves or anyone else that he lost because he went too far left. And maybe it'll learn 'em that courting racist suburban whites and ignoring young people, progressives, Hispanics, and the entire working class is a bad idea. And maybe they'll actually do the opposite of that next time and be what they've been pretending to be again.

Yeah... this is a big ass "maybe". They'll probably just blame Bernie Sanders again.

[Raxivace]

I mean it doesn't matter if the narrative they come up with to deflect criticism away from Biden if he loses is actually coherent, as long as its pithy enough to be endlessly memed to death that's good enough.

[Cassius Clay]

The party will take the wrong lessons from either a win or a loss anyway.

If they win they'll say they were right to say fuck off to progressives. If they lose they'll probably blame progressives anyway. If they suddenly decide to move left and start courting progressives, but lose, they'll obviously blame progressives. I think the only scenario where they actually learn something is if they court leftists and win. Not sure that's happening anytime soon. But I do think there is some pre-election value in threatening to withhold your vote and seeing if they decide to move left(*whispers* but then secretly doing damage control by voting against fascists).

Edit: And all this assumes they even care about winning. Because I think we've seen enough to assume they hate progressives more than they like winning. My ultimate point is that we should be realistic about our leverage.

[Derived Absurdity]

You sound very different from last time we talked about this. A bit angrier and more cynical. Did the 2020 primary red pill you or something?

[Cassius Clay]

I actually feel less angry but I'm definitely more cynical. But I think that just comes from more clarity and understanding of what's going on and what needs to be done. The primary definitely played a part.

[Gendo]

The thing is, unless some evidence of wide-spread voter fraud comes up; then the plurality of people voting in the democratic primary voted for Biden. This tells me that despite the fact that I know easily 10-20 times more Bernie supporters than Biden supporters online; that the online community isn't a good representation of the average American voter. Despite the growing popularity of progressive movements, there must still be a huge number of every day democrats who aren't there, at least not yet.

The sad thing about them courting republicans is that I have no idea if it will work... all you hear from republicans is how Biden and Harris are both extreme radical leftists. I'm pretty sure they would say the same no matter who the democrats nominated or what their policies were.

[Derived Absurdity]

Most Dems voted Biden because they thought he had the best chance of beating Trump; it was not a conscious rejection of progressivism. The overwhelming majority of Dems said they would be enthusiastic if Bernie were the nominee and that they supported progressive policies. They were just convinced Biden was "safer".

So most Dems are "progressive", not moderate, if you take their polling responses seriously. It's just that only a small minority of them are really ideologically disciplined and politically cognizant enough to get on board with a mass non-voting strategy.

[Gendo]

Fair point. It just seems strange that people would think that after what happened in 2016.

For what it's worth, I've always leaned conservative/libertarian and was a big Bush Jr supporter way back in 2004. But since then I've pretty much rejected the "lesser of two evils" argument and voted third party on the principle that the system will just keep getting worse and worse until more people actively reject that system. In 2016, Trump was so bad that I considered going against my principles and voting for Hillary; but didn't. In the 2018 midterms I voted basically all Democrat for the first time in my life, basically on the principle that "Republicans need to have some serious consequences for allowing someone like Trump to lead the party". Unless something changes between now and November, I will be voting for Biden for the same reason... not because I support Biden or his policies, or because he's the lesser of two evils. But because I want Republicans to see that allowing someone like Trump to lead their party will not be stood for.

[Derived Absurdity]

Fair point. It just seems strange that people would think that after what happened in 2016.

Yeah, that's the understatement of the decade right there.

[Cassius Clay]

I don't think any fraud was necessarily committed, but there was a lot of transparent colluding by establishment Dems to keep Bernie out.

[Raxivace]

^I tend to agree with this. I'm not convinced there was anything illegal done to keep Bernie from winning, but man it does seem like the Dems tried way harder to beat him in the primaries than they are against Trump now.

[Derived Absurdity]

That's how much this country's ruling class fears and despises even extremely mild social democracy.

The current Democratic nominee has promised he would veto a universal healthcare bill in the middle of a pandemic and that he would strengthen the police in the middle of an unprecedented wave of protests against police brutality.

His running mate has been seen, on tape, mocking the very idea of investing more in schools and less in jails.

Theses people barely qualify as human. We are ruled by sociopaths.

[Gendo]

No doubt there. My point just was that there must be a whole lot of moderate democrats out there because someone was actually voting for Biden in the primaries.

[Faustus5]

^I tend to agree with this. I'm not convinced there was anything illegal done to keep Bernie from winning, but man it does seem like the Dems tried way harder to beat him in the primaries than they are against Trump now.

The Dem establishment would have preferred Trump over Bernie. You can tell from their behavior, and apparently off the record insiders said as much.

[Derived Absurdity]

First Michael Brooks and now David Graeber, a little over a month apart... depressing. There are so few public leftists who are worth anything that each one's death represents a huge loss. Michael Brooks' in particular was wrenching, since he was so young and intelligent and was just starting to get big. And one of his big things was global proletarian solidarity, which almost no one else gives a fuck about.

Graeber was also an intelligent and perceptive voice on the left. Out of all of his books I've only read his two most recent, but I found them very interesting and incisive. I've also read several of his general and academic articles and many of them shaped my thinking in several important ways. He was a very lucid and clear writer and thinker, well worth reading for the most part IMO. A big loss.

[Derived Absurdity]

lmao

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[Raxivace]

lmao

https://twitter.com/rabrowne75/status/1 ... 5806992384" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Man if there was ever a time for that gif of Emperor Palpatine saying "Ironic", this is it.

[Derived Absurdity]

I'm having a hard time dealing with this whole thing about Trump knowing how bad it was back in February and then not telling the public about it. He outright told Bob Woodward that he knew it was deadly and that it was deadlier than the flu, and that it was airborne, and then he spent the next several months yelling that it was a Democratic hoax and that you don't need to socially distance and that you shouldn't wear masks and generally doing everything he could to spread it as far as possible.

He is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. See, I previously thought it was willful denial that made him think the virus wasn't a big deal. (Nothing like this could happen on MY watch, or something like that.) But, no, he knew it was murderous, deadly, from the beginning. And for months he kept saying that it didn't even exist.

In an alternate country, this would be beyond career-shattering. This would be immediate impeachment, removal from office, imprisonment for mass murder, the entire country would rise in revolt against him, his name would forever be considered a curse word and insult, and so on.

Yesterday, I overheard, for only a few seconds, a news clip of some anchor lady interviewing a (presumably Republican) congressman about this. I heard her play the Woodward clips, and then she relayed how Trump pretended it was all a hoax, and then asked him some incredibly weak question like, "Don't you think he was misleading the public?" And the congressman replied, "Well, you know I'm not a fan of these gotcha-type books - " and then I left and didn't really think about it.

But now I can't get that clip out of my mind. This guy was informed, point-blank, that the President basically murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians. He heard the audio. And he just blithely dismissed it. And I didn't even have a reaction at the time. I just kind of laughed at the clip and walked away, didn't think anything of it. It didn't even register.

This is where we're at now. We are now at a point where the President can kill via virus hundreds of thousands of citizens, out of a combination of malicious incompetence, willful self-delusion, and targeted sociopathy, and it makes a blip in the news cycle, and then members of his party can just blithely go on camera and casually defend it and dismiss it without truly worrying about being beheaded or even voted out, and his approval rating will go down by a few points at most if it goes down at all, and his opponent is only up by seven or eight points.

I honestly think this marks some sort of event horizon for this country. Rock bottom. How do you salvage this? How can anything after this matter, if this doesn't? I can't even be bothered to be worked up about anything political after this. This country is beyond depraved, and nothing matters.

[Cassius Clay]

1) Michael Brooks' "Nation-of-Islam-Obama" and "Bernie-or-bust-Bill-Clinton" are two of the funniest character-impressions I've ever scene. Such a smart/funny dude. And he was so well-read and so good and putting everything in historical context. What a tragic loss.

2) I'm not sure why people are surprised that Trump knew/lied about the virus. A lot of us have been saying since 2015 that the guy seems to have some kind of personality disorder and doesn't believe in anything, and therefore could potentially be the most catastrophic President we could ever have. I guess people thought that was hyperbole.

He will literally do/say anything it takes to protect his interests. The funny thing is that he's also held hostage by his insane base, so he has to show support for any crazy thing they believe. These motherfuckers have started saying antifa/blm caused the wildfires on the west coast. Trump is gonna be repeating that shit very soon.

[Faustus5]

1) Michael Brooks' "Nation-of-Islam-Obama" and "Bernie-or-bust-Bill-Clinton" are two of the funniest character-impressions I've ever scene.

Don't forget right wing Mandela!

[Derived Absurdity]

I didn't say I was surprised, I said the fact that we have incontrovertible proof that the POTUS intentionally murdered hundreds of thousands of citizens and it barely registers to most people and that elected officials can just casually dismiss it on television marks some sort of moral tipping point from which we will never recover.

Trump's actions don't surprise me, everyone else's reactions do. It's unbelievable that we've all greeted the fact of the POTUS intentionally spreading the worst virus in over a century with a collective shrug.

[Gendo]

Literally the one time Trump was telling the truth:

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters". This has been proven true time and time again.

[Derived Absurdity]

Oh, and I almost forgot that Donald Trump literally killed Herman Cain and it was news for, like, a day.

I don't know. I guess I need to hone my nihilism and apathy, apparently, to fit in with the rest of this country. I still think things matter, and they clearly don't.

[Cassius Clay]

1) Michael Brooks' "Nation-of-Islam-Obama" and "Bernie-or-bust-Bill-Clinton" are two of the funniest character-impressions I've ever scene.

Don't forget right wing Mandela!

Yep. And the origins of characters like this and "anti-sjw MLK" are part of what make them so funny.

[Cassius Clay]

I didn't say I was surprised, I said the fact that we have incontrovertible proof that the POTUS intentionally murdered hundreds of thousands of citizens and it barely registers to most people and that elected officials can just casually dismiss it on television marks some sort of moral tipping point from which we will never recover.

Trump's actions don't surprise me, everyone else's reactions do. It's unbelievable that we've all greeted the fact of the POTUS intentionally spreading the worst virus in over a century with a collective shrug.

For me, there is no meaningful difference between his "willful denial" of the danger and his intentional lying. That's why it's not personally registering as something extra in the revelation that he was completely aware...and I assume that's true for many. I feel like I've always known that, and I felt everybody(even his supporters) already knew that on some level. Because we all know that he didn't care about people dying either way as long as downplaying the virus was useful to him. To think that his downplaying the danger, if it was willful ignorance, was motivated by him thinking "not on my watch" was actually giving him far too much credit imo. Plus I've been hearing for months that his whole family have been getting tested everyday...so they privately have been taking it very seriously when it comes to their own health.

His supporters don't surprise me either(neither regular conservatives nor establishment) because they've been shamelessly supportive of him for 5 years now. And mainstream media's reaction doesn't surprise because they've never really known how to handle Trump...or how to push back...or they just don't care. We've been in this hell for a while...I really don't get what's new. I remember when I thought the "grab them by the pussy" tape was gonna destroy him. Lol what a sweet summer child I was.

[Cassius Clay]

Let me clarify something: I'm not endorsing apathy or anything like that. What I'm saying is we should have been enraged/shocked a long time ago. The incredulity you're expressing shouldn't be new. But, even if it is, welcome to the party.

[Raxivace]

Trump is so shameless of a person that it really doesn't matter what scandal you throw at him. I mean just off of the the top of my head there's been the tape, Obama birther nonsense, the Muslim ban, "good people on both sides", the kids in cages, the fucking Wall, "I prefer to honor the soldiers that weren't captured", the 200,000 deaths from coronavirus etc. Every time we think some new "Gotcha" will get him, but it of course doesn't.

Like we shouldn't forget these things, they do matter. We should never get to a point where his legacy is whitewashed the way Bush's has recently been. I'm just not sure there's any more real way to deal with him than voting him out in November- which makes everything about the Democrat's ticket all the more frustrating to me but we talked about that already.

Apathy is hard to beat, and figures like Trump want the populace to be apathetic. Living your life with whatever moral integrity you can find is difficult and the harder path to choose than giving in to apathy- if it wasn't, the world would be a very different place with a very different history. Maybe this is just childish idealism speaking, but I think all of the current horseshit going on right now makes it all the more important to not give in and do what you can- even if all you can is simple act of wearing a mask when out in public right now, or not forgetting the crimes of those in power and so on. Maybe one day we'll be in a better position to do something more, but we're not there yet.

Its hard, but don't give up.

[Cassius Clay]

A funny thing about all this is that I believe Trump is actually very easy to manipulate if you stroke his ego. Since he believes in nothing, he will do/support whatever it is you want if you're nice to him. Look at what Kim Kardashian was able to do with the lady she helped free from prison. Look at how one minute he's threatening Kim Jong Un, next thing you know they're writing each other love letters. His fanatics have known this for a long time, and he's scared of disappointing them.

I bet you we could get him to say nice thing about antifa if "antifa" started talking about how cool and awesome he is.

[Derived Absurdity]

Let me clarify something: I'm not endorsing apathy or anything like that. What I'm saying is we should have been enraged/shocked a long time ago. The incredulity you're expressing shouldn't be new. But, even if it is, welcome to the party.

I've been enraged/shocked by this asshole for going on ten years now. I shouldn't be incredulous by anything at this point.

But I guess listening to those tapes, and that guy on the news, made it hit me all at once. The POTUS just let hundreds of thousands of citizens die (not to mention all the survivors who are going to suffer for the rest of their lives), he did all he could to help an extremely dangerous virus spread as far as it could, and... we all just kind of shrugged. Even I just kind of shrugged at first. Like we need to step back from The Endless Trump Show a bit and put things into perspective. It seems obvious to me that this is several orders of magnitude worse than anything he's done so far, or anything any previous President has ever done. Like, all of Nixon's, Bush Jr's, Clinton's, and Reagan's bullshit put together doesn't amount to a tiny fraction of this.

I'm just not seeing the appropriate level of outrage, is all. I know that The Endless Trump Show has warped our perspective a bit, I know some things that used to matter just don't anymore, I know there's no fully righting this ship and whatever, but this thing in particular should still shock us back to reality. Because if this doesn't matter, I don't see how anything else could.

[Derived Absurdity]

And, again, in case it needs to be said, it's not Trump himself I'm shocked by. It was incredibly easy to tell exactly what kind of person he was over a decade ago; it's not like he tried to hide it. Nothing about his Presidency has been in any way unexpected.

But just because it's not surprising doesn't mean it's not important.

[phe_de]

"Herd mentality."

[Cassius Clay]

If you're not surprised by anything Trump does at this point, why should anyone else be? The only people that are constantly surprised by Trumps depravity are fools and liars.

I was already beyond enraged about the death toll back when it was at like 20,000... still in the beginning stages, while conservatives were still downplaying it... while we were discovering that poor black people were most affected. Everyone should have been. Trump admitting that he's always known at 200, 000 doesn't change shit. And honestly at that point you start getting numb.

[Gendo]

As recent as TODAY Trump is out there Tweeting that COVID is just like the flu, that the flu sometimes kills 100,000 Americans, and that we've leaned to live with that, so we just need to learn to live with COVID also.

The man is literally ON TAPE saying that he knows it is deadlier than even the worst flus. ON TAPE declaring that he "likes to play it down". And here he is, playing it down, literally doing exactly what he said he plans to do. And people don't think he's playing it down.