The Germans sang hymns to the Rhine because the French wanted to invade them and made no secret of it. I'm not sure why this is relevant now.
Just noting the historical tendency to appreciate having a body of water between oneself and France.
View original postNext you're going to be saying he's facing off against a woman in the election to his country's highest office, and hoping her male relative's baggage can drag her down some more...
View original postSeriously though, I honestly thought Le Pen was the Trump analogue in this race...
Yeah, I'd noticed the similarities too. One of the reasons for my apprehension, in fact - odds are he'll be nearly as ineffectual on the things that really matter as Trump, lacking any relevant experience in working with the legislative bodies to get laws passed.
You ask me what that has to do with anything, and then go on a rant about Hillary Clinton who had nothing to do with anything in the post? Comparing Trump to Clinton makes sense only if you're explaining why you voted for Trump back in November (which in fact if I understood correctly you didn't?). I don't see how it makes sense here - we were comparing Trump to Le Pen.
I'm not as personally familiar with her. The obvious person to use in Donald Trump comparisons is Clinton, who is more working class than Trump. For all I know Le Pen does relate better to such folks than her opponent, I was simply pointing out that the criterion you seemed to be using (comparative economic & social background of the two candidates) is not necessary relevant to their relative degrees of identification and empathy. In our election, the rich guy from an elitist background is much more appreciated by the working class and seems to get along better with them. Le Pen's background does not necessarily make her better able than her opponent to connect with that class.
And I'm a little appalled that you think my contentions about one candidate's superior empathy skills indicates an inclination to vote for him.
Moreover, I'm not sure what Trump's social skills have to do with it - he may be friendlier and easier to talk to for working class people, but that doesn't say much about how he relates to them and takes their reality into account when taking positions. Looking at his cabinet and the descriptions of his mindset, it certainly seems like he has a tendency to only truly listen to wealthy people, who have proven themselves in his eyes.
Appointing people to his cabinet has nothing to do with his attitudes toward a particular group of people. You know what the appointees who fit your categorization have in common? They pay lots and lots of working class people. By their very nature, working class people are not going to produce a lot of individuals with the skills or backgrounds to be appointed to head departments of the executive branch of the country. Experience with poverty has nothing to do with concern for it, or the ability to do something about it. Furthermore, it is the left who insist that diversity & representation matter. Judging a Republican, part of whose success came through being branded the anti-PC candidate, by how well he adheres to those standards is silly. From the general thrust of his campaign rhetoric, his appointees are perfectly consistent with his intentions. His appeal to the working class was not based on compassion and hand-outs, but on getting better deals, and utilizing practical experience with concrete problems. As you say, wealthy people who have proven their abilities in the real world would be the right picks. This is not like Obama running as the non-political Washington outsider, and staffing all his closest or highest appointments with long-time insiders and hacks. This is not like the Clinton cabinet that was promised to be a cross-section of America, and consisted of like 98% lawyers. You're like someone who hears Trump saying he's going to build a wall, and wonders why he is hiring so many masons and carpenters, and so few ditch diggers and farmers.
And for all that he talks about 'Make America Great Again' and standing up for those who have been the losers of the trade policies of the past, still his idea of solving the problem is giving tax cuts to the winners of said trade policies so they can become even wealthier. Seems unlikely he would do that if he had the first clue of what it really feels like to lose your job because your employer's management decides to outsource the factory to another country where they can make more profit. Though then again, maybe not - there certainly seem to be a good number of Trump voters who, for all their complaining about their lost jobs, are magnanimous enough to want to further reward the people who took them away.
Have you ever heard of a quid pro quo? I never cease to be amazed at the left's tendency to attribute all manner of evil motivations and unscrupulous methodology to anyone with more money than they, but at the same time assume that these utterly amoral, completely ruthless avatars of insatiable greed will simply bow their heads and take their losses with humility at the first piece of legislation passed to block one avenue of profit. Tax cuts encourage investment and growth, and encourage the money to circulate within the jurisdiction of said cuts. And if they don't, giving tax cuts would at least be a viable offer to get those in power to agree to some of the other means that might be taken to restore jobs to Americans which the left has priced out of the country.
You might call all of Trump's actions hypocritical or unlikely to produce the results for which he campaigned, but opinions and projections aside, there is absolutely no question that in spite of more than a hundred years of relentless left-wing political, scholastic and entertainment propaganda, proselytizing & moralizing all promoting the idea of class warfare and the image of the out-of-touch wealthy class, incapable of even speaking the language of normal people, Donald Trump still won the blue collar vote. And he did it in spite of relentless efforts by his opponents to try YOUR path to identifying with them. Did you know that Marco Rubio's parents were immigrants, and worked as a bartender and a maid? I actively avoided the presidential debates, but I still was unable to escape that datum! Didn't help him take the working class vote, nor did Hillary Clinton's gift bag of bread and circuses. One thing working class people get in their bones, is that you don't get something for nothing, and that after decades of supporting their self-appointed champions, they are all too familiar with the bills that come due from pro-labor politics.
