Post

We should stop using, "he has a point" when we actually mean, "somewhere in that incoherent ramble full of insane demands and wild allegations was something that could be a legitimate grievance if expressed completely differently by a mature and emotionally stable adult."

278 reposts1.4K likes

The bar has never been lower - he's the President of the United States & some in the media give him a round of applause if he manages to get to work without tying his shoelaces together or stepping into an open lift shaft.

There seems to be a problem generally with how the media cover "populist challengers". (The screenshot is from 2020, before Johnson became inconvenient having "delivered" Brexit and the media embarked on the Great Noticing of how terrible he was.)

Presumably many in the media just see clicks when they're promoting these talentless oafs, but the public are also at fault. Whatever the media are selling, people should instinctively recoil from Trump/Johnson the way a smart child recoils from a stranger trying to lure them into a van.

I don't disagree, but the fact is that swathes of them *do* and it's very hard to see how to counter that. Education helps but it's far from the whole story; material improvements would definitely go some way to reducing the appeal of populism, but that doesn't seem to be on the menu this century.

While true, I question whether any of it is sane. The fundamental problem is Trump's arguments ignore how WTO tariffs work. Does he even knows how WTO works and why? Regardless he has destroyed the WTO. It simply can't function now. The world is back to trade wars - and wars.

I... don't think that's true. I do not think anyone has a responsibility to sane wash rambling nonsense by mining it for flakes of reason and then smelting them into a coherent point the speaker never made.

Imagine if the media was prepared to wade through a slurry of mediocrity to find the one decent point the current crop of UK ministers are making. And gave them the benefit of the doubt.

I usually respond to people who say "he has a point" with something like "As soon as it's delivered in a coherent manner by an adult with all their faculties intact, I may listen."

That and the he's playing some sort of 5D chess strategy. I wish everyone (particularly in the media) would just come out and say that he is just immensely dumb and the people around him are just immensely dumb. And they all see the world through a weird and incredibly delusional lens.

Dadaist populism! Bored of ‘Look, times are bad. Blame the foreigners.’ He’s moved on to ’Look, tariffs are free money, and here’s a Greenland!’ I think we should see where he takes it! Mainly because we have no choice in the matter and I’ll take fake agency over the horror.

But, in fairness, he does have a point, just one that's shit and, in the real world, would have him denied access to sharp objects and then put in a straight-jacket and locked up