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Well, I was listing moments where Trump revealed himself to be a repugnant, immoral man, not actual policy disagreements. Maybe I shouldn’t have even bothered with that low-hanging fruit though; even people who voted for Trump generally concede that they don’t like him as a person. Who was it who said on this site recently, “why argue that you’re better than *someone or other* when you already know you’re a better person than the president of the United States?

But, in the interest of good fun… placing Jeff “good people don’t smoke marijuana” Sessions in charge of law and order, trying to control and then firing an FBI director, calling into question the validity of an election which he won and then creating a witch hunt commission to justify it, pulling out of the Paris climate accords, creating an environment where white supremacists feel emboldened, retaining half of his family as advisors like a banana republic despot, failing to divest himself of his financial holdings, using his office to promote his (and his daughter’s) brand, spending all his time golfing after spending years saying Obama golfed too much, pushing for the repeal of the ACA without a viable backup plan to keep people from literally dying, attempting to enact a tax agenda that only furthers the unhealthy gap between the haves and the have nots, spitefully ejecting transgendered people from the military and DACA kids from the country, fomenting islamophobia, needlessly antagonizing a newly nuclearized North Korea, savaging the EPA, deregulating everything he can find that has a regulation, taking an “Israel first, second, third, and forget the Palestinians” approach to peace in the middle east, and finally, most importantly, either colluding with the Russians (highly unlikely, although it’s looking steadily more likely that someone from his campaign will go down for trying to) or simply proving unwilling to investigate their meddling in an election, which poses a true existential threat to the country. The power of elections to mollify the masses goes down dramatically if no one believes those elections were fair and free.

… that’s six short of two dozen, but I imagine you get the picture. And those are just the things I think are empirically bad for the country/world, not things that purely offend my political leanings (although I will readily cede that fans of Reaganomics probably like his tax proposal better that I do, and etc). My point is that I left off thing like the travel ban, border wall, and Gorsuch, moves that I personally dislike but would not begrudge a peer from across the aisle for supporting.

 

As for microaggression culture, I happen to agree that it’s a losing issue for democrats, and a bad way to structure a society. However, I think it may be a little generous to say that this is why Trump won, or why the media thinks he’s unhinged. He won for a number of reasons, one being that he’s closer to the correct side of this issue than Clinton was, but even then there’s a difference between speaking your mind and being needlessly, classlessly, mercilessly offensive and spiteful in your public comments. People seem to like his candor, but dislike what he actually says. As for why people think he’s nuts, my personal theory is that most of the country still hasn’t realized what I’ve insisted from the beginning: on most issues, Trump is a political nihilist. He has opinions on immigration, trade, taxes, and regulations, but probably not much more than that. The rest is just things he’s adopted to further his political ends, and to great success. In his heart of hearts he’s just another New York democrat, and not a very principled on at that. It’s ironic that his base is convinced he speaks for them, when in reality I’m not sure he really speaks for anyone but himself. Also he’s a compulsive liar, and doggedly refuses to ever admit a lie, which leads to all manner of circus displays as he tries to navigate his own minefields.

The media looks at all of this and thinks, he’s either an idiot or he’s diagnosably divorced from reality. I think the third option is that he doesn’t much care about reality, or care when he contradicts himself. It certainly is something to watch, kind of like Anthony Vasquez was something to watch back in 2011.

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