Washington Post: The GOP has become the Soviet party - Polidicks

Responding to big posts is hell on mobile.

No you won't

They won't but just revitalized Russophobic old outdated tropes for people who grew up in Cold War era, Because of Russia is recovering their loss superpower status as Soviet Union from the last three and half decades.

My point across the entire post is the same: Arguing that the GOP is in any meaningful way comparable to Soviet Russia is facile and idiotic. So to address your point, something being a good or bad idea is irrelevant to the question at hand. In fact, I agree that the majority of things on the list are bad ideas/character flaws from Trump, like I stated in my original post. This seems like a total non-sequitur. Yes, I agree that a lot of Trump's policies are bad, but that's not the topic of the thread or my post. I agree wholeheartedly that Trump's egoism and narcissism is absolutely disgusting. Does he have some of these traits in common with some Soviet leaders. Yes, of course he does, and so do thousands of other political leaders from around the globe who have nothing to do with communism/socialism/soviet style governance. In fact, it's a very common trait among politicians. About being the only valid source of news about himself, isn't that what most leaders do? If they say something, and a journalist disagrees, then they say the news person in wrong. The difference with Trump is that he stands on such outlandishly stupid and childish positions (like his crowd size) that he stands out from the crowd. For example, when Obama said that no one would lose their doctor with the passage of Obamacare, he stood on that position vociferously, even against opposition opinions, and in the end, he was totally lying. He knew some number of people would lose their doctor under his plan. He created a false narrative for political purposes. Even the left leaning Politifact rated him "Pants on Fire" for the statement after the facts came out. (https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/nov/06/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-what-hed-said-was-you-could-keep/) This type of narrative creation that ignores facts is nothing new. Trump is just way more obvious. Again, I didn't argue that I like these things. In fact, I clearly stated I didn't at the end of the post. I'm starting to think you didn't actually read the whole post. First, the argument wasn't "Trump is a dangerous authoritarian figure." The argument is that the GOP is the new Soviet party. So drawing parallels between general authoritarian dictators and Trump doesn't really do anything to prove the point. Also note that the argument is about the GOP as a whole, not Trump individually. Secondly, Trump has not used political power to imprison, stop publication, etc. of his political enemies that I know of. A political spokesman publicly defending the president from political attack, which was the only example provided in the article, isn't comparable in the slightest. Let me be clear that I despise how Trump has treated those who disagree with him. He's said some truly disgusting things, but that doesn't make him a Soviet. It makes him a bad person. Factually, Trump has done less regulatory controlling of the capitalist economy than presidents before him. In many ways he's hurt the so called "capitalists" through his tariff plans. I honestly think this point is basically nonsense. I agree that large corporations use government power to shut out competition, shore up markets, etc., but Trump hasn't done it any more than those before him.

It's not just how stupid his "positions" (strange way to spell lies) are, it is also how frequently he does it, objectively more than your average US president. And you're seriously downplaying his relationship with the press. The authoritarian worries come from things like banning specific outlets who had already been confirmed simply because they're critical of him, while favoring ones that portray him in a positive light. Things like the Acosta fiasco, where, after having some intern attempt to physically restrain him for asking questions that are too tough for the president, Jim had his pass revoked by Trump, something which Huckabee Sanders attempted to justify by publicizing doctored footage The attacks are daily. Any journalist and outlet these days has to seriously consider that they will be publicly targeted by the president if they do their work right. If you can look at his attitude and say it's par for the course, what I'd like to hear is, when did Obama ever use the words "enemy of the people" to describe the press? When did Bush?

I was actually talking about his dumb policies, like tariffs and the wall. I have no issue saying that he lies all the time. He does, and it's often blatant. Honestly, I think you're just over exaggerating the situation. People create and publically announce anti-Trump news daily, if not hourly. It's not just allowed, it's open and celebrated. It's yelled from the proverbial rooftops. Hell, there are entire left-wing media outlets, like The Young Turks, that are allowed to go absolutely crazy. A buffoon like Acosta, which he definitely is, getting banned from the media room did literally nothing to stop, prevent, scare away, etc. anti-Trump reporting. In fact, it wasn't even the outlet banned, it was just the one guy. They were able to immediately replace him with basically whoever they wanted. Did I like the way Trump handled it? No, I didn't, but to argue that it's an example of some real amount of press freedom simply isn't playing out in reality. There has been zero actual loss of press freedom in the US due to Trump. If you wanted to argue that the media has lost power, it's almost completely their own fault. Trust of the media has been consistently dropping for decades. The trend is almost weirdly linear all the way from the 1970s to today. (https://news.gallup.com/poll/243665/media-trust-continues-recover-2016-low.aspx) Trump didn't create that. He played on the already existing distrust. He said FOX's point of view is "ultimately destructive," (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/obama-in-command-the-rolling-stone-interview-188620/) but ignoring Obama specifically, the democrats attack right-wing media all the time. I'm not even saying that as an attack, it's just part of American politics. Listen, I don't like Trump's direct attacks on media. He obviously pursues dishonest positions constantly and attacks those who point out the true facts. I don't deny it, but I do see a president saying their personal opinion on these kinds of things as fundamentally different from him using government power to stifle press freedom.

A responsible man in his position doesnt go around doing the childish shit he does especially when it comes to the media. He has been stifling press freedom by pathetically transparent attempts at rebuffing any news outlet that isnt Fox because they say mean things about him, most of which are true anyway. In his position no matter the provocation, he had the chance to be the bigger man. He chose not to take that chance, which says something for his state of mind.

Gotta get some rest so you can return to your job as an actual road block before you go back to being a conversation road block.

I cannot be over-exaggerating the situation by doing nothing more than describing the facts. The conclusion to that post wasn't that the GOP is essentially the Soviet Party, if that's what you figured (had I cleared that up beforehand you'd likely discard the post as irrelevant). I only meant what I said, you downplay how Trump acts towards the free press. I simply don't think that Obama commenting that Fox's viewpoint - not Fox itself - is destructive compares to Trump's years-long campaign to delegitimize select outlets, individuals, and the press in general. As far as I can tell, you're right, he hasn't gone after them through legislation. But we all know things change https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/172/0871bfb5-8316-4ff2-b8e5-37fcf658936d/image.png Not that long ago, every conservative would distance themselves from Trump. Now he enjoys 88% approval among Republicans. Trumpism is here to stay, for it, too, is nothing new, like playing up distrust of the press for political gain, it only taps into views already pervasive among the right. "I don't like Trump's attacks on the media" rings as hollow as "we're only against illegal immigrants" these days, in the face of asylum seekers vilified and attacks on legal immigration. Saying what sounds right is easy, and I appreciate that you do, but it means nothing if the party keeps falling in line with Trump. And they will. I just hope it's not for long enough to see the anti-press rhetoric concretized

I'm not going to directly reply to sg because I don't really wanna have a wall of text war. But: So a few days ago AOC said that algorithms can be racist, and certain people got real mad at the mere idea. Of course, people in technology (myself included) know for a fact that an algorithm can easily have bias because they are made by people. This is a perfect example the problem with a lot of politics: there's no nuance, or even consideration that nuance may exist, we willfully ignore it and insist everything is simple and easy and that nothing effects anything it isn't directly connected to. It's just computers = numbers = facts. End of. Everything is in a bubble. Computers exist, bias exists, and never shall they intertwine. It's all very simple, there either is a thing or there is not. Trump has no wider context to his relationship with the media, or racism, or neoliberalism, or climate change, or just the GOP. Him, as an individual, simply doesn't like CNN and that's the end of the story. So, when Trump attacks the media and attempts to establish himself as the only source on himself it doesn't effect anything or weaken the public's trust in the world around them, allowing forces of oppression to better establish themselves, and it's definitely not indicative of a larger problem with how we approach the news and how our society totally wasn't ready for neoliberal controlled social media. It's just one individual dude being individually bad about one particular news network. In that context there's no room for change or discussion, nor can you fathom that the forces that drive Trump's world may have paralels to the forces that drove the Soviet world. I think a particular individual in this thread would only accept this discussion if some supernatural force was causing Trump's mind and body to slowly morph into Stalin's. And so, Trump is bad. In a bubble. The world that created him, the systems that allowed him into power, the elite class that stand and watch him destablise the entire world because it boosts their bottom line, the public who have had their circuits so persistently fried to the point where they will consent to all this, and the tools of capitalism that were used to make all this happen. None of that is responsible. No consideration for how those forces may be coalescing to create an ideology that looks a fair bit like the systems behind the Soviets. Trump is simply bad. End of. I don't know about you, but I think that might be a bit of a simplistic take.

Algorithms at their core are a system. They're a network of numbers and equations. But there are other systems, economic, political and social systems that have been around for a lot longer than computers have. And if those can be racist or bigoted, so can algorithms. reminds me of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM