Please dont come back on our account. You were not missed.
So now you are an isolationist. But that’s not what you used to think. It seems like you are adjusting all of your beliefs to rationalize what Trump is doing. Like with trade, you held your beliefs regarding free trade for decades. And then suddenly, because Trump has abandoned conservative trade policy, now you’ve changed your beliefs to accommodate him.
And he has no actual expertise in this arena. None. His beliefs are that of a doddering old fool, with no basis in research or experience. They’re just his “gut”. And his gut has been consistently wrong, for decades.
Hell, during the campaign, Trump blamed Obama’s withdraw from the middle East for the rise of ISIS. Remember that? He founded ISIS? So what now? We’re just gonna abandon our allies there, like we are abandoning our allies in NATO?
Do you buy into Trump’s rewriting of history in Afghanistan too? About how the Russians had to go in there, to stop terrorists?
Because that’s not what happened. You know that, right? They didn’t go into Afghanistan to stop terrorists. They went in to prop up a Communist puppet government.
But i guess Trump doesn’t know this? Basic history of the world?
So that kind of makes you wonder, what is he basing his ideas on foreign policy upon, since he is ignorant of basic facts, and we know he doesn’t care for intelligence briefings.
Is it perhaps that his differences with Mattis stem from the fact that Mattis had an immense amount of experience acquired over decades of service to America, and reality clashed with Trump’s view, that is seemingly based upon profound ignorance?
Why do you bother? Malathor says he’s a Libertarian, but holds all the same views as hard-core Trumpists, down to his desire to simply own the Libs. He says he only cares about economic and foreign policy, but got deep into discussions about identity politics, and has made clear his view for “SJWs.”
In the mean time, he’s perfectly willing to overlook all of the anti-Libertarian things that the Trump administration is doing.
In short, he’s either lying to us or himself.
The only way to come to terms with cognitive dissonance is to be faced with it directly.
To clarify one misunderstanding here: one can support free trade generally and support the trade war against China specifically without contradiction.
It’s a question of what conditions are necessary to reach the assumed free trade outcome of all economies better off, and if China is meeting those conditions. It’s extremely difficult to argue that China has met the necessary conditions, and rather trivial to demonstrate they are deliberately violating those conditions.
On the topic of transfers, to farmers or otherwise: I think they’re fine under the current conditions, although the design could always be better. If Bush had used them more in the mid 2000s in the rust belt we may never have seen the Trump backlash (but who really knows).
I don’t feel confined to support the entirety of the Republican platform just because I support the current China trade war. FYI the rising aggression towards China across many fronts is a bipartisan issue; Clinton would have been equally brutal (but I expect much more tactical) in her treatment of China.
But our handing of China has been ham-handed at best. Couple that with the bungling of all the OTHER trade issues, such as pulling out of the TPP, and the months long fiasco that was ultimately just a renaming of NAFTA. Trump’s trade policies are infantile isolationist views. He’s espoused them for years. It’s a view that fails to understand basic economics, reducing things to a zero sum game. That’s not how it works.
Trump’s views are in line with what used to be the far, far left, like Bernie Sanders.
I agree with fierce criticism of his handling of all other trade issues. I’d prefer TPP and economic allies against China. Trump’s mix of tactics against China are not ideal, but better than nothing.
I don’t agree with Trump’s broad trade views, which are indeed a far left platform. Again, the China issue is bipartisan and subject to only narrow criticism by politicians on either side for a reason: it is a strategically a sound choice, even if foolishly executed.
When confronted with new data, I change my beliefs. Do you really want to argue that middle east military interventions have worked? They haven’t. Everyone knows they haven’t except seemingly the purported experts. I’ll go with the non-experts in this case. The “experts” have wasted thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions for nothing, or even less than nothing in the case of Libya. But whatever, you want to continue the policy of proven, repeated failure to spite Trump. I think you are nuts. Non-interventionism has always been the orthodox libertarian position at any rate. They were right, and I for the most part, was wrong.
Why are they better than nothing? I have no clue what the end game is with China. Could you outline in specific terms something more than “a much better deal and fair trade”? The tariffs are screwing up supply chains across the country and the world. And screwy American farmer in what is likely to effect them for decade. Once they’ve start buying farm products from the rest of the world they aren’t likely to switch to back to American famers, without the US farmers offering significantly lower prices.
It is not like every President since Nixon, hasn’t pushed China to do better on trade and there hasn’t been progress. Intellectual property rights enforcement in China is far better than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
China is GM’s largest market. Yum Brands (KFC) gets 75% of their profits from China, and the $20 or so per iPhone that Apple pays Foxconn to make their phone pales in comparison to the hundreds of billion of profits they make selling those phones all over the world including some in China.
We as US citizens own the vast majority of shares of these American companies and benefit from their profits.
Trade with China remains a big problem but the correct approach is with allies not doing it ourselves, after pissing off our allies, with stupid tariffs.
And yet in spite (because?) of all that, the US economy is stronger now than it has been in many years. How do you explain that?
Do you want to pretend like Trump organized a coherent plan for withdraw? Given that it was apparently decided without even talking to our military, after talking to freaking Erdogan on the phone?
You could make a conference argument for withdraw, but that’s not what Trump did. It was just a rash, mindless decision, without consideration of any of the aftermath.
Oh, well that seems smart.
You just parrot whatever Trump tells you.
And it’s absurd, because he is an imbecile.
Because it’s a continuation of trends that existed before Trump even entered office. You can look at all the graphs… They didn’t change direction.
Trump hasn’t been in power long enough to totally screw it up. Yet. But i think we’re about to see exactly that.
Manufacturing jobs just showed the biggest gain in 20 years. The Obama years featured 7 damn years of fed rates at zero in a desperate attempt to reflate the economy and and still couldn’t get people to start to reenter the workforce. Now the fed is working the opposite direction and it still can’t slow things down. Unemployment is at lowest level in decades, minority unemployment is at levels never reached before. The country is booming and your only answer is, pay no attention to what is actually happening, things will collapse soon because tax cuts are bad and Trump is bad and therefore it must be true.
Your cognitive dissonance is off the scale. The better the country is doing, the harder you have to scream about irrelevant crap to justify your hatred.
The Obama years featured 7 damn years of fed rates at zero in a desperate attempt to reflate the economy
Who could have possibly deflated the economy?
and still couldn’t get people to start to reenter the workforce.
(Bureau of Labor Statistics Data)
Ok, so you were completely wrong about that statement. I look forward to you changing your views and saying nice things about Obama now.
More seriously, there’s only so much control that a President has over the economic cycles of the country. They do have the ability to cause un-forced errors (e.g. shutting down the government for years, massive deficit spending during an upswing) but there is no guarantee that good leadership and decision making means no down-turns or recessions.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Civilian labor force increased 2.604 million over the last 12 months. At no point during 8 years did Obama manage that. Best was 2.453 mil from Mar 2015 to Mar 2016.
Source: Graph: Civilian labor force (seasonally adjusted)
Dude, you are ridiculous.
The idea that you were “presented information and changed your mind” is silly. Because it just happens to have coincided with Trump implementing policy that was antithetical to what you used to believe.
He can just totally reverse himself tomorrow, and then that’s what you will believe.
And he probably will… Because he’s not guided by any real principles. And apparently, neither are you.
Did you see the line going down? Down means less unemployment. I’m really not sure how to make this clearer. Let me try again though.
Obama handled the recession handed to him by his predecessor and had increasing employment for like the last 6 years of his time in office. This this can be seen by the line going down. So when you write:
and still couldn’t get people to start to reenter the workforce.
That’s not a correct statement. It is an incorrect statement. Would it kill you to admit as much?
Ok, how about this. At no point during his presidency was Obama able to get people entering the workforce over a 12 month period at the rate people are entering the rate force right now.
You really are ridiculous.
What do you say now?
You mean you didn’t entirely reverse everything you ever believed? Well that’s quite an impressive achievement.
Ok, how about this. At no point during his presidency was Obama able to get people entering the workforce over a 12 month period at the rate people are entering the rate force right now.
Thank you!