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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I suspect this isn't serious, but these days, you never ever know: Is Donald Trump the Anti-Christ? ― 666 Fifth Avenue Mark of the BEAST, which contains among other things, all the ways that anything trumpy likes or is affiliated with adds up to 666.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Apparently Air Force One is Trump's favourite Harrison Ford movie.

Does make you wonder about the way Trump separates fantasy and reality in view of his recent statement.

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bone spurs . . . it's an actual, painful condition

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
Re bone spurs on T's feet:

I'm confused as to why people (here and elsewhere) make fun of this. If he didn't really have them, ok.

But it's an actual, painful condition. The Army rejects potential soldiers with flat feet. I'd think people with bone spurs on their feet would be rejected, too. Soldiers, even in training, have to walk, march, and run for miles, wearing heavy packs. Their feet need to be comfortable enough to do that dependably.

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Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health.

He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10.

But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968, making him eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: bone spurs in his heels.

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In an interview with The New York Times last month, Mr. Trump said the bone spurs had been “temporary” — a “minor” malady that had not had a meaningful impact on him. He said he had visited a doctor who provided him a letter for draft officials, who granted him the medical exemption. He could not remember the doctor’s name.

“I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.

Asked to provide The Times with a copy of the letter, which he had obtained after his fourth student deferment, Mr. Trump said he would have to look for it. A spokeswoman later did not respond to repeated requests for copies of it.

The Selective Service records that remain in the National Archives — many have been discarded — do not specify what medical condition exempted Mr. Trump from military service.

Mr. Trump has described the condition as heel spurs, which are protrusions caused by calcium built up on the heel bone, treated through stretching, orthotics or sometimes surgery.

Mr. Trump said that he could not recall exactly when he was no longer bothered by the spurs, but that he had not had an operation for the problem.

“Over a period of time, it healed up,” he said.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
Re bone spurs on T's feet:

I'm confused as to why people (here and elsewhere) make fun of this. If he didn't really have them, ok.

But it's an actual, painful condition. The Army rejects potential soldiers with flat feet. I'd think people with bone spurs on their feet would be rejected, too. Soldiers, even in training, have to walk, march, and run for miles, wearing heavy packs. Their feet need to be comfortable enough to do that dependably.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
[QUOTE]For the record, Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946. This means he had a draft number of 356 [PDF]. For those who are unfamiliar with the system, each American man of a certain age was given a number from 1 to 366 based on their birthday. The lower your number the more likely you were to get drafted and sent to Vietnam. Given his high number he was virtually immune to being drafted regardless of the condition of his heels.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
For the record, Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946. This means he had a draft number of 356 [PDF]. For those who are unfamiliar with the system, each American man of a certain age was given a number from 1 to 366 based on their birthday. The lower your number the more likely you were to get drafted and sent to Vietnam. Given his high number he was virtually immune to being drafted regardless of the condition of his heels.

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Clarification: he had a draft number of 356 in 1970. A new lottery was held each year (shades of Hunger Games) so last year's 356 could become next years #1.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
For the record, Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946. This means he had a draft number of 356 [PDF]. For those who are unfamiliar with the system, each American man of a certain age was given a number from 1 to 366 based on their birthday. The lower your number the more likely you were to get drafted and sent to Vietnam. Given his high number he was virtually immune to being drafted regardless of the condition of his heels.

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Clarification: he had a draft number of 356 in 1970. A new lottery was held each year (shades of Hunger Games) so last year's 356 could become next years #1.

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That's not how it worked. The 1971 draft lottery only applied to men born in 1951 (i.e. not Donald Trump). Once you had a number, that was your number regardless of what subsequent lotteries determined. Of course, by the time of the 1971 lottery Trump would have been outside the age normally drafted.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

There was a study a few years back that found a correlation between draft number and political opinion. American men of the Vietnam draft generation with lower draft numbers seem to have a greater tendency towards liberal politics and, most interestingly, not just on questions of war and peace. The correlation held the same for those who were ultimately drafted and those who were not. Trump, with his high draft number and very conservative political views, seems to be a confirming case.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
But there is something remarkably un-Presidential in his wanton disregard of any reputation but his own. Of which this is only one example.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

It's really hard to get out of our echo-chamber and get into the heads of his supporters.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
You might go over to Amazon and use the 'look inside' feature to scope out the first chunk of it. If it's utterly intolerable then you won't have wasted your money.

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"unjustly criticizing to hurt (malign) and condemn to sever a relationship"

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I'm intending to get The Faith of Donald Trump when I can bring myself to order it, with a view to trying to do so at least as regards evangelicals.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I'd quote Jesus. Let the dead bury their dead. Thank God, the younger generation wants to do better.

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Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
That is perhaps a pertinent point. If the majority of the trumpistae are getting on in years, then death will eventually remove them.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
That is perhaps a pertinent point. If the majority of the trumpistae are getting on in years, then death will eventually remove them.

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The problem there is that the generation that's currently about 70 years old also happens to be the generation that were teenagers during the sixties - you know, the decade that's famous for being full of teenagers who espoused peace, free love, flower power and the like.

Either they changed their minds or the highly visible liberal ones were only ever a minority. So who's to say the same things won't also be true of today's crop of teenagers?

Don't rely on demographics to do the job for you. Get out there and win hearts and minds to your cause.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The problem there is that the generation that's currently about 70 years old also happens to be the generation that were teenagers during the sixties - you know, the decade that's famous for being full of teenagers who espoused peace, free love, flower power and the like.

Either they changed their minds or the highly visible liberal ones were only ever a minority. ...

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I'd quote Jesus. Let the dead bury their dead. Thank God, the younger generation wants to do better.

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Time magazine begs to differ: Young Americans Are Actually Not Becoming More Progressive (the Washington Post has a similar article, but I've preferred to quote an article not behind a paywall).

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For years, it has been said that Republicans have a “young-people problem” — the party, it was assumed, just couldn’t attract young voters. Yet despite predictions it would experience an “historic trouncing” in 2016, among young voters, 37% of young adults voted for Trump (about the same as voted for Mitt Romney in 2012), with Trump winning among white young adults by 48% to 43%.

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I'm didn't reach my teens until the 1970's (and let's face it, the "sixties" actually ran from 1965 to 1974) . . .

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Originally posted by LutheranChik:
I think one of the things that's sent us off the rails, that rational people need to address, is the idea that one idea is as good as another; that my ignorance is as good as so done else's knowledge.

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I'm with you there, but unfortunately not many of the Democrats I read online seem to be there. The best defence against fake news is to relentlessly and patiently debunk it with rational arguments, not throw insults or mock.

And while not all views may be equally valid, a place has somehow to be found for those holding what we may feel to be unpalatable views. That's society. If the stereotypical Trump voter is dismissed as "white trash" or "old", there's a problem somewhere.

[ETA Croesos, that makes me not born in the Sixties ]

[ 28. February 2018, 14:21: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Ah, the effect of postmodernism on manners. "This is my truth, tell me yours".
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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I'd quote Jesus. Let the dead bury their dead. Thank God, the younger generation wants to do better.

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Time magazine begs to differ: Young Americans Are Actually Not Becoming More Progressive (the Washington Post has a similar article, but I've preferred to quote an article not behind a paywall).

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The 'tell' in these kinds of analysis is who counts as a "Young American" and who doesn't. From the first paragraph:

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For years, it has been said that Republicans have a “young-people problem” — the party, it was assumed, just couldn’t attract young voters. Yet despite predictions it would experience an “historic trouncing” in 2016, among young voters, 37% of young adults voted for Trump (about the same as voted for Mitt Romney in 2012), with Trump winning among white young adults by 48% to 43%.

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For whatever reason only white voters seem to count in these kinds of analyses. Even in those terms the data seem to be moving in the wrong direction for the Republican party. According to CNN 51% of white voters age 18-29 cast their ballot for Mitt Romney in 2012, while only 47% of voters that age voted for Donald Trump in 2016. A four percentage point slide among young white voters in a party that is increasingly becoming a white nationalist party would seem to be a problem.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'd pigeonhole "The Sixties" as the period of time between November 22, 1963 and August 9, 1974.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The same is true of the oft-touted stats re evangelicals. When you look at the methodology employed, it is always white evangelicals they are counting. And yes, it is disturbing/ upsetting/ dismaying (especially to an evangelical pastor such as myself) that such a shockingly large percentage of white evangelicals support Trump despite all the obvious reasons not to. But it is only white evangelicals. About 1/3 of American evangelicals (and the majority of evangelicals globally) are non-white and, not surprisingly, non-white evangelicals are overwhelmingly not Trumpsters.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The same is true of the oft-touted stats re evangelicals. When you look at the methodology employed, it is always white evangelicals they are counting. And yes, it is disturbing/ upsetting/ dismaying (especially to an evangelical pastor such as myself) that such a shockingly large percentage of white evangelicals support Trump despite all the obvious reasons not to. But it is only white evangelicals. About 1/3 of American evangelicals (and the majority of evangelicals globally) are non-white and, not surprisingly, non-white evangelicals are overwhelmingly not Trumpsters.

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A fairly convincing case can be made that "white evangelicalism" is different theologically from the evangelicalism practiced by non-whites. That "white evangelicals" are not so much "evangelicals who happen to be white" but rather "evangelicals whose whiteness is an important component of their evangelicalness". As such I'd argue that "white evangelicals" and "non-white evangelicals" aren't two different subdivisions of one thing called "evangelicalism" but rather two different things.

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