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Trump's nickname.

theprestige said:
Better the devil you don't know, perhaps?

Other than the influence of your own thoughts about Trump, what would you say is the biggest influence he's had on your life? As in, policies that affect you directly.
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That is, of course, an amusing bit of thought exercise, especially for people who are selfish and have no interest in the future of our country or the planet.

From the purely personal point of view, as usual, Trump is probably doing me no harm, perhaps even good. I'm retired, white, heterosexual, live rurally, have income from stocks, pay taxes. So sure, in the short term, without regard for what happens to the poor, or future generations, or any of the other abstract stuff that some people consider worth talking about, whenever I vote against a bigoted, anti-scientific, anti-environmental, corrupt, lying idiot like Trump and his cronies, I probably vote against my short-term self interest. Shame on me.
 
bruto said:
That is, of course, an amusing bit of thought exercise, especially for people who are selfish and have no interest in the future of our country or the planet.
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It was wasapi who introduced the lived experience criterion. If we're judging Trump based on effects we've heard about but not experienced directly, then we can certainly judge Attila "the Hun" the same way. You're taking me to task over wasapi's feigned ignorance.

Anyway, have you found your Forever Trump Nickname yet? Mine is still "Covidfefe".
 
theprestige said:
It was wasapi who introduced the lived experience criterion. If we're judging Trump based on effects we've heard about but not experienced directly, then we can certainly judge Attila "the Hun" the same way. You're taking me to task over wasapi's feigned ignorance.

Anyway, have you found your Forever Trump Nickname yet? Mine is still "Covidfefe".
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The question was not specifically aimed. If you find yourself in its way, fine, but if you're not, fine too. I'm quite willing to judge Attila the Hun as having been a bad fellow, despite my not personally feeling his arrows. I was also never skewered by Vlad the Impaler, and yet I feel it reasonable to suggest that he's not a model of good behavior.

But looking at it from a strictly personal point of view, assuming that the world ends when I die, a lot of conservative policies serve my self-interest. I can cast my ineffectual vote, and live like a rich libertarian without having to be actively hypocritical.

We make a lot of judgments based on what we believe is the right or wrong thing to do, without having to experience everything directly.

Covidfefe is OK, but it's a bit of a mouthful.
 
The difference is everyone in the world has seen and heard what a despicable person Trump is. With their own eyes and ears. Firsthand. Multiple times. Live on TV.
Not so much Attila.
 
Cheetah said:
The difference is everyone in the world has seen and heard what a despicable person Trump is. With their own eyes and ears. Firsthand. Multiple times. Live on TV.
Not so much Attila.
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If you follow this conversation back, you'll see that the difference doesn't matter to the question of who was worse.

What's the worst thing you've witnessed with your own eyes and ears about Trump? What's the worst thing you've heard or read about the Hun? Compare the two - which is worse?

Not that it matters much. Follow the conversation a little further back, and you'll see that the previous question is whether Trump is so bad that, like Attila the Hun, he doesn't need a nickname. That's the question wasapi says she can't answer, because she's never experienced life under the Hun. Me, I'm perfectly comfortable nicknaming Trump based on secondhand reports rather than my own lived experience of the man. I think if we restricted it to personal lived experiences of the man, and we were being honest, most of us would have to go with the nickname, "President Nothingburger".

Again, not that it matters much. We're talking about finding a nickname for Donald Trump. This is not anything important.
 
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I do think the Attila/Trump issue is a little backwards. What makes a person's name an insult without accompanying epithets is not what one experiences during his tenure, but what history decides after.

We don't need epithets for Attila the Hun because he has been made an icon of nastiness by history. From what I've read he was really pretty nasty, but it really doesn't matter anyway. Whether or not you have any knowledge of his historical role, his name alone invokes an idea of invasion, pillage, rape, cultural sabotage, and an unforgiving heartlessness that is often a stand-in for ultra-conservatism. The groundlessness of the latter doesn't make it any less understandable that when one is said to be "to the right of Attila the Hun" it's understood as a grave insult.

It's convenient to have some names that stand for notable behavior, and membership in that class depends in part on convenient placement and timing, as well as character. You don't need historical analysis or a sea of words to know what's meant when you bring up Stalin or Quisling or Benedict Arnold - or for Gandhi, for that matter.

To suggest that Trump's name alone is enough is largely predictive, based on some people's opinion of how his policies and actions will appear in the future, but ultimately it will depend on how history judges him, and on the aftermath of his policies, more than on how people see things right now. If he's nowhere near as bad as Attila or ten times worse won't really matter if history finds it handy to use the name Trump as shorthand for a certain sort of leader.
 
bruto said:
I do think the Attila/Trump issue is a little backwards. What makes a person's name an insult without accompanying epithets is not what one experiences during his tenure, but what history decides after.

We don't need epithets for Attila the Hun because he has been made an icon of nastiness by history. From what I've read he was really pretty nasty, but it really doesn't matter anyway. Whether or not you have any knowledge of his historical role, his name alone invokes an idea of invasion, pillage, rape, cultural sabotage, and an unforgiving heartlessness that is often a stand-in for ultra-conservatism. The groundlessness of the latter doesn't make it any less understandable that when one is said to be "to the right of Attila the Hun" it's understood as a grave insult.

It's convenient to have some names that stand for notable behavior, and membership in that class depends in part on convenient placement and timing, as well as character. You don't need historical analysis or a sea of words to know what's meant when you bring up Stalin or Quisling or Benedict Arnold - or for Gandhi, for that matter.

To suggest that Trump's name alone is enough is largely predictive, based on some people's opinion of how his policies and actions will appear in the future, but ultimately it will depend on how history judges him, and on the aftermath of his policies, more than on how people see things right now. If he's nowhere near as bad as Attila or ten times worse won't really matter if history finds it handy to use the name Trump as shorthand for a certain sort of leader.
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I agree with all of this.
 
As my how my life is personally different under President Trump. I have had to give up discussing politics on certain boards. Not because US politics has become too partisan to discuss, but rather because the rules of debate have disappeared under President Trump’s tenure.

I’ve already mentioned that on another cite, I asked for a citation on an unsubstantiated claim and the response I received was “**** you.”
We live in a post-factual world.
Furthermore, President Trump has done more to perpetuate and to create conspiracy theories than every president for the past 100 years combined (I’m leaving off the 1800s because political attacks got pretty wacky back then). This man has convinced 35-45% of America to not believe statements made by his own administration. And if that weren’t bad enough, he has taken the idea of “don’t believe anything unless I personally state it” to the absurd level of “don’t believe anything unless I personally state it today.”

Who knows how long it will take to get people to believe in an objective reality that can be described by facts?
 
Back to nicks, and one I'd like the wilting snowflake to see...

Donnie Jouncy Tubby-Rump

Recall the snapshot of him on the tennis court, with his marbled arse practically busting outta his shorts. Ugh.
 
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