Trump MAGAThread XII: A Tarriff-ic Thread!

[Bakery Hill]

...So the Founding Fathers were not elites?

You know, I can't help but feel a significant chunk of Americans would have dismissed the Founding Fathers at first sight for being "darn educated condescending elites."

Man, I hate anti-intellectualism.

It's better to have dismissed them at first sight for being slave owning aristocrats.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

...So the Founding Fathers were not elites?

You know, I can't help but feel a significant chunk of Americans would have dismissed the Founding Fathers at first sight for being "darn educated condescending elites."

Man, I hate anti-intellectualism.

It's not anti-intellectual to acknowledge the fact that the Founding Fathers were no saints, and that they were, in fact, just a bunch of educated condescending elites who happened to stumble across a good idea for a government.

It's being honest about the country's past. You can still think someone you think is a person you would despise had good ideas, because I am pretty sure black people would likely not like to meet George Washington or any of the other founding fathers, but yet they still have to thank the experiment that they started for their freedom, as it was these rights that they thought every man should have that shaped the nation into accepting them, even though they had to struggle through years of oppression to get there.

[Bakery Hill]

You know, I can't help but feel a significant chunk of Americans would have dismissed the Founding Fathers at first sight for being "darn educated condescending elites."

Man, I hate anti-intellectualism.

It's not anti-intellectual to acknowledge the fact that the Founding Fathers were no saints, and that they were, in fact, just a bunch of educated condescending elites who happened to stumble across a good idea for a government.

It's being honest about the country's past.

I like Jefferson's agrarianism and what he took from the French Revolution. Pity he wasn't personally consistent enough to free his slaves, though he might have called that practicality.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

The last time we had major tax cuts, we created the largest recession since the 1930's and reversed years of economic progress millions of Americans made.

Now I'm no economic expert, but I think I can safely say the next recession will cost the average American a little more than that $100 tax cut they got a few years back.

Tax cuts are only part of a recession, but not the whole picture.

There were more factors behind the recession than just tax cuts. We had several bubbles going on one after another for years, tbh, and there were other economic factors at play. So, the 2008 recession was more complicated than just because the taxes were cut.

Also, had the cuts been the reason for the recession, Obama wouldn't have continued the Bush Tax Cuts. Which he did throughout his presidency. He didn't touch taxes in order to restore the economy.

[Northern Davincia]

You know, I can't help but feel a significant chunk of Americans would have dismissed the Founding Fathers at first sight for being "darn educated condescending elites."

Man, I hate anti-intellectualism.

It's better to have dismissed them at first sight for being slave owning aristocrats.

Greetings, oversimplification.

[Valrifell]

You know, I can't help but feel a significant chunk of Americans would have dismissed the Founding Fathers at first sight for being "darn educated condescending elites."

Man, I hate anti-intellectualism.

It's not anti-intellectual to acknowledge the fact that the Founding Fathers were no saints, and that they were, in fact, just a bunch of educated condescending elites who happened to stumble across a good idea for a government.

Actually, this line of thinking is basically how you can summarize anti-intellectualism "anyone educated is a condescending elite!"

[Valrifell]

The last time we had major tax cuts, we created the largest recession since the 1930's and reversed years of economic progress millions of Americans made.

Now I'm no economic expert, but I think I can safely say the next recession will cost the average American a little more than that $100 tax cut they got a few years back.

Tax cuts are only part of a recession, but not the whole picture.

There were more factors behind the recession than just tax cuts. We had several bubbles going on one after another for years, tbh, and there were other economic factors at play. So, the 2008 recession was more complicated than just because the taxes were cut.

Also, had the cuts been the reason for the recession, Obama wouldn't have continued the Bush Tax Cuts. Which he did throughout his presidency. He didn't touch taxes in order to restore the economy.

It wasn't tax cuts, it was moreso bank deregulation that happened in the '90s because that's always a good idea as history has always proved *nods*

[Soldati Senza Confini]

It's not anti-intellectual to acknowledge the fact that the Founding Fathers were no saints, and that they were, in fact, just a bunch of educated condescending elites who happened to stumble across a good idea for a government.

Actually, this line of thinking is basically how you can summarize anti-intellectualism "anyone educated is a condescending elite!"

No, it really isn't, and this is coming from an educated person.

An educated person =/= a condescending elite. The founding fathers were very much a bunch of condescending elites, since they themselves feared the concept of a Democracy in its purest form, and decided to restrict who could and who couldn't vote for office.

That's extremely different from being educated. It was an attitude problem that made the founding fathers condescending elites. Not the fact they were educated landowners, but the fact they looked down on people they thought shouldn't be able to vote. You make more injustice to the concept of the founding fathers by thinking they were these geniuses who genuinely cared about people than to simply acknowledge they were pricks, but they were pricks who stumbled across a good form of governance. Which is a far more compelling narrative: that out of a bunch of fuckups (and they were), they managed to give the world a system which has ensured to guard people's freedoms for over 200 years in modern history.

Presenting the flaws of your founding fathers is not to say they weren't good enough, just to say they weren't saints. If you think that's anti-intellectual, then you don't understand what anti-intellectualism is. Anti-intellectualism is having a disdain for knowledge and deeming it impractical for human pursuits. It doesn't mean viewing educated people as arrogant elitists. That's a more social issue, but the issue doesn't stem from common folk being anti-intellectuals, it stems from academic folk thinking knowledge outside of academia is useless and thinking that if you haven't gone to college or you can't quote some author that disagrees with them you must be stupid and you don't know what you're talking about. Make no mistake in thinking that academic arrogance isn't a form of elitism. It absolutely is, and academics need to come to terms with the fact that not everyone who has a good idea is necessarily a PhD candidate at a prestigious university. They also need to come to terms with the fact that calling them arrogant, because they do show a high amount of arrogance, doesn't necessarily make the person accusing them of being arrogant anti-intellectual.

It's a good defense and all but it doesn't address the root of the problem. I have met far too many academics and self-professed intellectuals myself who for one reason or another think I'm stupid and uneducated simply because, while I happen to disagree with them, I use simpler language than they would use, or I disagree with the idea, but they think I'm stupid because I can't seem to understand their idea in their own context which is inside of their heads and somehow I must be some kind of telepathic mind-reader to guess which context they are talking about. People who are in the capacity of being highly educated do themselves no favors when they assume that because someone disagrees with them that person must be an anti-intellectual despite their background suggesting otherwise.

Of course that is not the only way to dismiss a person. Had I been born back in the day when the founding fathers were roaming the Earth and planning their experiment, I wouldn't have dismissed them because they were educated elites. I would have dismissed them because they were English.

[Luminesa]

...So the Founding Fathers were not elites?

You know, I can't help but feel a significant chunk of Americans would have dismissed the Founding Fathers at first sight for being "darn educated condescending elites."

Man, I hate anti-intellectualism.

...But I mean...that was the social hierarchy of America. The Founding Fathers were mostly elites with very varied religious beliefs. Anywhere from Catholics (John Carroll) to Episcopalians (George Washington and others) to deists (Thomas Jefferson, who was probably the most extreme deist of the group). This does not mean, however, that the everyday culture of America was not influenced by the many nameless Puritan, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Quaker, etc. settlers who lived their everyday lives around their religions. You can’t throw-out either one, really. It’s rather incredible when you think about how much we, as normal people, influence our modern culture.

So it’s not necessarily “anti-intellectualism”, rather it’s merely forgetting one side of the tale.

[Mujahidah]

An educated person =/= a condescending elite. The founding fathers were very much a bunch of condescending elites, since they themselves feared the concept of a Democracy in its purest form, and decided to restrict who could and who couldn't vote for office.

Literally any sane person would fear democracy in its purest form.

[Salandriagado]

So what you mean is that in a functional fashion, parliament doesn't actually make such decisions for the church.

They approve them.

But in a functional sense, they don't actually get involved.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

An educated person =/= a condescending elite. The founding fathers were very much a bunch of condescending elites, since they themselves feared the concept of a Democracy in its purest form, and decided to restrict who could and who couldn't vote for office.

Literally any sane person would fear democracy in its purest form.

Yes, but the question is, were they altruistic geniuses like we try to present them?

The answer is no, they were not. Even their form of government, before all the suffrages we saw come up in the US, was the result of their biases towards people.

[Mujahidah]

Literally any sane person would fear democracy in its purest form.

Yes, but the question is, were they altruistic geniuses like we try to present them?

The answer is no, they were not. Even their form of government, before all the suffrages we saw come up in the US, was the result of their biases towards people.

Fearing pure democracy is not an example of a bias though. Its an example of having the foresight to reject mob rule.

[Ifreann]

The Oscars are tonight. Do we think Trump's going to stick his oar in? Complain about the results? Get mad when famous people say mean things about him?

[Bruke]

The Oscars are tonight. Do we think Trump's going to stick his oar in? Complain about the results? Get mad when famous people say mean things about him?

Yes yes and a definite yes. The man loves attention. He's an attention hog.

[Ifreann]

The Oscars are tonight. Do we think Trump's going to stick his oar in? Complain about the results? Get mad when famous people say mean things about him?

Yes yes and a definite yes. The man loves attention. He's an attention hog.

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

[Freezic Vast]

Yes yes and a definite yes. The man loves attention. He's an attention hog.

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

If anything is to go by, this year's Oscars will have even worse ratings than last year did.

[Bruke]

Yes yes and a definite yes. The man loves attention. He's an attention hog.

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

The Oscars are probably going to be even more political this year. Hollywood is dying to virtue-signal and show its progressive politics yet again.

That's what I think will set him off.

On the other hand, because the ratings were down for the more political awards last year, they might tone it down. If they tone it down, i think he'll ignore it.

[Freezic Vast]

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

The Oscars are probably going to be even more political this year. Hollywood is dying to virtue-signal and show its progressive politics yet again.

That's what I think will set him off.

On the other hand, because the ratings were down for the more political awards last year, they might tone it down. If they tone it down, i think he'll ignore it.

And if they don't expect even harsher ratings drops than last year. And you can bet your money that I won't watch it, I've got better shit to do than see a bunch of stuck-up elitist celebrities try to be funny and woke by bashing the president. Nothing new there at all.

[Mujahidah]

The Oscars are probably going to be even more political this year. Hollywood is dying to virtue-signal and show its progressive politics yet again.

That's what I think will set him off.

On the other hand, because the ratings were down for the more political awards last year, they might tone it down. If they tone it down, i think he'll ignore it.

And if they don't expect even harsher ratings drops than last year. And you can bet your money that I won't watch it, I've got better shit to do than see a bunch of stuck-up elitist celebrities try to be funny and woke by bashing the president. Nothing new there at all.

If you don't want to have the president laughed at, maybe don't elect a joke.

[Freezic Vast]

And if they don't expect even harsher ratings drops than last year. And you can bet your money that I won't watch it, I've got better shit to do than see a bunch of stuck-up elitist celebrities try to be funny and woke by bashing the president. Nothing new there at all.

If you don't want to have the president laughed at, maybe don't elect a joke.

The problem is the jokes are not even jokes, they're not funny, it's cringe.

[Vassenor]

Yes yes and a definite yes. The man loves attention. He's an attention hog.

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

Claimed that the reason the wrong winner was originally announced for Best Picture was because everyone was too preoccupied trying to make fun of him.

[Ifreann]

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

If anything is to go by, this year's Oscars will have even worse ratings than last year did.

If what is anything to go by?

---

This is true, but I don't think he said anything during the last Oscars.

The Oscars are probably going to be even more political this year. Hollywood is dying to virtue-signal and show its progressive politics yet again.

That's what I think will set him off.

I think he doesn't want to start shit with the people holding the microphones while the show is going on, because they can respond and get standing ovations while he's just sitting in his suite in Mar-A-Lago with half a dozen empty Diet Coke bottles strewn around him.

On the other hand, because the ratings were down for the more political awards last year, they might tone it down. If they tone it down, i think he'll ignore it.

I don't think any of the people who'll be making acceptance speeches care about the ratings, so they'll be as political as they want. And besides, art is political.

[Mujahidah]

it's cringe.

The existence of President Trump is the pinnacle of cringe humor. The idea that anyone would vote for the embodiment of all the racist jokes the stereotypical American "drunk uncle" somehow manages to reach a higher summit of cringe.

[Freezic Vast]

it's cringe.

The existence of President Trump is the pinnacle of cringe humor. The idea that anyone would vote for the embodiment of all the racist jokes the stereotypical American "drunk uncle" somehow manages to reach a higher summit of cringe.

No it's not.