BPX053: Olympus Has Fallen

[JazzFunk]

[wheelaa]

*GETS MASSIVELY ENGORGED KNOB OUT AND SPUNKS ALL OVER THE THREAD!!!!!!*

Suddenly it all makes sense!

When you blow your LOAD and a few chunks of that clear, frogspawny snot fly out but you can only find about half of it, afterwards, and you can't find the other chunks ANYWHERE....



....that is, until about an hour later when you scratch your ear and you feel a clod of icky, cold, frogspawny jelly stuck to the back of your hand.

Just happened to me. So icky. It's OK when it's warm and you've got a tissue but when it isn't and when you haven't...

(https://bordersdown.net/threads/1280...=1#post2395158)

[JazzFunk]

Hahahahahaaaaaaa!!!!!!

Thanks mate, I really just proper belly laughed then and it was ace!!!!

[wakka]

Yeah, I don't enough about any of these presidents to remotely call it. I first learned John Tyler's name from this post, so I can't really give an informed opinion on the main thread question.

Dogg's post is spot on for me though. He's the worst of the past few decades, by a long shot. He has actively aimed to dismantle American democracy in the name of self-interest. He's openly supported fascist organisations like the Proud Boys and dictators like Putin and Erdogan. He's a narcissist and an unsophisticated thinker, and lacks any form of compassion.

He is a low human being. A straight up asshole.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

[teddymeow]

Chester. A. Arthur was the 21st President.

I now this thanks to Jeremy Irons n Die Hard With a Vengeance:

"Temper John. The road of the truth has many turns. You will find an envelop under the rim of the fountain. When you undertake the trip it suggests, ask yourself this question: What is 21 out of 42?"

[Lebowski]

Jazzfunk do you only ever post when pissed? some clarity really can help in situations where your trying to take a overall view. both siding really? if you want to both side things, take his reaction to a peaceful BLM protest in-front of the white house, it was cleared with tear gas and force so trump could take a photo outside a church. His response to his supporters storming a government building was inaction followed by a very bizarre speech where he said "i love you i love you go home now" ???



He's Regularly been asked to denounce fascist white supremacists groups and his response was to tell the proud boys on national TV to stand back and stand by. Regularly calls Covid the Chinese virus and Kung flu, Insinuated Kamala Harris Dosent meet the requirements to run for Vice president, a tatctic he tried with Obama, because of their Heritage. Made statements that all Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, Tried to ban Muslims from entering the US, called African country's **** hole country's. This is just the stuff i can remember. Historically he always seems to be on the wrong side of racism issues too, in the 80s he lost a lawsuits where he removed black dealers from the floor of his casino to accommodate a wealthy customers request.

[Dogg Thang]

Related, Cory Doctorow (who seriously knows things), tweeted a thread about Bush hours ago - https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/...376428033?s=20

[Neon Ignition]

Even more damning that originally the Republicans already had that recent legacy under their belt and even they didn't want Trump at first

[wheelaa]

Yeah, Dubya was complete scum too, thicker than pig****. Trump trumps him though, his insidiousness and more blatant hatred is far more calculated and pervasive.

On the subject of ****bag leaders / ****bag behaviours / ****bag attitudes / ****bag racism (not sure '****bag' is strictly needed on this one, all racism is ****bag) / ****bag policies / ****bag ****bags...anyone want to start a Russia thread? Or a China thread?

[QualityChimp]

The thing is, America boasts that it's the "Leader of the Free World".

The Cold War conception of the "Free World" included only anti-communist states as being "free", particularly capitalist states which were said to have free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly and freedom of association.

Arguably, both China and Russia have both been communist and to a degree still are, with the above definition of freedom definitely not the case.

If America declares itself the "Leader of the Free World", it needs to be setting an example, which Donald Trump has definitely not done.

I see no point in the argument "This guy isn't bad because these guys are worse" as it rarely puts them in a good light when comparing yourself to the worst people, it just puts you in the same category...

Embedded Tweet

[wheelaa]

"I see no point in the argument "This guy isn't bad because these guys are worse" as it rarely puts them in a good light when comparing yourself to the worst people, it just puts you in the same category..."

That's not my argument though. It's purely that Russia and China get up to a lot of very very nasty **** too, yet it's almost taboo to talk about either here. A forum dig really. I might even say that your reply, and assumption, feed into that!

The wider sense of hatred is rife there too, so why are we not discussing that as well. Not for comparison, but because hatred is awful.

Maybe that's on me though and I've been getting it wrong these last few months / years. I thought it was about the hatred, the bile, the lies, the deceipt, the racism, the cronyism, because they are awful in themselves, not because they are only attached to some pathetic outdated 'leader of the free world' concept crap. My bad!

[QualityChimp]

As a mod, the issue is that criticism of China and Russia tends to be different to America because that is normally "Trump did X, which is bad", but when criticising the other two, it tends to be "The Chinese/Russians did X, which is bad".

For an example, we have to be careful when people start saying "The China Virus", because it's labelling a whole race of people, rather than their Government or a specific leader and cultivates a "them Vs. Us" attitude.

I totally welcome reasonable discussion, Wheelaa, and we do our best not to shut down any rational lines of conversation.
(This thread definitely has too much jism in it for my liking.)

As America is a close ally and we have better access to their news/events we're more attuned to hearing about them.
Russia and China are a lot more closed off and there seems to be less reporting on them by our press.
Crazy Trump does seem to get the clicks.

You are in a thread discussing Donald Trump on the last day of his leadership, so this possibly is not the place to discuss China or Russia, but I'd definitely be interested in reading a thread more about developments in those countries, especially if you can find news sources that don't appear to have a heavy bias against them.

[Dogg Thang]

I don't think that can't be discussed. And I can't imagine there is anyone who would try to deny those things. Aside from the obvious that this is a thread about US presidents and not Russia or China and totally agreeing with QC's point that it does not make anyone else better, there are two key differences here for me.

1) We're inundated with Western culture and, largely, that means the US. We're far closer culturally to the US than we are Russia or China so it's much easier to look at the US and see what we could become and be more horrified by it. There are all kinds of horrors going on in the world but we focus more on those that feel more relevant to us. The US, for better or worse, has been more relevant.

2) I don't think anyone grew up with there being any myth that Russia or China was leader of the free world. Far from it, I think we're all probably very aware of the ongoing human rights abuses from a very young age. With the US, because of point 1, we get sold the US myth from a very young age through movies and other forms. So that disillusionment often comes with more impact.

But really, those points are hardly relevant in a thread about US presidents so I'm not really sure where we're going here.

Edit: Oh yeah, sorry - exactly what QC said above is true. If your question is "why can't we be racist to the Chinese?", that's a different question. Sorry, it took me ages to write this little reply so QC covered everything in the meantime.

[wheelaa]

Lots of very good points and I'll do me best to not derail this thread further for too long.

Just to be clear "why can't we be racist to the Chinese?" is not my question, rather "why do we never seem to discuss that there is a huge issue of racism in internal government led Chinese policy?" or "a huge issue of LGBTQ+ rights in internal government led Russian policy". And I certainly don't want any us v them bs. (I wince every time I see a 'China Virus' or similar...yet I do laugh at 'London lurgi'...I'm yet to see any 'British vaccine for British variant' nonsense but I'm sure it's out there.) I don't think there are many countries where the government / policies reflect the average joe citizen.

Just on that us vs them though, and bringing it back to the gold ol' US of A, have not several people here decried the 75 million Trump voters as rascist scum? I'm not saying they aren't, but I do feel that is treading that line.

Anyway, Trump bad, no question.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, I think some of this is for another topic but it's relevant to wider life and discussion definitely. You probably saw this - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55723163 ("MPs voted by 319 to 308 to remove an amendment to the Trade Bill which would have forced ministers to withdraw from deals with nations the UK High Court ruled guilty of mass killings.") There's an awful truth here that people will sweep some horrific crimes under the carpet to make a bit of money. But it's a rabbit hole discussion that gets into why it's in the interests of Western countries to keep developing countries in poverty and unstable and it's also a really depressing conversation.

Let's just point and laugh at the orange man who has finally at least been ousted and we can take some comfort in that.