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Trump is plainly ignorant, despite his enormous wealth and privileged education. I don’t believe it is even a strategy for this campaign, as some appear to suggest. Trump has a history of racist, sexist and xenophobic remarks, backed up by racist, sexist and xenophobic action, particularly in the workplace and in his personal life and Trump has then been protected by his small army of PR advisors and lawyers.
Can you name a specific example of him being racist? I would perhaps also say I’ve never seen him be sexist either, he seems to habit of insulting women based on their appearance, but I would not classify this as sexism personally. Clinton on the other hand did say something that was sexist during the debate. She criticised Trump for saying “Women only deserve equal pay if they can work as well as a Man”, which implies that Clinton thinks Women should be paid either less or more for the same work. Both of these posibilities would be actual examples of sexism, one against men and the other against women.
Trump clearly lacks the insight to moderate his language and various insults, because his inherited wealth ensures he has lived his entire life in a bubble far removed from the reality that most people live their own lives in.
He says whatever comes into his mind at the time he is speaking, I think this is probably due to his inexperience with this style of public speaking and is probably something he would improve at over time if he was to win the election. As for inheriting wealth, as far as I know his statement of recieving a ‘small’ loan of 1 million dollars to start his business career is factually correct. So saying all of his wealth is inherited isn’t 100% accurate. He probably is far removed from the average citizen I will agree with you there, but is he any more than Clinton? I would say he probably isn’t.
However, this campaign has revealed and highlighted, just like during the EU referendum in the UK, that vast numbers of working class people, blue collar, have been neglected by the political class for decades and are mobilizing in ever greater numbers to vote against the so called establishment and establishment figures like Hilary Clinton.
You’re correct here, but the establishment is definitely a real thing.
I reply to your posts when I can read them, lol.
I agree with you that there is a worryingly strong radicalisation among Muslims, especially in France (where there is one estiamte of 20% support in the banlieues). So what’s your plan of how to handle it – you say it’s less authoritarian than Trump’s.
I don’t have any short term plans yet, but I think the most important thing in the long term would be to ban foreign investment in religious institutions. A lot of the radicalised Muslims seem to have links to mosques that have recieved Saudi and Qatari funding in exchange for teaching Whahabi / Salafi intepretations of the Quran. I think this would enable the teaching of more moderate versions of the faith.
Another thing I think is important is to make sure that exceptions to the law are not made for muslims. One example of this is that currently the police can order people to remove face coverings if they are suspected of a crime. Some people would have nicabs and burkas excluded from these powers on grounds of ‘racism’, which is why I don’t like the labeling of eveything as racism because it allows these kinds of things to enter public discussion.
Why do you have no problem with xenophobia? It’s present in all countries, but in a counrty as strong as the USA (or the UK, for that matter) it’s pretty dangerous.
I don’t have a problem with xenophobia in regards to negative aspects of a culture or religion, these things should be criticised.
drac you make my eyes go wonky
but in a nice bleary sort of way.I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.
Thanks!De ja vu
Anyway getting back to UK’s quotes from the Huffington …. is that not the US’s equivalent to The Sun ?
So it must be true ….. not
It makes for good convo though.
Huffington Post is pretty aweful to be honest, at lot more left leaning than The Sun is though.
drac,
I’m glad you take debate and discussion seriously, and not as an excuse to show what a command of bad language and insults you have in your vocabulary. I don’t think that makes you a wannabe politican, any more than it makes me one. just someone who takes life seriously.But I do think you’re confusing a technical discussion of racism with a common sense approach. You rightly say that Mexicans are a nation, not a race, but then you accept the racial element because they are hispanic. A huge number of Americans are hispanic, but that’s a sign of America’s racial make-up. When Trump demeans mexicans, he’s actually attacking hispanics. When he demeans women as ugly, pigs, dogs etc, it could be argued that he isn’t really insulting women, because he makes gestures of ownership and power when introducing his wife, but that’s reasoning gone out to lunch – he is demeaning women.
I don’t really like to assume what is in peoples heads when they speak, maybe he ment mexicans, maybe he ment hispanics. Neither of us can say definitively what he was trying to say. I don’t even think he does half of the time.
Personally I find his comments towards women to be that harmful, I can understand why some people would though. Most of the time I just find his comments to be funny.
Similarly in his attacks on Obama for not being American, he is pandering to racial prejudice. The first black President is not really an Ameican, he says. Technically, you can make all sorts of distictions, but in the political game played by Trump (and farage in thsi country) he’s pandering to race prejudice.
The same goes with his attacks on muslims. Islam is a faith, not a race – you rightly say that. But the vast majority of Muslims don’t engage in acts of terrorism. It’s a minority hailing from a particular area in the popular mind – an area inhabited by what Americans (and some Brits) call ds’ and ‘ragheads’ – a slur against Arabs. popular feeling knows what Trump is talking about – he speaks in a barely hidden code understood by all, who feel he’s saying what they want to say about hispanics, blacks and Arabs.
When people say Muslim I usually imagine a Pakistani man, rather than an Arabian one actually. But maybe that’s because I have a few friends there. Obviously not all Muslims commit terrorism, but a worrying number of them are sympathetic to the ones that do, and as we saw in Belgium would be willing to hide them from the police. More needs to be done about this, I have a few ideas of how to help with this issue, none of which are as authoritarian as Trump’s.
I wouldn’t of put it quite so bluntly but am inclined to agree with Reason …. No offence Drac but not all comment needs analyising & some of us make tongue in cheek comments.
No offence taken, but I prefer to analyse things to determine if my beliefs are the correct ones, which I why I make these long posts here.
Reason….er, yes.
Drac, try xenophobia, which is a more wide-ranging term than racism. Racism is linked, and the two can be confused, but Trump is guilty on both counts. It’s an inward, insular approach to life, becoming more common.
Xenophobia would perhaps be appopriate, not sure why I didn’t think of it. Perhaps Trump is racist, but nobody seems to be able to provide concrete evidence that he is, which was the original point I was making. I think we will disagree somewhat on the issue of Xenophobia, other cultures have problems (ours does of course also) and I don’t think we should be blindly accepting of other cultures withought challenging those problems.
Funnily enough, only 500-odd American actually vote for president. Clinto and Trmp will not be appearing on ballots. No Presidential candidate ever does. You vote for electors, not for a president. The electors then go on in Decemeber to vote for the President directly. It’s a funny system, written in 1787, to ensure that demoracy didn’t interfere with the process.
That pesky democracy, always getting in the way of things.
Some electors are rogues and vote for a candidate of their own choice. Once, one elector decided to vote for Walter Jones, the local postman, because Mr Jones was a good postman who braved all weathers. So, Walter Jones got 1 vote in the elction, as opposed to 500-odd for the other two candidates.
Walter Jones sounds like a good guy, maybe they should bring him back. Probably a better choice than the current candidates.
drac, that is a long post which misses the point of racism in the US. Racism there is pretty weird – it’s connected with demeaning referneces to other ethnic groups. WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are the king group. “Everybody else is a visitor”, as Matt Damon’s character says in a very good movie called The Good Shepherd.
I like your long posts, but it’s like common sense can be buried by rationality. Does that make snese? I is tired, so will answer tomorrow, but as a starter Mexicans are latinos, hispanics, and are seen as inferior to WASPs. Look at John Wayne’s attitude to them – in The Alamo, Wayne goes to Texas to fight for freedom from the Mexies – the fact that mexicans abolished slavery doesn’t seem to have been noticed by him. Trump called one latino in a beauty contest Miss Houecleaner. One judge was dismissed as a Mexican, and therefore incapable of independent judgement. It’s demeaning.
I disagree with you here, the only thing racism is connected to is race. Other usages of the word racism are often used to shield people like radical islamists from critisism, and I am very against the attemts to redefine what racism is.
We need a different word for discrimination against someone for nationality or cultural background, i’m don’t really have a solution to this, but I also don’t think discrimination on these grounds is inherantly wrong (depending on how valid a basis the discrimination has). Most of Trump’s statements however are not valid, except maybe with Muslims. Some of the research (from the UK) has numbers that indicate an actual problem. (52% of Muslims think that homosexuality should be illegal, and 23% want to introduce Sharia Law, which includes death for homosexuals. Souce : https://www.icmunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Mulims-full-suite-data-plus-topline.pdf).
Candidates can only be on the ballot when they reach a required number of supporters. There are usually about a dozen candidates. Two parties predominate because of the nature of the federal system and electoral process. Third parties do arise, but never survive for long.
Maybe it should be changed to list the top four candidates or something instead. I don’t know the US system in depth enough to suggest any meaningful changes.
American elections are very important to everybody. The USA is the only country in the world where its choices affect all other countries. Several countries have an influnce on various groups, but the USA’s choice really is important for us all.
I think that generally people overestimate how important the US is internatonally. But I agree that they are pretty important for us here in Britain, especially with leaving the EU in the next few years.
Here Are 13 Examples Of Donald Trump Being Racist
Using Huffington Post as a source isn’t very intellectually honest, but I will address their points.
1) He attacked Muslim Gold Star parents
‘Muslim’ isn’t a race, it’s an ideology.2) He claimed a judge was biased because “he’s a Mexican”
Again, Mexican isn’t a race, it’s a nationality. But its more closely related to race than before so I will treat this as if it was about race. His point although stupid, does have some merit to it. The media fairly often tries to create divides between him and Mexican people, so artificially created bias might be a legitimate concern in some cases. I don’t think it was in this example though.3) The Justice Department sued his company ― twice ― for not renting to black people
I haven’t read through the full context, and the evidence of discrimination that they found to see how valid it is. But his company was sued, not him personally. This is a significant difference.4)In fact, discrimination against black people has been a pattern in his career
Again this is lawsuits agains companies he is involved with, not him personally. There is a quote provided that was made by Trump himself calling a black employee lazy, but no evidence is provided that he said this for racial reasons. Maybe he actually was lazy, I can’t tell from this article.5) He refused to condemn the white supremacists who are campaigning for him
Being supported by racists doesn’t make Trump himself racist. I’m sure there are racist people who have donated to Clinton’s campaign, is she going to refund those donations? I don’t think so.6) He questions whether President Obama was born in the United States
The first thing to mention here is that Clinton’s campaign also investigated this when she was running against Obama. This is related to his race, but i’m not sure that saying Kenyans are black is racist. There is some (largly trivial) evidence that would lead people to believe he was Kenyan, one of his books erroniously lists his birthplace as Kenya for example.7) He treats racial groups as monoliths
Cultures exist, this should not be contraversial. And sub-cultures develop within areas with distinct demographics. Again ‘Muslim’ is quoted here as a race, which it isn’t. As a generalisation, black people Americans have a different culture than the surrounding areas. Although I believe this is more to do with a majority of black people living in poor conditions rather than behaviour that is inherant to their race. I don’t know what Trump thinks the cause is, and the article doesn’t suggest anything either.8) He trashed Native Americans, too
The quote provided here seemed more like he was criticising the use of the word ‘Indian’ to describe native americans. I don’t see how this could be interpreted as being racist.9) He encouraged the mob justice that resulted in the wrongful imprisonment of the Central Park Five
Again, I don’t see any racism here. Trump said he wants death penalty for murder. The DNA showed the people in this case were innocent, and he was wrong. The article doesn’t even say what race the accused people were.10) He condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester
I have no love for BLM personally, I view them as a borderline terrorist orginisation after the shootings of police officers, human trafficing and other offenses commited by senior members of the group. Maybe Trump feels the same about this, it doesn’t say anything about how he feels about black people who are not part of BLM. As a side note, most members of BLM UK are white. Condoning violence against them however is wrong, but I don’t see it as being racist.11) He called supporters who beat up a homeless Latino man “passionate”
See point 5, Trump wasn’t involved in the beating. Although he should have encouraged his supporters not to act in such a manner.12) He stereotyped Jews and shared an anti-Semitic meme created by white supremacists
Whether Jewish people are race or not is debatable, semetic people certainly are, but not all jews are semetic. The quote provided seemed like it was addressed to specific people who are jewish, rather than all jewish people. I would guess he is refering to people like George Soros, but without context I can’t tell. The second point raised, the use of a star on advertisement is common practice and nothing to do with the star of David.13) He treats African-American supporters as tokens to dispel the idea he is racist
If he actually hated black people, he wouldn’t allow them to be near him. Not really sure what the point is here.Overall, most of this article was filled with collectivist nonsense that implies Trump and anyone that is remotely related to him are somehow part of a hive mind that acts as one entity. This is why I don’t like Huffington Post. Perhaps one or two of these points could have validity, but the reporting on it is aweful and makes it impposible to tell without further investigation.
If there is somthing I missed then let me know and I will address it.