Quote (Black XistenZ @ Dec 3 2020 09:45am)

Good prediction, although it wasnt exactly a difficult one to make. Trump had spent almost the entire campaign season laying the groundwork for this maneuver which allows him to keep his image as a "winner" in spite of losing the election, thus saving face with his base.

Quote (IceMage @ 3 Dec 2020 16:57)

I think for someone from my perspective, it's not a difficult or surprising prediction. We know the utter rot of Trump, his cult, the right-wing, and the Republican party. But it's a little strange to see a Trump supporter saying it's not a difficult prediction.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Dec 3 2020 10:34am)

I expected him (and the GOP) to lose by a bigger margin to be honest.

Perhaps it's because I was an avid supporter, but never an actual "cultist" (no matter how many times PaRD's lefties called me out as one).

Quote (Black XistenZ @ 3 Dec 2020 11:34)

I expected him (and the GOP) to lose by a bigger margin to be honest.

Perhaps it's because I was an avid supporter, but never an actual "cultist" (no matter how many times PaRD's lefties called me out as one).

Quote (Thor123422 @ 3 Dec 2020 17:37)

You ride the cultist line.

You dropped it at the pandemic, but it shouldnt have taken the world diving off a cliff to make a realization. Like, some foresight would have allowed you to drop the avid support earlier as you realize we dont get to pick the dates of emergencies.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Dec 3 2020 10:45am)

Well... I still believed for the longest time that if shit would really hit the fan, Trump would be able to get his shit together and perform on at least the replacement level. Imho, claiming that this hope was unfounded all along is hindsight bias. We couldnt really have known if Trump would be able to be a bit more serious and professional in the face of a serious crisis. Now we know that he didnt have it in him, and he consequently lost his (eminently winnable) reelection race because of this failure.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Dec 3 2020 10:45am)

Well... I still believed for the longest time that if shit would really hit the fan, Trump would be able to get his shit together and perform on at least the replacement level. Imho, claiming that this hope was unfounded all along is hindsight bias. We couldnt really have known if Trump would be able to be a bit more serious and professional in the face of a serious crisis. Now we know that he didnt have it in him, and he consequently lost his (eminently winnable) reelection race because of this failure.

Quote (Thor123422 @ 3 Dec 2020 17:51)

We had every reason to know that wasnt what would happen. If somebody doesnt get serious when they assume THE MOST POWERFUL OFFICE IN THE WORLD you are being genuinely stupid if you think they ever will.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Dec 3 2020 02:02pm)

Oh, I dont think that Trump has been unserious in this sense throughout his time in office. With "get serious", I meant something along the lines of "thinking about his communication with the public rather than shooting from the hip" or "putting aside his ego for just a single moment". But fine, consider me stupid for having a different opinion on Trump than you do if it makes you feel elated.

What is it with liberals and their pervasive urge to call anyone who disagrees with them either stupid, uninformed or immoral? :rolleyes:

Side note: the most powerful office in the world is that of paramount leader of China (chairman of the CCP, supreme commander of the PLA and president of the PRC). The U.S. are still the more powerful nation than China, but the Chinese leader enjoys a far greater amount of power and authority in his country while the power of U.S. presidents is limited by a strong separation of powers, a free press and the need to win free elections.

Quote (Thor123422 @ 3 Dec 2020 21:11)

I think when it comes to evaluating Trump, you are very stupid. There's probably things that you are smart and can think critically about, but politics generally isn't one of them, with Trump being an extreme example of this deficit. The reason I say that is because of your inability to see patterns and project that behavior into the future on this subject. Trump was never going to listen to experts, was never going to take an actual emergency seriously, and was never going to put aside his ego, and we had years of data to draw this conclusion from. This is how conservatives have treated him from day one, where all his negative actions were isolated and definitely not part of a larger pattern. And you only broke from this when he failed to do anything about a literal pandemic.