There is a certain sort of Republican who hates Donald Trump so much that he regularly appends the #NeverTrump hashtag to his tweets and would much rather that Hillary Clinton won the election.
Which is fine as far as it goes. It is not as if I, personally, think Trump would make a good president. I have always found him obnoxious and he seems to have little idea of the depth of the economic crisis affecting not just the United States but the western world in general. But, hey, he would at least be amusing. And I have twenty quid on him to win.
But I am seriously turned off by a lot of the Trump hatred that goes on. Particularly because it comes from people I had hitherto regarded as ideological soulmates.
I think this is because they display so little humility. When Trump announced his bid for the Republican nomination no one gave him a prayer. He had no experience, he had no grounding beliefs, he had no connections. He didn’t even have that much money. All he had – seemingly – was his name. And yet he still won.
It was an astonishing achievement.
You really would have thought that some people might be asking themselves how he did it. How was it that in the midst of the greatest depression in history the supposedly fiscally conservative party voted for someone who went around promising to raise spending? How come even candidates like Rand Paul didn’t seem to have anything sensible to say on getting the federal budget into balance? How come that when faced with the Trump threat supposedly sensible Republicans were incapable of uniting around a single candidate?
I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had encompassing, economics, identity, the electorate’s fears and Trump’s media-savvy. But all his detractors seem able to do is to produce a stream of bile.
And this is where it all gets rather troubling. They said of the Bourbons that they had forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. The sense of entitlement prevented them from engaging in anything resembling introspection. #NeverTrumpers sound just the same. “How dare you take my unsuccessful political party away from me!” seems to be the attitude.
It’s not so much #NeverTrump as #NeverLearn.
About to be re-named?
Scott Adam’s (dilbert) take on Trump is worth reading;
http://blog.dilbert.com/
The same can be said of many people achieving their aims, even if the person is vile and their aims are vile. So what? The only good things I can think to say about Trump is (1) he is not Hillary Clinton (2) he has probably destroyed the not-fit-for-purpose GOP.
To me, the true wonder is that otherwise ideologically sensible people actually buy into Trump’s shtick. As I have said before, if I was a US voter, I would be spending next election day on a beach in Cancun drinking tequila and neither voting nor giving a damn who won. That said, the howls of woe if Hillary looses will be a delight to hear, but it will be a very hollow and expensive delight.
Indeed. What impresses me is how early he called it for Trump
It is rather more complicated than that I’m afraid, Patrick. This is how I see it, FWIW:
First of all, very little about this election is about actual issues, vocal protestations and even personal convictions notwithstanding – rather, it is about the establishment (or rather the Establishment, henceforward referred to as Est/est, depending on context), both in its institutional sense, and in the sense of the status quo, i.e. the way the US has been working (or “working”) for decades. And, both political and cultural. And, I believe this applies both to the Left and the Right and to most in the middle, albeit obviously for different reasons.
Then, there is the Parties, each with their particular est, and this is where it gets tricky: while most Republican voters are anti-Est as defined above, in the primaries’ campaigns the Cruz camp was generally anti-GOP est, while said GOP est generally supported and even pushed forward Trump, and that was why Trump won the nomination.
To complicate matters further, many of the Trump supporters from the wider circle of GOP voters/independents/(even)libertarians see their candidate as the anti-est (in the general sense as defined above) savior – either ignoring the fact that he himself has been pushed forward by the GOP est., or thinking that it is a price worth paying to stick it to the SJWs and the Left, and the general (here it comes again) Est.
I happen to disagree with them, thinking that Trump is in fact just as much of the Est. as any other candidate on offer (possibly even Cruz, whom I supported and would still support), but my personal opinion is of course beside the point.
Just my $0.02.
Also for what it’s worth, I actually think that as bad as Clinton is, she would be a less-bad POTUS than Trump, and either will be less-bad than Obama. But like Perry, I’m not going to play that game, and will find something less boring and pointless to do an Election Day (aside from possibly voting for Congress).
I think that is a key point worth making. Cruz was a deeply flawed but genuine anti-establishment option, and it is a measure of the complete decadence of a critical mass of the GOP that they would even back Trump to keep Cruz out.
“…said GOP est generally supported and even pushed forward Trump” Really? I can’t say I was following things that closely but… really?
That aside, glad you mentioned the “Establishment”. OK, it’s a slippery term but there has been a post-Cold War consensus. The problem is that it has clearly failed. It is not surprising then that voters start looking round for alternatives.
Yes, not surprising at all. What a pity they settled on such a terrible one on this occasion.
Yes Patrick, really: the GOP (meaning, it’s Est.) were scared shitless of Cruz. Rightly so or not, that is a matter of where one is coming from. But yes, really.
That aside, I agree with both you and Perry here.
I feel the urge to elaborate further:
Possible consensus aside, it may be slippery objectively speaking, as it is highly subjective to each individual voter – but since it is the voters that we are discussing, that slipperiness ceases being an issue.
As to consensus, most people seem to feel something is rotten, and as human nature goes will blame anyone but themselves. And in this particular context I don’t think them to be very wrong. How they might go about fixing that is a different question: a lot of them choose Trump, a lot chose Sanders – both are wrong in my opinion, but here we are.
After big government, I think the biggest threat to Western liberal(classical sense) democracy is Islamofascism. Hilary has had Huma Abedin as her closest associate since Monica was servicing Bill: she has been indispensable to her as Secretary of State and liasing with the Clinton Foundation while remaining unestranged from her staunch Muslim Brotherhood family. Trump, however clumsily, is willing to protect the USA from imported shariah.
The problem is that it has clearly failed. It is not surprising then that voters start looking round for alternatives.
The politics of failure have failed. We must make them work again.
We can get specific about the Trump phenomenon. Over the last 30 years or so, the American working class has suffered a substantial decline in real income, and the middle class has suffered a modest decline. All of this is due to the trade and immigration policies of the Ruling Class, which includes both the Republican and Democratic elites, which are largely one and the same. The Ruling Class has not only reaped all the benefits from those policies (which are real), they have clawed away some of the income of the working and middle classes. Hence the rage. Hence the repudiation of Cruz, Rubio, Bush, et al., all of whom are part of the Ruling Class, and all of whom would continue those policies.
Peter Turchin would describe this as excessive numbers of the elites fighting over society’s limited resources and impoverishing the masses. The result is ultimately rebellion and civil war. See P. Turchin and S. A. Nefedov, “Secular Cycles,” Princeton, 2009.
“I think the biggest threat to Western liberal(classical sense) democracy is Islamofascism.”
Islam is just a tool for a bigger goal. The elimination of white nation states. I for the life of me can’t work out why, but the elites clearly have decided that white western nations have to go. They’re treating the world as a giant snowglobe – that all they have to do it is shake it and we all become a peaceful blend of mocha people. See the Kalergi plan from the 1950’s.
What I like most about Trump is that all the correct vile people hate him with a passion, (including Glenn Beck). The ONLY reason Trump is in the political position he’s in today is because of the electorate.
It wasn’t that he “had no money”, it’s that he told the donor class to go fuck themselves. That made the power-mongers with purse strings which wrap around one’s wrists VERY nervous. Then the GOP decided that he’s not “conservative enough” to suit them, so he told them to go blow goats too. More panic in the smoke filled back rooms ensued. ‘Never mind that running on a platform where one is manical about abortion and quoting the bible loses national general elections in this century.
The NeverTrumpers, the conservative talkshow hosts, with the exceptions of the intelligent ones like Limbaugh and Hannity, are merely FEELING SORRY FOR THEMSELVES.
Yes, it’s self pity that drives them to run down Trump to the betterment of Hillary, which is a far worse candidate for POTUS.
What cracks me up is the apparent fear that Trump will make some foreign leader unhappy or insult them, as if Obama hasn’t spent 8yrs insulting every decent foreign leader and D-sucking every warlord and dictator on the planet. Trump isn’t a warmonger. Hillary is, and so is her mentor Obama.
Obama’s paying 1.5 BILLION dollars to goddamned Iran, for fucks’ sake. And they’ll take that money and buy enriched uranium from Russia mined from OUR uranium mines in the states…made possible by Hillary herself, a deal she made in exchange for mystery money being poured into the Clinton Foundation by the tens of millions every time she OKed yet another piece of the Canadian company Uranium One being signed over to Russia.
If Hillary gets elected it’s be WORSE that a liberal/Progessive stacked US Surpreme Court, it’s be WORSE than air-dropping hundreds of millions of dollars in mixed currencies on the lawns of Mulas hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and the US in the middle of the night. It’ll be WORSE than forcing thousands of pages of material to be voted on the following morning in congress. It’ll be WORSE than using the IRS to punish the working poor who currently can’t afford health insurance of any sort. It’ll be WORSE than a so-called POTUS that, for no sensible reason, hands over the keys to the internet to third world dictators in the UN, with the apparent purpose of destroying the freedom thorn in the side of Big Brother.
If for no other reason, I think one should vote for Trump because he’s a loose canon on Big Brother’s deck, and the seas are rough.
Bob Sykes said,
“…All of this is due to the trade and immigration policies of the Ruling Class”
Unionist tripe IMO.
Protectionism harms a nation economically, and free trade helps it. Proping up certain industries by banning trade or imposing draconian tariffs is inefficient, creates Dead Weight Losses, raising the prices of goods and services (which harms the poor the most), and lowers the Total Economic Surplus of a nation. It’ll result in LESS total jobs and less economic growth. This is exactly why war-time embargoes that cut off trade harm enemy nations.
And as for “immigration policies”….anyone who can’t compete in the labor force with a 35yr old illegal semi-literate Mexican with a sixth grade education and who barely speaks English…has failed themselves. Such people don’t deserve propping up at everyone else’s expense.
Ljh,
Humma Abedin released a screed addressed to Trump the other day, saying that she’s a “proud Muslim woman”…
Yeah, a proud muslim woman…married to a Jew. Not only that, is married to Anthony Weiner, one of the most famous sexual degenerates known in today’s modern world.
Why would Weiner marry a “proud” powerful feminist Muslim woman? Why would he irrationally “act out” by sending penis pictures in text messages to women he doesn’t know? I can think of one reason only, and that would be if Humma looks rather fetching in black dominatrix garb. I wonder if she calls him a filthy Jew while he licks the bottom of her feet? I wonder if she uses a strap-on while yelling “feel the wrath of Allah!” I wonder how many times Huma has kicked Anthony in the balls because he likes it?
Do you seriously think the GOP establishment backed Trump? They HATE Trump and always have. They tried unsuccessfully to change the rules at the beginning of the convention to where the delegates didn’t have to nominate the candidate the electorate want.
Now that the weathervane is turning no matter HOW hard some folks still try to blow it…
#nevertrump makes a handy reference to set the wayback machine when it comes time to evaluate (US) State/Federal, Senate and House elections. (That time should be right now by the way).
And as we superimpose the #nevertrump, and “Well NOT that I think he should be President BUT….” proclamations with CVs, resumes, and actual voting records, the Oh my! factor MAY provoke further “correction” in the “What were we THINKING?” bubble that leaves us (US) with “special” Executive proclamations, “special” college jurisprudence, “Special” considerations for rioting vandals and illegal aliens, a “special” FBI/ DOJ/ FDA/EPA/ DoE/ and State Dept. and “special” opinions at the the HIGHEST Court.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Politics is sometimes a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable. There seems to be a checks and balances argument for Trump precisely in that the Republican party does not like him. Unlike the Democratic Party for Hillary, the Republican Party did not provide double-headed coins and stacked decks to get Trump chosen. If all the facts needed to prove him guilty of a crime were in the public domain, as they are for Hillary, a number of Republicans would have used that to change their candidate. So one can imagine significant numbers in the party opposing him – even impeaching him in extreme case of improper behaviour. The spectacle of Republicans offering more opposition to Trump than they did to Obama would be in some ways unpleasant, but would be preferable to a Democrat majority eagerly complicit in Hillary’s misdeeds, past and future. Such freedom as we get depends on the elements of government sometimes opposing each other, not always colluding against us.
This logic makes me #UnpalatableTrump rather than #NeverTrump. Being British, I don’t have to do anything – or even decide to do nothing. The OP’s remarks are interesting, but I would extend them by suggesting #NeverTrump apply their own constitutional principles to the very imperfect choices now available to them – and do the long-term thinking the OP recommends later.
Trump is everything what NeverTrumpers say and more. Life long liar, thief and con man, who always backstabbed and betrayed everyone.
Add zero military and government experience, zero knowledge about everything world leader shall know.
It’s probable that all this thing began as big “deal” between Trump and Clinton family, as false flag operation to break Republican party and bring Clinton easy victory.
It’s nearly certain that if there was a deal, Trump reneged on it and backstabbed his life long friend, once he tasted the power. We will see once the debates begin, whether he will play hardball and for real.
If Trump is for real, he is the last hope of all mankind, and i mean it.
I’m not American, and do not care about American guns, abortion, health care, gay marriage, Mexican wall and whatever else Americans argue about. I care about avoiding WW3, and it was Hillary who always pushed for war, more war and even more war. Barack Obama earned his Nobel prize at least three times, for Iran, Syria and Ukraine.
Of all actual and potential world leaders today, its Hillary who have the right mixture of arrogance and incompentence to start a big war, lose it decisively and then rather press the red button than lose face.
@Alisa
> Also for what it’s worth, I actually think that as bad as Clinton is, she would be a less-bad POTUS than Trump,
I’m a big fan of your comments here Alisa, but I think exactly the opposite is true. I think if you line up the issues Trump is better than Hillary on pretty much all of them (although he is also bad, and who knows how much theory becomes practice.)
For example, Trump’s plan reduces taxes, eliminates Obamacare and advocates originalists for the USSC.
What makes you think she would be better than he?
Politics is always a choice between lousy, terrible, horrible candidates. Jesus, these are people who actually want to be politicos.
The proper course for NeverTrumpers is to hold their noses and vote for him but also go to work for him, his organizations and his likely allies so as to be able to influence him. My experience here in Canada leads me to believe that a lousy candidate can be assisted, persuaded, forced even, into better behaviour by a coterie of associates. My experience is as a member of Canadian MP riding associations, but friends tell me it works at all levels of government, over here anyway.
That’s why I am so pissed off at the egregious Cruz. The man should have accepted defeat gracefully and immediately volunteered to help Trump. There might have been a time when Trump would have asked Cruz for some piece of assistance or advice that might have made a critical difference.
Cruz had many supporters and would have been a decent influence on Trump, were he a decent man, which he turned out not to be.
@Fred Z
> The man should have accepted defeat gracefully and immediately volunteered to help Trump.
In fairness to Cruz, Trump said some really horrible things about Cruz and his family. It is asking a lot to let that go. You can’t do scorched earth and then expect the cooperation of the few people left standing…
“It was an astonishing achievement.”
Sort of. Trump gaining the nomination was an astonishing success, certainly. But the success was not entirely Trump’s achievement. The project sailed on a foreseeable tailwind that all primary rivals remarkably consistently chose to ignore. Trump should get credit for acting on it, and executing fairly well. But I don’t think he deserves credit for events (notably Merkelism) happening to blow it into a gale.
Eric Cantor lost his primary in mid 2014. Even dimwits should’ve noticed which was the breeze was blowing. (Primarily against immigration-as-crafted-to-alienate-even-libertarians sentiment; secondarily against increasingly arrogant display of bad faith by insiders, exacerbated by Internet routing around MSM.)
And it was not hard to guess that the breeze was increasing. Obama’s highest-profile relief-for-underclass-immigrants executive order was in November 2014. Even from a position of historical ignorance, one should’ve been taken aback. But beyond that, history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, sometimes it rhymes. And sometimes it yells “why don’t you listen to what I’m telling you” and throws something big at you… Anyone who hasn’t read Macaulay’s History of England should do so now. (First, to catch up on how much history has rhymed in the last few years. Second, to get started wondering about the throwing part.) For this post, the key rhyme is Obama following in the footsteps of James II in insisting on the general “dispensing power”. Insisting even after it’s been renounced and forbidden; and specifically using it to legalize people excluded by legislative law. Indeed, even more specifically, claiming general tolerance but in fact specifically favoring his faction (Catholics then, chosen-to-be-underclass immigrants now) while continuing to vigorously suppress others (Scots and dissenters, H1Bs and engineering students and the like).
So… Trump likely saw at least some of that stuff, and acted on it. And the Republican establishment managed to dogmatically suppress it across the board, to the point where Trump’s most-touted rivals (Rubio, Jeb) were among those who had most unmistakably burned their ships on the issue, so they couldn’t effectively back off on their position as the disaster unfolded. A definite point for Trump.
But foreseeing the cluster of events in Europe associated with Merkel’s policies (and less-cohesive events in the US, notably the San Bernardino massacre)? They were IMHO important: if those had happened in December 2016 instead of during the primaries, Trump might have been merely a surprisingly strong primary contender instead of the Republican nominee. And I don’t think we have reason to think Trump foresaw them.
If Trump was farsighted in his secret councils, perhaps he thought somewhat like commentators who had been talking darkly about electing a new people, and about holiness spirals (like http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/10/28/reactionary-heretic-how-luther-survived-a-holiness-spiral/). Then he could get credit not for foreseeing not this specific turn of events, but at least for a worldview in which a turn of events like this was somewhat ordinary — maybe 20% likely in 2016 — instead of less-than-2% super-unlikely as in the more mainstream worldview. But my impression is that instead he was just plain lucky in this. (And, similarly, just plain lucky in the remarkably stubborn solidarity of his primary opponents on the other side of the issue.) So like most wildly successful people he’s been talented *and* diligent *and* lucky, not just one or two of the three, and his “astonishing achievement” is in fact a significant achievement with a generous helping of luck on top.
What??? Given Trump’s remarks about Cruz’s wife, I would not blame Cruz for putting his fist in Trump’s face. On a purely personal non-political level, Trump is a vile piece of shit, so no, Cruz should not have offered Trump anything other than a firm kick in the bollocks.
Patrick,
You wrote: “How was it that in the midst of the greatest depression in history the supposedly fiscally conservative party voted for someone who went around promising to raise spending?.”
The answer to that one is easy: Trump is playing a numbers game. Unsurprisingly, he’s trying to get more people to vote for him and fiscal conservatism is almost never popular. Meanwhile, people are highly-dependent on government programmes. Most have not saved nearly enough for retirement and so will be dependent on Social Security, the American state old age pension. Similarly, healthcare would be completely unaffordable by the elderly, were it not for Medicare.
Yet Social Security and Medicare are the two biggest federal government programs by far. More to the point actuaries, and other people who know about these things, agree both programmes are going to go bust without major reforms, i.e., cuts in benefits. But that is what people absolutely do not want to hear.
Hence Trump’s promises of increased spending. What’s more, it has quite likely worked: his ratings jumped when he announced his proposals. However, this ratings boost is changing the nature of the Republican Party, away from fiscal conservatism to populism.
A word about Perry’s statement at 4:16:
The
manEvil Hippo speaketh but the truth.Fraser:
The feeling is mutual.
Neither you nor I know what will be true when either of these candidates wins. We both are speculating, some speculations will prove better than others – but only time will tell. My second-worst problem with Trump* is that I have no plausible speculations about him. As others here put it, he’s a loose cannon. I know that some see it as a plus – but sorry, rather have the devil I sort-of know.
Trump has a plan on anything that he hasn’t changed at least twice during his entire campaign? I am pleasantly surprised. I mean it. Still, see ‘loose cannon’ – I just can’t trust this guy to not change his mind and turn 180 on anything.
Better? Perish the thought. I don’t think she’s better, I think that she is less-bad – big big big difference. I think she will be bad, period. But, I think that she will be less bad than Trump for the reason I mentioned, plus she will be less bad than Obama.
All that said, please note that I am not going to vote for her – not because I’m lazy or refrain from voting on principle, but because I think that both candidates are terrible. *BTW, my first worst-problem with Trump is that he’s terrible.
@Alisa
> Better? Perish the thought. I don’t think she’s better, I think that she is less-bad – big big big difference.
Oh, I get that you weren’t an advocate for her at all. But I guess my question is this: is it better to have a loose canon who could be anything from quite bad to really really bad than have someone who is guaranteed to be really really bad?
I think perhaps especially on the USSC. Whatever Hillary does here will be appalling. There is a reasonable chance Trump will do considerably better (but of course no guarantees.) And that is pretty significant. Better to have a small chance to save the USSC than accept a guarantee of a dreadful court for the rest of my lifetime.
Honestly, I am really struggling with this. Not that it matters. I live in Illinois so Hillary will win here, so I’ll probably go vote for Gary Johnson (who is also an imperfect candidate, but light years better than the other three.)
Fraser, I agree that the Supreme Court appointments is a very important issue, so let’s try to take use it as a “case study”: why do you think that Trump will do better on that score than Clinton? Because he said so? Even though he said so, I don’t trust him to actually think so. And even if he thinks so, I don’t trust him not to change his mind in a week. And even if he doesn’t change his mind, I don’t trust him not to cave in on this when the actual push comes to shove. That’s what I mean by ‘loose cannon’ – the man is all over the place. With Hilary I at least know (more or less) what I get. Again, not a reason to vote for her (these caveats are not aimed at you, but at anyone who may not have the inclination to follow all the comments), but it does make her less bad in my opinion.
Now to remind you again, being all over the place is my second-worst problem with the man. Too many unknowns. But my first-worst problem with him are the things we do know about him.
@Alisa
Yes I agree there is no guarantee he will do better than Hillary, but Hillary is GUARANTEED to do terrible, and there is at least a chance that Trump’s caprice will do better. We could be screwed either way, but better to at least have a shot. I can’t imagine Trump would do worse than HRC on this issue. But perhaps he will surprise me 🙂
And I agree, Trump is a terrible person, but my God, Hillary is one of the most appalling human beings that have ever run for political office. Corruption and graft are her religion, and lies are her language. Trump is certainly a capricious blowhard, but she is just a terrible, terrible person.
I agree with every point Thailover made here (three successive posts beginning at 12.24 PM).
Alisa has been consistent in arguing that Hillary (“the devil you know”) would be preferable to Trump, but I agree with Fraser that she’s wrong. There is no conceivable way that Trump would be a worse president than Hillary, and there is at least a reasonable chance that he would be better, at least in some respects. Yes, he’s a loose cannon with shifting proposals, but some of those might end up as improvements to the status quo. With Hillary, it is 100% certain that they would be the same or worse. However small it may be, it’s better to bet on the possibility of success than on the certainty of failure.
Trump has offered several names as potential Supreme Court nominees, all of which were at least acceptable. Will he renege on those, and appoint another leftist? It’s certainly possible, although I think unlikely. But we know the sort of appointments Hillary would make. That alone is sufficient reason to vote for Trump. Again, I’ll take the possibility of a good outcome over the certainty of a bad one.
And it’s worth considering their relationships with Congress. For the last 6 years of Republican control of both Houses, they have toadied to Obama and given him almost everything he wanted. They would do the same with Hillary, because to do otherwise would expose them to charges of sexism (just as opposing Obama was allegedly “racist”). With Trump that would not be the case, and they might actually rein in an out-of-control Executive branch the way they never would with Obama or Hillary. And FWIW Trump has promised to rescind some of Obama’s illegal Executive Orders, which he might actually do. With Hillary, not a chance.
As between the two, I see no downside to Trump. It couldn’t possibly be worse than with Hillary.
Oh, and as to the Evil Hippo’s comment at 4:16, it’s just wrong. This is politics. Sure, Trump is a shit, and if he and Cruz were alone somewhere Cruz would have every reason to punch him in the nose. But this isn’t a social event. He should have sucked it up and made nice in public. Carson figured that out quickly, and he’s not even a professional politician. I expected better of Cruz, but he has proven himself to be every bit as big a shit as Trump (witness the disgraceful spectacle at the Republican convention). His chances of national office now are nil.
“ . . . anyone who can’t compete in the labor force with a 35yr old illegal semi-literate Mexican with a sixth grade education and who barely speaks English…has failed themselves.”
I know quite a few Mexicans who have come here illegally in order to find an economic success that is unavailable to them in Mexico.
While I firmly believe that we must close our borders until we can figure out who to allow in, I very much admire people who, in an attempt to better their own lots, are willing to travel illegally into a strange foreign country, in which a completely different language is spoken, and work their rears off, all while sending the bulk of their earnings back home to support their extended families.
The willingness of these people to work – both hard and well – is astounding. Most of them are honest, generous, forthright – they’re the kind of people who are excellent friends and coworkers, and who would make excellent citizens.
While they’ve gone as far as their Mexican schooling took them, woe to their kids who fail to take their present American schooling seriously.
Their tradesmen and craftsmen outperform – both in quantity and quality – most of their American competition.
In short, from an employer’s viewpoint, your “illegal semi-literate Mexican with a sixth grade education and who barely speaks English” is yards above the overly-entitled, over-educated, under-experienced crybaby endemic to the USA.
I understand the point you were making. The slurs just rankle.
FWIW, I agree with Fraser (and others) on Hair vs. Shrill.
“Two roads diverged in a [bloody] wood,” and sorry that I must travel one, I saw that one path ended in at a sheer precipice, and was so straitened at both sides that one could not turn around. The other I knew not for certain, but from the general lay of the land it seemed there was a chance that one might walk it, slip and fall, yet still survive.
I shall take that second path, where it seems there is a chance.
“As between the two, I see no downside to Trump. It couldn’t possibly be worse than with Hillary.”
Amen. The Supreme Court issue is enough for me.
But I also continue to believe that, with the vested Congressional officeholders looking down their collective nose at Trump, Trump’s greatest value to us lies in the gridlock he’s going to cause.
If he wins, Congress will, first thing (and finally!) rein in executive power. They completely failed to do this with BO, and they would likely never do it while Hillary was president, but Trump will appall them enough to get them to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
Then, out of pique, Trump will look to his veto power. And, if Trump does win, his coattails will be at least strong enough to give him a large enough contingent in Congress where his vetoes won’t be easily overridden.
We’ve reached a point where stopping the growth of the state would be a victory by itself. Actually legislating a shrinking of it is, of course, the goal, but we ought not let the perfect destroy the good.
Laird, what “disgraceful spectacle” at the Convention? Ted Cruz gave an excellent, stand-up-guy speech at the Convention, and the post-Convention talk to the Texas delegation was possibly the best he’s ever given. He was straightforward, answered objections, and most definitely spoke the truth as he saw it. (And not just as he saw it, but as I and may others saw it ourselves.) Exceptional.
By the way, let us not forget that for his first move, Hair said, IIRC, that he would sign the pledge to support the nominee; subsequently he said he would not necessarily support the nominee; and for his third act, he said he would. This was just tacking with the wind. And saying in Act Three that he would support was just tacking so as to look good, it being pretty clear by that point that he had no real competition.
It’s very much in Ted’s favor that in the end he refused to support Hair, unless Hair mended his ways — which qualifier was implicit in the Convention speech.
Props to Ted for that, a couple of other problems notwithstanding.
On the other hand, I feel the need to point out that IMO, Laird has it just exactly right at 7:44 p.m. above. :>)
I have not read all the following comments yet, but meanwhile I forgot to add on the point of speculation: as I said, we all speculate about both candidates. And hypothetically speaking, of course someone with no prior political record like Trump could surprise for the better. So to that extent, a loose cannon is not necessarily a bad thing, all other options considered. However, the reason I dread this particular loose cannon is that he is not a complete unknown – far from it: even though he has no political record, we do know quite a bit about him, and virtuously none of it promises (in my opinion) that he will be any less bad than Hilary once he does assume a political position.
But YMMV, just call it a hunch. If I were being forced to choose, I’d probably go nuts, but fortunately I am not.
*virtually
Alisa, could not your concern about Trump’s actual supreme court appointments (September 4, 2016, 7:00 pm) be answered (insofar as it can be) in mine above (Niall Kilmartin September 4, 2016 at 2:03 pm)? Hillary and the Democrats will collude on supreme court appointments. If Trump departs from his promised list, there is at least a realistic chance that angry republicans (Ted Cruz not least) will not play dead? This is no certainty, but by checks and balances it would place a Donald presidency, as “better than” (i.e. not as bad as) a Hillary one.
In Britain, the prime minister and the majority in the commons are naturally of the same party and cooperate (or collude as one views it). In the US, it is possible for one candidate to win yet face a house of the other party, but I assume the most likely outcome for the next two years is a white house and congress of the same party. Therefore the best candidate is one whose party does not offer double-headed coins when requested, and does not refuse to take the opportunity to arrest the candidate if fate offers it.
FWIW, I disagree with those in this thread who suggest Cruz is blameable for not pursuing cooperation with Trump. Some have replied pointing out Trump’s loud-mouthed personal abuse, but I see other reasons. Firstly, Cruz may have reasons (political andor better than that) for sticking to his convictions. Secondly, it was rather for Trump to offer an olive branch if he wanted – Cruz would have looked cringing if he had publicly asked without invitation.
In Trump’s defense (there’s a phrase that comes across as fingernails on slate) vis-a-vis Cruz’s wife, Trump from day one has been taking very personal highly offensive shots against himself, his wife, and his family, from Day One, from all points of the compass.
So, yes, he should have taken more care to think about who it was that he was addressing, and in what terms. He didn’t. But he was being reviled from the left and from the right, and I suspect he just got caught up in it.
Cruz’s sin, if it was a sin, was in placing his own self-regard ahead of the common good. To the extent that Cruz’s choice at the convention made it marginally more likely that Hillary will win, he lost my good regard, and he had been to that point my clear first choice.
Niall, you may be right regarding the Supremes appointments – but I only discussed that point in reply to Fraser. It is a very important issue, I agree, but the slim chance that Trump may not completely screw it up is not incentive enough for me to vote for him.
It’s not that I’m looking or waiting for a perfect candidate – god knows I’m not 18 anymore, and even then I hope I was not that naive. I did support Cruz in the primaries, and I still would support him come November – not because I think that he’s anywhere near perfect or maybe even good, but because he impresses me as someone who is determined to bring some positive changes, or at least stop some negative ones. That is something that would get me out to the polling place, not someone whose intentions are between bad and unknown, but he may be hypothetically manipulated into doing something sort-of positive. Thanks, but no thanks.
FWIW, I agree with your point about Cruz.
Also, thanks to bobby b for challenging the slurs against Mexican immigrants.
@bobby b
> “As between the two, I see no downside to Trump. It couldn’t possibly be worse than with Hillary.”
> Amen. The Supreme Court issue is enough for me.
Having said that and not wishing to argue with myself… lol… one should never say of a politician “they can’t do any worse” because they might take it as a challenge…
And also FWIW, I very much appreciate your comments about Mexicans. The stereotype of Mexicans is standing around on the corner waiting to find work. Something much preferably to standing around on the corner waiting to cause trouble or sell crappy drugs. The situation with immigration is a big f-ed up mess, but I hope, were I a poor Mexican farmer that I would have the balls and work ethic to do what many of these guys do.
To me he proved to be a conviction politician, so actually what you see as a minus I see as a plus. If his actions hurt Trump with a few people, I am ok with that too.
Perry, I’m not sure any of us can afford any more conviction politicians, if that means they work to elect the absolute worst choice because the second-worst choice insulted them.
At some point in the real world, a “conviction politician” becomes a self-regarding git.
So now Cruz is a self-regarding git for failing to support someone who is slightly less awful than Hilary? Sorry bobby, but that’s some truly impressive mental gymnastics. I mean, I can see the point coming from people who care about The Party above all – happily, I’m not one of those, and could not care less. I care about the country and its people, and if the party can’t work for those, then I say good riddance. I suspect and hope that Cruz feels the same.
Not that the demise of the stupid GOP is in any way Cruz’ fault. They brought it all on themselves over many years – so to repeat, good riddance.
Alisa, I was maybe less clear than I could have been.
I couldn’t care less about The Party. The Party has shown itself to be less than useless, of low character, and hurtful to the welfare of the object of my true concern: The People.
I think that Cruz – who had my vote as one of the very few politicians of great character who shared my moral imperatives – wasted much progress towards a better future for us when he failed to endorse the candidate in a binary selection who opposed Hillary.
We’re all going to be worse off for it. I say this not out of love for Trump, but out of loathing for Hillary et al.
How so?
Indeed, Perry.
Indeed, Alisa (twice, just above).
bobby b: “Cruz’s sin, if it was a sin, was in placing his own self-regard ahead of the common good.”
Um. You mean Cruz should put the “common good” ahead of himself? Isn’t that sort of Collectivist?
FWIW, I was very disappointed in Dr. Carson’s turnaround. Why he would suddenly embrace the unembraceable is beyond me. It smacks of someone who’s unwilling to let go of being somewhat of an Importance in the Beltway. Or else, I suppose, completely naïve.
So why in the world should Ted Cruz end up carrying Trump’s water, putting up with his bad behaviour, and so on? Especially if, should a Trump Presidency turn out badly (which it almost surely would, in several ways, but hopefully not all of them), it would be partly on his conscience that he supported and possibly stumped for this creature; thereby showing that his dedication to the Constitution and its principles really were, yes, empty words when push came to shove.
. . .
I have heard, in amazement, other people criticizing still other people for putting their principles ahead of The Common Good or some such. The people I’m talking about argue that to do so is specifically to put themselves first. Actually true, when you think about it in the light of Miss R’s philosophy, parts of which imply the exact same thing. The difference is that she’s all for it, as she values the individual, in principle, rather than the Collective: in which the individual has no importance, no value, no reason to exist, save as a slave to the wants and needs of the Collective.
This is quite different from choosing to aid the existence and health of some group as one of your very own very important values, or aims in life.
Well, Alisa at 9:56 and 9:58. :>) Couple more slid in there while I was Composing.
And in light of bobby b’s subsequent remark, I’ll withdraw some percentage of my criticism. I admit to overlooking the phrase “if it was a sin,” which changes the interpretation of the remark quite a bit. Given that phrase, the remark could quite reasonably be taken to mean something like “Some of those who fault Ted do so on the grounds that he was placing his own self-regard ahead of the common good.”
July: indeed. But then, not quite. Here’s why: of course I agree with Rand’s position here, that’s a given. But that is beside the point – the point being, if a political candidate claims to be working of behalf of the people and look out for their interests (which virtually all of them do), then they should put the people first, even at the expense of their own self-interests. If they’d rather look out for their own self interests, that’s is perfectly fine, but then they should not claim otherwise and generally should stay out of politics.
It is also perfectly reasonable, legitimate and even desirable for them to work for their political party and look out for its interests – but that only so long as said party works for the people and on their behalf. Members of political parties should never lose sight of the principle that these parties are the means to a larger end, not an end in and of themselves. Sadly, many of them often forget that.
How so?
Cruz (and a few other less-visible candidates) garnered more enthusiastic national support for a conservative, smaller-government philosophy than I had thought possible in our current climate. He did it, not via some Reaganesque force of palatable television character, but by the intelligence of his words, the consistency of his positions, and his ability to connect with a largely hidden wave of discontent.
He brought us to a point further along than I had thought possible on the continuum. I was a devoted follower quite early – my exposure to him had come more in the legal field than in the political one, and he was a mind of some note well before he started making a national name for himself as a pol. But, even as one of his adherents, I did not expect him to win any sort of mass popularity contest.
(Because, face it, the man is an abrasive, egotistical jerk. He has few friends, he annoys the hell out of most who deal with him – it’s been his reputation since law school. As I type this, I acknowledge that I would vote for him for president still, in a heartbeat, because the strengths for that position that he does possess easily outweigh the individual jerkiness. Heck, that might well be a strength for that position itself.)
But he did advance the cause far more successfully than I had expected.
Had he not succumbed to the personal, I think he could have advanced the cause even further. “Advancing the cause”, to me now, means as a first principle keeping Hillary and Co. out of power. I’m almost sixty. If Hillary wins, I do not think that we will be able to even begin repairing the damage to our constitutional republic before I’m dead.
I wish he had viewed it all not as endorsing Donald Trump, but as continuing in a leading role in refuting what Hillary stands for. He could have done that, he could have taken a lot of wind out of the #neverTrumpers, he could have continued empowering the philosophy he did so much to boost, but he chose to take his ball and go home.
And I think less of him because of it.
Julie, I think the term “the common good” has been appropriated by some to limit its meaning.
I would like to see society move to a place of free markets, with limited governmental meddling; a place where each person is judged, not on group characteristics, but on individual ones; a place that recognizes that our performance, because of human nature, is enhanced by incentives and pressures and that thus allowing for a welfare state to grow fat is a self-sustaining evil.
When I work towards such a place, I do so for the common good. It would be good for more of us were our society to move that way.
I’d hardly call that collectivist.
Alisa is correct in her comment at 10:33.
And as to Cruz, he promised (along with 17 or so other wannabes) to support the Party’s nominee. He lied. Nice “principles” he’s adhering to. His speech at the Republican convention was fine as far as it went, but if he wasn’t going to use the platform to endorse (even if not overtly work to support) his party’s nominee he should have declined the invitation. The man has no class.
Oh dear. Laird, to break a promise given in good faith is distinctly NOT to lie. And I am not aware of any evidence that Ted made his promise in bad faith.
bobby b, as to “the common good,” you make a good point.
As to Cruz, from his point of view — and mine — as far as I can see, he did act in “the common good” by refusing to support Trump at the time of the Convention. He refused to betray America and our future by putting up a pretense that Trump was other than as he so flagrantly is.
As a matter of fact — and if my memory serves, as it so often does not — Cruz made remarks just a bit later, maybe the next day or the day after, saying that although he would not “support” Trump, he would probably vote for him.
He simply had no intention of taking part in the sale to the American public a bill of goods.
Nor do I think it was at all out of line for him to speak as he did at the Convention. He did not insult, smear, or even refer to Hair in any way, except in the third sentence of his speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhqM9ZnVmI
But, Julie, he did so at the cost of empowering Hillary. I won’t complain that he acted as his personal philosophy and values directed – but the cost was simply too high.
When someone sticks to their principles and takes the pain from it, that’s admirable. When someone sticks to their principles and millions of others take the pain for it, to no other greater good, that’s . . . I don’t know what it is, but it falls short of “admirable.”
Julie @7:56 PM:
I’m reminded of the Mae West quote: Between two evils, I pick the one I’ve never tried before.
Ted, Mae always had useful advice. ;>)
bobby b, the reason so many of us are so conflicted is that we see your point all too well. But Ted’s message was not “Don’t vote for Trump.” It was “Vote your conscience.” He put the choice and the responsibility on each individual voter, which is where it belongs. Furthermore, everybody knew what that meant: “Don’t vote for Shrill.” Surely that much was blatantly obvious. I think in fact that he said, in effect, “Vote, but not for Shrill.”
It’s extremely unfortunate, unfair, and unjust that in some cases all of us suffer from the poor choices of the rest of us. But that’s the reality.
And if Shrill is elected, I promise you Ted will be taking the pain of it, just like everyone else. Do you think he doesn’t know this perfectly well?
In any case, everybody here seems to have staked out his or her turf, and I don’t think anyone has the slightest intention of moving to some other patch.
Ted Schuerzinger
> I’m reminded of the Mae West quote: Between two evils, I pick the one I’ve never tried before.
Ah, I think this is the thread winner…
>Trump is everything what NeverTrumpers say and more. Life long liar, thief and con man, who always backstabbed and betrayed everyone.<
right: see hillary clinton watergate committee and proceed to the present mr. rocket scientist.
“In any case, everybody here seems to have staked out his or her turf, and I don’t think anyone has the slightest intention of moving to some other patch.”
Isn’t that the Internet Motto? (;>)
Bobby, if I understand correctly, your position regarding Cruz’ behavior at the convention rests on the assumption that Trump would make a much-less-worse POTUS than Hilary. As I said here and elsewhere many times, I happen to disagree, very strongly so. I guess I could go as far as conceding the point made here that he will be slightly less bad than Clinton, seeing as the gap between my position and that one is not all that wide to begin with – but painting this man as some kind of savior of the Nation, worthy of the gesture you seem to have expected from Cruz is ludicrous in my opinion. I guess you and I will have to agree to disagree on that. And hey, if Trump does win and proves to be what his supporters expect of him – I’ll be more than happy to have been proven wrong.
I am with Julie all the way regarding Cruz’ speech.
Put ‘er there, Pard. :>)
My impression is that the odds are better for a manageably poor outcome with Trump than with Clinton. They’re both lousy candidates, but at least Trump is a lousy candidate of the sort that the system is designed to handle (and various of his problems remind me of things that have been handled in the past). The Constitution is designed for various kinds of adversarial government including a fraction of aggressively unprincipled people, and both the Constitution and the older British political culture it descends from have conventions and traditions to incentivize demonstrating “look, nothing up my sleeve,” that an act of governance is aboveboard even when the actor isn’t particularly trustworthy. (Jury trials, right to publicly air grievances, recordkeeping and reporting and parliamentary-investigation requirements, and dozens of other things, only some of which we’ve abandoned or completely worked around since the 1700s.) Trump, in my judgment, will be rationally tempted to use some of the existing ones, and could even conceivably be tempted to revive a dead one or two; and in most cases, using those mechanisms requires actually not having much up one’s sleeve. Hillary would come to office more precommitted to the opposite (most dramatically by not being in prison only courtesy of over-the-top prosecutorial favoritism, but also heading a formal party and informal coalition whose core credo celebrates bypassing the entire Constitutional headache machine by aggressive oathbreaking by courts all the way up through the Supreme Court, and being the aggrieved party in the celebrated Citizens United case that her faction howls to overturn). Hillary is also much more the candidate of the bureacracy, the courts, the press, and insider stakeholders like lawyers and universities. So even though they’re both bad candidates, the normal restraints on spectacular misgovernance seem much more likely to work effectively to restrain spectacular Trump misgovernance than spectacular Clinton misgovernance.
Trump does seem to have more a rational temptation to certain bad populist policies than Hillary does, gross protectionism in particular, and nothing in the mechanisms I appealed to above would protect us against that. And either candidate could give us an escalation of police-protected street violence against the opposition. It is not rare for someone who’s only slightly suggested abusing power to do so energetically once in power, and the mechanisms that in ordinary times would limit Trump have probably been badly undermined on this issue by evidence (like video footage) of police protecting attacks on Trump’s supporters. But Hillary has already been unusually dirty as in-power figures go w.r.t. corruption, abusing power against opponents, suppressing political speech, flagrantly violating laws at the felony level, and destroying evidence which likely reveals more abuses, and bad though Trump is, it doesn’t seem to me a safe bet that he will turn out to be unusually dirty in a comparable way. One reason is just naive betting odds: sure, “power corrupts” is a good point, but still lots of seamy politicians don’t turn out to be as dirty as that even when they are in power. Another reason is that for Trump in particular (compared to entrenched politicians with wide existing corrupt support in the formal organs and informal creatures of the state) it’d be less smooth sailing to do so.
My take resembles Julie’s and Alisa’s: Cruz said “Vote your conscience” and a senior Republican quickly explained that as meaning ‘vote for Trump”. It was rather on Trump (to whom Cruz gave a copy of his speech in advance) and his supporters if they did not take that obvious route.
My own comments in this thread could be summarised as “Vote for the candidate who will be more (externally) checked and balanced”, which is rather a similar take.
@Niall Kilmartin
> “Vote for the candidate who will be more (externally) checked and balanced”
This along with William Newman’s excellent comment would surely advocate for Trump? Given that his party mostly hates him it is simply another check and balance. HRC would get a rubber stamp from all congress folk with a D after their name, Trump would not. From this it seems that Trump would be the gridlock candidate.
Niall, was it you who said that this election is most likely to result in the same party holding both the White House and Congress? If so, can you explain why you think so?
A point I’ve been making more and more lately is that Trump’s support isn’t really for him; he is simply the ‘flag’ of a voting public that has observed that whoever is ‘in’, and whatever programs they promote, things do not go well but the insiders prosper anyway. Having concluded that a system so mired in incompetence and corruption will not fix itself, these voters are opting for a changing of the guard; and there Trump is, the outsider’s outsider, modestly offering his services.
Now, Trump may be as evil as his opponents paint him (but bear in mind that American politics has become two troops of howler monkeys disputing territory), but even if he is, electing him reminds the insiders forcefully of who they work for, which is an important outcome; and I really cannot think of anything even ‘evil Trump’ could do against the opposition of the remaining old guard that would come close to the harm Clinton could do with the support of a ‘healthy’ establishment.
This election isn’t between Trump and Clinton, but between the voters and the government class; it remains to be seen if enough voters can be frightened into voting to keep the government class in clover.
Trump is an imperfect flag for a sovereign people, but it’s time the Sovereign took charge again.
Absolutely.
And this is where you and at least some of his supporters are wrong: the problem with Trump is not that he’s evil (which I doubt anyway), but that he is very much an insider.
“to break a promise given in good faith is distinctly NOT to lie.”
Well, then please give it another name, Julie. (Personally, I do not think it was given “in good faith”, as at the time he assumed that he would be the winner and never expected that he would have to honor that pledge, but I suppose we’ll never know.) How about “betray”? “Break faith”? “Forswear”? “Play false”? I’m not sure any of those would be seen as an improvement over “lie”. But whatever
nameeuphemism you give it, it is NOT synonymous with “principled.”What William Newman said.
As to Cruz’s speech, it would have been perfectly acceptable for him to say “vote your conscience” in another setting, and even to maintain a discreet silence. But it was not OK for him to use the national platform Trump graciously gave him to cut Trump off at the knees, and reduce his party to weakly asserting that Cruz had somehow vaguely implied that this meant “not Hillary”. He deserved the boos he got.
There was a point, in the early to middle part of the campaign (after Walker withdrew) that I supported Cruz as being the “least bad” of the candidates. But he will never have my support again (except, possibly, for Supreme Court). #nevercruz.
Well, if that’s your opinion, Laird, then that’s your opinion. It’s not mine, what can I say.
And Trump flip-flopped on the pledge three times, or maybe actually four — I forget exactly. So by your argument (which I think does work for Trump, as I explained above), how come Cruz is scum-of-the-earth for pledge breakage, whereas Hair gets a pass?
Because, Julie, whatever “pledge” Trump might have given, he has not broken it. Cruz has. QED.
And you never answered my question of what name you would give to an oath-breaker.
Alisa (September 5, 2016 at 4:42 pm) “Niall, was it you who said that this election is most likely to result in the same party holding both the White House and Congress? If so, can you explain why you think so?”
Yes, in (September 4, 2016 at 8:23 pm) I wrote: “… I assume the most likely outcome for the next two years is a white house and congress of the same party.” There was no great thought behind that – simply an assumption that even with two very doubtful candidates, how people vote for president will correlate with how they vote for senate and house, and an awareness of precedent – Clinton 1992-4, Obama 2008-10, that kind of thing. This election is quite unusual enough that ticket -splitting may happen more than usual, and someone in the US is far better placed than I to guess if that is so.
Laird, while I think the OP has a point, I’d suggest it can be turned around against over-harsh criticism of Cruz. Surely the mental and moral exertion required for #NeverTrumpers to vote for him would suffice to turn #nevercruz into something much more positive for Cruz. It would be poor tactics to ask that distaste for Trump be endured while indulging distaste for Cruz. Trump himself seems prone to such tactics, but we should not be.
I’ve offered some defences of Cruz in my posts above. And of course my general argument for Trump as the less bad option positively requires people like Cruz in the senate.
“Bobby, if I understand correctly, your position regarding Cruz’ behavior at the convention rests on the assumption that Trump would make a much-less-worse POTUS than Hilary.”
Yes.
But much less because of the individual specifics of each of them, and more because of who they would bring along with them.
Hillary’s election would also empower the far left wing of her party – the Bernie Bros, the Acornites, and far, far worse. They would all see her election as their own path to power, and Hillary et al probably aren’t going to limit them.
And we already know the short list for the USSC that her entourage has in mind. Goodbye, Constitution.
Trump’s entourage is mostly going to be misfits who are reviled by GOP stalwarts. They’re going to be bombastic, erratic, and ineffectual. He’ll bring us gridlock and great entertainment, while leaving us to fight for a Cruz another day, our Constitution at least as intact as it is today.
“And you never answered my question of what name you would give to an oath-breaker.”
As I understand the discussion, the issue is not general oathbreaking, but specifically giving a promise in exchange for some benefit, then disregarding the promise. As far as I know, we don’t have a good catchy name for that specific kind of misbehavior. People commonly do seem to have the specific concept, though, even without having the specific word. It’s more or less the same way that even people who don’t have the specific word “schadefreude” in their vocabulary commonly seem to have that specific concept nonetheless.
I think there might be related legal terms of art, but as far as I know none of them are punchy enough or widely understood enough to be useful in ordinary speech or writing.
To appeal to the _History of England_ again, Macaulay was not shy about mining his large vocabulary to vent about Stuart perfidy, but for this kind of misbehavior it seems he can only appeal to the common understanding of the specific concept without finding a suitably specific word.
E.g. re. Charles I:
And re. Charles II…
Laird. I’d call him someone who broke a promise. Of course.
So by you it’s OK to go back on your word several times: Makes you a mere flip-flopper, and lord knows we’re used to those. But just once, not OK: Makes you a promise-breaker. And in Trump’s case what was broken was a “pledge,” which at least to me, is a less binding form of promise than is an oath; which is how you characterize Cruz’s broken promise.
Trump, gracious? Now there’s an epithet it would never occur to me to apply to him. There’s a slang expression that does occur to me: Lipstick on a pig. (Insulting to pigs, of course.)
Yet you’d like to see “Lyin’ Ted” (now who thought up that moniker, and chanted it from every Middlesex village and farm, not to mention almost every time he opened his mouth on national TV) in the Supreme Court. OK. Whatever.
. . .
Niall, I agree: we do need people like Sen. Cruz in the Senate.
And this:
. . .
Isn’t everybody getting tired of this? How about something enticing about Stinker Pinker in the match at Hockley-cum-Meston?
There’s no doubting that he was a part of pay-to-play corruption, but was he a villain or a victim? If he only paid bribes to keep the services he should have had for free from being witheld, and made nice with the politicians because evil doesn’t forget slights, then he’s exactly the kind of ‘insider’ who knows where the bodies are buried and may delight in digging them up. There’s no one more ‘outside’ than an apostate.
“Isn’t everybody getting tired of this?”
Me? I’m a lawyer. It says right on my license that I can’t stop arguing until someone turns out the lights.
Oh, good point, bobby. I shoulda figured that out for myself. ;>)
@bobby b
> Me? I’m a lawyer. It says right on my license that I can’t stop arguing until someone turns out the lights.
Surely you mean “until someone runs out of money”?
Well, that’s not how they phrase it on the license. That would be crass. Think of “turns out the lights” as a euphemism. 😉
Trump is an insider. He is quite happy to use government to advance his interests. (He loves the Kelo decision.) He has a very broad net of connections into the billionaire class.
But (very telling) he was a very public fan of Hillary Clinton for many years. He donated to her campaigns, he donated to the Clinton Foundation, he endorsed her for the Senate and he praised her as Secretary of State nominee.
And he invited her to his wedding. It’s one thing when one has to shake hands with a louse because the diplomacy. I recall a story about George V and IIRC Curzon. The King asked Curzon whether he would meet Lenin and Trotsky at an upcoming conference. Curzon replied that he didn’t have much choice about who he met in the King’s service; he had recently shaken hands with a sodomistic Turk.
But one doesn’t have to associate with them in one’s private life.
I saw an interesting comment about Trump’s toe-dancing around the support he is getting from the alt-right. He avoids denouncing or explicitly contradicting them because he thinks it would alienate a large part of his base. In other words, he’s a New York liberal who thinks that the populist conservatives he has won over are all closet racists.
And Trump is somebody who has no problem at all with swiping other people’s stuff, at least not when he can get government to do it for him.
Viz. Vera Coking, Atlantic City — but good for her, she din’ let no low-down, no-good, property-swiping scumbag take her house. According to WikiFootia, she’d already turned down $ 1,000,000 from Bob Guccioni (publisher of Penthouse) 10 years before Hair tried to wrest it from her steely grip. I heard him whining about it on UT: “I asked her nicely. I made a very generous offer. All right, now we’ll do it the hard way.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking
Viz., that prattling he treated us to (via UT) on how he was very happy with the Kelo decision. “New London is a very nice community, blahblahblah, should have an attractive appearance,” or words to that effect. Sorry, I don’t have the link.
Thief.
*Ptui !*, as an online participant in one my favorite libertarian-ish boards used to say when disgusted.
Rich, interesting about Curzon and George V. Thanks.
I can’t entirely seem to get a fix on you have to do to be an Alt-Right. One board says you have to use the term “c**kservative” a lot. A conservative site says St. Milo of Y. is of the Alt-Right. I’d had the impression that they were part of this “Dark Enlightenment” or “Manosphere” crowd — ??
Alt-R at least started out as the “white rights” group who believe that there needs to be a white-centric lobby to keep things fair in the face of every other racial group arguing for preferences.
It also seems to encompass males lobbying for men’s rights, again on the theory that there needs to be a balancing influence since all of the other fifteen (as of Thursday) genders are lobbying for their own power.
But, just like “Tea Party” and “neocon”, the term got used by every journolist-type out there to represent whatever racist, sexist evil they could find and point to. Alt-Right no longer has any real meaning other than “those icky conservatives.”
(By the original meanings, I wouldn’t count Milo among them. He’s always been more of a pure anti-SJW than anything else.)
LOL
Sounds like it, yes. Bobby, it looks like you’ll have to turn the lights off – as to money, though… 😛
Forgot to add: If you want to get a flavor of the true alt-right, go read John Derbyshire, Steve Sailor, maybe some Vox Day, and this article:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
” he was a very public fan of Hillary Clinton for many years.”
As long as he could make money off her.
One thing I think you can say about Trump is that he is not dumb.
This is more than you can say about Hillary.
One thing I think you can say about Trump is that he is not dumb.
Gold. Solid gold. First genuine belly laugh I’ve had in a long time. Thank you.
@Julie near Chicago
> And Trump is somebody who has no problem at all with swiping other people’s stuff, at least not when he can get government to do it for him.
For sure. I don’t think anyone saying that Trump is a great candidate or a good person. Anyone who has a snowball’s chance of getting elected is going to be a thief, a bad person and an immoral slimebag.
That is what the American people want in their leaders (why else would they always choose them?) and that is what the political system filters for.
Voting is like eating your dinner out of the dumpster. It is all pretty gross, but you have to try to find the stuff that is the least slimy and disgusting out of your choices.
Although I think that is Trump in a contest between him and Hillary, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make me hurl.
I very much doubt it.
Good question – why are you going to do it come November?
That much is certain.
I think constantly voting for “the lesser evil” has finally produced a situation in the USA in which there is no lesser evil this time, just two qualitatively different greater evils.
I think Gary Johnson is a jackass: a political dunce who not only fails to pick up that the zeitgeist has turned decisively against people who pander to SJWs (which explains 75% of Trump’s appeal), but who is also a “libertarian” who also fails to “get” freedom of association & disassociation.
So faced with a choice between a jackass and two greater evils, if you hold a gun to my head, I would vote for the jackass. But if you don’t hold a gun to my head, I would not vote at all & arrange my affairs so I have two passports and very few fixed assets in the USA.
^
So, not voting will fix the problem…
There is no fixing of problems in real life – but yes, once the voter turnout drops below 50%, things will definitely take a different turn.
No, not voting will give you a warm feeling that you’ve “struck a blow”, or “made a point”, and you won’t have to hold your nose and vote for Lesser Evil even though your act has granted to Unmitigated Disaster one more vote up on Lesser Evil.
The virtue-signaling for the following four years will also be enhanced.
Once Unmitigated Disaster wins, I suppose we can just move across the ocean, but frankly most of that area is already in the sociological condition that we all fear Unmitigated Disaster is going to cause here.
Taking your ball and going home is tough when you’re already home.
Funny, but that has never been my experience.
You mean there is no life without voting, or do you mean that voting will prevent the unmitigated disaster?
Not going anywhere, just not playing ball – there are other games, you know.
“You mean there is no life without voting, or do you mean that voting will prevent the unmitigated disaster?”
I mean that any step left untaken that might have helped to prevent Unmitigated Disaster – Hillary – would be a mistake.
Trump’s a buffoon. We can live through a buffoon. Hillary will bring changes that will be very difficult to ever recover from. Hillary will bring us to parity with most of Europe, with a weakened constitution, a far more socialist economy and philosophy, near-open borders, and a demonization of nationalism.
@Alisa
> Good question – why are you going to do it come November?
I didn’t say I was going to vote Trump, on the contrary, I am likely to vote Johnson primarily because I’ll be at the poll anyway voting on some of the horrible initiatives the State of Illinois has on the ballot and some local elections that matter.
Having said all of that, I did want to point out an interesting phenomenon that runs contrary to conventional wisdom among Libertarians.
Excepting this election there is a general theme among libertarians that Repubs are a little better than dems (and I think that is primarily because social issues have mostly been dealt with, and it is fiscally that America is most f-ed up.)
There is also a belief that voting Lib takes votes from Repubs.
But the evidence seems to be quite the contrary here. What you see is in a two person poll Hillary does much better than in a four person poll. And evidently Johnson is taking votes from her, because the Stein polls way lower than Johnson.
I have no idea why that is, but that does seem to be the conclusion one would reasonably draw from the polling data.
“Voting is like eating your dinner out of the dumpster. It is all pretty gross, but you have to try to find the stuff that is the least slimy and disgusting out of your choices.”
Fraser wins the thread.
He does, if only for the sheer imagery of it :-O
Fraser: fair enough. BTW, I was about to settle on voting for Johnson (again), but then you know what happened (or rather, only God and Johnson know what happened) – so here I am, can’t even get to he beach in Cancun that Perry keeps advertising here…
Perry de Havilland (London) September 6, 2016 at 1:18 pm: “I think Gary Johnson is a jackass”
I agree; indeed, that seems positively kind to him, given how very un-libertarian his views are. He seems as (or more?) out-of-place as the libertarian candidate than Trump as the Republican (which is saying something). Surely the point of no-chance-of-winning 3rd parties is to be at least ideologically sane, not to repeat the “travesty of the party name” antics of the major two. It all adds to the joy of the season that Gary seems so wholly inadequate as a means of evading the dilemma.
Fraser Orr (September 6, 2016 at 5:13 pm) “… evidently Johnson is taking votes from her … ” Well, yeah, he would, given his actual views. That leaves me not so clear why Perry would vote for him even with a gun to his head, or Fraser either – unless, given the certainty of his losing, it means more votes counted against the word ‘libertarian’, with the Jackass not in office to discredit the term. But if you’re in any case going to have to hold your nose to vote, well – see my earlier posts.
(That said, I do appreciate that, being British, I have a “get out of consequences free” card that those of you with US votes lack in this discussion. Never have I less regretted lacking a transatlantic vote.)
Niall, my suspicion is that Johnson secretly harbors a hope that he actually has a chance.
…which of course would make him insane in addition to being a jackass.
I mean a chance at winning the election, not merely entering the debates.
There is no lesser evil this time.
I do not “hate” Donald Trump – he can be a charming and witty conman at times.
The problem is much bigger than one man – it is the effort to take over “the right”.
We all know what “the left” means Patrick – they are collectivists who believe in ever more statism for “the good of the poor”.
But what is “the right”?
Is the “the right” people who at least IN THEORY believe in less collectivism? However, much they fail (sell out) in practice?
Or is “the right” something else?
In Germany “the left” meant the Marxists – but “the right” were the Nazis, also collectivists.
Heads we lose – tails we also LOSE.
Donald Trump is not a member of the “Alt Right” – but his victory would mean that the Alt Right (who have been his main supporters) would become what “the right” means.
The left would continue to be the people who want ever more statism for the “good of the poor”.
But “the right would become those people who also want every more statism – for the good of “the race” or “the nation”.
And anti collectivists?
We WOULD HAVE NO PLACE – we would, essentially, cease to exist.
The “Alt Right” do not admire Winston Churchill or Barry Goldwater or Joe Foss – they are not patriots, they are nationalits (a very different thing). They would destroy patriotism – in the sense of people who believe in the Bill of Rights (British or American). Or the Bills of Rights of any of the States – including the Southern States for they were bashful about their racialism (the Alt Right openly embrace it – and despise Old Whig concepts such as fundamental rights and the Rule of Law).
I hope you understand Patrick.
This is why Mr Trump must be defeated.
What the opposition to the left is – that is at stake.
It is not a matter of “losing” – it is a matter of no longer existing (in any meaningful sense).
The stakes are that high.
Thank you, Paul – that really does sum it all up, perfectly.
@Paul
I really don’t agree. I’m not even sure what “alt-right” means. I think it is a retread of a meme to attach to Trump. Has he ever claimed to be AltRight?
If you look at Trump’s position on the issues he is far closer the the libertarian position than HRC with the exception of two big loud issues — immigration and foreign trade.
Based on his claims:
He is more pro gun rights.
He is more pro choice in health care
He is advocates lower taxes
He is more isolationist in foreign policy (though it trade his ideas are bad, bad, bad)
He is in favor of more choice and more local control in education.
He will select better justices for the courts, including the USSC.
Of course you can come up with a list of some of his terrible ideas, but he is broadly more libertarian than HRC on most things (much as the David Cameron was more libertarian than Jeremy Corbyn — which is to say yes but not by much.)
If you think that he will piss on the right’s brand, you are crazy. The right has been pissing on its own brand for years. What exactly does the right stand for except “elect us”. Bill Kristol and his cohorts enthusiastically supported Bush, McCain and Romney, and they were in some respects worse than Trump. What they really hate about him is that he is rude, classless and not one of them.
The Libertarians will survive Trump, in fact they might even grow because of Trump (with the dilution that is inevitable with growth). Johnston is currently polling twenty times higher than Harry Browne. And that is thanks to both the mainstream candidates.
But I don’t particularly say that to advocate for him. He is dreadful, just less dreadful than HRC who is a terrifying human being. I can certainly sympathize though with anyone who choses to vote Trump, Clinton, Johnston or None Of the Above.
(And I’ll say again, my biggest concern WRT to HRC is simply this. Her email server was amateur hour. Any serious foreign intelligence agency hacked it, and has all her emails. Assuming there is something serious embarrassing in there, and there surely is, than means were she to win she would be directly subject to the blackmail of several foreign governments. Might sound like tin hat brigade or crazy movie plot, but the facts are plainly there for anyone to see.)
yes trump would be better than hillary, but a trump victory would
also be a victory for the alt-right or ‘dark enlightenment’ movement which is pretty worrying,
for the alt right are anti-semitic to the core.
yes the alt right takeover in the form of a president Trump would be a crushing blow to the leftist academic-media-government establishment, and as such it is tempting to support them, but one should remember that the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.
A very small portion of the amorphous movement called alt-right is Neo-Nazi (i.e. antisemitic). Actually there is no such thing as Alt-right, and the use of this name, and it’ pegging to Trump is just scare propaganda.
Trump’s adversaries try to claim he is a dangerous bigot, when all he is is a clown and a shrewd con-man or salesperson (maybe the other way round).
sorry but that is simply wishful thinking, jew hatred is central to ‘alt right’ ideology.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435527/anti-semitism-donald-trump-right-nationalism-white-supremacism
@ragingnick
> sorry but that is simply wishful thinking, jew hatred is central to ‘alt right’ ideology.
But this is a classic error. You say person A has some attributes of group G, therefore any attribute of group G should be attributed to person A.
Other false equivalencies?:
Jose is a young Latino man. Many young Latino men are illegal immigrants, therefore Jose is an illegal immigrant.
Hillary Clinton is a white woman who lived in the deep south for a long time, southern women often have latent racist tendencies, therefore Hillary Clinton must be a racist.
Can you give some examples of where Trump has been anti-semitic? As far as I can see this whole “alt-right” thing, which AFAIK Trump has never embraced, is simply HRC’s latest smear tactic against him.
Can people please read the comments to which they respond carefully, before responding? No one here accused Trump of antisemitism – read Paul Marks’ comment to see what he actually wrote.
That aside, antisemitism and racism do exist – whatever the latest label has been attached to people who espouse such views. How they relate to Trump (regardless of whether Trump relates to them or not) is explained in Paul’s comment.
Alisa
> Can people please read the comments to which they respond carefully, before responding?
But Paul’s claim that “the Alt Right (who have been his main supporters)” is plainly wrong. The article ragingnick linked to to claim Trump was antisemitic by association says this:
This isn’t a majority of Trump supporters, obviously. It’s not even a large minority. But there is a significant core of Trump support that not only traffics in anti-Semitism but celebrates it
Now what are we to make of such a vague claim. “a significant core”? Any person saying some of the things Shapiro relates is “significant”, significantly bad, but how many? 10, 100? 1000? We are left to guess.
My experience of Trump supporters is quite different. They are just ordinary folks who are sick of getting screwed and embrace someone who dares challenge “the system”. The idea that Trump ascendant somehow releases this “significant core” of antisemites is both unsupported by data and is completely contrary to the types of people that I see surrounding Trump.
The fear that the election of HRC will release a plague of SJWs on the country would not be because a “significant core” of her supporters are SJWs — on the contrary, most HRC supporters are just people who honestly buy a soft collectivist ideology. However, the SJW plague is a legitimate worry specifically because HRC herself is an SJW, and has support. There is no reason I am aware of to imagine that Trump is an antisemite.
There are lots of reasons to criticize Trump. Julian Assange said, when asked why all his releases were dumping on HRC, said something like “what comes out of Trump’s mouth is enough”, and I agree. Antisemitism doesn’t seem to be all that valid a claim though, and neither does there seem any reason to believe that Trump’s election will release a wave of antisemitism.
On the other hand HRC will release a plague of SJWs on us — telling businesses where their employees can pee is just the beginning — and she will inculcate that philosophy into our institutions for generations via her court appointments bottom to top.
Fraser, Jacob wrote:
Some do, but no one on this thread did that – there have been other and very different objections to Trump presented here, so I think it is more constructive to address those.
You wrote:
Same question as to Jacob. Someone somewhere may have said that Trump eats live babies – do we really need to bring it up here?
Now, we can all argue about Trump’s supporters, and while you have never seen antisemites/racists among them, others may have. That’s a separate issue though, and one that’s difficult to quantify. I do agree with you though that SWJs are currently a much greater threat than KKK types. Etc.
Once again, if you want to know about alt-r before you assert its characteristics, please go read Milo’s rather long and detailed explanation of it:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
I’d also recommend this, from Claremont:
http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/
Sorry Bobby, but that metaphor does not apply to the current situation at all. A country is not like an airplane, and the head of its government is not like a pilot. There is life outside politics. That is not to say that politics has no significant impact on our personal lives – of course it does, very much so. But to think that if the wrong guy/gal becomes the President, we are all gonna die a day after the Inauguration Ball is just a bit over the top.
That said, the US and the West in general are facing a very difficult and unpleasant future, but I’m sure that not even someone like Cruz can significantly soften the coming blow. That does not mean though that the end of the world is coming either, no matter who occupies the White House.
And also, thanks for the link to Milo’s article, it is very interesting and rings true as far as I can tell. If these are in fact some of the people who are among core Trump supporters, that is just another reason for me to distance myself from the man – regardless of his own feelings about them, if any.
” But to think that if the wrong guy/gal becomes the President, we are all gonna die a day after the Inauguration Ball is just a bit over the top.”
Well, that’s a bit literal. I think it can be read more subtly than that.
I’m sort of a fan of our Constitution, and the precision of thought that went into its drafting. I think the USA became as great and powerful of a beacon of freedom and opportunity as it did only because of that document, and because of the way we’ve been able to hang on to it over the years without allowing factional whims to alter it.
I see Hillary et al – not Hillary alone, but the groups who are now ready to assume power with her when she wins – as viewing the Constitution as an impediment to what they’d like to accomplish. I fear that their organizing abilities are more than equal to the task of finally re-writing it through the amendment process – or even through the judiciary – to the point where we finally lose the protections that it guarantees to the minority against the majority.
Once we lose that protection, I think we very quickly devolve. And I don’t see a path to regaining what is lost if that happens. I doubt our Constitution could ever again be adopted in anything like its present form.
Rome once ruled, but then it dwindled. England once ruled, but then it dwindled. I doubt the citizenry of either believed that that would ever happen, but they both strayed from disciplined paths, and it was that discipline that made them great. Our Constitution is our discipline; without it, we’ll be run on whim and faction and cronyism, and I think what was once a great experiment dies at that point. Hillary et al is that point.
Ragingnick is correct. Trump may be less evil and venal than HC, but he’s still a shockingly bad candidate for such an office. The list of his statements and comments that turn my stomach are too long to recount.
I’m unimpressed that Patrick is irritated that people aren’t more impressed at how well Trump has done. He’s taken advantage of an upsurge in white nativism and perceived/real grievances in a way unmatched by most other candidates and matched with a level of vulgarity, and undertone of approval of violence that isn’t an entirely new feature of American politics. His achievement has echoes in the Perot candidature of 1992. So it’s hardly unprecedented. My prediction is that he loses. My hope is that he loses badly enough to discredit his style of politics, but I tremble for America with Clinton in charge.
“My hope is that he loses badly enough to discredit his style of politics, but I tremble for America with Clinton in charge.”
So, let America wither because it would be rude not to.
(Look at the past year. You decry the “undertone of violence” from Trump, but all of the actual political violence came from Hillary’s side. Screw substance, form must be served.)
“but a trump victory would
also be a victory for the alt-right or ‘dark enlightenment’ movement which is pretty worrying,
for the alt right are anti-semitic to the core.
This is what has been said on this thread – and it is totally false.
It is clearly an attempt to tie Trump to antisemitism, and scare people away from him on this ground. It is an unjustified smear.
Trump seems to be an opportunist, devoid of any principles.
Hillary is an opportunist who claims she sticks to SJW principles, which I abhor. Of course, she is also a certified liar, so her claim about adherence to SJW principles is not credible.
Which is worse? Tough question. My answer is, of course, Hillary.
By the way: the philosophy that rejects principles is called Pragmatism, and is a typical or common American feature.
Perhaps what appears to be a rejection of principles is actually a recognition that sometimes principles are at odds, and one must decide which principle is most important.
I cannot stomach Trump.
But the preservation of our Constitution makes me choke back the bile and vote for him.
@Johnathan Pearce
> My hope is that he loses badly enough to discredit his style of politics
But wouldn’t you like to see HRC lose badly enough to discredit her style of politics too? She isn’t rude and boorish like Trump, but she is dreadful in so many other ways. She is plainly a liar, and she has the most dreadful way of dealing with her lies, she is plainly corrupt, and has a dreadful way of dealing with her corruption, she plainly changes her views to suit whatever way the wind blows, and had a dreadful way of covering up for her flip flops and so on an so forth.
The thing is that when Trump wants to say nasty things, he says them himself. HRC says nasty things too but she is politically astute enough to get someone else to say them for her, and often take the fall for her. It is a contemptible way to behave, and it has a name: “politics”.
The next one that is heading our way is that apparently HRC’s campaign is going for a smear campaign against Trump for his birtherism. This despite the fact that it is a well documented fact that the birtherism movement began in her original campaign against Obama.
She really is the queen of chutzpah.
bobby, I’m repeating for emphasis: I’ll vote probably vote for Trump (even though I’m in Illinois), not because I think he rides a white horse but because I’m convinced Shrill is a Ringwraith whereas Trump is sort of flagrantly what he is, speaking of the devil you know; and I agree with what I see as simple common sense: with Shrill there is 100% chance that she will contribute with all her soul and all her heart and all her might to the wreckage of America, even as she can’t quite believe she’ll kill the Golden Goose. (But apparently there are plenty more such geese whose necks she can wring, or at least whose feathers she can pluck, in the Wonderful World-Wide Planet Earth. This is her Golden Parachute, or, if you prefer, her Safety Net. You know, the one we’re all entitled to rob each other blind in order to secure for ourselves.). Whereas with Trump perhaps there is 10% CHANCE he might not irretrievably wreck us.
.
However, interesting though the Breitbart article is, Breitbart surely does seem to be among those pushing Hair. And I’m not 100% positive all its facts are strictly correct. Claremont’s piece on the other hand is pure polemic, and matches my own bias a little better than “good enough for government work,” ha-HA-ha-HA-ha-HA.
So, back to the “Alt-Right.” As it happens, a few years back I wasted some time trying to find out if the “Manosphere”/”Dark-Enlightment” folks had anything interesting to say. “Unqualified Reservations” (Mencius Moldbug = Curtis Yarvin), jim.blog (James A. Donald, used to be a strong and sensible libertarian*), a bit of Foseti, even one foray into Nick Land I think. Also a bit of TakiMag; VDare at that time at least was right off the charts in a negative way. Sam Francis? Gah! I visited Conservative Christians for [Whatever it was, I forget] — a Yahoo Group, whose mission statement was by Mr. Francis (of whom I’d never heard), and was enough to set every antenna stuck behind the boxes of junk in my belfry to waggling frantically. I never saw anything too outrageous from the group itself, but I did think they skated awfully close to the edge.
Summary: Not worth what you have to wade through to get to wherever Messrs. Moldbug & Foseti thought they were going. James A. Donald: A few pieces which sounded worth checking on and, if they passed muster, thinking about. Unfortunately, most were and are James on his particular hobby-horse, which is strong stuff, fairly disgusting, and I don’t think the Samidatistas would really enjoy. It does however contain hefty usage of “c**kservative,” ick. JUST THE SAME, the early J.A.D. posted some highly worthwhile stuff, the sort of stuff that earned my respect.
——
….Current main website……………..: jim*blog*com — [Make the obvious substitution: * = dot]
….”Natural Law and Natural Rights”…..: jim*com/rights*html — Original essay on the topic that I think is pretty good
….”James’s Liberty Index”…………..: jim*com/ — Links to several important libertarian and proto-libertarian writings
——
Now, why all this? Well, on one of those sites there was a diagram showing connections amongst the groups or promulgators of various philosophies, all going back to hubs depicting the overall concern of eight varieties of “Dark Enlightenmentistic” philosophy.
One of the hubs, “Political Philosophy,” is directly connected to Moldbug, Foseti, James A. Donald, Spandrell, and a few others. It is also directly connected to the hub labelled “Secular Traditionalists.” Directly connected to this is a site called “Alternative Right.”
.
So, after that lengthy introduction, here’s where you can find the diagram:
http://habitableworlds.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/visualizing-the-dark-enlightenment-v-1-5/
Wayback’s first catch of this diagram is from 4/27/13. Posted by “schlacter1”. Also has a link to a “Library of the Dark Enlightenment.
. . .
With the diagram firmly under our belts, a search for string “Alternative Right” website (with the quotation marks) turns up two WikiFootia Articles, of which perhaps the more interesting is the article Alt-Right. The first four of the results are as follows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right.
The other of these is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative-right.
There’s also a link to the “Radix Journal,” which currently features a piece by Richard B. Spencer (NOT Robert Spencer!) entitled “The Alt-Right Strikes Back,” which I haven’t read.
. . .
Milo: Maybe it’s mostly personality clash, but he hugely turns me off. For one thing he does that childishly stupid plea for the audience to notice him: “Look, Ma, it’s the teens — I can say whatever I please!” Yes indeed, me rebelliously adolescent lad, it ain’t illegal no more, so go ahead, throw in the f-bomb after every other word — only, aren’t you a lit
tle old for that? Anyway, we are not impressed. Nor with the other piece of your shtick, either, which I shan’t mention on this Family Site. Your first talk that I saw wasn’t bad at all, just anti-SJW boilerplate. Well, who can argue with that! The other talks, especially to the college kids, sure set a model of worthwhile, intellectual, civil discourse. We are also not amused. So long, it’s been real.
. . .
bobby, I do want to thank you for your answers to my query, and for the links. And I’m largely in agreement with you as to the bottom line. 🙂
No it has not Jacob, and it is either clueless or dishonest of you to read it that way. It says nothing about Trump, instead it does say something about at least some of his supporters – and you know as well as I do that candidates do not always get to choose who supports them among the general public. Especially if they are not very thoughtful about things they say to the media.
You may argue that these people are non-existent (you would be wrong), or that their numbers are insignificant (no idea about that), but that has nothing to do with Trump. He’s a nasty piece of work, he says a lot of nasty things, and some nasty people either choose to interpret him their way, or just see an opportunity to do so once he’s in power. None of that means that he shares their particular brand of nastiness, but unfortunately no one really cares.
Personally, he doesn’t strike me as a racist or as an antisemite. The problem with all this AltRight association with Trump (whether he asked for it or not), is that even if he doesn’t win the election, he will have helped paint the political and philosophical Right in the US as a bunch of bigots and racists. It has already intensified with the Tea Party – only then there was no Trump to go around on TV bashing all those damned foreigners, and now Trump gives those smears a basis and a justification.
Not that I personally care about these reputations – problem is, other people do. And make no mistake about what that will mean in practice for any sane and decent person who is not a leftist: feeling of intimidation, fear to express oneself and identify as right-wing, lest one be painted as a racist Trump supporter – thus further ceding the public discourse in general and in right-wing circles in particular to the PC culture, ultimately creating a political vacuum on the Right which the real racists and bigots will eventually occupy.
Shoot. Correction: Have to use Wayback to get to the diagram:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130427093449/http://habitableworlds.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/visualizing-the-dark-enlightenment-v-1-5/
Alisa, ” other people do [care about these reputations].” Yes, we do. (I’m speaking as a Tea Partier, at least in spirit. Of course it’s a movement, not a political party.)
I think you sort of overestimate the sane and decent non-leftist intimidation, etc. Personally I don’t feel intimidated; I just mostly (but only MOSTLY) don’t go in for combative confrontations with silly leftists (nearly redundant!) Although my last no-holds-barred was a year ago, mein host was a lawyer and a huge SJW (and his library featured a nice hardbound copy of Piketty). Another was a Proggie Prof of Philosophy, at the Jesuit and highly Progressive Marquette U. in Milwaukee. And the third was (I’m pretty sure) a European Social-Democrat, with a few traces of American Conservatism thrown in. These folks were all high-school classmates, and Ellie had been my Second Sister since I was 2, right up till she went to college on an Early Entrant Program as a Junior in High School; eventually she graduated from Georgetown (I think) with either an MS or a PhD in International Relations, and went to live permanently in Europe and around the world. Bobby the lawyer , and mein host, was a friend since we were FOUR, but we weren’t in contact after graduation in 1961 until early last year.
Agree with your third paragraph (which is part of Paul’s point too); but not entirely. Actually, the left will use any fact to smear you. You have a dog. What, you don’t know that Muslims are allergic to dogs? RA-A-ACISSST! What, you don’t like dogs? Listen, the planet would be better off with people than without dogs. I’ll be publicizing the fact that you’re anti-environmentalism! Also, animals have rights too, you know. Your attitude amounts to hate speech.
Or, if you can’t come up with any facts, you just make something and let it go at that. Did you know that he/she has slept with zillions of people of assorted genders, keeping it all from his/her loving spouse? (Well, truth to tell the spouse isn’t so lily-pure either….)
So there’s no point trying to avoid the chimp chips that will be thrown at you. If it suits their purpose, the left will vilify you however it can.
I am not intimidated either, Julie – but this is not about you or me, as frankly we both are too old to care. However, for a high-school or college student, or a young person entering the job market or just looking to socialize things may well be very different.
Or at least I am 😛
Whereas I, Alisa, am a young thing, a delicate fragile flower, as note my taking exception to sentence composed entirely of the f-word. 😉
(Gee, I seem to have lost my birth cert….)
Also, correction to dogs-and-anti-environmentalism: Please rewrite as “…planet would be better off without people than without dogs.” (Actually, I don’t think so, but I also think a world without dogs is a word not worth bothering with.)
.
I know, Alisa. Many young people aren’t sure enough of themselves to buck the opinions of their social circle. Only the rebellious … and the contrarian ones. (Be contrarian long enough and it becomes your style. Paraphrasing Woody Allen.)
But each person, if he’s going to be relatively independent-minded, is going to have to develop the strength somehow. “If not now, when?”
This is not to argue with your point; you’re quite right. Just making an additional point of my own.
And there has to be a vanguard that dares to challenge even the Republican PTB.
Julie: Ha! Here I thought I was giving you a requested primer on alt-R. I think I misinterpreted your query just a bit!
And, thanks for the further links. I’m not alt-R, but my surface knowledge was making me wonder if I ought to be. You made that decision easier.
(And, re Milo: I haven’t dug much into his core beliefs. I just know that I really enjoy watching him routinely and effortlessly making SJW’s hyperventilate. The enemy of my enemies is damned entertaining, at the very least!)
Actually, bobby, I did find your links interesting. From looking around your links, I think maybe — was it Breitbart? — anyway, maybe the Alt-Rt is in the eye of the beholder. It was on neoneocon.com, a U.S. board, that I saw people finding Milo a part of the Alt-Right — I think. Opinions about the positions of the A-R seem to differ widely, and I wanted to know if really they do. I think the answer is Jah.
(Neoneocon is a psychologist and recovering Dim. Every so often an inhabitant of this parish shows up there. Brian Swisher, for one, and Subotai Bahadur once in a blue moon. — Dunno if you were here when he was a regular. I was glad to “see” him.)
If you are absolutely 100% convinced that women were made to be slaves, as were the lower orders IQ-wise, then you were made for the Alt-Right and I’ll never speak to you again. Not because of your views directly, but just because it would be awfully embarrassing to have to admit I “know” you. 😉
There are, of course, people who are genuinely interested to know whether racial differences matter in potential intelligence; which is a perfectly scientific question. It’s obvious that they do in gross physical characteristics — those 10′-tall basketball players! And I’m far from a Larry Summers fan, but I thought he showed a truly scientific attitude when he said it’s conceivable that very few women end up on the Extreme Genius end of the math IQ scale precisely because they are women, and it’s a question worthy of inquiry. I quite agree.
I remember a PBS show that spent about four sentences reporting the awesomely amazing fact that dogs DO feel pain. Science had just proven it. Yeah, and any kid over age 5 or so who’s had a dog friend knows it, too. But it’s a valid scientific question; it’s just that the answer is so obviously Yes, it shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds to decide it.
Oh, I’ve found Milo a bit cloying so far, but maybe he’ll get lucky and I’ll give him another chance. 🙂
Hmmm . . .
The only thing of which I’m 100% certain concerning women is that they and I originated on different planets. FWIW, if I mention this to them, they mostly tell me they agree, but I think their reasons are slightly different than mine.
I remember reading The Bell Curve shortly after it came out (twice! for clarity) and thinking that, while it seemed to be a superior piece of scholarship concerning differences, it was doomed from the start because it could be used improperly by those thinking more in terms of “superior” rather than “different.”
To the extent that the alt-R is willing to discuss differences and distinctions, I have to admire their bravery, but those who want to draw Master Race or Dominant Sex conclusions wreck the entire genre for the rest of us.
So I think you’re safe being seen talking to me. If anything, I belong to the Weenie Wing of alt-R. Taki’s not for me.
As to the last para, bobby, I had no doubt of it. ;>)
I never did read The Bell Curve. Somehow it never really interested me. Some people say that people tend to misinterpret Mr. Murray…I don’t know. I do know that every once in awhile somebody, or his publisher, messes up the title of his magnum opus so badly that it conveys the exact opposite of what he intended. Case in point: Robert Ringer says he did exactly that when he called his book Winning through Intimidation. I agree with him! Doesn’t that sound like something our toupéed friend would write? I know it soured me on the book without my ever picking up a copy. He says that he meant “winning through” as in the phrase “we have won through!” Which always sounded weird to me anyway. There’s another example I was thinking of just yesterday, but, gosh!, that was yesterday. You can’t expect….
Well, let’s see. Women, of course, were born of Athena, who (being wise) put into us a bit of Queen Boadicca and a tou of, yes, Venus, and of Diana. Whereas Men were created by Loki, with a bit of Zeus and the King of Siam thrown in for flavor. You boys would never make it on your own — be glad you have us! *grin*
Then again, Kirk Douglas is alleged to have announced, at some point, “The king is home! I’d like a little attention, please!” –Now that always struck me as hilarious and illustrative of a marriage that at that instant at least was good, where the parties understood each other. But I mentioned it to a couple of girlfriends, separately, back in I guess the late ’80s, and both of them were horrified. 🙁
For heaven’s sake, why! –By the way, it’s a shame they couldn’t get Kirk to play Ragnar, back when he was in his prime….
Whatever the Master Race may be, I don’t think it includes any of the Usual Suspects above.
Alisa,
Being not so very young, either, I’ve seen some political campaigns over time.
There was NEVER a conservative or Republican candidate, starting with Barry Goldwater, which has not been portrayed by the liberal media (I know, this is a redundancy) as a bigot, racist, and dumb dunce (for not “getting” the wonderful thing that is socialism, equality, social justice, etc.).
Sometimes there were direct accusations, but mostly it was smear and association and innuendo.
Saying that “some of Trump’s supporters are antisemitic” isn’t a simple, innocent statement of fact (which might be true) – it is innuendo – it is trying furtively to create in people’s minds a connection or association between Trump and antisemitism. It is not to be taken at face value – in which case it would be trivial and uninteresting and not worth saying. It is an intentional smear.
Well, I’m sure that SOME of Hillary’s supporters are antisemitic too… (maybe the BDS crowd). There are antisemits everywhere. (Hillary, of course, isn’t).
Why is the topic raised (in the media, and in one comment here) only in association with Trump but not Hillary? That was not an innocent comment. It was maybe an inadvertent repetition of memes (smears) spread by the media. In this case – the National Review – not the typical “liberal” media – but they have an anti Trump agenda too, and I don’t sympathize with it, and they are not above smearing when it suits them.
In short, as you maybe noticed, “the #NeverTrumpers” irritate me, somewhat, too.
Alisa, September 7, 2016 at 8:18 pm: “Personally, he doesn’t strike me as a racist or as an antisemite. The problem with all this AltRight association with Trump (whether he asked for it or not), is that even if he doesn’t win the election, he will have helped paint the political and philosophical Right in the US as a bunch of bigots and racists.”
That is how the right are painted anyway – and have bee since the days of Goldwater (who, yes, got mainstream media Nazi slurs as well as the more usual racism). Reagan was first noticed as the only speaker whose “I’m annoyed when people call Barry a racist” actually got some traction. You – correctly – find accusations of racism and antis-semitism against Trump implausible. So they were against Barry, Reagan, … – but that never stopped any reporter or editor. Cruz would be being called all these things if he were the candidate (and has been and will be). For real anti-semites, look in the anti-islamophobia crowd. And for real acknowledgement of that in mainstream media look – uh, where? To me, this “painting” comes across as the kind of argument that we take seriously about Trump only because we do not like him. If it were Cruz, we’d dismiss it with contempt. If it had been Cruz, some establishment Republicans would complain about how he was allowing the party to be painted as …
For an anti-semitic candidate, look at Obama. I expect Hillary, let alone Trump, to be less bad on that particular axis. Similarly, for a genuinely anti-British candidate, look at Obama. His recently-repeated nastiness about “back of the queue” says it all – but may well matter little to Hillary, let alone Trump.
Of course, Niall – but the difference is that this time the media is correct, to a real extent. None of the GOP candidates’ core supporters you and Jacob mentioned*, deserved these accusations – but a certain number of Trump’s core supporters apparently does.
And yes, of course there are many antisemites on the Left, and at least historically there were many racists there as well. But being generally part of the Right rather than the Left, I am concerned with the future of the former far more than with that of the latter.
*Except for Buchanan, who understandably went unmentioned, but who figures in Milo’s very informative piece linked to above (no matter what one’s opinion is about the author himself).
Amusingly enough, when the left claims someone is antisemitic these days, they’re paying them a compliment.
(See Columbia University, Cornell University, George Mason University, Loyola University Chicago, etc.)
I share a lot of enemies with the alt-right but there are a lot of them I would not share a platform with. I am not a fan of Steve Sailer or Vox Day for example. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.
How so, Bobby?
Alisa, the anti-Zionist movement of the left has become so strong across American campuses that it now regularly devolves into pure anti-Jewish sentiment. Jewish publications across the country now regularly relate how Jewish students – even anti-Zionist Jewish students – are encountering a very hostile environment across academia, specifically because of their Jewishness.
Perry, as in my example of The Bell Curve, the problem of agreeing with the generally benign and well-supported conclusions of works that document differences between sexes and races is that it allows people such as Vox Day and Taki the opportunity to claim kinship with you. The easiest way to deal with this is to disclaim the actual conclusions of the scholarship so as not to be branded with the “bridge too far” conclusions drawn by the racists. It’s much tougher to defend the scholarship while maintaining the distinctions between what has been proven and what the racists claim has been proven – but when we allow the entire alt-R to be branded with the shame of the racists, we’re rolling over to one of the basic fallacious attacks of the left. One can argue against Affirmative Action, for instance, without being a White Supremacist. I think one can be compatico with the benign underlayments of alt-R without inviting Ted Beale to dinner.
“certain number of Trump’s core supporters”
False – they are not CORE supporters. They are fringe supporters.
@Alisa
> a certain number of Trump’s core supporters apparently does.
Can you define “core”? How many?
See a significant number of Trump’s supporters are also pedophiles, some are allergic to peanuts and some hate puppies. Why? Because some portion of the population falls under these banners. However, if the press only mention the child raping, puppy hating, can’t hold their peanuts supporters in the context of Trump, they are doing so not to make some point of demography, but to try to suggest that Trump is like them, or at least approves them, or at very least doesn’t disapprove of them.
As you pointed out, Paul Marks did not accuse Trump of antisemitism, but what he did suggest is that a Trump victory would give them ascendancy. However, that is only true if Trump himself has supported or encouraged that behavior or believe, which, AFAIK, he has not.
Is there any evidence that less pedophiles support HRC? Any data on how many of HRC’s supporters (core or not) hate puppies? Have peanuts been banished from the concession stands at her rallies? Not that I am aware of.
BTW, something that is, if not relevant, at least interesting, is that Trump’s daughter Ivanka is orthodox Jewish, having converted to marry her husband. Her father seems, by all accounts, to be a big fan of hers. And were Trump to win, he even talked about putting her in the cabinet. That doesn’t sound like the ascendancy of the antisemites to me. It is also intersting, BTW, that Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton are apparently very good friends.
Fraser, “Ivanka and Chelsea seem very good friends.”…
Sure. Both their parents believe in Grab whatever you can, that you can get some legal eagle to say isn’t a crime — or at least, not indictable or not prosecutable. (Leave Constitutionality out of it: That’s a bridge that’s totally beside the river.)
SNARK. But not entirely.
. . .
I’ve just been re-reading this whole discussion, which is extremely interesting. And I’ve found one or two more things that deserve notice.
.
From Paul, Sept. 6, 8:55 pm:
.
bobby b, September 7, 2016 at 7:39 pm:
.
Of course, there are plenty of gems in the whole discussion, but those (among others discussed as we went along) stood out for me.
. . .
Further note: Of course, many allow that the Dark Enlightenment folks form only the core of today’s Alt-Right; while others seem to see the D-E as merely one of the groups constituting the A-R.
I’m sure that the Dark Enlightenment folks are not Trump fans. Whatever criticism they have of the current system, Trump is not their solution or hero, by far.
That is true, bobby, but ultimately it is their problem, not mine.
I think there is a double-sided misunderstanding of Trump and the AltRight in some comments of this thread.
One side, I’ve already suggested: disliking Trump makes some prone to credit PC accusations they’d discard if it were Cruz, even while recognising the accusations are unjust in point of fact.
The other side is ignoring the actual point of contact between Trump and the AltRight, which has nothing to do with antisemitism or racism in either, and I suspect little to do with Trump originally choosing them or vice versa.
The true characteristic of the AltRight is the aggression with which they not only refuse “you can’t say that” but double-down. If you’ve seen the film “Clear and Present Danger”, you’ll recall the episode where the hero tells the president to exaggerate, not minimise, an embarrassing past association to a murdered money-launderer: “If a reporter asks you if he was a friend, say he was a good friend. If they ask you if he was a good friend, say he was a lifelong friend. Give them no place to go.” When an AltRighter is accused of racism by a PCer and responds with something like, “Why can’t you vile liberals leave us nice nazis alone”, that is the tactic. The essence of the AltRight, it seems to me, is: “They’re going to accuse you of this anyway, whatever you say or even prove – so stop arguing; it just helps them crush you.”
Trump’s style is to trample down the “you can’t say that” barriers of PC. He too – whether from ignorance or intent on any given occassion – makes far less effort than a Cruz, or one of us, to hit his target with care, avoiding collateral implications.
There are points of similarity in these styles. I think this is the true point of contact.
Background Remarks:
1) The tactic creates a context that isn’t ideal for discouraging ordinary rudeness, any more than PC does.
2) When someone on this blog talks about “Suppose we applied the logic of PC to … (us, our in-group, whatever)”, typically, it’s unmistakably hypothetical (unmistakable except to PC liars that is); we put effort into avoiding collateral implications, even while knowing it will never be enough to satisfy the PC. When reading an AltRighter, the difference between the aggressive, shameless, concede-nothing hypothesising guy, the “This is fun – I’m not thinking how much of it I truly mean” guy, the , “Let’s have as much PC as the other groups” guy, the “But we’re the better culture, not the villain, so should have more” guy and the “Let’s PC in reverse – take equality then go far beyond” guy, is less obvious. This is an inevitable side-effect of the style. (To be strictly precise, the difference in signalled intent is less obvious – not that I suspect anyone here of believing other than they say.)
3) Antisemites who truly want to excuse Jew-killers hang out with the anti-islamophobe crowd. And if you want to excuse racist murderers, BLM and similar is the place, provided you make the right colour choices. For the less extreme – especially if they don’t want to hang with those crowds – the AltRight is a place where you will stand out a good deal less than you would here. Again, this is an inevitable side-effect of the style.
Just my 0.02p FWIW.
Fraser, by ‘core Trump supporter’ I mean the polar opposite of Never Trump – i.e. not someone like you or some of the other commenters here, or many others elsewhere, who see Trump as the lesser evil or the last lifeboat before Hellary, etc., but rather someone who thinks that Trump is the best thing that happened to American politics since Buchanan (and far more successful than the latter to boot). How many? I have no idea.
Now what do pedophiles and peanuts have to do with this? Are you even serious? Trump’s main characteristic in his campaign has been his bashing of foreigners – either those who steal our jobs by coming to the US, or are stealing them while remaining in China by flooding the US with cheap stuff through evil trade agreements. Of course that does not make him a bigot or a racist (it just makes him ignorant about economics, but that POV can be legitimately contested, too), but the thing is that racists and bigots do latch on to him precisely for this reason.
BTW, it just so happens that the same types tend also to be antisemitic – which likewise does not mean that Trump dislikes Jews, and which I very much doubt he does, as his policies have nothing to do with Jews to begin with.
And just a word about myself, for context: I am not a Never Trump, but for reasons that probably differ from Patrick’s. I am not a Never Hillary, either. Not even Never Obama. Like I said, as much impact politics do have on our lives, it is preposterous to think that life is all about politics.
Also, I do very much value Trump as a candidate, as someone who is dealing some great blows to the PC “culture”. I just don’t think he should be President, and am not going to vote for him, because I don’t see a chance in hell that he could save the US, its Constitution or its economy. YMMV. I would wish though that he could campaign forever 😀
” Trump’s main characteristic in his campaign has been his bashing of foreigners – either those who steal our jobs by coming to the US, or are stealing them while remaining in China by flooding the US with cheap stuff through evil trade agreements.”
(God, here I am defending Trump again. Please believe me when I say I’m not doing it to defend Trump as a primary goal.)
Alisa, I think you’ve interpreted this incorrectly.
Trump hasn’t bashed foreigners.
He’s bashed US government officials who have decided – on their own personal initiatives, in contravention of US law – that we ought o be admitting into the country anyone who wants in, out of some misplaced we-are-the-world sentiment.
I’d argue that it is the duty of US (especially Federal US) government personnel to first and foremost work for the benefit of US citizens.
What he’s been decrying is the apparent goal of US feds to benefit world-wide interests OVER US interests.
Yeah, he hates the Mexican gangs that have taken advantage of this failure, but he’s expressed no such hatred for the good people who have only tried to better their own lives.
He has no hate for the Chinese industries who have made great deals for themselves – he hates the US powers who have tread upon our own US workers’ interests in making the deals they have made for their own personal profit.
Once again, it’s too easy to decry an “American interests first” philosophy as racism.
Curtis Yarvin for Emperor.
Alisa:
Excellent. :>))))!!!!
This is the thread that won’t die.
Well, Laird, we have to provide you with something to read on these long insomniac nights….
You asked for it!
(…and so goes the undead thread…)
Curtis Yarvin for Emperor.
One of those “neo-reactionaries”, I see, to use yet another term. I don’t know why they just don’t self-describe as “reactionary”, and ditch the “neo” stuff.
An interesting item about the Alt-Right can be found at Commentary.
Thonks for that JP – talk about the Jewish angle. Bloody hell.
JP,
I do self-describe as reactionary – for a variety of reasons, as I’ve partially elucidated in Xenosystems threads previously.
There are anti-semites in the neoreactionary movement, but you have linked to a hit job. Yes, there are nuts and crazies in pretty much any large group/segment of people. The internet has a way of exaggerating their presence/power.
I’m a proud Jew and extremely pro-Israel. I’m also a humble reactionary (quite similar to most self-described neoreactionaries). This is not a contradiction in any way. In fact, as the final post on my blog documented, the two are in my mind’s eye bound up in one another intrinsically, beautifully, inherently – forever.
I don’t have a dog in this election, so to speak, but on the topic of ‘core supporters’ and anti-semitism…
It is my understanding that American blacks have long been much more anti-semetic than the population at large. They are also ‘core supporters’ of the Democratic Party. Yet The Donald is supposed to answer for some of his supporters, but not Hillary.
Interesting.