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Trump, revisited

He’s done a lot of what he’s said he’d do, and while I still don’t personally like the guy all that much, I can’t complain about the job he’s done.

Given the alternative, which seems to be socialism drenched in the stink of identity politics and pseudo-science, I don’t think there’s a free person alive wishing to remain free who can, in good conscience, vote for the emotionalist fascists the Democratic progressives keeps parading before us like a conga line of simpering, flaccid, petty tyrants dressed in pussy hats.

2020 is a no brainer.

44 Replies to “Trump, revisited”

  1. McGehee says:

    Agreed. I confess I started coming around on Trump when he surprised me by winning, and then the Democrats failed to surprise me with their whining.

    I’ll take winning over whining any day of the week.

  2. serr8d says:

    Given the alternative…” yes. I always considered Trump a grenade rolled into the GOP Establishment’s mess hall. That he’s effective in that role is reinforced by their refusal, even now, to embrace what obviously has stemmed (slightly) the march of postmodern progressivism. Nothing will stop that, but the slowing helps.

    As for the remaining Kristollized Never Trumpers? Julie Kelly nails it…

    What the Trump-Russia collusion hoax has laid bare is that so many of the people who Republicans trusted and respected for two decades were undeserving. They are as fundamentally dishonest and intentionally ignorant as the those on the Left. Their animus for the president and his supporters exceeds that of the most faithful Democratic partisan. Their eager participation in the greatest political scandal in American history—intended to overthrow a Republican president—should never be forgotten. Or forgiven.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-25/nevertrumps-complicity-trump-russia-collusion-hoax

  3. JHoward says:

    Given the real list of accomplishments, the roster of promises kept, the fairly thorough outing of the GOP, and the baiting of an increasingly lunatic left into self-immolating over what amounts to an enormous public nothing, he could be the best potus ever.

    Problem is he’s accidental and the right still has no plan. We can argue it never did, I suppose, but how do you squander a guy like this and look at yourself in the mirror the morning after his last day in office.

    I’m absolutely certain we’ll find out.

  4. McGehee says:

    He wasn’t the only good one — just the only one apparently electable in 2016.

    “The right” isn’t an institution, so expecting it to plan for the future may be the biggest mistake we keep making. Presidents rarely groom future leaders effectively, and party hacks take a passive role because ultimately they’re organizers and fundraisers, not leaders.

    To the extent there is a “right,” we’re it (meaning the rank-and-file). If there needs to be a plan, well, we’ve all tried passivity and it’s worked for us as well as it has for the RNC.

  5. Kevin McDonnell says:

    Hey…. back again are we?

    Outstanding. I was actually bored, and just for a lark, I clicked on the link to this (which still has been sitting in my bookmark folder near the top for a long time), and BOOM… here you are. Well… soooo… that’s all I got right now. But I will be back with aplomb as the days of Spring unfold. Welcome!

  6. JHoward says:

    “The right” isn’t an institution, so expecting it to plan for the future may be the biggest mistake we keep making.

    The right was bequeathed the American birthright so not only was/is it a default institution, it was explicitly in charge of The Institutions until such time – by at least 1913 – when it certainly was not in charge of much of anything at all.

    Expecting the POTUS to carry a latter day torch certainly is an obvious tactical blunder, and since Orange Man Bad is the institutional cant and dogma, I’m sure we won’t see his kind again, haphazard and accidental as he already was.

    And of course, we already don’t see his kind again. The Grand Old Party is shit up to the gunnels, which one assumes owes to its constituencies.

    The philosophy of liberty was never cast in iron all that much. A lifestyle of Americanism is what’s left and it’s obviously not enough.

  7. McGehee says:

    The right was never an institution, default or otherwise, unless one redefines “institution” to mean something it patently does not and cannot mean.

    It was a default outlook for most of American history, but has only been pigeonholed as “the right” since the rise of progressivism.

    As long as we acquiesce in their labeling, we’ll continue to fail. We’re not an institution and fuck ’em if they call us one.

  8. JHoward says:

    As long as we acquiesce in their labeling, we’ll continue to fail. We’re not an institution and fuck ’em if they call us one.

    No need to include the corollary that the right runs almost entirely on reacting to the left’s psychosis, then. If not Accidental Orange Man, reactionary instinct will see us through.

  9. Darleen says:

    I was voting for Ted Cruz in CA even after Trump has sealed the nomination.

    But after the Covington Catholic debacle – I’ve now got an official MAGA hat at home.

    The Kabuki make-up has slid off the faces of the Ruling Class like watching the picture of Dorian Gray melt in a fire revealing the ugliness that was always there.

    Screw ’em. Screw ’em all.

  10. serr8d says:

    American Greatness is emerging as a top destination for intellectual conservatives.

    This excellent video production of Julie Kelly’s essay (linked above) is well worth watching.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIINBMNJ8TU

  11. JHoward says:

    The Kabuki make-up has slid off the faces of the Ruling Class…

    There needs be a fundamental distinction between leftism – the overt collective modern psychosis – and the Cloud People – who have been there quietly for a hundred years.

    DJT took on the latter, at least in part, possibly because they asked him to so great was their hubris. Even Cruz wouldn’t have done that and at least three of the other GOP’s ’16 candidates were actually part of them.

    The left doesn’t qualify as the problem although they certainly are a problem. The right must, must, must make the distinction between leftism and long-standing, silent statism, a phenomenon far too many rightists support.

  12. guinspen says:

    Given the alternative, …a conga line of simpering, flaccid, petty tyrants dressed in pussy hats.

    2020 is a no brainer.

    Bingo!

  13. happyfeet says:

    i’m happy everyone is happy

  14. guinspen says:

    And just like that, the no brainer checks in!

  15. happyfeet says:

    hi Mr. guins nice to see you

  16. I’m pretty surprised. I never thought Trump was a conservative, but now that I know he’s not a Republican I like him more.

  17. Hey. You changed the tag line. Nice.

  18. JHoward says:

    Carefully considering today’s full frontal assault on reason: Is it more the dirtbags in power or the scumbags in the press?

    https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1113533705346093056

  19. JHoward says:

    More important national conversation from our careful band of pondering do-gooders:

    https://twitter.com/BCAppelbaum/status/1113651243652734976

    Making the world gooder by arbitrary goodness is how democracy thrives in the light of a thousand Utopias.

  20. guinspen says:

    “Carefully considering today’s full frontal assault on reason: Is it more the dirtbags in power or the scumbags in the press?”

    The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

    Not to speak on behalf of Pip, still, lesser expectations.

  21. JHoward says:

    It’s said the best recourse to what amounts to an invasion by the sum of nannying psychopaths, guinspen, is retreat within what must not be institutions. Because fuck ’em.

    Plus, we have social media!

  22. McGehee says:

    There’s the passive aggressive JHo we all knew and ignored.

  23. JHoward says:

    And to think I show up at a blog about language and intent, McGehee.

  24. happyfeet says:

    good catch Mr. Cookies

  25. dicentra says:

    OMG. Ur back.

  26. McGehee says:

    And to think you keep misapplying words at a blog about language and intent, JHo.

  27. McGehee says:

    The point of my comment on March 28 was that there’s no point bitching about how “the right” doesn’t have a plan for after Trump because, constructively, we are the right.

    Institutions exist to promote and perpetuate themselves. If the principles on which those institutions were founded fall out of favor, well, they have others. As a result, they will always fail anyone outside their walls who relies on them.

    Want a plan for after Trump? Propose one. Let’s kick it around.

  28. JHoward says:

    Restating McGehee: There’s no point bitching about us because it’s us and besides we can redefine with the best of them. Plus stuff doesn’t work and oh here’s some empty argumentation.

    Brilliant.

    Let’s help you out: Having been given the intellectual keys to the place by contract, the right proceeded to hold on to almost nothing. It gave up all the structures that were to hold individual liberty and then it invented and now maintains its own forms of statism. It finds itself on the receiving end of a running assault by the semi-official academy and media but it yowls online a lot.

    It has no institution itself, save for a badly flawed television network and a few video channels owned by a national censor, and it still has no plan to cement a 200 year old contract as the formative governing philosophy. It can’t name its rights half the time and it certainly can’t distill them back into their intellectual basis. Its conservative representatives are almost to the man peddling constituent services with Washington the national candy jar.

    Having been all but completely incapacitated by eight years of prior subversion, it put up an assortment of GOP lumps to be completely taken by surprise by a Trump – ask your host for his political and philosophical CV – and it hasn’t a suitable replacement candidate for 2020 or beyond, even assuming potus was that constitution’s sole force, which we know he’s never been. Meanwhile the list of Big Washington the right actively clamors for grows, from militarism to monetization, jingoism to patriotic, secular corporate religion.

    This, of course, we mayn’t say. If we define them just so institutions become part of the problem and so screw the left and hey there’s nothing we can hang on the right anyway because the right’s us and that’s my point.

    I don’t think you had a point, which should have been agreeing to the formal restoration of a contractual philosophy of liberty a quarter of a millennia old. Those and prior hundreds of years of structural civilization are evaporating and the the right has no plan and it sure as hell hasn’t a single institution capable of working one. It’s more interested in clawing back the civil rights movement, making sportsbowl games safe from kneeling thugs, and meming fake Indians and other psycho career pols from two decades ago while it shatters its own sovereign foundations with genuinely runaway debt and a rightism it can’t identify the principles or instruments of itself.

  29. serr8d says:

    Having been given the intellectual keys to the place by contract, the right proceeded to hold on to almost nothing. It gave up all the structures that were to hold individual liberty and then it invented and now maintains its own forms of statism.

    To make it worse, they took their supporters for granted, expecting us to numbly carry on because where else could we go? Elections are games of numbers, vote summations which we’ve no chance to win without the electoral college. The rats in the overcrowded slumburgs outnumber us. Republican establishmentarians realize we’re losing, and I believe they gave up a long time ago. So very lucky we were with that flawed surprise candidate who had the charisma to win, but believe me he’s the last one who will ever get the chance. We’re so lucky to have lived to see Trump overcome the unbelievably insurmountable odds he was up against, first to win the GOP nomination (which I find more satisfying than) then again in November, and even luckier he’s somehow accomplished a few good things. Despite the gnawings of the Kristolrats.

    Oh, before I forget,
    https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/06/the-establishment-war-on-the-intellectual-dark-web/,
    ICYMI. Some scrabbling and gnawing of our own.

  30. Strabo says:

    (Best John Wayne voice) Welcome back, mon-sewer!
    I just suggested, on another site, that you call your office, as they were discussing the hijacking of language by the leftards, and here you are! I shall be making regular stops again.

  31. happyfeet says:

    President Trump stood on the back porch of the white house, scanning the horizon for danger.

    Inside the houses of America people were putting away dishes and letting the dog out for a bit before going to bed.

    Safe and fed with wonderful tomorrows ahead, America was very happy.

  32. Dusty Pitts says:

    If this thread is typical, this place is NOT living up to its reputation.

  33. guinspen says:

    Heh!

    If your comment is typical, you don’t deserve it.

  34. guinspen says:

    C’mon, people!

    Can’t we all drag along?

    Drag City

  35. guinspen says:

    Because burn up that quarter mile!

  36. Physics Geek says:

    I considered him to be a crass, bombastic and narcissistic boor. I stand by that assessment. But, by and large, the results have been pretty good from his administration. I won’t be conflicted about voting for him in 2020

  37. Mr. Saturn says:

    I probably won’t be voting for him but I wouldn’t vote for his opponent.

  38. palaeomerus says:

    Wow, I didn’t know PW was back.

  39. guinspen says:

    It’s not.

    We’re all merely JG’s fervid figments.

  40. Garym says:

    On the whole, I have liked what Trump has accomplished and give a huge assist to Cocain Mitch. Time will tell out, but he has pushed through a solid list of non-progressive judges. I will vote against his opponent in 2020.

  41. Dusty Pitts says:

    Eh, mebbe so, guins.

    Hopefully Jeff will get around to having fun here again.

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