rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

xp - having nano-bots pee on you just isn't the same as having real human women do it

xxpost The day and a half there when he stopped slathering it in Cheeto dust was a slight improvement, I have to say. He almost looked like a human. Almost.

Who would want more money when they’re already a billionnaire?

this is adorable

i'm not sure he even wants money so much as he wants to be endlessly praised. the money is just capitalism's means to that end, but it certainly hasn't seemed to buy him even a modicum of happiness so long as the NYT or WaPo or god forbid ANYONE is criticizing him at any time. his only basis for determining whether a person is good or bad is whether that person is willing to publicly praise him at all times.

making him president was an insanely awful idea because when you're president, millions of people are going to criticize you and hate you and shit on you regardless of whether you deserve it or not. pretty much every other president has been able to grasp this concept (eh, maybe not Nixon so much) but it entirely evades Trump.

i'm not sure he even wants money so much as he wants to be endlessly praised.

Daddy issues are America's number one killer in 2020.

yeah the morning after he was elected that was my main thought, "how is the most fragile man on earth going to deal with this?" the answer of course....very poorly

i just don't get it, why certain people put SO SO SO much time and effort into trying to _understand_ horrible human beings.

if you want to understand someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. don't understand donald trump? congratulations! you're probably not as terrible a person as he is. why are you trying to change that?

when one of them is President of the United States and is actively making decisions to make everyone's life work I think it's worth a little effort

I don't think anyone outside of some #resistance accounts and people who want to write a book on him are dedicating their lives to understanding his interior life (spoiler alert: he doesn't have one).

But I mean we're all just animals puzzling over something we don't understand, like a chimp handed a Rubik's Cube.

...for life

#heaven

I tried to understand what it's like inside the mind of Donald Trump but I could only seal myself up in that septic tank and whimper 'How was that, daddy? Am I good enough for you now, daddy?' for so long before enough was enough.

"The mind of Donald Trump"

i.e a burnt-out cigarette in sun-dried cottage cheese

seal myself up in that septic tank and whimper 'How was that, daddy? Am I good enough for you now, daddy?'

Brb, dry heaving

I was thinking earlier that there was a usage of the word trump or trumped that would probably gain a new origin story in years to come.
May be trumped up or similar, which i bet will be dated back to this incumbency in the public mind.
That it will be thought that it came from the most complete liar and fabulist in history instead of it being something much older.
oh well

Trump is obviously not and has never been a billionaire, and was probably in profound debt when he became President. Something I've wondered a lot in the last four years is whether he's actually paying off the German and Chinese banks with all the money he's openly grifting, extorting, and looting*, or continuing to shuffle it around shell companies to hide it. And, assuming the latter, what the imagined endgame is for the banks - what value they get from continuing to be ripped off, from someone making it plain they will never come good.

* For all that he's incredibly lazy, it's remarkable that he's used the presidency to do all three, distinctly.

he's hiding his tax returns cos he doesn't want people to know he's secretly the owner of the Mets

Aside from maybe athletes or performers/artists, anyone who could spend a million dollars a year for the rest of their life without going broke but continues to dedicate their life to the accumulation of wealth is a soulless monster who can never be trusted.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Friday, August 14, 2020 9:21 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

explain the exception here

anybody who dedicates their life to the accumulation of obscure musical recordings is a soulless monster who can never be trusted

anybody who dedicates their life to the accumulation of loosely bound social relationships is a soulless monster who can never be trusted

etc etc people unlike myself are all suspect blah blah

You really love these taste of bootstraps, don't you.

the billionaire defender has logged on

explain the exception here

I'm not entirely sure they should be exceptions - but a 28 year old baseball player could have a contract guaranteeing them a half billion in future earnings (ie Mike Trout). Their entire life has been dedicated to the physical performance and game and they're out playing that game, entertaining fans, etc.. Actors and artists - they're still doing something, making, creating.

It doesn't make any more sense to me to not be on that private island with research chemicals but Mike Trout's life for the next 10-15 years isn't just about creating more value for his hedge fund. Sheldon Adelson's rapacious maw has no art, no joy, no love, no humanity.

Tbh I don't think there should be exceptions. I think there should be cap on wealth.

word

Yeah definitely, and not a chance in hell of it ever happpening.

Doesn't mean a 35 year old who's never made more than his age in a year can't dream

I also favor a 90% estate tax over assets worth $500000, so...

obv I'm on board with the above but I'm just talking about my view on people in the world as it is - musicians and actors are doing things people do or would do for free but getting paid for it. No verifiably human being on death's door would be engineering a hostile takeover of a century-old retail chain, but someone on death's door might like to get in one last game of pickup basketball.

a wealth cap should change the billionaire mentality entirely from "continue" to "you completed and won the game"

if they really thought they contributed value to society through their business, they could just load their winnings into the public purse, start another business and prove they were twice as good as other "completers" by doing it again

80-year old politicians accumulating power for the sake of accumulating power fall somewhere in between those two, of course.

anybody who dedicates their life to the accumulation of obscure musical recordings is a soulless monster who can never be trusted

― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto)

i salute your dedication to making it clear that you hate me specifically, but i'd kind of figured it out already

I wouldn't take it personally. Pretty sure tombot is a board Calvinist, his Chosen Few are okay but he can only react with rage to anyone else who intrudes on his bubble.

I agree that it seems wild that rich people keep trying to accumulate more money, but it's really not that surprising. Humans like to keep hitting different thresholds and have a sense of progression, like trying to get better at art even after you've peaked or had success. It's clearly not about creature comforts, they're bored and it's their main hobby. Something to do. It's entertaining for them to see the numbers go up.

abolish inheritance

view on people in the world

your view on people in this world is discriminatory or incoherent

Yes, I am extremely intolerant of the wealthy.

Gosh, passing value judgement on the accumulation of wealth for wealth’s sake, how can I sleep at night?!

I am taking issue with your tolerance of a subset of the wealthy. I am with table on this one!

You missed the maybe in my first statement then and the "I'm not sure" after?

A desire for wealth abolition isn't really relevant to my statement anyway - in the world as it is right now, there is a real distinction between an 80-year old Jasper Johns and an 80-year old Mike Bloomberg IMO.

In an economy where money still changes hands, artists continuing to earn money past a lifesworth of $30 million could be entirely voluntary on the part of the audience. If athletics exhibitions were owned by the athletes, same goes there.

xp the 'maybe' is why I pushed for explanation. But I think you can't justify it, and I do think the original exclusion, even qualified with a maybe, reveals some of your own biases. I say this as someone who appreciates many of your posts -- I have learned things from you on this board.

*bias

big 'if' there, sic

But I think you can't justify it, and I do think the original exclusion, even qualified with a maybe, reveals some of your own biases.

I'm not denying those biases, though? I think calling people soulless monsters is pretty explicit about laying out my biases.

I never said "being extraordinarily rich is just fine and dandy and forever okay if you're an actor" - I'm drawing a distinction about why I can see human reasons for why they keep working. Even if you've made your bank as an artist - you're an artist, you're creating. Something I think, again, Jasper Johns would be doing regardless of his bank account, as many other people do as an avocation. Sheldon Adelson is being kept alive by God knows what machinery but exists only to exploit humanity in order to funnel more money into his Scrooge McDuck coin vault.

No individual needs eight digits or more worth of money, full stop. How many things really need to be diamond-encrusted?

xp you recognize the bias, but still the bias and your comfort with it does not seem justifiable.

Do you see no difference in Neil Young and Jeff Bezos, aside from the scale of their fortunes?

I do. Art provides positive value to humanity, people play guitar and sing for the love of it. I can understand how you keep doing it even after your bills are paid forever.

Being a businessman provides no positive value, it only takes.

maybe pick someone on Neil Young's level for that comparison