- February 9th, 2020, 9:43 pm
#595651
For reference, this article is three years old.
This line of questioning is reprehensible. They would literally run a week-long news cycle if a conservative did this to someone.
It is amazing to me that people defend his behavior as fundamentally American. His honeymoon in Soviet Russia not withstanding, he has supported SWP presidential candidates platformed on a dismantled military and nationalized industry. And if we are willing to observe the past, Castro, Mandela, and even Ho Chi Minh all feigned democratic ideals to gain influence and power before ”coming out.”
That said, I think he is the least electable candidate. I hope he is the nominee and we can get a true test of the Socialist/Communist side of the democratic party against Trump. Trump would have been a democratic candidate earlier in my life. He is absolutely a moderate candidate when it comes to actual policy. His state of the union hinged on policies around health care and infrastructure reform.
At the risk of sounding super right-wing, I do think we can objectively look at things like Trump Derangement Syndrome and see that there is an air in the democratic party if ”orange man bad.”
I remember hearing all kinds of fear-mongering from the highest level democrats. That gays and minorities would be quarantined, segregation was just around the corner, that Trump had a blood lust for war and the terror that him having nuclear launch codes caused.
I entered the workforce in 2010. I served my entire enlistment during the previous administration and saw late paychecks, sequestered civilian counterparts, 60 year low pay raises, and a top down military culture designed around force reduction. Even though I was young, I was maxing out my IRA and watching that money disappear as it went in. I finished four years with less than a third in retirement of what I invested. I watched commanders parade their rate of force reduction as justification for promotion.
Since I separated it couldn't be more different. My friends that stayed in noted the greatest change in culture. Evaluations changed. Promotions changed. My retirement has doubled in the last three years. I’m observing record low unemployment for all groups of people. Tensions with NK and Iran are down. Working in sales, I've seen a shift in customers thinking ”America First” when presented with Asian import products versus domestic products. Some have even noted that even though the US price is higher, the price is stable and predictable. And one of the coolest shifts is seeing people now have a presupposition that American products and engineered and manufactured on equivalent status to German products.
American Exceptionalism isn't a bad thing. There's a reason so many people come here to fulfill their dreams. I'm not going to vote against Trump. I don't like the presentation and I certainly don't appreciate the appearance of wrongdoing. But there is a mountain of evidence that Trump is a good president.
That said, and I know this is a mile-long post, there are issues I'm trying to understand better. They weren't as Polarized as I thought growing up. Or maybe they are and it just takes so long to get from one to the other, it's hard to tell the difference.
Sorry for the novel. It wasn't really a preplanned thought. I just started typing and followed it. I guess it's just a long way to say, everyone lied(or was at least just wrong) about what a Trump presidency would look like except for Trump himself. If I can get four more years without another war, a happy retirement account, and the wage growth that follows this kind of unemployment, sign me up. The only thing that could make it better is some fiscal responsibility.