What is productive about agreeing? What is productive about an echo chamber?
At one point I had made peace with the clothespin and had resolved to vote for him. Think of that resolve as an armored suit, and every idiotic thing he says and does, or should have said and didn't, or shouldn't have said and did, as armor piercing arrows. Eventually there's not enough left of my resolve to vote for him. He just keeps wearing it away. Because I PAY ATTENTION to what's happening, even if it goes against what I want. I really do want to be able to support Trump. He just makes that incredibly hard. He keeps telling us how smart he is, and I see little evidence of that. I see mostly a petulant, egotistical child who is pathologically incapable of being criticized without striking back at every little barb.
I wish I could like Trump. I wish I could support him. But I don't put my fingers in my ears every time a legitimate criticism of Trump comes along. I criticize him when he screws up. I defend him when I think he's being criticized unfairly.
Every gun owner has a dog in this fight. I want my guns and I want left the hell alone too. The problem with doors is that you can't see what's on the other side until you open them. You strongly believe you know what's on the other side of the Trump door. I'm certain what's on the other side of the Hillary door. But I'm not as certain as you that the Trump door is any more safe. I kinda don't want either of those doors opened.
I am in the same boat, except I haven't completely given up. He still has a couple of months to stop saying stupidand win my vote.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I'm not saying I can never vote for Trump.
And here's an admission. I can recognize a similar feeling that I had in 2004. I wanted to fire GWB as POTUS because he got us into a war with Iraq that we didn't need to fight. We didn't gain anything worth the lives and livelihoods of our soldiers who died or were injured. I felt GWB betrayed the public trust and had not earned a second term. But, even though I didn't vote for him, when he won reelection, I had this sense of relief that he did win. And even during the campaign, deep down I did not want him to lose to Kerry. I kinda have this same feeling about Trump. I feel that I really don't want him to lose to Hillary, but, intellectually, principally, I can't support him. It's like a battle between thinking and feeling.
I think this isn't a great analogy but I think I can make it work.
Tombs is right. Bloomberg is orders of magnitude more invested in his ideology, and that is orders of magnitude worse than Trump. Trump is almost purely pragmatic. His ideology is self fulfillment. His ideology: Donald J Trump.
I can see Trump waffling on positions for purely pragmatic reasons. And that's why I don't trust him. It's not that I think he'll revert to his old positions because he had arrived at those ideologically. The place where your analogy holds up is this: a leopard can't change its spots and neither can Bloomie or Trump. Bloomberg can't not be a mammoth government statist. That's who he is. Trump can be a statist, or an anarchist, or a communist, or a capitalist--whatever it takes to win the goal he's after at the moment. That's who he is, and the spots he can't change is his pragmatic devotion to winning the deal, and furthering himself.
My friend, persuasion is rarely the goal of discussion. At least, that's not how I was raised, or even how I am naturally. And, as I've often said, in Indiana, it doesn't matter. So, we can talk about this stuff all we want.
The goal of discussion is an exchange of ideas. Sometimes that's persuasive, sometimes it's informative, sometimes it's just casually shooting the breeze. Some discussions are more productive than others. I think exchanges of ideas are more productive among critically open minded people with diverse opinons. Not much exchange of ideas happen in echo chambers.
