it's all good. we having fun. this thread is artistic

Fair enough.

Again, that's just your opinion. People I know don't see those tendencies at all. Just becuase it's your opinion that "that's what a dictator would do bro!" doesn't mean it is true. I've seen Hitler speak. I've seen Castro speak, and Stalin. Trump doesn't remind me of any of them.

Trump reminds me of guys I know from the NY area. They're outspoken, they have swagger, and don't really give a sh-t about what you think of them. I can understand from people who are not experienced with that type of person it can come off as a certain way. But I'm used to them so it doesn't bother me.

It does strike me as authoritarian that mainstream hollywood people are afraid of showing support for Trump or any conservative because they won't be able to find work anymore.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...hapiro-apology

If you want to "get out from under China's thumb", then you need

a) Allies which think along somewhat similar lines to yourself.
b) To properly understand China, iow. use experts, not brown-noses.
c) Seat the chairs in international fora properly and not hand them out as participation trophies to loyal troopers or generous donors.

I've met Chinese foreign dignitaries, and the guys (and gals) I met were not even high rank. Still we were talking ivy league education, plenty of languages, sharp as heck and prepared to the finger-tips even for minor dealings. You're not going to defeat that on the diplomatic stage with people selected primarily to sing the president's praises.

A lot of vague characterizations about people who think Trump handled this badly and then another vague mention about "people" who are "right." I've seen opposing viewpoints. Navarro is on Trump's team here. People who have foreign policy experience. Just because some people you may know think it's wrong doesn't mean it is wrong. I'm not even sure why I'm responding to this. You need to say why he's handling it wrong.

Obama did nothing on this front.

Just mentioning that China has been stealing IP from us for years was first mentioned by Trump afaik.

I bet the comma is supposed to go before/inside the quotation mark

https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=...sclient=psy-ab

Ess,

Where do you rank Communism and Nazism on the evil ideology scale of 1-100?

this is a topic for another thread. I'm not an expert on biology, I'm just going on what I've learned from what I thought were experts. Happy to discuss this in another thread and learn more.

It's my opinion, but one that is shared by many. I'm not sure that comparing watching people speak is instructive here; it's more the contents of what they say.

However, if you don't see the parallels between watching a Trump rally and watching old footage of Nazi rallies, I'm not to sure what to say. The fawning admiration of the crowd, the cheers every time he says something divisive or calls for a political opponent or journalist to be jailed, or calls for violence, and the chanting of slogans is quite scary to watch.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

That's not what authoritarian means. That's just people not wanting to work with you because they don't like you as a person for having shitty opinions.

Interesting question. Communism seduces people becuase the intentions seem pure. But in the end it has proven stickier and deadlier than Nazism.

Nazism is atrocious on its face, which makes it less likely to spread.

Communism 96

Nazism 94

It is authoritarian, it's a form of censorship and blacklisting eerily similar to the red scare days of McCarthyism.

If you can't work because of your opinions, you don't really have free speech. The only authoritarianism I see in America is coming from the left, which controls the media and has more combined power - across the education spectrum, media, and big tech companies - than Trump.

Thanks, I actually did not know that. In my language you generally only use punctuation inside quotation marks if it is actually part of a quote.

10 pages within a few hours lol and look it's the same bad faith posters trumping it up again

talking about racism in super power discussions lol the west is destroyed with these self hating ***** walking around

d2 you need a break brother this hatred is destroying your soul

That's a given. You also aren't going to defeat that with an uninformed public. Jimmy Lai should probably be an advisor.

Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences of speech. I'm free to post swastikas all over my Facebook homepage, but if a potential employer sees it and chooses not to hire me, he is not impinging on my rights, he is just exercising his freedom of not wanting shitty people working for his company.

Then you're really not looking hard enough.

"Power" is doing a lot of lifting here. I have power over my own residence. A CEO has power over the company he manages. Trump has power over the country. The word means different things in all of those contexts.

It's different in British English and American English. Brits typically put punctuation inside the quotation mark, Americans outside. Personally I do whichever seems appropriate in context.

Thanks for popping in, I always look forward to your thoughtful contributions to the discourse.

Well, I owe yet another thanks. And I will stop derailing the thread by thanking people for teaching a foreigner proper English / American punctuation.

You keep trying to convince me that Trump is authoritarian but you haven't provided any evidence, just opinions.

So if your company fired you and you couldn't find a new job in your field because you said, "Trump's bad" then that's OK with you?

Power is roughly defined as influence, at least it seems that was the way you used it. Trump's influence is limited by his position (the president has relative power) and his length of term. The max is 8 years, but the schools have children from K-12 and possibly even more.

Speaking of terms, if Trump is going to be dictator, how do you think he'll manage to get past term limits?

I have provided you with evidence that Trump has said and done things that are typically associated with authoritarians and considered anti-democratic. You are saying "well, that's just your opinion man", but what would you accept as evidence then?

If I couldn't get a job anywhere for having a certain opinion, and I needed the money, I'd STFU and keep it to myself. If the principle was more important than the money, I'd fight the good fight. But I wouldn't want to compel someone to hire me if they don't want to, any more than I'd want to compel someone to be friends with me if they didn't like me as a person.

just feeling my oats lol

dunno much about grammar and punctuation myself, but I love language, so I try to retain what I can. getting old, though, so it's a chore sometimes.

Yes, while it's still a free country, media do and should wield a lot of power and influence. Both conservative media and liberal media, might I add.

You'll have to ask him, he's the one who keeps "jokingly" suggesting it (haha, hilarious!) Maybe it's because "the constitution gives me power to do whatever I want, Article 2, nobody ever mentions Article 2".

When the co-founder of the Federalist Society starts calling your man a fascist, you might want to start to listen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/o...ronavirus.html

When your arguments involve denying the accepted definitions the rest of the world uses/has used--and is based on things like the encyclopedias are wrong and I am right--might be a red flag

Fascism in the classic sense is clearly a rightwing ideology. Because in the practical sense it looks almost like having a king/monarch--pretty much as far right as you can get. Leftwing ideas/democracy are generally about giving more power to the people vs 1 guy at the top.

Like with lots of other things in this regard(say unbridled capitalism) being out on the extreme edges usually isn't a good thing.

What era of our history do you think maga refers to and how do you think trump's ideas get us there??

I actually contemplated starting a new thread in poly titled "should freedom of speech be free of consequences?"

It's definitely is an important topic and freedom of speech does protect consequences in specific veins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better...w_of_headlines