A while back, in a response to this post, commenter Brian had left a comment that brought up many issues in a multipronged way. I had wanted to respond, but life kept getting in the way. I now have some breathing room, so I'd like to respond to some of Brian's points. Be sure to reread my original post and Brian's comment first before proceeding with this post.
First up is the rather rude accusation of "Trump Deification Syndrome." The idea that I'm "deifying" Trump is offensive on many levels mainly because such an accusation requires one to have ignored large swaths of the critical things I've said about Trump over the years. Here are just a few examples, moving backwards in time, from this year to late 2022:
1. 3/9/24: the discussion branches out (exchange with Paul/Daeguowl)
As to the issue you raise—Birtherism—yes, Trump was (and maybe still is) a Birther, a position I find utterly ridiculous. Throw that one on the fire along with "Michelle Obama is a man," "Barack is a Muslim," "9/11 was an inside job," and any number of other truly stupid conspiracy theories. Trump was silly to bring the issue up, and I roundly condemn his stance. [ ... ]
As to the larger issue of Trump's judgment: I think a lot of conservatives will at least quietly agree that Trump is a terrible judge of character given his staffing picks (he liked hiring ass-kissers), and the number of them who turned out to be Judases and left his administration in a dramatic huff, then wrote tell-all books (that mostly bombed). Trump also still bizarrely brags about Operation Warp Speed, which put out the COVID shots that most righties turned against (and the left won't credit him with). Many conservatives are nonplussed by how Trump continues to tout this as a triumph despite how much his voter base hated the shots—evidence Trump is in a truth-deflecting bubble of sorts.
So Trump isn't perfect on every issue, even among righties. He's often wildly wrong, and he has the frustrating tendency never to admit when he's wrong (but—wake-up call—he's not unique in that regard).
2. 8/22/23: good interview on where the media go from here: politics
re: podcasts
This is one area where I think Trump is too old and inflexible to adapt. If you sat Trump down in one of these now-standard formats, just two people shooting the shit with only the skeleton of a discursive agenda directing the exchange, Trump would rapidly get antsy if the conversation didn't focus constantly and directly on him. I admit my observation may have something to do with my personal dislike of the man, but all evidence suggests that Trump is at his most effusive when he's talking about his favorite subject: himself. That's not a knock against Trump's priorities and orientation as president, but I think his megalomania is a character flaw that would become impossible to ignore in, say, a Rogan-like format. If Trump ever did Rogan, I think someone else would have to be there—like Joe Biden—to keep Trump talking. Biden's presence would provide Trump the opportunity to cite his achievements versus Biden's non-achievements. But having Trump on Rogan with no one else there to spar with? I don't see that going well at all.
Consider, too, that at the beginning of his term, Trump did take a stab at putting out short, scripted, state-of-the-nation YouTube vids about 2-3 minutes in length, but that effort dried up within a few months (I actually liked those videos and wished he had continued making them). I don't think the man is psychologically predisposed to "Fireside Chat" formats. Give him a crowd he can play to, that reacts to him; give him a microblogging format on which to publish misspelled, ungrammatical rants, and keep him talking about himself. That's Donald Trump's comfort zone.
3. 7/17/23: is he still in denial?
Here's Donald Trump talking about making mistakes in hiring certain staffers when he was president... but note how he tries to spin his mistakes. I don't think Trump has learned the essential lessons regarding Judases. He's probably still prone to hiring ass-kissers who will backstab him at the first opportunity so they can go on to write their tell-all memoirs. Trump's inability to see who his real friends are is among his worst personal traits. He's good at understanding human psychology on a "macro" level (Abraham Accords, the economy, etc.), but at the "micro" level, he suffers from scotosis.
4. 12/8/22: "She Said": review
Regarding Donald Trump, if there's one accusation that I think might stick regarding his character, it's that he's a dyed-in-the-wool sexist. I think the evidence for this is as plain as day: a series of trophy wives, his "Just look at her" comment about Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina ("Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?"), and the fact that he managed the Miss America pageant for years, which means he got used to seeing women as a commodity.
I can dig up more examples at need. Suffice it to say that, far from deifying Trump, I've been critical of him. Have I also been supportive? Of course. I have little regard for him on a personal level, but what's not to like about his policies and priorities? I've been open about my support for that aspect of his political worldview. In his comment, Brian writes:
I have yet to [be] convinced that Republicans somehow have a moral superiority vs. Democrats when it comes to election fraud. Both sides have no morals and to intimate that somehow Democrats cheated in large numbers while Republicans were/are paragons of virtue is frankly, laughable.
But Brian, when did I ever "intimate" that Republicans were moral paragons? You're reading things into what I've written. Republicans just happen to be right in this case, and as I wrote in my reply to Daeguowl, they tried to present piles of evidence in court but have been stymied at every turn by cowardly lawyers and judges who use flaccid arguments like "you have no legal standing to present such evidence." (See this comment here.) Brian writes:
As @daeguowl said, "show me the evidence". 3+ years have passed and nothing credible has come up. [Republican-appointed] judges dismissed lawsuits, Republican state AG's did deep dives and came up empty, [a] computer expert was paid almost $1MM by President Trump to help disprove the election results, and he came up with nothing, etc etc etc
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| The fact that one interlocutor is named Brian is pure coincidence, I swear. |
The media wants everyone to swallow the horseshit that rejected evidence = nonevidence. There are even spineless conservatives who believe this, many of them simply tired of the fighting and desirous to move on. But persistent evidence of shenanigans keeps popping up, and it's a fair bet that the Dems will be trying a second steal this coming November. I admit I'm fairly black-pilled about the upcoming election: it's hard to see Trump winning a second term because too many interested parties will do their damnedest, by hook or by crook, to drag Biden's festering corpse across the finish line. Brian writes:
Case in point - President Trump recently floated a 16 week federal ban on abortions. This would allow about 95% of all abortions that were done pre- repeal of Rowe vs Wade. It would be more liberal that what currently exists in Texas, Alabama, etc. Yet, these people are nodding their heads going, "Yeah, what Trump proposed sounds like a good idea. Federal ban is good."
Trump's basic stance is in keeping with the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade: leave the issue to the states. This makes many anti-abortion Republicans uncomfortable: they thought they'd seen an opportunity to finally go all the way and eliminate abortion for good. Ballotpedia.com quotes Trump as saying this:
"I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended. [...] My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case the law of the state. Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative [laws] than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people."
I'm sure Trump toyed with the notion of a federal ban, but the ban had a lot in common with what's already everyday practice in Europe. At this point, though, such a ban in the States is only a hypothetical. In sum: I have very low regard for Trump the man, but I'm in tune with most of his policies and priorities—a mantra I've repeated on this blog ad nauseam. How this gets misinterpreted as "Trump Deification Syndrome" is beyond me. Meanwhile, I'd written a response to Brian, meant to be a temporary holdover until this post got written, in which I tossed the issue back at him:
Meantime, ponder this question: you seem to like to visit my blog to be a contrarian. I have a good idea of what you're against, but what are you for? Whom will you vote for in the coming election if you vote at all (and if you're not voting, why not?)? What's your solution to the country's most pressing ills, and which of those ills do you see as worth dealing with? Also: where do you sit on the political spectrum (or compass, or whatever)? It's time to show your cards. Right now, you're looking like a timid fence-sitter, a "moral-equivalencer" too afraid to commit to a position, but I don't believe that for a second. Someone as smart as you has had a long time to think through his positions and develop convictions. So spill it! What's important to you, and why?
Still no response since March 26.
I remain highly unconvinced there was any kind of significant election fraud in your last Presidential Election and articles like the following do nothing to support your assertions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/20/election-denial-2020-michigan-voting-2024
You seem to be saying that you think Trump is an awful human being but you'll hold your nose and vote for him because you like his policies. If hypothetically, Trump and Biden were switched so that Senile Biden was leader of the Republicans with all of Trumps policies, would you still vote for him? I wouldn't vote for Odious Trump no matter what, in my opinion he is simply unfit to be leader of a country.
Well, you have a right to your opinion, but people really do have to ignore a lot of contrary evidence to think that way.
ReplyDeleteOn the assumption that this hypothetical Senile Biden's puppet masters would support the policies that I support, I might vote for him (knowing I was really voting for his puppeteers, the way pro-Biden people these days know they're really voting for Biden's puppeteers) rather than for a coherent-but-leftist Trump who insanely advocated for open borders, inflationary economics, racial conflict, global conflict, etc. More likely, though, I'd write in Santa Claus or some such if senility were a huge factor to consider.
I was young when Ronald Reagan was in his second term and growing visibly senile. Robin Williams was having a field day with ol' Ron, who managed to survive the presidency and live into his nineties. As an older person now, looking back on the Reagan era, I think Reagan and Thatcher were a good team in terms of foreign policy—e.g., helping along the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall—but Reagan's notion of economics—much different from Trump's—were only so much pie in the sky. Worse than Reagan was George W. Bush, who utterly mismanaged the economy he'd inherited from the Democrat Bill Clinton (who himself patterned his economic policy on what Republicans like Newt Gingrich were advocating for in the US Congress). Bush also proved not to be a true conservative: instead of being pro-small-government the way a true conservative ought to be, Bush expanded government through things like the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security ("Homeland" has a bit of a sinister ring to it, don't you think?). Those were both overreactions to 9/11.
Trump, too, is not a true Republican. You've followed my blog long enough to have read me several times contending that Trump is essentially a 90s-era Democrat: his policies tend to be pro-worker and anti-free-trade because he keeps demanding that other countries pay what they owe instead of constantly buttfucking the US. I find that to be a welcome change in international economic policy. Most presidents are content to let other countries raid our wallets while the US does all the heavy lifting. Imagine Europe without US protection, without the NATO umbrella, without the mostly US-funded UN, and Russia leering over the next mountain range. I think Europe should either pay a fair price for protection or conjure up its own homegrown defense. If war were to break out in western Europe right now, it'd be like Hitler rolling into Poland. Europe has atrophied under the American umbrella.
But I digress. No presidential candidate is going to be perfect, and in the political systems that dominate Western industrialized countries, the only menu options we're ever going to have will be assholes, stupid people, malicious people, psychotics, or some toxic combination. Holding out for the perfect person is a fool's dream. But a person is free to vote for Batman or Mickey Mouse if s/he wants.
(You do realize that the Guardian is a leftist rag that hates Trump. I never expect fairness or objectivity from it.)
Luckily for all the Trump-haters, if he somehow makes it into office this November, he'll be gone after another four years. I hope the haters have fun enjoying a bit more economic prosperity (lower gas & grocery prices) and a bit less global conflict... which they probably won't even notice while they curse Trump's name.
But there's a nightmare ahead for economic lefties: God only knows what's going to happen when Trump joins forces with a force of nature like Javier Milei. Personally, I'd love to see a wave of capitalism sweep across Latin America (and, hey, Canada too, if the Canucks can get Poilievre into office) to create a truly gigantic, continent-spanning prosperity-sphere. But that's just a dream, and reality is messy.
It's really simple for many, were they better off four years' ago than they are now?
ReplyDeleteThe astronomical price of just existing in today's world is all on the warmongering party occupying the Whitehouse, no matter what derangement the bootlicking media is spe wing at the request of their overlords pulling the strings of the Demoncratic party. Yes, the party leadership is full of vile Demons who never intended to unite the country, rather just sell it out to increase their ill-gotten wealth based on war and globalism while their citizens suffer and instead illegal immigrants benefit.
Daejeon John,
ReplyDeleteWhat's funny is that the Republicans were the globalists not so long ago, cynically farming out manufacturing jobs to poor countries as a way to get cheap labor, and the Dems were the ones touting "Made in America!" and "Union, yes!" Now, possibly thanks to Trump's reorientation of what it means to be conservative (i.e., it partly means being antiglobalist, but not necessarily pro-union), we all cheer when Ricky Gervais points out that Apple hypocritically presents itself as woke, but meanwhile, it has factories in China where the workers are miserable, working for peanuts inside buildings that have actual suicide nets to keep people from leaping to their deaths to escape the misery. Even by a classically conservative interpretation, though, Trump is right to want to bring work back to American shores: American workers are indeed more expensive, but (1) they'll turn out a higher-quality product, which (2) will mean less waste, and therefore less expense, in the long run.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your detailed response. Thank you.
Like @daeguowl, I remain unconvinced that election fraud occurred and if it did, it was only done by the Democratic party. But trying to convince me otherwise probably has the same chance of success as me convincing you that none occurred. LOL
Among other things, one of the problems with getting the majority of news from the Internet is that a person slowly receives a narrower and narrower range of information. That information ends up only being things that a person agrees with, as the algorithms tailor what you see to what they think you want to see. For example, you post a lot of videos from "Styx". I haven't watched any of them, but what is his background/expertise/education that makes you consider him a good source for information?
Anyway, I do continue to enjoy your blog, but I have come to the realization that discussing politics on the internet is a no win, so I now typically scroll through and pick and choose the posts that are non-political.
I am 100% sure that if we met in person and talked politics (and life in general) over a meal, we would have a fantastic time, and we would both leave the meal with a better understanding of each other and our respective viewpoints. For whatever reason, the internet for me does not seem to lend itself to that same type of interaction.
Early congrats on 20 years in the blogoshpere.
Brian