Trump Strikes Syria - How to View This

[TrueTomHarley]

Trump bombed Syria and made a lot of people mad. How can you not make them mad when you’ve killed 15 people? He broke a lot of things, too, but he can always say: “Look, Vlad, what’s the big deal? I’m a billionaire. You’re a billionaire. But them some new planes out of your own pocket if it takes that to placate them.” The people are a different matter. But even that is mitigated by pointing out they were all (or almost all?) military people who have signed on to the program.

For some inexplicable reason, I feel I have a read on this guy. I long have. It surprises me to think so few do. Even that is hard to know for sure because in this scenario, as in all others, liars spin the facts this way and that for their own purposes. In the case of a President, the motivation to do so is high.

At any rate, his actions clearly turn a lot of memes on their head. Clearly, he is not a pawn of Putin, as U.S. media has insisted for months. Clearly, he does not hate Muslims, as they have also insisted. It is now spun that he is impulsive and acts from the heart. “Trump said he would not do Syria! No way! No how! Then he saw a picture,” I have heard.

Or perhaps it is all spin. The trouble with conspiracy theories is that, once a few of them prove to be true, you readily swallow the next one coming down the pipe. There are cabals hanging about and they do try to skew things. But these cabals have hated Trump from the beginning. I think it is because he is not one of them and they don’t feel able to control him. We all know that Trump is not a Republican. He took over the Republican party. It might just as well have been the Democratic party. He simply read the tea leaves and saw that, at the moment, the Republican party was easier to commandeer. When he says ‘drain the swamp,’ he is not referring to one party or the other.

Anyone in small business, which I have been, can easily conceive of a businessman who loves his country but thinks the slippery boobs have ruined it, saying: “There!  I built my business. Now let’s see if I can fix the country.” A BIG businessman can easily miss this because he is primarily worried about Trump’s effect on the stock market, but a small businessman doesn’t care, or at least it is not his chief concern. If you’re experience is something else entirely, you heard the ‘grab them by the you-know-what’ and concluded life around him was a 24/7 brothel. I always thought It was nonsense. I always agreed with him that it was ‘locker room’ talk. I did this because I have been in the locker room and they do not read Plato in there.

He can spin this as I believe it really is. There are some things so barbarous that you cannot go there. Chemical weapons are among them. They are not good, especially when you have just had photos of the victims thrust under your nose.  He did what he did impulsively, from the heart. Yet even that cannot be determined with certainty. Insiders said he leaned on and took options from the military people. He didn’t hastily tell them what to do. He let them tell him, and chose from the choices they presented.

It is easy to conclude that they, however are swayed by the business model. When BigDefence gets too big, it must keep the profits rolling in. If it does not, the stockholders will bolt for some noble competitor – say, BigPharma. So if the world threatens to get too peaceful, they must stir up the pot. It is the United States, not Russia, that is bombing many countries. It will never be fixed because money drives everything here. You solve nothing by taking out a bad guy. Another bad guy simply sees a fine new career opening. It is the play that must be changed, not the actors in the play, who simply follow the script given them – sometimes begrudginly, sometimes with gusto. Human reformers can change the actors, but they cannot change the play. Only God’s Kingdom will do that.

In a world where barbarities are commonplace, it is tough to know where to draw the line. “What’s one more slaughter in the greater scheme of things?” is easy to say. Is it preferred for Trump to say: “Ah, well – shit happens?” Obama drew a line in the sand and it was instantly crossed. Perhaps leaders should keep their mouths shut over such things, and not make grandiose remarks about slaughter being ‘unacceptable’ (duh) and how people will ‘be held accountable.’ They won’t be, usually. Why carry on as though they will, except so as not to look like a helpless fool. And don’t carry on about people being ‘cowardly.’ They may be despicable, but surely it is not cowardly to be willing to die for a cause – any cause, from Boy Scout to Barbarians-R-Us. Also, don’t whine on about how the terrorists are trying to change our way of life, but we won’t let that happen. If anything, they want us to maintain our way of life and thereby be easier targets to kill. And even the terrorists will say: “Look, they elect their leaders over there, and the leaders come over and kill all our loved ones. That makes them not so innocent after all.” Victims of massive suffering and evil, many turn into unreasoning animals that must be taken out, like putting down a vicious dog. But that doesn’t mean you must judge them for it; many in the West become unreasoning animals with far less provocation.

A man that recoils at the use of chemical weapons and reacts immediately can be spun as not such a bad thing. He can say to Putin: “Sorry. I lost it. but nothing has changed in the big picture. Let’s work together when it is expedient to fix the world.”

It’s not my cause. I am a neutral Jehovah’s Witness, interested in these things only as ‘current history.’ All human governments will drop the ball; the only question to be answered is upon which toe will if fall. The Kingdom arrangement, as detailed in the Bible, is the only permanent answer. So if you have read these words and said: “Harley is an idiot! I’ll write to tell him so,” please don’t. I will respond by saying: “you forgot to mention that I am also a moron.”

[JW Insider]

58 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

It’s not my cause. I am a neutral Jehovah’s Witness, interested in these things only as ‘current history.’

I appreciated the fact that you wrote this. You say you are neutral and I believe you. And I would agree that being neutral should not mean that neutral people should be ignorant of current history. Unfortunately, many people in the United States at least appear to be ignorant of current history, but are not neutral in most senses of the word. Still, relatively few vote, and even those who do mostly believe that they have no say or power in any form of national government. This makes them feel "neutered" but not neutral. The partisan swings that happen every 4 to 8 years since Roosevelt have at least given most of the US population a sense that "it's their turn" and they will be at least partly represented (to the extent that their views have been incorporated into the talking points of either one of the two major parties).

But this election, just like many in Europe and elsewhere, was a call to populism by the winning politicians. Populism is full of anger, tribalism (nativism), progressivism, and hopefulness. It's not easy to define. Bernie Sanders was the big winner of the progressive and angry hopefulness, and not really a Democrat. Donald Trump was the big winner of the nativist and angry hopefulness, and not really a Republican. Both groups hoped for an economic fix. Both groups knew deep-down, that such a fix would include trillions less spent on wars, and trillions more spent on the homeland (infrastructure, for example).

There were a lot of things that people from all sides of the "populist hopes" could have agreed on from either populist candidate (Trump or Sanders). But the swamp remains because it is funded by corporate greed, mostly military contractors who want to sell weapons. 

It takes a lot of energy and will to drain such a swamp, and in the end, of course, it appears that the swamp has already drained Trump.

[TrueTomHarley]

13 hours ago, JW Insider said:

This makes them feel "neutered" but not neutral.

This is very clever. I like it.

I like it when someone has looked beneath the surface, though it is at best a hobby, by no means necessary to the faith, and can be divisive when people push views. So I never do. And it seems you never do as well, or I would have known about it before now. Rarely do I mention this stuff among the friends and never to I press it. Other people disagree. No matter. The area king, the area media, and our own prior experiences all influence our current opinion, as does geography. What do brothers in the mid-East think?

Some of our people barely know such a thing as politics exist, and to the extent they were aware of it, were inclined to say of Trump: 'He's bombastic and I try to be polite.'

Though I can think of one PERSON who may not have reasoned that WAY, at least not while the FOUNDING FATHERS were using his facilities on a PIT STOP during their TIME TRAVELS!!!

[TrueTomHarley]

For @JW Insider's sake, I will be very bold and predict that Trump will bring in socialized medicine, though it will not be called that. Even I do not think this likely, but most do not think it possible, so I still come off as being bold, though JTR will say insane.

Trump is pragmatic and has shown he is not bound by ideologies. I can't imagine how healthcare could work via competition among insurance companies when healthy persons can opt out. Obamacare, though it will surely crash of its own weight, has planted the notion, accepted everywhere else, that everyone deserves access to healthcare. Trump himself seems to embrace the idea. He may take the bull by the horns, figure he can craft a system that incorporates the private sector better than any Democrat can, for they distrust the private sector, and charge ahead.

It will be a very hard sell. He will lose many of his own people, but may gain from the other side. Even then it may be doomed. Americans are used to Cadillac treatment, and while universal health care is universal, its quality goes down. Pharma too, may scream, because they are used to soaking Americans to offset the modest profits they must take elsewhere. They will carry on about 'choking innovation,' and so forth. As it is, they don't bother innovating unless they see a substantial buck in it; that's why there is MRSA will no new antibiotics to fight it. It's hard to be optimistic here, but I can imagine Trump may try tackling it.

Maybe he can still sell it. Overall healthcare quality in America is well above that of any third world country. But among the developed countries, it comes in dead last. I'm tired of playing Russian Roulette with my modest net worth for every sliver I have removed. Perhaps other people are, too.

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

For @JW Insider's sake, I will be very bold and predict that Trump will bring in socialized medicine, though it will not be called that. Even I do not think this likely, but most do not think it possible, so I still come off as being bold, though JTR will say insane.

When a person is all over the place on issues, and is willing to switch his advisors at will, we can always hope that the entropy of chaos will produce one or two anomalies in our favor.

He will definitely look for a few places to eke out a populist win as a counterbalance to undeniable failures, and this could become an option for him to try - but he will fear another failure in Congress. Another option is just to declare all failures as wins, and use the bully pulpit of Presidency+Twitter to make the claim.

[TrueTomHarley]

I rather like the idea of Twitter, sort of a 'Fireside Chat for Dummies,' which is what most of us are. The only ones who might be upset over this will be the ones who a) don't like change, and b) are annoyed that they no longer have first access to his words in order to spin them.

[TrueTomHarley]

For several months I have subscribed to The Week Magazine. I like the short synopsis of news stories from around the world. It is as sneeringly liberal as anything I have seen, routinely calling the President an ignoramus, an egomaniac, and a liar, but I figure that's just politics and let it go.

But some things are just too much. Like the Trump/Putin romance meme. See, we've been conditioned, rightly or wrongly, to not like Putin. Therefore, if Putin and Trump can be portrayed as bosom buddies, we will not like Trump either, which has been the object of portraying him that way ever since the election. Usually if you run a thread which consists solely of allegations, with conclusions heralded though no evidence is provided, admin will take down the thread. However, it doesn't work that way in journalism, where the mission, from Day 1, has been to take out Trump.

At any rate, when he carries on as he did in Syria, it clearly shows he is a lover from hell, and more likely, he was never a lover at all. The story line of the past few months that he and Putin were in cahoots was pure fiction, written for the purpose of Trump's elimination. The Week has been foremost in spinning this line.

In light of Syria, do they repent of the rubbish they're written? Not a bit of it. "Blowing up a Bromance" says the cover of the most recent issue, with Trump and Putin portrayed with backs to each other, each holding wilted roses.They are indeed lovers who have just suffered a little lover's spat, that's all.

Therefore, I tend to not like The Week simply for their lack of humility, and their bending the facts to fit their story, rather than the reverse. The reason they do this is that they despise the 'populist' candidate. I'm not sure what is so perjorative about 'populist,' Doesn't following the populist course mean you are doing what is popular with the majority? Isn't this the very purpose of democracy? But there is another view.

Career politicians like to think of themselves as plumbers. (my example, not theirs, theirs will be more pretentious, but the idea is captured with plumbers) When you hire a plumber, you don't tell him how to fix the problem. You hired him because you do not know how to fix the problem. You trust his expertise to figure it out and do what he thinks best. He is not expected to report his every step to you. Career politicians love to see things this way. They are the experts, elected by the dumbbells, to do whatever they want. 

These days, what they want is to push toward a world government. That aspect, in itself is also what we want, but theirs is run by humans, not God, so it is not necessarily an improvement over the 'carved up earth' model. Six to one, half dozen to the other.

This is not the only scenario under which you might hire a plumber - because you have no idea what to do. Some homeowners know exactly what to do, and simply want or need someone else to do the labor. These are the populist homeowners.