The problem with articles like Ronan Farrow’s about Trump’s alleged affair…
…is that it apparently assumes we care.
I haven’t read the article and I do not know the details except what I’ve read in a couple of summaries, nor do I have a clue if the allegations in it are true—of an affair in 2006 and a coverup.
But life is short and I have no interest in reading it, so I’ll just stipulate for the sake of argument that it’s all true, and that Trump has had multiple affairs of this sort all his life and engaged in various machinations to cover them up. We certainly know about some of them (Marla Maples, anyone?) and have known for many, many years.
I didn’t care then. If there’s a way to care in negative numbers, that’s how little I cared. Donald Trump mattered not one whit to me and I didn’t waste any time thinking about him.
Well, that last part of the sentence—that I haven’t wasted time thinking about him—is no longer true, is it? I’ve spent a great deal of the last year and a half learning, thinking, and writing about that very same person—Donald Trump—for the simple reason that his run for the presidency upended a race I thought was the GOP’s for the taking, and then in a shocker on Election Night he surprised me by winning the whole shebang. Since then, it’s been fascinating to follow his actions as president and watch the reactions of the Democrats, the Never-Trumpers, the people of the USA, and the world.
But despite all those changes, one thing remains: I have zero interest in Trump’s sexual affairs. That is for two reasons. The first is that this is part and parcel of what we—the American voters—already knew about Trump. It has been factored in. I feel sorry for his wife and particularly for his son, but the women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs, the left, Ronan Farrow, and the New Yorker, have bigger and (in their eyes) more important fish to fry by publicizing such information.
The second reason I don’t care is that I don’t care about politicians’ affairs in general, as long as they are with consenting adults, don’t involve shady shadowy spy- or blackmail-type figures, and the players don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.
And I am consistent. I didn’t care about Bill Clinton’s affairs, either. If he was abusing or raping women then I would care, of course. But I am skeptical about those claims for various reasons (I’ve written about the Broaddrick claims here and here, and somewhere I have notes about the inconsistencies in Paula Jones’ story, although I do think they had a sexual relationship of some sort). And I am consistently skeptical about rape/abuse claims about anyone unless and until proven, although of course I know they might be true and I have empathy for victims.
However, if there’s anyone on earth surprised at this sort of tale about Trump, that person has been living in a cave on the moon. Or maybe on Pluto.
People trying to harm Trump through these reports are handicapped by the fact that most of the public is fully inoculated against caring or being surprised. If it were my husband of course I would care. But the American public isn’t in a marital relationship with Trump. The days when we expected sexual morality and fidelity from our presidents, or the appearance of it, are long gone.
At least—unlike a lot of people, particularly in the press—I’ve been consistent in my position about politicians and extramarital sex. The press certainly hasn’t been consistent, nor have a lot of political partisans. Now the Democrats are dumping Bill Clinton, but that’s only because he and Hillary are very yesterday and have fulfilled their purpose, and dumping him might help them electorally and bolster their self-righteous pose of sincerity.
I think the answer is simple, overselling. We were promised Treason, and have seen countless lies told to push that explode over the last two years. An affair? Heck, that, even if it were true, would be a relief at this point.
I did care about the Monica Lewinsky situation. An intern and in the “people’s office”–not his personal living space. If someone in the private arena, or a Republican, had sexual encounters w/an intern that would be cause for dismissal and possibly more. But we were schooled then that we shouldn’t make judgments about a man’s intimate life (actually, a Democrat’s intimate life it turns out). The same people that have ridiculed Pence for having strict boundaries, want us to care about Trump at this point. I laugh!
In Australia, the Leader of the Nationals’ party is being pilloried for fathering a child with one of his media advisors. His marriage has collapsed & his reputation is on fire, but only the Opposition parties & some in the media are saying he should go, and that for obvious political (not moral) reasons.
There’s a bunch of Aussies who just don’t care…like you Neo I suspect. We’ve grown numb to moral lapses & tend to say, “Consenting adults? Your business.”
This will get zero traction in part due to Farrow ”s own recent
expose in the NYT. LOL. He helped give us our booster shot. of this “who cares vacine.” Pretty soon he ll become archaic and irrelevant & a foot stamping get shrew like Hedda Hopper. Don’t think she was a shrew but who knows.
BTW would he care to comment on the morals of his own mother or his alleged father. Ole blue eyes
I did care about the Monica Lewinsky situation. An intern and in the “people’s office”—not his personal living space.
Sharon W: Likewise.
I’ve never had a job where I could have had sex with a subordinate at our workplace without fear of repercussions.
I don’t care either. Nor do I care about gold-plated bathroom fixtures or having to look at a farm from a golf course. In the same way, i don’t care about Michele’s dress designers.
I am far more interested in his ability to get good advice and implement it.
I did care about the Bill Clinton thing.
I cared, because the alternative to Bill Clinton was (both times) a vastly superior human being (with better policy ideas, to boot).
All things being equal, I’d rather the president be a good and wise man.
And, all things being equal, I’d rather he have good policy ideas.
So there are two things to consider.
With Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole, it was Good Policy Good Man versus Bad Policy Bad Man. Easy call to make.
And likewise, with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, it was Possibly-Good Policy Bad Man versus Bad Policy Bad Woman. (And, to my delight, Possibly-Good Policy turned out to be Quite-Good Policy.) So, again: Easy call.
If the situation should ever arise where I have to pick between a guy with Good Policy But Bad Moral Character, and a man with Good Moral Character But Bad Policy, then I will have a tougher decision on my hands. Maybe if it’d been Trump vs. Joe Lieberman or some such match-up.
But thus far that hasn’t arisen.
“The days when we expected sexual morality and fidelity from our presidents, or the appearance of it, are long gone.”
Yes, indeed they are.
Who made that happen? How and when?
It is disappearing not just for presidents, but for all of us.
Why, Hollywood, in part, did it, by their movies, by the pigs with their casting couches and the bimbettes who willingly prostituted themselves, only to proclaim their victimhood decades later, now that all women are good, and all men are suspect. By the pill, “free love” and all the other garbage of the 1960s, by no-fault divorce in the 1970s, by the rampant homosexuality of the 1980s and the ActUp crowd that put their lives and conduct before those of others (e.g. women with breast cancer) with the cries of “More research! For us!”
It is a long sorrowful litany, a song of descent. The common thread is the daily dissemination of information about the hoity-toities’ conduct, thus implying to the hoi polloi that it is all OK.
But cast your mind back to Grover Cleveland: “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” Response: “He’s in the White House, ha ha ha!”
At my age and having been around lots of people in my professional and personal lives I no longer am surprised that people are having affairs. I’m still sometimes surprised by the pairings, but never that such things happen. Frankly, they are quite common.
Your point, Neo, about any of these allegtions involving Trump not being news, is spot on.
Incidentally, Neo,
I believe that the whole point of investigating Trump’s affairs (other than the fact that it’s salacious and it sells) is to try to peel away “Evangelical” voters from Trump’s base.
(By “Evangelical,” I mean: Serious Christians generally, not necessarily just Protestants. Could be Catholic, could be Orthodox, could even be non-Trinitarians like Mormons, or folks who invent their own spinoffs on the basis of their own Bible-speculations. In general the markers are: Folks who attend church services 50+ times per year, go on short-term mission trips, give away 10%+ of their pre-tax income, and don’t have premarital sex…or else do, but confess it as a sin and ask forgiveness.)
The left would like these folks to abandon Trump. If they do, he’s done-for.
That worked with Roy Moore, after all.
But it worked rather less-well with Moore than one might have expected, if one were operating under the old Trent Lott paradigm. Moore, in spite of his apparent moral taintedness, still got a lot of Evangelical votes.
Why?
It’s because “Evangelicals” (as defined above) now consider themselves to be choosing between a government which will protect them from (mild, non-fatal) persecution by leftists, and one that won’t.
They don’t feel they have the luxury of insisting on moral behavior any more; they’re more worried about will this guy protect me from being attacked by my cultural enemies, like G.W.Bush, or will he join them, like Obama?
This is because serious Protestants and serious Catholics now know that they are uniformly considered contemptible-enemies-fit-to-be-squashed-hard by the left…and, they simultaneously acknowledge that the left has complete cultural hegemony in the U.S.A.
The left won the culture war by dominating academia, entertainment, the arts, the news media, the federal-and-state regulatory bureaucracies, the law schools (and therefore most courts) and the HR, marketing, sales, and design departments of all moderate and large businesses.
This cultural domination means that the left can squash Christians hard, if they want to. (And they want to.)
What’s to stop them?
Answer: Only the courts and the elected-officials (the President and the Congress) currently exist as a firewall between Christians and the left vilifying them, silencing them, denying them employment, impoverishing them, and fining or jailing them for publicly practicing their religion.
Ask a baker. Or someone who runs a Catholic adoption agency. Or who wants to be a certified psychologist. Or who wants to put popular politically-conservative videos on YouTube.
So, Christians are now in the last, lowest level of trusting the political process. (The phase where subcultures start practicing civil disobedience and thinking about secession.) They think they’re fighting a hopeless cultural rearguard retreat against a more-powerful enemy.
They’re trying to stretch out, as long as possible, the interval before they become the Copts.
Is Donald Trump a philanderer? Sure. Was Cyrus the Persian a polytheist? You bet.
But the Israelites were plenty laudatory of Cyrus when he allowed them to return to Jerusalem, polytheist or not. Better that, than Antiochus Epiphanes.
Likewise the Christians (the serious ones), vis-a-vis Donald Trump. He won’t persecute them. And he’ll discomfit the crowd who usually does.
When you’re fighting a losing war, that’s good enough. The rest is negotiable.
R.C.:
I see no reason why evangelicals would be any different from any other voter re Trump in that they already knew all this before the election. If they voted for him then, knowing it, why would they abandon him now?
There’s so much freakin’ blockbuster news that this one doesn’t even make the lede. Over the last couple of days, items that trump this in term of coverage based on my random observations include:
1. The school shooting
2. Mueller indictment of 13 Russians trying to help the Trump campaign and hurt the Clinton one.
3. Trump admin’s bumbling response to alleged wife beater Rob Porter
4. Trump lawyer pre-election payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
5. Trump intelligence chiefs telling lawmakers that Russia sees their 2016 attack as successful and will try to do it again in the midterm.
6. Trump admin members not being able to get security clearance
7. Trump frm Chief of Staff Reince Priebus warning “Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50”
8. Trump fmr advisor Omarosa warning: “its not going to be ok”
By my estimation, Trump cover-up of playmate affair comes in around 9. This is the best reality show ever!
Manju:
He who laughs last….
We shall see.
Neo:
I quite agree with you.
My point is that, given what Evangelicals feel about the country in which they live now, very few of them will abandon him over mere philandering.
And, as you correctly note, most of them knew he was a philanderer from the get-go. They expected it. It’s already “priced in to the market.”
But you see: Political observers in D.C.’s elite class are often late to recognize social trends. (As the 2016 election outcome demonstrated so vividly!)
D.C. elites expect that Evangelicals haven’t been paying attention, and that some of them will say, “What? Trump’s a skeezy perv? We had no idea!” …and drop him.
Or perhaps they think Evangelicals were gritting their teeth over the earlier philandering, and their patience will eventually wear out with incessant scandals, and they’ll drop him.
But that’s not how Evangelicals act any more. And the D.C. Elite hasn’t kept up-to-date.
Their new behavior is quite different from the way they felt in the 90’s and earlier. Back then they would punish politicians for political scandals, even at the risk of losing a House seat, because back then they didn’t feel like their livelihoods, free-exercise rights, and ability to raise their children as Christians were hanging by a thread.
(Consider the old quote: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Now, no American Christian thinks the left are going to hang him. But they do think — perfectly correctly! — that the left are going to try to take their kids away from them if they don’t teach their kids that a girl is a boy if she thinks she is, etc. They think that leftism increases the odds that their children will spend eternity in hell. THAT tends to concentrate the mind “wonderfully.”)
So you’re right, Neo. They won’t abandon him.
But consider:
(a.) Not everyone understands how Evangelicals now feel about their situation in America; and,
(b.) Not all Evangelicals keep up-to-date on current sociological trends outside their own hometown and circle-of-friends.
Because of (a.), a lot of folks still expect Evangelicals to drop Trump like the GOP abandoned Trent Lott for making a dumbass remark at, uh, I think it was Strom Thurmond’s birthday party, or something. They still expect that the Evangelicals will both believe every accusation the MSM produces, and react by dropping the candidate. They don’t realize that Evangelicals now consider that a sucker’s game, and that many Evangelicals fully believed the charges against Roy Moore and yet were still perfectly willing to send Moore to D.C. if that’s what it took to deny Democrats an extra vote.
And, because of (b.), the mistaken expectation described in (a.) is still partly-right (though increasingly less so as the years go by).
That, after all, is why Roy Moore lost. Not many Evangelicals abandoned him. But enough did, because they were still playing by the rules of the 90’s, and couldn’t stomach “identifying with a man who preys on young girls.”
So there is still some susceptibility among Evangelicals to this kind of tactic. But not much. Not any more.
The rules have changed, and the Left is going to hate the new rules.
Does that clarify things, Neo?
You can always tell when a Republican is being successful: it’s when the Party of No Moral Standards Whatsoever lines up to tell folks like me that he’s just not conservative enough, gosh darn it.
We don’t really care at all about Gunwalker, Nukes For Iran, imprisoning filmmakers for mocking Islam, the corruption and weaponization of the FBI, a collapsing military and guys with beards in the little girls’ room…. but oh gollly, that devil Trump might’ve slept with a Playboy Bunny.
It becomes pretty easy to see what people like Ronan Farrow really consider important in the grand scheme of things.
The left seems to believe that there are some people who not only care, but don’t know this stuff already; surprise, surprise, surprise – the left thinks their enemies are utter morons who live under rocks.
Yeah, lefties. I suspected this and much, much more all along, and I didn’t care because however much of a philandering cad Trump is, we have no reason to believe that he’s evil, or a dangerous enemy of US citizens who work for a living, as Hilary was.
Kyndyll G: And as Hillary still is and forever will be.
Whaaat?? Trump had a fling with a Playboy Bunny!? Is that wrong? Should he not have done that??
Skilly:
Well, yes, of course he did. (A quite-cute brunette this time, as opposed to the stereotypically flashy blonds he normally seems to favor.)
And, of course it is. And, of course he shouldn’t.
(But, given how much worse the alternatives are, there’s still ample reason to prefer Trump in the Oval Office.)
We have picked side, Trump is a mess however he is our mess and much better than the Hillary mess. Evangelicals and wife and I are kind of on the edge of that sub-group, are also pragmatic and oft times forgiving.
If you consider that the Kinsey Report in the 50’s might have been half-way correct then you might surmise that a whole damn lot of us have some closets in the past when we were in difficult marriages. 1960’s & 70’s were crazy times and the 80’s not much better.
Whaaat?? Trump had a fling with a Playboy Bunny!? Is that wrong? Should he not have done that??
Hark! Methinks I hear a Seinfeld line:
“George Costanza – Was that wrong?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM
Good one, Skilly.
OldTexan:
Right there with ya’…except for one caveat: It sounds like you’re lumping Trump in with other folks who “did things they regret.” That’s certainly true for many people (in the 70’s, the 80’s, the 90’s, the “oughts,” and today).
But I’m not sure it’s true of Trump. He may have bedded a thousand women; but I doubt he’s anything other than proud of having done so. I certainly don’t suspect that he’s in any way chastened or contrite about bedding Playmate of the Month, or Pornstar of the Year, or whatever.
What I’m saying is: Some folks behave immorally and then repent of it and try to live more decently thereafter. One can call them hypocrites, if one likes; but they’re the best kind: They have a moral standard for their lives that’s high enough that even they can’t consistently live up to it. And when they fail, they don’t give up and lower the standard; they keep the standard where it is and try again. That puts them (morally) a level below persons with equally high standards who keep them, to be sure. But it puts them a level above persons with lesser standards.
I’m not convinced that Trump has any standards whatsoever, apart from “I should always do whatever gets me what I want in the smartest and boldest possible way.”
The payouts to the women in question shows him consistently following that “standard” of behavior: Having Melania leave him would make him look bad; and having to stifle his enjoyment of sexual conquest merely because he’s married probably strikes him as servile; so sleeping around with lots of beautiful women and then hiding the fact with payola sounds like the best, smartest, boldest option.
Or so I suppose. Maybe I’m mischaracterizing him. For all I know he may be a wannabe saint whose bad behavior is the consequence of unusually strong temptation: A titanic libidio aggravated by an even-more-titanic ambition. Maybe he spends every moment in a struggle against his own id.
But I kinda doubt it.
I voted for him because I thought he was likely to be at least a little better than Hillary.
If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have voted for him more enthusiastically, since (policy-wise) he’s turned out to be much better than Hillary would have been. Much better than I expected, to be honest.
That’s in spite of the fact that, if a pimp offered him the opportunity to enjoy the services of a bunch of underage sex slaves, I suspect the only question on his mind would be, “Well, how hot are they?”
In short: One can vote for a moral reprobate, if the alternative is a worse moral reprobate. But having done so, one need not indulge any illusions about his/her good character.
R.C.
He ran away from the Lolita express… whereas Bill Clinton took 26 trips according to the records.
Near as I can tell, Trump hooks up with certified sluts and pros.
Manju:
Yes, there’s often so much news I can’t even begin to cover it.
Fortunately, I’m not a newspaper or a news aggregate. I cover what interests me at the moment. But I also sometimes wait till the next day to write about something due to time constraints and the need to do more research and write more fully about it. My plan is to write about the 13 Russians tomorrow, actually.
I wonder if his Evangelical supporters would react differently if Melania were to begin divorce proceedings. That would drag his son directly into all this; not sure they’d be so comfortable supporting a bad father as they are a bad husband.
The 13 Russians seem to be anti trumpers staging “he is not my president” rallies, in other words, they are colleagues of Manju.
Let’s play a bit of devils advocate and assume that everything written in the indictment by the investigators was true. If Putin has changed his strategy from pro trump to anti trump after trump was elected, because Putin’s intention all along has always been to undermine whoever is in power or holding the upper hand in a race to create discords In America in his plan to defeat America and according to manju’s argument that anyone was colluding with Russia as long as this person’s action aligned with Putin’s goal, regardless whether consciously knowing if he is helping Russia or not, under the same standards Manju defined democrats and never trumpers are all colluding with Russia right now, since now it’s in Putin’s interests to undermine trump, and democrats are helping him undermine trump.
Me too. I don’t care.
I’m not going to read it all, but Ronan Farrow has high credibility and it’s pretty well written, probably all true. Including this:
She recalled that Trump said he had asked his son Eric “who he thought was the most beautiful girl here + Eric pointed me. Mr. T said ‘He has great taste’ + we laughed!”
<<
Two things. 1) the article is about the details of the affair AND the payments & semi-coverup plus the signing away of rights to the story. A third party non-disclosure agreement. For 150k (?) minus 43% or 82.5k. The .5 makes it more accurate and the article is full of details like that (too full!).
2) Yes, Trump is proud of bedding lovely women.
Most men would be.
Most men are admiring, or envious, or both.
Most men would want the power/ fame/ riches … status, to be such a successful womanizer.
Many men seem to be far better supporters of male leaders who ARE successful womanizers. Clinton & JFK both come to mind. Alpha males? Alpha-wannabees? Betas?
The #MeToo movement helped convince sex-bunny McDougal to talk, despite her NDA. Also to remove her breast implants as she's becoming more Christian and repenting of her earlier mistakes.
It would be good for society to be more honest about Trump's prior claim: when you're rich & famous, lovely women ALLOW you kiss them, and do anything, even grab by their crotch.
Do lovely women act this way? Yes, some do – many who want something do (casting couch). She wasn't even accepting cash for sex (not THAT girl), she actually liked Trump.
Society needs to talk more about hypergamy and the women, who control sex when they say No.
… which leads me to think again about the Ansari #MeToo first date where 23 yr old cutie gets naked & does mutual oral sex, all consensually, but feels assaulted.
The Dem feminist hookup culture, claiming men and women "are the same", is so false. Men give love to get sex; women give sex to get love. Dem feminism says women can just have sex, too. Well, why buy the cow when the milk is free?
Thanks to Democrat enforced feminism, colleges are mostly majority female, and if you're not having the sex that cute guys want on the first date, there might not be date two. But in any case, there's a lot less real love (=commitment). Because women choose to not say No.
The lovely Trump bimbos didn't say No.
Lots of lovelies want to "be with" the highest status guy around … The Leader of the Pack.
Dave:
The 13 Russians are neither pro- nor anti-Trump. They are pro “let’s mess with the US.” As such, they believe in stirring chaos. When they thought Trump’s election would cause more chaos, they were for him. Not because of any favors he would do Russia. After he was elected, they were happy to stir more chaos by encouraging the Resistance against him. Chaos galore! Marvelous! That was the whole idea of electing Trump—that the forces against him would be easily stirred and manipulated afterward.
And that’s what has happened. So we agree, I think.
But I wouldn’t exactly call them “colleagues” of Manju. Fellow travelers? Or if Manju is not a “traveler,” then he’s their “useful idiot.”
Ann:
I doubt it would make a particle of difference.
But I also believe it’s moot. I doubt she would do it. Certainly not while he’s in office.
“2. Mueller indictment of 13 Russians trying to help the Trump campaign and hurt the Clinton one.”
And also trying to hurt Trump. A lie by omission manju. But we know that’s what you’re here for, to troll and sow division just like those Russians.
I guess I do care a bit too much — one of those faithful married men who is yet fascinated with the successful womanizers?
From the article (I’m looking for why she slept with him):
McDougal described as their first date: dinner in a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. McDougal wrote that Trump impressed her. “I was so nervous! I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man,” she wrote. “We talked for a couple hours — then, it was “ON”! We got naked + had sex.”
<>
At another California golf event, Trump told McDougal that Tiger Woods had asked who she was. Trump, she recalled, warned her “to stay away from that one, LOL.”
<< Tiger, another successful womanizer.
Arnold S. is mentioned in the article, too.
Women allow these guys a lot.
Remember when a news person suggested Tiger should convert to Christianity and repent? And he was attacked by the others? The Dem media does hate Christians.
It was 45% in fees by the lawyers, not 43% above.
Why sex with Trump? Because…of his intelligence! & charm!
Those who claim Trump is a moron are projecting.
FOAF, from the Mueller indictment itself:
I’m guessing you’re referring to the fact that the Defendants organized anti-Trump / pro-Clinton activities as well. Is this the material fact I’m leaving out?
Do you want me to square that with the quote I provided?
Quite strange seeing how right and left seem to have exchanged positions, and this is a global (in the west) trend.
Again let’s say every assumption about Putin’s intentions during the election was true for discussion ‘s sake, Putin can’t sow discord by sitting on his hands doing nothing or put out ads helping Hillary because the expectation was she was definitely going to win. If the goal was to divide the country helping the challengers to even up the odds is the only logical way. If trump was ahead of Hillary in the poll Putin would’ve helped Hillary. Putin theoretically would have helped anyone who was behind, as illustrated as he was helping Bernie and Jill stein as well, the side effect the pro Hillary pollsters fixing the polls creating the sentiment that Hillary was vastly ahead to create momentum for her base didn’t account. Funny the diversity loving democrats think only Americans can fix elections, but not the Russians, how many Americans fixing the election for Hillary were actually Americans taking money from foreign countries to influence the election as there proxies. There were probably millions of trollsfrom foreign countries working to help Hillary get elected like China or Saudi, but the progressives on the investigation will never bring it up. Funny how it is really lying by omission, they only mentioned Russians while intentionally ignore the many other agents from all over the world trying to meddle with our election as well to create an illusion that only Russians were hacking just like what msm did with police shooting black kids to deny us a way to have a accurate gauge on how much was Russia trying to influence relativly to the other nations.
And only 13 Russians? you honestly believe that Israel who’s existence solely depended on Hillary not winning didn’t send more than 13 agents to try to swing the election trump’s way?
Manju:
Something else to think about regarding the Russian internet indictment (from Powerlineblog.com) by Scot Johnson:
“As the Wall Street Journal observes in the related editorial today (behind the Journal’s paywall): “The 37-page indictment contains no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does show a systematic effort to discredit the result of the 2016 election. On the evidence so far, President Trump has been the biggest victim of that effort, and he ought to be furious at Vladimir Putin.”
“….no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign….”
Useful idiot indeed.
Involuntary exploitation? No.
Superior exploitation? No.
Normalization/promotion of a divergent orientation or behavior? No.
It’s a private matter, best left to reconciliation between the principals.
self-righteous pose of sincerity
Bigotry. They’re Pro-Choice and in denial, with only their twilight faith to calm their cognitive dissonance.
There is no better way to discredit an election by intentionally leaving around evidence to mislead people into believing someone in the shadow making moves trying to change the elections, no matter how irrelevant those plots were in actually affecting the results. The election was a conglomeration of agents around the globe making moves to support whatever candidates that might benefit their respective countries, moves that were designed to benefit Hillary were probably neutralised by moves that tried to sink her, this has been going on for ceuntries. What the Democrats try to do is try to claim monopoly of that, only countries that help democrats like China and Saudi can meddle
Who benefits from the indictment of foreign agents? Local politicians, because when no foreign agents can ever operate inside America for their respective countries, when foreign countries need to meddle with our elections they have to outsource to American politicians to do it for them.
Who else also benefit from the ban of foreign agents working in America? the establishment. Establishment has a monopoly of political resources in America and no outsiders can ever win without at least some foreign assistance. founding fathers couldn’t have won without the help of the French, and the establishment wants no foreign power to help any outsider who might ever challenge them like Ron Paul, Bernie and trump did.
Why do Conservatives want free trade? it’s because foreign goods help break the monopoly of local businesses, allow customers access to more choices, and more choices mean better choices, like Japanese autos. I actually don’t mind foreign agents working in America as long as what they do are legal, in a way they are a part of check and balance system that contribute in some way to regular folks being able to hold the uncheck government accountable. Without a outlet like wiki leaks where our whistle blowers can leak crucial info to how would we know dance fixed election to help Hillary win?
Do you want me to square that with the quote I provided?
Manju: By all means. I usually can’t tell what your argument is beyond general complaints and out-of-context / citeless claims.
“Do you want me to square that with the quote I provided?”
I’m sure you can come up with some sophistry. You are very practiced at it.
Presbyterian marriage vows:
“I, ______, take you, ______, to be my wedded wife/husband, and I do promise and covenant, before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful husband/wife, in plenty and want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.”
Episcopal marriage vows:
“In the name of God, I, ______, take you, ______, to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”
When asked his religious preference, Donald Trump said this:
“I am Presbyterian Protestant. I go to Marble Collegiate Church,” he told reporters in Greenville, S.C. He also proudly displays his confirmation certificate in the Presbyterian faith.
However, when he married Melania he chose an Episcopal ceremony. Notice the one word difference in the vows?
Eisenhower
I disagree with your point about Bill Clinton. I think the case made by Christopher Hitchens in No One Left to Lie To was compelling.
We ought to give a damn about the character of the people we elect to office. This was the point Bush tried to make in the debates against Clinton.
Clinton repeatedly took military actions to try and provide himself political cover during his scandals. I don’t particularly like Trump, but I’ll put up with him. If, however, Trump did something similar–using military force to try to distract the public from his own moral failings, I’d be less inclined to go along.
I’ve been married 50 years and neither of us has ever cheated. But then, I’m not a billionaire and beautiful women don’t throw themselves at me and I’ve never been to the Playboy Mansion surrounded by scantily-clad available beautiful women in every nook and cranny.
It’s been a lot easier for me to be faithful without all those temptations. Who knows what I would have done in his place? I’m certainly not going to take a holier-than-thou position.
As long as they were consenting adults and no one was hurt I’ll keep my judgment to myself.
Trump wasn’t elected to be a moral example. He was elected to try to save the greatest country in the history of the world that has been circling the drain for some time.
When your’re drowning you don’t ask the morals of the person throwing you a life preserver!