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Thread: Donald Trump is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for the next POTUS [Copperknickers II vs Elfdude]

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    Copperknickers II's Avatar quaeri, si sapis
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    Default Donald Trump is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for the next POTUS [Copperknickers II vs Elfdude]

    Apologies for the delay, but here goes: I posted the following motion in the Fight Club Challenge thread: Donald Trump is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for the next POTUS. Elfdude graciously lifted the gauntlet I threw down.

    Elfdude and I have agreed some limited groundrules for this debate. Nothing too fancy:

    • osts should consist of a series of separate points. The debate will consist of these points being put, and then dissected individually by the opponent, and vice versa.
    • Each point should be responded to, points not responded to will be viewed as a concession, if you've already responded to something be sure to mention it.
    • Every point which does not have a credible response will result in 1 pt.
    • Responses can be dismissed via standard appeals to fallacies unless someone can show good reason why a fallacy doesn't apply.


    The points will be added up at the end, but will be advisory only, let's see how things pan out.

    Full disclosure: I am arguing Devil's advocate here to some extent, although I thank my lucky stars that as a Brit I don't have to make the choice between Trump and Clinton (I'd probably choose option 3, emigration to Canada). Anyway..

    Preamble


    Donald Trump has shocked the world with his meteoric rise to the candidacy of the Republican party, and the world will be watching in November as the USA decides whether to entrust him with the presidency of the world's only superpower. He has been accused of polarisation, misrepresentation, aggression and even racism, and his primary policies are vague at best, and barefaced lies at worst. However, he has risen to power on the back of a wave of resentment of many ordinary Americans at what they see as the corporate and financial elite's strangulation of mainstream American politics and exploitation of ordinary American people. They feel furthermore that this has led to a decline in their living standards, to a lack of strong leadership, and to a general reduction of America's status in the world. But I would argue, despite the arguably populist rhetoric Trump employs, and the real questions about his honesty and integrity, as well as his rather colourful personal life, that he represents someone who could offer a genuine sea change in American politics, both domestically and abroad, and who might provide a way of averting a coming catastrophe of global economics and geopolitics.


    1. Reversing an unethical policy of globalisation by the backdoor, and building a better Latin America and a more united US

    First off, we can pretty much forget the great wall of Mexico which is obviously , but I think we might see a genuine push in a Trump presidency to deport many illegal immigrants and do something towards securing the border. Now he may not be doing this for entirely the right reasons, but still, there can only be one effect of this: improving the rights of Mexicans in the USA by ensuring that more and more of them are officially recognised and on the radar (and not undercutting wages of native-born Americans, as there is some justification for believing they do), and forcing the region to face up to the fact that the current situation in Central America is not sustainable: right now America is watching its Southern neighbours bleed slowly to death, meanwhile it is collecting the blood and drinking it in. Perhaps America does need immigration, but it does not need unregistered illegal immigrants falling through the cracks and turning California and New Mexico into third world countries (America's biggest internal security risk after all is not even Islamic terrorism, it's Hispanic drug gangs such as MS13, and a proper attempt at securing the border and not allowing people to slip throught the cracks will help that too).

    The current situation benefits nobody: not Americans, and not Latinos either. It just means Mexico will continue to be a drug-addled warzone and an underclass of Latinos (Democrat voters, for the most part) will form that will have all the same problems we see in the black community. The Democrats turn a blind eye to this problem, and Donald Trump will at least make more of an effort to combat it than Hillary would. Perhaps his protectionist policies will damage the economy a little, but let's not forget that Hillary is also something of a protectionist. And so Trump's contribution will be to at least cut levels of illegal migration, perhaps have some kind of an amnesty, and in fact ultimately end up helping both immigrants and their countries in the long term by forcing a change.


    2. Letting the world's wounds heal

    It's pretty well known in foreign policy circles that Hillary Clinton is not so much a hawk, as a peregrine falcon. By which I mean, she is an advocate of a new age of American militarism. The consequences of this for the world are perhaps the most important thing to come out of this election from my position as a non-American. The fact is, the Middle East right now has gone from being a powder keg to being a fully fledged inferno. Syria is hell on earth, Turkey is spiralling into the void, Palestine is likely to get another hammering from Israel in due course, Islamic State is proving more of a tangible threat to the security of Western countries than Al-Qaeda ever was, and the Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict is proving far more devastating to the global economy and to global security than the Israel vs Muslim conflict ever did, with ramifications from terrorism to oil prices to the refugee crisis.

    Donald Trump's response to all this, besides 'bombing the Hell out of ISIS' (and let's be honest, there can't really be anything worse than ISIS, better that somebody just goes in all guns blazing and installs any other kind of government than what is there right now, it still won't be as destabilising as what is there now) would be one of isolationism. He does not intend to be a military expeditionist, he wants to strengthen the military but he also does not have any intention of a lengthy imperialist project in the Middle East, nor in Russia (he would be rather friendly with Putin after all), nor in the major conflict of the near future: the South China Sea. Hillary's position on the South China sea is really quite scary. She had to be slapped down by Obama when he explained to her that sending an aircraft carrier to threaten North Korea was probably not a great idea, because it would offend China, who as anyone who has been following recent events will know, are aching for a fight. Her exact words were '“We’ve got to run it up the gut!”. Combined with her actions in Libya, and her general attitude towards foreign policy (she has been described as having “a textbook view of American exceptionalism”) it's obvious that she poses a real threat to world security, which is likely to turn out even worse than the disastrous intervention in the Middle East.

    "For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has."

    From a left wing position, it's obvious that Clinton is nobody's idea of a safe option for ensuring global stability. Trump is also a straight talker: he has openly admitted that he intends to take Iraq's oil if he mounts a ground invasion. He's also pledged allegiance to Israel solidly: “They are the only stable democracy in a region that is not run by dictators. They are pioneers in medicine and communication and a close fair trading partner.” And, like his father, he said, he had always been loyal to Israel and “would do more for Israel than anybody else.” In the mouth of a warmongering radical, these might be slightly scary words, but when they come from Donald Trump, they frankly indicate nothing much more than his intention to reverse the damaging abandonment of America's allies, and a realpolitik focus without the bare-faced lies that marked George Bush's presidency (and given Hillary's record, she's not only as much of a crowd-pleasing lie machine as Trump, but also has a more sinister reputation for internal government deceptiveness). So in short: Trump will roll back the damage done by Obama, and will not cause WW3. Probably. But at least if he does, he'll be honest about his intentions, and he won't drag Europe into it with him, as he won't even try to appeal to European sensibilities.


    3. What will be the consequences in the aftermath of a Trump presidency? Changing American politics for the better...

    I posit that the disaffection of a large swath of the American population comes first and foremost from a very real, if misunderstood, systemic problem with American democracy. Perhaps even more than many other countries, the US democratic system is in the palm of large corporations. In the UK, our opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has been rendered completely powerless by his refusal to submit to the powers that be in his party, and thus he has little to no power (a sitting prime minister in his position would have no choice but to resign). Whereas in the USA, the president is answerable mainly to himself. He does not have to cooperate with the ruling party in the senate or the HoR, indeed he doesn't even have to be a member of it. And of course, as Obama shows us, despite being somewhat hamstrung by having so little support on Capitol Hill, it is still possible to push through legislation, such as Obamacare, provided you know how to do a deal, and Trump at the end of the day is a businessman with a great track record in making relationships. If he continues as he has done so far, he will herald some big changes. Or, you know, he won't, and he will also be hamstrung. Leaving aside the specifics of his political goals, there remains the larger problem of how politics itself operates, and so even if Trump fails to live up to his anti-establishment rhetoric, he will at least open the door for someone else who can bring change in a less radical way.

    How will Donald Trump do this? In amongst all the arrogance and hyperbole, it must be said that he really is a very rich man, and he has certainly been as good as his word in funding his own campaign and not letting the corporate backers put him in their pocket. Trump doesn't have the best track record in many respects, but in terms of remaining aloof from the usual 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' cadre, especially in the Republican party, he has certainly proven that he is one of the only people in Western politics to truly commit to being his own man. By its very nature, the American presidency is not given to being pushed around in the way that a party leader in a non-presidential system (like the UK) is, and although he faces obstacles, I see no reason why he would turn out to be as much of an obvious cooperator with the establishment as Hillary will be.

    Now, I'm not saying we should take Trump at his word in every single matter, the pressure on him to start cooperating with the GoP elite and corporations is growing by the day and it would be naive to think he could stay quite so aloof from Wall Street and major industry as he has been so far. But we must assess him as a person: contrary to popular belief, it's quite plain that this is not just a publicity stunt: he has nursed political aspirations for some time, and he clearly wants this. He was formerly a supporter of the Democrats, and has as good as admitted that he intends to tone down his far-right rhetoric. It's pretty clear that he will do what he needs to to get the job done, and it's also pretty undeniable that he is not the neo-nazi maniac he is made out to be: he is at hear reasonably liberal and clearly does not harbour any real prejudice against migrants or foreigners. And so I think we must characterise him as a pragmatist, who is working towards an agenda that is not informed by hatred, but by a desire to change things.

    And indeed, even if he does not change things as a president, he has already changed things as a presidential candidate. If he wins the presidency, it will prove once and for all that someone without the backing of corporations and party elites, and without the carefully crafted advertising strategy funded by donors with vested interests, can become president. To distill what I am saying down to a Trump-esque one-liner: he isn't as bad as ya think he is. Either he gets into government, gets castrated to some extent by the checks and balances system as Obama has been, and does no real damage, hopefully leading to a non-Hillary Democrat president in 4 years. Or, he brings his full business nous to bear, leaving behind his hate-speech at the door, and really does something to shake things up. Either way, if he wins, he will have totally rewritten the rulebook, and America will wake up to a new dawn where corporate interests have their rightful place: important, but not the be all and end all. But if Hillary wins, things will stay exactly as they are, and Trump's success will be written off as a fluke and all the positive aspects (straight talking, engaging with people who never before had a voice) will be irrelevant to future campaigns. It will be business as usual, which cannot go on.
    A new mobile phone tower went up in a town in the USA, and the local newspaper asked a number of people what they thought of it. Some said they noticed their cellphone reception was better. Some said they noticed the tower was affecting their health.

    A local administrator was asked to comment. He nodded sagely, and said simply: "Wow. And think about how much more pronounced these effects will be once the tower is actually operational."

  2. #2
    Elfdude's Avatar Tribunus
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    Default Re: Donald Trump is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton for the next POTUS [Copperknickers II vs Elfdude]

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    1. Reversing an unethical policy of globalisation by the backdoor, and building a better Latin America and a more united US
    First off, we can pretty much forget the great wall of Mexico which is obviously , but I think we might see a genuine push in a Trump presidency to deport many illegal immigrants and do something towards securing the border. Now he may not be doing this for entirely the right reasons, but still, there can only be one effect of this: improving the rights of Mexicans in the USA by ensuring that more and more of them are officially recognised and on the radar (and not undercutting wages of native-born Americans, as there is some justification for believing they do), and forcing the region to face up to the fact that the current situation in Central America is not sustainable: right now America is watching its Southern neighbours bleed slowly to death, meanwhile it is collecting the blood and drinking it in. Perhaps America does need immigration, but it does not need unregistered illegal immigrants falling through the cracks and turning California and New Mexico into third world countries (America's biggest internal security risk after all is not even Islamic terrorism, it's Hispanic drug gangs such as MS13, and a proper attempt at securing the border and not allowing people to slip throught the cracks will help that too).
    The big point here seems to be talking about globalism but it's an interesting assertion you make here that undocumented immigration is a problem. While I do think it is a problem, I feel that problem lays mostly with the undocumented people not within negative effects caused by those undocumented people. What I mean is simple, undocumented immigrants provide a huge amount of the labor force which exists in this country, this labor force is typically assessed taxes and paid as though they were indeed documented (part of the plausible deniability for employers) which means that they're usually paying into a system which they cannot fundamentally take advantage of other than tacitly. Undocumented immigrants cannot recieve in-state tuition, they cannot recieve welfare or food stamps (unless they're a parent of a citizen), they often cannot even recieve credit or recieve a driver's license. These limitations provide a strong incentive for immigrants who are in this country to naturalize. The demand businesses place on their labor pushes immigrants to come to this country and by and large immigrants come to this country legally only to have their status expire. The number of undocumented immigrants who legitimately just cross the border illegally are relatively few. According to the US citizenship and immigration services undocumented roughly 6.6 million immigrants were naturalized over the last 10 years. An average of 600,000 persons per year. Currently there's approximately 11-12 million undocumented immigrants which has held stable over the same period 10 years. The total number of immigrants is 42.1 million immigrants. This means that over that period either there's been no change in the undocumented immigrant population or people are coming in about as fast as they're being naturalized/deported. That's not the characteristic of a weak border. Furthermore one must consider that when it comes to border security the Mexico US border is more militarized and secured than probably anywhere else in the world with the largest military base, regular patrols and thousands of men and women dedicated to patrolling that border. With the recent discovery of mass graves presumably created by said border patrol to cover up kills, for the regular hispanic population crossing the border is ridiculously risky.

    On the other hand, the Democratic solution which HRC supports is a pathway to citizenship. With a stable population of undocumented immigrants the largest barrier to them being a part of our US system is naturalizing them and the limited number we allow. The immigration quotas the US allows are tiny compared to historical trends Donald Trump is not advocating for conservative borders but rather for border policies which are regressive and reactionary. Such policies will eliminate roughly 10% of our economic activity was it possible for him to actually accomplish what he's talking about and this labor is often highly demanding more labor of which US citizens are often entirely unwilling to work. Such a loss could easily lead to long reaching damage to the economy itself.

    His policy on undocumented immigrants isn't the start of his xenophobia however, he wishes to have all muslims identify themselves because he's convinced that muslims are disproportionately evil terrorists (not even slightly true). More worrisome this forced outing of your subjective religious values will only lead to further discrimination against those people. We've seen countless examples of genocides started by just this sort of thinking. Furthermore it assumes that people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs can't be loyal when it seems like a better solution (presuming this is a real problem and not just smoke and mirrors) is to give these people a reason to be loyal to our country.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    The current situation benefits nobody: not Americans, and not Latinos either.
    This is simply false. Undocumented immigrants wouldn't come if there wasn't demand. There wouldn't be demand if there wasn't a benefit for corporations and their bottom line in hiring these immigrants and/or the US standard of living wasn't so high. Undocumented immigrants often live as second class in the US but they still often live better than their counterparts who haven't. This is combined with the enormous decrease in labor costs companies who utilize this source of labor get as a perk provides a system which will continuously figure out ways to provide for immigration. If you really want immigrants to not "take our jobs" then the simplest answer is to naturalize them as per the democratic platform. Accomplishing this will allow said immigrants to more easily be assessed taxes, but it will also penalize employers who try to take advantage of immigrants as wage slaves.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    It just means Mexico will continue to be a drug-addled warzone and an underclass of Latinos (Democrat voters, for the most part) will form that will have all the same problems we see in the black community.
    It's a bit ridiculous to assert Hispanics are the new blacks. They do significantly better than blacks in just about every category. The drug-adled nature of their country is directly due to the US creating one of the most powerful blackmarkets worldwide. As we can see with Marijuana decriminalization the cartels and drug corruption depends on the profit margin which is created by the US's own draconic laws against drugs. To put it another way, our judgement of certain drugs as prohibition worthy despite their high demand has created the systems of crime and smuggling completely dedicated to supplying that demand. In many ways these drugs become worth more than precious metals as soon as they cross the border. Good sense drug policy is another Democratic platform of which HRC supports albeit not as overtly as her competitors for the DNC nomination.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    The Democrats turn a blind eye to this problem, and Donald Trump will at least make more of an effort to combat it than Hillary would.
    Also not true, if anything the democrats are better at enforcing it than the republicans are:



    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Perhaps his protectionist policies will damage the economy a little, but let's not forget that Hillary is also something of a protectionist. And so Trump's contribution will be to at least cut levels of illegal migration, perhaps have some kind of an amnesty, and in fact ultimately end up helping both immigrants and their countries in the long term by forcing a change.
    Republican platform is explicitly against naturalization or amnesty so I find this as very hopeful. Luckily the Democratic platform is exactly this. If this is your belief it would be better served by the democratic platform. Furthermore you touch upon Trade protectionism but don't go into detail which is odd because it's probably trump's most easily defensible policy. HRC made a good choice in opposing TPP and the democratic platform has always held that trade protectionism and regulation should be used with caution while we expand overseas trade, essentially Dems like trade but hate trade deficits, a far more nuanced and I feel a much more likely to lead to a positive outcome for our economy viewpoint.

    Now let's talk about genuineness. I know this isn't something either candidate can really call on. However, I would assert there's a real difference between doing one thing and saying another versus changing your perspective. Donald trump rails against free-trade while he profiteers off it. Donald trump attacks sending jobs overseas while his companies become profitable by doing so. Donald Trump isn't racist but somehow repeats the quotes of known white supremacists as if he didn't know, hell we know actual racists who are less likely to retweet someone supporting genocide than Trump is. Donald Trump rails against foreign loyalties that the Dems have while he pole rides Putin. Donald Trump even exalts Saddam Hussein and his use of chemical weapons. When it comes to character here there's absolutely no reason to believe anything Trump says is anything other than what benefits him at that moment. Now, what's quite worse is realizing that despite what Trump says, the Republican Party has it's own platform which very clearly and articulately lays out these vague policies proposals of the Republican party. These policies are simply put abhorent. They promote a return to discrimination. The outlaw of gay marriage. Draconic laws about drugs. Draconic laws about muslims. Draconic laws about immigration. Draconic laws which harm the poor and the working class. They slash welfare, and expand upon subsidies for big business. They doubledown on military spending but think that privatized healthcare will solve the country's monetary problems. The worse part of this is nothing that they expand upon they've been historically able to accomplish at anytime in the last 30 years. Hell they're against basic science and what it says on pretty much everything.

    Republicans have de-regulated business, they've reduced taxes on the rich while increasing tax burden on the poor, they've cut aid programs, they've disenfranchised voters, they've moved the country progressively towards theocracy and they've gotten us into countless potracted wars. Voting against republicans at this point is damage control. There's not a single thing they've supported which wasn't also supported by the left which has been beneficial for this country in the last 30 years and rather than taking a step back they've gone one level further into the extreme.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    2. Letting the world's wounds heal

    It's pretty well known in foreign policy circles that Hillary Clinton is not so much a hawk, as a peregrine falcon. By which I mean, she is an advocate of a new age of American militarism. The consequences of this for the world are perhaps the most important thing to come out of this election from my position as a non-American. The fact is, the Middle East right now has gone from being a powder keg to being a fully fledged inferno. Syria is hell on earth, Turkey is spiralling into the void, Palestine is likely to get another hammering from Israel in due course, Islamic State is proving more of a tangible threat to the security of Western countries than Al-Qaeda ever was, and the Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict is proving far more devastating to the global economy and to global security than the Israel vs Muslim conflict ever did, with ramifications from terrorism to oil prices to the refugee crisis.
    This is particularly interesting argument. I do consider HRC to be oddly hawkish with her foreign policy however I do think that she more or less has the correct view of the rest of the world albeit I don't support bombing it. I find it highly problematic that trump endorses and even seems to support fascist dictators around the world and throughout history and critiques our closest allies as rotting pits of PC liberalism despite the honest truth being directly reversed. Donald Trump most infamously has said that the US would not defend countries which are currently our Allies. This when clarified to point out those countries most likely to be the victim of Imperialist aggression was again confirmed. NATO remains a key deterrent to the aggressions of both China and Russia when it comes to imperialism and has been a major force preventing full-scale war from breaking out between the world powers. The US provides by and large the largest single contribution to the NATO forces. Worse, when challenged with the idea that such aggression could affect American targets Trump's response is to nuke them. Luckily no president in history has been willing to offhandedly recommend something so drastic, Trump is the first president that seems to see this reality as not only plausible but also acceptable.

    Furthermore when we think about his imperialism itself we have to wonder how much of an interventionist he truly isn't. What I mean is that he directly and explicitly supports the Military action which gets us into these conflicts in the first place, while he directly opposes peaceful stabilization efforts. Case in point Israel which he's stated is the US's largest overseas aircraft carrier and considers it a key strategic interest to help enforce the US's dominance in the middle east. This same enforcement is by and large what people think of when they say Donald trump is an isolationist, when it's clear the only isolation he really is talking about is humanitarian.

    This includes declaring War on North Korea, declaring War on Iran, declaring War on ISIS which are three theaters we currently don't exist in. Furthermore he advocates that the US arbitrarily take 1.5 trillion dollars of natural resources from IRAQ to pay for the war against them. Can you imagine the fallout from actual follow through on this? As terrible as Hillary is, she's nowhere near the level of international idiocy that Trump engages in. For every good thing he's said there's ten or more things (any one of which) which are worse than everything Hillary has done combined.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Donald Trump's response to all this, besides 'bombing the Hell out of ISIS' (and let's be honest, there can't really be anything worse than ISIS, better that somebody just goes in all guns blazing and installs any other kind of government than what is there right now, it still won't be as destabilising as what is there now) would be one of isolationism. He does not intend to be a military expeditionist, he wants to strengthen the military but he also does not have any intention of a lengthy imperialist project in the Middle East, nor in Russia (he would be rather friendly with Putin after all), nor in the major conflict of the near future: the South China Sea. Hillary's position on the South China sea is really quite scary. She had to be slapped down by Obama when he explained to her that sending an aircraft carrier to threaten North Korea was probably not a great idea, because it would offend China, who as anyone who has been following recent events will know, are aching for a fight. Her exact words were '“We’ve got to run it up the gut!”. Combined with her actions in Libya, and her general attitude towards foreign policy (she has been described as having “a textbook view of American exceptionalism”) it's obvious that she poses a real threat to world security, which is likely to turn out even worse than the disastrous intervention in the Middle East.
    Donald Trump's solution against North Korea is several steps more aggressive than placing an Aircraft Carrier off their coast in international waters. Yes Obama is a better diplomat than both of them. Hillary however has never mentioned a pre-emptive strike. Donald Trump exclaimed (seemingly proud of himself) that he's the only one who's recommended such a thing. He wants IRAQ to pay for their own liberation, wants to militarize Israel and wants to declare war on Iran. Almost all of this is wishful thinking or just plainly inaccurate and doesn't apply to Trump, except that I find more often than not Trump supporters have come away from this odd misinformed perspective.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    "For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has."
    A quote from Mark Landler, a highly biased conservative journalist: http://www.mrc.org/tags/mark-landler

    It's rather meaningless in light of what I just explained.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    From a left wing position, it's obvious that Clinton is nobody's idea of a safe option for ensuring global stability. Trump is also a straight talker: he has openly admitted that he intends to take Iraq's oil if he mounts a ground invasion. He's also pledged allegiance to Israel solidly: “They are the only stable democracy in a region that is not run by dictators. They are pioneers in medicine and communication and a close fair trading partner.” And, like his father, he said, he had always been loyal to Israel and “would do more for Israel than anybody else.”
    Firstly, he believes we should take Iraq's oil for services already rendered as in another imperialist campaign to requisition their natural resources to pay for a war they didn't ask for. Second, the support of Israel has directly related to the US's imperialism and international intervention. Thirdly, Israel hates Iran and visa versa, and Trump has stated unequivically that he plans to attack Iran if they don't capitulate to his utterly insane demands.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    In the mouth of a warmongering radical, these might be slightly scary words, but when they come from Donald Trump, they frankly indicate nothing much more than his intention to reverse the damaging abandonment of America's allies, and a realpolitik focus without the bare-faced lies that marked George Bush's presidency (and given Hillary's record, she's not only as much of a crowd-pleasing lie machine as Trump, but also has a more sinister reputation for internal government deceptiveness).
    I want to know how you qualify internal government deceptiveness. By my count Trump has actually done far more sinister things in his basic business practices and business politics than Hillary has done in her entire career.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    So in short: Trump will roll back the damage done by Obama, and will not cause WW3. Probably. But at least if he does, he'll be honest about his intentions, and he won't drag Europe into it with him, as he won't even try to appeal to European sensibilities.
    This is another interesting statement. What damage has Obama done? Obama is the least interventionist, most peace loving and most military-hating president we've had in decades. Trump has nothing on Obama and you already know what the Obama administration did. How do you connect Trump's statements with an even greater degree of anti-intervention when someone who was explicitly far more anti-interventionist than Trump couldn't do it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    3. What will be the consequences in the aftermath of a Trump presidency? Changing American politics for the better...

    I posit that the disaffection of a large swath of the American population comes first and foremost from a very real, if misunderstood, systemic problem with American democracy. Perhaps even more than many other countries, the US democratic system is in the palm of large corporations.
    Yes. The Republican party far more so than the democratic party is responsible for that. First off campaign spending limits were implemented BY the democratic congress directly to remove the influence of wealthy individuals in politics. These were struck down by the largely Republican Supreme court in the recent Citizen's United case. Democratic Nominees, Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor upheld the law on limits while the republican nominees struck it down as limiting free speech. Trump also gets to nominate Supreme court justices assuming that they end up changing. It's ridiculous to assume that nomination dependent upon such abhorent platforms and rhetoric will ever lead to the outcome you seem to desire when the Democratic Party has been working to establish these limits for decades with limited success.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    In the UK, our opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has been rendered completely powerless by his refusal to submit to the powers that be in his party, and thus he has little to no power (a sitting prime minister in his position would have no choice but to resign). Whereas in the USA, the president is answerable mainly to himself. He does not have to cooperate with the ruling party in the senate or the HoR, indeed he doesn't even have to be a member of it. And of course, as Obama shows us, despite being somewhat hamstrung by having so little support on Capitol Hill, it is still possible to push through legislation, such as Obamacare, provided you know how to do a deal, and Trump at the end of the day is a businessman with a great track record in making relationships.

    Obamacare was pushed through when Dems controlled congress. It's just harder to repeal a law than it is to pass one.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    If he continues as he has done so far, he will herald some big changes. Or, you know, he won't, and he will also be hamstrung. Leaving aside the specifics of his political goals, there remains the larger problem of how politics itself operates, and so even if Trump fails to live up to his anti-establishment rhetoric, he will at least open the door for someone else who can bring change in a less radical way.
    So wait, either he'll be worthless and it'll be business as usual (ignoring the current congressional status quo which is republican) or he'll be successful and usher in a people's republic? As if.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    How will Donald Trump do this? In amongst all the arrogance and hyperbole, it must be said that he really is a very rich man, and he has certainly been as good as his word in funding his own campaign and not letting the corporate backers put him in their pocket.
    Errm. He is loaning his campaign money from his corporations which makes it seem like he's funding his own campaign. In reality he's got the exact same type of funders you would expect just they're donating in a different way (re: loophole!).

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Trump doesn't have the best track record in many respects, but in terms of remaining aloof from the usual 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' cadre, especially in the Republican party, he has certainly proven that he is one of the only people in Western politics to truly commit to being his own man. By its very nature, the American presidency is not given to being pushed around in the way that a party leader in a non-presidential system (like the UK) is, and although he faces obstacles, I see no reason why he would turn out to be as much of an obvious cooperator with the establishment as Hillary will be.
    Yes. Trump is a narcissist. Narcissists tend to be their own people. They also tend to see everyone else as beneath them. On the other hand we've seen throughout history that Narcissists ipso-facto are the easiest to manipulate.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Now, I'm not saying we should take Trump at his word in every single matter, the pressure on him to start cooperating with the GoP elite and corporations is growing by the day and it would be naive to think he could stay quite so aloof from Wall Street and major industry as he has been so far.
    Wallstreet is small beans compared to: Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tobacco, Big Food, Big etc. Like really Wall Street is just one group that did something bad. The bad habits are rife throughout ALL of these corporations, Wall Street simply got a lot of attention because they can directly impact the valuation of goods and services in the US which impacts all of the others.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    But we must assess him as a person: contrary to popular belief, it's quite plain that this is not just a publicity stunt: he has nursed political aspirations for some time, and he clearly wants this. He was formerly a supporter of the Democrats, and has as good as admitted that he intends to tone down his far-right rhetoric. It's pretty clear that he will do what he needs to to get the job done, and it's also pretty undeniable that he is not the neo-nazi maniac he is made out to be: he is at hear reasonably liberal and clearly does not harbour any real prejudice against migrants or foreigners. And so I think we must characterise him as a pragmatist, who is working towards an agenda that is not informed by hatred, but by a desire to change things.
    Clearly does not habor any real prejudice against migrants or foreigners? How do you justify this perspective. He retweets neo-nazi rhetoric more than known neo-nazi's do. You've got a lot of faith in this idea that there's a hidden greatness to him and frankly that's what this entire argument depends upon.

    1. The Political system as is is bad
    2. Trump is supposedly outside of said system
    3. Trump is supposedly genuine
    4. Trump is supposedly using double-speak to talk about these things we swear
    5. Trump is supposedly really genuine
    6. Don't pay attention to what he says it's not genuine!
    7. Trump is an outsider
    8. Trump uses his insider knowledge to manipulate his way to success
    9. Trump is an outsider!
    etc.

    It's a constant exercise of "But that just contradicted this." When discussing trump with any Trump supporter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    And indeed, even if he does not change things as a president, he has already changed things as a presidential candidate. If he wins the presidency, it will prove once and for all that someone without the backing of corporations and party elites, and without the carefully crafted advertising strategy funded by donors with vested interests, can become president.
    . There's one candidate who could've done that and that was Sanders. Trump is an elite billionaire who earned the majority of his living building government funded projects.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    To distill what I am saying down to a Trump-esque one-liner: he isn't as bad as ya think he is. Either he gets into government, gets castrated to some extent by the checks and balances system as Obama has been, and does no real damage, hopefully leading to a non-Hillary Democrat president in 4 years. Or, he brings his full business nous to bear, leaving behind his hate-speech at the door, and really does something to shake things up.
    This just seems like wishful thinking and divorced from the reality that is Trump.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Either way, if he wins, he will have totally rewritten the rulebook, and America will wake up to a new dawn where corporate interests have their rightful place: important, but not the be all and end all. But if Hillary wins, things will stay exactly as they are, and Trump's success will be written off as a fluke and all the positive aspects (straight talking, engaging with people who never before had a voice) will be irrelevant to future campaigns. It will be business as usual, which cannot go on.
    I don't find this to be at all the truth. While I admit I fully endorse Sanders over Hillary, the fact of the matter is when it comes to policy the two of them agree on 80-90% of their proposals and the few things they do disagree with each other they disagree in terms of degree not in terms of basic facts. Frankly the republican platform and the republican party and republican votes go hand in hand. You're not voting for just Donald Trump, you're voting for the party he represents and the representatives that are there. Furthermore as the unofficial head of the party Donald Trump will have a good chance of pushing forward stupid policy proposals which both he and the republican party agrees on which are detrimental to the US and the rest of the world. Your argument rests upon Donald Trump being an unknown quality but not as "Known" to be bad as Hillary, which is simply ludacrous. Conspiracy aside, I would never trust my presidental candidate who makes racist, sexist, nationalistic, fascist, xenophobic, and totalitarian remarks. Hell, claiming the use of chemical weapons is no big deal is already enough to make me hesitate much less the other problems.

    https://www.gop.com/the-2016-republican-party-platform/

    https://demconvention.com/wp-content...AFT-7.1.16.pdf

    Reasons to Vote HRC:

    1. DNC platform is objectively better
    2. DNC economic theory is well supported and proven over the Austrian economics which idealize the republican perspective
    3. DNC represents real solutions to the challenge of immigration
    4. DNC already has moved past discrimination by class affiliation and believes everyone should be treated equal both in rhetoric and action
    5. DNC supports poor and working class Americans
    6. DNC explicitly opposes the distribution of wealth and bending policy to benefit the rich at the cost of the poor
    7. The Mccain Feingold act (billed a bipartisan campaign reform) was supported by 41 Republicans and opposed by 176 Republicans, while 198 democrats supported it and only 12 opposed it.
    8. Tax cuts for the rich are explicitly opposed by Dems
    9. Healthcare is considered a fundamental human right by the Dems
    10. Religion is a choice and a not a government mandate to the Dems

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