Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[olegru]

15 years ago being a new American I studied English in Riverside language school. (By the way, I love that school.) One day we discussed the stereotypes about emigrants from different countries and somebody said that Russian Americans are much less tend to trust compare to other Americans. I found that observation to be very true.

 

I think I could trust Tim Kaine in a business deal. I am pretty sure I could trust Hillary Clinton. Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham also come to mind as trustworthy.

 

Sorry, in my list of politician who I would not trust even to hold a bag with my dog’s droppings, Hilary is on the third place. Trump is on the second.

[kenberg]

15 years ago being a new American I studied English in Riverside language school. (By the way, I love that school.) One day we discussed the stereotypes about emigrants from different countries and somebody said that Russian Americans are much less tend to trust compare to other Americans. I found that observation to be very true.

 

A colleague who emigrated from the Soviet Union back when It was the Soviet Union told a story that might support this. He was assigned to demonstrate statistically that the average Soviet worker was better off than the average US worker. As he put it: "I had a wife and family, so I demonstrated that the average Soviet worker was better off than the average US worker. And I applied for an exit".

[cherdano]

Sorry, in my list of politician who I would not trust even to hold a bag with my dog’s droppings, Hilary is on the third place. Trump is on the second.

 

I think you are severely misreading Clinton. Why do you think so many in her party endorsed her? In no small part because they have come to trust her based on their personal interactions with her.

I have never understood why Clinton is considered so untrustworthy. Yes, she has shifted some policy positions - but are there really more of those than for Obama, taking into account how long she has been in national politics?

[cherdano]

Anyway, I don't really care whether Ryan does or does not retract his endorsement of Trump. His choice, he can live with it. But sometime back he, Ryan, said he did not think that he could work with a President Hillary Clinton. Have we not had enough of this? He does not have to vote for her, he does have to work with her.

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/why-paul-ryan-can-endorse-trump-and-still-be-paul-ryan.html

 

But it is precisely Ryan’s reputation for sincerity that allows him to follow his present course. The essence of Paul Ryan’s career is an uncanny knack for being defined by his stated aspirations rather than his actions. He is a deficit hawk who spent the 1990s and 2000s supporting deficit-increasing measures, and pushing to make them even more profligate. He is passionate about anti-poverty policy even though his own policy priorities require massive cuts to the anti-poverty budget. He wants desperately to write a detailed health-care-reform plan but does not actually do it.

 

Ryan was able to sell the US press, and to a large extent the US public, to the idea that he did care about poverty, even though all his policy proposal indicate the opposite. Etc. I am sure he'll be able to sell to the US press that he was really against Trump.

 

If someone considers Clinton untrustworthy and Ryan trustworthy, then they live in an alternate reality compared to mine.

[Winstonm]

15 years ago being a new American I studied English in Riverside language school. (By the way, I love that school.) One day we discussed the stereotypes about emigrants from different countries and somebody said that Russian Americans are much less tend to trust compare to other Americans. I found that observation to be very true.

 

 

 

Sorry, in my list of politician who I would not trust even to hold a bag with my dog’s droppings, Hilary is on the third place. Trump is on the second.

 

Why do you mistrust Hillary? And please, be precise, as I really don't understand why there is so much antagonism toward her. Thanks.

[ggwhiz]

Why do you mistrust Hillary? And please, be precise, as I really don't understand why there is so much antagonism toward her. Thanks.

 

I don't get it either but I don't get Fox news. Just in it for the big bucks?

 

I read (don't remember where) that she got $250k per speech and that makes her claim that she and Bill were broke after leaving the Whitehouse credible. Add in the speaking fees for Bill and it's no surprise they are worth north of 100M today. Trump speeches topped out at 1.5M.

[kenberg]

Why do you mistrust Hillary? And please, be precise, as I really don't understand why there is so much antagonism toward her. Thanks.

 

i was listening to NPR today, not Fox, and they were briefly speaking about Hillary's claim that Comey, or I think they were speaking of Comey, had said that her statements to the American people about her emails were true statements. He did not say that, and as I understand it her statements were not all true statements. It is true that the there was a decision not to prosecute. She claimed more. The participants in this discussion were David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, and a host. I am not sure just who the host was, as I was listening only while going from here to there. Not any of these three claimed that her statements were true, they did not even claim that her statements were technically true but misleading. The three agreed that her statements were simply false. There was some puzzlement over why she would say something that was so clearly and so checkably false.

 

That's for today. We we could go back and look at yesterday.

 

This is not going to stop me from voting for her.

[Trinidad]

So the choice is between someone who makes false statements and someone who makes statements without any factual basis?

 

Rik

[kenberg]

So the choice is between someone who makes false statements and someone who makes statements without any factual basis?

 

Rik

 

Yes, something like that. I would put it as a choice between a thoroughly obnoxious belligerent jerk and a reasonably competent reasonably decent person who is more than a bit evasive. Not a great choice but a clear one. If we were to hold out for someone with no faults we could never vote for anyone, not even for ourselves.

[MrAce]

Yes, something like that. I would put it as a choice between a thoroughly obnoxious belligerent jerk and a reasonably competent reasonably decent person who is more than a bit evasive. Not a great choice but a clear one. If we were to hold out for someone with no faults we could never vote for anyone, not even for ourselves.

 

+1000

[Cyberyeti]

Yes, something like that. I would put it as a choice between a thoroughly obnoxious belligerent jerk and a reasonably competent reasonably decent person who is more than a bit evasive. Not a great choice but a clear one. If we were to hold out for someone with no faults we could never vote for anyone, not even for ourselves.

 

Also if you're looking for the sort of person you want to vote for, you won't find them, presidential election politics is brutal enough you have to be a weirdo of some sort to want to go through it.

 

I think you're being a little kind to Hillary though, she's told some whoppers in her time. (The alleged landing under fire when the film turned up showing nothing of the sort for example)

[Winstonm]

Also if you're looking for the sort of person you want to vote for, you won't find them, presidential election politics is brutal enough you have to be a weirdo of some sort to want to go through it.

 

I think you're being a little kind to Hillary though, she's told some whoppers in her time. (The alleged landing under fire when the film turned up showing nothing of the sort for example)

 

Yes, it is still hard to understand what she was thinking when she made that claim - knowing how easy it would be to debunk.

[billw55]

Yes, it is still hard to understand what she was thinking when she made that claim - knowing how easy it would be to debunk.

What it means to me is that she lies frequently and casually, enough so that she had a slip of attention while doing it.

 

Or alternatively, that she really remembered it that way. Memory is a very tricky thing, and can certainly be influenced by ego and braggadocio.

 

Either way I am not particularly impressed. But it won't make me vote for Trump.

 

 

[hrothgar]

What it means to me is that she lies frequently and casually, enough so that she had a slip of attention while doing it.

 

Or alternatively, that she really remembered it that way. Memory is a very tricky thing, and can certainly be influenced by ego and braggadocio.

 

Either way I am not particularly impressed. But it won't make me vote for Trump.

 

What it means to me is that Clinton is being held to a different standard than other politicians.

There are all sorts of academic studies that demonstrate that memory is extremely fluid and faulty.

 

Spend 25 years holding ANYONE under this sort of spotlight and you're going to find some unpleasant *****.

 

There have been some pretty good studies by the newspapers rating the truthfulness of the various candidates this election cycle.

 

Clinton does very very well.

Virtually everything that has come out of Trump's mouth is a distortion, if not an outright lie.

[billw55]

What it means to me is that Clinton is being held to a different standard than other politicians.

There are all sorts of academic studies that demonstrate that memory is extremely fluid and faulty.

I suppose, then, you take the position that she believed it when she said it?

 

Virtually everything that has come out of Trump's mouth is a distortion, if not an outright lie.

Or gross ignorance, which is also plausible. He, too, may believe the things he says. Not sure which is worse.

 

 

 

[hrothgar]

I suppose, then, you take the position that she believed it when she said it?

 

You need to be a lot more specific:

 

For example, Clinton claimed that she was under sniper fire when she landed in Kossovo.

I believe this to be either a false memory or a deliberate lie.

 

In contrast, I think that Clinton's more recent claims about James Comey to be an attempt to take a (far too) legalistic spin on his comments.

[Zelandakh]

Is it possible that she was briefed that the armed forces were taking precautions to make sure there were no snipers in the vicinity and she filled in the gaps? As others have said, memory is a funny thing. I was once involved in an accident at a judo club that ended in a legal case and each witness had a completely different take on what was happening at the time of the incident, not only in terms of details but even as to what the general exercise was (throws, groundwork, mixed). It was somewhat amusing to read back the various accounts. How much more difficult when almost every week has some sort of noteworthy event that might become relevant in the future?

[PassedOut]

Is it possible that she was briefed that the armed forces were taking precautions to make sure there were no snipers in the vicinity and she filled in the gaps? As others have said, memory is a funny thing. I was once involved in an accident at a judo club that ended in a legal case and each witness had a completely different take on what was happening at the time of the incident, not only in terms of details but even as to what the general exercise was (throws, groundwork, mixed). It was somewhat amusing to read back the various accounts. How much more difficult when almost every week has some sort of noteworthy event that might become relevant in the future?

A close relative is a police detective in a metropolitan area. He says that you'd rarely know just from reviewing the eyewitness accounts of an event that the witnesses were describing the same event.

[kenberg]

I'm an only brat, but Becky has a sister. The relevance being that when Becky and her sister recall things from child hood they sometimes wonder of they really were in the same place at the same time. Memory is indeed selective.

 

With the e-mails, I have a guess. She never really intended to turn them all over for archiving. I am more than a bit understanding of this. It is very useful to have times when you can speak in only half thought out terms. If your every utterance or your every note is going to be preserved and gone over, I think that it would be very difficult to think things through. We should hold people responsible for the conclusions that they come to and the actions they then take, but not for their early thinking. So I can see why she might want to be able to hold un-logged early stage discussion. I suppose she can't actually say that though.

 

Added: I realize this is totally unrealistic. I even realize that there are some good reasons for archiving everything. But I wouldn't like all my utterances recorded and it doesn't surprise me to find others are not so fond of it either.

[Winstonm]

What it means to me is that she lies frequently and casually, enough so that she had a slip of attention while doing it.

 

Or alternatively, that she really remembered it that way. Memory is a very tricky thing, and can certainly be influenced by ego and braggadocio.

 

Either way I am not particularly impressed. But it won't make me vote for Trump.

 

I cannot imagine being a politician in today's U.S., where every comment - erroneous or otherwise - I make can be edited and repackaged as a sound byte.

[barmar]

Yes, it is still hard to understand what she was thinking when she made that claim - knowing how easy it would be to debunk.

Politicians do this all the time. The Daily Show has made a habit of finding politicians directly contradicting themselves. They say "I never said X", then TDS shows an earlier video of them saying exactly that.

 

Most of this probably happens in extemporaneous talk, so selective memory probably is to blame for much of it. If you've changed your opinion about something, it may be difficult to remember expressing the previous opinion.

[Trinidad]

I read that McMullin wants to be an independent candidate. Would he be able to get a significant amount of Republican voters to support him?

 

Rik

[kenberg]

I read that McMullin wants to be an independent candidate. Would he be able to get a significant amount of Republican voters to support him?

 

Rik

 

Beats me.

 

This year gets stranger and stranger. I guess the campaign would be something like "I want to give Republicans a chance to vote for a Republican". Maybe it would catch on, who knows?

[billw55]

Is it possible that she was briefed that the armed forces were taking precautions to make sure there were no snipers in the vicinity and she filled in the gaps?

This is plausible to an extent.

 

However, this is not a psych experiment to see if people remember furniture that was not actually in a room they viewed for 30 seconds. We are talking about getting shot at, or not. It seems like something that would be more difficult to confuse. I have many times driven through neighborhoods where shootings have occurred. I may incorrectly remember what buildings were present, or even whether it was day or night. But I would never confabulate that I personally was shot at. Still, there are many known cases of false memories far worse than that. So I must accept it is possible. I wonder if perhaps she was shot at in some other place or incident, and confused the two?

 

Too many plausible explanations to reach a conclusion. It's like the dominant athlete who may or may not be doping. Neither answer will surprise anyone very much.

[barmar]

One of the panelists on last week's Real Time made the same comment I did, about Trump's campaign being like "The Producers". She's a Republican who's embarassed by her party's candidate. Former candidate Rick Santorum was also on the panel, trying to justify why he has endorsed Trump despite all his faults.