Reply to post: Re: Motivation?

Re: Motivation?

Actually, that's more in Trump's world than the previous ones, but you'd never get that from the media. They have only one weapon, and that's personal destruction... and they're using it liberally.

Draining the swamp necessarily enrages every resident of the swamp, and the media that give you the "news" definitely fit into that category. The screams of horror and fear and outrage you hear from the media aren't the truth! They are the distress calls from swamp creatures that fear that he may actually do what he set out to do.

This was never going to be neat and clean... the corruption that formed the swamp has built up over decades, and it's not going to go down without a fight. Hillary Clinton is probably the swampiest swamp creature to run for office in decades (and that includes the times Richard Nixon ran), and all of the Republican candidates other than Trump were from the same neighborhood. Bernie wasn't, but his rapid re-education, sellout, and subsequent show of support for Hillary and the very same Democratic party that fixed the primaries to ensure he would lose indicates how quickly he would have gotten there if he'd won. That, and he's a little nutty and out of touch with reality if he actually believes the inane, childlike statements he makes.

It's been swamp creature after swamp creature that have gotten us to where we are; do you really think electing someone who epitomizes everything that is wrong with politics was going to make things better?

Trump has made a number of clumsy mistakes and misstatements as an inexperienced non-politician, but no non-pol without a massive ego and a bombastic personality to match was ever going to walk in, tell the electorate that he can do better than an actual pol, and WIN. Yes, he can be a boor. He's petty. He's willing to wallow in the mud by counterattacking those who attack him first, which is unseemly and unpresidential. The thing is, though, that he did not win despite those things; he won because of them.

People are sick to death of the status quo, where professional politician after professional politician promises the world, then gets into office and does pretty much what the last guy did. They've begun to realize it's all a shell game, and they've all been had. Repeatedly. The purpose of the two-party system seems to be to give the appearance of a healthy public debate of ideas, and of people having a real choice between contrasting candidates, but the reality is that our choices boil down to one or the other candidate from the official party, the establishment party, of which the Democrats and most Republicans as well are simply puppets.

Lots of candidates say they're different. Hell, most of them do. They're not, though. Outsider candidates like Bernie and Trump are supposed to be weeded out by a system wholly owned for, and for the benefit of, the establishment. It worked as designed when it dispatched Bernie, but when it fired its cannons at Trump, he didn't do what Republican candidates are supposed to do (duck and cover and go on the defensive).

Trump was too egotistical and petty to do that; he instead hit back with his New York street-brawler style, and the truth of another old adage was made apparent: When you go on the defensive, you LOSE. That's why the establishment machine is all about the first strike; it's about putting the enemy on the defensive. The funny thing about human nature is that if you hear a person say, "I'm not a stamp collector," you'll then associate that person with stamp collecting, and even though the association was one of denial, in your head they're associated. You don't win by denying something over and over! You only reinforce the claim of the accusation you're trying to refute.

That's where Trump's lack of polish, decorum, and political experience worked for him. When he was hit with massive salvos of attacks from the media (a division of the Hillary Clinton for President company), his ego would not let him apologize and genuflect like Republicans generally do. He went on the offensive and hit them back-- and in doing so, he countered the accusations people made about him with counter-accusations about his accusers. He didn't reinforce the accusations about himself by denying them; he balanced the scale by making it a he-said, she-said situation.

No one but someone as petty and egotistical as Trump was going to beat the personal destruction machine of the establishment. That's why he won. Anyone who was more genteel or sophisticated would have been destroyed by half of what the establishment threw at Trump. And it's not over just because Trump won and was inaugurated! The anti-Trump campaign continues, and will continue for every moment he's in office. It's nothing but one lie after another, but what else is new?

The establishment media is an arm of the Democratic party, and they're not going to start being fair now. They've watched, astonished, as Trump not only survived their withering attacks, but thrived in them. Their response is to launch even more of the same, in the hopes that somehow doing the same thing is going to have a different effect this time. A more traditional president might begin to give in to the attackers and dial back his rhetoric, but Trump wasn't brawling with his critics because that was his considered campaign strategy. He was doing it because that's who he is-- and still is. And just as it propelled him to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, their continued litany of dishonest attacks on him will continue to backfire on the media (which polls at historical lows of trustworthiness) and render their continued attacks more and more irrelevant, as more and more people realize that the western media are no better than Pravda during the Soviet era.

Flawed as he may be, Trump's the only shot we have at ending the government as usual that got us to where we are. And by "we," I mean the world, not just Americans. No one that wasn't petty and egotistical was ever going to make it past the establishment sentries. It was either this or more of the same kind of politician we've had for decades.