"It's weird because America is the kind of place where someone can get more offended at you calling them a racist than at the fact that they are racist. And that's become like a new thing that I stumbled across. How dare you call me a racist? How dare you be a racist? And that's the world that Donald Trump is in. People try to trap you into being afraid of saying what the person is doing as opposed to them acknowledging the world that they're living in"
I noticed this in American-dominated internet forums as well. So moderator thinks I was offensive by calling someone a liar? Does Moderator pretend that the exposed lie in itself wasn't offensive? The truth is never offensive where I live.
This twisting of (quasi)political discourse may be an important ingredient in at least one path towards destruction of a liberal society, destruction of democracy. It may be the path that leads to policy based on fake news.
S O
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'The truth is never offensive where I live.'
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about that? Germans who point out the incompatibility of islam in the west don't get pilloried?
'It may be the path that leads to policy based on fake news.'
Trump has done some dumb things during his term, but I'm with him on this issue. CNN is fake news.
A statement about the incompatibility of radical, literal interpretation of Qu'ran and First Testament with modern Western values and the current German constitution would be true and not troublesome in the mainstream.
Deletekesler, CNN is ordinary news. Trump meanwhile is a pathological liar with a track record of three daily untrue public statements on average. The faking asymmetry is clearly weighed towards Trump being a liar.
CNN doesn't exactly report what non-mainstream political groups want to see in the news and it is as unhelpful to progressives and fascists as the BBC was to Corbyn's labour wing, but CNN at least gives them a lot of attention.
ARD and ZDF tend to ignore non-mainstream political groups as much as possible.
Obama and Bush were pathological liars as well, they were simply coached on how to do it better (and the sycophantic media politely witheld criticism from them). But thats merely an aside...
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying Trump is a genius politician or anything like that. Hes done stupid things like selling weapons to the saudis, failing to repeal obamacare, and exacerbating the situation with north korea. I'm disappointed that he enabled the military to continue their clusterfuck in afghanistan, and that he didn't axe the sanctions against german companys dealing with gazprom. But for the most part, I'm quite been pleased with his work.
Anyway, have you been keeping up to date with things in the EU? The victory of the AFD in germany, and the OVP in austria is setting the stage for something big... When you add in the situation with poland, hungary, and the czech republic, the trend becomes undeniable. Nationalist, conservative governments are experiencing a powerful resurgance. I would not be surprised if this soon results in the end of the EU.
Too much nonsense in one comment.
Delete1. Bush and Obama were no pathological liars. relationship with truth was ordinary for politicians.
2. A pathological liar cannot be coached to hide it better. That's why Trump keeps lying even when there's absolutely nothing to be gained from it and when it's obvious that the person he's lying to detects the lie instantly.
3. Trump sold practically no weapons to the Saudis. The yuuuge announcement was mostly fake.
4. To repeal Obamacare would have been stupid because to do so was extremely unpopular and extremely harmful.
5. POTUS isn't in the business of repealing laws anyway, save for giving a signature.
6. The AfD did not have any victories in Germany; they were defeated in the elections everywhere. The relevant threshold is participation in a ruling coalition, not whether a party gets a couple of parliament seats.
7. It's a stretch to claim that Trump works.
8. The FPÖ is the far right party in Austria, not the ÖVP.
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The EU is super stable in my opinion. Brexit will ensure that no other country will think of leaving the EU as advantageous.
You overlooked Corbyn and some other symptoms. The far left (Americans would call them progressives) are advancing after the almost neoliberal centre-left parties and party wings have failed in their jobs during the past ~20 years.
So what we're seeing in much of Europe is a polarisation with far left and far right parties gaining and the relatively boring and often neoliberal centrist parties losing seats.
Macron is an example for how this is part of a greater trend of trying to shift power away from an unsatisfactory non-reforming neoliberal establishment, even if the replacement isn't necessarily on the fringes.
Sorry, but thats not true. Bush and Obama are both pathological liars, and so were their entire administrations. The best example of this was during the lead up to the iraq war, when bush & co made over 900 misleading or false statements. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/
DeleteObamacare is not healthcare as understood by europeans, or even canadians like myself. It is a compulsory insurance mandate, and a highly ineffective and expensive insurance at that. If anyone told you obamacare is popular, rest assured, you have been lied to. http://www.dailywire.com/news/12146/11-biggest-problems-obamacare-aaron-bandler
About the AFD, it depends on your perspective. They won a tremendous victory this year given how they went from 0 seats to 94 seats, most of them taken from the humiliated CDU. Like it or not, the AFD is the most powerful far right party in germany since 1949.
About the weapons sales to the saudis, I guess thats good news? Though I'm still skeptical about the stability of the EU. Guys like Thorsten Polleit have noted some worrying political shifts taking place in europe. I wouldn't close the book on it just yet.
GWB and his goons lied intentionally and with a goal. That's what politicians do, just in an unusually determined way. Pathological lying is a mental disorder and something very different.
DeleteObamacare as you describe it is pretty much what Europeans think of in terms of health care policy; a system that tries to ensure that poor and sick people can afford healthcare, even at the expense of the healthy and rich. Obamacare was working quite well in almost all places where it was fully implemented and not sabotaged. The costs were actually below projections. You consumed too much Republican propaganda.
AfD is written AfD, not AFD. They will not have any direct influence on federal policy for decades, if ever. They will be shut out like the PDS/Die Linke was and still is, after 27 years.