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A beautifully told story with colorful characters out of epic tradition, a tight and complex plot, and solid pacing. -- Booklist, starred review of On the Razor's Edge
Great writing, vivid scenarios, and thoughtful commentary ... the stories will linger after the last page is turned. -- Publisher's Weekly, on Captive Dreams
How is that a gotcha question? He answered a vague, dumb, meaningless question with a vague, dumb, meaningless answer. As he should. What does that even mean?
ReplyDeleteAn economically stated, if dumb, question gets a long, gear-grinding, clutch-slipping, can-i-get-this-thing-moving? reply with, if possible, even less intelligible content than the question. And as the engine coughs and stalls out, he calls out some guy in a hat?
DeleteEven by the low, low bar of American political discourse, that's a fail.
I would suggest, however, that the more superficially coherent replies of Saunders are more insidious, the 'how can we even talk about X when children in America are going hungry?' type of evasion. Saunders is worse than your standard social and economic illiterate - he's a social and economic buffoon convinced he understands it better than anybody else, and, unfortunately, has honed his soundbites accordingly. And some folks with more than one synapse to call their own fall for it, just like other-inclined but equally impassioned fruit-flies fall fro Trump.
American Democracy: insuring we get the leadership we deserve for 200+ years.
An economically stated, if dumb, question gets a long, gear-grinding, clutch-slipping, can-i-get-this-thing-moving? reply with, if possible, even less intelligible content than the question. And as the engine coughs and stalls out, he calls out some guy in a hat?
DeleteEven by the low, low bar of American political discourse, that's a fail.
But it's not. Trump needed to make sure people were positive towards him. What he did might sound bad when reading the quote back later, but evidently it worked. He certainly had no good reason to answer the "question", such as it was.
Either way, I don't see this as anything close to a "gotcha". It's more like an irrelevancy.
Trump has said repeatedly that he will 'bring back the American dream'. It is hardly a 'gotcha' to ask him what he means by that.
DeleteA 'gotcha' question would be something like 'do you know the name of the French minister of defense?'
Then perhaps instead of cherry-picking the answer to one question, we should look at the times he actually did clarify things:
ReplyDelete"Our country is in serious trouble. We don't have victories anymore," said Trump to an enthusiastic crowd in Trump Tower, "The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everyone else's problems."
"Our country needs a truly great leader – and we need a truly great leader now," he said. "We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military – can take care of our vets..."
"The fact is, the American Dream is dead – but if I win, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before," he declared.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/trump-american-dream-dead-i-will-bring-it-back
It's a complex question. Let's wait for a sound-bite answer then?
Lots of soundbites in his proclamations, that's for sure: platitudes and rah-rah. Okay for a rally, I suppose, but a little short on specifics. What does he think the American Dream is? Why does he think it is dead? How does he propose to "bring it back" from the dead? In what way does he propose it will be "better" and "stronger"? He who lives by the vague generality will die by the vague generality.
DeleteEurope went looking for "Leaders" in the 1930s. They too thought that a "Leader" could bring back the past, create jobs, and the like. But what does this guy know about manufacturing? He's a real estate wheeler-dealer. At least Perot knew something about production.
Okay, you don't think what he does will work. But what you said was that it wasn't unfair to ask what he meant by that, and I pointed out that he did say what he meant like that.
DeleteCherry-picking soundbites, and expecting him to answer a vague question within, like, 30 seconds to a minute, is unfair.
You're wrong on this one. He has answered what was asked, just not in this specific quote. You want to know more details about it, which is fine, but this is hardly a gotcha. It's an irrelevancy.
It's not that we don't think what he does will work, it's that he hasn't actually said he's going to do anything. "A leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military"—how, how, and how? By protectionism that's about as obsolete as luminiferous aether?
Delete"Bring back our jobs, manufacturing, and military" is a mission statement, it's not a plan to accomplish the mission.
To be fair, the "red hat" thing at the end is just saying "next question—by the way, sir, nice hat".
ReplyDeleteMaybe he meant to imply that Linux was the way to bring back the American Dream?
DeleteMaybe he meant to imply that Linux was the way to bring back the American Dream?
Delete