Trump's New Blog Is a Trap

I don't agree with the idea that we should ignore people who have ideas we disagree with. I think you should either ignore people (almost all of the time since nobody has the time to engage in every political argument they come across) or listen respectfully and point out your disagreements or alternate views. You will convince very few people this way, but you'll convince the occasional or borderline person, and if more and more people behave this way then we'll have a virtuous cycle of improving politics. You teach and learn from others who teach and learn from you and so on.

I think people have largely failed to do that and especially so with Trump. The message I hear from mainstream media and mainstream folks on Twitter is that Trump is an evil Russian puppet and dumb liar Nazi racist destroying the country. Maybe that's true, but I think endlessly chanting insults will actually be counterproductive. Even if you win, you'll erode faith in the system and make your opponents hate you.

This blog seems to do something similar arguing that Trump should just categorically ignored. That reading his thoughts is falling into his "trap" - as if it is some rhetorical trick to get you to read what someone else thinks. As I wrote above, if you're just not engaging in politics or specific political questions, then ignoring is the right choice. However, ignoring is not the right choice for actually dealing with Trump and his supporters. We should understand and discuss with them and try to find better, mutually beneficial solutions.

On Trump's website, I think it's pretty bad, though obviously an early version. The big thing they're missing is comments. Most of the fun of Trump tweets is seeing the crazy responses and consequences. Trump's website loses that.

Trump has a fading opportunity to create some kind of social media platform similar to how thedonald.win created a reddit knock-off. It needs to have a community though, not just Trump's observations.