Official LRC President Donald J Trump Thread

BingBongChingChong wrote:

Um, ever heard of the inverted yield curve? wrote:

Question for you all: How long until Trump completely caves to the Chinese on trade (probably lifts sanctions of Huawei, allows them to operate in the US, gets nothing substantial on forced technology transfers, nothing on copyright enforcement, nothing on currency manipulation but gets some token like they’ll buy more agricultural goods from us) simply to try and declare “victory” in the trade war and try and salvage his slim chances in 2020?

It’s clear Trump’s economic, tax, and trade policies are a total disaster (not surprising) but he is trying to stave off total economic collapse prior to the election in a bid to avoid prison by outlasting the statue of limitations for his many crimes. So, how long until hjs full capitulation to China? I think he’ll make “the best deal” by late September. What’d you all think?

The capitulation has already started....

https://www.apnews.com/36e35060a3b5456e9582abd56f85f71f

In addition to the USA having no real economic leverage with China, this is the other reason Trump is caving....

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/china-could-crush-some-u-s-military-assets-in-hours

Better start learning mandarin....

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

OK boys (I can call you boys because I'm much older than you), this pissing contest between two of my favorite anti-trump posters has to stop. The trumpsters are enjoying it way too much. Although I may not have your in depth knowledge of religion or the bible nor do I remember much about the philosophy I took in college, I will use my keen intellect to intervene and resolve these issues.

First lets stick to the main original argument and avoid digression into whether FatHurts said any things that were factually incorrect. That is a loser path to take because, one, there are too many things to argue about and two, that is too ego involved and when people become this ego-involved listening and reasoning skills decline.

Also lets understand some of the argument is semantics. Whether some one is considered evil or not is how you define evil. Its very subjective. If you do something wrong does that make you evil? There will be no winner at all in that discussion.

(someone is at my door - I will return to address the main issue)

Actually the whole thing is hilarious for us non-Trump supporters too. And asking Flagpole not to argue semantics and split microscopic hairs until the heat death of the universe is like asking the pope to stop being Catholic. Pseudo-intellectual blowhards like Flagpole have argued about religion and relativism on the internet for years (and if you're amused by this behavior then I strongly encourage you to read Confederacy of Dunces) and it has provided great amusement to actual scholars of philosophy and ancient literature.

Conundrum wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

1) What you said was so irrelevant, I thought you must have meant something else. Yeah, it threw me, and you still haven't explained what it had to do with anything. I've probably heard about pronunciation of Jesus, but never thought much about it. This is something more of interest to linguists than Bible scholars.

2) There are very few truly evil people in this world. You couldn't possibly know them all.

3) See #2.

4) I am correct and I proved it.

5) I dodged nothing. I even provided background on the hermeneutics of literal interpretation.

6) Your church didn't sound liberal to me. If you think that Methodists can't be fundamentalists then you don't know what fundamentalism is. However, I am sorry if I mischaracterized your previous church.

7) I said nothing about how you should feel. You said you were a cultural relativist. That is the ethics equivalent of being a flat earther. But as a cultural relativist, you can't argue that a group of people in their own culture are evil for going along with what their culture says is right. Therefore, fundamentalist evangelicals are not evil for wanting to ban gay marriage.

8) I am correct. It is self-evident that a Christain follows Jesus and his teachings. Jesus as the son of God is central to those teachings. Any church who teaches otherwise should not call themselves "Christian". The fact that some wrongly do so proves nothing.

9) I always maintained that your faith is your own. That is also self-evident and there is no way to narrow such a statement.

OK boys (I can call you boys because I'm much older than you), this pissing contest between two of my favorite anti-trump posters has to stop. The trumpsters are enjoying it way too much. Although I may not have your in depth knowledge of religion or the bible nor do I remember much about the philosophy I took in college, I will use my keen intellect to intervene and resolve these issues.

First lets stick to the main original argument and avoid digression into whether FatHurts said any things that were factually incorrect. That is a loser path to take because, one, there are too many things to argue about and two, that is too ego involved and when people become this ego-involved listening and reasoning skills decline.

Also lets understand some of the argument is semantics. Whether some one is considered evil or not is how you define evil. Its very subjective. If you do something wrong does that make you evil? There will be no winner at all in that discussion.

(someone is at my door - I will return to address the main issue)

Conundrum wrote:

Let go back to the core issue. Are those in the past (or present) who are religious fundamentalist (its irrelevant to the point what they are called) who were raised with the religious belief the gays shouldn't have equal rights, evil.

Yes it is difficult for one culture to judge another, but certain cultures do have bad beliefs and practices.

I think I see the point where you guys are hung up. There are two separate but related issues here. One, is the practice of the culture inherently wrong and (if you want to use the loaded word) evil. And two, is the individual who engages in this practice culpable and evil?

I think we can all agree that there are certain culture practices that are wrong and if you must use the word, evil. Slavery, bias toward gays are evil practices no matter when or where they occur.

But is the individual who was raised to believe that gays are sinful and slavery is OK, culpable and evil. Was George Washington an evil man? Certainly the people who engage in that behavior are very wrong to do so, but are they culpable and truly evil if that is all they knew.

Maybe they are better thought of as ignorant.

My opinion.

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

OK boys (I can call you boys because I'm much older than you), this pissing contest between two of my favorite anti-trump posters has to stop. The trumpsters are enjoying it way too much. Although I may not have your in depth knowledge of religion or the bible nor do I remember much about the philosophy I took in college, I will use my keen intellect to intervene and resolve these issues.

First lets stick to the main original argument and avoid digression into whether FatHurts said any things that were factually incorrect. That is a loser path to take because, one, there are too many things to argue about and two, that is too ego involved and when people become this ego-involved listening and reasoning skills decline.

Also lets understand some of the argument is semantics. Whether some one is considered evil or not is how you define evil. Its very subjective. If you do something wrong does that make you evil? There will be no winner at all in that discussion.

(someone is at my door - I will return to address the main issue)

Actually the whole thing is hilarious for us non-Trump supporters too. And asking Flagpole not to argue semantics and split microscopic hairs until the heat death of the universe is like asking the pope to stop being Catholic. Pseudo-intellectual blowhards like Flagpole have argued about religion and relativism on the internet for years (and if you're amused by this behavior then I strongly encourage you to read Confederacy of Dunces) and it has provided great amusement to actual scholars of philosophy and ancient literature.

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

Let go back to the core issue. Are those in the past (or present) who are religious fundamentalist (its irrelevant to the point what they are called) who were raised with the religious belief the gays shouldn't have equal rights, evil.

Yes it is difficult for one culture to judge another, but certain cultures do have bad beliefs and practices.

I think I see the point where you guys are hung up. There are two separate but related issues here. One, is the practice of the culture inherently wrong and (if you want to use the loaded word) evil. And two, is the individual who engages in this practice culpable and evil?

I think we can all agree that there are certain culture practices that are wrong and if you must use the word, evil. Slavery, bias toward gays are evil practices no matter when or where they occur.

But is the individual who was raised to believe that gays are sinful and slavery is OK, culpable and evil. Was George Washington an evil man? Certainly the people who engage in that behavior are very wrong to do so, but are they culpable and truly evil if that is all they knew.

Maybe they are better thought of as ignorant.

My opinion.

The entire premise rests on ideas and actions that are inherently "evil" or not "evil," which itself raises the problem of evil, the solution to which rests basically in the realm of discussion on free will. Now you've got various forms relativism thrown in there which is the ultimate meta-ethical question that again refers back to actions as good or evil and suddenly everyone has Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy bookmarked. The entire argument is dangerously circular and often depends on careful semantics to navigate overlapping theses which is why people love to debate it so much.

Back to the actual topic, the question now seems to be if Trump can keep the economy alive long enough for re-election. A lot of economists are talking recession right now and it definitely doesn't look optimistic with the trade war going on and the fact that Germany is probably in a recession now. The Fed has been talking lately of doing some yield curve control to stabilize the dollar and various markets and I think it just might keep things status quo for long enough to prevent a big crash. I still think that if you voted for him in 2016 then I don't see yet why you wouldn't vote for him in 2020 so it's going to come down to Democrat turnout. Also, my conspiracy theory is that Biden doesn't actually want to be there and he's playing the part of some sort of foil or something

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

Let go back to the core issue. Are those in the past (or present) who are religious fundamentalist (its irrelevant to the point what they are called) who were raised with the religious belief the gays shouldn't have equal rights, evil.

Yes it is difficult for one culture to judge another, but certain cultures do have bad beliefs and practices.

I think I see the point where you guys are hung up. There are two separate but related issues here. One, is the practice of the culture inherently wrong and (if you want to use the loaded word) evil. And two, is the individual who engages in this practice culpable and evil?

I think we can all agree that there are certain culture practices that are wrong and if you must use the word, evil. Slavery, bias toward gays are evil practices no matter when or where they occur.

But is the individual who was raised to believe that gays are sinful and slavery is OK, culpable and evil. Was George Washington an evil man? Certainly the people who engage in that behavior are very wrong to do so, but are they culpable and truly evil if that is all they knew.

Maybe they are better thought of as ignorant.

My opinion.

The entire premise rests on ideas and actions that are inherently "evil" or not "evil," which itself raises the problem of evil, the solution to which rests basically in the realm of discussion on free will. Now you've got various forms relativism thrown in there which is the ultimate meta-ethical question that again refers back to actions as good or evil and suddenly everyone has Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy bookmarked. The entire argument is dangerously circular and often depends on careful semantics to navigate overlapping theses which is why people love to debate it so much.

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

I am mostly following you but you lost me on your thoughts regarding Joe Biden. I wonder if Joe feels responsible for Trump being president and that is why he is running. I think if there was a popular moderate candidate Joe would be more inclined to step aside.

But I am curious about your theory on this.

He got in the race way late and has shown pretty lackluster performances in debates, plus he has a lot of baggage and I think he knows it. He's already tried twice, once in 2004 and again in 2008 and supposedly Obama asked him not to run this time around. I think he ultimately wants to retire and joined the field to show Democrats that you can't always pick the old guard, sometimes it's good to shake things up and go with an exciting and energetic younger person (like Obama was in 2008) so he's intentionally sandbagging to try to send a message to moderate Dems.

Or maybe he just really wants to be prez at the age of like 75

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

I am mostly following you but you lost me on your thoughts regarding Joe Biden. I wonder if Joe feels responsible for Trump being president and that is why he is running. I think if there was a popular moderate candidate Joe would be more inclined to step aside.

But I am curious about your theory on this.

He got in the race way late and has shown pretty lackluster performances in debates, plus he has a lot of baggage and I think he knows it. He's already tried twice, once in 2004 and again in 2008 and supposedly Obama asked him not to run this time around. I think he ultimately wants to retire and joined the field to show Democrats that you can't always pick the old guard, sometimes it's good to shake things up and go with an exciting and energetic younger person (like Obama was in 2008) so he's intentionally sandbagging to try to send a message to moderate Dems.

Or maybe he just really wants to be prez at the age of like 75

Racket wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

I am mostly following you but you lost me on your thoughts regarding Joe Biden. I wonder if Joe feels responsible for Trump being president and that is why he is running. I think if there was a popular moderate candidate Joe would be more inclined to step aside.

But I am curious about your theory on this.

He got in the race way late and has shown pretty lackluster performances in debates, plus he has a lot of baggage and I think he knows it. He's already tried twice, once in 2004 and again in 2008 and supposedly Obama asked him not to run this time around. I think he ultimately wants to retire and joined the field to show Democrats that you can't always pick the old guard, sometimes it's good to shake things up and go with an exciting and energetic younger person (like Obama was in 2008) so he's intentionally sandbagging to try to send a message to moderate Dems.

Or maybe he just really wants to be prez at the age of like 75