crazy cloud posted:

I'm the EAT AGAIN, MAKE AMERICA

The Saurus posted:

The frightened, childish response of a liberal threatened by opinions that are deemed wrongthink in their circles.

LungBrothers posted:

Carl Killer Miller posted:

Yeah, I'm a cowering baby because I don't think empathy has a lot to do with Trump's interests and voters. It's been on like every page of this thread that wasn't cluttered by shitposting idiots that his campaign is driven by a combination of pure dislike for the rest of the field, and a lot of voter apathy.

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

So I read somewhere today that Trump believes that global warming is some kind of Chinese conspiracy? Is that an actual thing he believes, or is that pandering to the primary voters? I read it on a page that was basically "list of reasons why trump is literally the antichrist" so I am taking it with a grain of salt.

Donald Trump posted:

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

-Troika- posted:

lol Slashdot is mad because Twitter won't ban Trump

Platystemon posted:

Donald Trump may technically be in violation of Twitter’s terms of service, but let’s face it, they don’t enforce it that zealously. The average Joe would not be banned for it.

If they ban Trump, it’s precisely because he’s not an average Joe and can’t fly under the radar.

quote:

January 29, 2016

Why Does Twitter Refuse to Shut Down Donald Trump?
A reporter asked me a provocative question some days ago: "Why do you think Twitter hasn't enforced their own Terms of Service rules when it comes to Donald Trump?"

I didn't have an immediate answer. I told him I'd look into this, think about it, and get back to him.

So I've been researching this in considerable depth.

I found that any reasonable analysis of the situation suggests that Trump should have been closed down on Twitter long ago.

To be sure, I don't regularly follow Trump on Twitter, just as I don't frequent websites devoted to close-up photos of diarrhea.

Certainly I do hear about some of his tweets from time to time, when they leak onto other social media or when the press tries to get more clicks from displaying them on cable news and such (ah, perhaps our first clue to the mystery!).

Exploring an archive of even his relatively recent Twitter activity -- which instantly reminded me somehow of a vile bully named Sheldon I knew back in elementary school -- it was startling what a hateful, deceitful spew of apparent lies and direct attacks that Trump has been leveraging Twitter to deliver -- with his enormous following on Twitter, presumably to Twitter's financial benefit as well (another clue!).

It's quite a Twitter stream Trump has going there -- if you're into gawking at gruesome highway wrecks, that is. Onslaughts against individuals. Similar attacks against organizations, even against entire races. White supremacist propaganda. On and on and on. Try retrospectively reading Donald's tweets without feeling the need to vomit -- virtually impossible if you're a socialized human being and not someone raised by hyenas.

Yet as long as a Tweet isn't actually illegal (irrespective of Trump's creepy, sexualized comments about his own daughter) Twitter is not actually obligated to take any action against anyone.

But Twitter is certainly obligated to apply the rules that they do have in an evenhanded manner. And looking back over the collection I have of complaints from Twitter users who feel Twitter terminated their accounts inappropriately -- even for a single comment that was interpreted to be disrespectful in some way -- it would appear that Twitter is coddling Trump in a unique manner indeed.

A reading of the Twitter content Terms of Service suggests at least three categories relating to hate speech and harassment that should apply to Trump (but apparently haven't been applied), but seem to have been rigorously enforced against other, ordinary users on a hair-trigger basis.

Are there special exceptions in the Twitter ToS for obnoxious billionaires running for the presidency? Or for tweets where the individuals, organizations, or others targeted by those tweets did not formally complain to Twitter?

No matter how deeply you study those Terms of Service, you won't find such exceptions.

But wait! Perhaps there's an exception if you're only retweeting other users' material? After all, Trump's most popular excuse for his most offensive tweets seems to be that he was "only retweeting someone else."

Nope, I can't find an exception for that, either. You retweet someone else's tweet, you own that content just as if it was your tweet originally.

The conclusion appears inescapable. Twitter apparently has voluntarily chosen to "look the other way" while Donald Trump spews forth a trolling stream of hate and other abuses that would cause any average Twitter user to be terminated in a heartbeat.

There's always room to argue the propriety or desirability of any given social media content terms of service -- or the policy precepts through which they are applied.

It is also utterly clear that if such rules are not applied to everyone with the same vigor, particularly when there's an appearance of profiting by making exceptions for particular individuals, the moral authority on which those rules are presumably based is decimated, pointless, and becomes a mere fiction.

In other words, we thought that Twitter was far more ethical than Donald Trump.

Apparently, that assumption is in error.

--Lauren--
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.

quote:

About 15 years ago, I said something nasty on CNN about Donald Trump’s hair. I can’t now remember the context, assuming there was one. In any case, Trump saw it and left a message the next day.

“It’s true you have better hair than I do,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “But I get more pussy than you do.” Click.

At the time, I’d never met Trump and I remember feeling amused but also surprised he’d say something like that. Now the pattern seems entirely familiar. The message had all the hallmarks of a Trump attack: shocking, vulgar and indisputably true.

Not everyone finds it funny. On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump. The Democrats assume he’s a bigot, pandering to the morons out there in the great dark space between Georgetown and Brentwood. The Republicans (those relatively few who live here) fully agree with that assessment, and they hate him even more. They sense Trump is a threat to them personally, to their legitimacy and their livelihoods. Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park.



I understand it of course. And, except in those moments when the self-righteous silliness of rich people overwhelms me and I feel like moving to Maine, I can see their points, some of them anyway. Trump might not be my first choice for president. I’m not even convinced he really wants the job. He’s smart enough to know it would be tough for him to govern.
But just because Trump is an imperfect candidate doesn’t mean his candidacy can’t be instructive. Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch carefully.

Here’s some of what they might learn:

He Exists Because You Failed

American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.

Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.

Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents “an existential threat to conservatism.”

Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.

It turns out the GOP wasn’t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.

On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn’t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it’s hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don’t go to public school. You don’t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It’s all good.

Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn’t said anything especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals — these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the “ghost of George Wallace” that a Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder their voters are rebelling.

Truth Is Not Only A Defense, It’s Thrilling

When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn’t been long. That’s not just a talking point about political correctness. It’s the central problem with our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t have the words to describe it. You can’t even think about it clearly.

This depressing fact made Trump’s political career. In a country where almost everyone in public life lies reflexively, it’s thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe he’s wrong. It’s especially exciting when you suspect he’s right.

A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven’t assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed. What’s our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino—attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that was the plan.

Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country.
Evangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch this: How could they be that dumb? He’s so obviously faking it.

They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the Nicene Creed, () or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What they’re looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How’d that work out for Christians, here and in Iraq?

-Troika- posted:

lol Slashdot is mad because Twitter won't ban Trump

Donald Trump posted:

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

Donald Trump posted:

But think of it. So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the — a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air and I want clean water. That’s my global — I want clean, clean crystal water and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don’t have to destroy our businesses, we don’t have to destroy our — And by the way, China isn’t abiding by anything. They’re buying all of our coal; we can’t use coal anymore essentially. They’re buying our coal and they’re using it. Now when you talk about the planet, it’s so big out there — we’re here, they’re there, it’s like they’re our next door neighbor, right, in terms of the universe. Miss Universe, by the way, I made a great deal when I sold — oh did I get rich.

Donald Trump posted:

But think of it. So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the — a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air and I want clean water. That’s my global — I want clean, clean crystal water and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don’t have to destroy our businesses, we don’t have to destroy our — And by the way, China isn’t abiding by anything. They’re buying all of our coal; we can’t use coal anymore essentially. They’re buying our coal and they’re using it. Now when you talk about the planet, it’s so big out there — we’re here, they’re there, it’s like they’re our next door neighbor, right, in terms of the universe. Miss Universe, by the way, I made a great deal when I sold — oh did I get rich.

bhlaab posted:

its like I'm looking into americas eyes and its dead

Donald Trump posted:

China's excavated — massive, massive — take a look, massive. The biggest excavation. They are ripping the hell out of that ocean. They are ripping it and they are taking their dirt and they are putting it — and they’re building air fields and they’re building forts. We couldn’t do it because, just like I said for the EPA. Legitimately, they could not get an environmental impact statement. Now, that’s probably not the only reason it didn’t happen. I heard their costs were too high. With me, that’s easy. You know, I’m doing the old post office in DC. I’m under budget, I’m ahead of schedule. Hey, look at the campaign. Jeb's at $89 million and he’s down at the bottom. I’m nothing and I’m at the top. It’s the same thing, OK?

bhlaab posted:

stop just stop
this is happening just stop memeing please

its like I'm looking into americas eyes and its dead

Jewel Repetition posted:

You do NOT tell Donald J. Trump what to do.

Jewel Repetition posted:

All of our love for Trump (ironic or otherwise), all of our repetition of his talking points, all our glee at what he's doing to the Republican party, all our memes... they've reached critical mass, and in doing so, coalesced into something. Something yooge.

Patman posted:

God I wish Jeb would try to do that. He'd do his hop-skip all the way to the stage.

Donald Trump posted:

China's excavated — massive, massive — take a look, massive. The biggest excavation. They are ripping the hell out of that ocean. They are ripping it and they are taking their dirt and they are putting it — and they’re building air fields and they’re building forts. We couldn’t do it because, just like I said for the EPA. Legitimately, they could not get an environmental impact statement. Now, that’s probably not the only reason it didn’t happen. I heard their costs were too high. With me, that’s easy. You know, I’m doing the old post office in DC. I’m under budget, I’m ahead of schedule. Hey, look at the campaign. Jeb's at $89 million and he’s down at the bottom. I’m nothing and I’m at the top. It’s the same thing, OK?

Dahn posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8HRcTawPjs
How do you compete with this?

Dahn posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8HRcTawPjs

How do you compete with this?

Dahn posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8HRcTawPjs

How do you compete with this?

Dahn posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8HRcTawPjs

How do you compete with this?

Donald Trump posted:

But think of it. So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the — a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air and I want clean water. That’s my global — I want clean, clean crystal water and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don’t have to destroy our businesses, we don’t have to destroy our — And by the way, China isn’t abiding by anything. They’re buying all of our coal; we can’t use coal anymore essentially. They’re buying our coal and they’re using it. Now when you talk about the planet, it’s so big out there — we’re here, they’re there, it’s like they’re our next door neighbor, right, in terms of the universe. Miss Universe, by the way, I made a great deal when I sold — oh did I get rich.

Oiled and Ready posted:

Here's how he can pivot this:

It may be real, or not, frankly doesn't matter. The chinese do nothing and fund groups to make Americans waste money trying to stop it. This kills our economy and only buys us a few years until China floods the planet anyway.

I'm for clean air and clean water. I'll also pressure China to stop polluting, but they have to take steps first. They've been ripping us for too long and we've proven we can cut emissions - they NEVER have!


Something in that template is widely appealing and not really a backpedal.