Is anyone watching this Trump car crash?

[soundsys]

WTF is happening? It’s like some bizarre performance art piece.

He’s holding up signs and shouting and throwing out hats it’s just 🤯

Because in a world of polarised politics soft right, soft left and centrist don't exist. So if you see yourself as in any way to the right (soft or far) then everything to the left is far left and equally everyone on the left sees you as far right.

Except if you are centrist then both those on the left see you as far right and those on the right see you as far left.

For example Badenoch who would claim to be centre right is viewed by many on the left as far right.

Except they quite clearly do exist. Democrats are soft right by U.K. standards. Labour currently centrist (arguably also soft right). What about Lib Dem’s here? You can’t just declare that political viewpoints represented by actual political parties don't exist just so you can accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being ‘hard left’. What does that even mean?
You seem to be the one doing the polarising. You are the one calling everyone who dislikes Trump ‘far left’.

Well again it depends on who is doing the describing. So for the solid US Republican voter the Democrats and the UK Labour Party are far left. Whereas for the solid Labour voter Donald Trump and his administration are far right.

As for the Lib Dem's traditionally they would be on the progressive side for social issues such as gay marriage etc but on the right economically. However more recently I haven't actually got a clue where they stand other than Trump is not a nice person.

It’s you. You are doing the describing. You keep saying people are peddling hard left conspiracy theories when a)they aren’t and b)you have no idea of their political position but have just chosen to call them ‘hard left’.
What is ‘hard left’ in your view?

Well it's not just me is it? The posters on this thread view Trump as hard right because they are coming from a left wing (centre, soft or otherwise) view point.

As for my definition of hard or far left that would be someone like Corbyn.

Equally I would view anyone who believes that you can grow the economy by increasing taxation based on Keynes as simply ill informed.

So where do you put Trump on your scale of hard left to far right?

The posters on this thread view Trump as hard right because they are coming from a left wing (centre, soft or otherwise) view point.

Thanks for speaking for me, but no thanks. If you're asking me, as one of the - but not all - posters on this thread, I'd say I view him as completely unprincipled with authoritarian tendencies and a personality disorder.

Equally I would view anyone who believes that you can grow the economy by increasing taxation based on Keynes as simply ill informed.

It must be nice to be so simplistic. Takes all the nuance and difficulty out of life and saves you having to synthesise information.

Yes, it literally is you. You are calling people hard left. Look back if you’ve forgotten. Whether people think Trump is hard right or an idiot or whatever makes no difference. You are calling them hard left.

Edit: in most of Europe Corbyn looks like a pretty normal social democrat.

So Trump said this yesterday

"You know, our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax."

Is this ill informed, a hard left/right conspiracy theory or just nonsense?

RFK had nothing to do with the Samoa situation. Does it ever cross your mind that there are lies spread about RFK for a reason?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50625680

RFK visited Samoa after the outbreak - he had absolutely nothing to do with why people hadn't been taking vaccines, nothing at all.

His stance on the vaccinations is that there is not enough safety data on the number of vaccines that children are given. That means that there may be some safety data on individual vaccines, but there is none on the cumulative effect of giving very young humans 72 vaccinations (US) and around 40 in the UK.

Whatever you want to come back to me on that one, you too will not be able to provide safety data on that, because there is none.

If you want to call that anti-vax, good for you, but I would like to see that data too. You are 'messing' with an infants immune system, and we need to be absolutely sure there are no unintended consequences. Or we all must have informed consent.

Vaccines are so strange in how they incite people - do you have the same anger if someone says they don't take ibuprofen? Or antibiotics? It's so strange. If people want to take vaccines, that is cool, what has it to do with anyone else?

I can see no point in debating with you. Samoa's Ministry of Health feel differently.

You seem to see nothing wrong in this current Administration so we are on different wavelengths. RFK has totally wild theories on Covid, flouride, and vaccines.
But you do you.

So you’re a vaccine sceptic? Explains a lot.

In fairness, not having a vaccine does affect other people because of herd immunity. We rely on that to keep some people safe.

If someone doesn’t take ibuprofen, I guess they’ll still have a sore back or headache, or whatever. That doesn’t affect anyone else’s mortality risk.

So it would be factually accurate to describe the period from 1870 to 1910 as one of the biggest growth periods in US economic history with the US share of manufactured goods increasing from 23% to 36% (alongside 1946 to 1973).

However to claim that this was solely due to tariffs is both untrue and difficult to unpick in hindsight. Clearly there were other major factors at play such as major leaps in technology including electrification plus a "recovery boom" following the end of the Civil War.

So in summary it would be true to state that this period was one of the greatest periods of US economic growth but that there were other important factors which created this growth other than tariffs. Indeed there is an argument that growth could have been greater if there were no tariffs.

But 150 years later it is impossible to say for sure.

https://www.propublica.org/article/history-income-tax-history-16th-amendment-trump-tariffs-great-depression

104% tariffs on China now

You look at these peoples polices, Trump is very far to the right of anything in Europe, deporting asylum seekers/people engaging in the refugee process/with families in the USA, not to their home country but to an El Salvador mega prison... his economic/trade and monetary policies, his support for Putin.. Israel's actions in Gaza...

Badenoch is not far right as Trump but she also supports, by any standard, right wing policies, esp economic... quite why is a mystery, as they've decimated the UK over the last 14 years...

Corbyn? mmmmmm far left? nope, his GE manifesto's were centre left by European standards... and quite tame compared to Labour ones from the 40s 50s and 60s...

He is a die-hard fan of McKinley apparently (and probably why he renamed Mount Denali) and those were the heydays of protectionism. Think he fancies himself a reincarnation of Rockefeller...
Ah the days of the robber barons, how we missed them...

...And it figures with the rest of his strategy: his main aim is to impose his gas and oil on Europe (+ 'drill baby drill')
I think he doesn't know which century we're in.
Did Americans realise that travelling back to the 19th century was on the ballot?

I don't think he's right or left btw. I think he's on the side of whatever pocket he can fill the quickest.

I tend to agree, he doesn’t seem to have any real ideology other than self preservation and massaging his ego. On the question of separating the man from the policy this is where and why I think it’s impossible. This man literally lives and makes policy to look “big”.

This would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn't causing such tragic consequences - click through to the video

https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lm4gk3gnj22c

Fluoride lowers IQ.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/completed/fluoride#:~:text=The%20meta%2Danalysis%20found%20a,if%20they%20were%20not%20exposed.

Great for tooth cavities, not so much for cognitive health. RFK wants to take it out of the water, what a bastard eh

This report doesn’t say what you’re construing that it does. This report talks about levels of fluoride much higher than that found in drinking water. Exposure to too much of virtually anything will have a negative impact.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/05/fluoride-water-child-iq-study-national-toxicology-program/

Yes he is a bastard, agree.
And not fit for the office he holds