Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "At Least Trump Is Putting His Foot Down on John McCain" video.
-
"CIA black sites" and "waterboarding" were things Trump SAID he was thinking of doing, to trigger a response, likely to provoke even MORE over-reach by his political foes. I say this because you said you were calling him out on what he was "doing," when in all likelihood, ALL he was doing was posturing, WHICH IS WHAT ALL SALESMEN DO. You have to understand he's in an intense, multi-level negotiation with EVERYone, from casual social media consumers to his most ardent foes and even his most ardent supporters. His posturing includes "I should just shut this Mueller thing down," which triggered the exact kind of hysteria needed to keep the Fake News going and even make it WORSE. It EXPOSED the Fake News media, big-time, with one "Walls are closing in" piece after another, when nothing of the sort was actually taking place.
With Trump, I think you have to make the distinction between what he's actually DOING with what he seems to be SAYING. Most of what he says is to get SOME kind of movement from the opposition, often sort of a "Tactics of Mistake" kind of deal (See "Gordon R. Dickson." Good book.), where he APPEARS to be blundering, just to get the enemy onto the ground of HIS choosing. The more outlandish the claims made against him, the easier it will be at the end of the day to topple the entire edifice of fabrication. But it has to be so blatant, so overt, that his accusers can't possibly wiggle out of "I'm an idiot" status.
In the SHORT term, it can feed all the worst in his accusers' apparent arsenal. In the LONG term, it makes the "They're gullible and incompetent idiots" conclusion inescapable.
For instance, the neocons who seem to be up to more Iran-Contra type nonsense in Central and South America (and the Middle East). Is he REALLY using them (or giving them a free hand) to pursue those same old strategies and tactics, or is he waving them like a metaphorical club, while keeping them in check, in fact? Is this more about using an apparent threat to push people to react, one way or the other, or is he actually up to the same bullshit as Obama, Bush and Clinton? His big, flashy "missile strike" in the Syrian bay of ?Tartis was it? made a lot of flash and noise, but he gave advance warning beforehand, everybody cleared out of the strike zone, and THEN he launched the attack. It seemed to me he was throwing Deep State a bone, letting them think he was all-in on their messed-up strategic plans, but maybe he was just posturing. Then he pivots on a dime, declares victory over ISIS in Syria and - albeit against great resistance from his own people and allies - announced a plan to pull out, entirely.
With Trump, I think you have to look at where things end up - actual results - more than perceptions and posturing. "My grandma owned this very same model and put 500,000 miles on it before she even changed the oil" is the kind of thing a car salesman would say to make a sale. It's a lie, obviously, but what if it's a pretty good vehicle and a pretty good deal, and it pushes the customer into making the purchase?
Recall his fire and brimstone rhetoric against Kim Jong Un, followed by the historic face-to-face? Everybody freaked at the rhetoric, but he got the first sit--down with a North Korean dictator since North Korea was created! Nobel Peace Prize stuff, made possible by posturing in such a way as to bring the man to the table, where MAYbe something could be worked out, and CERtainly a totally new - and for the first time hopeful - climate was created.
I'm not saying this IS the case, but it seems to fit most of the facts more neatly and simply (Occam's Razor) than all the hyperbolic, hyperventilating conspiracy theories we all hear bandied about. I'm prepared to suspend my disbelief and maintain high skepticism, as always, until unequivocal facts are laid before me. In the end, I think Trump's intelligence is of a different sort and a higher order than most of his critics really understand. He's respected the law MUCH more than his predecessor and eschewed the weaponization of government agencies against his political foes, which is WAY more than you could say about Obama, whose IRS, FBI, DOJ, CIA and NSA still have much to answer for. That bunch treated the people's government like their private play thing, and Trump's pulled us farther out of that than I ever dreamed possible.
1
-
1