It's refreshing!

I've never read that magazine, but I had to look it up... Here's the article referred to folks: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/trump-should-be-removed-from-office.html

Now I wonder what will happen.... I looked that magazine up, and found it it's quite influential... Will this hurt Trump or that magazine.... I wonder...

In Dutch we say "Als er een schaap over de dam is volgen er meer" which roughly translates to: "If one sheep crossed the dam, more will follow"... The idiom means that if one person did something good, other people may follow that example, and do the same thing... I guess that is what you are implying...

Of course, with the current political climate in the U.S. this is a risky move for a magazine who appears to have a lot of republican readers, and the climate is that way that even a fortune teller would not dare to predict if this will work as a wake up call, or to a drop of readers for Christianity Today. But I guess I'll follow suit with you and deem this courageous...

But no, sanity has not been restored. Just like Fox News improving on separating fact-based reporting and opinion talkshows, does not mean sanity has returned.

Nor will it return once Trump leaves office. And, sadly, it will not be until at least 2024.

"At least"? So you are implying (those words clearly do) that Trump may successfully change the constitution in which it is stated that a president can only be in office twice (as stated in the 22nd amendment), so he can server longer than that? It's a brilliant move for him to do in which many DICTATORS went before him in other countries....

(Of course, if Trump gets a second term and doesn't die, resign or get impeached, his term will end in 2025. The elections are in 2024, but the new term starts in January the year after that, but that's a tiny detail, isn't it) 😁

The Republican Party in its current iteration has consider themselves constitution originalists, which means they consider the time and the people who drafted the amendments of our constitution. The constitution isn’t set in stone and can be amended and will be amended again. If Republicans believe Trump to remain an asset, and they have the votes to do it, it is entirely possible for Trump to have more than two terms as President. If he’s re-elected in 2020. If the constitution is amended before 2025. Is it likely? No. It is far more likely will win the 2020 election’s popular vote than get a third term.

Well I don't dare to put my money on anyone at this point... For a long time nobody expected Trump to even make it far in the primaries and in the end... Then again, Trump is not unique on that point, as nobody expected Barack Obama to keep Hillary Clinton out of the official nominee let alone become president, either... (well not before Oprah Winfrey stood up for him, I suppose) And due to the electoral college system the U.S. has, so not the votes of the people count, but of that of the college, although chosen by the people, there is never serious telling where the outcome will go. I deem Trump winning a second term not unlikely, though...

But I've always been told that the number of people actually voting in the U.S. for presidency is way lower than in many other countries electing their leaders, and if those who do normally not vote, find either their savior or enemy in Trump and start voting, then there's no telling at all how things will turn out... Could be more exciting than a world cup in any sport I suppose.... I wonder if the bookmakers in the U.K. can already give us a prediction on how people did bet on the next outcome... Or is it too early for that?

My predictions on political outcomes rest with statistics. While these are certainly no guarantee, it is far more likely that an incumbent President serve a second term than lose it. Of the forty-five Presidents we've had, only eight have ever tried and failed to be re-elected for another term. Not counting death, assassination, and Grover who lost his first re-election, but won his second. True, most of them were Republicans, but I think in the twenty-first century, we may see more single-term Democrats, if any.

As the centuries have gone by, we've seen fewer deaths in office. Fewer assassinations. And voters have become more and more likely to vote incumbent than the challenger. The ye ol "Devil you know" tripe is alive and well in the mind of the American voter. And not just Presidents either. Hence why this whole wretched idea of imposing term limits ramped up in the last century. People are just too busy to pay attention to politics and vote incumbent, or along party lines.

It is entirely possible that Trump may lose the 2020 election, but statistics are on his side to win. So much so, that he is far more likely to be the first President to never officially win the popular vote. There are a myriad of reasons for my calculations but none of them are poll related. Though Trump may win in 2020, and assuming he doesn't run again in 2024... there is a strong chance a Democrat will take his place.

In our complacency with voting incumbent, Americans are becoming far more predictable in voting for the opposition of a leaving President on his second term. Again, it was only twenty-eight years ago when we had our last single term President. And the double-term President before him was sandwiched between not two but three single term Presidents.

So, that bubble is supposedly going to pop! But there is still only a 1-6 chance of that happening. And we're only on President number four since the last single-term. And we're due for another single-term Democrat, but not a single-term Republican.

I won't pretend that Boris Johnson didn't play a part in my statistical tallies either. The fact he won proves that nationalism across the globe wasn't just some fluke in the last few years. It is here to stay. And if the liberal parties remain disconnected, discombobulated, uncoordinated, and divided; they cannot hope to defeat a united nationalist party. No matter what the morals, character, or
platforms, or lack thereof, for any side are.

I'm not so sure that the nationalists are so united... If they are, they have become what they seek to destroy actually, which would be ironic... What I've seen is that nationalism is always the key leading to trouble, and once the trouble has come people will realize what they've done and seek unity against it... Liberalism is by the way NOT the opposite of nationalism... The two CAN mix quite easily as they have nothing to do with each other... Liberalism is the ideology of freedom in its purest form (hence the name since liberalism is derived from the Latin word "libertatem" meaning "freedom"), and as little power to the authorities as possible... Nationalism is the kind of "my country only and the rest can rot, and my country for the countrymen only... keep up our traditions and our traditions alone" kind of attitude... Some nationalists even use liberalism as their "weapon"... But socialism which is rather an opposite to liberalism has also been used by nationalists as a "weapon", and the way the Soviet Union was formed shows that can work, however the way that nation worked had little to do with socialism, but Stalin did base his propaganda on the socialistic teachings...

Nationalism is getting more ground and yeah, the question is where that will end. WWII was solely based on nationalism. And I can even pull it further. The Dutch 80 years war, came to be as King Phillips II used a religious kind of nationalism, in which Roman Catholic teachings were the "nation" and the Dutch "heretics" were what today the foreigners are the nationalists "combat" against. The crusades came to be because Pope Urbanus did the same kind of thing, by demonizing the Muslims and followers of other religions.

Yeah, nationalism is likely to stay... Most likely until WWIII comes and then we'll swear it may never happen again, until all people living now are dead and then nationalism will be back... And so history repeats itself... over and over... Most likely till the last human being is dead. Or till when the aliens come... Or well... no then we will battle the aliens out of nationalism, only then the nation will be the entire earth against the home planet of the aliens as "the enemy nation"...

It's human nature after all... Just like beasts constantly combat over their territories... Humans ain't no better than that... Still bound to our instincts, eh?

Not saying liberalism is the opposite of nationalism. Not so sure that socialists and liberals are as separate as you think, though. At least, in US terms. Socialism, at least partially, proved quite useful in the early twentieth century. But only to a point. We did not become completely social, thanks in part to communists who took socialism to another level.

The common enemies paradigm is logically flawed and unreliable. It became popular due to Americans, Europeans, and Russians briefly uniting over the Nazi threat. And what happened after that? We all went our separate ways. Our ties to the UK only improved because we share a language. Russia and the US, however, have seemingly remained deadlocked for almost fifty years. Using proxy wars to stave off a third world war. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. The key to lasting peace is not a common enemy but a common interest. And, for a time, we had a shared interest.

Yeah, neither liberalism nor socialism work. WWII did bring unity in the aftermath... The EU was formed to prevent WWIII from happening... Well not entirely true, but it was one of reasons to form that union. And when the threat posed by the Soviets was clear, the unity became stronger and stronger... It was only after the Soviet Union fell that the threat posed was not as visible anymore as it used to be, and well the EU crumbling under the effects of nationalism is the result... Something Putin now uses as his sword... The nationalism of his "enemies"... Not so strange that Front National, THE anti-EU party in France, got money from Moscow, is it? The Dutch anti-EU parties, Forum voor Democratie and Partij voor de Vrijheid also both deny any threat from Moscow, and claim it's all fake news, or spreading fear etc. etc.... How convenient, eh?

But a common enemy does do a lot. Me as a Dutch should know that more than anybody else. Do you know how we won the 80 years war against the Spanish, while we were nothing but small counties hating each other more than anything else, not even speaking the same language sometimes, and having many internal struggles? It was because the Spanish threatened them all, due to "heresy", but the Spanish didn't really make much difference between Catholic and Protestant, as "God will find his own"... This eventually led to the rebellion of "De Geuzen" who united all the counties and eventually led by William the Silent the counties were unified, and so we could fight the common enemy... And the Republic of the Netherlands was born in the process... It wasn't the perfect place after the war, although the golden age did come after that, and the time in which the Netherlands made name for itself worldwide... Something Dutch nationalists today carry out with pride, not realizing it was only possible due to unification and everything nationalism stands for, all caused by a common enemy. To tell you what, when William the Silent was murdered, responding to the request of the Spanish King to do so (who also set a bounty on William's head), people united even more.. I cannot call the Dutch of the war nationalists.. They had a common enemy, that's what drove them together... When there was less threat, it was visible how well things held, as Belgium, was always a part of the Netherlands and would separate itself later...

(to be continued)

It was also often claimed that if the Berlin wall didn't crumble the EU would have been a federal state, much comparable to what the U.S.A. is today, already... I do not even think that Trump would have stood a chance for president if that will still the situation today, unless he made a completely different story....

Common enemies are common interests... Common interests are not always common enemies, and mostly common interests of other kinds are by far more fragile... Or treacherous... After all, we have a common interest to do something about the pollution on earth.... See what has happened so far.... Yup, it never worked... Despite the common interest... We all think we have better interests.... But what people think and what things are, are also two different things.

lmao that photoshop

Good to see libs are now concerned with what an opinion from some Christian magazine has to say

i'm not a liberal

And I’m not a human

if you're one o' them Japanese sex robots, keep talkin', sugar

you’re not my type

more like establishment republican insanity

Merry Christmas! ( :