How much longer can Trump/Trumpism last?

Trump makes America great again, don't you see it? Finally we are doing something against our allies and side with long-time foes like Russia. And those tax cuts for the wealthy really help the struggling working class. Also more expensive healthcare is very great because it helps funding research and development in how to increase profits.

I actually have no idea how people could even believe in Trump before the election. I think this will continue as long as he is president, but I cannot imagine that he will get re-elected. He wouldn't have been elected in the first place if the U.S. had been a real democracy with fair elections and more than two political parties. Seriously, over 300 million people represented by two parties? Minus the people not really represented because they live in red/blue states.

Oh geeezzz..... I know this is the lounge and therefore it's not off topic, but do we really want to take the Trump war to Gamedev?

The longest it can last is about 6 more years. That's assuming he can get re-elected at the end of his current term, and that he can't garner enough vote in state legislatures to get a two-thirds supermajority to pass a constitutional amendment to allow a president to serve more than 2 terms. Or maybe figure out how to pass a presidential decree to invalidate the constitution, because I wouldn't put it past him to try.

It can last a shorter time (no re-election, impeachment and removal, resignation, assassination, spontaneous human combustion), but that's the hard upper limit not subject to spin or propaganda.

He probably last much shorter than the pm of my country

3 hours ago, Gnollrunner said:

Oh geeezzz..... I know this is the lounge and therefore it's not off topic, but do we really want to take the Trump war to Gamedev?

100% agree. I do development on the side as a hobby to get away from the political nonsense. Sigh.

Until he gets impeached or really does something bigly stupid instead of just stupid. Somehow he's blundered from one controversy to another but never quite put his foot in it enough he can't get it out again.

Coupled with the fact he's been largely ineffective at actually doing anything, so lives mostly continue as they did before and the system trundles on.

I'd like to say there's no way he could possibly win a 2nd term but after the last few years, that would be too optimistic! When are the mid-terms, that should shed some light?

1 hour ago, AtomicWinter said:

100% agree. I do development on the side as a hobby to get away from the political nonsense. Sigh.

And yet you chose to open and read and comment on this thread, when you could tell from the title what it was about. You aren't obligated to give your opinion, you could have ignored the thread.

6 hours ago, Magogan said:

I actually have no idea how people could even believe in Trump before the election. I think this will continue as long as he is president, but I cannot imagine that he will get re-elected. He wouldn't have been elected in the first place if the U.S. had been a real democracy with fair elections and more than two political parties. Seriously, over 300 million people represented by two parties? Minus the people not really represented because they live in red/blue states.

This is a point I've heard fairly frequently. That if there were more parties in our system then Trump wouldn't have been elected. Of course I can't say for certain if more parties would mean that Trump wouldn't have been elected, but looking in Europe (where there are a fair number of parties in each country), far-right populism seems to still be moderately successful. The AfD has a decent chunk of representation, Brexit happened, but I do contend that it seems a bit less successful? I also contend that Trump was never super popular, and given that he did not attain the popular vote, it's perhaps telling that another party's candidate could've won.

I'm not sure how much I agree with reasons for Trump/Trumpism's electoral victory. It's difficult to really understand what exactly happened. We may not understand for a very long time what happened, but one day we'll look back at this and say "Of course, it was obvious, how could we not have seen it then?"

5 hours ago, Bregma said:

The longest it can last is about 6 more years. That's assuming he can get re-elected at the end of his current term, and that he can't garner enough vote in state legislatures to get a two-thirds supermajority to pass a constitutional amendment to allow a president to serve more than 2 terms. Or maybe figure out how to pass a presidential decree to invalidate the constitution, because I wouldn't put it past him to try.

It can last a shorter time (no re-election, impeachment and removal, resignation, assassination, spontaneous human combustion), but that's the hard upper limit not subject to spin or propaganda.

Well there's also the notion of Trumpism as a movement. How much longer can it last? Will the supporters of Trump want MORE like Trump? Assuming he gets re-elected and finishes his second term, is this a new political force?

As for trying to amend/throw out the Constitution...agreed. It's really unlikely, but I wouldn't be surprised if he tried.

1 hour ago, d000hg said:

Until he gets impeached or really does something bigly stupid instead of just stupid. Somehow he's blundered from one controversy to another but never quite put his foot in it enough he can't get it out again.

Coupled with the fact he's been largely ineffective at actually doing anything, so lives mostly continue as they did before and the system trundles on.

I'd like to say there's no way he could possibly win a 2nd term but after the last few years, that would be too optimistic! When are the mid-terms, that should shed some light?

And that's just what blows my mind is how this administration is still even a thing after going from one idiocy to the next. He's done more idiotic things in office than any President in recent history.

Has he really been ineffective though? He's certainly done enough disastrous things that while not unrecoverable, are certainly going to take time to fix. That and he's only just started to ramp up things like the trade war.

But the next big question is will he finish out this term? Certainly there are enough scandals and investigations that could lead to impeachment. Assuming he survives to election season in 2020, could he get re-elected? His poll numbers show he isn't popular enough at least.

Well it depends on how long the citizen want to be under trumpism

10 hours ago, mr_tawan said:

He probably last much shorter than the pm of my country

We certainly hope so. Thaksin was a piece of s&*% and his whole family is corrupt, but they are not out to destroy the entire world and to align America with the axis of evil. At this point I would be happy if we were only dealing with another Thaksin.


L. Spiro

Trump becoming the President of the USA felt like bad comedy.

Back in the days when he presented the Apprentice, I got the impression he was a decent man. But over the years things came to light ( forcing people out of their homes in Scotland just to build a sodding golf course ) and now I can only see him as a greedy child who found his daddy's shotgun( the Presidency )...

That said, I think he has bitten off more than he can chew, and hes not as mouthy as when he first entered the role. From the first day he was like "I'm in charge and you will all do as I say because I WILL shut you up", but now hes eased up slightly as the world of politics is pushing back, and its clear to anyone that he is trying to catch up with the role he was not qualified nor prepared for.

That said I'm from the UK and not in a position to judge the American people for voting him in.

Trump has absolutely nothing to do with amending the Constitution. That is a power of the House and Senate or a power of the States if enough of them would vote one forward.

If you want to disparage him, and there are plenty of things to disparage, at least do it with some thought and not rattle off vague things like "he will amend the constitution so he can serve more than two terms" stuff which is just factually incorrect. Maybe you want to say something like he just will refuse to leave office when his term is up. But even stuff like that only works if people will listen to that, accept it, and back him up on it. Which I would find highly unlikely.

A large portion of his base very much believes in the constitution and would in no way support this.

IMO he won because Hillary was just *that* bad. Imagine, no matter how bad you think he is, and he is in some respects, he *still* beat Hillary. And the easy thing to do is blame it on sexism, racism, *ism.... While it is probably true that a certain percentage of people voted for Trump because he wasn't the woman, is it any less sexist to vote for Hillary *only* because she was a woman? Because there was plenty of that talk going around that people should vote for her because she is a woman.

Regardless, we had two very bad choices. I would just like to see him get credit when he does good, and get the blame when he does bad. Get behind him and help him when he wants to do good. Oppose him when he wants to do bad. Instead, all we get day after day after day is bashing, hope he fails no matter what, etc....its getting old.

Post reported due to irrelevance to this site. This is not the forum for politics.

2 minutes ago, dangermoose said:

Post reported due to irrelevance to this site. This is not the forum for politics.

From the forum description of The Lounge (where this topic is located):

Quote

Chat about anything you feel like, but keep it mature and civil. It does not have to be about game development, but it should be about something; i.e. don't post JUST to post.

We do allow discussion of politics in this subforum from time to time.

That being said, we hope people will be respectful of differing opinions, and will moderate quickly if anything gets out of hand.

For those who don't want to participate we suggest simply ignoring the topic - it likely won't be active for more than a week or so.

Perhaps we could use some functionality to allow people to hide things like this from the front page feed, we'll see if something like that is doable in future.

Thanks. If that functionality could be implemented it would be great. As a game dev I come here for inspiration and community support; not for the divisiveness and angst of political diatribe I find everywhere else.

No promises we'll be able to get it out quickly for this topic, but we'll see what's doable and try to add it in future.

For what it's worth, political discussions are reasonably rare here, and our moderation team usually manage to keep a good handle on things.

Quote

Oh geeezzz..... I know this is the lounge and therefore it's not off topic, but do we really want to take the Trump war to Gamedev?

Meh... you mean you are not into politics? Look around, everything is connected with politics, even this website

5 hours ago, dangermoose said:

Thanks. If that functionality could be implemented it would be great. As a game dev I come here for inspiration and community support; not for the divisiveness and angst of political diatribe I find everywhere else.

Then don't read or comment on the thread?

There are around 40 topics on the first 2 pages of the lounge; of which maybe 3 could be considered political, and only one that is specifically about Trump. Given that his administration effects nearly everyone on the planet, it feels entirely reasonable that people would want to discuss it in the lounge.

As to the question itself; I don't think there's anything Trump can do that would see him removed from office. The news media seem constantly amazed at the depths to which he will sink.

"He called countries shitholes! He paid off a pornstar! He's siding with Russia!"

yep... and?

I don't think the media (and even Fox sided against him on the Russia thing) get how little he cares about political discourse, civility or even basic human decency. When he said he could shoot someone in Times Sq, he may have been joking, but for a large portion of his base, it was a simple statement of fact.

Politically, it's amazing. I've never seen a politician who can do as little wrong in the eyes of his supporters. It's frankly astounding, especially given how much damage his policies on tax and healthcare are going to do to the very same demographic that got him elected.

5 hours ago, djsteffey said:

Imagine, no matter how bad you think he is, and he is in some respects, he *still* beat Hillary.

To be fair, he didn't. More people voted for Hillary, so no matter how bad you think she was (and she certainly wouldn't have been my first choice), she still got more votes than Trump.

completely unrelated edit: That "merge replies" is a very cool forum feature! Kudos, GDNet team.

Sadly it can last quite a long time. A lot of repugnant things last a long time because human nature is what it is. There will always be ignorant and greedy people, people easily swayed to vote against their own better interests, and so on.

The thing about Trump is that he didnt create the climate of divisiveness and hatred that permeates our political system and discourse. He just tapped into it and is playing it for all its worth. That climate has its roots back to the days of Newt Gingrich and the slow decay of the GOP that he instigated.

But the thing that Trump IS doing is he's making everything worse. The political climate has been bad, he's making it worse. Government has been corrupt and ineffective, and he's making that worse too. The next President will have to spend much of their term just trying to fix all the shit that Trump is breaking... from net neutrality, to the State Department, to our relationships with our allies, to trade, to the other hundred things that are being destroyed because one incompetent, greedy asshole wants to play politics and use the office of the Presidency as just another scam to make money and pad his ego.

6 hours ago, jbadams said:

From the forum description of The Lounge (where this topic is located):

We do allow discussion of politics in this subforum from time to time.

That being said, we hope people will be respectful of differing opinions, and will moderate quickly if anything gets out of hand.

For those who don't want to participate we suggest simply ignoring the topic - it likely won't be active for more than a week or so.

Perhaps we could use some functionality to allow people to hide things like this from the front page feed, we'll see if something like that is doable in future.

I strongly recommend hiding politics from any page where someone did not explicitly seek it out. I happened to check out the site again, and seeing this thread is a huge turnoff. I did not seek it out, and a site that may try to suck me into political bickering is pretty much an instant rejection. I don’t want to waste my limited time on this planet passionately hating others merely because they have different political views.

For the topic itself, Trump supporters will blindly support Trump even when he does something negative exactly as long as Trump opposers will blindly oppose Trump even when he does something positive. And each will receive positive reinforcement from likes and thumbs ups and retweets and equivalents. And algorithms will ensure each side sees more views like their own and less in opposition, so they will truly believe the world is more in tune with their view and more opposed to other views than what reality is. How long will this last? There is currently nothing on the horizon that will break the feedback loop we as a society have created, so probably quite a while.