It could be.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
Remember that Trump isn't some kind of principled isolationist, so there may be another theme in here that isn't just Miller's personal fantasies.
Civil War: MAGA in Turmoil
- Thread starter Shaquille Oatmeal
- Start date
I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
Remember that Trump isn't some kind of principled isolationist, so there may be another theme in here that isn't just Miller's personal fantasies.
Columnist Ed Kilgore lays out 5 ways MAGA excuses Trump's 'childishness' and 'cruelty'
On the heels of Politico writer Jonathan Martin's scathing "exposé" of President Donald Trump as a "free-range" adolescent who has turned the presidency into an "adult fantasy camp," New York Magazine's Ed Kilgore offers five excuses MAGA makes to defend his behavior.
"Martin is just scratching the surface here, of course. He doesn’t even mention the president’s inability to admit or accept responsibility for mistakes, which is reminiscent of an excuse-making child, or his tendency to fabricate his own set of 'facts' like an incessant daydreamer bored by kindergarten," Kilgore notes.
"I find myself wondering regularly how Trump’s own followers process his rather blatant lack of seriousness about the most serious job on the planet," he muses.
The first way MAGA processes this, Kilgore writes, is by "trolling the liberals," a popular pasttime of Trump and his followers.
"The 'he’s just trolling the libs' defense is a useful bit of jiujitsu as it happens. It turns the self-righteousness of his critics into foolishness while neutering any fears that whatever nasty or malicious thing Trump has said reflects his true nature and inclinations," Kilgore says.
The second excuse, Kilgore says, involves "playing chess, not checkers," in that MAGA will "argue that he’s operating on multiple levels that include some higher strategies his critics simply don’t have the mental bandwidth to grasp."
"Trump himself set the template for the 'chess not checkers' theory by telling us his most incoherent speeches and statements reflect a novel rhetorical style he calls 'the weave.' You do have to admire his chutzpah in telling people they simply aren’t smart enough to follow him as he fails to complete thoughts and sentences," Kilgore writes.
Kilgore says MAGA's third excuse was that Trump "is a man of the people, and the people are as childish as he is," Kilgore notes.
Trump's "childishness and even his cruelty could be construed as efforts to meld minds with the sovereign public or, at least, key parts of it," Kilgore explains.
"This became most explicit in 2024 when Trump’s crudeness and fury about diversity were transformed into a shrewd pitch for the support of the 'manosphere' and the masses of politically volatile younger men who spend much of their lives there," he adds.
The fourth excuse is that "Trump is an insurgent leader with an insurgent style," Kilgore writes.
"When returned to power most recently, he hit Washington like a gale-force wind defying all precedents and expressing an exasperated public’s disgust with the status quo and the people who led it. So why would anyone expect this Robespierre to play by the rules of Versailles? That’s not who he is and not what he was elected to do," he writes.
MAGA's fifth excuse is that Trump is "saving America, so he should be able to do any damn thing he wants," Kilgore writes.
"From the MAGA point of view, the 47th president is bending history, reversing a long trend toward national decline, and raising the economic aspirations and moral values of America to heights thought to be long lost," he explains.
"It’s Trump, warts and all, or the abyss, to many Trump fans, today as in 2016," he concludes.
On the heels of Politico writer Jonathan Martin's scathing "exposé" of President Donald Trump as a "free-range" adolescent who has turned the presidency into an "adult fantasy camp," New York Magazine's Ed Kilgore offers five excuses MAGA makes to defend his behavior.
"Martin is just scratching the surface here, of course. He doesn’t even mention the president’s inability to admit or accept responsibility for mistakes, which is reminiscent of an excuse-making child, or his tendency to fabricate his own set of 'facts' like an incessant daydreamer bored by kindergarten," Kilgore notes.
"I find myself wondering regularly how Trump’s own followers process his rather blatant lack of seriousness about the most serious job on the planet," he muses.
The first way MAGA processes this, Kilgore writes, is by "trolling the liberals," a popular pasttime of Trump and his followers.
"The 'he’s just trolling the libs' defense is a useful bit of jiujitsu as it happens. It turns the self-righteousness of his critics into foolishness while neutering any fears that whatever nasty or malicious thing Trump has said reflects his true nature and inclinations," Kilgore says.
The second excuse, Kilgore says, involves "playing chess, not checkers," in that MAGA will "argue that he’s operating on multiple levels that include some higher strategies his critics simply don’t have the mental bandwidth to grasp."
"Trump himself set the template for the 'chess not checkers' theory by telling us his most incoherent speeches and statements reflect a novel rhetorical style he calls 'the weave.' You do have to admire his chutzpah in telling people they simply aren’t smart enough to follow him as he fails to complete thoughts and sentences," Kilgore writes.
Kilgore says MAGA's third excuse was that Trump "is a man of the people, and the people are as childish as he is," Kilgore notes.
Trump's "childishness and even his cruelty could be construed as efforts to meld minds with the sovereign public or, at least, key parts of it," Kilgore explains.
"This became most explicit in 2024 when Trump’s crudeness and fury about diversity were transformed into a shrewd pitch for the support of the 'manosphere' and the masses of politically volatile younger men who spend much of their lives there," he adds.
The fourth excuse is that "Trump is an insurgent leader with an insurgent style," Kilgore writes.
"When returned to power most recently, he hit Washington like a gale-force wind defying all precedents and expressing an exasperated public’s disgust with the status quo and the people who led it. So why would anyone expect this Robespierre to play by the rules of Versailles? That’s not who he is and not what he was elected to do," he writes.
MAGA's fifth excuse is that Trump is "saving America, so he should be able to do any damn thing he wants," Kilgore writes.
"From the MAGA point of view, the 47th president is bending history, reversing a long trend toward national decline, and raising the economic aspirations and moral values of America to heights thought to be long lost," he explains.
"It’s Trump, warts and all, or the abyss, to many Trump fans, today as in 2016," he concludes.
I read it and posted the PDF with some excerpts.
It is the usual white supremacist treatise you'd suspect comes from Miller.
A lot of rhetoric on European identity, Western identity, great replacement and the like.
Your little chart doesnt tell us much.
The article claims 895 potential U.S. citizens from fiscal year 2015 through the second quarter of 2020 were deported, but cancelled about 74 percent of those detainees.
That means 662 US citizens were not deported. So why were the 662 US citizens not deported, and why were the remaining 233 indeed deported??
Were the 233 deported not actual US citizens?? Maybe they had fake passports??
Until you post every single case we dont know the answer to that.
And also show us the stats for the Obama and Biden full terms as a comparison.
Were US citizens deported during their terms??
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Trump isn't a principled anything except for enriching his family's wealth and he is doing a fabulous job. He is actually a "Vince McMahon" prototype running the WH instead of the WWE.
Oh, it clearly is. You can argue that it has failed to consolidate its power, but incompetence at accomplishing its fascist goals doesn't mean it isn't fascist.
I'm just objecting to the objective facts framing.
Don't be silly.
Trump is far from the only fascist in the world.
But that is a graph of ICE activity against US citizens from 2015-2020, which is what that part of the discussion is about.
It isn't a graph of "fascism".
I'm sorry?
Are drug dealers automatically enrolled in the military?
The problem is that you don't know which way that error goes.
(I'm also not sure what you are referring to that has a 53% disapproval rate. Lots of things have been discussed and you are probably referring to something earlier in the thread I missed.)
No one has ever argued that the economy isn't a major factor in how people vote.
But unless you want to argue it is the ONLY thing people vote on (which would be very difficult to argue) then considering what other things would be a factor matters.
Of course.
Thermostatic equilibrium is a MAJOR force in US politics.
But again, unless you are arguing that there is NO other force, then other things also matter.
Especially in a system that often has small margins with a binary outcome, a small shift in the right place can be huge in its impact.
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If it was that easy, they wouldn't have done the family separation stuff.
Kid could be taken in by a relative, or other guardian.
They don't become wards of the state.
They may well.
I have certainly had my disagreements with Shaq.
Nonetheless.
He did not say they were denied all services.
And there are many services they are denied.
The most generous explanation is the two of you are talking past each other because of your per-conceived notions of what the situation is.
You are free to believe that.
You recruited me into your argument against someone else.
I warned you off since I don't appreciate it and I don't expect you will repeat it.
That's the entirety of the fuss.
He's tried to back it up now by citing a rather infamous 2013 paper about the size of biceps.
But the disconnect between his claim and the claim in the actual paper he found on the internet was pretty stark.
It does.
There were arrests and detentions of citizens during Obama's term.
But there were no removals.
The removals were in Trump's term.
It is unlawful and unconstitutional to deport US citizens.
We see this one a lot here.
We see this a little bit, but not often.
It's usually more in the "what he says doesn't matter, that's just style, the real goal is something else" rather than "he's too smart for you to follow".
This one seems a bit hand-wavy. Is it actually connection or is this an excuse where people say "oh, he just says it that way to sell it"?
That's maybe closer to what I was saying we see sometimes for number 2.
We definitely see that one here.
This is what I have observed is decades of observance of gym culture....I don't know about alpha males, but from my experience in life this study is spot on
Strong men are usually conservative
Strong men come across as more conservative, study finds
A study published in Personality and Individual Differences found that physically strong men are perceived as more conservative. The research indicated that physically strong men are viewed as favoring policies that support competition and hierarchy, and such men are also seen as likely to value...www.psypost.org
It does not, because 2015 and 2006 were only 2 of Obama's eight-year term.
It also doesn't list Biden's full term
I saw your post and already had a copy.
Prime suspect is Miller, for sure, but there are a number of currents in the GOP, so I am curious whether I will see hints of more.
Just curious, but how much do you trust these polling companies after the 2024 election when most of them turned out to be wrong??
