Pence believes apocalypse is divine, tho

Think you guys are not factoring some knowns about Trump in these situations.

For one, he always flatters his audience even if he's subtly talking down to them. Two, he's always finding outsiders to blame, not whoever he is talking to. And three, he's always self-aggrandizing.

So he's not going to spit fire at Muslims or the Arab world or do the bull in a china shop thing.

He's going to churlishly blame Obama, ISIS and vague undefined bad guys for meta-problems and non-specific woes and then talk about his golf courses and resorts and Arab business partner friends and how they love him and he's great friends with so many Arab guys.

I reckon it will start something like this:

"I like Islam, I've heard tremendous things about it. Muslims are great, except for the bad ones of course [some rambling about Skittles or bad eggs or whatever his dipstick son Tweeted a while back]. We are just not stopping the bad ones. Sad!"

Trump's giving a speech on Islam? What's next? Kim Jong-un giving a speech on democracy?

I honestly can't wait to see what Trump does overseas. It is gonna be like National Lampoons European Vacation.

Got 2 out of 3 in my hypothetical speech

Spicey got cucked pretty bad, almost feel sorry for the guy...

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/1...ess-secretary/

Is it normal for all these foreign dignitaries to visit the White House after a new president? It seems odd so many are coming to see Trump but I don't remember if so many visited Obama or Bush when they were first elected.

Probably is but nobody gave a **** before. Now everyone is live streaming mundane normal events just in case Trump says something crazy.

True.

I'm not even correcting anyone ITT necessarily, just that the common conception seems to be that Trump is going to walk into a potentially hostile audience and go HAM and say mean things about Muslims and **** but he almost never does that. Not from what I've seen. He always goes in as an oafish poor man's version of an insincere compassionate conservative of the early 2000s vintage, but instead of pretending as if significant problems are solved by free enterprise and private charity, he just ham-handedly says he'll solve all the problems because he makes great deals.

The games they are all learning, the deflections and distractions and handwaving and whataboutisms, those are all defense mechanisms against real information getting through. They are learning these techniques from Fox News and Trump and all kinds of places, but they don't realize the real effect of the techniques--it keeps the person who's learning them super duper ignorant and exploitable.

I'm surprised Spicer has lasted this long to be honest. Trump is always looking for people to blame.

Guilfoyle from Silicon Valley would be a better choice

Or in other words, because of their cultural affiliation with the right, they have literally given up their right and ability to process or discard information as they see fit. They now have no choice, if they want to keep their tribal affiliation they have to process all information in this garbled and twisted way. And now it's become the language they talk to us in, and oftentimes each other. They're becoming a totally separate society from the rest of us.

I wasn't abundantly clear in lieu of going for the Arrested Development homage, but my take isn't that Trump blasphemes Islam out of spite. It's that he could well do so amidst trying to flatter his audience because he's dumb as a box of rocks and doesn't know the least bit about Islam.

totally agree. the only check on this administration is its own incompetence.

Even when you tell them that, it doesn't register. I was talking to one of my conservative friends the other day about the AHCA. Even though he's type 2 diabetic and will have a pre-existing condition, he loves it. He tried to blame Obama basically saying he did such a bad job with the ACA, the GOP has to fix it for everyone. They are just clueless.

It is out of necessity for sure. Ignorance is the only rock they can successfully hide under. And even that is so transparent.

Oh yeah that's because they have been using this 'language' for awhile now and it's just second nature. It doesn't even occur to them that they are using all kinds of verbal tricks and sleight of hand, that's just the language they hear every day. On the news, friends, coworkers, it all seeps through eventually. Language is contagious.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/1...&_r=0&referer=

Info President Cheeto leaked came from Israel

GWB to Trump.

amazing even for Republicans. Don't know what is next.

My sister-in-law on Facebook this morning said she's glad Trump told the Russians classified information because of how "upset it made libtards." The only people responding to her are of course Trump slappies that agree.

sealioning
whataboutism
handwaving
deflection
appeal to ignorance
appeal to hypocrisy
redefine words
ad hominem
attack the gaps

And when all that fails, they just do like dear leader does:
Lie shamelessly about easily provable facts.

Yeah this logical fallacy is pretty new to me. I'm not sure there's even a term for it yet. I see it all the time too. "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" maybe?

I'm not praising it necessarily but one thing to consider is that what you're seeing is a highly effective ideological movement.

I try to say this without inputting my own values onto this, but I've made this point before: but having a huge number of basic automatons who can reflexively and dutifully recite highly ideological and partisan talking points (put aside for the moment that they're brazenly stupid) before opinion elites even create them is symbolic of a highly effective political movement.

The left should think long and hard about this because in the our goal should be to create the same thing. The modern left is NOTHING but a political movement of free-thinkers who require almost debilitating amounts of messaging coordination and explanation to get our point of view understood by the public writ large. That's kind of a bad thing, it has huge costs.

I'm not suggesting we perfectly emulate the modern right but it is worth noting some of what you are witnessing is a hallmark of their ideological success and our inability to counter it a mark of our collective longstanding failure.