Jump to content

Say something good about the Trump presidency. I’m serious.


Recommended Posts

24 minutes ago, Orca of Peace said:

most Trump haters, if not all, will favor his sanctions on Iran. I don't think there is a single person on Surly who will oppose that Trump policy, meaning they support it as a "good" 

From the Venezuela thread....

50 minutes ago, Orca of Peace said:

didn't work for the Iraqi people.  Sanctions are always bad for the general population and is a terribly obtuse and inhumane method to conduct foreign policy.  

Can't figure out if this dude is trolling or has just attained Swam levels of retardation. 

Edited by Blotto
  • Like 3
  • Haha 1
  • Fuck You 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Blotto said:

From the Venezuela thread....

Can't figure out if this dude is trolling or has just attained Swam levels of retardation. 

debate it, instead of this useless fluff. 

1. do you support Trump's Iran sanctions?

2. Sanctions are inhumane and ineffective. Don't be so ignorant to ignore the suffering of the Iraqi people under the sanctions regime. 

let's see how you respond. 

Edited by Orca of Peace
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...
On 4/26/2018 at 1:00 PM, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I expect super sarcasm, but I am interested to see if people see any positives. 

 

Me: he doesn’t seem to be as much interventionist/War hawky as our last many many presidents and how I expect Hillary would be.  We will see how Bolton influences.  If we look back at the end of his term and see we aren’t marching on every country that gives us the stink eye, that’ll be something. 

 

 

Well, cross him off then.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used to think "George W Bush is the dumbest motherfucker that ever has or ever will hold the office of President of the United States." Against all odds, Dotard has proven that way of thinking to be completely false. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Progressive activism and youth engagement have both seen surges. It shouldn't have taken this though. That's about the only good thing directly attributable. Job market/economy was already very strong, so that one doesn't really mean anything. Especially when he is doing his best to undermine it.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

trump would've probably been the perfect president.  in 1840 or so.

no twitter.  no fox news.  very little press coverage on his actual personality.  no real foreign powers to deal with or foreign leaders to fall in love with.  not many federal agencies to micromanage or dismantle.  racism is totally ok.  sexism is totally ok.  corruption is commonplace.  philandering is expected.  great self-promoter, so he probably wins twice.

of course, there's also no secret service, so he also probably gets whacked.  win-win.

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’ve gone from hoping that some of his policies might be worthwhile early in his Presidency to realizing he is an absolute disaster. Every single policy issue has been fumbled, not because of the general idea but because of his infantile, ridiculous approach to the issues.

1. North Korea - at first the novel approach seemed interesting until it became clear that he just wanted photo ops and to be seen trying to do something. Total farce.

2. Tax cut - wrong structure that harmed the middle class and ballooned the deficit.

3. China Trade - its all hat no cattle.

4. NAFTA - see #3.

5. Pulling troops from Afghanistan and Syria - not necessarily a bad idea but handled like a moron.

6. Healthcare - nada.

7. EPA - terrible appointment and massive over-rotation to the objectively bad policy.

8. Immigration - he’s accomplished nothing, and even worse he’s polarized the country over a stupid wall when he could have been working on reasonable compromises that made sense.

9. Trade - see #3.

10. Supreme Court Appointment - too conservative, ie Stone Age mentality.

11. Israel - unabashed pandering, rather than objective recognition of the rights of Palestinians.

12. Iran - no observable value at this point to blowing up the agreement. Maybe something comes out of it but I highly doubt it given the moron’s track record.

13. Deficit - worst ever.

14. Trade deficit - terrible.

15. Country Unity - horrific.

16. Maturity - non existent.

17. Integrity - none. He lies every single day, multiple times a day.

18. Military Transexual Policy - he could have addressed the issue of using the military health benefits as a means for free sex changes differently, rather than just banning them all. For example, military doesn’t pay for sex change treatments. If these folks want to be warriors for our country, we should support them.

19. Education - appointed an absolute idiot. There might be some merit to innovative private school structures and school choice, but unqualified morons can’t create a sensible policy and that’s who he put in charge.

20. Energy - Drill baby drill, with zero thought to the environmental aspects of the policy.

I honestly can’t think of one single thing he’s done successfully. It’s just a giant shell game that will eventually come crashing down once the over-stimulus of excess spending to prop up the economy eventually fails.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I hate the motherfucker.  And I don’t really like any of his policies.  I believe in remaining loyal to Israel, which he’s done.  
 

Even if you’re not a Trumpkin, and just a moderate Republican, there are 2 accomplishments his base will anchor to:

Tax cut 

Conservative judges

 

Any claims he makes for credit for improvement in the economy, healthcare, education, infrastructure, immigration reform, trade, dealing with enemies, dealing with non-Israel allies, or energy...are lies.
 

He’s easily the most divisive president in the last 100 years, presiding over the most tumultuous time in our country since the Civil War.  He fucking sucks.

Edited by Snake Diggity
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Snake Diggity said:

the most tumultuous time in our country since the Civil War.

i think that is his fault too.  the protests wouldn't be nearly as bad if there was some belief that the people at the top were somewhat sympathetic to this issue.  you'd just have coronavirus -- not any more important than say, cuban missile crisis, 9/11, oil crisis, 2008 financial crisis, the entirety of the 1960s.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

In the spirit of the thread title, I appreciate his attempts to shift the dialogue around China and our relationship with them. Now of course his execution has been absolute dog shit because he's an incompetent. But he's the first president in awhile that has stopped tap-dancing around China's market manipulation, IP theft, etc. And it's forced the rest of the government and even the Democrats to stop pussyfooting around and actual adopt some rhetoric calling China out for their crap. It might be the only positive he leaves behind in a wake of awfulness and failure. 

If we can get a competent president that actually stands up to China on trade and IP theft and, unlike Trump, actually cares about the human rights side of things too, that would be good by me.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The next President does need to stand up to China but unlike Trump, he or she needs to do it smartly. Like it or not, we're dependent on China because we allowed corporations to be reliant on China for cheap labor because we wanted maximum profits and cheap goods. All Trump succeeded in doing by trying to play strong man to China was jack up the cost of goods and help kill our exports. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, mdmost said:

The next President does need to stand up to China but unlike Trump, he or she needs to do it smartly. 

Exactly. That's my hope. Trump opened the can of worms now let's get someone decent and competent in there to actually take some measured and smart action on it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It might just be me getting older (53), but I have never been more politically engaged in my life.  To be honest, I am not really doing anything more than just keeping abreast of issues, voting at every available chance, and using my newly gained knowledge to "push back" on false (mostly conservative) talking points when I encounter them.

Even though I cannot stand this administration and its policies, I am far more familiar with Trump's cabinet than I ever was with any other administration.

Political engagement  feels pretty empowering for me since I have been able to move on from palace intrigue type stuff to looking at actual policy which connects you with those that have different points of view since you are generally in agreement with the desired outcome but differ on the means to get there.  Policy discussion also weeds out those concerned only with emotional wedge issues or personalities. 

This next point remains to be seen, but I think Trump might be the spark that gets the youth of this country engaged politically so that they will be less fucked over in the coming decades than they otherwise would have been.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

In the spirit of the thread title, I appreciate his attempts to shift the dialogue around China and our relationship with them. Now of course his execution has been absolute dog shit because he's an incompetent. But he's the first president in awhile that has stopped tap-dancing around China's market manipulation, IP theft, etc. And it's forced the rest of the government and even the Democrats to stop pussyfooting around and actual adopt some rhetoric calling China out for their crap. It might be the only positive he leaves behind in a wake of awfulness and failure. 

If we can get a competent president that actually stands up to China on trade and IP theft and, unlike Trump, actually cares about the human rights side of things too, that would be good by me.

 

8 minutes ago, mdmost said:

The next President does need to stand up to China but unlike Trump, he or she needs to do it smartly. Like it or not, we're dependent on China because we allowed corporations to be reliant on China for cheap labor because we wanted maximum profits and cheap goods. All Trump succeeded in doing by trying to play strong man to China was jack up the cost of goods and help kill our exports. 

There are big ideas Trump has that I agree with or don’t object to.  This is one.  Extricating ourselves from foreign entanglements is another.  But it’s at the operational level where he fails miserably.  It takes more than a tweet to address complicated problems and you can wind up in a much worse position with a poor strategy  or no strategy at all in many cases with Trump.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Goredho said:

 

There are big ideas Trump has that I agree with or don’t object to.  This is one.  Extricating ourselves from foreign entanglements is another.  But it’s at the operational level where he fails miserably.  It takes more than a tweet to address complicated problems and you can wind up in a much worse position with a poor strategy  or no strategy at all in many cases with Trump.

I know you’re saying Trump ultimately failed these policies with poor execution, but I argue he never actually supports those things. 
 

Supporting China in establishing concentration camps to round up, imprison, and execute minorities is a funny way of standing up to them - it also fucks 2 centuries of reputation we built supporting religious freedom. 
 

Also Trump’s veto to keep US involved in the Yemeni Civil War isn’t exactly ending foreign entanglements. Ignore the “US troops in Afghanistan home by Christmas” tweets and look at real actions by this administration. Even philosophically the policies you cite aren’t actual goals advanced by this administration 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do struggle to come up with anything that I think is good, which makes me concerned I’m in an information bubble.  But I do like that we haven’t started any more wars, and I like drawing down troops abroad.  I think the national mood on things like drug enforcement has changed for the better, and Trump hasn’t gotten in the way of that. 
 

There are some things that potentially could have been good but were so screwed up from the outside that it’s hard to get any sort of positive angle on it. I think it’s good to have different discussions on immigration than what we’ve had for the previous 25 years because I think that system entirely is broken. Of course Trump picked the worst possible way to go about that, being only racist, wasteful, thoughtless about about WHY certain immigration should/should not be deemed illegal,  and making it a halfwitted vanity project on the one angle that was almost certain to NOT substantially curb illegal immigration.
 

This is contrary to the spirit of this thread because it’s a backhanded compliment, but I think the future looks a lot different now.  Once people start voting, they don’t stop.  If millennials get as engaged as it looks like they are going to, we will have an entirely different outlook on life and government far earlier than we would have otherwise. The average age of a voter might drop by a decade this year. That could have real affects — for the better imo. 

Edited by BehoId, The Underminer!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, thepop said:

It revealed the portion of the population who are shitty and should be avoided.

It did remind us vividly that we had a latent moron problem.

It's probably important from here on in to have a strategery to deal with the morons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the general idea of getting rid of regulations.  Self imposed rules like "For every new regulation, we need to get rid of two or three".

The problem is, I only want us to get rid of bad regulations, or regulations that are duplicative or the cost clearly outweigh the benefits.  The failure to correctly value environmental regulations is criminal with this administration. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...