Trump 2: The Trumpening

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

38 minutes ago, Mowgli said:

I'm torn on whether Elon knows what he's doing or not.

Elon knows what he is doing to help Elon. He doesn't care about any of the rest of it unless it costs him money or impinges on his ability to make more. 

[BomberPat]

12 hours ago, Chili said:

I believe you'll find Elon did the Roman Salute, if you studied history like all the other crypto tech bro's you would know this, pathetic wokeflakes.

Not that you're doing this, but I came perilously close last night to replying to a few people to point out that there is, for all extents and purposes, no such thing as a "Roman salute" - certainly not in any way that resembles an antecedent for the Nazi salute. But it's not worth it.

None of it's worth it. So Elon Musk, the pro-apartheid oligarch who Tweets Nazi talking points and Nazi memes, did a Nazi salute. Has that taught us anything new about him? Does it materially change anything? 

[Merzbow]

Where's JD Vance these days? Thiel wouldn't dump all that money into him just to have Elon take his place, I'm assuming it's some weird optics thing as JD wasn't going down well even among the saddo online right.

I'm not saying Elon is VP btw, just he's being made to look like he's Trump's second.

[BomberPat]

I assume Thiel would be happy enough to have Vance working relatively quietly in the background, and that getting him the VP pick was more important early in the election when there was a chance that the choice of VPs might actually prove to be a deciding factor. 

One of the few things I have hope for in American politics is that Trump and Musk are both incredibly insecure man-babies who can't take criticism, and both profoundly weird in their own ways, that there's no way there will be any kind of lasting alliance there. They're going to blow up massively. It's the only saving grace of a Trump presidency - he can't keep allies long enough to do the kind of lasting damage that he could if he were a more competent leader.

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, Mowgli said:

It doesn't seem fair (of the Trump lot) to be sticking an autistic person front and centre, irrespective of how clever he is.

Autistic people shouldn't be front and centre?

[Jazzy G]

7 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Autistic people shouldn't be front and centre?

Why shouldn't they? 

[Chest Rockwell]

1 hour ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Elon knows what he is doing to help Elon. He doesn't care about any of the rest of it unless it costs him money or impinges on his ability to make more. 

He also desperately wants to be liked though, and you can't discount that as a motivating factor in the stuff he does and says. 

[mim731]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

 

 

The Constitution can only be amended if proposed by two thirds of Congress or the State Legislatures, and then ratified by three quarters of the States.

The Supreme Court plays no role, and Trump's majority in the House is both slim and not uncommon; he had one at this point in his first term, too.

He's also not the first president to have called for repealing the 22nd Amendment. And yet it hasn't come close to happening.

@Ronnie is bang on here. It's also worth saying, that the process for a constititional amendment is a lengthy one, as it sounds. I'm a bit rusty on congressional procedure around amendments, but you would imagine there would be a significant amount of filibustering even if it was to go through Congress as the Dems would be dedicated to preventing it? 

I've always felt that while he is undoubtedly a bit mad, the biggest concern Trump will have is what benefits him financially and keeps him out of prison, and anything else feels like misdirection on a massive scale including the chatter about term limits. He's not a man of conviction to anything, like all the biggest grifters. I've yet to see anything here so far that indicates differently this time around. 

[Mowgli]

7 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Autistic people shouldn't be front and centre?

Apologies, that does sound like I made an awful post. I probably shouldn't comment on things that I don't have a huge understanding of but I will try to make my point a bit better. 

Some people with autism will act in a way that most people in society would see as strange, I really don't mean any offence with that. Putting Elon up in front of the world in such a high pressure situation seems a little unfair, and perhaps that is why he did what he did. He really is a strange (again I'm not trying to offend here) character, obviously so clever, but also doesn't act in the way most of society would seem as normal, I'm not sure whether that is his autism or whether that is him (if the two can or should even be disassociated).

I'm going to stop as I really don't want to offend people, and I'm not sure I can quite get my thoughts down in a way that won't offend people.

[SuperBacon]

26 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Where's JD Vance these days?

Hellmouth opened and he went home.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

16 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

He also desperately wants to be liked though, and you can't discount that as a motivating factor in the stuff he does and says. 

A certain section of the audience are going to love those fascist salutes so he will be well liked. His main problem is that he isn't a natural born American, if he starts to be a problem then they might just send him back to South Africa. 

[Chili]

20 minutes ago, Mowgli said:

Apologies, that does sound like I made an awful post. I probably shouldn't comment on things that I don't have a huge understanding of but I will try to make my point a bit better. 

Some people with autism will act in a way that most people in society would see as strange, I really don't mean any offence with that. Putting Elon up in front of the world in such a high pressure situation seems a little unfair, and perhaps that is why he did what he did. He really is a strange (again I'm not trying to offend here) character, obviously so clever, but also doesn't act in the way most of society would seem as normal, I'm not sure whether that is his autism or whether that is him (if the two can or should even be disassociated).

I'm going to stop as I really don't want to offend people, and I'm not sure I can quite get my thoughts down in a way that won't offend people.

It's the ketamine.

[Chris B]

12 minutes ago, Mowgli said:

Apologies, that does sound like I made an awful post. I probably shouldn't comment on things that I don't have a huge understanding of but I will try to make my point a bit better. 

Some people with autism will act in a way that most people in society would see as strange, I really don't mean any offence with that. Putting Elon up in front of the world in such a high pressure situation seems a little unfair, and perhaps that is why he did what he did. He really is a strange (again I'm not trying to offend here) character, obviously so clever, but also doesn't act in the way most of society would seem as normal, I'm not sure whether that is his autism or whether that is him (if the two can or should even be disassociated).

I'm going to stop as I really don't want to offend people, and I'm not sure I can quite get my thoughts down in a way that won't offend people.

Not meaning to put you on blast - these things can be complicated to talk about sometimes.

The base issue with Elon Musk isn't autism. It's racism and fascism. He has, as @BomberPat pointed out, a massive tendency to use nazi imagery, sayings and beliefs. 

Think about autistic people you know, and how many of them show racist tendencies because of autism? There's a massive difference between 'can have some difficulty reading people or finding it easy to send the wrong message' and throwing nazi salutes while at an inauguration.

I do understand good-faith readings of things, and sometimes stretching for them. "Can I imagine an autistic person I know fucking up in public and people getting the wrong idea? - Yes, I can, therefore this could be an example of this" is, on some levels, a good faith read. But it ignores everything else about Musk and how much this is in-character for him. You can sometimes be too good-faith, and end up making excuses. There's also been a bunch of this with the Neil Gaiman stories recently.

The whole discourse about the salute in the media is surreal. And it makes it a debate - rather than saying 'he did a nazi salute', it's becoming 'but what is a nazi salute, technically' or 'did he know it was a nazi salute?' (when the dude clearly knows a LOT about nazis).

[wordsfromlee]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

So Elon Musk, the pro-apartheid oligarch who Tweets Nazi talking points and Nazi memes, did a Nazi salute.

It’s always the ones you least expect, isn’t it?

Reichest man in the world more like. Ay, lads?

[JNLister]

Long story short, Trump can't run for President again without changing the Constitution, which is probably never going to happen again. There are ways he could get back in by running as vice-president and the President resigning, though that would involve the Supreme Court making a very creative interpretation of an ambiguous part of the Constitution, which you can't entirely rule out. Alternatively, he could get into the Congress or Senate and become its leader, or get appointed to the Cabinet, and then have everyone above him in the line of succession quit.

Basically it's possible to get him a third term but you can't do it sneakily. He'd need the entire Republican establishment on side and then go into an election outright saying "here's the plan, the presidential candidate is quitting on day one, we're outright doing this to get Trump back in."