Donald trump. what is your take on him?

[living sounds]

I live and work in Cologne. Our mayor did not resign. 

The whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. There's a policing issue, in fact the executive as well as the judicial sector has been understaffed for a long time now. Budget cuts, too much money going to the top and insufficient taxes to fund state duties. There's also a lack of enforcement regarding the return of immigrants coming here from comparably safe countries.

This will not happen again. Police will see to it.

"Stranger danger" remains a gross misjudgement of reality. Sexual violence is still overwhelmingly commited by close relatives. Disproportionate affecting women with an immigrant background.

Misbehaviour is an issue of education and upringing (or the lack thereof) and negelect much more than it is one of religion.

 

[DaveP]

Error corrected,  it was the chief of police.

DaveP

 

[miszt]

As I hope you noticed, I have absolutely no problem with other races, or different nationalities coming to the UK, as long as they want to integrate

It is not in an immigrants best interest to confine themselves into an area of self imposed apartheid.  It seems to me that the  original concept of multiculturalism was a licence to do just that.  Even Mother Merkel has said it has been a mistake.

my experience has taught me that they don't actually live in a "self imposed" apartheid, but are infact pushed out of the rest of society by the large (but not majority) number of racists we have in this country; most people are very accepting and tolerant, but it only takes a few to make life a misery (psychological studies have shown that you need 5 acts of kindness to balance out just 1 negative interaction).

also worth baring in mind that some people cannot learn languages very easily; I personally have tried to learn French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, and yet I can only just speak about 20 words of Italian (none of them pleasant, all of them as a result of being yelled at by an Italian ex lol) - I simply cannot learn a new language, no matter how hard i try; for children its easy, and I have found that all the immigrant families I have known are very proud of the fact that their children can speak English fluently

the situation is very complex, many refugees and asylum seeker are dependant on help from our government, which often means for housing, they don't necessarily choose to all live in the same area, they are put there... i'm sure I don't need to tell you how long the waiting list for housing is in this country! the gov puts them in the cheapest house they can find, which unfortunately also means they are in areas which are deprived of good public services, they live either in poverty on or on the boarder of it, their kids don't get great education, and so the snowball rolls... poverty is the biggest problem that many immigrants face in this country, as do many English people; unfortunately racism is also more common the lower down the economic scale you go

the whole situation is a messy and complicated web of different factors, all causing the same result, high density immigrant populations, that live in poverty, suffer because of poor public services and the ignorance and prejudice that frequently comes with poverty.

(no of course poverty doesn't always mean prejudice, but unfortunately it is far more common there)

 

[DaveP]

my experience has taught me that they don't actually live in a "self imposed" apartheid, but are infact pushed out of the rest of society by the large (but not majority) number of racists we have in this country; most people are very accepting and tolerant, but it only takes a few to make life a misery (psychological studies have shown that you need 5 acts of kindness to balance out just 1 negative interaction).

I was thinking of towns like Bradford and Southall where people have lived there for decades, not the new immigrants who obviously have the difficult experience that you describe.  If migrants knew of the dire housing situation and the lousy weather they might not be so keen to get here!

I do understand about the language but it has to be mastered, I have had to learn French at 66 and it certainly ain't easy, my mouth has great difficulty making some of the vowel sounds required!  But the French really do appreciate the effort and their politeness code makes things much easier.  Did you know that when the French enter a doctors waiting room they say Bonjour to the people waiting, and also when they enter shops, even a builders merchants.  If you are very polite with Madame and Monsieur you are half way there already.

Best
DaveP

 

[lassoharp]

yup... While every politician will claim it will be different this time if they get elected. Trump's complete lack of experience with the process is both good and bad... Good because he won't know what he can't do so might try some grand experiments. But since he won't know how to do stuff he has little chance of success unless he stumbles upon a good staff which IMO is a matter of chance.

He's been so lucky so far I would buy lottery tickets if i was him.

Definitely.  He seems to fall in the category of those risk taker types that have a river boat gambler's luck so I guess he has some precedence for his audacity.  The pop psychologists have slapped a psychopath label on him (or maybe sociopath or narcissist - I can't keep up with them all)

It's hard to be shocked by American politics, and they even engineer in "October surprises" on purpose... I suspect both parties are working on their own versions of October surprise for this time. 

I get the feeling this will be something more personal and outside the realm of political strategies.

But since he won't know how to do stuff he has little chance of success unless he stumbles upon a good staff which IMO is a matter of chance.

Exactly, and if he wins you've got a situation where he's really on the hot seat. The rabble rousing is over and it's time to prove competence.  No easy way out of losing face on that it would seem but he does seem to have some above the average ability to escape typical repercussions for the irresponsible things he says.  I suspect it will get old with the public really quick even among his supporters.

One other troubling thing about him is his tendency to have this ring of chaos around him - he's not necessarily losing it but everybody around him is . . . . . . America already has enough crazies.  Unless he tones it down, I do see him as a contributing influence to a number of selected aggressions - misguided hatred towards "illegal aliens" being one   

 

[miszt]

yup... While every politician will claim it will be different this time if they get elected. Trump's complete lack of experience with the process is both good and bad... Good because he won't know what he can't do so might try some grand experiments. But since he won't know how to do stuff he has little chance of success unless he stumbles upon a good staff which IMO is a matter of chance.

He's been so lucky so far I would buy lottery tickets if i was him.

Definitely.  He seems to fall in the category of those risk taker types that have a river boat gambler's luck so I guess he has some precedence for his audacity.  The pop psychologists have slapped a psychopath label on him (or maybe sociopath or narcissist - I can't keep up with them all)

It's hard to be shocked by American politics, and they even engineer in "October surprises" on purpose... I suspect both parties are working on their own versions of October surprise for this time. 

I get the feeling this will be something more personal and outside the realm of political strategies.

But since he won't know how to do stuff he has little chance of success unless he stumbles upon a good staff which IMO is a matter of chance.

Exactly, and if he wins you've got a situation where he's really on the hot seat. The rabble rousing is over and it's time to prove competence.  No easy way out of losing face on that it would seem but he does seem to have some above the average ability to escape typical repercussions for the irresponsible things he says.  I suspect it will get old with the public really quick even among his supporters.

One other troubling thing about him is his tendency to have this ring of chaos around him - he's not necessarily losing it but everybody around him is . . . . . . America already has enough crazies.  Unless he tones it down, I do see him as a contributing influence to a number of selected aggressions - misguided hatred towards "illegal aliens" being one 

Much as I like the idea of labeling him a sociopath (psychopath is the same thing, just outdated name), calling him one would mean acknowledging him as a good businessman (based on studies which show sociopathic tendancies in top business people), which by all accounts he is not; some estimates put his inherited wealth at just 1/3rd of what it would be, had it been managed properly.

 

[DaveP]

Well he has one fan:-

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-01-27/nine-year-old-girl-cries-when-she-finds-out-she-is-going-to-see-donald-trump/

DaveP

 

[miszt]

Well he has one fan:-

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-01-27/nine-year-old-girl-cries-when-she-finds-out-she-is-going-to-see-donald-trump/

DaveP

This makes me mad, I so want to believe in free speech, but indoctrinating kids with right wing lunacy is detrimental to the whole of humanity... Question is, is it worse than dictating what can and cant be taught/believed; probably not.

Still makes me mad tho.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Well he has one fan:-

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-01-27/nine-year-old-girl-cries-when-she-finds-out-she-is-going-to-see-donald-trump/

DaveP

This makes me mad, I so want to believe in free speech, but indoctrinating kids with right wing lunacy is detrimental to the whole of humanity... Question is, is it worse than dictating what can and cant be taught/believed; probably not.

Still makes me mad tho.

Don't get too angry, she isn't a voter.

I am concerned about some indoctrination going on in schools and universities. Kids are NOT being influenced to think conservatively, pretty much the opposite from anecdotes I've seen/heard. IMO they should not be programmed one way or the other, just exposed to the full spectrum of ideas. Many are smart enough to reject overt programming by teachers. That ecstatic young girl is probably most influenced by her parents and/or peers, as you and I were, at her age.  She seems genuinely happy.  If we have a problem with what parents tell their kids, we really have a problem.

Sorry to open this can of worms (education). It is an important one IMO.

Carry on,,, I now return you to your Trump flogging.  (He is picking up some interesting endorsements besides Palin).

JR

 

[DaveP]

This thought occurred to me after watching the video.  It might be OK for an old guy like me to spend some of his retirement hours keeping up with the news so that I might be" informed".  But what about a busy family with kids?  They have obviously watched his reality shows and the attraction has come about from that rather than political indoctrination in one so young.

That family had a nice car, the parents obviously loved and cared for their child and she had the reaction of a child who had never been spoiled, she knew how to be grateful too.  They did not fit my picture of low information voters, where I might have been thinking more along the lines of trailer parks.

We might have to re-think the demographic here?  They looked like what I would call middle America.

DaveP

 

[mattiasNYC]

Don't get too angry, she isn't a voter.

I am concerned about some indoctrination going on in schools and universities. Kids are NOT being influenced to think conservatively, pretty much the opposite from anecdotes I've seen/heard. IMO they should not be programmed one way or the other, just exposed to the full spectrum of ideas. Many are smart enough to reject overt programming by teachers. That ecstatic young girl is probably most influenced by her parents and/or peers, as you and I were, at her age.  She seems genuinely happy.  If we have a problem with what parents tell their kids, we really have a problem.

Sorry to open this can of worms (education). It is an important one IMO.

It would be impossible to interfere and "correct" upbringing in a population, and it surely isn't what we want as a system, but despite that why should we not have a problem with what some parents tell their kids? The question really is just what an individual's opinions are on various topics, which in turn determine how much of a problem we think it is. If your neighbors are black and they teach their kids that white people are all incarnations of the devil, then you'd be wise to think it's a problem.

As for education it's actually a fundamental problem. On the one hand we want to educate kids, and on the other we don't want to indoctrinate them. But where does one draw the line? I see two separate "fields" of things taught in schools:

- Facts. It might seem obvious to us, who I think all are likely to be at least 'average' intellectually ;-), that teaching facts should be no issue. A fact is a fact and isn't subject to a conservative or liberal view (to stick with the binary mindset of America). Yet despite that we have large segments of the US population that are against teaching some facts. They are against teaching the age of the earth despite all our available knowledge telling us it is within a certain range. They are against teaching evolution as well. To them, the sanitized and politicized version of teaching creation is to teach "the controversy", which amounts in propaganda as them being "exposed to the full spectrum of ideas". But seeing two sides of an issue isn't necessarily the best use of time if one side is clearly true to the best of our knowledge.

- Opinions. So while people here think it's again obvious to stay away from promoting certain values, because they think the government should stay out of it in general, they certainly don't have a problem with promoting others. So you can promote nationalism, you can promote god, but you can't promote Socialism.

So the problem here is that when it comes to both facts and opinions people are just inconsistent.... or hypocrites, to be blunt. And it doesn't get better at all when we try to figure out just how to solve the problem. The same bowing to authority that is ok in some cases goes out the window as long as it's an issue a person cares about. If we're going to have representative "democracy", and the representatives decide schools should teach the value of compassion, solidarity and other "socialist" values, then what? Are we facing a problem with the principle or the specifics?

A blunt example of the problem would be the argument against some types of Socialism; the argument is that people don't all think the same or act the same. This, by some, is the argument against Socialism = it won't work. They freely admit that yes, it would be the better system if it worked, but it doesn't. Well, if this is the case, what if you could teach your population the values of it so that they would work together for common goals within such a system? What if we could make it work that way? Well, says the anti-Socialist, then we'd be facing indoctrination of a population. What then of teaching the values of Capitalism, of profit, "good" greed" etc? Probably not that much of an objection.

For what it's worth, I don't personally see the big deal about what higher education teaches in the US that constitutes teaching the opposite of conservatism. I even don't see it at all I think. Just which classes present this problem?

 

[DaveP]

You made some good points.

I think that the state education system should be completely secular and children should be left to make up their own minds on religious matters and political preferences too.  I think that evolution and the age of the earth falls into the fact category, but if parents want to suggest otherwise they are obviously free to offer alternatives to their kids.

Political science is not taught at lower levels of education, (unless it is included in economics) it is a specialist subject that is only taught at Uni, where we would hope that kids were mature enough to make their own judgements.

DaveP

 

[Andy Peters]

You made some good points.

I think that the state education system should be completely secular and children should be left to make up their own minds on religious matters and political preferences too. I think that evolution and the age of the earth falls into the fact category, but if parents want to suggest otherwise they are obviously free to offer alternatives to their kids.

In other words, parents are free to tell absurd lies to their children, all in the name of their religious beliefs.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I have problems with religions which claim that their holy books are the unerring truth as dictated by their creators.

How many gods have humans worshipped over the millennia? That number has to be in the tens of thousands now, I think.

 

[DaveP]

I agree with you Andy, but we can't legislate or we take away peoples freedom, it would be like Russia in the darkest days of communism.

What you and I are against is religious fundamentalism in all religions.  This is born out of the fear of change, they are frightened that if you unpick the slightest detail, the whole lot will unravel.  Rather than take the risk, they retreat into superstition and blind faith.

DaveP

 

[mattiasNYC]

In other words, parents are free to tell absurd lies to their children, all in the name of their religious beliefs.

You almost word the above to make it seem like they're allowed to tell "absurd lies" solely because it is done in the name of religion. I think the issue is that it's hard to draw a line regardless of what the cause for the lies are, and even if we do we end up with the huge problem of how to enforce it. So I think we're stuck with this problem.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I have problems with religions which claim that their holy books are the unerring truth as dictated by their creators.

How many gods have humans worshipped over the millennia? That number has to be in the tens of thousands now, I think.

Religious beliefs are often nonsense. Nothing new there.

 

[JohnRoberts]

As I mentioned this can be a can of worms. The last letter I wrote to my local newspaper before I stopped reading it, was to defend the teaching of evolution in school. Some (_______) parent wrote a LTE complaining that teaching evolution was causing students to misbehave.

I defended the teaching of evolution in school as established science, and even got one phone call at home (small town) from a very religious but not very bright (dumb?) individual, whose belief system was completely upturned by my strong defense of evolution.

I told him to never mind me.... follow his own compass.

I give that same advice here.... 8)

JR

 

[Andy Peters]

In other words, parents are free to tell absurd lies to their children, all in the name of their religious beliefs.

You almost word the above to make it seem like they're allowed to tell "absurd lies" solely because it is done in the name of religion. I think the issue is that it's hard to draw a line regardless of what the cause for the lies are, and even if we do we end up with the huge problem of how to enforce it. So I think we're stuck with this problem.

I word it as such because absurd lies actually are told in the name of religion! And because the First Amendment protects religious expression, they are allowed to tell -- teach in school -- the lies. For example, evolution is challenged because a religious belief called "creationism" is taken seriously, and that belief is supposed to be honored as "sincere."

Or, worded another way: for what reason would anyone challenge evolution, other than that it goes against a peculiar religious belief? Evolution is utterly non-controversial. I mean, it doesn't affect how one goes about one's daily life, or in the words of one of our Founding Fathers, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. So to have a staunch viewpoint opposing it on the basis of some irrational belief system is really baffling.

Here's what I believe:

• If your religion teaches that you must kill or convent non-believers, your religion sucks.
• If your religion teaches that the earth is only 6,000 years old or that evolution is "just a theory" or that "intelligent design" is valid, then you should take every piece of technology you own and donate the lot to the nearest school, because clearly you don't "believe" such magic should work. Also, if you get sick, don't go to the doctor or get medicine.

 

[mattiasNYC]

In other words, parents are free to tell absurd lies to their children, all in the name of their religious beliefs.

You almost word the above to make it seem like they're allowed to tell "absurd lies" solely because it is done in the name of religion. I think the issue is that it's hard to draw a line regardless of what the cause for the lies are, and even if we do we end up with the huge problem of how to enforce it. So I think we're stuck with this problem.

I word it as such because absurd lies actually are told in the name of religion! And because the First Amendment protects religious expression, they are allowed to tell -- teach in school -- the lies. For example, evolution is challenged because a religious belief called "creationism" is taken seriously, and that belief is supposed to be honored as "sincere."

Or, worded another way: for what reason would anyone challenge evolution, other than that it goes against a peculiar religious belief? Evolution is utterly non-controversial. I mean, it doesn't affect how one goes about one's daily life, or in the words of one of our Founding Fathers, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. So to have a staunch viewpoint opposing it on the basis of some irrational belief system is really baffling.

Here's what I believe:

• If your religion teaches that you must kill or convent non-believers, your religion sucks.
• If your religion teaches that the earth is only 6,000 years old or that evolution is "just a theory" or that "intelligent design" is valid, then you should take every piece of technology you own and donate the lot to the nearest school, because clearly you don't "believe" such magic should work. Also, if you get sick, don't go to the doctor or get medicine.

Right, but I think the point was that parents tell their kids nonsense we don't agree with. I don't disagree that certain things shouldn't be taught as facts in school.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Not to change the subject but speaking about Trump, he is threatening to pull out of the (fox) debate tomorrow night. He has a personal problem with a woman moderator.

They need to leave an empty podium for him on stage.. it seems empty chairs are fashionable this season. ;D

JR

 

[mattiasNYC]

Not to change the subject but speaking about Trump, he is threatening to pull out of the (fox) debate tomorrow night. He has a personal problem with a woman moderator.

They need to leave an empty podium for him on stage.. it seems empty chairs are fashionable this season. ;D

JR

It might not be as detrimental to his campaign as some are saying it would be. If he's perceived as the Republican anti-establishment candidate then perhaps it can be implied that Fox is in a sense also establishment, at least because of its ties with mainstream Republicans.

What do you think? Do you think him skipping the debate will harm him in the polls?