There’s a simple fact about many in the #NeverTrump movement that putative “conservative” pundits don’t seem to understand, try as we might to explain it to them: #NeverTrump is not the opening bid in some ongoing electoral negotiation. Rather, it’s a final position already reached — call it SETTLED SCIENCE! — and one that won’t change simply because the latest batch of party “pragmatists” lecture us on the need to act like “adults” and return ourselves to the “real world,” surreally defined these days as the one in which Donald Trump, a man with Mondale’s (D) trade policy , McGovern’s (D) foreign policy, and Wallace’s (D) populist charm (and a hefty haul of his remaining spiritual heirs) is the GOP standard bearer; while movement conservatives, who’ve rejected him for his loutish and confused populism, his lack of personal integrity, his frighteningly totalitarian tendencies, and his statist policies, are but silly obstructionist purists who Just Don’t Know How Things Work.
So let me be as clear as I can here: #NeverTrump means never Trump. I mean, it’s right there in the hashtag, for Chrissakes! And it can’t “fail” — as the burgeoning establishment narrative would have you believe — because it is its own self-enclosed system, one whose only condition for actuation is the very individual neverness that defines it. Whether Trump wins or loses is of no consequence to our entrenched neverosity. All that matters is that we aren’t responsible for either outcome. When the new Workers Party is frenzying itself to seize the means of production, we’ll be hanging back in our bourgeois suburban digs giggling at hapless hikers being eaten by giant spiders on Animal Planet Monster Week episodes.
Look: if you were previously anti-Trump but believe you need to back the presumptive GOP nominee because he’s the only person left standing in the way of the dangerous women he backed for President 8 years ago (and for Secretary of State after that*), I understand. To you it’s a practical choice. You’re a Party person. A Team Player! So thoroughly filled with common sense conservatism it dampens your pits! You understand that to have any actual impact on the real world you can’t just sit back and bitch on Twitter about how ugly is Trump’s body of lifework. Instead, you recognize that in order to beat the evil master-criminal Hillary you must actively stump for a guy who tries to intimidate judges and plaintiffs, who practices lawfare against “losers,” who supports a host of progressive policies and promises to make America Great again by reintroducing us to the wonders of trade protectionism, union vigor, price controls, federal mandatory minimum wage increases, racial nationalism (disguised as economic populism — and at odds with race-based affirmative action, which he supports), gender fluidity, and a medical system under which insurance companies are mandated to pay for pre-existing conditions while consumers aren’t compelled to pay any kind of fine for not purchasing insurance, thereby taking away every incentive to buy “insurance” in the first place. In one of the most ridiculous stated policy prescriptions ever recorded.
You do all this for FREEDOM, naturally.
But that I understand your position doesn’t mean your position is any less wrong. My ability to recognize your opportunistic practicality doesn’t make that practicality any less soul-crushingly stupid, nor any less enabling of a corrupted political culture driven by increasingly aggressive moral and intellectual rot. Your guiding principle, simply put, is backing the lesser of two evils — the payoff being that you share partial corporate ownership, you hope, in the ascendant evil that gets to be in charge of you for a bit. And you can justify your complicity by chiding the supposed “moral vanity” of those who choose not to spend the rest of their days averting their eyes from every mirror.
That’s your call. I understand it. And more power to you!
But once again, the truth is simple, and all your pleading and cajoling, all your shaming and cuck-calling, all your pointed barbs at “purists” and “TrueCons” with our outmoded principles (when you use that word, make sure you hit the second p hard, almost like you’re spitting it out), won’t change that truth: Never means never. No means no. And we aren’t negotiating. The issue is settled. The die is cast. And any further discussion is pining for the fjords.
Some of us, it turns out, are really quite okay with being “losers.” We’re perfectly content to remove ourselves from a sad, failed, corrupt party that for decades now hasn’t represented our interests and, in its leadership, openly disdains us and seeks our crushedness. And that’s because we recognize that what it’ll take to drag an orange con man over the finish line is not worth what we’ll have to give up to help those of you for whom winning is a form of personal validation.
So. To sum up:
We aren’t egoists. An egoist is the malignantly narcissistic candidate you demand we fall in line and support.
We aren’t sanctimonious. That appellation more properly belongs to those who insist that our refusal to heed their righteous call to defeat the Demon Hillary marks us as unclean and selfish, unwilling to join the congregation whose mission is to bring about the Greater Good, as articulated by a guy who tosses out law suits like Michael Moore does spare rib bones.
We aren’t “purists.” Purists are those who put party uber alles and demand others do the same.
And we aren’t “ideologues.” Because ideologues ignore experience. Ideologues refuse to learn from history. Ideologues base their beliefs on abstract ideas and utopian wishcastings — like, eg, that a guy with little political experience and a host of dubious personal connections to Marxists and race-baiters will heal the racial divide and lower the oceans; or maybe that a guy who has lived his life as a scion of corporatism and government cronyism for going on seventy years will suddenly evolve from boisterous sideshow “billionaire” to a national savior and a tremendous statesman.
We get it. But frankly? We don’t care. Truth is, we’re just not that into you.
Sorry.
*****
*even after Benghazi, Trump assured us Clinton was doing a “good job.”
For me it’s less #NeverTrump than #AlwaysConstitution, with a soupçon of #NeverCaudillo.
It’s not so much the hashtag as the impulse behind it as I use it.
Meaning, never. No way. Don’t even think it.
Exactly.
People without principles, who do everything for venal reasons, assume everyone is the same — and thus that every stance is negotiable.
They don’t know what to make of people that can’t be bullied, shamed or guilted into giving ground.
The hashtag is incidental. The fact is immutable. I will never bear any responsibility for inflicting that upon the country I once loved so much. The murder weapons will not have my fingerprints on them and I’ll be able to tell my kids and grandkids that I tried to stop them.
We’ve already lost, for those a little slow on the uptake. That train has left the station. As RI Red once noted, and being that we were neighbors for a few decades, my vote has long been purely aspirational. I’m totally used to election losses. It’s a lot like being a Cubs fan, I suspect.
You understand what “Never” means, yes? I am a worker. This is not and will never be in my name.
Trump: GOP Will Become ‘Workers Party’ 5 Years From Now
I have my CA primary ballot … I am STILL voting Cruz on it.
Gotta say, though, that the f**king idiots who rioted in San Diego carrying Mexican flags an “f**k Trump” signs are only giving him more votes.
On purpose. It’s orchestrated.
IMHO I don’t think the anti-Trump protests are orchestrated by the Trumpkins — it is the same idiots who actually get results on university campuses by OUTRAGE AGAINST THE RAAAAAAACISTS!
I listened to a lot of the local news coverage and the protestors they interviewed sound so much like the ivy league snowflakes it is painful.
And there are a ton of organized racist Mexicans here, too (La Raza) who are itching to get publicity.
Just when there are fleeting seeds of doubt regarding my stalwart stubbornness threatening to germinate from the humid halitotic [yeah, spell check, I just made up that word for alliterative emphasis] hot air blasted at me from “figures of authority,” Jeff slaps me up the back of my head with another post that resonates well beyond the topic at hand.
#never* means if I have to, I’ll pound never into your damn cranium if that is what it takes to get you to understand what it means. Figuratively, of course.
As one who learned contract bridge at age 10, I just like #NoTrump better.
i still think Trump is a way better choice than pee-stank just on the face of it
i don’t really get all the drama – after 8 years of food stamp Mr. Trump looks like a pretty nice change of pace to me
I guess chikungunya fever is a “better choice” than dengue fever. Until you remember one is just a different form of the other.
Me, I’d rather promote the widespread use of DDT.
Jesus, take the wheel.
yes yes i’m a lettin go
Trump: GOP Will Become ‘Workers Party’ 5 Years From Now
Don Surber must be horrified at the thought!
Here’s my brilliant plan: We’ll secure the trademarks for the American National Party the American Worker Party and the American Socialist Party, then we’ll trade them to Trump when he’s looking to offload the Republican brand in four years.
It’ll be a fantastic deal!
Why not just change the name from “America” to “Brand”? I mean, hell, if it needs to be a nation of slaves and masters, then just go ahead and give it the name. And bonus, nobody else is using it.
Mr. “I’m Very Wealthy And Self-Funding And The Only Person Ever Who’s Immune To The Influence Of Money” Super System Shaking Candidate Who’s Going To Change Everything With His Awesome ShakeItUpedness is poor mouthing and has his hand out to the RNC.
If you bought into that crap, you’re a fucking moron and you should run all of your decisions by a competent adult before acting, for your own safety.
Yes, ‘feets, this means you.
he’s way way better than the nasty colostomy bag lady Mr. Pablo
this is obvious to anyone who is willing to do the analysis
How can you know that when he’s 100% full of shit? It simply cannot be obvious. There is no evidence whatsoever in support of that.
yes yes he’s lived a life of accomplishment and he’s worked very hard whereas pee-stank is only even an option cause of she’s married to some sleazebag ex-president
she’s a dynasty candidate
but Mr. Trump, he’s not from a political family
he’s just a guy who made a name for himself
i’m so curious to see what kind of president he turns out to be
whereas i’m not at all curious to see what pee-stank would do
way better than
And of course there is nothing novel in this, at least since the dawn of humankind when two slaves of different masters could meet somewhere and quickly agree that Slave A’s master is better than Slave B’s master, though neither had anything to say about a condition of freedom to govern one’s own life.
the most anybody ever did slavery on me was justice roberts when he done the obamacare tax on my ass
i’m still pretty sore about that
You should begin to get used to it. There’s much more of it coming.
‘Feets crayoned: he’s way way better than the nasty colostomy bag lady Mr. Pablo
As someone who had a colostomy bag for seven months, I can tell you, pickaarse, that Trump is merely a variation of the species. I’ll spare everyone the detailed description.
Goddamn brilliant, Jeff. A shot in the arm of Right Reason [and I’m only half-way through the first Maker’s Mark].
i’m so sorry that happened to you
let us speak no more of this
Oh, yes. He’s got many accomplishments. Just today, he’s still accomplishing. Things.
Trump Tower Toronto To Be Sold Off After Debt Default
And he’s in control! Of his narrative. Except when those stupid Mexicans get in his way. Especially the Indiana born ones.
You know what the problem there is? Obama. And the fact that Trump isn’t POTUS.
downtown toronto has all kinds of problems
it’s a very crappy downtown and to the extent that there’s any life down there they sabotage it with the path to where it’s just kind of an unwalkable mess
i almost always end up spending more time on king street than anywhere else this is my favorite place to eat there – if you only get to go once the slaw’s the deal but it’s just a fun menu to explore
also it’s a good place to get one of them caesars
Hey, a quick question for you, ‘feets: Is it possible to be a woman with a cock and balls?
I find it incredibly galling to listen to a number of people who have bellyached for years about having to vote for RINOs like McCain or Romney suddenly telling me that I’ve got to get on board with a man who is literally a Republican In Name Only. A man who has donated generously to his general election opponent, who invited her and her loathsome husband to his most recent wedding as honored guests, who writes mash notes to Nancy goddamn Pelosi, who has never indicated any understanding of conservative ideas or admiration of Constitutional principles–well, we can overlook all that because DEY TUK ER JERBS!!!
No, fuck that. There is no Lesser of Two Evils here. I refuse to participate in this vulgar clownshow, and I’ll sleep very well at night knowing that I did so. The only small solace I’ll draw from the election results in November is that whoever wins, the other candidate’s legions of vile, power-humping acolytes will be sorely disappointed.
trannies are mentally ill and Mr. Pablo I don’t have any patience for them
i’m not spending much time in my one god-given life thinking deep thoughts about fucking trannies
happyfeet: “the most anybody ever did slavery on me was justice roberts when he done the obamacare tax on my ass”.
Yer verbose in a dumb kind of posing way, but not all there, despite the pose. It’s not sarcasm. It’s not quite passive aggressive. It’s essentially pointless, but with the barest hint of character. Sort of an empty character. I’m sure you’ve heard it before.
Our freedom has been crumbling for a century or more. Roberts deserves but a notch alongside many bigger notches. Whether your pose is earnest or not, the only need for it is one of failure.
Seriously. What motivates you to be such an idiot?
Just askin’. It’s my culture.
don’t be mean it’s a holiday picklehead
Which means what, you’re sucking your own hotdog?
Hey! I’m sorry. Let’s be… whatever. Let’s vote local.
quote of the day:
“We’ve [now] had over a generation of society weened on reality shows and glittering prizes. This election is, pure and simple, about power and stuff and glitz. We are merely reaping what we have sown over the last quarter century.”
Dr. Bradley J. Birzer
Makes perfect sense but, I am not choosing a spouse, just voting for president.
no i had to go meemees
ok to be clear i don’t understand the question
but here’s what i think Mr. Soja
i never my whole life seen a more potent catalyst than Mr. Trump
i thought it was president food stamp but i was naive – food stamp mostly just confuses people cause they don’t know what to do with a president who actively hate-fucks our country on purpose
but there’s never been anything in politics like Mr. Trump
he’s done more to encourage Rs to think discuss and evaluate what they believe and why than anything in memory
he’s a gentleman and a patriot and a goddamn plum lolly in my book
Bullshit. Trump has demonstrated that you don’t really have to believe anything, you just have to keep grabbing headlines. Trump is a lout, not a gentleman.
he’s a great guy he’s single-handedly all by himself healthily disrupted a corrupt stagnant Republican Party
plant a seed, plant a flower
plant a rose!
you can plant any one of those
keep planting to find out which one grows
it’s a secret no one knows!
He’s a Democrat.
that’s a misnomer he’s sui generis
No, he’s a Democrat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcUCLwWCihE
that looks like a propaganda video to me Mr. Pablo
It looks like Democrat bullshit coming directly out of Trump’s orange face to me. Because that’s exactly what it is. Silly Trumpkin.
i just find your whole outlook to be very negative Mr. Pablo
there’s a lot of exciting things happening and it looks like failmerica could be moving in a new more better direction than where we been with food stamp
Just stop.
You can’t vote for the bad man. And you understand that some others disagree with you ,”because he’s the only person left standing in the way of the dangerous women[…]”
An intellectual man could just leave it at that content in his decision but you are not an intellectual man, or a humble man. But you are a clever man.
You make your concession and weasel your way into its negation: “You’re a Party person. A…” But you won’t ever argue for the less supportable side of your position. You’re tactics are those common on the other side of the political fence.
You can’t leave the ‘lesser of two evils’ vs. I can’t vote for a bad man stand. You need it all. There’s you and those who agree with you on the one side and all the stupid or evil on the other, and by virtue of their stance on this particularly binky, particularly (fancy that).
But you don’t argue for it.
Do you or do not accept the premise that we are in fact dealing with a lesser of two evils question? Make your argument or quit taking pot shots at the 10’s of millions sane Americans left standing in this once great country. An academic once an academic always, I suppose.
Lesser of two evil arguments have been with us forever, do you argue that it’s never appropriate? Or just in this case? If, so, why and if so, why. Was it enabling to join forces with Stalin during the second world war only to pivot after the fact into a decades long cold war with the very one and same? What’s different here? Argue.
At this point, you aren’t a blogger anymore, you’ve retreated into your private space with those who agree with you, denouncing 10s of million stupid Americans who take a different approach than you.
So it’s kind of like a virtual backyard BBQ without the meat or the beer or even the flag. I remember when you used to do analysis and when you used to argue and make points. Now you simply attest and denounce and get applauded by those who think like you. You have allowed yourself to become irrelevant to the public discourse, when you used to be one of its most effective contributors.
It’s not too late, vote how you wish but argue, dammit, and stop with your stupid sarcastic denunciations of everyone who doesn’t think like you; you are smart but not that smart.
Think it through Pedant. At this point never Trumpers have moved past refusing to vote for him in hopes of getting Cruz, to actively defeating him. In other words, posts like this are about helping Hillary, period. They can deny that all they want, but that is the reality of their actions. This is not a non-vote, this is an attack and an attempt to stop the only viable alternative to Hillary. So if Hillary is elected, they can explain THAT to their children.
Shorter pedant: Shut up!
LBascom:
I don’t really agree with that. I see strong arguments for both sides; some arguments are such that it the end you do what makes sense to you but acknowledge that reasonable minds may disagree. This is one such argument, in my view.
But there are clearly those who are exactly and admittedly as you say, but that’s not what’s going on in this place, in my view.
What has happened to this place.
Yes cranky-d that would be shorter than what I wrote and yes there is great deal in the most recent writings that I argued had no logical business being written, so yeah I suppose.
Anti-Trumpkin!
Lee
I, and most #nevertrump people I’ve conversed with, have no intention of working against Trump.
We have WITHDRAWN from playing the game.
I’m working down ticket – whether Trump or Hillary, either will have to have the Imperial Presidency schtick severely curtailed.
posts like this are about helping Hillary, period
dear god that comes close to peak stupidity.
self-marginalization isn’t the answer
you gotta put yourself out there and embrace these perilous and fascinating times
it’s like Mr. Toad and his wild ride
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.
Bullshit. I want Trump and Hillary to unite again. In their planes. At 30,000 feet. For America.
You want to put an orange psychopath into the office held by Washington, Jefferson, Madison. Fuck that.
i like him more or less ok and I don’t think he’s a psychopath at all Mr. Pablo
I think that’s hyperbole and a misnomer
he’s a good guy what stepped up when his country needed him, made a case for himself, and won the nomination
the pee-stanky criminal woman, she’s gonna lose (i hope), and if she does who will we have to thank for that?
That’s right it will be Mr. Trump
You know what P.T.Barnum said was born every minute? You, son. He was talking about you.
no he wasn’t
i’m trying to explain to you how baleful pee-stank truly is
Mr. T might could be an unpleasant anomaly
but pee-stank is forever
she literally dresses like chairman mao with an overactive bladder
We’re not facing the lesser of two evils as a choice, it’s the evil of two lessers.
Also, a big chunk of the Trumpenproletariat has been waving the “all of you people suck ass” flag since at least as far back as last October, and I was sick of it *then*. It was a lousy tactic when others did it for McCain and Romney, it’s lousy now.
It’s been a pretty inviolate rule in my life that if you get anywhere near someone who is a hostile, colossal ass, they will screw your life up in any way they can. I can’t think of an exception to that rule.
Trying to convince people to join your team by berating them and calling them names fits that pretty well. The part where they don’t accept the “no sale” response and keep trying to hawk the product is where the “fanatic” part comes in.
Concern troll trolls. Troll, concern troll, troll.
I remember voting for various Republicans, with a varying degree of electoral success, based on the notion that they were the lesser of two evils. They had some policy stances I disagreed with, and sometimes had a record of legislation that was disagreeable. Benghazi convinced me to vote for Romney, for instance, rather than just avoid the top spot.
None of them were even close to being as innately distasteful as Trump, for all the reasons Jeff has eloquently outlined in his various posts of late. The evil is just too great to ignore this time.
We have two statist Democrats running for President. They have both revealed their true character by their previous actions. Their words are meaningless. Their principles are nonexistent.
We have two statist Democrats running for President. They have both revealed their true character by their previous actions. Their words are meaningless. Their principles are nonexistent.
My thoughts exactly. I suppose, if we had a Congress filled with true conservatives which would fight to sustain the Constitution, I might be susceptible to the “lesser of two evils” argument. Alas, since 2010, I have learned that there is no honor in that institution. For the Republican members of Congress, the only hill to die on is the one defending their sinecures. They have sold our birthrights for a bowl of porridge and will gladly watch the republic be destroyed so long as they have a place at the trough. I’m done. I’ll never again be complicit into the destruction of our nation by deluding myself that the “lesser of two evils” is somehow justifiable.
Cranky wrote:
Well put.
McCain and Romney were not out-and-out Fascists [or Fabians, if you prefer].
Rodham is committed to two things: Immanentizing The Eschaton and achieving Power And Control [the latter commitment having the stronger pull, but the former drives her, so she is more Stalin than Lenin].
Trump seeks Power And Control and, like Caesar, will champion those causes which will get him in what he seeks.
Both of these Evils are, ultimately, equal in their Evilness.
Shermlaw’s remarks at 4:07 PM are my thoughts exactly.
https://thecampofthesaints.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/goodfriendsdlfttite-254.jpg?w=381&h=263
yes okay fine, this time it’s too evil, and they’re both *ultimately* equal, yadda, yadda maybe, and you are resolutely absolute in your assessment that there can be *no* other, but never flesh out a fucking case. It’s oh, he said Clinton is Super, just super (that he meant of course); it’s he’s bad bad bad and therefore he’s fucking bad and fuck you trumpkin.
It’s agree with me or TRUMPKIN! And stupid. You get so used to arguing with leftists that you lose perspective. Seriously, anybody unpersuaded by *ultimately* the same is a stupid trumpkin, that’s shit rhetoric and the kind you get away only in forums where all the cool kids agree with you anyway.
To be clear, nobody is suggesting you should do anything other than you are doing. Trump is really bad. (Though Obama is fucking satan and has moved governance so far leftward that the republic may well be over, and Trump isn’t really scary in that contest). It’s simply new church trumpkin heresy doctrine that borders lunacy.
“nd Trump isn’t really scary in that contest” that came out wrong cause everything is more scary in that context especially an authoritarian egomaniac, I meant not scary in comparison to the doubling down in that direction.
cause seriously they are absolutley the fucking same Trumpkin: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/268174-clinton-i-have-a-bunch-of-litmus-tests-for-supreme-court
y’all just reflexively think the worst of trump
i blame comic book movies and your inurement to supervillians
The case against Trump has already been laid out in Jeff’s last posts. There is no need to repeat it.
You disagree that the case has been laid out? Fine. Perhaps someone will repeat if all for you and perhaps not. However, if what is in the record from May 14 to now is not sufficient, then I highly doubt anyone will convince you otherwise. That fact that you are so dismissive of it tells me that.
However, when someone barges in making demands and issuing orders, they are more likely to be ignored than anything else.
i’d much rather come eyeball to eyeball with the most horrific trump scenario than get plastered up against pee-stank’s fetid crotch for four years
that’s who i am
If I knew how to script better, I’d write a new trollhammer script.
We might leave it at, “We’re not voting for either of these skanks,” if the skanks’ supporters were willing to return the favor.
The more we’re told that failing to vote for the Syphilitic Camel is treason, the less charitable we feel toward those saying it. It’s inexplicable!
i’m a join the Niger Delta Avengers and fight for social justice
from now on you can call me Niger Delta Thor
i got a hammer and don’t you worry I’m a figure out the blond hair thing
McGehee is, yet again, directly on point.
+1
If you comment on my position you should read it through. Or not cause it’s still a free fucking country. The case against trump has been made sufficiently. Trump is an asshole and really bad candidate. I’ve no issue at all with an anti-trump movement. what I do see is that anyone who will go with the lesser of the two evils is written off as stupid. It isn’t even the principled stance case that needs to made, that too isn’t wanting. It the absolute negation of the intelligence and (?) morality of any and everyone who sees it differently that lacks support. It’s borders on insanity, actually. It’s arrogant and stupid and dishonorable in my opinion.
I’ve been here for roughly 10 years, I’ve learned a lesson. For years we’ve been arrogantly dismissing the insane and evil left (albeit with plenty of supporting arguments) now those on the right who disagree with a particular stance are being dismissed in much the same way without the supporting arguments. I guess we were assholes all along.
ur such a suck-up
not you Mr. pedant
ur awesome like a possum on a blossum
don’t worry cranky there is only so long I’ll hang out in this place. I’ve read here for 10 years, you are the fucking troll.
You haven’t made the case that Trump is the lesser of two evils. Should you attempt it, you’ll still be arguing that Trump is evil.
Me, I’m anti-evil.
good for you
ur amazing
That should be pretty standard. That you think it amazing speaks to how far we’ve fallen.
epiphany!
thank u india
now those on the right who disagree with a particular stance are being dismissed in much the same way without the supporting arguments.
Look, as Trump had edged closer to the nomination, most #nevertrump people just grew quiet.
If nothing else, the pro-Trump have been especially sore & nasty winners. Anyone insufficiently kissing Trump’s ass was deemed part of the Evil Establishment.
Really? In 2009 I was out on the street with TEA Party people and we delivered up to the GOP (in ways we thought were going to take it over FROM the Establishment) more conservative reps in each succeeding election cycle. Hell, look at what we’ve done in state legislatures & governorships.
And Trump has the audacity to attempt to bully NM Gov Martinez for insufficient tongue-bathing?
Hey, we’re already tired of the cult of personality from Obama, we are supposed to welcome the same populous bs from Trump? Orange is the new black?
First time tragedy, second time farce.
Trump gloats he doesn’t need conservatives at all. So why not just take him at his word?
pablo, how do live inside yourself.
You haven’t proven me wrong and even if you did I’m still right. Fuck you.
The case was made extremely well in monster 657 comment thread. Find ‘naftali’.
I live inside myself by renouncing evil and not supporting it. Also, I can look my posterity in the eye that way.
As for your “Heads I win, tails you lose” formulation, please fold that up until it’s nice and pointy and them cram it where the sun don’t shine.
naftali is perspicacious
i’m just super-impressed
Darleen, I cannot fathom the people who were supporting Trump over Cruz in the primaries. Cruz was an out of this world candidate, I would have canvased for him and I don’t do that sort of thing.
I speak specifically about the Dennis Pragers of the world. When they become trumpkins you need to check your premises.
pablo, that was really, really thick.
“You haven’t made the case that Trump is the lesser of two evils. Should you attempt it, you’ll still be arguing that Trump is evil.”
pee-stank’s herpes-infested husband
(who’ll go right up in your cowardly stanky white house with her when you elect her)
loved to put it to little girls on epstein’s pedo-orgy island
me personally it’s not difficult to make a moral distinction
I don’t know you, pedant, so I’ll try not to be too much of an ass about this. You wrote, “what I do see is that anyone who will go with the lesser of the two evils is written off as stupid.” The way I see it, most politicians are bad people in one way or another. Every one of them has to be an attention-seeker by the very nature of the job, and lots of them take that further into pandering and sucking up to people to get votes. A good number of them are liars, too. Far too many of them are only in it for their own personal aggrandizement.
If any of these things were the only problems with Trump, I could perhaps entertain the Lesser of Two Evils argument. The problem is that he’s not just these things. He is an absolute and obvious con man. A fraud. He is, in fact, being sued for fraud as we head into the general election. He has been good buddies with the woman he’s ostensibly trying to beat in November for years. Bill Clinton encouraged him to get into the race just before he announced. He has talked in the past about running for president as a Republican because he thinks GOP voters are stupid. The man is perhaps the biggest charlatan to ever run for the office, which is saying a lot considering who has been occupying it for the last several years.
I have been personally frustrated by the way in which many people seem to be willfully blind to this stuff. Point any of it out, and at best they say, as you have, “Hillary’s worse.” The less articulate simply scream “CUCK!!!!” at you. And the scummiest of them talk about packing you off in cattle cars.
If you can live with voting for such a scumbag and joining his legion of angry dimwit followers, so be it. But now you know my reasons for looking askance at you if you do.
Wow, repeating what I said is nearly as impressive as rebutting it. But not quite.
Ok Sean that was pretty polite, but you guys keep doing this:
“If you can live with voting for such a scumbag and joining his legion of angry dimwit followers, so be it.”
Yes I can live with voting for such a scumbag because I see it as voting against a more dangerous scumbag. I believe that you are in effect enabling that more dangerous to gain office, but I don’t look at you askance because I’m not an arrogant prick and I can see that is more than one way to view this thing.
I surf the web without loading images nor running java script (I strongly recommend web-developer plugin by prederick, you can control these things on page load basis in case you need images or java script for say amazon.com) If it weren’t for the long ago past I wouldn’t pick trump out of lineup.
I’m hardly anyones follower and I assure you I am no dimwit. (you can actually see that in my writing frankly).
There is word for self righteousness but it escapes me, but on a more serious note: we allied will Joseph Stalin in world war 2 only to pivot immediately after into a decades long cold war with the very one and the same. Does that give you the jeebies, too?
I don’t say that to change your mind. There is a subtle difference between I am right and I right you heretic piece of shit. I’m surprised to see the sane right come to this.
I giver pablo so no need to thank me. “Heads I win, tails you lose” was a description of your presentation. I been nothing if not fleshed out in this thread.
I speak specifically about the Dennis Pragers of the world.
I’ve listened to Dennis on this and I understand where he is coming from. He dislikes Trump, doesn’t trust him and believes he’s a disaster; however, he’d rather have him than Hillary in the White House because he truly believes Trump will be ‘easier’ to sway by having to get his party’s support in Congress.
That is the ONLY reason Prager has for voting for Trump.
That is where I disagree. I don’t believe Trump will be easier to control at all. In fact, I believe he’ll be worse.
mr. trump will be a fine president, but he woulda been better wo bout 2012
sorry did that sound bitchy
Darleen,
The Dennis Prager’s of the world are on whom this blog is raging. That’s is the ONLY reason most of us will vote for him, too.
To disagree with him is fine, of course, I simply trying to argue for the ‘I understand where he is coming from.”
Your position is sane.
No, pedant, you haven’t. Take your own advice and make your case:
So where’s your argument?
Given the feckless GOP Congress and the possibility of losing even that, this is where I land with Hamilton:
Let me add something. I was a Scott Walker supporter early on. I wish he had run a better campaign, but them’s the breaks. As the field got–very slowly, unfortunately–winnowed down to the final three we had to choose from, I became a Cruz supporter. Here’s the thing: I don’t like Ted Cruz. I know Darleen and Jeff do, but the man has always struck me as oily. He says a lot of things I agree with, but at the end of the day, I personally get the feeling that first and foremost, Ted Cruz is a Ted Cruz salesman. But I was perfectly happy to cast my vote for him against Trump because Cruz and I actually inhabit similar neighborhoods in terms of our stated political philosophies. I was going to settle for, so to speak, The Lesser of Two Evils. I’ll still vote for him in the CA primary as a protest vote, and then I’m out of the GOP.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump simply don’t present a choice for me, a choice being two or more reasonable options. Each is an amoral, power-hungry liar who I feel should not be trusted with the highest office in the land. The thought of either one of them in that office makes my skin crawl. I will not have a part, however small, in affirmatively throwing my support to either one of them. Period.
In 2008, a large segment of the electorate took an relatively unknown junior senator from Illinois and imposed upon him all manner of attributes which they wished he possessed. They willed themselves to believe he was something he most definitely was not. Some of us did not fall for that and have been proven right. But, as the regulars here know, saying we hoped Obama would fail in his efforts to transform the country, made many of us outcasts among the self-designated “conservative” elite, because “how bad can he really be?” and “we don’t want to jeopardize our invites to the right cocktail parties by saying something intemperate.”
The same thing is happening with Trump in my view. He says whatever pops into his mind in order to garner the accolades of the masses who are tired of Obama and want any sort of change. Those people are willing themselves to believe in something for which not only is there no evidence, but indeed mountains of contrary evidence. The best one can say is we don’t really know what Trump stands for other than “Trump, the brand” and that he’s the “UnHillary.”
As I said above, I’d be tempted if the GOP had not done everything in its power to marginalize and demonize the true Tea Party conservatives which were responsible for returning them to power in Congress. We have been lied to, laughed at and insulted for the last six years. The GOP has lost its right to presume that I will vote for whomever it designates as the party’s champion.
I was a Scott Walker supporter early on.
me too
he utterly failed to scale up though it was
a debacle
a mercifully quick one though
after that i briefly liked ted til he got all unseemly and weird with Kin Davis
now i wander the earth in search of a champion what can defeat the grendel’s pee-stanky mother
*Kim* Davis I mean
this is where I land with Hamilton
Chicago’s getting a resident Hamilton production
but i’m not buying in i already decided
i’d rather wait for a superlative classic
pablo, as I said before in that 657 comment thread where your name appears 53 times, you can find this comment that makes the argument https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=58498#comment-1275716
but I said that already.
There were half a dozen people in the field I would have been satisfied with. The megalomaniac reality show buffoon was not one of them, ever.
comment linking doesn’t work as expected it’s naftali says May 17, 2016 at 4:02 pm on the 657 comment thread.
But you are on that thread 53 times, so now you are interested?
Mr. Pablo even if you don’t like Mr. Trump i still hope he beats pee-stank
that’s coming from a deep-inside place to where I can’t help it
so please don’t hate me
it might be fun to concentrate on the state elections of 2018(via Art V) and just let the shtf?
well Sean that’s a more pleasant conversation. I became sold on Cruz when I saw this: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ted-cruz-bill-bratton-wrong-terrorism-article-1.2580401
It just floored me that an actual politician responded to an actual criticism substantively and in detail and in public. I was looking forward to someone who speeches might actual mean something. I am just floored that it didn’t work out.
I’ve read and commented here for 16 years. Does that make me more special than you?
It’s not my fault you didn’t signal your intent properly.
and if you use Art V in 2018: keep it simple stupid;
1) 12 yr term limits All Fed Gov’t employees,
2) debt limit increase for Fed Gov’t 3/4 State Legislatures approve
Re: the “I’m not so much voting for Donald as I am voting against Hillary” argument.
This would be a reasonable position, and one I would gladly take if our electoral system allowed us to cast negative votes, and reduce a candidate’s tally.
Since at the ballot box we can only register our support (and therefore, presumedly, our preference) and raise some candidate’s tally, my unwillingness to raise Donald’s tally (and lower my self-respect beneath the threshold of detection) does nothing to increase anybody else’s tally at all.
I wish we could cast negative votes. I doubt either major party would end up in the black.
No, that doesn’t make the case extremely well, pedant. When your best argument is that maybe he won’t be so bad??? Not compelling. Will he be better for Israel? Maybe. Until an Israeli hurts his feelings. Israelis don’t share your optimism.
Pro-military? Can you tell by the way he charity scammed veterans while hiding from Megyn Kelly? Sure, he says he’s going to build the greatest military, but he says that about everything he ever has or ever will lay hands on. More specifically, he says he’s going to spend less. What in his resume suggests he has any fucking clue what he’s talking about in that regard?
He says he wants to go kick the shit our of ISIS when he’s not saying we shouldn’t bother and just let Russia do it. How can you possibly suggest that he’s better than anything when he doesn’t even know what he’ll do? You’re simply hoping that this asshole is going to taste like chocolate rather than shit. Well, bully for you. I’m not playing that game.
Judicial appointments? Trump put out a great list! And as soon as he found out about it, he immediately started backtracking. You’re going to trust him? Again, good for you. I will not.
There is absolutely nothing about Trump to suggest he’s the least bit conservative of grounded in any principles at all, let alone Constitutional, limited government. He’s a progressive NY Democrat, and if that weren’t enough, he’s a bad person with bad character who lies constantly and simply cannot be trusted. If you choose to do it anyway, that’s on you. Don’t look to me for congratulations.
Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you with your wholly different name, pedant. That must be because I’m an asshole.
pedant, you arrived in this thread and told Jeff not to write what he’s writing because it’s bad to do so and he should stop it. If that isn’t concern trolling, what is?
In any case, we are all going to do as our conscience guides come November, and I highly doubt anyone will be talked out of his or her position. I know one guy at work who will be voting for Trump because #NoWayHillary and I will still consider him a work friend when this is over, just like I expect he will understand my position.
no pablo, I’m pedant but I agree with that argument to it’s particulars.
regarding Israel, I assure you, they are a divided politically as we are divided (and the left is even more insane) so it really wont do any good to duke it out regarding what they do or do not believe. Suffice it to say that you can find support going each way, and there are Israelis who favor Obama.
but at base, you are weaseling around the bush on the issue (“Will he be better for Israel? Maybe…”)
Pro-Military: If you are using that term to describe the argument, you either didn’t read it or you are thick.
The court appointments much the same. He put out an non-binding list. Satan said this: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/268174-clinton-i-have-a-bunch-of-litmus-tests-for-supreme-court.
No I don’t trust him. Seriously, read that argument (or don’t).
cranky, I don’t know what concern trolling is. It’s a lot like racism: a modern term that we kinda of know when to use but that has no real meaning.
but yes if the anti-trump can countenance #NoWayHillary crown and the converse, the right will be in good shape.
by the way, if you follow Israel at all by far the most trenchant commentary in English is this woman here: http://www.jpost.com/Author/Caroline-B-Glick.
It’s a link to the bio and links to her past pieces. go to page two to see here writings on the american primaries. She was a big cruz supporter, there’s even a great Cruz interview there with a link on the second page. That guy would have been something special. she does address the trump thing, the upshot being anybody but the Left.
Seam M, that was the most eloquent argument for not voting this election I’ve read so far. I understand it, and have felt the same in the past. I thought Romney was an awful candidate; the architect of Obamacare, favored a federal minimum wage with automatic increases, was an amnesty guy, and the general establishment bitch. I voted for him anyway…not for him though, against Obama.
I think though, the people that have let their personal feelings for Trump stop them from voting against Hillary have lost their reason.
Trump may disappoint on SC picks, even though he’s given a solid list. This is true, though I give it a slim possibility. Hillary will CERTAINLY forever irreparably destroy the country with hers (the next president will likely seat 3 justices, on top of the 2 Obama picked)
Controlling the borders. I know, touchback amnesty. That’s a misnomer though. The point is to stop illegal immigration. I don’t care if they came back, as long as they are vetted, documented, won’t be a drain on the welfare system, and their numbers set to a specified (sane) amount per year. A guest worker system of some sort set up. Just follow the fucking laws already in place! I really believe Trump will do his best to do this, knowing his support will vanish if he doesn’t. Now whether he CAN do it, with opposition from all sides in the ruling class, that will be the trick. Hillary has promised amnesty in the first 100 days, and will erase our border once and for all, guaranteed.
The second amendment. Yes, Ill grant Trump has been squishy on the issue in the past, and given another Connecticut type shooting feel compelled to pass some sort of new restriction. Thing is though, I think San Bernardino gave the man religion, and plus, again, he knows the second amendment is important to his base. Hillary will do all in her power to strip our right to own guns. She won’t try and confiscate them, she will sue gun manufacturers and so make them very expensive to buy, require a licence to by ammo, and make it very expensive, require a gun owners insurance, and make it very expensive, set up a registration process with very stringent qualifications and add an additional tax on guns to pay for it. Prosecute diverse instances of gun use with lawful intent to make it dangerous to use a gun even justifiably (a new George Zimmerman every day). In short, she will make most Americans voluntarily give up their guns, even as even now they are indoctrinating kids to fear and dismiss the idea of guns by suspending six year olds for chewing their toast into a gun shape. I guarantee this is the road Hillary will take us down, until she can stack the Supreme Court enough to revisit Heller and strike the second amendment altogether. Trump is not interested in any of that.
Yeah, I understand you think choosing either would sulley your sacred soul, but for heaven’s sake, this is far from choosing the lessor of two equal evils, this is choosing i Nguyen a sinner, or the very devil herself. I beg you, not Hillary!!
Sorry, Pablo, I’ve gone from aspirational voting to “don’t vote, it only encourages them.”
And I’m very close to “don’t pay taxes, it only funds them.”
Pretty sure that trump will win because we’ve progressed/regressed to reality star presidents. While the fate of the Supreme Court used to be a way to get me to vote repub, the John Roberts blackmail/betrayal decisions have convinced me it’s all kabuki.
Gosh, I hate to be such a downer, but this version of the American experiment is over. Much better we revert to individual states that may want to mount a common defense.
Here one view of Trump regarding Israel from the Israel perspective (C. Glick):
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/COLUMN-ONE-Trump-the-EU-crack-up-and-Israel-446166
You’re willing to operate on hope where Trump is concerned. I am not.
The argument, cut and pasted (emphasis mine):
This is not how pedantry works.
So you’re going to support someone you don’t trust and you think that’s rational? Commendable, perhaps? A position worthy of advocating?
I note Pendant asks us, ” Do you or do not accept the premise that we are in fact dealing with a lesser of two evils question? Make your argument . . .”
No, it’s not really the lesser of two evils, because there is a third choice: Not playing at all. We are not forced (yet) to cast our ballots for president, yet your question presupposes that we do. In fact, we are allowed (for now) to stay home and refuse to participate in what has become kabuki. For reasons that have been stated here and elsewhere in great detail, Trump is not an alternative to Hillary. At best, he is HillaryLite which is not enough to make me want to play.
And BTW, don’t play the “it’s your civic obligation to vote card,” which someone trotted out to me the other day. I’ll be happy to discharge my civic obligation when I see politicians discharging theirs, i.e. to protect and preserve the Constitution instead of their own offices inside the Beltway.
Scrolling down to address these points
The Dennis Prager’s of the world are on whom this blog is raging.
No, this blog has been raging against the sore winners, the “you’re a cuck” sneers and some virulent alt-right racist & anti-Jewish sentiments.
That’s is the ONLY reason most of us will vote for him, too.
Well, then “most of you” haven’t been clear because Prager’s stance hasn’t been copied much.
I’d be right there with you, Red, but I get to vote for a fucking SEAL Commander instead of a flaming Mafia homo!!!!
But then…. ah, shit.
Maybe November 8 would be a good day to start sniffing glue.
Yeah, I understand you think choosing either would sulley your sacred soul, but for heaven’s sake, this is far from choosing the lessor of two equal evils, this is choosing i Nguyen a sinner, or the very devil herself. I beg you, not Hillary!!
Yeah, the thing is, I won’t be voting for Hillary either. And you really can’t have a “lessor of two equal evils,” seeing as how, you know, equal. But thanks for the compliment up at the top.
Lee, you forget that upon his election, Trump doesn’t need your support anymore. You are a means to an end and then you’ll be useless to him.
Well, Pablo, RI is a reflection in the rear-view mirror now; NH does offer some alternatives. Hope the great American Redoubt is as good as it looks!
so really: where do we go from here? politically?
It’s amazing. You think everyone on your side is more intelligent then everyone on the other and then some internecine thing happens and you see that the distribution is more equal than that. Note to self, stay away from echo chambers even when the echo is correct.
This back and forth with pablo is surreal, I always thought he was intelligent so what was I wrong or bad faith..
He says (op text in quotes)
The argument, cut and pasted (emphasis mine):
Ok so hows this for pedantry you thick asshole.
The referent for the ditto is
So let’s do the ditto…
Better now? (I can’t believe that just happened on protein wisdom)
At this point you cannot be trusted, so here it is in full and may the reader draw his/her own conclusions:
Shermlaw, there a numerous rational and moral and justifiable positions regarding this issue. It is the heresy claim that isn’t at all justifiable.
sorry for calling you an asshole. I was very frustrated and that was wrong.
“battle lines are being drawn”
Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth 1967
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY
nice effin’ rerun
actually the “ruining class” only does “reruns” see: hollyweirds sequels or derivatives!
it is called: ” stuck on stupid” 1 party wants it; 2nd party is feckless.
Oy vey.
i accept the #nevertrumper pose. i don’t accept that you have nothing to offer going forward.
I didn’t call anyone a heretic. I merely noted your question suggested only two choices, and requested an argument. The premise for your question is wrong. There are not only two.
If your question is, “why not Trump,” it has been answered. I’m not sure then what your beef really is.
Wait, let me make sure I have this straight.
*I* can’t be trusted, but you want to make Donald Fucking Trump< the President of the United States of America?
AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!!!
Art V is self Gov’t : Do you want to do sumthing in 2018?
My beef is with
My comments were addressed to that and only that. It is categorical and absolute. It needs a lot more support than a paragraph of clever absolutely assertions. My comment addressed that and only that, and if it’s wrong then *that* is evil as it bitterly divides the last political man standing (and I don’t mean party) into me me me and them. Vote how you want but don’t create a self righteous religious war. I assumed a greater level of in ‘tuneness’ with the message of the post in the comments than was warranted in retrospect.
Listen, dumbfuck. You said this:
…and I cited Naftali’s argument using that exact term. How about you just go play some Hide and Go Fuck Yourself? The butthurt dumbass game is not going to win you anything around here.
the entirety of the answer with the onerous back and forth is up there. the reader will decide.
Mr. Pablo sometimes the things you say are not nice
‘feets most times the things you say are not smart. I’m not here for nice.
Public Image Ltd – Rise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN-GGeNPQEg
No one cares what you “think,” yellow peril.
i still hope he beats her
beats her like johnny beat amber
beats her for the gipper
and then he drinks a whisky drink
he drinks a vodka drink
he drinks a lager drink
he drinks a cider drink
Pablo, I think Trump wants to go down in history as a successful two term president that made America great again, not a one term loser that is despised by one and all.
This is the fundamental difference between Trump and Hillary/Obama. Trump really loves America, Americans, and wants what is best for the country, even if he doesn’t always see eye to eye with conservatives on what that is. Hillary/Obama hate America, and want to fundamentally transform her into a socialist Utopia. For the benefit of all us herd animals they have thoughtfully taken possession of of course.
Meanwhile, those of you so blinded to this reality by your spite at Trump for taking the nomination from Cruz have got to the point where patriotism and national pride equals fascism, because “nationalism”!
It’s become surreal.
god love you Mr. Lee
joy division
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZwMs2fLoVE&index=12&list=RDylOCIP54PIQ
>Trump really loves America, Americans, and wants what is best for the country, even if he doesn’t always see eye to eye with conservatives on what that is. <
he is for effin' TRUMP' clown
Steely Dan – Here at the Western World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkIFE2sLmkM
Assumes facts not in evidence. Also reminds me of the argument for Obama 6 years back.
Thank you for highlighting my first point new router.
And I’ve become immune to schoolyard insults. Soooo, rubber and glue and all that friend.
No, one does not want to fundamentally transform what one loves Pablo.
-Yeah…and Caesar loved Rome.
-Pablo wrote: He’s a progressive NY Democrat…. Even if he were a Progressive NY Republican, I wouldn’t for the Rockefeller with marble floors.
-It seems, RI, that you and I are simpatico: …this version of the American experiment is over. Much better we revert to individual states that may want to mount a common defense.
Refugium inveniemus in provinciis
[Find refuge in the provinces]
for some ’70’s fun:
Dont Take Me Alive / Steely Dan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gV1sxB8TxI
>And I’ve become immune to schoolyard insults.<
nah you don't have a clue about what to do?
>Soooo, rubber and glue and all that friend.<
Sure. I'm over here:
Steely Dan The Royal Scam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDFad7hmQSY
Simple Man by Bad Company…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLHtXUml-kY
I am just a simple man, working on the land
Oh it ain’t easy
I am just a simple man, working with my hands
Oh believe me
Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me
Oh you can’t fake it
Freedom is the only song, sings a song for me
Oh we’re gonna make it
I am just a simple man, trying to be me
Oh it ain’t easy
I am just a simple man, trying to be free
Oh believe me
Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me
Oh you can’t fake it
Freedom is the only song, sings a song for me
Oh we’re gonna make it
I am just a simple man, working on the land
Oh it ain’t easy
I’m just a simple man, working with my hands
Oh baby, believe me
I’m just a simple man, yeah yeah
Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me
I’m just a simple man, yeah
Here In The Western World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AReSAytW0XQ
Pretzel Logic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy9BXuy5_FA
Slightly longer pedant (because cranky already covered the shorter pedant):
Shut up before you talk me out of doing this awful thing that I’m trying to convince myself I have no other choice except to do, but I don’t want to do it.
I’m sure I missed the nuances because I was skimming —really, really fast
An essay with something for everyone.
It seems the long anticipated electoral realignment is upon us. Again.
Anyway, something to discuss, if discussion is to be had.
“[Trump] woulda been better wo bout 2012”
Indeed, slewfoot, he should have primaried Obama.
‘nother one to talk about, in keeping with the previous post
But he loves us, Lee, and just wants us to be better. In fact, we’re lucky to have him!
I have to admit, when Andrew Sullivan starts to hyperventilate over creeping Trump fascism, I do feel the urge to pull the lever for the short fingered vulgarian. But #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary means I am not giving a vote advancing a mandate for either one–I will definitely vote down ticket.
Although I do enjoy Trump calling her #CrookedHillary. Maybe she will align the media against him and win, but imagine if Mitt Romney managed to repeat his first debate performance in debates 2 and 3 and did not lie down for Obama? There is a political media lesson (beyond the merits of the candidates themselves) that makes this fascinating to watch. And sort of scary too.
I am just watching seeing where this will lead.
“You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to love Donald Trump when I give all these jobs.”
Yeah, what could go wrong with this guy?
People who’ve read here for “ten years” but change their handles in order to avoid scrutiny and call me arrogant, etc., bore me.
People who’ve read here for “ten years” and understood all my talk about losing more slowly would know exactly why I am taking the position I’m taking.
As for looking askance at those who have decided to fall in with the lesser of two evil? I do. And you won’t shame me out of it. It’s your choice to make. Live with it. But you won’t get any strokes from me. The truth is, you are indeed aligning with people literally agitating for white nationalism, racial tribalism, anti-semitism, and — in policy — a whole lot of leftism.
Just because it’s being pushed by a louting reality TV star instead of by a faux academic Chicago Marxist doesn’t make it any more palatable to me. With Hillary I know what we’re getting and I accept that. If voters wish to continue to make uninformed decisions and align themselves with people like Trump — either because they like what he says he stands for or because they because they claim they don’t want to wind up with someone worse — they are free to do so, of course. And I’m free to look down on the useful fucking idiots who continue to allow the GOP and the corporatists and the cronyists and the elites and the de facto single party system to piss all over them.
You’re just going to have to find a better venue to read, this one being so suddenly useless and my being so unimportant nowadays to the public discourse.
No one is keeping you here and I don’t much give a fuck anymore about readership, etc. I’ve made all my arguments. That and not actively participating in the advancement of evil and corruption and the destruction of the republic and the undermining of the Constitution is about all I can now do.
If you want to tell yourself you’re at least a temporary stop gap, fine. But you aren’t. You’re just part of the problem, in my opinion.
Deal.
I hear ya, for the record I’ve never commented at least not to where I did anything but create a throwaway account long forgotten, and thus had no handle to change. You’re arrogantly wrong or wrong because you’re arrogant, but your’e a decent and clever chap and you may well start writing something interesting again one day, so as before I just go back to lurking.
In addition to Art V (which you know I support and have made sure my Rep supports), I laid out an entire post on where I think we go and what the solution is.
Luckily, I’ve written several posts on the subject!
Ironically, this post was written in response to just such a one. And careful readers will note that the paragraph you so object to is addressed to people who previously claimed to be #nevertrump but (naturally, predictably, and in many cases I suspect opportunistically or out of fear of losing audience and revenue) had their most recent epiphany! — because it evidently just occurred to them that Trump will have to run against someone who is either Hillary or Bernie (or maybe Biden).
If you can live with yourself and cast an affirmative vote for Trump, go for it. I won’t. I can’t. And I’m willing to say it aloud. Have been. For many months.
That seems to really, really steam your bean.
To which I say, meh. I don’t really care. I’m done trying to convince people who work so hard and so consistently to fool themselves. And as I’ve been told I’m a Jew Cuck who needs some eliminatin’, being told I’m a “clever academic” who has nothing of substance to offer in these new glorious days of American resurgence doesn’t really sting all that much, shockingly!
you probably have a lot to offer. But you aren’t and you haven’t. Not since your’re work on the good man/ I hope he fails / tea party outlaw! contributions. The strategy needs to change because the facts on the ground changed. We could not anticipate how few adhere to as guiding governing philosophy constitutional conservatism. This climate does not bode well for an article V re-imagining.
You’ve said correctly that the tea party can’t die because it expresses something that is not limited to that particular form of expression. But that something isn’t never trump. It may lead to never trump or it may lead to never hillary, but the idea does not consist (entirely) in either never.
The way forward, such as it is, is to educate. It is to argue effectively boots on the ground, the body politic is profoundly unhealthy, so shaming into proper voting is counter productive. And diving the sane right into warring camps is insanely counter productive.
Personally, I believe that we don’t recognizably make it out of 8 years like the previous. We need to educate and to create a movement of understanding, and I argue that that requires time and unity among those who more or less agree philosophically.
it’s time to get out of politics and back into rhetoric.
OT: I see the Libertarians went with their version of establishment hack.
I know from experience that there is nothing a writer appreciates more than someone telling him what to write and what not to write.
go fuck yourself cranky, ya mean like what I should or should not write. They need to make a facebook like button for you or some arrows so you can get your vote on.
the writer is who is he is because he engages; he isn’t a brittle snowflake.
in order to beat the evil master-criminal Hillary
At this point I feel compelled to ask: What are her accomplishments?
Outside of parlaying her SecState position into six flavors of influence-peddling and laying bare State Secrets to every moderately competent HAXXOR on the planet, I mean?
True, she’s far more ideological than Bill, but other than attempt to pass Hillarycare in the 1990s, what’s she actually done to further the LEFTWING cause? No, I mean something apart from stuffing her own pockets and buying up enough leverage to stay out of federal prison.
That’s not to say she won’t go pedal-to-the-metal once in office, but it might be to say that she’s too stupid and corrupt and lazy and dotty to get much done.
Meaning that no matter who gets into office, it will be the Beltway Regulars who will call the shots, and the figurehead in the oval office will be neither a guide nor a brake to what happens.
We’re screwed either way, me hearties. Either your name is on the death of the Republic or it isn’t.
Hey, guys! We need to educate! To argue our points clearly and with methodical patience!
And the best way to do that is to tell everyone that of course we understand why you’d back a reality TV con man with a history of corporatism and political cronyism/graft, a guy whose pernicious populism has already in fact aided in a movement to undermine the Electoral College (wait for it, and trust me) and negate the validity of both Constitutionalism and conservatism, properly understood! We educate, that is, by making sure first and foremost that people whom you’ve spent years of your life trying to educate day in and day out have their predictable “I’ll vote for anyone over [name the latest Leftist boogeyman] feelz validated for them! As a learning experience!
Because shaming them for their repetitive insanity every four years is, naturally, unproductive!
— Unless of course you’re attempting to shame me back into those heady days when I had “a lot to offer” but no longer do and in fact haven’t for quite some time, dealing as I am with politics and not “rhetoric” or philosophy (let’s gloss over the work I did on the several SCOTUS decisions when last I posted semi-regularly). If only I had stayed true to my mission and not “simply” blasted morons for being demonstrable morons, or racialists for being demonstrably racialist, or pragmatists for once again being told that the only way to save the republic is to vote for the lesser of two evils, and yet again falling in line — as if not voting at all for president when the two candidates are Donald Fucking Trump and Hillary Clinton isn’t the most sane thing anyone of conscience can do!
The answer is bite me.
Pass.
“[O]ut of politics and back into rhetoric” somewhat betrays an ignorance of the purpose of the art of rhetoric as such. It’s about politics, remember? No philosopher uses rhetoric upon himself in his search for the truth of things — that would be quite the opposite of his intentions. And this too is apart from Aristotle’s recognition that there’s practically no such thing as a human being outside the city wholly alone and to himself alone [Pol. I, 1253a 1-19] — that being, says Aristotle, would either be some sort of beast or else something stronger than humankind (he refers there to Homer’s Cyclops, a cannibal to boot).
The way forward is that America is going to get what it keeps voting for, good and hard. Ideally, that will be educational. Or we’ll have President Camacho. Whichever.
Yep. I’m reminded of the Bushitler conundrum: Evil world-destroying mastermind or smirking idiot chimp? It can’t be both.
Hillary just ain’t all that. She may, in fact, be more incompetent than Obama.
Bullshit sdferr. You are too limiting. The human being and his means of informing and persuading and evaluation the speech the speech of fellow human beings is not, in essence, subservient to politics at least as understood in the context of whom to vote for in this bitter upcoming election. Seriously, you render rhetoric slave to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
It was also this blog authors area of expertise. But indeed the writing here has pivoted from the analysis of rhetoric and the elucidating of its foundations to but a crass usage of such to political ends.
Like this
Fucking cheesy
Rhetoric makes a dandy companion to every mathematician’s efforts to conjure theorems and proofs, sure.
No. And too limiting? What, you mean rhetoric is everything and all? Is somehow comprehensive of the whole? Gee, who knew?
I didn’t realize this was your blog, pedant. By all means, tell Jeff what to write on your property.
You are an arrogant prick, with nothing interesting to say.
I thought you were taking your ball and going home. Please, declare victory and leave the field, satisfied that you have done the Lord’s work here.
That two fat strawman in succession by the two smartest crayons in this box.
compare:
“The human being and his means of informing and persuading and evaluation the speech the speech of fellow human beings is not, in essence, subservient to politics at least as understood in the context of whom to vote for in this bitter upcoming election.”
“Rhetoric makes a dandy companion to every mathematician’s efforts to conjure theorems and proofs, sure.”
no cranky there is this sign that says leave a reply here and post comment, get it. You mean your writing is you writing so you just hang out here and up and down vote you sad fuck.
But hey, y’know who was a professional rhetorician and happened to be concerned with the education of good rhetoricians? Yeah, that Marcus Fabius Quintilianus fellow — he was keen on his liberal arts.
oh sdferr I take it back sorry I see what you are saying.
yes it take rhetoric to ferret out the proof and theorem from the speech it takes rhetoric to communicate such with motivation.
You sure scho0led me, pedant! I am thoroughly chastised.
you aren’t shit cranky I’m just responding
They don’t know what to make of people that can’t be bullied, shamed or guilted into giving ground.
Sure they do: They call us “morally vain purists.”
Self-Funding And The Only Person Ever Who’s Immune To The Influence Of Money
Mandatory reminder: Trump is immune to the influence of money in the same way George Soros is.
he’s lived a life of accomplishment and he’s worked very hard
Doing what? You can argue that Mao worked hard to accomplish the Cultural Revolution in China. He’s a crony, and that’s NOT free-market enterprise but corporatism, which Mussolini championed.
As someone who had a colostomy bag for seven months…
My most heartfelt condolences. One of the times when the cure is barely better than the disease and even then…
Trump is a lout, not a gentleman.
If he were a lout AND a rock-ribbed Constitutionalist, I’d be OK voting for him.
But he’s not. He’s a lout and a crony.
No sale.
disrupted a corrupt stagnant Republican Party
And got Mcconnell and Boeher to back his play, because they know they can make deals with him, whereas with Cruz they’d have to butt heads with, you know, the Constitution.
Do you or do not accept the premise that we are in fact dealing with a lesser of two evils question?
He does not. I do not.
And he’s responding primarly to Ace’s backpedalling and name-calling, found here and here.
Ace frequently starts out arguing from principle on some position, then later admits those arguments were only a tactic to a different end.
And then when he gets called on it, he accuses everyone of virtue-signalling.
Because that’s what you do when you treat principles as a means rather than an end.
If you’re not that guy, then Jeff’s invective isn’t aimed at you.
self-marginalization isn’t the answer
Why not? Sometimes your only choice is not to play.
When they become trumpkins you need to check your premises.
When people argue that I need to jump on the bandwagon BECAUSE LOOK AT WHO ELSE IS ON IT, then I know my premises are exactly right.
There’s an old saw about horses, water and drinking applicable here I believe, though altered to people, texts and thinking. Maybe a good dose of Plato’s Phaedrus would help too?
The essence of the human being and his social interactions cannot be found in Clinton v. Trump? Holy shit, that changes everything.
I’m also trying to understand why people who have decided that Trump is indeed the lesser of two evils get so bent out of shape by #NeverEverTrump.
What the hell do you care?
There aren’t enough of us to tip the scales for Hillary in any state of the union.
Chill out, man. We’re not going to Ruin Everything.
Everything already being Ruined, that is.
Again, your eloquence is a beauty to behold:
You don’t see rhetoric like that every day!
And there is a word for someone who has read a lot but isn’t as wise a he believes. Or a word to describe someone who has read a lot but cannot cogently discuss that which he is read.
I’ll make the argument clearly for you. Aristotle call it “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”
Any truth you believe need be accepted by someone else, provides an opportunity to apply ‘it.’ And any truth being conveyed to you in speech provides an opportunity to evaluation in the lens of ‘it.’
A father uses rhetoric to get his son to appreciate studying the assigned subject (is that politcs).
We live under constant bombardment and there is a profit for the sake of discerning truth from fiction in being knowledgeable about ‘it.’
This not limited to politics at least as the term is used in common speech, which is how it was used in original sentence you quoted.
When I said we need to return to rhetoric I didn’t mean that as some general prescription for the life and writing of every man. I meant it with respect to Jeff Goldstein as it was the area where he has made his most valuable contribution (in my opinion) and where there is still a lot to be contributed.
There is a view of truth which accords the human grasp no final comprehensive attainment (tacitly, and as yet, anyhow, in this view) — to know any part one must know the whole, and thereby the role of any and every part within that whole, along with it, its relations to all other parts in their respective roles — this view asserts, then, that all human truths are partial and therefore incomplete. The aim of philosophy, under that view, is the pursuit of something the philosopher has not got, but wants — lacks. The odd thing about this conclusion is that, regarding it, and turning back upon himself, this philosopher does not despair and give up the pursuit immediately. Instead, he makes it his life.
To what, toward what, are we persuading? In politics, at least, it appears to be justice, as most people say. Got the whole yet, though? No. So, partial justice then. And here, rhetoric will be useful. It’s always going to be about uncompleted imperfect parts, ready for action now.
I meant it with respect to Jeff Goldstein as it was the area where he has made his most valuable contribution (in my opinion)
If you can’t see #NeverEverTrump as a logical continuation of Everything Jeff’s Ever Written, then I don’t know how to help you.
Or are his contributions only welcome when he’s pounding someone other than you?
sdferr as usual that’s interesting, I’ll think about it.
dicentra for the upteenth time my problem is not with never trump per se. (you don’t really care what my point was, but it’s discoverable in this thread right here)
I am sickened by my latest comments. I apologize to you cranky and pablo, none of you are my enemies and even to them I don’t speak that way.
I made my point and it will stand or fall for whoever will read it on its merits .
It’s bad spot politically — to better times.
‘Pedant’ is now retired.
When Jeff told me “Trump will NEVER represent me, not even if he winds up taking every constitutionalist position – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=58498#comments“, I realized logic had little to do with his never Trump position. I won’t speculate on what is really going on because it would be only speculation, and so unfair.
Lee, “taking every constitutionalist position” refers to Trump’s campaign declarations.
Which, Trump’s campaign speeches are slipperier than Hillary’s. He says whatever feels right at the moment, and he’s known to contradict himself twice in one utterance.
Meaning that Jeff (and I, and the rest of #NeverEverTrump) know who Trump is and won’t be fooled by campaign sweet-talk to the contrary.
dicentra for the upteenth time my problem is not with never trump per se.
tl;dr
Because that’s what you do when you treat principles as a means rather than an end. –
THIS THIS THIS
I’ve tried the ‘educate’ part with everyone I disagree with — from Leftists to Trumpkins. I really do engage in good faith style and am ready to back up my arguments with substance.
But way too many have fallen into the Left’s debate style. They refuse to debate. By golly, they have their talking points and they will stick with them regardless of any inherent absurdity or contradiction. Worse, the mere fact of disagreeing makes *me* (or any other dissenter) the villain! We want women to die of back alley abortions, children to starve in the streets, endless war to enrich our corporate masters, etc.
You can’t educate those who are comfortable in their power to dismiss you & who can even destroy you and your livelihood.
No dicentra it was “ends up” taking every constitutional position.
Nice try though.
“I realized logic had little to do with his never Trump position.”
There is no logic to pretending a liar is not a liar if he has the right positions for a moment, even if it is the last moment.
Trump is not trustworthy or consistent. His positions at any given moment or at the last moment of campaigning have little to no value.
The promises of a liar are just air.
He’s also made a habit of claiming not to have said things he’s been recorded saying. His bullshit expires even faster than Obama’s.
So don’t read it. To my mind there’s nothing crass about calling a spade a spade. And since I’ve been doing it for going on 15 years here, forgive me for not taking your assessment of my “pivot” seriously. I was in this exact spot back in 2008 when I was told that I was being “unhelpful” bad-mouthing “the first black President” — that doing so would alienate us from the “moderates.”
Well, now we have the “moderates,” and it turns out they’re disaffected white Democrats who can’t justify pulling the lever for a Jew commie like Bernie, so they’ll vote for his “GOP” doppleganger. Enjoy the new squatters in your big tent!
You’re pro Trump. You therefore have surrendered any claim to either understanding or competently identifying logic. As it stands, I’ll put my work up against yours using logic as the criterion any fucking day of any fucking week of any fucking month in any fucking year.
If some of you here want to pretend I don’t argue in good faith, fine. I know better, as does anyone with even an ounce of intellectual honesty. As to being able and willing to defend my arguments, I’ll just let this entire site stand as my defense. The real problem some of you have with me is that I don’t pivot with you.
Yes. Persuasion only works when it’s persuading, because when it isn’t persuading you aren’t persuading well. So what I need do is get back to using persuasion better to persuade better, otherwise I won’t persuade. And if I restate such simplistic pablum in a way that doesn’t pretend to take such simplistic pablum seriously, that’s “fucking cheesy.”
I’m not persuaded. But thanks.
Meaning that Jeff (and I, and the rest of #NeverEverTrump) know who Trump is and won’t be fooled by campaign sweet-talk to the contrary.
As I noted way up thread, the exact same thing happened in 2008 with BHO. People persuaded themselves to believe something which was demonstrably untrue, and then voted based upon a delusion rather than reality, all while having nominally “conservatives” give them cover by criticizing those of us who from the beginning predicted where we’d end up. Jeff, of course, was a prominent victim of this mindset.
We need not rehash everything Trump and done or said which demonstrates he is most definitely not the conservative messiah. Yet we are asked to have faith that somehow he’ll come around or be kept in check by a Republican congress which has spent the last six years pissing on constitutional conservatives while tell us to get out of the rain.
Maybe a President Trump will be the greatest constitutional conservative the world as seen. Maybe the Congress will do its job. Maybe SCOTUS will have an epiphany and realize it is not a super legislature empowered to affect the latest social engineering craze.
I doubt it, but if it happens, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
In the meantime, having reread pendant’s comments, I still cannot fathom what his gripe is. He acknowledges that the #NoTrump position is a principled one. Presumably he has read Jeff’s posts and other writings on these issues. What else do you want? An absence of summation? I withholding of the opinion that the “lesser of two evils” position is foolish and delusional?
Or do you merely wish the #NeverTrump people to just shut up and get out of the way of pragmatism and “getting shit done?” Sorry, not going to play, because “getting shit done” inevitably means taking a melon-baller to my personal autonomy. And when Trump begins to do it, I can in good conscience say (again), “I fucking told you so, you idiots.”
“You’re pro Trump. You therefore have surrendered any claim to either understanding or competently identifying logic. ”
Pure sophistry. Just because you don’t approve of my choice doesn’t mean I didn’t arrive at my choice logically I’ve laid out my logic several times now. That I disagree with some of your assumptions in making my case doesn’t mean I’m illogical, basically you assume Trump is evil, I don’t. That means I have different expectations of a Trump presidency, not thatI have surrendered logic.
Shermlaw , I gotta quibble with your recollection of 2008. Obama was truthful and upfront about what he was going to do, and did it! That was why Rush said he hopes he fails. Obama told us he was going to fundamentally transform America, open the borders, shut down the coal industry, negotiate with Iran, pull the troops from Iraq, pass Onamacare, and so on. About the only thing he hasn’t t done as promised is close Gitmo. Really, the only thing I think his supporters mirrored onto him was thinking he would improve race relations, which I don’t think was an Obama promise.
I only hope Trump is as good as his word as Obama has been!!
Sure, cupcake.
You have no argument. You have no point. You have faith. That’s it. I don’t share it and I base that on experience and history.
Sorry your feelz are all hurt because I don’t take your bullshit position seriously or grant it any weight or pretend it could be reached “logically.” It’s a fucking hope and a prayer. Nothing more. If it works out perfectly, it was still a hope and a prayer.
Finis.
Whatever.
You have a boner for an old dick. There are millions of sites you can hang out and circle jerk to the return of American Engreatenment, which never could have happened under Lyin’ Ted the Canadian lothario whose father helped take out Kennedy and whose ugly globalist wife has, with Lyin’ Ted’s help, helped convince his two girls that he’s a man of faith when clearly he’s a pretender! As foretold by that pair of Corinthians.
Fuck yourself.
LB,
Which is why we got Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley and other noted “conservatives” telling us BHO would “really, really, really, really pivot to the middle and not be too bad . . . really” and why Jeff was cut off at the knees.
Back up a ways, happyfeet:
“i never my whole life seen a more potent catalyst than Mr. Trump”
Pfui. Your ebonics says you never seen a shinier object than ol’ Mister Trump!
Good for you!!!
More happyfeet:
“i’m trying to explain to you how baleful pee-stank truly is”
So, how many of you fucking morons are going to vote for the absolutely reprehensible clown of one party just to hedge your bets against the absolutely reprehensible clown of the other party?
At what point do you begin to question your commitment to a process that only ever proceeds in a direction contrary to your druthers? “Conservatism” has never won any long term battles. Voting Conservative has amounted to squat. The Progressives are relentless. The game is stacked in their favor. They are winning. They will continue to win. Until we are Venezuela. It’s political nature. It’s human nature.
You should stop embarrassing yourselves over Trump and resign yourselves to whatever you think the worst is.
I recommend freeze dried food and some ammunition.
i bought some pork sung now i need to figure out what to do with it
there’s a congee place down the street i never been to
that’s probably gonna give me some ideas
Mr. Trump is a good alternative to that nasty bladder-dysfunctional old woman. This is not even hard to understand.
I think after 8 years of being raped by food stamp people are displacing their fears and anxieties on Mr. Trump. That’s not the lens i use.
The election of which candidate, I ask myself, represents the most emphatic repudiation of food stamp and his legacy?
I think that’s Mr. The Donald.
“Take pork sung and shove it,
I ain’t aworkin’ here no more.”
“Mr. Trump is a good alternative to that nasty bladder-dysfunctional old woman. This is not even hard to understand. ”
You keep repeating that, but it doesn’t get anymore credible.
“That’s not the lens i use.”
You aren’t practicing optics, and this isn’t really a job for the old PO-MO.
“I think that’s Mr. The Donald.”
I’m not seeing a lot of thought going on, just assertion. Empty assertion in the face of contradictory evidence(Trump’s past, present, and general incoherence)
This is the kind of snob-kissed asshattery that just happens when you value a Hemingway three-& a half pager about a not very responsible rich guy pressuring his be-lifey-doodled tootsie to get an abortion on a fun trip, over robust bridge designs.
“pee-stank”
First, liberals with the urine fetish; then happyfeets.
i don’t agree
i think preventing pee-stank’s moist and corrupt tenure in failmerica’s woefully besmirched oval office is a noble cause, and a necessary one
i know the supreme court is a joke, but stank will make it risible beyond all third world imaginings
this is important to me so please try and be a little more cooperative
The reader has decided that the guy who believes that anything Trump says can be believed has given up even trying to think critically.
Shorter: you fail.
‘Feets has a bad case of Toe Fungus of the brain.
feets, you could be replaced by a random-phrase-spewing computer program and none would be the wiser.
As it is, though: none are the wiser even so.
No. Instead you put them onto Hillary.
Because HopenChange er I mean Make American Great Again
with single payer health care, comprehensive immigration reform Smoot-Hawley II: the Reckoning and America First isolationists in charge of foreign policy.
Let me say this again: We all watched as Donald Trump used his free media and his big celebrity megaphone to do Mitch McConnell and John Boehner’s wet work for them: he set out to try to destroy the reputation of a real conservative fighter who demonstrably stood up to the GOP leadership, to the Bush DOJ (in Medellin), to the gun-control lobby (writing the amicus for 31 states), for religious liberty, etc — and Trump did so by relying on the ignorance of most American voters, a ratings-starved and revoltingly opportunistic media, and the tactics of the left as run thru the WWE to do so.
So for most who don’t follow politics closely, Ted Cruz has been cast as an unlikable phony establishment insider and champion of amnesty who somehow can’t and won’t get things done with “leadership” despite his establishment insiderness — and besides, he’s a serial liar, a fake Christian, a Canadian (and not every eligible for the presidency), son of an accomplice in the JFK assassination, a serial adulterer (goes along with the fake Christian and the Lyin’ Ted tropes, and is a direct attack on his supposedly ugly wife and his family), and a guy who “everybody” says Trump beat in “every” debate, likely because he was too busy banging his entire campaign staff or off making secret deals to create a North American Union and give control of the country over to the nefarious Jewness that is represented by
HaliburtonGoldman-Sachs.Donald Trump isn’t fit to be in the same conversation for GOP nominee as someone like Cruz. And yet here we are — Cruz’s reputation damaged, and the GOP standard bearer a supporter of socialized medicine, the capricious use of increased tariffs, military as mercenaries, race-based affirmative action, sex as a self-determined social construct, punitive policies toward corporate mobility (where does that authority come from, by the way? Isn’t a necessary condition of liberty the ability to move?), INCREASING ethanol subsidies, making nice with (after having funded) the GOP leadership whose goal has been to CRUSH conservative insurgencies, neutrality toward Israel (all the Buchananites in the house say “ho!”), an increase in the federal minimum wage, support of Kelo, the continued federalizaton of lands (which necessarily keeps the entrenched power of the EPA viable), a dislike of “assault weapons” (leading him to back a ban), a fan of Planned Parenthood (they do Good Things!), price controls on Big Pharma (as a start! Take that, Bernie!), and so on, to the point where I can’t even any longer rattle off positions he’s taken in order to “bring new blood into the GOP,” almost all of it progressive nationalist blood that remains uncomfortable voting affirmatively for a socialist Jew (who trust me, is their second choice).
To hear people stand up for Trump’s character — particularly putative conservatives — has been surreal.
Trump will never get my vote or my support. Remember? How you get there matters?
Well, here we are again. And to me it still does. I haven’t changed.
With all due respect to the Instapundit, I would suggest that Trump is *a* response to PC run amok, not *the* response. Certainly not *the only* response, or even *a good* one.
Here’s what I think *is* a good response: Stop using the fuzzy, imprecise, subjective term ‘gender’ as a trendy or supposedly polite substitute for the clear, definitive, reality-based term ‘sex’. There’s something we can all do on a grassroots level that doesn’t involve the question of whether to pimp our consciences and sell out to Orange Obama or not.
It should be clear to all–with one notable exception–that attempting to use reason with feets is wasted effort.
What’s the problem with Happyfeet. He prefers Trump to Hillary. The counter arguments are moral arguments. And in this case particularly these moral arguments are, well, arguable.
I get that the overwhelming majority of this section is on one side of that debate, along with the estimable blog host, but everyone being in agreement around this one position doesn’t make it any more (or less) reasonable.
we elect Hillary we’re not just electing a filthy crotch-damp criminal
but we’re also ratifying a vile third world dynasticism
i’m not a part of that it’s not who i am
“but we’re also ratifying a vile third world dynasticism ”
If “Boss Tweed’s” friend is good enough for Tammany Hall then he’s good for the white house, see?
The problem with slewfoot is that he has far too many enablers.
pee-stank
nasty colostomy bag lady
pee-stank
pee-stank
pee-stanky criminal woman,
baleful pee-stank
pee-stank
chairman mao with an overactive bladder
pee-stank’s fetid crotch
grendel’s pee-stanky mother
pee-stank
nasty bladder-dysfunctional old woman.
pee-stank’s moist and corrupt tenure
a filthy crotch-damp criminal
———
Besides mommy issues? Gynophobia?. Something bit him?
The problem with feets is that he makes assertions unsupported by evidence or logic.
It’s not complicated.
Methinks some kind of brain damage [perhaps inflicted with a cooking utensil – repeatedly].
I was perusing some of Jeff’s older posts the other day and discovered the old Happyfeet, who eschewed the baby-talk and vulgarity, and concluded that only some kind of traumatic brain injury had occurred.
To settle the science — as it were — it would benefit Mankind [and the Aliens hidden beneath Mt. Denali] if we could autopsy his brain ASAP. Can I get an ‘Amen!’…and a promise to not rat anyone out to The Fuzz?
Your Humble and…
Dr. Robert Oswald ‘ Bob’ Belvedere,
Director of Vaginology and Gam Services,
The Lord Fatheringay von Whoopsie Memorial Hospital and Tiki Bar
To flip matters around, when it’s happyfeet who has innocently fallen into this here enclosure only to be intemperately and roughly mauled by the unreflective, leg-yanking beast within, what’s anyone’s problem with shooting this gorilla, naftali?
Where comes, after all, the sudden frisson of public interest — for this unreflective beast was conceived here and here he remains — so we may ask of others: why mourn to shoot it now?
No. No worries. Let’s save the innocent.
Heck, in the new ways we can even scroll right past the gorilla. Even the whole gorilla.
Even the whole Magilla!
Oy, so much for esoterica.
Oh boy, thank you for all the responses, I guess, but I didn’t mean to do that all, sorry Happy.
For the record, I’ve always found Happy entertaining and still do. It’s a vulgar method of expression and one I don’t encounter much in real life, but often very funny (to me). I mean food-stamp, classic, he even called someone a picklehead up-thread or in some other, and I remember the food posts and restaurant critiques and when he would use ‘what’ as a conjunction where one would expect ‘that.’ It’s bit low brow I guess, but I like it, at least at internet distance. I do remember when he went out of favor during the Palin era, and when the blog turned against him, but to remain here out of favor and contrarian for as long as he has just making his basic points, with which some I agree, without ever incurring the degree of wrath normally unleashed on persistently contrarian commentators is impressive. At base, I believe he isn’t liked here because he runs contrary to the current general position, vehemently held by most of the regulars.
I just spoke up because I’ve always liked him (his writing?). And I’m just responding again because I regret having unintentionally set his handle up as a virtual pinnata in the thread.
From Robert Tracinski:
I’d disagree that “saving/replacing the Party” is our most urgent necessity, I think reducing DC’s influence, scope, and cost are more urgent. But Trump is destructive of that goal, also, so overall I think it’s a good point.
Well, since you can’t accomplish the latter (reduce DC’s influence, scope and cost) without first accomplishing the former (either save the GOP for limited government and constitutionalism —or replace it altogether), really it’s the only point.
Fair enough, Ernst, although we seem to have gone a long way toward totalitarianism without a major party openly embracing it as a plank in their platform. And Cruz was at the very least leaning in that direction without (obviously) GOP support.
And I’m confident that someday soon DC will matter much less in our everyday lives than it does now. I’d much rather it happens by reasoned volition rather than by default after it gets blown to hell by “workplace violence” and “angry youths”.
*by “that direction” I mean smaller gov’t, not totalitarianism. That’ll teach me to run a conference call while commenting.
Openly, closedly — what’s the diff if it’s the ultra-boogie dance of outcome that’s the point?
Or at least authoritarianism, as De Tocqueville predicted we would, btw.
And arguably a Cruz nomination would have preserved the GOP’s standing as the party of limited, constitutional government. Instead, the voters chose (poorl, in my opinion, but you knew that) to embrace the crack-up the R. Emmett Tyrell has been predicting since Bush 41:
Bruce Frohnen, Neoconservatives, #Nevertrump, & the Death of Conservatism
I’m tempted to say that, should Trump win, he will be the most transformative President since Andrew Jackson.
But then really, when there’s so many to choose from, TR, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, even Obama, it’s probably best to wait and see what he transforms. If he’s elected.
Speaking of crack ups, Beck’s show is suspended. As out there as he can be, I don’t think Sirius did the right thing. Lefties explicitly called for bush to be assassinated and got no pushback.
he’s been off his meds lately but i don’t see what suspending him accomplishes really
like who’s even gonna notice he’s gone
it’s summer vacation season anyways
i bet he goes and does something fun like check out the new Harry Potter World or just sit out on the river drinking trumptinis watching old man river float on by in the hazy lazy days of summer
briar patch much?
Wait.
The David French of NRO?
Speaking of crack ups, Beck’s show is suspended. As out there as he can be, I don’t think Sirius did the right thing. Lefties explicitly called for bush to be assassinated and got no pushback.
Why do you assume that Beck/Thor actually called for any kind of assassination?
He didn’t. Listen to the clip: He and Brad Thor are saying that if Trump or anyone else becomes a caudillo, and Congress won’t do the right thing (tossing him out of office), then who will step up and remove him?
There’s no reference to killing anyone but of removing him from office.
Atty General. SCOTUS. Joint Chiefs. State legislatures/governors. Off the top of my head there’s a bunch of entities who might could step in without even being armed should Congress fail in its duty to impeach.
Also, Glenn is on vacation right now. Since Friday there are subs doing the show.
Big whoop.
yeah David French
kinda ironic for Kristol to turn around and trivialize the presidency like that I think
this is just a very weird year
“he’s been off his meds lately but i don’t see what suspending him accomplishes really”
Who listens to him on Sirius/XM? I’m not going to trust a cash starved debt heavy low subscriber outfit like a satellite radio company with a recurring payment instrument.
His show was on WOAI in San Antonio who syndicates him. I think KLBJ puts him on but at night and I don’t listen to KLBJ anymore on account of their pushing lame local talents.
KLBJ thinks their fatty baby-voiced sports guy, some sorta faux-smuggo-Libertarian ex-pro-NFL kicker, their traffic guy, a news reader guy, and a 58 year old local morning zoo shock jock on the 70’s power rock oldies station are good talk show fodder.
I do not agree with them.
So per Yoda, I listen not.
since i got my echo i don’t listen to any radio at all anymore really
Darleen says May 28, 2016 at 11:31 am
I have my CA primary ballot … I am STILL voting Cruz on it.
Gotta say, though, that the f**king idiots who rioted in San Diego carrying Mexican flags an “f**k Trump” signs are only giving him more votes.
Jeff G. says May 28, 2016 at 11:51 am
On purpose. It’s orchestrated.
Sorry Jeff, but that idea is just batshit crazy, the mirror image batshit crazy of people who got upset because Mrs. Cruz worked for GOLDMAN SACHS!!111!!
The La Raza Treason goons in this state of Clownifornia has become brazen because they *control* one political party and the other is essentially moribund. They would be doing their rotten terror goon “protests” at Cruz rallies if they perceived Ted as a threat. They just never did. :-(
Let me say this again: We all watched as Donald Trump used his free media and his big celebrity megaphone to do Mitch McConnell and John Boehner’s wet work for them.
Again, let’s not go into fever swamps. Trump did his smearing of Cruz simply because Cruz got in his way. There really wasn’t *anything* cunningly “operative” to it at all.
And Trump did the same verbal smackdowns of !Jeb! Arbusto, Marco the Rube, and Pansy Grahamnesty when they got in his way, before Ted Cruz did. And Mitch and John certainly were not in approval of *that*.
And *again*, just to be clear, I so wanted Ted Cruz, the thinking man, over Trump, the bloviating one.
Indeed, when I look back at the first presidential debates, I must admit I was pleased at verbal smackdowns Trump delivered to Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, with Ted Cruz offering tacit bromantic support back then I might add. And yes, Trump’s verbal smackdowns did derail Jeb’s, and later Marco’s, Amnesty Campaign Trains.
Established “Betters” like Bush and Rubio had enjoyed unearned credibility and gained way too much control in the GOP for too long. And as a final proof, they couldn’t even discredit Donald Trump, a clear buffoon.
It was so bad that honest and well meaning (if wrong) people actually were looking at Trump, yes, big hairpiece buffoon TRUMP, as a “viable” alternative to that Bushy-Rovie Amnesty rot, because (I cringe at this) he actually *was*.
(Why they didn’t understand that Ted was much better, actually thought things through and did his homework is sad, but I chalk that up to celebrity star power and perhaps the media demonization of Ted all through the 2010 Obamunistcare standoff).
That’s how bad the condition of this nation is. And again, it didn’t happen overnight.
He didn’t. Listen to the clip: He and Brad Thor are saying that if Trump or anyone else becomes a caudillo, and Congress won’t do the right thing (tossing him out of office), then who will step up and remove him?
And again, here’s the problem: it is hard for most people care about what Trump *could hypothetically do*, after eight years of what Young Pioneer Barry actually has done, with no serious GOP opposition, and what Chairwoman Shrillary Spiteful would make worse, and what Comrade Bernie would rubber stamp. (Not that Bernie has a chance).
If Trump is so dangerous as to merit this response from some people for potential future acts, and he hasn’t even done anything yet, what do these Obamunist criminals merit for 8 years of usurpations and tyranny?
What could Trump do, in comparison to the Obamunist?
–Trade 5 terrorists for one deserter?
–Use the IRS to hound political opponents?
–Use the govt. to compel purchases of a product?
–Grab up definitional control of health insurance plans to the point of killing plans and doctor-patient relationships?
–Make “non-agreements” with Iran and box Congress out of it?
–Use the media to run pass interference for him? The media certainly *won’t* do that for the Donald, like they did and do for the Obamunist and would for Shrillary.
–Make Amnesty agreements for illegals and box Congress out of *that*?
–Gin up hatred between blacks and cops, and start cities burning, by siding with “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” liars over officers?
–Diminish our standing internationally, with “red line” after “red line”?
–Tank the progress made in Iraq, with a pullout that created a vacuum that ISIS filled?
–Crush military morale?
Again, disclaimer: NONE of this means that I think Trump is wonderful, far from it.
-Bruce Frohnen wrote [per Ernst]:
While I have my differences with BF, he’s spot-on here.
What he describes is The Triumph Of Leftist Thinking.
Most Americans now believe this heresy. They have embraced this mutant form of thinking, which is essentially their demanding that they be Enslaved.
-Special Note To Ernst: Thank you so very much for alerting me to the essay, ORESTES BROWNSON and the UNWRITTEN FOUNDATION of AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM. Much food for thought there [especially ‘providential constitutionalism’].
Perhaps I will finally sit down and read a whole work by Mr. Brownson, as I’ve long promised myself [although I have Christopher Dawson’s God And Revolution in the mail-stream].
https://home.isi.org/orestes-brownson-and-unwritten-foundation-american-constitutionalism
[…] Pamela Geller: Half Of Muslims In Massive Idomeni Migrant Camp Go Missing Protein Wisdom: No, #NeverTrump Can’t “Fail” Shark Tank: Marco Rubio For Senate In 2016? Shot In The Dark: “Something’s Wrong With […]
It’s the Triumph of the Servile Mind in Minogue speak.
Dawson, God And Revolution
Me want
They suspended the show for his whole vacation? That’ll show him.
They need to get Steve Bannon’s Trumpbart radio off the conservative channel and put him with his pal Alex Jones or something.
If you say so.
You’ve just described the Weimarization of America.
How Much Worse Can it Get?
You’ve just described the Weimarization of America.
How Much Worse Can it Get?
In a “first time tragedy, second time farce” way, I can’t disagree.
But Mr. Trump has never written a Mein Kampf.
He has just hosted “Reality TV”.
He’s a buffoon, and it is sad that it has gotten to that level.
But really? The GOPee, who just wouldn’t listen to the rank and file and even tried to silence us, finally met its match, namely, a loudmouth who could not be silenced.
>Chernyshevsky’s ideas were heavily influenced by Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, and Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach. He saw class struggle as the means of society’s forward movement and advocated for the interests of the working people. In his view, the masses were the chief maker of history. He is reputed to have used the phrase “the worse the better”, to indicate that the worse the social conditions became for the poor, the more inclined they would be to launch a revolution.<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Chernyshevsky
the "third way" is trump then art V in 2018
we should be preparing for 2018 state elections now for art V convention of the states
2018: make dc detroit
With ya, di. I think it was a “what if” discussion. The fact that a president has already rode rough-shod over the constitution without patriots stirring is more troubling to me.
And yet the rank and file lost again. That part of it that cares about anything other than winning-at-all-costs, that is.
And all this third way crap is a dead end —literally—as 1793, 1918-89, 1933-1945, 1966-1976, 1975-1979 should have taught us.
“And yet the rank and file lost again.”
That saying about being careful what you wish for because you just might get it sadly comes to mind….
**** “Last April [1990], perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed … Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist,” Marie Brenner wrote.
When Brenner asked Trump about how he came to possess Hitler’s speeches, “Trump hesitated” and then said, “Who told you that?” “I don’t remember,” Brenner reportedly replied.
Trump then recalled, “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and he’s a Jew.”
Brenner added that Davis did acknowledge that he gave Trump a book about Hitler. “But it was ‘My New Order,’ Hitler’s speeches, not ‘Mein Kampf,'” Davis reportedly said. “I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”
After Trump and Brenner changed topics, Trump returned to the subject and reportedly said, “If, I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
In the Vanity Fair article, Ivana Trump told a friend that her husband’s cousin, John Walter “clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler,” when visiting Trump’s office. ****
a loudmouth who could not be silenced.
And with whom they can make YUGE deals.
None of which will break in our direction.
So. I hear Colombia is nice this time of year.
“At base, I believe he isn’t liked here because he runs contrary to the current general position, vehemently held by most of the regulars.”
For the record, slewfoot’s a griefer.
And your belief is one hundred percent off base, mister my struggle.
“eschewed the baby-talk and vulgarity”
The come-on or hook.
Which shell hides the pea?
And thus, they’ve attached themselves to his ass like so many barnacles. So it’s win/win, except for America.
Unless he loses, in which it’s you conservatives got your dream candidate and you lost; you conservatives need to understand that conservatism can’t win —now get in the back of the bus and STAY THERE!.
Oh wait: That’s still win/win.
Or at least heads they win, tails we lose.
Whether Trum wins or loses, I think the only people on the right who are going to come out of this cycle with clean hands are those intellectually high-minded tradcons —who’ve already washed their hands of the whole mess.
Jonah Goldberg today:
It’s a start, or an attempt at one, along similiar lines to what’s already been suggested. Albeit, like almost all conservative and classical liberal enterprises, an inherently flawed one.
Ernst, what do you make of the thrust of Goldberg’s meaning about “1930s moment” there? Time just after a massive economic system collapse? Time of great religious promise and vigor (i.e., the grip of socialism on human imagination at that time)? Time of the failure of trust in institutions (Weimar)? Time of attack on long-standing order (see Charles Hill’s essay)? Something else I’m not expressing? All of that together? Or something altogether different from this?
I would say he’s implying that Clinton=FDR & Trump=Hoover (or vice versa) by analogy, and arguing that, like in the 1930s, conservatism/classical liberalism lacks a party base.
Before concluding with conservatism’s version of socialism would work this time if only the right people were put in charge.
Who is suggesting the right people be put in charge, as differentiated from the right system of checks and balances, owing to Madison’s insight that the “right” people will not always be present — or, put more forcefully, that there are no wholly “right” people to be found, anywhere, ever?
But we can put that aside for the moment, this 1930s moment. I’d even put aside mention of conservativism for the moment (I do not say put aside classical liberalism here, since I’m uncertain how far these two names go hand in hand — the one name [conservative] being primarily a question of party, one party among others within a classical liberal regime or fundamental order, the other name being the name of the regime or fundamental order itself), for the sake of attempting to get our arms around what is happening on the whole.
There are two phenomena we’re dealing with here, I’d say. On the one hand, our unpartied state (by our, I mean those of us who understand ourselves as cut off from or cut out from the Republican party, which formerly served to represent our views but which no longer does in any significant respect); on the other hand, the ongoing destruction of the fundamental classical liberal regime as conceived in the Constitution of the United States.
Or, wait! — even larger, as alluded to just above, another great phenomenon as well, a third: the dissolution of the global order built and enforced by formerly powerful 9now fallen weak) Western powers.
Ha, I just got my first ever unsolicited e-mail from the Trump team, which signifies to me (although it went unread and straight into the trash can) that the Trump team has no idea who I am.
sdferr:
“that there are no wholly “right” people to be found, anywhere, ever?”
That’s a tough argument to make. I’ve not read Madison but have heard the less forceful configuration of the argument, which makes sense to me. The *not always available* problem obviates delving into the “never available” problem, practically, as long as its solution is available, but its solution , namely, “the right system of checks and balances”, depends not on any right person but rather on the right body politic, which is the argument Bob B. often mentions about the ‘religious and moral people.’
Ironically, it’s possible that *that* requirement is more difficult to obtain, than to obtain the right person, if we concede that he can exist.
It seems to me naftali, that Madison’s view is of a secular political order — it does not speak to (appeal to as curative, in this sense) a higher one, that I can see. Madison was hard about that I think, insofar as he wanted to strictly leave higher orders to the people in their private capacities in the private sphere, where government and governing had no business.
To put this crudely: currently we see Oriental despotism on the march, and in many places. What checks Oriental despotism under its own theory of itself? Again, crudely put: the Mandate of Heaven.
Madison and his fellow framers wanted a theory which was inclusive of human error, and therefore curative in human terms of those myriad ways of human error.
Right, and it’s genius, and it’s worked for roughly 200 years. But it is coming undone with “the ongoing destruction of the fundamental classical liberal regime as conceived in the Constitution of the United States.” It’s a system that allows for human error but depends on human but relies on human probity on a massive scale. The solutions is no solution at all for any other body politic.
I have no solution and have always held a bad monarchy inferior to a bad republican democracy (or plain democracy, even) but I am trying to contemplate a theoretically framework for a solution such as we are, and have boiled it down to a monarchy. I have no implementation details but as theoretical matter it stands on firmer ground than the original solution as is depends on the probity of a fare more limited set of people than does the healthy republican democracy.
I speak not of any higher order (here, perhaps elsewhere I would argue for the order consisting in the 7 noahide commandments and nothing at all more) but rather to monarchy as a curative (cool word, thanks) to what it is that encroaches on what the founders enshrined in the bill of rights.
This is certainly a time in history where we can freely explore alternative theoretical frameworks.
Heh, I’m not sure what history has to do with it. (I make the little joke here. “Right side of” and all that.)
To expand that, it’s sort of my view that it’s always the time to reconsider all the alternatives, if it’s human beings we’re talking about here. And sure, that’s who I think we’re primarily talking about.
But the implication of the popular Adams’ quote? That we’re to somehow design the return or rebirth (renaissance?) of a religious and moral people? Yeah, that does seem at least on its face to imply something we’re supposed to know about an higher orders of things.
It’s education, right? But will we be instructing our fellow men how to pray? How to commune with a god or gods? Oof, what a bomb that is — Robert Oppenheimer be damned, along with his Bhagavad Gita quote.
Heh too, another funny thing: 1929 was when Robert Maynard Hutchins became the President of the University of Chicago and set about doing something about the ruin of the universities (caused by mere decades earlier “reforms”) which he and others had begun to notice around that time. Of course, his own reforms — strenuously opposed from the start — were suppressed shortly after his tenure ended.
Just to throw another log on the bonfire, via bh’s twitter a link (Is it irony? Well, no. Well, yes. Well, no.), “Collapsing at the Speed of Twitter“.
LBascom sez:
“Just because you don’t approve of my choice doesn’t mean I didn’t arrive at my choice logically I’ve laid out my logic several times now….basically you assume Trump is evil, I don’t. That means I have different expectations of a Trump presidency, not thatI have surrendered logic.”
Jeff rebuts:
“You have no argument. You have no point. You have faith. That’s it. I don’t share it and I base that on experience and history. Sorry your feelz are all hurt because I don’t take your bullshit position seriously or grant it any weight or pretend it could be reached ‘logically.’”
Sorry, Jeff, but LBascom is actually right here. His reasoning is sound enough, and logic is just the process of right reasoning. It’s his assumptions that are warped when compared against reality. And you tacitly admit that the error is in his premises, not his reasoning, when you say that you disagree with him based on “experience and history.” If you ignore things like what Trump has said or done, or downgrade them by focusing on what Clinton has said or done that you didn’t like, LBascom’s position becomes tenable.
Now, you could definitely make the case that ignoring one’s experience to that degree is a type of logical error in and of itself. But you’d need some more groundwork for that.
Sorry again. Don’t mean to be a pedant. But as you yourself have said in the past, meanings matter.
It took me a few re-readings of what you wrote, naftali, but eventually (owing to my decided thickness of skull) this bit got through to me: “relies on human probity” [on a massive scale, you add]. And I believe it’s not quite correct, if I’ve understood Madison’s thought. Probity isn’t the deal with him — he says he means to set human “ambition” to oppose human “ambition”. Is ambition probity? Not exactly, I think.
I apologize, yes, it was clear as mud, the roughest of drafts, but thank you for reading.
I”ll take your word regarding Madison, because I don’t know enough about the founders’ thinking to differentiate between their respective approaches. I just took the Adams quote — because it makes sense to me — and that Madison assertion and joined them into one approach. I hope someone thought that :) cause it makes sense to me, and unless Adams disagreed with Madison, it’s seems plausible that he at least did, but admittedly I haven’t studied them and will defer to the in house expertise.
It’s interesting that Adams was speaking to a higher order — my inspiration for the monarchy as the enforcer for a secular political order argument was actually a Heinlein character in (iirc) ‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” who attested that he was a mornachist be he was a liberal (not an exact quote, it’s been a while) which I liked at the time.
I’d suggest just two of Madison’s Federalist Papers contributions, num.s 10 and 51, so you can see for yourself and perhaps even better than I. In my view (opinion), Madison re-presents Hobbes’ stark thinking about human shittiness there in highly refined and elegant language.
So, more or less, the opposite of probity is to be at work.
But if we go farther with that, taking for granted for the moment that Madison’s construct did indeed work as devised for some long time, and now is failing — what do we see?
I think we see that the ambitious men, the men with an inclination toward tyranny, having been mired in Madison’s architecture for a good long while have finally figured out how to get around it: by means of collusion! And what do we see on the present political scene? Collusion by the shit-ton, everywhere we look.
Excellent, thank you, I will read them.
Not a fan of Heinlein as a political thinker myself, though I think I read one of his stories long ago — and recall nearly nothing about it.
Me neither :)
I audio booked the Moon book and Starship Troopers during a time when I was doing a lot of driving. I started stranger in a strange land but didn’t finish it because it was just too much for me. The books are thoughtful but the stories were compelling.
Sorry, you misunderstood what I meant. The Left is always going on about how socialism wouldn’t fail if we put the right people in charge, or some variant thereof, despite all the evidnce to the contrary.
I’ve realized that there’s a (movement) conservative version of that self-delusion with which Goldberg concludes his opinion piece.
Ah, gotcha, I think, unless I’m still misunderstanding — you’re saying Goldberg simply replaces the “right people” of the socialists’ fantasies with the “fresher arguments for timeless principles” by way of the movement conservative version of a fantasy? -ish, sort of deal.
Yup.
Yeah, peace seems to remain our “value” for the time-being. Killing, on the other hand, also remains an option — for the sake of peace, of course.
Heh, and how long is that leash again, we asks ourselves?
It’s more a matter of better messenger/policy/messaging is very good for professional conservatives in a way analogous to better candidate/positioning/messaging is good for professional political consultants.
Or maybe I’m just extra cynical today.
Everyone’s just out of solutions I think. The collapse of the conservative right is a major event. It wasn’t even so much of a collapse as it was a revelation. I think it was just unanticipated how small the conservative constituency really was. I think that’s the lesson of this T phenomenon: I, at least had, deep down, sort of assumed that a party base insurrection would be in the pursuit of conservative governing principals, that the fight was between the ‘lose more slowly’ elite and the principled Tea Party, but it wasn’t. The Tea party was not the base and it seems now foolish to have ever thought they were.
The punditry will advocate messaging because that’s all it’s got.
Life goes on.
If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side. — Orson Scott Card
Naftali wrote: …The collapse of the conservative right is a major event. It wasn’t even so much of a collapse as it was a revelation. I think it was just unanticipated how small the conservative constituency really was.
What we’re seeing, I think, is both collapse and revelation.
Since the rise of Ronald Reagan, Richard Viguerie’s mail campaigns, and the journey of the Evangelicals to the GOP, there has been an undercurrent of Ideology partially powering the Conservative Movement.
This New Right, as it used to be called, saw the Movement and believed it was just another System Of Ideas, a hierarchy of beliefs that could be understood if one just followed the chain of Logic.
The non-Ideological, true conservatives embraced these ‘converts’ because they thought that either (1) they could control the Ideologues and the damage they would inevitably do or (2) they did not understand the danger letting them in would put the Conservative Movement in [I was one of the latter for a long time].
To avoid tl;dr here, let me just state this: anyone who embraces Ideology as a way of dealing with the World will, in the end, lose their Soul, because the System Of Ideas embraced has to become god-like, all-encompassing, in order to survive.
Conservatism is a Way Of Life, ‘it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order’ [Russell Kirk], not some Scientism dreamed-up in the sterile laboratories of the mind, far away from Reality — not some Ideology.
Given that Ideology and conservatism are forever in total conflict with each other, it was only a matter of time, therefore, before the faux edifice collapsed and it was revealed that the number of actual conservatives was — and has been for a least a century — small.
As to Jonah Goldberg and his fellow pitiful conservative comrades, it seems their type is not new for Edmund Burke wrote of them back in 1793 [emphasis and re-paragraphing mine]:
Source:
Remarks On The Policy Of The Allies
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15700/15700-h/15700-h.htm#REMARKS
— Orson Scott Card
Seventh Son series?
> The Tea party was not the base and it seems now foolish to have ever thought they were. <
2010, 2014 mid terms would suggest they -were- the base. steve sailor calls the democrats the "coalition of the fringes". the democrats throw a little bit money and time to each of the the members of the coalition. the republicans look at their fringe for votes and once have power do "failure theatre" saying they don't have condition x to achieve "victory". the rubes got wise.
that's why 2018 is the year of going article v convention of the states.
with Mr. Trump you have a chance to survive
with pee-stank i see only death disease pestilence hunger
criminality
pungent odors
and i bet her whore herpes husband with the bad ticker up and dies smack dab in the middle of it
i’m not up for the drama i’m really not
I see now why you like Trump, happyfeet. You sound just like him.
Only with a little less dignity and gravitas.
>with Mr. Trump you have a chance to survive<
trump/hilarity eff it!!11!! onto 2018 Art V convention of States
Surviving’s not living.
you need to study history more better pickle-poo
“Chirp chitter chirp,” said the rat. “Drip Drip,” said the sink. Good night window roach. Good night Bathroom shadows across the hall.
Good night scabs.
>Surviving’s not living.<
no get rid of the idiots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY
Alison Krauss & Union Station – Live at The Louisville Palace, KY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_UCz_qaqGk
@ newrouter
“that’s why 2018 is the year of going article v convention of the states.”
I hope not, honestly. That would be like noticing that your boat is taking on water from a hundred small leaks in multiple places, and then dropping a boulder through the bottom of it to let out the water.
@ happyfeet
“you need to study history more better pickle-poo”
You could use a grammar refresher yourself.
Update: yup, still Never Trump.
Go me!
“I hope not, honestly. That would be like noticing that your boat is taking on water from a hundred small leaks in multiple places, and then dropping a boulder through the bottom of it to let out the water.”
Yes, probably. Revolutions often don’t end up in the place many of its agitators were heading, but in a darker place.
Something to contemplate: heat map
If you think an Article V convention is dangerous or revolutionary, you don’t understand its limitations.
There’s plenty of material by Mark Levin around to fill you in.
It would NOT put the whole document up for grabs: it would merely provide THE STATES with their Constitutionally provisioned right to propose amendments that would have to be RATIFIED by the states just to be officially proposed and then duly RATIFIED by the states again to be enacted.
Which is a pretty damned high bar to clear.
Legalizing marriage between humans and cartoon characters is unlikely to make it out of committee.
Which, if it did, might be the least bad amendment ever proposed.
So, attempting a Constitutional solution to our problem is akin to agitating for revolution, and/or using a water-letter-outer on our foundering dinghy…
Save us Cap’n Trump!
*burble*
The Article V convention is the same as the amendment procedure for DC pols, only the states promote the amendments and appoint the convention delegates (whom they can also recall).
It’s the best way to take back power the feds have usurped and to put a check on the judiciary.
There’s nothing revolutionary about it and Mason put it in for just such a point we’ve now reached. Di is right: the agitprop against it, mostly from Birchers, is nonsense. And the number of people who know little about it but who nevertheless (ignorantly) speak against it is not surprising. After all, Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee. So I guess ignorance is in this season.
That certainly is very limited. And if we ever do get there, I will study it, but on its face, when I contemplate the conditions that might actually bring 3/4 of the states’ legislatures’ calling for a convention to amend the constitution of the United States of America (and I don’t think we’re there yet) and when I contemplate the conditions that would render such a convention effective in that aim, in the face of those limitations you describe, I can’t help but conjure mass scale disaffection with the current political order the likes of which I’ve never seen nor heard of in this country, and once the body politic is *there*, well, then things get really hard to predict, because I have no faith in the whatever in the probity ore wisdom the 3/4s choices of my fellow citizens such as they are now, in the modern times, or as they were, in many times, in the past, and in many places in the world, 1800 century America was a unique time.
If you don’t understand the process don’t presume to speak to it. Simple, really.
I believe 8 states have already passed legislation joining. This is a growing movement and one that it absolutely necessary. I made sure my rep was in favor or I was prepared to run against her my own self.
Stop bitching and take back what is yours. Beats depending on Donald Fucking Trump to act in your interests because his ego demands he do so having made certain promises. Which he’ll tell you he didn’t make, and that “everybody says so, you lying losers.”
“There’s nothing revolutionary about it and Mason put it in for just such a point we’ve now reached. Di is right: the agitprop against it, mostly from Birchers, is nonsense. And the number of people who know little about it but who nevertheless (ignorantly) speak against it is not surprising. After all, Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee. So I guess ignorance is in this season.”
We can’t everyone to be expert in everything and it isn’t current enough to demand that everybody study up right now without mind to any opportunity cost; the most you can reasonably hope for is that people commit to study it in its time and that they keep an open mind and perhaps raise their premonitions in the forums where they are most likely to get educating responses. After all you are talking about a 3/4 popular action. There is no need for acrimony, but it is your blog so I’ll say no more on that.
Yeah, we can hope for people to study up on it — but not before they reject it without first knowing anything about it.
That’s asking too much, evidently.
People have different methods of studying and some have multiple methods given the type of commitment to the particular subject. Making polite assertions in the appropriate forums and carefully reading the responses and taking them into account with an open mind is one of my methods. It works for me.
Blacking out the blackout of the blackout of the blackout. Here it’s relatively easy to see how an infinite regress gets started. Even without sitting in a barber’s chair. But criminy, what a strange way to make a claim to instantiating a legitimate government [“deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”].
Well, with all due respect, the idea’s been around since 1682 or so.
Faster, please.
it isn’t current enough to demand that everybody study up right now
Levin’s been flogging it for a couple years now. http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Amendments-Mark-R-Levin/dp/145160632X/
A couple-three listens to his show from last year can getcha up to speed. Or the precis of the book.
Pic o’ Day.
YNMMV.
Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.
You could always Google-search “Article V Convention”, and read.
conventionofstates[dot]com
Thank you. I’ve read the article and got the definition down as well as some of the back and forth that contributed to the character of its final draft. I’m curious to know what amendments are being proposed to be proposed so I will google to find out more about that and check out the movement website.
I still do wonder what the country will look like when a majority of 3/4 of the state legislatures or state ratifying conventions coalesce around a set of amendments, a little smoking never hurt anyone.
I didn’t mean to rub any of you the wrong way, you have good thing going here. I’ll go back to lurking because some of you very insightful.
-A brief summary of the eleven Amendments proposed by Mark Levin may be found here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357516/amendments-liberty-hans-von-spakovsky
-I have a PDF of the actual amendment language proposed by Mr. Levin That I would be more than willing to send to anyone.
E-mail me at:
Robert.Belvedere@gmail.com
don’t do 11 do two :1) term limits of all federal employees; 2) debt limit increase with3/4 state legislatures approvals.
take out the modules:
Deactivation of Hal 9000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY
how long the office drone at the VA or the mail carrier at the post office be limted to before their employment is terminated?
Not every government worker is a shameless partisan hack.
I agree in general with the idea that the higher up the food chain you are, the more tenuous your civil sservice protections should be. (Lois Lerner, for example ought to be forced to forfiet her pension –for starters).
And government employee unions ought to be abolished.
Even FDR knew better than that!
should be should in there
That’s the idea right there. Government jobs shouldn’t be sacrosanct. Getting rid of civil service employees shouldn’t be such a headache that no one even bothers trying.
The left has become adept at larding up civil service jobs with leftwing lawyers such that entire divisions of the government are effectively progressive activist enclaves (DOJ, EPA, HUD, Civil Rights Division, etc). Much of our torment comes from there. The legislature is just theater for the most part these days, and a single-party con job at that.
If we don’t insist on our liberty we won’t have it. Simple as that.
Here’s a very good post on where the Convention Of States effort stands and what the process is and it’s history:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/06/momentum-builds-for-convention-of-states/
And government employee unions ought to be abolished. –
Hear! Hear!
And I say that as a (forced) member of a public employees’ union!
I’m also a supervisor and it is next to impossible to fire someone without them having committed a felony or something. It’s those crappy, lazy, ‘I have a right to this job’ folks who give the hardworking ones a bad rap.
At least in private business you can get rid of the dead wood.
btw … San Jose mayor, a pro-Hillary dude, just got more votes for Trump by blaming the violence of the anti-Trump rioters who physically attacked Trump supporters while police stood by and did nothing — on Trump.
Oh, the rioters made sure to wave the Mexican flag, too.
Chicago 1968 – one of the big reasons Nixon won.
dayum
Look, let me tell you something, I’ve got no, and honestly?
Listen, they all, if you really look, right?
And seriously, and everybody agrees with me, not one, okay?
Plus, Keely Smith for Veep, believe you me.