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Comment by glangdale | Hacker News Reader

Just, no. It is clear: he's an idiot with the attention span of a 3 year-old. He's not a masterful schemer whose every move is carefully calibrated for strategic success. These narratives about how it's all part of a cunning plan are just ridiculous. Sometimes floundering is just floundering.

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Did you not see the front page of reddit? The Russia scandal was completely gone and there was nothing but confeve memes as far as the eye could see. Don't let your irrational hatred of a man cloud your judgement. The fact that you are so easily duped by such a simple juke... literally 7 jabs of his thumb, should warn you that you need to spend some time in self reflection

You are confusing what I've said. Just because he's an idiot doesn't mean that he's not effective. Apparently reality is awarding an idiot right now. However, this doesn't make it a cunning plan.

The main point here is that an effort to combat an idiot with sleazy advisors and good instincts looks quite different to the effort that you'd go to if you were trying to counter a secret mastermind who is just playing dumb. I'm amazed at the number of Random Know-it-all Lefty Bros out there who seem to think that overestimating Trump's intelligence and painting everything as a sophisticated plot marks them as somehow more sophisticated and right-on. I suspect you are one of them, with your raving about how I'm "easily duped" by Trump's typo. Jeez.

How relevant do you think the front page of reddit is to reality?

A lot it's the 5th largest website in the usa.

Reddit as a whole, sure.

The front page itself though? I don't know how others use it, but my frontpage is populated by my favourite subreddits, which are luckily mostly free of politics.

TBH I have no idea how the majority use Reddit, but don't confuse the front page with all of Reddit.

(As a side note, yesterday I went on /r/The_Donald out of morbid curiosity. I'm not sure what I expected, but it was rather shocking).

I've not read the reddit "frontpage" in years. I do run into it when I'm not logged in, but I don't look at it at all.

So it is likely to be infiltrated with marketing disguised as news & comments. Lots of agendas. Not sure it is as relevant as you think.

With a demographic that is the inverse of the "voter turnout by age" graphic though [0].

[0] http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics

If he's a 3 year old floundering idiot, what does that make his political opponents who he continues to trounce?

Reasonableness, rationality, diplomacy, civilization — these are fragile and require the good faith cooperation of intelligent people to have any effect on the world and to overcome our natural tendencies for selfish blinkered tribalism.

An angry and selfish man with power can easily destroy the careful work of decades (or centuries). That doesn't make him smart or right.

Ah yes, "my side is too nice to get anything done." It comes up in politics all the time. I've heard the claim since Reagan was in office.

I've never believed it.

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The biggest problem in the US is that currently neither party has a convincing majority. During the Depression, Democrats held something like 75% of the Senate. When FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court, the Republicans had no ability to stop it and had to rely on Democratic senators to decide it looked bad.

Today all politicians know that government control can change drastically in the next election, which gives a lot of hope to the guys out of power that if they slow things down just a little longer they'll achieve their wildest dreams, and a lot of fear for the guys in power that if they don't get what they want today they may not get another chance tomorrow.

I think you have misread what I said.

There are brutish, stupid, and venal wreckers at both ends of the political spectrum. There are intelligent, careful, and thoughtful conservatives and socialists. Donald Trump and his followers are not among them. It's only the deeply fucked up political situation in the US that lead to conservatives (those interested in conserving the good that has been achieved) to support a person like Trump.

Political effectiveness divorced from thoughtfulness and respect is not desirable.

His job isn't to trounce oppinents, and ut's his job he's floundering at.

You ever see a 3yo fight a 2yo?

Victims of propaganda

He's a 3 year old floundering idiot who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

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