“If Melania’s speech is similar to Michelle Obama’s speech, that should make us all very happy because we should be saying, whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, we share the same values. If we happen to share values, we should celebrate that, not try to make it into a controversy.”
—Dr. Ben Carson, making an absurd but original argument to justify Melania Trump’s plagiarism.
What?
WHAT???
Observations while I clean up bits of my skull and brain and get the superglue:
1. Has anyone so completely, bizarrely dumb and unqualified ever had such success running for the presidential nomination of a major party as Ben Carson? Carson’s statements make Donald Trump seem astute by comparison. In retrospect, the fact that a dufus like Carson had any support at all was the clue that Republicans and conservatives had left reason far, far behind.
2. Gee, plagiarizing students should try this logic! “True, my original short story has whole paragraphs and the same plot as a Flannery O’Connor work, but shouldn’t we rejoice that a Northern born male teen and a Southern female writer share the same values?”
3. Those same values that Republican and Democrats share, Ben, are cheating, lying, and “the ends justify the means.” Or is that what you meant?
4. It is astounding what an idiot Ben Carson is. All by himself, he has destroyed the illusion that successful doctors and surgeons have to be intelligent. Heck, he’s destroyed the illusion that successful doctors and surgeons have to be as intelligent as short-order cooks. I would think physicians across the nation would be furious at Carson for revealing this.
Ethics Alarms 
OMG that is truly one for the ages…
Charlie, is your head OK????
You may want to get a nice, sturdy motorcycle helmet and don it before reading or viewing anything else connected to this election. It will be compression gear for your cranium.
Ha, my response to the criticism of the speech would be “is that all you’ve got?” because while they’re focusing on that, they aren’t focusing on the substantive stuff and they look like high school teachers.
You’re turning off your brain, Steve-O, and I advise against it. As with Joe Biden’s plagiarism, this IS substantive. It shows substantive incompetence, laziness, chicanery, disrespect for the event and the public, rules, fairness, and honesty. That not’s “nothin’,” that’s damn near everything. Trump himself hasn’t said anything substantive yet, and the issue is trust and character. You can’t shrug this off. Don’t debase yourself. Come on.
No, what I said above is a tactic, not a judgment. Like it or not, some dirty infighting is needed here, because the alternative is (ugh!) Her Thighness.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “…the alternative is (ugh!) Her Thighness.”
I thought you were above such petty BS; I guess I was wrong.
“Her Thighness”
I believe I’ve offered you this advice before, Steve, but if you don’t want to be accused of hating Clinton because you’re sexist against women, don’t say things that make it look like you hate Clinton because you’re sexist against women.
Bwahahaha! A little cribbing from the Mark Levin lexicon and suddenly it’s all about that petty insult, and not the culture of deceit and totalitarianism that HRC represents.
Levin completely undermines his credibility by such gutter level name calling. It’s not helpful, it’s not illuminating, and it’s not fair. Whatever makes Clinton a troubling candidate, it isn’t her thighs, just as Trump’s hair has nothing to do with his leadership ability. That’s Trump-level logic. It’s not just beneath you, it’s beneath everyone.
“Mark Levin Does it Too” is a listed rationalization.
It’s a tactic, actually, which has worked for me at times with other lawyers – knocking someone off his game, or distracting him, or getting him so mad that he forgets the main point or doesn’t ask a critical question or leaves out a key piece of evidence or loses his cool and looks bad. No different than another attorney I know who is 310 pounds if he is an ounce stretching, moving, and grunting during an opponent’s presentation or Clarence Darrow letting his cigar ash get long to distract the jury. Just look at this thread – one cheap insult and suddenly it’s all about the insult, substantive discussion goes right out the window, and those arguing against the insult look thin-skinned. This is frankly where Trump could knock Hilary out of the box – if he is all over her during the debates she would look powerless against his insults.
Steve: “Just look at this thread – one cheap insult and suddenly it’s all about the insult, substantive discussion goes right out the window, and those arguing against the insult look thin-skinned.”
The effectiveness of this trolling tactic depends on your audience. To some, the slur makes you look like a sexist jerk. If your target audience is also made up of sexist jerks, then I suppose to them those objecting to the slur do look thin-skinned. But I’m not sure why I should care what sexist jerks think.
This is part of the wrongthink mentality which is making the left a caricature of itself… This idea that you can learn enough about a person from a single comment, or even a series of comments to make judgements about their character…. “sexist jerks” is no more or less an uniformed slur than “her thighness” in it’s own way. It part of the silencing language the left uses, which really boils down to “I don’t really know you, and I don’t want to, I’m just going to call you names until you go away, or failing that, do my best to plug my ears with my fingers and sing showtunes really loudly.”
You owe me a keyboard for the showtunes line, damn you.
Humble Talent,
Frankly, that’s ridiculous.
“Sexist” has an actual, substantive meaning. So does “jerk,” though to a lesser extent. Those words describe real behavior in the world. They are not “slurs” in the way that “Her Thighness”–which has no substantive meaning other than “she’s a woman I hate”–is. The term “sexist” is, in fact, an apt descriptor *of* that slur, which is overtly gendered and would never be said about a man. Would anyone call Trump “His Thighness?”
Using sexist slurs makes people look like sexist jerks. Again, that’s not a “slur;” that’s a substantive, apt description of terrible behavior. You can’t really argue against it, so instead you tried to draw a ridiculous false equivalence.
What you seem to be saying is that when conservatives use overtly sexist terms, liberals should refrain from accurately pointing out that those terms are sexist. And you seem to believe, bizarrely, that accurately pointing out when something is sexist is a “silencing technique,” while at the same time telling people to NOT use the term “sexist” isn’t *in itself* a silencing technique! This makes no sense. You are the one saying people should avoid certain terminology, even when it is entirely accurate.
Whether I “know” Steve is immaterial; all I know is that he chooses to use overtly sexist language, repeatedly, and when called on it, retreats to essentially saying “Lol just trolling.” Your argument amounts to saying that it’s fine for conservatives to use sexist and demeaning terms, but “silencing” for liberals to point out they are sexist and demeaning.
No no, you’re being either stupid or obtuse, and I don’t care which, but you need to stop.
There’s a substantive difference between a sexist comment and a sexist person, and while you might have enough information to judge a comment as sexist, you have no real idea what that person thinks about women. And you interchange the behaviour and the person constantly, to the degree that I assume a subliminality to it.
You even admit to it; “Whether I “know” Steve is immaterial; all I know is that he chooses to use overtly sexist language, repeatedly, and when called on it, retreats to essentially saying “Lol just trolling.””
You’ve heard the wrongspeak, you’ve identified the bigot, and that’s all you really need.
It reminds me of the IBTs Charles linked here a while back, (Internal Bias Tests) these Harvard developed tests attempt to measure implicit bias in respondents, by using reflex texts and word association. What they discovered was that something like 65% of the white people in their sample groups have a subconscious bias against black people. This is as far as most media outlets read, birthing countless headlines like: “Yes, all white people are racist, what do we do about it?”*
But there was so much more to those stories, for instance, you’d assume that if upwards of 60% of white America had subconscious bias, that they would have treated say… a black researcher worse. But part of the original study showed that despite a 65% positive (that was, racist) response rate, the black researchers were actually treated markedly better, on average, than their white counterparts. The authors marked that up to a conscious effort on behalf of respondents to adjust for their biases. Great story, right? No. “All white people are racist, what do we do about it?”
When you say his comments are obviously sexist, you really aren’t saying anything meaningful. If I were to say that Hillary’s legs looks like someone cut them off at the hip and foot and reattached them upside down, and her cankles should be registered as deadly weapons, is that sexist? Not necessarily, because I also think Chris Christie is a bloated land whale who would probably go to the gym if only he could fit through the damned door. Do I hate fat people? No… My six pack turned into a keg at 25, and I’ve never looked back. But I CAN find humour in the world. Low brow, awful, sometimes mean humour.
At no time did you ask the question “Would Steve tell these jokes about all women, or is Hillary special? Gee, why on Earth would someone treat her differently than anyone else?” You jumped straight to the -oginys. You skipped half the critical thinking process and pretend like you’re morally superior. Congratulations!
*http://www.alternet.org/comments/news-amp-politics/yes-all-white-people-are-racists-now-lets-do-something-about-it
HT, if you look back at my comments you’ll see that they mostly referred to appearances–people who make sexist slurs end up looking sexist to others, even if they aren’t “sexist people” on the whole. Certainly you’re aware the GOP has an image problem when it comes to its relationship with women; I was repeating advice to Steve that slurs such as “Her Thighness” re-enforce that image.
Yes, it’s true that later I did make the jump from “sexist comment” to “sexist person.” This is not the first time Steve has made such comments, nor the first time he has (rather poorly) defended them. This reveals something about his character, and at this point, calling him a sexist person is fair, since this is now an established pattern of behavior.
Also: it literally does not matter if Hillary Clinton is the first person in the world Steve has ever aimed a sexist insult at. A sexist slur insults all women, just like an anti-fat insult insults all fat people.
Your rhetoric of “wrongthink” is just a way to pretend to be against silencing techniques while actually engaging in one yourself–you’re saying I shouldn’t call something exactly what it is, which is simply political correctness on your part.
Only in a world where disagreement is conversation ending would my accusation of wrongthinkery be a silencing mechanism. You just don’t understand… And I don’t know how to explain it… This might be a failure on my part.
When I say “you’re exhibiting wrongthink mentality” there’s no… social stigma there… but calling someone sexist gets people fired. If you’re trying to use accusations of bigotry to further a conversation, you’re doing it wrong. There are a significant number of people who hear things like that and can’t run away fast enough because they don’t want to deal with the label. It’s a shitty thing to sling around.
HT, sexist slurs are also shitty things to sling around.
If Steve did not sling around sexist slurs, I would not call him sexist. It really is that simple.
Sexism creates stigma against women. I’m not supposed to care about that, but I am supposed to care deeply about the stigma caused by me accurately pointing out what Steve’s comments obviously are? Screw that. Your request is ridiculous. I will continue to call people who routinely engage in sexism sexist, and further requests that I refrain from doing so will be filed away under “political correctness.”
HT, sexist slurs are also shitty things to sling around.
If Steve did not sling around sexist slurs, I would not call him sexist. It’s really that simple.
Sexism creates stigma against women. I’m not supposed to care about that, but I am supposed to care deeply about the stigma caused by me accurately pointing out what Steve’s comments obviously are? Screw that. Your request is ridiculous. I will continue to call people who routinely engage in sexism sexist, and further requests that I refrain from doing so will be filed away under “political correctness.”
You don’t understand… I expect you to continue. I expect you to continue thinking it’s the right thing to do. I expect you to continue believing that you have some kind of moral high ground. And I’m going to continue to laugh at you, because you’re being dumb. Everyone wins!
I’m not being dumb, and you can’t explain why I’m being dumb. You’re wrong, and you defended something indefensible, and now you’ve dug your heels in too much to admit you were wrong. You do this all the time.
I know that both of you — who have expressed great love and admiration for me — have been waiting anxiosly for my adjudication of this spat. Well, wait no more.
I’d say that Chris is arguing from principle and for that reason has a better-grounded argument. Humble Talent’s argument lacks a firm base in principle and so he appears to be protesting a great deal in an attempt to make a bad argument good.
If all these rules and regulations are going to be established, and if one takes them seriously and really and truly believes them, then holding to the principles and defending them tooth and claw will always give one victory.
Yet the ambitions and the motives of the one who holds the ‘higher ground’ might be corrupt, and then his moralizing takes on the air of an harangue.
And the one defending a poor argument, who is arguing against the principles he is supposed to honor and defend, even as he seems to be doing it for a noble purpose (to castigate a progressive ideologue), more or less gets trapped in the mud.
It is an interesting situation which, I assume, is almost archetypical of so many different disputes that go on in our day.
In order to ‘argue from principle’ but on the other side of the equation, one has actually to be a sexist. However, the term ‘sexist’ (like ‘racist’ and so many other terms of that sort) are so ideologically and rhetorically charged (swear words effectively) that in my humble opinion cannot be and should not be terms of discourse.
To say someone is a ‘sexist’ is as antique as some old disco movie. Really, it does not function. But that goes too for so many of the -isms and yet they still lunge about like Godzilla, screeching on the side of a skyscraper. In fact the feminism that defined sexism has so often turned against its own self, and splintered itself, that feminists will turn against their own for their ‘sexism’.
I hope I have been of assistance here, please let me know if I can be of additional service.
😉
Chris…. Just because you don’t accept my reasoning doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, you’ve just got your fingers buried in your ears and are humming Slow Boat to China.
I think that your habit of falling back on the labels (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, et al.) is very progressive of you, but still just as poorly thought out and stupid as making fun of Hillary’s thighs. Are Steve’s comments sexist? An argument could be made. You called that argument ‘substantive’… Well, so are Hillary’s thighs… That doesn’t make them good political discourse. You attribute too much meaning to terms people like you have rendered meaningless with overuse.
HT,
What is your argument that “Her Thighness” is not a sexist term?
You have objected to my use of the word “sexist” with pretty much everything *but* a fact-based argument that the term does not apply.
I’m not interested in your PC crusade against words you don’t like. Tell me why and how this term isn’t sexist, and your argument will matter; right now you are simply repeated that you don’t like the word, not that it doesn’t apply. That’s a waste of our time.
“What is your argument that “Her Thighness” is not a sexist term?”
What is your argument that it is? This is actually my second kick at an attempt to respond to you, It hit me during my response that it really depends on your interpretation of what ‘sexist’ means. And that’s a problem all on it’s own…. these terms have become… subjective.
If “sexist” means what I think it does: Discrimination against individuals solely because of their gender. Then this is not a sexist comment. Hillary Clinton paints a target on her back every time she opens her mouth, and it has nothing to do with being a woman.
If “sexist” means ‘something with disparate sexual connotations’ then yes, I doubt many people would call a man ‘his thighness’, and so this could be called sexist. But if that’s the bar you lower sexism to then sexism exists on a scale that would be disastrous to our culture to do away with.
Wiki defines sexism as “Sexism or gender discrimination is prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s sex or gender.”
Merriam defines it as “unfair treatment of people because of their sex; especially : unfair treatment of women”
and Oxford defines it as “Relating to or characterized by prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex:”
I mean… At the end of the day, do you believe that Steve holds his opinions about Hillary because she’s a woman, or because she’s a democrat? And once you’ve come up with the obvious answer, why do you think the comment is sexist?
I notice that some people desire to get you in a armhold and they won’t let you out. I am not sure what it is. The judgment power offered by PC ideology? Is it that it offers a weapon against which you have no defense? This has been going on for a long time. I have gotten the impression it is a post-Sixties thing but maybe political correctness had other manifestations, like in the 30s or something.
People seem to wind up so constrained that they fear opening their mouths. The screws tighten. Games become very serious indeed.
“Those comments, comrade, require critical self-analysis!” You’d hear something like that in a Chinese mind-reform meeting.
I begin to understand that there is something in people that rebels against such constraints. The ‘ethical’ question is less relevant than the fact there is some a**hole who sets his hooks in you. That someone feels they can take it upon themselves to be your judge. What a strange coercive power. What is the way out of it?
Break every single PC determined convention. Become walking and talking anti-PC speech. Upturn the table where the conversation is taking place.
But hey, if that’s who you want to model yourself after, who am I to argue?
Oh, thanks, valkygrrl. Laughed to breathless. I’ve needed that for ages.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “It’s a tactic, actually, which has worked for me at times with other lawyers – knocking someone off his game, or distracting him, or getting him so mad that he forgets the main point or doesn’t ask a critical question or leaves out a key piece of evidence or loses his cool and looks bad.”
Seriously? That’s the how you do your lawyer’in?
This is a blog where we’re allowed to comment on topics, it’s not a fucking court room where, it appears that, you might be only able to win based on your own dishonorable distractions – this is a discussion and your distractions don’t divert attention from the more serious nature of the discussion elsewhere; heck we can allow you to diminish your character, trash your sophomoric statements, and continue to discuss the topic with other people all at the same time. You’re nonsense is completely illogical and ineffective in this setting.
Your intellectually dishonest and petty deflections show a little sliver of your character; that part needs to grow the fuck up.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “if he is all over her during the debates she would look powerless against his insults.”
Now there’s a point where you and I can agree; but that same logic holds absolutely no water in a blog with a comment thread, you look nonsensical when you flail around with blade-less sword logic, all you’ve got is a pummeless hilt.
The term for the knob on the end of a sword hilt is pommel. Pummel is what you do when you repeatedly hit something with your fists. And yes, I do sometimes resort to tactics like that if my opponent has shown he would be vulnerable to them, same as other attorneys use their own less-than-ethical tactics to gain an advantage – writing pedantic letters, pointing out spelling or grammatical mistakes that have nothing to do with the actual point, objecting again and again during a deposition or administrative hearing in the hopes of breaking their opponent’s rhythm.
I think I have made my point here, which is that one insult, or one focus on an issue that’s not really the main issue, can derail an otherwise good point, or knock a whole campaign off-message if the other party takes the bait. If you respond to insult with anger, or you focus too hard on an error that might appear minor, you risk letting the person who throws the insults or who uses the less-than-stellar speech with recycled material that’s not the main message call the tune.
There’s plenty to attack Trump on, and plenty of reasons he shouldn’t be the nominee, or president. However, this convention hasn’t gotten to its main message yet, and the public is only going to pay attention to so many attacks before they will tune them out as just more of the same and to be expected because those on the other side aren’t interested in anything the candidate says, they attack him because that’s what they do. I think excessive focus on this error makes it that much easier for him to not only brush it off by saying “is that all you’ve got?” but to brush off later, more substantive attacks by referencing this one. I think the other side needs to pick its battles and pick its attacks.
Steve-O-in-NJ,
Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.
Goethe – and going by that a lot of folks are not of such great character. Most folks laughed at the misfortune of others and at low humor. Come on, when your brother fell in the mud you laughed, when your classmate made a mistake while reciting you laughed. You laughed because it wasn’t you. And who here didn’t laugh at Beavis and Butthead or the Jerky Boys?
We are in different generations.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “Come on, when your brother fell in the mud you laughed, when your classmate made a mistake while reciting you laughed. You laughed because it wasn’t you. “
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Don’t you think it’s about time that you to put away your childish things, Steve-O-in-NJ.
And I’m aware of the Epistles as well. My point is that we all laugh, or laughed, at things we shouldn’t have at one point, like other folks’ misfortune. That doesn’t make us bad people automatically.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “My point is that we all laugh, or laughed, at things we shouldn’t have at one point, like other folks’ misfortune…”
Well Duh! Do I hear an echo in here?
…and my point is that when we become a man, we put away childish things.
Low and behold, there’s another echo in here. Can we be done repeating ourselves now?
I don’t watch America’s Funniest Home Videos because I put away such childish things.
Steve-O-in-NJ said, “That doesn’t make us bad people automatically.”
Where did I say you were a “bad person”? Do you exhibit some character traits that I consider less than adult & less than honorable, sure; but that alone does not make you, or anyone else, a bad person.
You might as well give up; there’s no honor lost when you’re wielding your blade-less and “pommel-less” sword at a combat hardened attack-dog. 😉
(shrug) I don’t watch America’s Funniest Home Videos either, but because I consider it dumb. I will cop to having a strange sense of humor – I love puns and jokes that make most people groan, and I think slapstick humor is hilarious. I was responding to elsewhere in the thread where there was a question of considering someone bad because of something he said, as well as to your comment about telling someone’s character by what he laughs at. Hardened attack dog? If you say so.
If I remember correctly, a senate candidate had withdrawn from an election due to plagiarism that happened a decade before or so.
The implication is that you don’t have much respect for “high school teachers”. As someone who teaches at the post-high-school level, I have the greatest admiration (and gratitude) for high school teachers.
I would put it this way: I have great respect for high school teachers, but little for the teaching profession or high school administrators, both of which have low academic, behavioral and ethical standards and don’t police enforce the standards they’ve got. As a result, I don’t trust high schools, period. Nobody should.
I have no words to express my despair for the future of the United States.
Regardless of who wins the Presidential election in November, the mentality of the populace has been terribly skewed towards delivering and believing utter bull shit propaganda. I fear for our future, seriously.
“In retrospect, the fact that a dufus like Carson had any support at all was the clue that Republicans and conservatives had left reason far, far behind.”
He got credit early on for being a black man that criticised Obama, kinda like Fiorina and Hillary, then they opened their mouths and their support started a gradual decline. Maybe not fast enough, but Republicans got there, eventually… At least with those two. I got nothing for Trump.
Might some kind soul stoop low enough to help me to understand the Trump strongarm tactic and how it was underhanded an atypical in conventions?
(Though I am evil at my core, and suffer unutterable syndromes and whatnot, still I contribute $5 a month to the ACLU. That’s something, no? One tiny redeeming feature, a foothold).
Trump and now the entire Trump’lican Party is using the same political tactics that the Democratic Party has been using for years, the difference is that Trump and the Trump’lican Party is feeding those same morally bankrupt tactics with a continuous IV stream of media induced invincibility and they are steam rolling over all opposition.
To Trump and the Trump’lican Party no news about them is bad news if it puts them front an center in the political arena.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the Republican Party is DONE!
Side Note: If the Democratic Party, Progressives and Liberals don’t get their collective shit together, the Trump’lican Party will steam roll right over them.
As for Carson; he’s nothing but a political hack trying to give a perfume bath to a pig; but alas, when he’s done, he can’t change the fact that the pig is still a pig.
Jack, this thread has touched on a subject that really saddens me: the lessons taught conservatives by years of unfair tactics from the left.
It used to be that conservatives (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Republicans,) had a general moral and ethical compass, rooted out of tradition, if not something deeper. Some things were just ‘not done,’ and there were consequences for those that broke ranks and violated the general accepted rules of fair play, truth, and the Golden Rule.
To do less meant you were not really a conservative, having shown behavior that is internally inconsistent with those values. During the Cold War, you expected a communist to bite you: you knew it was a snake when you picked it up. That is their nature. And the left used those self imposed limitations, those values, against their opponents, because the ‘ends justifies the means’ to the left. And, to be fair, in that environment the conservatives and Republicans generally began to eat their own, so that they themselves would not be next (but then found that this was scant cover, should their own weakness be detected by their opponents)
My conservative friends (I seemingly no longer have Republican friends, as they deserted our commonly held beliefs over the past decade), have gotten tired of the unfairness, the misrepresentation, and seeming to continually lose not based on facts and logical premise, but on ridicule, ad hominem attack, and outright lies. I fear that the lesson they have learned is that if we want to WIN! we have to lower ourselves to the level our enemies use against us.
The pendulum will swing back, from liberal control to conservative, as it always has. But what will that conservative control be, if we use the same tactics of our opponents? Trump does this, and being generally experienced in the business world (where outcomes count) looks to be better at it than the liberal politicians who have had it their way for so long.
On the other side of the coin, I hope I do not come off as too smug when I observe that the left, after accusing the right of so many foul deeds and intentions without proof for so long (Republicans want to starve children! They want to push granny off the cliff! and so on…) may find that their worst fears are suddenly confirmed. Conservatives as a group are generally competent, when they turn their hand to something. Their values emphasize hard work, education, and the like, after all. Teach them that the only way to beat you is to act like a fascist, and they will make GOOD ones. What happens when an erstwhile conservative, having forgone those values that held him in check, have possession of the tools the left has given government? The IRS scandal is small potatoes, when all of the laws on the books are suddenly enforced against those who never had much regard for the law, even as they wrote them.
The liberals cried wolf for so long that the wolf finally appeared. And payback may be brutal.
I weep for our country, for I do not see a way to reverse this trend.
“And the left used those self imposed limitations, those values, against their opponents, because the ‘ends justifies the means’ to the left.”
What commie/Democrat made Nixon the man he was? Or J. Edgar Hoover? Joseph McCarthy? Roy Cohn? (And in fairness you could throw in a dash of LBJ).
Strikes me as home-grown at least as much as left-inspired.
The sad fact is that the electorate came around to rewarding these tactics. Politicians no longer have to hide their dirty tricks.
You know, it just hit me a mminute ago that this is the kind of thing tht Trump supporters don’t care about, but the policially engaged class does. I’m not defending the Trump supporters, but to them, this is exactly the kind of controversy they despise… We’re slagging their golden boy because his wife borrowed some words? Who cares!? Build a wall! Make America Great Again! It seems so damning to the people who care, but we have to realize that these people don’t share our mores.
I’m trying to peice together what a real damaging act would be…. Sex scandal? Probably not. Physical violence? Probably not. Vulgarity gets him a bump. I think the worst thing Donald Trump could do for his Candidacy is what would probably be best for America: Reign in the craziness, apologie for all the shitty things he’s done, and talk more like a real candidate. That’s like Trump voter kryptonite, right there.