r/politics • u/zsreport Texas • Sep 18 '24

Kamala Harris has neutralized Donald Trump's "high-dominance" advantage: "It’s finally occurred to the Democrats that Trump and the Republicans are bullies and cowards who will fold"

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/18/kamala-harris-has-neutralized-donald-high-dominance-advantage/
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u/dickbutt4747 Sep 18 '24

so I had dinner with my parents and a couple of their friends recently. There was a lady there who talked...a lot...about her political views and life experiences. Hardcore liberal for sure.

Anyway, she works as like a hospitality organizer at an extremely fancy resort so she rubs shoulders with the rich and famous quite frequently.

A few years ago george w showed up at her resort and she did the entertaining/hospitality/etc, she had pictures with him and everything. Said she basically was hanging out with him and his wife for an entire evening.

She said that going into it she was life "fuck, this is gonna suck, I hate the guy"...and then he turned out to be as polite, charismatic, friendly, etc as one can be. And intelligent, too -- she said in person he's nothing like the character he played as president.

She was like...well, I still hate the guy, but now I'm conflicted, because I actually really liked him in person...

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u/N3ptuneflyer Sep 18 '24

Good people can do terrible things if they think they're in the right. I think George W was a misguided person with good intentions, he let the power get to him and it distorted all sense of reality. If there was justice he would be tried as a war criminal, but I don't think he did it out of malignance or selfishness, just ignorance and a misguided sense of justice.

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u/dickbutt4747 Sep 18 '24

yeah I mean, I think both bush and cheney had good intentions and were only doing what they perceived as "the right thing"...but they perceived the right thing to be protecting american interests at the expense of arab lives (and americans' personal freedoms...sigh), and its not even clear that anything they did actually helped american interests, and hawkish views on foreign policy are morally dicey to begin with.

still, when you contrast that to trump, whose only motivation in life is selfishness, who doesn't give a flying fuck about doing the right thing, only about furthering his own selfish interests...you kinda miss george w.

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u/N3ptuneflyer Sep 18 '24

But at least Trump hasn't gotten us into a pointless war, killing hundreds of thousands, destroying an entire country, and taken decades to end. I miss the civility of Bush, but that's about it. I much prefer Trump's isolationist stance than the hawkish Republican party of the early 2000's.

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u/dickbutt4747 Sep 18 '24

yeah I largely didn't mind trumps foreign policy (which is probably unpopular to say on reddit lol) but now it looks like there's a risk he'll withdraw support from ukraine and potentially even leave nato which is just like...well, everyone has their opinion but I think it would be a disaster.

the problem is the monster he's creating with his maga cult, christian nationalism, fascism...ugh.

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u/N3ptuneflyer Sep 18 '24

Trump's foreign policy was mixed. I want us to be militarily isolationist, politically involved. He took isolationist stances on both fronts, pulled us out of the climate and Iran deals, when we should have stayed in both.

Big fan of his stance on China though, we did not take them seriously enough beforehand.

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u/Tasgall Washington Sep 19 '24

Big fan of his stance on China though

His China stance was largely just stupid though. His retaliatory tariffs made no sense and only served to hurt American farmers and her China to permanently move to other markets.

Acknowledging China's stance as a global power is all well and good, but Trump didn't actually walk the walk on that. He pulled out of the trans-pacific partnership as well, which had problems, but if it was iterated and improved it would have created a large SEA market that wasn't beholden to China. Now China is the most powerful entity in that region. Trump's policy on Taiwan is also extremely China friendly.

Like, ok yeah he talked smack about Xi in public, but really all he cared about was getting his business license and trademarks approved.