He has affected far more tension than he’s prevented, and North Korea was a red herring for all parties involved. In a nutshell, he thinks you’re a zombie that’ll be distracted by fireworks, and in most cases, he’s right.

I don’t think comparing presidencies is helpful - economic systems ebb and flow outside the 4-8 year cycle, and no two conflicts have ever been close to the same. We can’t have any idea how Trump would’ve handled September 11 or Bin Laden, except to extrapolate from the psychology of his presidential decision making - and that, especially the stuff you mentioned in a positive light, has only ever been about him looking good.

He’s harnessed something real that needs addressing - America’s growing distrust in its political authority - but he’s achieved it through the heuristics of his own over-confidence, and through an appeal to emotion rather than reason; the arrogance works in his favour, because people are stupid enough to think that anyone acting confidently, is capable.

I don’t really like any political leaders, but Obama would’ve been even more fucked if he didn’t pull the trigger than if he had. The president doesn’t have enough control over world events to hold him personally accountable for civilians getting killed in a foreign conflict - not in America’s case - he was simply fulfilling his role, as every president would have. If it went against his morals, then that’s kind of expected of a leader. Besides, however you want to spin it to make Obama seem worse and Trump seem better, it’s bleedingly obvious Trump would’ve handled the situation with as much aggression, if not more.

Trump’s biggest achievement is demonstrating that presidents are nothing more than glorified social mascots. Obama was the same, but he was also, in terms of social progress and integrity, a fundamentally better person.

The wall bullshit is so annoying.

He is. Fair points, but not sure I agree re Obama being a sociopath. That’s kind of silly. He’s definitely pro-social narcissistic, but his MO sems ethical for the most part, even factoring for his role in the Middle East.

Sociopathy is just slang for anti-social, which gets classified in the DSM as anti social personality disorder. It’s a big call to say Obama fits that sort of mold; would mean he’s one hell of a good actor. Therefore, closer to a psychopath - which many argue Putin to be. I think Obama’s too fine-tuned as a good guy for there to be any room left for an antisocial underlay. He and his wife seem motivated by a sense of role fulfillment and therefore by image validation, but that’s exactly what you’d expect of anyone with the right traits to reach that level of office. Everybody has narcissism; it’s a basic human characteristic, but it gets ugly when the person uses it to buffer an insecurity, or to vessel themselves socially without wasting energy through conscientiousness or empathy.

Obama isn’t like that. He’s more the constructive kind of narcissist - and as such, he’s extremely idealistic. I think most of his bad decisions can be traced to his having a sense of duty, which sometimes seems to overwhelm basic ethics. He’s like a presidential brown noser. That’s where I agree with him not being remotely perfect. But the forces in presidency appear crazy enough to keep that stuff in a bigger context. What I was more gettig at, is you can’t really draw much from the comparison. Trump is clearly a lot more selfish than Obama was, whom I’d argue had his selfishness in line enough with the role, to eventually be looked back on as the better president.

Seems like a circus over there. Not saying our politics is much better, but it’s like something from Robocop or Idiocracy. You must feel like moving to Canada.

Isn't Mexico supposed to pay for the wall? Trump should be in Mexico shutting down their government.

Of course Obama’s choices in the Middle East (and in the post-GFC clean-up) were shithouse. What’s less obvious is the usefulness of comparing his conflict choices to that of any other president; the US presidency is typically aggressive and militaristic in counter-attack, and no other recent president would’ve done any differently. Unnecessary casualties are a fundamental dilemma of any presidency when there’s war, which in Obama’s case became outwardly selfish seeming, because he wanted to satisfy the role more than basic morality. I don’t know enough about being a president to scrutinise him any more than that.

Well tell Nancy and Chuck to allocate 0.0000001% of the federal budget to build/repair/replace fake walls/steel slats/fencing that doesn't work even though there are already fake walls/fencing/slats on various sections of the various border states that apparently do not work even though they all previously voted to build all these fake/immoral fences/slats/walls in the past.

All this fake outrage over 5.7 billion out of a trillion+ dollar budget was and is nonsense.

What compromise would you suggest?

Trump did make a bit of a critical mistake, that now hurts him at the negotiation table, to say Mexico would pay for the wall.

What compromise would you suggest?

Trump did make a bit of a critical mistake, that now hurts him at the negotiation table, to say Mexico would pay for the wall.