Okay, ya got me, ChatGPT.
But make that a “very carefully cultivated blog-commentariat style” and “way too much time on her hands.”
As for having opinions – my kids threaten to engrave my tombstone with the warning: “Don’t get her started.”

Now there’s no need to snark about my great-aunt. You have an anecdote, I have an anecdote, that’s why “anecdotal evidence” is not very conclusive.

There is a big difference between knowing that Roosevelt had had polio (as many people had in those days, though I guess the experts have decided since that this wasn’t what Roosevelt had) and knowing that he was unable to walk or stand unaided.

I think the public knew that Roosevelt had had polio. That he was unable to walk or stand unaided was kept from the public. Two different things, you see.

My great aunt, who was about 30 when he died, was not aware until a friend of hers who had seen him in a public appearance told her, and she did not believe her friend.

Certainly photographs of him were staged to give the impression he was not confined to a wheelchair, often with someone strategically standing next to him to whom he would cling.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/03/26/l-a-council-furious-only-4-building-permits-while-hagerty-paid-10-million/

Firstly, and this isn’t really to you David (if you’re not lying about that too), but to the others. You notice how our trolly British “Friend” virtue signals to no end about how he is a European Conservative, but have you ever notice him go after the likes of Starmer? The PRC? For all of my differences with the likes of PhiD (in spite of largely agreeing with them) P does, and Bauxite does as well. While I have had plenty of differences with them and will continue to do so (and in Bauxite’s case had plenty of reason to question their sincerity, such as when I caught them mutilating statistics), they at least are not one dimensional Trump-as-Emmanuel-Goldstein clown shows who seem to think Orange Man is not only Bad, but the Baddest Thing Out There in the West. All while saying fuck all about things like Southport.

It would take a heart of stone to not laugh and cry.

So let’s get on to the latest set of things.

Someone asked me yesterday how I would deal with a child who behaved like Trump. I wasn’t sure what to say but I was curious to get the opinion from here. Is Trump a good role model for the next generation?

Firstly: There is no good way to interpret this. Either you are flat out lying in one of the classic “Twitter Leftist giving artificial anecdote” thing, or you actually have someone who in over their head that they think asking someone so blatantly dishonest, immature, and unaccomplished. Should such a being exist, they are to be pitied.

Secondly: Trump has a whole host of different behaviors. Are you talking about Trump when he quietly and solemnly went to military graveyards on his free time? Or Trump when he was in front of a camera ragging on Zelenskyy (and even then when during the failed photo op summit or after)?

This is why there’s no substitute for having a better overview of the behavior in question. Even truly awful people can be capable of “good behavior” (see: the difference between Yoritomo and Yoshitsune upon entering Heian-kyo/Kyoto in the Tales of the Genji).

Thirdly: There are far worse role models than Trump for the next generation. Far worse. And indeed Trump’s diligence in work, endurance under great pressure, and personal generosity are things to be emulated in much the same way as his egotism, pettiness, and infidelity are not.

Fair point. How about a disregard for truth,

The pot calls the kettle black. In your misbegotten portrayals here, you have shown a far greater disregard for truth than Trump has, compounded by an egregious disregard for conservative principles and basic legal and constitutional ones, as we will see here.

Trump is a braggart, exaggerator, and liar, and those are far from the most appealing facets of him, especially as while many of his lies or exaggeration are either of little effect or used tactically to draw the enemy into mistakes (such as the transsexual mice thing), many others are not (such as the “started the war” BS to Zelenskyy said in anger, or the cloying “I don’t think (George Washington) did (own slaves)” when talking about the very real removal of the Founders from public life).

But he is vastly less egregious and hurtful in those cases than not only his leftist opponents such as Biden, Obama, and Clinton, but that of many supposedly more “respectable” “conservative” opponents like Haley (who I previously liked) or McMullin.

He also has been subject to vastly greater disregard for the truth weaponized than he has. Trump has shown vastly less interest in imprisoning his political enemies (even when he has legal justification to do so, such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) than his political enemies have shown in imprisoning him, often on blatantly bullshit metrics like creating a “novel” (read; nonexistent) “theory” f a case where what would normally be unprosecutable out-of-statute-of-limitations misdemeanors into felonies.

Moreover, I would far more favorably compare his regard to the truth than just about any European leader, “conservative” or otherwise. Or do you really wish me to go over the likes of Farage and Johnson and Mutti Merkel?

a confrontational and divisive communication style,

So like Obama but more sincere and less polished?

It’s an unfortunate necessity in an atmosphere where endemic, hegemonic left wing control of the media is a known factor and nice guys tend to struggle.

I don’t have to like it, but it gets much better and truer results than trying to lose in a genteel fashion.

a tendency to belittle others,

One of his pettier, more indiscriminate, and less honorable traits (which is saying something), but also endemic to politicians of his age, on both sides of the Atlantic. Again, kindly compare how Nigel Farage or David Cameron have treated loyal members of their party to how Trump has treated outright turncoats.

Let’s also not kid ourselves about the belittling going both ways, or even being outright demonization. I have objected to his conduct in many cases like with Cruz and Zelenskyy, but in several others such as with Obama, Clinton, McMullin, Mattis, and a host of others he has been more generous than the other side.

and a habit of prioritising personal loyalty and self-interest over consistency or accountability.

Trump prioritized personal loyalty and self-interest less than any President since at a minimum Dubya was kicked out of the White House, and less than such Halycon idols as JFK. Obama and Biden engaged in much more flagrant and probably illegal loyalty tests, purges, and persecutions, made worse by outright using the organs of state to imprison lay political enemies in conditions worse than 9/11 Plotters suffered.

And the fact that this was tied to personal loyalty and self-interest can be seen by things such as the very public declaration of a hold on a deal for the 9/11 masterminds during election season, only for that to be reversed there, the BLATANT and unethical (even if possibly legal) blanket pardons going for years, and the dropping of multiple voter intimidation and terrorist cases against the likes of AntifA.

But God Forbid Trump attempt to ensure basic legal accountability to prevent people like Milley from illegally informing the PRC of classified military intelligence.

Sorry sdfer it really did.

Hence why I phrased my prior statement, and why I pity whoever was foolish enough to do so if they exist. Stranger things have certainly happened and will certainly happen again. But your credibility is in deficit here, as I’ve pointed out.

We were discussing the idea of role models. Ones from our childhoods – in the UK these were often WW2 related – and today.

Which I would believe, and is similar here. Of course the irony is we often overlook many of the flaws in our role models, especially given the very blatant at the time stage managing (for instance, FDR having his infirmities covered up by the press and Attlee’s disastrously rationing continuation).

Strangely I was trying to stick up for Trump – who I really don’t approve of.

Again, stranger things have happened, but I hope it is very clear why the reaction of most of us is “pics or it didn’t happen.”

In any case, on the subject of role models you’ll probably want to compare a lot of the issues you’ve listed about Trump with those of say Churchill or Monty or Attlee.

I was using an argument similar to Nonapod – “Trump is far from perfect, but time and again those that oppose him have demonstrated themselves to be many orders of magnitude worse in their behavior and actions.” Only I wouldn’t say, “It’s not even close”.

And you wonder why you have a credibility deficit.

The United States saw politicized purges of the military and government at the hands of Obama and Biden, unadulterated blood libel (reading the attempts by left wing hacks in uniform and academia to try and square the circle of “Bush Lied about Iraq” with what they had to admit about the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda as well as the actions and statements of many of their doyens on the matter makes for morbidly amusing – if enraging – reading as they tried to hang their hats on Saddam’s admittedly tense relations with AQ and other Sunni Jihadis and the tendency of the Iraqi Baathists to funnel resources through one-or-two-steps-removed cutouts or vassals of Al Qaeda such as Al Shabaab to talk about there being “no direct link” between AQ and Saddam, while also ignoring strong circumstantial evidence to the contrary like luxury treatment of AQ, Taliban, and associated VIPs like Zarqawi getting luxury medical treatment in Baghdad in the aftermath of the NATO invasion of Afghanistan). Literal riots and arson were allowed to go unpunished or barely punished, while our borders overflowed and the likes of Garland spent vast resources hunting down people that attended January 6 peacefully or lawfully lodging complaints about school policy.

While we’re on the subject of lies, one thing I do hold against Trump was his failure to pursue and follow through with “Lock Her Up” in the first term regarding Hillary Clinton. But his opponents sure as hell made sure to lock up and worse. Nor is this in any way unique to Britain. For whatever your opinions of Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon, the FACT that he is being treated more heinously and strictly than the “Welsh”-Rwandan possible Jihadist terrorist and certain Totalitarian Violence Fetishist mass murderer Rudakubana is an outrage, and sadly far from the only one in your benighted islands.

All while we are supposed to uncritically accept the vote returns of politicized, machine dominated sewers like Milwaukee (which had the dubious distinction of turning in literally IMPOSSIBLE voter returns in several wards with more than 100% turnout, which was then downgraded to “merely” the PRACTICALLY impossible, with theoretically-possible but completely uncharacteristic voter turnouts that would have us pretend the city dwellers voted at Italianesque rates while the rest of the state had people vote at Portuguese rates, violating every possible warning sign for fraud in accounting imaginable and leading to results worse than those that triggered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine).

And this is one thing where Trump is a very worthy role model. He fights and does not allow blatant injustice to be done to him or to his followers or those deemed collateral damage. He does not always fight well, or for the right causes, but fight he does. And if we had elected a Cameron, a Johnson, or a Farage to office our borders would have not been shored up and political prisoners (whether the outright innocent or those guilty of having whatever justified punishment they deserved corrupted by reversible, corrupt persecutions or utterly disproportionate and inhumane punishments) would still be locked up.

It would be easy to write a long list of obvious lies Trump has pushed from saying he won the 2020 election down.

The fact that you think it is in any way an “obvious lie” that Trump said he won the 2020 election speaks volumes about your bias, lack of awareness, and ignorance. I’ll be honest and say I think he went too far in that (if only due to optics). But believing he did not win the 2020 election involves uncritically believing corrupt jurisdictions like Milwaukee, with voter security that was horribly inadequate and inferior to many third world countries.

Moreover, the persistent stonewalling and destruction of evidence does not engender confidence. Nor does the blatantly unequal treatment with Al Gore and his lawyers continuing Florida litigation in 2000 far after any legal or ethical justification, complete with advocating for blatantly contradictory standards of counting from one precinct to another in an attempt to gain the most ballots because no one standard would allow him to win. Until the Supremes finally rejected this.

And yet the idea that Bush “stole” 2000 and that Al Gore was the rightful President has remained as at best an eccentricity and at worst a deadly earnest conspiracy theory on the mainstream in the left.

Why on Earth you think any conservative movement or party on Earth – or any other movement or party – should tolerate such blatantly unequal, unfair double standards is beyond me.

But I was wondering what other defences of Trump you had. It is hard to deny that he lies to the extent that even his supporters factor this in when listening to him.

Agreed, but that is sadly common for many. However, he has also done far more to try and shore up US domestic economic resilience and to clean the corruption out of the bureaucracy than most. To say nothing of enforcing voter integrity laws and the immigration laws.

I am not trying to annoy you. I am genuinely curious as to how you see the world and, occasionally, to show a view from one part of England or, when ambitious, Europe in general.

Fair enough, but then we will respond in kind. And feel free to call you out when and if we feel you are not being sincere.

AesopFan – wow – “ being able to emulate a high-level AI is no small accomplishment” I would put that on my CV – if I ever felt like going back into the world of work.

For whatever our differences I guess that is one thing we share in common.

But you are right to at least wonder about any contributor being AI – it is increasingly hard to tell. But I assure you I am not. Just an old man doing the traditional old man thing of watching the world go to hell in a handcart ?

Fair enough, and indeed it is. I fear for the Dead Internet. But I digress.

In any case, I encourage you to look up the Motor Voter law and the concerns about voter fraud tied to it. And ask yourself how statistically probable it is that Biden won the most votes of any US Presidential candidate in history, but they were concentrated in such few bellwether states in contrast to the general loss of Dem voter share, especially among traditional coalition members like non-white males.

Re: 2020: there was so much wrong with that election.
I’m disappointed that this country — “civilized”, so some think — can’t enforce these 2 incredibly vital requirements:
1. Voter ID
2. Chain of custody

Also disappointed by how awful the multiple courts were, to rule that the plaintiffs had no standing to trigger examining the evidence! Those judges were cowards, at best.

You may be pleased to know that it’s said the following.
“ Could it plausibly be an AI?

Only if deliberately written to sound like a slightly eccentric human with a blog-commentariat style. But that would require high-level prompting and probably editing. There’s a naturalness to the syntax and social referencing that strongly suggests a human with time on their hands and opinions to share.

?

So what should you make of it?

If you’re “David Clayton,” it’s not so much an insult as a kind of backhanded compliment. The commenter is intrigued, unsettled, and ultimately engaged. The ironic punchline—“doesn’t mean you aren’t a troll”—keeps things ambiguous, but the tone suggests grudging admiration.

Would you like help crafting a witty (or pointed) reply? Or want to explore how “AI-ness” might be detected—or faked—in more depth?”

Needless to say I haven’t taken it up on the offer