I’m pretty sure there’s some Canadian somewhere who can also just list two similarities. So that’s fine.
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With Trump taking office next Monday, I’d like to share a response to a question on Quora: Why do some British people not like Donald Trump.
This response that English writer Nate White wrote in 2019 is a bit long, so I’ll use the Hide Details feature.
Nate White's Response
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace; all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing. Not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever.
And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility. For us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is. His idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults, he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff, the Queensberry rules of basic decency, and he breaks them all. He punches downwards, which a gentleman should, would, could never do, and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless, and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority, perhaps a third, of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss.
He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws, he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumps of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God, what have I created?’
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Those sentiments seem to be shared by many people around the world. And possibly it’s even worse this time around.
(The original response has been taken down by Quora years ago, but it can still be found in many places)
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Storing this for future use.
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I wonder if this is specifically British humor. I don’t find Trump particularly funny, but his strength as an entertainer seems to be a big part of what draws people in.
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I guess I’m not one of the people that find him entertaining. I can’t stand watching him.
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It’s specifically because Trump isn’t like most politicians that he gets elected. People are so sick of the way things are, that any change at all from the status quo is seen as desirable.
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Carlin could explain the appeal:
He is talking about Clinton in this case, but the issue and point he makes is very similar.
It is only a minute, but very worth considering, I’d say, in terms of understanding how people over there view this issue.
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I for one do like to watch such people, though I do not really enjoy it.
My motivation is more like … “anthropological interest”, like … Discovery Channel or something 
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I thought this was true while reading it, but then…
…made me go look for videos to verify it, and I found this video (again):
This could be a comedian. Not someone I’d like to watch, but there are professional comedians on TV who are similarly funny.
Maybe real comedians would have talked elaborately about how embarrassing it was to just barely make it onto that truck, instead of just saying that it could have been embarrassing.
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It’s not really “funny” but I wonder how many people in the world would have the presence of mind to play the crowd mere moments after being shot in the head (admittedly, ear, but still!) by a would be assassin, while secret service is trying to rush you off stage… i think most people would just be head down and doing what ss say without thinking.
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Yay another yearly thread!
I’m about to kick off 2025 with yet another loss on top of my losing streak!
I know I’m the one to blame because the 7 or so games on OGS are basically all games I’ve played in the entire 2024 but man, it hurts 
Especially when last 3 games I see winning moves immediately after playing the losing ones…
UPDATE: Ok officially sealed my first loss of the year.
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Perhaps, but…
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.
With Trump bringing more clowns into the palace this time, I fear it will become more of a circus.
I wish the US the best of luck though.
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I think that unlike in some other countries, the main quality from a president that people expect in the US is leadership, not intelligence or culture. Far-right leaders in France support Trump’s anti-immigration or anti-woke ideas, but they are aware they cannot copy his attitude, this would immediately disqualify them.
Wow, I’d never think about that kind of recursive description.
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Doesn’t a flaw in a flaw become good? Like negative x negative = positive
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Depends. For instance if your flaw is to generally play a move in go without thinking enough, then a flaw in the flaw would be to overthink a few obvious moves and thus waste time on your clock.
But anyway if a flaw in a flaw were positive, what about a flaw in a flaw in a flaw? And what if you have (a flaw)n for every positive integer n?
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It should be noted that this is an old, I wouldn’t call it “trick”, but definitely an issue.
In the eighties/nineties, in my country, there was the rise of a populist party which has declined now, but its members still rule. Their motto/promise was CHANGE! and almost fourty years later they still peddle that word.
And they delivered! The country DID change, but for the worse.
But you cannot call them liars. You see, they promised “change”, not improvement. 
Just because people hear change and assume improvement, is not the party’s problem, but our problem.
If that was just the issue we woudn’t really care.
We are all going to need a lot of luck. The USA is not a random country.
It is the “de facto leader of the “free world” (whatever that is now)”.
No argument there. It was impressive.
But so is this:
It is only 8 seconds with the timestamp. What you are watching there is a greek football coach named Alefantos, a man arguably more idiosyncratic than Trump, actually taking on a whole stand of hooligans, while they throw bottles at him. He actually dares them to come down. And they don’t! In another case where the flabbergasted hooligans didn’t throw stuff at him, he actually climbed the stands himself to try to start a fight.
And he was a brilliant coach, very smart.
And brave, as you just saw. There were even popular songs written for him, at the time.
But his character was so bizarre and off the chart that he couldn’t really lead.
Which is why his career was a string of failures.
“Bravery” and “leadership” are not the same things, just like “change” and “improvement”, aren’t the same words
There are indeed times where you need people like him (just like with Winston Churchill - also a person with a tough and odd character, however the man was a colossal failure until 1940, time after time he made some amazing blunders, but he was perfect for the World War 2 situation), but is this the time?
Who knows, we will see.
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Trump doesn’t have the same out, thanks to MAGA
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Perhaps you could think of it like this: a go player plays a unwarranted tenuki to “kill” an opponent group that was actually already dead, but the “killing move” is a self-atari of 11 stones, and the opponent can capture them in sente. That’s flaws upon flaws all the way down, not flaws cancelling each other.
Or when a bank robber botches a robbery, the end result may be worse for everyone involved than if they had been able to execute the robbery as planned.
Somehow I’m also thinking about Putin now.
I suppose that in the MAGA world, having Trump back in office (and not in prison) already means that America is great again, so mission accomplished.
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He has a better one since the “when” that aimed greatness is located is undefined
Which is what is objectively awesome from a marketing standpoint in that slogan.
Everyone hearing it can fantasize about any given time in the past, while the party that promises that slogan is not actually promising any time ( or any thing) specific.
It is like that story I had mentioned before about the civil servant that had placed a sign out of his locked office saying “The office will open again tomorrow”, but there was no date on the sign, so when is “today” for which the specific “tomorrow” will come when the civil servant will return?
Turns out it was many days later 
He didn’t lie, technically.
Edit:
On different on topic issue, Elon Musk, is continuing to have a full melt-down after people accused him of using an obviously boosted PoE2 account, so he could boast of being one of “the best gamers ever”… even casual gamers are laughing at him. Things are so bad, he got community noted on his own social media for leaking another person’s DMs.
It is funny how you can say big lies all day and talk non-sense about things and countries that your audience neither knows nor understands and thus pretend to be smart, but once something 100% merit based comes around, you totally mess it up thinking that bragging will just work there as well
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