Ugliness

[poliphilo]

There are good reasons for not wanting to see Donald Trump become POTUS and there are bad reasons. One of the bad reasons is snobbery. Trump is just so vulgar- "such a coarse soul" as one of my teachers once said about Kipling- so decidedly not "one of us".

Another bad reason is fear of change. Trump hasn't and won't play by the rulebook. He threatens to upset the smooth running of things. He's going to jump into the sluggishly-moving, lumpy stream of effluent that is national and international politics and splash about. It could embarrass and annoy a lot of people who aren't used to having their beauty sleep disturbed.

So Trump approaches his inauguration with the political establishment (both parties) against him, the cultural elite against him, the media against him, the security agencies against him and most foreign leaders against him.  Bush Jnr wasn't much loved either, but has any president entered office with so many powerful enemies?

Expect ugliness.

And here comes some, right on cue....

All this TMI about prostitutes pissing on one another or pissing on Trump or having Trump piss on them in a Moscow hotel room is probably made up. I'm sure Trump has some pretty gross things on his CV but doubt this is one of them. As with all the stuff about Russians hacking Clinton's computer we need to remember where its coming from. It's coming from the spooks- that is to say from people whose entire raison d'etre is subterfuge, misinformation, dirty tricks etc...

Trump isn't handling the pressure very well. Or is he? That rough-edged, bad-tempered press conference is what we've come to expect from him- and being rough-edged and bad-tempered hasn't harmed him thus far. In fact rather the opposite. The media and elite don't yet seem to have understood how sick, sick, sick  the common people (the unwashed, the not particularly articulate, the deplorables) have become of well-groomed, political smoothies who "smile as they kill".

Comments

[topum.livejournal.com]

I have to say that so far I am really surprised. I would have thought that with so much of the domestic and international elite and pretty much all of the media so vehemently against him and digging left and right to find anything on him, way worse things could have been found on the guy like Trump. Is this all, this piss / prostitutes stuff? If yes, than he is much "cleaner" that I could have imagined a guy like him could be. I think I bought way too much popcorn than I am going to need.

I still cannot come to terms with the thought that Donald Trump is the leader of the free world but am eagerly awaiting for the moment when the US politics will finally move up from the nether regions (taints, dicks, wieners and what comes out of them) and firmly into above the belt area.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose anyone who voted for Trump thought he was a "nice" man. He's spent to long in the limelight for that. It's actually one of his strong points that he doesn't present himself as unfeasibly wholesome. It also makes him very hard to blackmail.

With Trump what you see is what you get- and there are very few politicians of whom that can be said.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that "what you see is what you get" is really true about anyone. Especially about someone with Trump's life and record and I did think that they would be able to find way worse stuff on him than they did.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Obviously we don't know all the dirt on Trump but we do have a fair idea of his character. His hucksterism and sexual braggadocio are on the record. We don't know what he's actually done but we do know what we think he's capable of- and a game of golden showers is at the milder end of the spectrum. The point is people voted for him in spite of knowing things about him that would have sunk of career of any mainstream politician.

[topum.livejournal.com]

This is all true. What I meant was that I was still surprised they hadn't found more of the stuff he actually did with all the resources I that I can imagine where devoted to it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's odd.

Perhaps his enemies are being careful because he has dirt on them and could sink them in return. After all he used to hang out with Bill Clinton. It's a delicate balance. MAD in fact.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I don't think that he has dirt on everyone (or even the majority) in the elite and the media though.
Perhaps we will see more in the near future. It is only the second week of the year and we already have golden showers and nazi Germany trending, so off to a "good" start.

[matrixmann]

For my guessing until now it's - the big established elites don't like Trump because he's one of those which rose into their ranks, but he's one of the expressive louder personalities. He doesn't do everything the subtle way as all the other people of the hidden elites which hide in the dark for generations and exploit whatever can be exploited on this planet.
This is the sole reason for everyone making noise and starting campaigns against him. He simply doesn't play by their rules and this poses a threat to the game they've been playing for generations. It threatens that the game goes on and on - that there's gonna be broken porcelain, and this porcelain is gonna be the base of their daily living.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He's other ranks, not an officer and a gentleman...

[evilzerg-r.livejournal.com]

It reminds a story: when one guy from Trump's team reposted in Facebook that story about Podesta and pizzagate, he was immediately excluded from the team by Trump.

So from this point Trump looks as more decent and respectable man than all those so called "good people", who are ready to pick up every shit and spread it with no doubt if they see name "Trump" on it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Trump is no fool. I used to think he was, but he ain't.

[evilzerg-r.livejournal.com]

Man who can get that far is definitely no fool. By the way, that guy who made up that so called secret report left his cat to a neighbor and ran away from the fame, which is already chasing him (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/former-mi6-officer-produced-donald-trump-russian-dossier-terrified/).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's like a spy story- which I suppose it is- only more like fiction than something that's actually going on.

[evilzerg-r.livejournal.com]

One guy on 4chan image board said that it was him who sent that prank about Trump to Rick Wilson from whom it made its way to that Mr. Bond from Mi6 and further. It's a win, I suppose.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's so much disinformation out there it's hard to know what to believe

[evilzerg-r.livejournal.com]

Sure. And people in intelligence services who are responsible for making the report for government are hired there for that purpose - to dig the truth. But now it looks like someone in internet shouts that terrible Trump eats children for breakfast, and this nonsense without any check comes to the government and TV.

[sinsterminister.livejournal.com]

It's a weird time to be an American. I keep hearing how Trump is going to do things differently and be the antithesis to all things politics that we've known the past quarter-century or so, but I haven't really heard an adequate explanation on what he's actually going to do. The American government isn't a dictatorship. He can't just waltz into office and start doing all these crazy things just on a whim. He has a Republican majority in the house and Senate, but that only makes some things (repealing the ACA, weaning down social welfare programs) easier. Getting Congress to cough up $25 billion for a wall, bringing in extra officials to round up and deport 12 million people living here, many of whom employed and working necessary labor jobs for our economy to function, and fundamentally changing trade deals is going to be very, very difficult, even for the POTUS.

Agreed I think the golden shower thing is a red herring. If it's even remotely true that the Kremlin has dirt on Trump and is using it to get him to be at their mercy, it's probably some evidence of massive financial fraud or conflict of interest between foreign interests.

I don't think the sky is falling, as many of my friends and family do.

However, I don't think anything would surprise me at this point.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I doubt that Trump himself knows what he means to do. I think real, deep-down change is happening but Trump is more symptom than cause. I think he's surprised to find himself where he is- and is improvising wildly.

The golden shower thing- if it were true- would sink most politicians but Trump is different. The people who elected him knew he was a huckster and a lecher and still gave him their vote. At this point I think he's virtually scandal proof.

I don't think the sky's falling either- but these are far from normal times...

I don't think the sky is falling either.

[tagryn]

re: Trump improvising - I agree, and it brings to mind a quote attributed to Gen. Nasser of Egypt:

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.

I've seen the same move by Trump attributed to him just being stupid/ignorant, and alternatively by others that its a brilliant maneuver on his part to get his foes talking about something while his *real* plot is afoot away from the attention.

I guess that's the virtue of being outside the box, that the analysts who built careers on trying to understand regular politicians can't get a handle on a populist who isn't bound by the "rules" as they know them. Business analysts might have a better feel for Trump's strategy than political scientists, at least at this point.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

"Innocent until proven guilty" is such a nice principle, especially towards those one doesn't sympathise with...

Also, it seems that more attention is given to the alleged type of activities, rather than the allegation that they happened with prostitutes. And yes, using prostitutes would be an issue, but sexual proclivities surely shouldn't be, whether the stories are true or not. (And to be quite honest and with no facts to back it up, personally I'm inclined to disbelieve the reports until they can be verified.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Trump isn't a fool- and- as he's said himself- he knew that Russian hotels are wired for sound and vision. I just don't see him making such an elementary mistake.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Given some of the sexual accusations levelled against Trump, a bit of golden rain is the least of anyone's worries!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well quite.

I don't think this one holds water (pun sort of intended) anyway.