Donald Trump and US politics

"

faerwin wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

It doesn't take intelligence to lie one's way to the top.

Um, no. Intelligence is precisely what that takes. You are literally talking about a series of obstacles that cannot be physically overpowered and must be outsmarted in order to be overcome. Do you think professional poker players aren't intelligent either?

I mean wow. Just wow. That's like saying Yagami Light is dumb and Francis Urquhart is a moron. It confuses utterly the concepts of morality and intellect.

You are mistaking knowledge with intelligence.

Applying previous knowledge, while it is a certain sign of intelligence, doesn't make one person intelligent. Intelligence is about the capacity to gather and apply knowledge. Trump's methods show that's he's unable to gather and apply new knowledge as he's using the same tactics he did in business to the political world and he's refusing to acknowledge that it doesn't work.

So what you're saying then is that Trump is a former man of intelligence. At some point in the past he gathered and applied knowledge (that is, was intelligent per your definition of it) to get on top of the business world, but you claim he has since stopped gathering knowledge out of... what, hubris? ... and is now merely applying previously gathered, outdated knowledge.

In what way is this unlike saying Yagami Light is dumb and Francis Urquhart is a moron? That's the exact same problem they had.

I don't think Obama was unintelligent. Not Bush, who I hated. Nor Clinton, nor Nixon, who both got caught in their own scandals. These were smart but fallible men who were sometimes appallingly wrong on key issues. But you fail to appreciate the gravity of the task of opposing the President of the United States if you are foolish enough to consider any of them to be idiots. The Left underestimates Trump at its own peril.

I did not say that Trump is a former intelligent person.

I did not pay attention to him at all and frankly, didn't even know he existed until he started the birther movement against Obama (or at the very least, he was extremely vocal within the movement).

He might have been intelligent and lost it with age but quite frankly, I doubt it. His various nonsensical claims he made through the years (such as claiming that the body has a finite amount of energy and exercising will just make you burn it faster) show that the person is, at the very least, shackled to his own beliefs rather than accept evidences that go against his own beliefs.

As for his gathering of intelligence, it's hard to say as he was born with a silver spoon and it's hard to tell if he was managed by others or if it was his own doing. That said, with the way he acts, I'd be tempted to say that it was mostly the doing of others as he's someone that seems to be extremely easy to influence if you know how to press the right buttons. That said, this is just speculation on my part and I could be wrong.

What I will give him is that he is very ruthless and willing to do anything to achieve his own definition of winning.


As for Yagami Light and Francis Urquhart, I can't say anything as I don't know who they are, sorry.

I don't think the problem of the left was how the underestimated Trump. It's actually pretty easy to see exactly where he stands.

What they DID underestimate is the amount of hatred that's brewing in the US, especially with all the middle east wars and terrorism acts and how it made a great portion of the US grow racist (racist is a word I despise because it's used broadly about almost everything that's actually tied to country of origin/ethnicity).

Ironically enough, a lot of that hate was grown by the medias that supported them because everything that related to hating on brown people was getting a lot of attention. Talk about digging your own grave!

I'll give it to you anytime that the democrats were extremely disorganized and focused so much on making Trump look like a buffoon (a task he was able and willing to do himself) that they forgot about themselves.

"

faerwin wrote:

As for Yagami Light and Francis Urquhart, I can't say anything as I don't know who they are, sorry.

Both fictional antiheroes and excellent analogies. In the Netflix remake Urquhart becomes Underwood.

"

And you seriously think that taunting and lying is a good way to represent millions of people? He acts like a nine year old bully in a playground.

I'll disagree with you on the "lying" part. I would agree that his methods, approach and attitude are unorthodox and probably scary to people who mistrust his motives. We will certainly see whether his tactics prove effective.

"

It's not his complete lack of morality and empathy singling him out as a moron, it's the inability to fake those things.

He's a dangerous psychopathic narcissist.

The "inability to fake those things" almost certainly rules out being a psychopath. They are typically extremely good at that.

"

faerwin wrote:

You are mistaking knowledge with intelligence.

Applying previous knowledge, while it is a certain sign of intelligence, doesn't make one person intelligent. Intelligence is about the capacity to gather and apply knowledge.

It has nothing to do with gathering knowledge. Perhaps you mean the ability to learn new knowledge, such as someone picking up a new language. The ability to learn is certainly an aspect of it. Learning what isn't important to learn is also an aspect of intelligence, and one of the key stumbling blocks facing AI right now.

As an example, if I asked you to walk in a room you had never been in and turn on a light switch, you would probably ignore looking at the objects on the floor to see if they were a light switch. The light switch might be hidden in the carpet, but how often is that going to be the case?

Some people hear the changes in pitch and rhythm. Some see the bright lights. Some measure the changes in velocity. Some feel their increasing heart rate. Intelligence is experiencing them all together as a dance.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

"

It's not his complete lack of morality and empathy singling him out as a moron, it's the inability to fake those things.

He's a dangerous psychopathic narcissist.

The "inability to fake those things" almost certainly rules out being a psychopath. They are typically extremely good at that.

What's funny about this is that Hillary Clinton is the prototypical psychopath. "We came, we saw, he died, lol." An inability to accept responsibility for negative consequences. And, of course, a politician's suave duplicity.

Of course, "psychopath" is one of those frequently abused words these days, like "autistic" and "liberal," such that I interpreted "psychopathic narcissist" as "narcissistic asshole." I didn't expect anyone to discuss it in earnest.