Who hasn’t heard of the internet? What does the internet mean? It means everyone in the world gets to see this stuff. All the leaders of other countries, all the ordinary citizens:
I wish we could get over these discussions on persuasion and politics. When you call a plumber for an emergency do you insist he be persuasive and personable? We have given the highest office in the land and maybe put in place the leader of the free world to someone whose greatest advantage is he may offend the fewest people. He impresses no one.
I'm on your side Perle, believe me, or should I say I am of the same mind. I believe Trump is the only plumber we have and believe in supporting him as much I can, but I also need to understand (make sense of) what in the hell is happening to our world. And this site and Mark himself is brilliantly devoted to providing insight and a forum for having the discussion about all of it. I don't mean any of my comments as a replacement for my action or your action. What I understand my role to be is as a citizen. What I am busy doing is Support Trump / True MAGA candidates. Support information sources like this one that seek to question the prevailing narrative. Bank locally , buy and sell locally, use cash as much as possible, prepare for the collapse of fiat currency ( buy gold, silver, precious metals, keep healthy mentally and physically for the hard times ahead and to be able to work or otherwise procure the means to support my family even at an advanced age.) The reason I talk about persuasion is because I think it helps (at least it helps me) to make sense of Trump, and gives me some hope that he can be successful in accomplishing a massive goal. I see persuasion and politics, writ large, as the only way he can do it. I think I put comments out there to see if others feel the same way, just as reading mark's posts and reading others comments give me the sense that there are other citizens out there who feel the same way as I do. That strengthens my (conservative) convictions.
I cannot recommend too highly Mark's masterful summary in "Whither the Dollar." This is not tiddley-winks. The threat, on multiple fronts, is real, and the American people, unused to hard times, are ill-prepared. A schoolboy during the Second World War, I am already at an advanced age, and have seen this Nation transform from the best to the worst in multiple categories. There are powerful forces at work I cannot profess to understand. Trump is understandable if you consider his background and that he is a doer, not a lawyer as are almost all politicians. For a non-politician he communicates brilliantly, but don't expect him to explain his each and every move. Indeed part of his success can be explained by his hiding his real goals as he manipulates the enemy, probably all of Washington, to go along. When, not if, our economy collapses shortly we will need someone capable of crafting a solution at the helm, and he will require massive support because the powers that be are not going to give up easily.
You "see persuasion and politics, writ large, as the only way he can do it." Why should he, and why should the entire burden of saving us rest on his shoulders, even to the point he must sell himself to the public before they give him this arduous and thankless task?
The Master Persuader only makes claims he knows will eventually be proven true or that can never be proven false. Now, you can make your own judgment about how truthful with his claims trump has actually been, but I would submit that however outlandish you find the claims he made (I rarely found them outlandish at all), if you evaluate them for how truthful they are it's very hard to judge them factually false. Now again, this is because the vast majority of Trump's claims are very very general in nature i.e. "She's crooked!" ...but the point of persuasion is not to convince you that Hillary Clinton has factually been convicted of a crime and has served time and so is in fact a convicted criminal, and there for Trump is factually correct in the moment, the goal of the persuader is to persuade you that eventually the truth will come out of which the persuader is certain. To play this kind of rhetorical game requires , to my mind, unbelievable discipline - it will not do to be proven wrong too many times, or poof there goes your persuasive power. And you simply cannot mind the counter that your opponents will throw your way -- you lie, you are a liar, a boor, a dimwit, you are crude, you are a danger, you are Nazi, whatever... Look at the whole vaccine issue through that prism. Big, beautiful vaccines - he has never wavered. That is the discipline of the master persuader. We may not like it, we may wish he would react differently, with more nuance or more ethically, but he's the one who got elected president and is single-handedly turning a corrupt political party over.
I wish we could get over these discussions on persuasion and politics. When you call a plumber for an emergency do you insist he be persuasive and personable? We have given the highest office in the land and maybe put in place the leader of the free world to someone whose greatest advantage is he may offend the fewest people. He impresses no one.
I'm on your side Perle, believe me, or should I say I am of the same mind. I believe Trump is the only plumber we have and believe in supporting him as much I can, but I also need to understand (make sense of) what in the hell is happening to our world. And this site and Mark himself is brilliantly devoted to providing insight and a forum for having the discussion about all of it. I don't mean any of my comments as a replacement for my action or your action. What I understand my role to be is as a citizen. What I am busy doing is Support Trump / True MAGA candidates. Support information sources like this one that seek to question the prevailing narrative. Bank locally , buy and sell locally, use cash as much as possible, prepare for the collapse of fiat currency ( buy gold, silver, precious metals, keep healthy mentally and physically for the hard times ahead and to be able to work or otherwise procure the means to support my family even at an advanced age.) The reason I talk about persuasion is because I think it helps (at least it helps me) to make sense of Trump, and gives me some hope that he can be successful in accomplishing a massive goal. I see persuasion and politics, writ large, as the only way he can do it. I think I put comments out there to see if others feel the same way, just as reading mark's posts and reading others comments give me the sense that there are other citizens out there who feel the same way as I do. That strengthens my (conservative) convictions.
I cannot recommend too highly Mark's masterful summary in "Whither the Dollar." This is not tiddley-winks. The threat, on multiple fronts, is real, and the American people, unused to hard times, are ill-prepared. A schoolboy during the Second World War, I am already at an advanced age, and have seen this Nation transform from the best to the worst in multiple categories. There are powerful forces at work I cannot profess to understand. Trump is understandable if you consider his background and that he is a doer, not a lawyer as are almost all politicians. For a non-politician he communicates brilliantly, but don't expect him to explain his each and every move. Indeed part of his success can be explained by his hiding his real goals as he manipulates the enemy, probably all of Washington, to go along. When, not if, our economy collapses shortly we will need someone capable of crafting a solution at the helm, and he will require massive support because the powers that be are not going to give up easily.
You "see persuasion and politics, writ large, as the only way he can do it." Why should he, and why should the entire burden of saving us rest on his shoulders, even to the point he must sell himself to the public before they give him this arduous and thankless task?
Zhou has empathy ticket.
The Master Persuader only makes claims he knows will eventually be proven true or that can never be proven false. Now, you can make your own judgment about how truthful with his claims trump has actually been, but I would submit that however outlandish you find the claims he made (I rarely found them outlandish at all), if you evaluate them for how truthful they are it's very hard to judge them factually false. Now again, this is because the vast majority of Trump's claims are very very general in nature i.e. "She's crooked!" ...but the point of persuasion is not to convince you that Hillary Clinton has factually been convicted of a crime and has served time and so is in fact a convicted criminal, and there for Trump is factually correct in the moment, the goal of the persuader is to persuade you that eventually the truth will come out of which the persuader is certain. To play this kind of rhetorical game requires , to my mind, unbelievable discipline - it will not do to be proven wrong too many times, or poof there goes your persuasive power. And you simply cannot mind the counter that your opponents will throw your way -- you lie, you are a liar, a boor, a dimwit, you are crude, you are a danger, you are Nazi, whatever... Look at the whole vaccine issue through that prism. Big, beautiful vaccines - he has never wavered. That is the discipline of the master persuader. We may not like it, we may wish he would react differently, with more nuance or more ethically, but he's the one who got elected president and is single-handedly turning a corrupt political party over.
Amazing how many times Trump was right.
The video Don Surber has with Trump and Zelensky, when Trump brought up corruption Is revealing.
I am not amazed at how many times he has been right. I am amazed at how many people refuse to recognize all the times he has been right.
We're well beyond partisanship at this point. There are only those who use their eyes to see & those who don't or won't.