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comment by Cumol
Cumol  ·  1746 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How Trump is profiteering off the coronavirus (covid-19) outbreak in 10 simple steps

Maybe not trump himself but some of his advisors? I am sure that by now evil-minded smart people are around him to guide such decision, no?





kleinbl00  ·  1745 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I am sure that by now evil-minded smart people are around him to guide such decision, no?

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLerskates

The minute someone is so much as perceived as smarter by Trump he's out.

I see what you're reaching for. You're trying to ascribe all this malfeasance to some grand conspiracy. It's not. It's a basic feature of capitalism. If there's any edge to be made, you are considered derelict in your duty as a corporate officer if you don't make a play for it. You will be mocked and pilloried by your peers for every penny you leave on the table. It is the Commons, and if you don't seize it, everyone else will.

This is the system that has been chosen for us, where every minute victory by the forces of opportunism leads to an unstoppable force of corruption.

Cumol  ·  1742 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not talking about a conspiracy theory. But exactly what you are talking about.

In Israel we call such stuff "Kombina":

    Kombina is one of the most salient features of Israeli society. In order to survive in this country, one needs to fend for oneself, using all possible means: Contacts, resourcefulness and creative ideas. The noun Kombina, which entered Hebrew from the Spanish combinar via Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), seems to be a good combination between the three. To have a kombina somewhere means to have a scheme or a plan to get something, not always in the most straightforward way, with the use of connections.

    Kombina could be innocent, like asking a friend who works in a cell phone company to track down your stolen machine; or a more serious kombina, where someone is actually cheating other people in order to make money.

If you are not playing, you are a loser. Many people are proud of their "Kombinot" and their peers love them too. I guess a similar way of thinking is in these positions of power. Wherever there is a buck to be made, people will do it.

My point is only that some of these things are a little more "tricky". I am thinking of stuff like the Cum Ex affair in europe/Germany. It is not easy to grasp for people who cannot follow. It took me several attempts until I understood how they were doing it.

kleinbl00  ·  1742 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Our disconnect is that you think Trump is in the same kombina as 3M and general motors. He's not. You could make that argument about Bush, and many people have. You could make that argument about Kerry or Reagan or Clinton. I mean, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both worked for Nixon, Rumsfeld was the guy who lobbied to make NutraSweet not a poison and got Saddam Hussein his agricultural equipment to make sarin gas.

Trump's a petty grifter, a slumlord with bad taste, a failed businessman painted up as an icon by reality television. He's never been more than a gadfly amongst the real corridors of power and the real corridors of power know it which is why he fired them all and worked around them with fellow petty grifters. You don't see Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos being feted in the White House you see this shit:

So I will restate: talking about anything between 3M and the White House is the opposite of what you think because for generations, 3M has had a much cozier relationship with occupants of the White House as they do now. I mean -

The guy who founded Polaroid ceased to do anything productive from a public standpoint ten years after founding his company because Eisenhower said "Hey Ed - we need some help with spy satellites" and Edwin Land did everything black from that point forth. Spooky shit we got. Collusion we got. Kombina we got.

But again. The kombina Trump belongs to grifts for Chick-Fil-A franchises.

Cumol  ·  1742 days ago  ·  link  ·  

But is there no truth in what is stated in the video?

I am not talking about any mastermind behind it. But maybe it is just the typical flow of capitalism. Make a buck when you see one kind of stuff.

kleinbl00  ·  1742 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The video is "ten simple steps" to conspiracy when we're talking about a government where "if you want a contract best stay at a Trump hotel" is out in the open.

Are there aspects of the Trump administration profiting off of this? Of course. But it's heinously dumb shit like this:

    Many of the volunteers were told to prioritize tips from political allies and associates of President Trump, tracked on a spreadsheet called “V.I.P. Update,” according to documents and emails obtained by The New York Times. Among them were leads from Republican members of Congress, the Trump youth activist Charlie Kirk and a former “Apprentice” contestant who serves as the campaign chair of Women for Trump.

My objection to the video - and to your assertions - is that there's this deep need to plumb gnostic depths of the globalist cabal in order to expose the neoliberal new world order of shadowy Illuminati conspiracy theories when the reality is Jared Kushner grabbing a bunch of inexperienced ideologues and telling them to ignore everyone but the MAGAheads.

There's no secret depth to this shit. None. There's Michael Cohen cutting a check to Stormy Daniels. There's Lev Parnas serving up his Instagram feed. They're every bit as stupid as they look and every bit as craven as they say and nobody needs to draw up ten steps to anything when this is our reality: