To the editor:
The only forces that can control President Donald Trump are the Cabinet and the Republicans in Congress. Yet even though they realize the jeopardy his continuing power represents, all, including those who have been publicly humiliated by him, vote in lockstep, because he is advancing the GOP agenda. As if we didn’t already know that greed trumped security.
— Larry Michalski, Chicago
I don’t believe the Democrats really want to see a deal on DACA. They are all talk and no action. This is the time but, day by day, they are blowing the one great opportunity they have. Too bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2018
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Reason in Bentham's day was something to be used primarily for the purpose of unmasking the bad thinking of others. He would have his fellow-men ever on the alert against being deceived by the clever sophistries of others, and his warnings are still worthy of the closest attention. But citizens today have been made conscious, as Bentham never was, of the more insidious dangers of deceiving themselves. And so, while many of them continue to share his burning indignation at the fallacies uttered by designing men, they smile at the naïve way in which his "love of mankind and an admiration of himself went hand in hand."
Bentham, in other words, was much too sure that he was always on the side of the angels, and that his opponents were plagued by evil motives rather than by apathy and ignorance. But at any rate his position on the relationship between logic and morals, unlike that of many of our contemporary social scientists, was perfectly clear. He was convinced by experience that there was a high correlation between political wickedness and bad logic: the slipshod thinker was probably up to no good morally, and the rascal in politics was almost sure to unmask himself by resorting to logical trickery. It was that conviction which lent force and vigor to his crusading exposure of political fallacies, and also deprived it of the objectivity of modern propaganda analysis.
(Harold A. Larrabee, editor's preface to Bentham's Handbook of Political Fallacies, by Jeremy Bentham [New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1952; Apollo ed., 1971], ix-x)
Trump haters should note the following: Donald Trump's approval rating, as of today, is 46%. Barack Obama's approval rating at the same time in his presidency (12 January 2010) was 46%. This equivalence must drive the mainstream media wild, for they think Obama was the Messiah and Trump the Antichrist.
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Here.
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Here.
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Thirds (1971).
Someone (preferably a philosopher such as me) needs to intervene in what has become a silly debate. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Donald Trump said that the United States doesn't need (or want) immigrants from "shithole countries." Trump used the term "shithole." What CNN did is something quite different: it mentioned the term. I haven't watched much CNN in the past day or so, but I'm fairly sure that nobody on the network used the term "shithole," as Trump supposedly did. This blogger appears not to grasp the difference between using a term and mentioning it. There is as much difference between using "shithole" and mentioning "shithole" as there is between using a hammer (to pound nails, for example) and mentioning (i.e., referring to, talking about) a hammer.
A second mistake, which was made repeatedly by Rush Limbaugh on his radio program this afternoon, is to conflate (1) being offended by the word "shithole" (as one might be offended by the words "bitch," "retard," or "fucker") and (2) objecting to the implicit racism of the use of the word. What leftists are up in arms about is not the fact that Trump used the word (still assuming that he did) but that he appears to have used it to disparage various countries, peoples, or ethnic groups. To quote Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh is (at least sometimes) a big fat idiot. Don't get me wrong: I like Rush; I listen to him religiously; occasionally I learn from him. But sometimes, as was the case today, he fails to make obvious and important distinctions.
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"Donald Trump lies" =df. "Donald Trump says things I don't like."
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Gov. Rick Scott will be running for the U.S. Senate in 2019. While CEO of Columbia/HCA, his company was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud.
As governor, he did not expand Medicaid, foregoing billions of dollars of available federal money, resulting in 800,000 poor Floridians not getting health insurance. He cut $1 billion in the education budget in 2011, and his small increases in the 2018 budget only recovers a small amount of what was lost to educating Florida’s students.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has not been returning phone calls or hosting any town hall meetings.
He voted for the recent tax reform bill that gave permanent generous tax cuts to the top one percent, while only giving a temporary and modest tax cut to the middle class.
The senator has been running for president, seemingly since he’s been in diapers, neglecting his job of serving Floridians.
President Trump consistently lies any time he opens his mouth, takes credit for everything, and constantly attacks the media and immigrants. He continues to cater to his base, dividing the country instead of bringing us together.
He has no respect for the law, considering himself above it. He attempts to distract investigations into his dealings with the Russians by making up bogus charges against his political enemies.
He is isolating our country and causing us to lose our position as a world leader by pulling us out of the Paris Treaty on Global Warming.
Politics are alive and well in both Florida and the United States of America.
Moderate and sane Americans need to find a new leader who can bring our country together and come up with solutions to our major problems.
We can do better than Donald J. Trump.
He always has been and always will be for only one person: himself.
KENNETH KARGER,
KENDALL
