the Donald Trump I know...


Recommended Posts

Just now, BaalChatzaf said:

My error

Not entirely.  I often go off on a tangent from a thread... following a thought that is related to this or that post, but not always expanding on the theme of the thread.  You were staying attuned to the thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Trump's  bad manners and abusive interaction with others do not suggest moral excellence to me.  

Well... we will always have two different views on that, Bob.   :P

Not knowing Donald personally, I believe what people say who are the closest to him because they actually do know him personally and they're sincere..

I think the real reason Trump rubs you the wrong way is because you were a government educated and employed intellectual, while he's an independent American entrepreneur. These two distinctly divergent life paths are bound to be the result of two completely different world views. 

TrumpTower.JPG

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, moralist said:

Well... we will always have two different views on that, Bob.   :P

Not knowing Donald personally, I believe what people say who are the closest to him because they actually do know him personally and they're sincere..

I think the real reason Trump rubs you the wrong way is because you were a government educated and employed intellectual, while he's an independent American entrepreneur. These two distinctly divergent life paths are bound to be the result of two completely different world views. 

TrumpTower.JPG

Greg

What marks a civilized person is how he treats strangers.  Anybody can be friendly with t heir friends. It is how one deals with non-close persons that indicates how civilized one is. 

From you illustration I take it that Trump has financed the erection of yet another tall building.   That is a giant leap for mankind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, moralist said:

Well... we will always have two different views on that, Bob.   :P

Not knowing Donald personally, I believe what people say who are the closest to him because they actually do know him personally and they're sincere..

I think the real reason Trump rubs you the wrong way is because you were a government educated and employed intellectual, while he's an independent American entrepreneur. These two distinctly divergent life paths are bound to be the result of two completely different world views. 

Greg

Give it a rest, will ya?  Do you realize that virtually everybody you are talking to on this forum is "government educated", as you call it, i.e., they went to public schools of some kind, at one time or another?    Do you not also realize that most on this forum did not learn Objectivism in those public schools?

We get it.  You're proud of yourself as an electrician.  You're proud you don't have college degrees.  You're proud you've made some money.   Good for you.

I suspect you're not only the person around who makes payrolls twice a month and has some money in the bank.   

And Bob is not the only one who Trump rubs the wrong way.   Please give your tropes a rest. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Financed the erection of yet another tall building. Like it's just a phone call. No intelligence went into it, just phone calls that go "I have a lot of money, erect it!"

What a simpleton you are about the world.

It's hilarious to hear you brag about your big smarts. You come across as having the life experience of a twelve year old.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

What marks a civilized person is how he treats strangers. 

And gain, we each have two different priorities.

Yours is public behavior.

Mine is moral character

There are many highly civilized cheats and crooks and liars. Hillary Clinton is just one example who you're helping to become President. Not voting against is voting for.

Chalk it up to you and Trump taking two completely different life paths.

Greg

.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PDS said:

Do you realize that virtually everybody you are talking to on this forum is "government educated", as you call it, i.e., they went to public schools of some kind, at one time or another? 

I was referring to government colleges where the real brainwashing is done. They're medrasas.

 

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, moralist said:

I was referring to government colleges where the real brainwashing is done.

 

Greg

My brain was honed keen at Syracuse University which is a private school.  

I did graduate work at Berkeley which had a first rate math department.  

I was non-political.  To this day I detest politics.  My interest was in the math and the applications.  As I pointed at earlier I was a committed techno-dweeb. Nothing mattered to be but the work and my wife and new-born son.  Anything else was secondary or tertiary. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Trump's  bad manners and abusive interaction with others do not suggest moral excellence to me.  He is a dolt and a barbarian. Insult seems as natural to him as breathing.  

LBJ got us involved in a war that directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of 4 - 5 million people. 2 million Vietnamese (and Americans and allied forces) and 3 million Cambodians. He wasn't a Donald Trump. He was a dolt and whatever else you may wish to call him.

Good manners and a token will get you a ride on the NYC subway.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

To this day I detest politics. 

I know.

"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

--Edmund Burke

"Good men" who do nothing aren't good... they only think they are."   :rolleyes:

--Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

What marks a civilized person is how he treats strangers.  Anybody can be friendly with t heir friends. It is how one deals with non-close persons that indicates how civilized one is.

I've heard that the guy on the left is extremely polite to strangers when he talks to them.

The other guy, too.

07.08.2016-19.27.png

But Trump is the one being called uncivilized.

Heh.

:)

Michael

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As to any bigotry accusers level at Trump, here's an interesting article about the Trump of 20 years ago.

Florida Lawsuit Reveals What Trump Thinks About Discrimination
"...long before he was running for president..."
Jack Davis
July 5, 2016
Western Journalism

From the article:

Davis said:

... a part of Trump’s history has resurfaced which may call into question his alleged racism and discrimination.

In 1997, Trump defied societal conventions when he purchased his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida and converted it into a private club.

Prior to Trump’s arrival, other clubs in the Pam Beach area “had long barred Jews and African Americans — which is to say they practiced a quiet but steely racism,” wrote Jeffrey Lord on The American Spectator.

“He put the light on Palm Beach,” said Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “Not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. It has an impact.”

Trump went further, asking the town council to lift the existing restrictions on the club, and sending them a copy of, “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” a film whose characters defy the race-based discrimination of the day.

The town council would not budge, leading Trump to file a $100 million lawsuit alleging the town was “discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African Americans,” reported The American Spectator.

The incident was profiled in a 1997 Wall Street Journal piece that discussed Trump’s clash with Palm Beach. Eventually, Palm Beach put an end to their discriminatory restrictions.

So Trump was litigating against discrimination of Jews and blacks 20 years ago.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, anti-Trumpers!

This probably won't affect the gotcha crowd, but it does affect those who distinguish between word and deed.

And because of this, Trump's support grows...

:)

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

LBJ got us involved in a war that directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of 4 - 5 million people. 2 million Vietnamese (and Americans and allied forces) and 3 million Cambodians. He wasn't a Donald Trump. He was a dolt and whatever else you may wish to call him.

Good manners and a token will get you a ride on the NYC subway.

--Brant

LBJ lived on and for the good opinion of others. He was a total politician.  If the members of Congress had balls (apparently not) they never would have let him commit troops to the longest war the U.S. had ever been in.   We were all victims of political cowards, especially the 60,000 Americans who died in Lyndon's War.  But the worst of the lot was Robert MacNamrra  who led LBJ by the nose into that war. 

Fortunately people of both major parties dislike Donald Trump and Congress will not permit Trump to get us into a war if a war is unnecessary. If Trump is elected (a distinct possibility)  it is fortunate that he is roundly disliked.  That will limit the damage he can do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I read the Jewish population of the surrounding area is 40%. Why would a businessman allow or sit back and watch the town exclude those people who could afford the $100k membership and $14k py dues in his private club? If Jews were being excluded from other clubs in the area what better way to bring in business? 

I dont think this offers a more balanced view of Trump as being "modern" enough to "fight" for Jews or blacks in the late '90's. He was simply out to bring business to his private club. And a law suit the town would have rightly understood they would lose.

What bothers me is this attempt at burnishing his creds into something theyre not. It would be similar to saying he is in business to make money. DUh. Trump doesnt win any awards for being fair minded and rational towards these groups. 

He also fought a town ordinance over a flag pole. Theres the proof. What a true American! ;)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, turkeyfoot said:

What bothers me is this attempt at burnishing his creds into something theyre not.

Geoff,

How's that for blaming the victim? This was only brought up because Trump has been accused of bigotry. Otherwise, nobody even talked about it. Trump stood up to an entire bigoted system--of elites at that. Maybe his purpose was to make money, but isn't that the point of not being a bigot? To ignore artificial moral classifications of people and treat them like anyone else?

I didn't see you complaining about those who claimed Trump was a bigot by "burnishing his words into something they're not." You seem fine when this process of burnishing words into something they're not smears someone as a bigot, but bothered when this process negates that claim.

That sounds like an accusation and that's not my intent, but since I only have your written words to go on, I do glean this impression from your posts.

Apropos, Trump has never presented himself as an activist to fight bigotry like Martin Luther King or so on. He merely doesn't include bigotry in his life. It's a non-issue for his own moral choices. When he talks about categories of people, he's looking at a specific problem that needs fixing. For instance, Mexicans, the border problem and illegal immigration. Muslims, terrorists hidden among them. And so on.

He's fine living next door to any of these categories and doing business with them so long as they are not part of those specific problems. Even having his kids date them and marry them. I speculate a bit, I know, but his daughter Ivanka is married to a Jew and even formally converted to Judaism, yet boneheaded people call him an antisemite. And if she did that, I am sure he will be fine with what his grandchildren do irrespective of their involvement with one of the "oppressed classes."

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Geoff,

How's that for blaming the victim? This was only brought up because Trump has been accused of bigotry. Otherwise, nobody even talked about it. Trump stood up to an entire bigoted system--of elites at that. Maybe his purpose was to make money, but isn't that the point of not being a bigot? To ignore artificial moral classifications of people and treat them like anyone else?

I didn't see you complaining about those who claimed Trump was a bigot by "burnishing his words into something they're not." You seem fine when this process of burnishing words into something they're not smears someone as a bigot, but bothered when this process negates that claim.

That sounds like an accusation and that's not my intent, but since I only have your written words to go on, I do glean this impression from your posts.

Apropos, Trump has never presented himself as an activist to fight bigotry like Martin Luther King or so on. He merely doesn't include bigotry in his life. It's a non-issue for his own moral choices. When he talks about categories of people, he's looking at a specific problem that needs fixing. For instance, Mexicans, the border problem and illegal immigration. Muslims, terrorists hidden among them. And so on.

He's fine living next door to any of these categories and doing business with them so long as they are not part of those specific problems. Even having his kids date them and marry them. I speculate a bit, I know, but his daughter Ivanka is married to a Jew and even formally converted to Judaism, yet boneheaded people call him an antisemite. And if she did that, I am sure he will be fine with what his grandchildren do irrespective of their involvement with one of the "oppressed classes."

Michael

And that six point diagram on his ad was not even a genuine "Jewish Star".  A real "Jewish Star" or Mogen David is two equilateral triangles laid one on the other one point up and the other point down and the sides are intermeshed.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Geoff,

How's that for blaming the victim? This was only brought up because Trump has been accused of bigotry. Otherwise, nobody even talked about it. Trump stood up to an entire bigoted system--of elites at that. Maybe his purpose was to make money, but isn't that the point of not being a bigot? To ignore artificial moral classifications of people and treat them like anyone else?

I didn't see you complaining about those who claimed Trump was a bigot by "burnishing his words into something they're not." You seem fine when this process of burnishing words into something they're not smears someone as a bigot, but bothered when this process negates that claim.

That sounds like an accusation and that's not my intent, but since I only have your written words to go on, I do glean this impression from your posts.

Apropos, Trump has never presented himself as an activist to fight bigotry like Martin Luther King or so on. He merely doesn't include bigotry in his life. It's a non-issue for his own moral choices. When he talks about categories of people, he's looking at a specific problem that needs fixing. For instance, Mexicans, the border problem and illegal immigration. Muslims, terrorists hidden among them. And so on.

He's fine living next door to any of these categories and doing business with them so long as they are not part of those specific problems. Even having his kids date them and marry them. I speculate a bit, I know, but his daughter Ivanka is married to a Jew and even formally converted to Judaism, yet boneheaded people call him an antisemite. And if she did that, I am sure he will be fine with what his grandchildren do irrespective of their involvement with one of the "oppressed classes."

Michael

Sorry Michael, I hadnt read the first line of your link stating Trump had been accused of bigotry so was just looking at the what the media regard as being the comeback for such reasoning. Im not finding any meat to those bones, from the accusations or to a line of defense for Trumps 1990's actions. Lots of irrelevant noise in this election process, isnt there?

This is from Nov '15, I guess before the hoopla.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-palm-beach-castle-and-his-30-year-fight-to-win-over-the-locals/2015/11/14/26c49a58-88b7-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html 

Is he also against the handicapped? I dont know or care. But he does open himself up with his one of a kind behavior. Its funny, I can recall doing the same thing during a boring family photo shoot. Trump though does go the extra mile to excite the crowd, he mentioned "the reporter" I guess not Charles Krauthammer. I dont think theres anything more than stupidity there. Is he artificially creating these problems for himself and then wasting time shutting them down? I dont know. But there is plenty for his opponenets to pick on. Hes a friggen treasure trove of missteps.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, turkeyfoot said:

 

Is he also against the handicapped? I dont know or care. But he does open himself up with his one of a kind behavior. Its funny, I can recall doing the same thing during a boring family photo shoot. Trump though does go the extra mile to excite the crowd, he mentioned "the reporter" I guess not Charles Krauthammer. I dont think theres anything more than stupidity there. Is he artificially creating these problems for himself and then wasting time shutting them down? I dont know. But there is plenty for his opponenets to pick on. Hes a friggen treasure trove of missteps.

 

All it takes is one of a kind cruelty or insult to indicate what an ill mannered lout Trump is.  

Proper regard for the rights and dignity of others is what puts the "civil"  in civilization. 

How many "one of a kinds"  will it take to convince you that Trump is in ill mannered boor?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Proper regard for the rights and dignity of others is what puts the "civil"  in civilization.

How many "one of a kinds"  will it take to convince you that Trump is in ill mannered boor?

About the same number of times I will need to be convinced that the gentlemen below have "proper regard for the rights and dignity of others":

20 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I've heard that the guy on the left is extremely polite to strangers when he talks to them.

The other guy, too.

07.08.2016-19.27.png

All I've heard about what the politeness means of these polite gentleman is crickets chirping.

:)

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

About the same number of times I will need to be convinced that the gentlemen below have "proper regard for the rights and dignity of others":

All I've heard about what the politeness means of these polite gentleman is crickets chirping.

:)

Michael

So???   Good manners does not assure goodness.  Neither of these criminals is a lout.  Both are bad.  

I refer to Trump's maladroitness,  not his good/evil quotient.  

There is more to governance that calling one's adversaries  "losers".  Appealing t he better angels of people's nature requires a some respect and tact.  Neither of which Trump exhibits.  Trump is one of the few  presidential contenders who has managed to alienate his own party.  That takes talent.  The sort of talent that produces gambling casinos  and golf courses,  those things which advance the human race measurably. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

This is not accurate. I would reread your posts if I was you.

Michael

I never once said or implied that Trump was evil.  I have repeatedly pointed out he is lout, a boor and a barbarian.  He lacks couth. He is unmannered.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I never once said or implied that Trump was evil.  I have repeatedly pointed out he is lout, a boor and a barbarian.  He lacks couth. He is unmannered.

That's right, Bob.

Moral character is of no consequence to you... only public behavior matters.

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now