Yesterday, in the comments to my month-old post on the Trump phenomenon and those long-time site readers of pw who’ve somehow lemming-bounced their way onto the #TrumpTrain! — which is, if we’re being honest, just a convoy of shabby, overstuffed short buses pretending to be mighty locomotives piercing a virgin white landscape of latent American engreatenment — serr8d, a freshly-minted mouthpiece for Orange Julius, took me to task for what he considers my intellectual sins against Trump supporters. Seems my smugly smug elitism is showing. Or at the very least, I’m not properly and with hushed deference hiding my contempt for the brazen and entitled mass stupidity of moron clusters playing working-class hero on their iphones, dull-eyed and full-throated cultists laying claim to being The People while many of us who have worked tirelessly to return the country to its propositional moorings are dismissed as “establishment dupes” or “failed conservatives,” relics whose flaccid Constitution is an impediment to the aim of Making America Great Again. Which of course, only Donald Trump can do. Somehow. Through, like, rambling rallies and the intellectual uprising of “nationalists” who have determined themselves fit to supplant Constitutional “fetishists” with the good kind of progressive essentialist tribalism.
I’ll lay out the indictment against me in full, then post my response (elevated from the thread to my earlier post by popular demand!).
Writes the Trumper and decade-long pw reader — whose honor I’ve besmirched with my outward disgust at an old, Orange-dyed, racoon-eyed con man currently FOXNewsing his way to the head of a party ticket that he in no recognizable way represents:
[…]
Problems with @proteinwisdom’s (and his like-minded associates’) approach to tackling the real and growing dangers we face as a culture are their failures to acknowledge any solutions not perfectly ‘pure’ by their definition of ‘conservatism’ (marked tunnel vision), but also their embrace of the tactics of SJW leftists to attack those they deem impure. And there’s fewer and fewer who can pass his purity tests.
Look at @proteinwisdom’s vitriolic time line. There’s not a string of Tweets 10 deep where one can find substance without wading through attacks on others he considers too dimwitted to cheer his overzealous visions. It’s a shame I can’t help but recall Vox’s column on the smugness of the Liberal mind…
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalismJeff continues to embrace leftist’s tactics of unsubstantiated name-calling, derisive guilt-by-association put-downs, and holier-than-thou smugness that sours his and his lock-step followers ever-narrowing vision.
Sure, it’s dark theater, but there comes a time when one must wise up.
“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;
as I grow older, I admire kind people.”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel
To which I’ve now replied:
Here, let me unpack this nonsense, since Serr8d tried to slip it into what he hoped was a dead thread. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way — with a fisking – which I likely invented anyway. So from an identitarian standpoint I’m the UR man, the singularity of blogging.
Problems with @proteinwisdom’s (and his like-minded associates’) approach to tackling the real and growing dangers we face as a culture are their failures to acknowledge any solutions not perfectly ‘pure’ by their definition of ‘conservatism’ (marked tunnel vision), but also their embrace of the tactics of SJW leftists to attack those they deem impure. And there’s fewer and fewer who can pass his purity tests.
First, let’s point the obvious: “the real and growing dangers we face as a culture” aren’t identified by serr8d but rather assumed to be homogeneous to all who believe we’re moving in a bad direction. He gets this newfound appreciation for meaningless generic puffery from his new friends, I take it, which just illustrates the danger of moving from a forum of thinking people to a farm of drones with ready-made memes and superficial arguments.
For me, the “real and growing dangers” we face right now in this election cycle are the eagerness and alacrity with which certain people who long identified as conservatives and Constitutionalists are willing to dismiss their own supposed principles for a man who has spent his life backing the very establishment politicians who we’re all in agreement are a large part of the problem. In his pre-Trumper life, Serr8d was fond of quoting or RT me — including this post, which laid out what I believed were the real and growing dangers we faced as a political system. All of that is to be dismissed now that the Orange Mondale has deigned to lead us out of the wilderness of globalist Jew rule and reaffirm our whiteness and greatness.
Second, I find it curious that serr8d would accuse me of adopting SJW tactics when the entirety of the Trump movement and its nationalism base is itself one poorly disguised SJW beg. Trump is always a victim of something: Colorado’s caucus system, the media, Lyin’ Ted, local governments, the Justice Department looking into his “university” racket, et al. And people like serr8d reflexively spring to his defense.
In a string of Tweets this morning I laid it out how this SJW charade works — you can go find them if you wish to review the argument in its entirety, but the gist of it was that the charge of SJW has become, to Trumpers, akin to shouting “RACIST!” “SEXIST!” “HOMOPHOBIC!” — with the supposed affront of being targeted by “SJWs” designed (they hope) as an inoculation against the tribalism they themselves police and enforce with lists and threats.
It is not being a SJW to notice real patterns of behavior and the actual members of a coalition: that charge is meant to shame those of us addressing empirical facts that don’t show particularly well on sellouts like serr8d in order that he and they won’t have to answer for them.
Well, fuck that and fuck him. He’s backing a prog populist / anti-American (in the propositional sense) nationalist who has already announced he’s for a fed minimum wage increase, price controls on pharmaceutical companies, socialized medicine, feelz bathroom policies, race-based affirmative action, protectionism and capricious tariffs, a wealth tax, and continuing federal control over public lands. He’s spent his life backing career pols and funding leftist causes. That he was allowed to smear and try to destroy the reputation of a man like Cruz who has demonstrably defended my liberties is revolting to me. To succor such behavior is to reveal yourself as the very kind of “pragmatist” I’ve spent years here exposing as mere political opportunists.
How serr8d squares what and who he backs with his years online screaming about the ESTABLISHMENT is, to put it mildly, an unresolvable dilemma.
In short, is isn’t being a SJW to notice what is obvious; whereas it IS being a SJW to try to keep me from pointing out that the camouflage these pro tribalists rely on isn’t working — at least not on me.
But back to my original point: Other dangers we face — and which I’ve laid out for 15 years — include surrendering to leftist notions of language and playing on their field under their rules. So when Serr8d writes,
Look at @proteinwisdom’s vitriolic time line. There’s not a string of Tweets 10 deep where one can find substance without wading through attacks on others he considers too dimwitted to cheer his overzealous visions. It’s a shame I can’t help but recall Vox’s column on the smugness of the Liberal mind…
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism…the gist of his indictment is that I continue to call out those who are too moronic to recognize how they are in fact helping leftists and the leftist project — only this time, because he falls on the dumb side of things, the attacks are “vitriolic”, “overzealous,” and smug. That is, right away, the complaint is how his honor has been victimized!
That sounds…familiar, somehow.
But let’s continue:
Jeff continues to embrace leftist’s tactics of unsubstantiated name-calling, derisive guilt-by-association put-downs, and holier-than-thou smugness that sours his and his lock-step followers ever-narrowing vision.Firstly, for me to “continue to embrace leftist’s tactics” I’d have to have embraced them in the first place rather than having spent years shining a light on them so that we can readily locate them and combat them. Secondly, what serr8d does here — unexpectedly! And with all the agility of a Trump policy speech — is conflate substantial attacks on what are very real morons with very real associations to the most unsavory of anti-Jew progressives and racial “realists” and “identitarians”, with “unsubstantiated” attacks.
That of course begs the question, because if I didn’t believe the attacks were substantiated by the dangers they pose to a Constitutional representative republic and the liberty of me and mine, I wouldn’t waste time leveling them. And of course, serr8d provides no evidence any of the rhetoric he decries is unsubstantiated, incidental, or motivated by sanctimony.
More, “lock-step followers” is, I take it, code for readers who agree with me — which is an odd charge to level, given my demonstrative willingness over the years here to take on all comers (recall the Letterman threads?), and my reputation for being quite willing and able to engage with views not my own in order to argue the righteousness of the beliefs and principles I hold.
So, uh, sorry…? Though in my defense, I’d argue not wanting to hang out and listen to your cultish excuses for backing a con man is not the same as demanding lock-step followers. It’s merely me not wanting to become stupider for having to constantly read your programmatic apologias.
And as for the “ever-narrowing vision”– I’ve been a constitutionalist and a classical liberal as long as this site has been active. My vision hasn’t narrowed: it has stayed focused on what I believe is necessary to reclaim this country from scheming pols divorced from the Founders and Framers — and if anything, I’ve even expanded my vision to take on those who claim to be on “our side” but who back candidates and ideas that are anathema to liberty, classical liberalism, and representative republicanism.
Sure, it’s dark theater, but there comes a time when one must wise up.
“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people;
as I grow older, I admire kind people.”
– Abraham Joshua HeschelTed Cruz’s presidential assassin father could not be reached for comment.
Spit.
There. Now you too can have your say if you so desire. Personally, I’m so fucking done with these whining frauds that I feel like having the Mexican government build a wall around me. Just throw in a few dozen cases of cerveza and some guac and chips and wake me up when this latest “populist agrarian nationalist” nightmare — which looks for all the world like a Nixonian reprise drop-stitched to Mondale’s trade policies and McGovern’s foreign policy — is over. At which time I’ll happily celebrate with a dozen or so fish tacos.
Every time Trump opens his mouth I become more disgusted with him. And every time the Trumpers defend his latest 180 — putting him on the opposite side of what used to be one of the gigantic issues that drew them to him in the first place — I become more disgusted with them.
Increasingly, he is the worst of what we thought he was, and increasingly his followers are the worst of what we said they were.
I guess the presidential elections are now all about which tyrant figurehead you desire.
I’ll pass.
The guy I’m most disappointed in is the guy behind the Golden Microphone who’s spent the last 20 years talking not only about the importance of winning, but of doing so on our terms -—don’t compromise on principles, bringing Democrat voters around to our positions rather than pandering to them as Democrat voters, articulate conservatism & why it works.
Now he just wants to beat Democrats —by compromsing principles, pandering to Democrat voters and obfuscating conservatism.
Maybe I’m being overly critical and he’s just describing the reality of the political landscape as he sees it. But I dont recall him being this objectively neutral –almost journalistic, one might say— in past election cycles.
I may make this a new post later (don’t want to interrupt Jeff … I’m savoring all this) but if anyone is interested in why Obama found it necessary to threaten the Brits over Britain’s vote to exit the EU, then watch this movie (released two days ago on youtube)
You get about 1/4 way in and it dawns on you that Obama is so enamored of the EU he has spent the last 7 years fundamentally transforming American government to be just an non-transparent, bloated, dictatorial, and unaccountable as the EU structure.
And the Unindicted and Indecent nominees are both looking to continue the same.
The figurehead part wouldn’t be so bad if we had a parliamentary system. I mean, if we’re ditching Mr. Madison’s opus anyway..
Haven’t been listening to Limbaugh much in the last few years but I do recall he made a point of never endorsing during the primaries, going all the way back to 1988.
Seems to me though, this year would have deserved an exception.
He came close to an endorsement of Cruz. The larger problem is that he won’t repudiate Trump the way he did Perot in ’92. He says that’s because Trump, unlike Perot is in it to win rather than play spoiler the way Perot did. But my guess is that he’s 24 years older and just doesn’t have the fire in the belly to take on his own audience.
I guess I should have said, “which interchangeable tyrant you desire.” That’s closer to my intent, which I did not signal well.
grilled or fried? i like the grilled ones
I’m down for fish tacos.
I Am the Walrus
A Prolegomena to Any Future Trumpophysic that Can Present Itself as a Science:
[precis] It rubs the Kultur on its skin, or else it gets the Kritiks again.
h8rs
I’ve never had a literal taco that contained fish. Maybe this summer while I am out west I can try one. Last I checked the big tribal casino outside the town we’ll be staying in, one of the restaurants therein has them on the menu.
I seem to recall trying a chicken taco once and being underwhelmed. When my wife and I go out for Mexican we generally order burrito or enchilada entrees.
Which is funny because when I was growing up “Mexican food” meant homemade tacos my (Irish and some German) mom made without a single prepared item except the Louisiana-style hot sauce in the bottle on the table.
For a while Taco Bell was an almost suitable substitute, but then we started going to actual Mexican restaurants…
If I’m remembering right, Limbaugh repudiated Perot for going third-party as much as being a walking hand grenade with a bad haircut. Callers repeating the mantra, “It can’t get any worse” as defense for their Perot support drove him to distraction.
I wonder if any of those former Perotnistas are watching all this and realizing how wrong they were back then. Or if they’re all dusting themselves orange and chanting “MAGA MAGA MAGA!!!”
Come to think of it, Limbaugh was pretty brutal to McCain too, though that may have been even before 2000.
Examining and exposing the tactics and lies of the left and the MFM (BIRM) is work, and work is too much work.
It’s much easier to shout angrily, though it doesn’t actually accomplish anything.
I’m just too tired of how thoughtless slogans always beat actual answers. Work is not rewarded, braying is.
That’s because we’re a nation become jackasses
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvDe-Bh71ek
We sure do got some great Mexican choices huh McGheehe?
To quote: “Spit”.
It’s often as though Trumpkins don’t even realize that they’re Trumpkins!
I see stupid people.
if i have a choice between pee-stanky old hillary and Mr. The Donald then i like Mr. The Donald better
this is just my preference
Mr. Trump doesn’t give a crap about protecting food stamp’s legacy.
Pee-stank does.
advantage: Mr. The Donald
Perhaps the Ghostbusters remake was released in 2016 for a reason. However Coulter and Palin aren’t crossing the beams, and there is Sherrif Joe and a mealy-mouthed neurosurgeon in the background, helping the girls pump the damn pudgy monolith up with fluffy albino BS.
Mopzilla versus King Clinton seem more apropos. We all know how the Hil recharges with electricity from the MSM, but where the Hell is Red Berry juice when you need it? Hope the FBI has a whole barge full of it. And the tremendously hot-breathing orange-skinned lizard is just too hard to kill, period.
Is it also a coincidence the Kong remake scheduled to be released in 2017 and Kong vs Godzilla in 2020? Maybe this election cycle will give us a clue.
Donald, my wife and I still hit Chapultepec sometimes. Their new location has a lot more room.
Comboverlord doesn’t care about protecting the Founders’ legacy either. Après lui, le déluge! (Though I should probably have translated that into Russian.)
At least Cankles wants there to still be an America for Chelsea to eventually rule over in her turn.
I hate dynasts, but they do have their uses.
Poclye nyego, potop!
>Darleen says May 14, 2016 at 10:03 am
I may make this a new post later (don’t want to interrupt Jeff … I’m savoring all this) but if anyone is interested in why Obama found it necessary to threaten the Brits over Britain’s vote to exit the EU, then watch this movie (released two days ago on youtube)<
i am 1 hour into it and agree with you .
Mr. Trump doesn’t give a crap about protecting food stamp’s legacy.
Says you.
>if i have a choice between pee-stanky old hillary and Mr. The Donald then i like Mr. The Donald better<
here's a vid for you
Two Steam Trains Collide at 90 mph California State Fair 1913 – Silent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioyl85MgFEA
Trump is Orange Obama. Legacy is irrelevant when you have a copy of the same.
trust me Mr. Trump is a hail fellow well met whereas pee-stank, she’s the apocalypse
i’m not in a good place for the apocalypse
>i’m not in a good place for the apocalypse<
just don't stand to close to the train wreck
Oooh, it’s the Anti-
ChristTrump, Rick Wilson, nailing it:Trump will not vanquish the GOP establishment unless he hugs it to death, but he is doing a nice job of exposing who the spinless, unprincipled barnacles are. He loves them, but you can’t help noticing them clinging to his orange hull.
Hillary is a garden variety leftist corruptocrat. That we’ve had 30 years to hate her does not make her supernatural. Trump is an unstable megalomaniac with severe Daddy issues.
Why not just join the John Birch Society?
for information purpose only:
>Unfortunately, if instead of a President Trump, America elects a President Clinton, The Great Purge will need a sequel. Even though conventionally conservative Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, if Mr. Trump loses, The Weekly Standard and National Review, along with organizations such as the Republican National Committee and the Heritage Foundation will immediately blame Mr. Trump’s loss on his “extremism” and his failure to “reach out” to minorities. All the forces within the conservative movement who opposed him will preen themselves on the prescience of having scorned him. They will claim that Mr. Trump has fatally tainted the Republican party with his “racism” and “mysogyny,” and will turn on anyone who supported him. Activists who worked for the Trump campaign will be blacklisted, websites such as Breitbart will be pushed into the wilderness alongside VDARE, and writers such as Ann Coulter who favored Mr. Trump will lose syndication.<
Conservatism Devours Itself
http://www.amren.com/features/2016/05/conservatism-devours-itself/
>Why not just join the John Birch Society?<
let us purge to cleanse the "party"on
>Why not just join the John Birch Society?<
funny how the kkk and birchers were tossed aside, about the same time frame 1940-60, by the ruining class democrats and republiclans
Jonah Goldberg echoes my sentiment:
So very sorry serr8d, but you cannot support Trump for the reasons you have given AND be an adherent to the principles espoused on this blog.
You’ve chosen your path. Don’t hate the blowback: hate the part of your brain that made you susceptible to Teh Sophistry.
Why not just join the John Birch Society?
Because I already read None Dare Call It Conspiracy and it sounds like the same stuff that the Trumpsters are saying?
And the 9/11 Truthers? And the Coast-to-Coast AM callers?
2018 state elections:
art v convention of the states;
1) no fed gov’t increase of the debt limit w/o 3/4 of states leg saying: yes
2) term limits of 12 years on ALL federal employment;
keep it kiss(keep it simple stupid)
MAGA MAGA MAGA!
Ban pre-shredded cheese!
MAKE AMERICA GRATE AGAIN!
Gotta be my favorite graphic of 2016.
>“When Mr. Trump is president, dogs will behave or they will pay a price. Just like Paul Ryan and Michelle Fields.”<
i don't like trump much but the whining fields can to hell with him
…go to hell with him
>Because I already read None Dare Call It Conspiracy and it sounds like the same stuff that the Trumpsters are saying?Establish an income tax system as a means of extorting money from the common man;
Establish a central bank, deceptively named so that people will think it is part of the government;
Have this bank be the holder of the national debt;
Run the national debt, and the interest thereon, sky high through wars (or any sort of deficit spending), starting with World War I.And the 9/11 Truthers? And the Coast-to-Coast AM callers?<
because of this:
BREXIT THE MOVIE FULL FILM
some of the above is true?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMxfAkxfQ0&feature=youtu.be
@ Trumpsters are saying?> is this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Allen
quote from source
@.And the 9/11 Truthers? And the Coast-to-Coast AM callers?<
BREXIT THE MOVIE FULL FILM
there are conspiracies and then there are theories of >conspiracies<. sumtimes "they" really are out to pad their pocketbook from you!
yo trumpsters
he’s a bullshitter like obama you idiots
This is in response to those who say Trump supporters are stupid. I have an IQ of 143. In reading the comments here there are many with double digit IQs. There are two choices. One will appoint judges who are like Scalia and Thomas, the other will appoint judges left of Ginsberg. If you do not support Trump, you are supporting Hillary Clinton. That is a fact.
2018 state election peeps w/cameo by gregg abbot. Art V libertarian clowns.
> There are two choices. One will appoint judges who are like Scalia and Thomas, the other will appoint judges left of Ginsberg. If you do not support Trump, you are supporting Hillary Clinton. That is a fact.<
3rd choice Art V Convention @2018 Fuck stare decisis
>. I have an IQ of 143. <
prove it clown. (argument by assertion)
> I have an IQ of 143.<
can you disassemble a zama carburetor from china without youtube? just axing clown?
>I have an IQ of 143.<
you steve sailor dudes are really hung up with your iq numbers. do you also do penis lengths?
If you do not support Trump, you are supporting Hillary Clinton. That is a fact.
If I do not support Hillary Clinton, does that mean I support Trump? Why isn’t that a fact?
Also, there’s no evidence that Trump will nominate judicial conservatives to SCOTUS.
There’s plenty of evidence that he has no earthly idea what a judicial conservative even IS, and even more evidence that he doesn’t give a rip.
Trump thinks Kelo is dandy. No judicial conservative thinks that.
High IQ or no.
This is in response to those who say Trump supporters are stupid. I have an IQ of 143.
There’s no correlation (positive or negative) between IQ and Classical Liberalism. This blog espouses Classical Liberalism (Jefferson, Madison, Washington), and those who have been long-time denizens of proteinwisdom are, ostensibly, Classical Liberals.
Jeff is absolutely right to say that it is against every tenet of Classical Liberalism to follow after a populist pied piper.
Every. One.
That’s not a matter of IQ: that’s a matter of What You Want, which, has everything to do with your personal desires and nothing to do with how well you score on a standardized test.
Personal desires such as Making Them Pay and wanting a dictator who purports to dictate for YOUR preferences instead of the other guy’s.
Not an IQ thing, dude: a character thing.
Learn the difference.
art v peeps
Public Image Ltd – Rise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN-GGeNPQEg
Have you ever read a Mensa political forum? There are some stone cold idiots out there with high IQ’s. IQ is about capacity. Having a great big vessel doesn’t mean you haven’t filled it with sewage. Or Trumpage.
How do you know that? Because Trump said it? LOLOL!!!
No, refusing to choose between AIDS and Ebola is not choosing one of them. I reject both and it is not for you to decide I’m doing anything else. As for your IQ, I demand a recount.
[…] Jeff Goldstein on Protein Wisdom: Of cabbages and kings: my response to a Trumper […]
So his followers assert, lacking any evidence from the man’s own mouth that wasn’t immediately contradicted, also from his own mouth. It is impossible for Trump supporters to know what he will do, because TRUMP doesn’t know what he will do.
Claiming otherwise is an example of the reason I gave for quitting Mensa almost 20 years ago: There are some monumental stupidities, of which only genius is capable.
So put your IQ card back in your pocket.
Incidentally, for those who may not have firsthand experience, when I tested for Mensa the proctors administered multiple tests. Each one gives a different score, but you only have to meet the criteria on one of them to be invited to join.
When someone flashes the IQ card in ordinary conversation I can guarantee you it’s the highest score they got — and may even be the only qualifying one.
I qualified on all three, and at least one of them was higher than 143. Do I win?
Help! I’m trying to cancel my account here but cannot.
Any tips?
I’ll tell Jeff you want out. He has those keys.
I don’t know the true definition of what IQ is, and I’m too lazy to look it up, but I think of intelligence as the ability to absorb new information and assimilate it with what you already know. The better you are at that, the more intelligent you are. However, you have to have a base of knowledge to build on or even a 180 IQ will not help you do anything useful.
I have known many highly intelligent people (1st in class at Stanford in a certain STEM PhD program, for instance) who held idiotic political opinions and/or thought being a leftist is an intelligent, reasonable choice. I think most of us would argue against the latter.
Humans are emotional creatures who can reason, not the other way around. If you make a stupid choice then you’ve made a stupid choice, no matter what your IQ is.
“[Madam H] will appoint judges left of Ginsberg.”
Praise Allan that we’ve a staunch Republican Senate…
“In reading the comments here there are many with double digit IQs.”
Boy howdy, it’s one of zono’s own.
Say “hey” to miss bigbrain for me!
yes yes you can grate your own cheese it’s so easy if you have an expensive food processor
i do that for when i make egg casserole
i been on an egg casserole hiatus though cause of i’m still seasoning my new cast iron pot
advantage: Mr. The Donald
Often being smart only results in clever arguments supporting dumb ideas. I believe Mensa lowered their standard so, I could probably get in now but, who would want to join a club that would have me as a member.
Trumps the candidate, I don’t think voting for him will change me and what I believe. I don’t take it that personally.
Hoping for the best. You know, bear of little brain and big words bother me etc.
that’s the spirit Mr. bear
hope for the best and plan for the worst
it’s axiomatic!
Thus spake slewfoot, the mastergrater.
Georgia Democrats have once again misjudged their November chances. In 2014 they were sure they could win back the Senate, and so recruited some big guns for their primary. Sam Nunn’s daughter was widely considered a shoo-in once she’d won the nomination.
This year, with the orange train wreck at the top of the GOP ticket the Democrats here could have been set to kick Johnny Isakson (or whoever defeats him for the nomination) to the curb, but all they’ve got are a couple of no-name businesspeople and a “perennial candidate.”
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of those nobodies sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 thanks to the #DonaldChumps.
Go away and don’t come back. Easy peasy.
I guess he’s afraid of getting drunk and leaving a comment.
Getting drunk and leaving a comment is what facebook is for.
Mr. Trump has sass and verve, he’s a tad irreverent
whereas pee-stank brings only stench and itchy crime-fingers to the table
i know who i support that’s for sure
Dump Aiken then double down on Trump? Makes no fucking sense.
Mey’gh Mer’kha Ghr’ayd’aghn! Ia! Ia! Trumpathxigguachodus
So you’re definitely voting for Trump?
Mr. Trump is the best one but I’m not sure if I’m a vote yet.
Illinois is pretty blue and plus i think pee-stank was born here.
Awwww….
https://twitter.com/stevenjay/status/731819278668824576
Somewhat tangential, but Kevin Williamson is doing a very good job of echoing mine (for both candidates):
Although I would have thrown in “Presidential Libraries” for good measure.
And now we’ll get to watch Gerbil Boy defend Sarah Palin after years of shitting all over her.
Sarah Palin seems to have sensibly moderated her expectations of life
I’m about halfway through that movie “BREXIT” that newrouter linked above.
If you have the time, I suggest you watch it.
“Presidential Libraries”
last one I went to was Eisenhower’s it was modest and a bit dated but i enjoyed it immensely
before that I did LBJ’s National Historical Park which is separate from the Library
it was very obviously put together by some obscenely whorish propaganda sluts
did not enjoy
oh to be clear it was the visitor’s center that was nasty and socialist and whorish
the ranch tour is well worth the time especially if you have kids
Thx McG. When you leave a comments board it’s best to deregister and close out your account.
Best of luck all.
Thanks in advance for canceling my account.
– s
So wait, are you inviting Trumpets to comment again, or only serr8ed?
Just in case, here’s a good article from American Thinker:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/05/ive_changed_my_mind_about_donald_trump.html
Oh, and another:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/05/the_real_donald_trump.html
I hope this helps, I’m quite distressed you guys that I considered allies are so deep in your hatred of anything Trump you will call good decent men like Geoffb (whom in my heart I felt was the successor to Ric as Protein’s wisdom) and serr8ed along with others such vile names and hold them in such contempt just because they are led by different priorities than you in choosing who they think would best be president in the present circumstances. I’ll say that again, our principles haven’t changed, our priorities are different. We are rapidly losing our country to the open borders and PC nonsense, and unless we return to an America first mentality real damn quick, any other concerns will be moot.
Anyway, I don’t expect I will be heard, you all seem pretty committed to your position, but I thought I should try since it appeared I was given an opening.
Leavin’ by the revolving door again.
Yeah, I’ve considered the people here friends for 11 years, it ain’t easy being turned on like this. You, a mere blip on the timeline, I don’t care what you think.
Mr. Lee you have to help me and Mr. Trump beat pee-stank.
Not for me
for America!
It’s important.
OK, I’ll say it…As for not learning anything from this blog, it seems glaringly obvious to me that everything Jeff has been teaching in the classroom that is PW about fighting the left’s corruption of the language, Trump has done in real life on the battlefield with stunning success. He is destroying the left at their own game by not letting them set the rules and being brutally un-PC. For this he is called vulgar, but dammit, the republican penchant for tying one arm behind their back so as to appear proper and polite is doing nothing but losing us respect and getting our asses kicked up one side and down the other. Trump is giving a clinic on how to fight PC, the media, and the proggs. Tell me I’m wrong…
Agree Lee. Romney let binders of women and 47% sink him. Time for that to end. Few here wanted Trump but, he is the nominee now. I hope he listens to the right people.
“I don’t care what you think.”
I’ve been here since 2007. Is that not enough? Meh. Frankly I don’t care what you care about when you hard sell creepy Trump-vision bullshit, ignore his incoherence & general incontinence, while running out and in and out and in and out and in…trying to be a martyred drama tornado every damned time.
Support of Trump seems to hinge on the triumphing of Hopes over Experiences in the Souls of some individuals.
It’s possible Lee, that we see it as you guys having turned on the Constitution and what it stands for.
Serr8d demonstrated his rejection of PW with his gleeful Twitter attacks on the one Constitutionalist on the ballot, buying into the demonstrably false “Lyin’ Ted” meme, attacks on Heidi Cruz, the National Enquirer extramarital affairs attacks, and ultimately even the JFK smear on Cruz’s dad.
All that, plus the flat-out lie that Trump was first on immigration – still argued now even after Trump has repeatedly repudiated his own positions on that issue.
The stubbornness with which Trump’s followers defend his every betrayal speaks less of loyalty and more of stupidity. There are no virtues demonstrated in that behavior, nothing to admire or respect.
The worst thing about all this is discovering the deep, abiding contempt Trump supporters must have been concealing for years toward the ideals they used to profess while among “friends” you now clearly despise.
Shit man, you don’t even care what Trump thinks. or says.
You have so much utopia to project on him, so much gleaming greasy shit not to see, and so much neo-natural birth law scholarship to chant into a serious question if you squint, that you’ve lost track of him reversing much of his staunch, anti-PC, no fucks given, iconoclastic positions.
Trump, like Obama, thinks a man bringing his swinging dick into the ladies room with my wife and/or daughter is just dandy, because feelings can turn men into women. You’re not just barking up the wrong tree, you’re barking up a lamppost with on of those sickly orange sodium vapor bulbs atop it. Meanwhile, after 150 years of being the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party, the Ku Klux Klan is suddenly Republican. They can all go to hell together.
This is exactly the same damn thing the Obamabots did. Trump is the new tabula rasa, despite decades of his degenerate bullshit being splashed across American media. Mass insanity is what it is.
The abject terror about a Hillary presidency is the product of 20 years of GOPe marketing.
How appropriate that Trumpers who used to revile the Establishment but have now embraced it, are using that shibboleth trying to bully non-believers into compliance.
You Trumpers know where the swordfish is.
I was yelling at people bagging on Trump right until he did the “Cruz is a question mark” thing at the debate. That’s the point where he just admitted he was ridiculous, mendacious, and expected to be taken seriously no matter how wacky he gets.
So I got off the train. That was in January.
Now “the Train” is mostly 4-channers doing canned jew-bashing on twitter or tardish fit-kidz joking that Trump will deport or jail anyone who doesn’t kiss their asses followed by cuck or manlet.
It is well beyond pathetic.
And in all this time Trump never straightened up, never got serious, never stopped with bizarre bloopers about subzero GDP in 2015…he’s the same mess he started out as.
New photoshop … Orange is the New Black
McGhee, if you really think I’ve turned on the constitution and been only pretending for all these years, I don’t know what to say except you are deluded.
If anything, you are playing fast and loose with the constitution thinking Cruz is eligible for the presidency when, while he is a American citizen, he is a natural born Canadian. Plus, being my priority is the immigration problem, Cuz lost my vote because of teddy bears and soccer balls, along with his plan to expand the H1-b visa program massively when 25% of the workforce is already foreigners and there is a huge number of unemployed already here. That he voted for the TPTP trade deal and pandered to Hispanics in the debates didn’t help.
As for me despising my friends, I’m not the one calling names and saying fuck off.
I don’t do Twitter, I can’t comment on what happened there.
Pablo, Trump said the tranny bathroom deal was a state issue, which if it’s an issue at all is correct. That he said Bruce can use the ladies room at Trump Tower, I hate to break it to you, trannys been using the girls room forever. Making out like this is something Trump is pushing is silly.
Bottom line, come next year, either Trump will be president, or Hillary. Hillary is straight up evil, Trump is not. Trump loves his country and wants to restore her to greatness, Hillary does not. Choose wisely, and don’t kid yourself, not choosing is still a choice.
oh please
People acting like the stuff Trump says is actually where he stands… That’s just crazy! He’s exactly what I want him to be, not what your lying eyes tell you! #Trumpkin
Assumes facts not in evidence.
palaeomerus, if you’ve been here since 2007, it was under a different name. Sorry I didn’t know. I still don’t care what you think, you are an unpleasant person.
“I don’t do Twitter, I can’t comment on what happened there.”
Convenient.
“I still don’t care what you think, you are an unpleasant person.”
And?
Yes, a portrait of evil: https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=lxaKUo5naoY
Sdferr, do you think geoffb turned on the constitution? Is he the enemy now?
Stuff Trump says, now and 25 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/embed/MOKi5YeNtRI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcUCLwWCihE
Trump.
Is this evil? http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/politics/donald-trump-veterans-donations/index.html
Stealing veterans’ charity while covering your debate cowardice? It certainly ain’t virtuous.
Proving even smart people sometimes say the stupidest shit.
Tell ya what, I’ll support Trump by not voting for Hillary. How’s that?
You want to vote for Trump, vote for Trump.
Just don’t come around here claiming you’re basing your vote on any sort of Classical Liberal/Constitutional Conservative principle.
Or denigrating those of us who have choosen principle over whoring after yet another false demigod.
Yeah Pablo, that’s pretty tough to watch (it’s obviously cut to deny context and put his words in the worst possible light though). I understand your being skeptical that his positions have evolved since, as he claims. For myself, I can take that leap of faith, given what has happened over the last ten years. For sure, he is talking different now, while Hillary is talking much, much worse.
One will appoint judges who are like Scalia and Thomas, the other will appoint judges left of Ginsberg.
I have a 140 IQ and I say you don’t know that. We know Hillary will go Left. We not only don’t know that Trump will appoint judges with fidelity to the Constitution, there is nothing from him that even hints he would look for another Scalia. Unless you can at least find me a direct quote from Trump that he’ll make it a priority to make the appointment to SCOTUS another judge in the mold of Scalia, then you’re spitballing.
I’m voting for Trump to secure our national borders. You can label that however you like.
More smart people (not as smart as you naturally) saying dumb shit:
http://www.teaparty.org/dennis-miller-nevertrumpers-dont-kid-point-vote-anyone-trump-vote-hillary-163883/
Mostly against Republicans. And mostly by embracing their tactics.
Get back to me when Trump has something to say about men in miniskirts going into the women’s rest room and girls with really short hair joining the Boy Scouts of America. Because it seems to me that Trump is rather selective in his pushback —tactical even.
bgbear too.
As for Trump not caring about Obama’s legacy: there’s one piece of it that he’s intensely interested in not only maintaining, but expanding. I’m curious if any Trump supporters are aware of what it is; and if they are, whether or not they even care.
It must be clear that what Jeff meant by inviting Trumpers to simply go away was that more than anything he wanted the Trumpers to remain here posting drivel and links to Trumper propaganda. Clearly.
Oh, he says that. But believing things because he says them is pretty foolish.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/13/politics/donald-trump-antonin-scalia-affirmative-action/index.html
You’re right. That’s exactly what that is: another smart person saying stupid shit.
–it’s an emotional appeal to an emotion (party loyalty) that I feel no more particularly than you. (At least, I assume it’s loyalty –maybe it’s to fear of the Hildabeast, but I’m not afraid of her like some people seem to be.)
–it fails to address the reverse (Is not voting for Hillary the same as voting for Trump? Am I cancelling out my not voting vote by not voting for either of them?)
–it’s statistically improbable.
–From where I sit, if Trump needs my vote to win, then he deserves to lose.
I’m the one to get mad at sdferr since I’m the one that asked Jeff to promote his comment to a new thread.
Yeah, well, if Jeff chose to accommodate you Ernst, does that mean he means vis a vis the Trumpers as I sarcastically quip in his absence? Or that the Trumpers have to understand matters in that way (Open season! Pump the propaganda while the gettin’s good!)? Doesn’t seem like it to me, musing on his previous views of these things. ‘ppears to me more like an opportunity sought, a thing to be taken advantage of.
But Jeff, Trump Will *MAKE*AMERICA*GREAT*AGAIN*, and he will do it the old-fashioned way.
With human sacrifices.
Oh, not his, nor will he send HIS children to the hecatomb as they brandish their trust funds and NJ tax breaks in vain.
No, it will be the children of his followers, condemned to a life of economic servitude and war.
And as one, their parents, watching their loves and futures fed to the flames, with turn to US with the wrath of a young John Edwards and demand, “Why couldn’t you be a fucking man and WARN us?!”
Because just as nothing Trump does can ever be wrong, neither will the fault ever be theirs, as they turn around and start looking for a new master.
I have been called stupid by left and right, by smart people and dumb people. Maybe they’re on to something. I do know I can’t prove a negative.
I think if there were a standardized wisdom test, one of its essay questions might be about how you use your IQ score in conversations.
O for god’s sake, Bascom, how many court cases do you have to LOSE?
We used to walk up to Chapultepec.
Maybe next year I can start doing it again.
Well, when you start joking about Thunderdome and steel cage flame wars before the new post is even up, you kind of have an idea of what to expect.
I mean, it’s not like this is one of Darleen’s Friday fictions and someobdy is waxing rapturous over Donald’s yuge erm, coiffure.
Only when someone asks you, I guess. And maybe not even then. I doubt you just bring it out to bolster some kind of argument from authority. Because, as has been said already, having a high IQ doesn’t mean you cannot have stupid ideas, or do stupid things.
Ya gotta point about that Thunderdome business, something I’d not noticed here prior, or if I had read it, had forgot. Yep. Got me there.
I’ll label that either Bill Clinton’s Middle Class Tax Cut or Obama Closes Gitmo.
Well, we’re going to find out how good of a president Trump is, I’m pretty sure he will be elected. If he is as bad as the nightmares you all have I’ll eat a lot of crow. If not I won’t gloat, promise.
Thing is, as I’ve been saying since the last election, as screwed up as the country is at the is point I doubt the resurrected George Washington and Ronald Reagan combined could really do much to fix things. I mean, even Reagan, with a landslide election mandate 35 years ago couldn’t get rid if the Department of Education, and now they have their own SWAT team. I think you guys expectations of what Cruz could do are way overblown, as is your (eotional)reaction to his loss.
As for my expectations for Trump, if he just reestablishes the enforcement of existing immigration law, I would consider him a huge success. I have much more confidence in him picking judges and supporting second amendment rights than any democrat, I do fear Hillary on those issues.
Can’t we all just get beyond Thunderdome?
What? And head down the Fury Road I s’pose! That way lies madness.
shiny and chrome
Good luck with that. Which I mean sincerely, because he’ll need it —assuming, that is, that he was lying to the editorial board of the New York Times and not to you.
What? You expecting him to get it right by accident?
Wait until the first mass casualty shooting incident. Then we’ll see how strong his support for the second amendment is.
So then, the question:
cui bono? or: who? whom?
Jeff? Any ideas? You write, I’ll read…
How the h-e-double hockey sticks did we get here?
LBascom wrote:
If Caesar just stops the Germanic Tribes from invading our country, I would consider him a yuge success. If he makes the chariots run on time –> gravy!
And this point by Ernst should be shouted from every mountaintop across The Fruited Plain:
Be careful what beliefs you’re willing to barter because you may find you end up getting jobbed.
I would not put my faith in any person to “save” us. I will, however, note who will further our destruction, and that is true of both leading candidates.
Its going to be one or the other, so choices are down to :
1. Pick one
2. Don’t pick one
3. Wash your car
I suppose a 4th choice would be to whine and complain that your perfect candidate didn’t make it and complain for the next several months that both Trump and Hillary will lead us to the ultimate destruction of the world….but then that would just be crazy.
for the next several months
Oh yes, that’s exactly what spurred the thought that we follow, dwell with and examine in detail, day by day, this coming calendar of effort. Interestingly, as then, so now, on the appointed day (May 14th) no one showed up. Wonder what anxieties, if any, were f0und in the intervening days between the 14th and the 25th, when finally a quorum was obtained?
In this thread, not once did I see any Trump supporter defend Trump based on his attachment to Constitutional law or limited government. Perhaps that’s because it’s impossible.
I’m thinking that maybe we can plan to put your idea, Sdferr, into practice next year, which has the advantage of allowing us (1) to gather a few, a happy few, a band of Constitutionalists, together, (2) to avoid doing it in a Presidential Election Year, (3) to create all the daily posts ahead of time, and (4) to create a site where it can be done.
Heh. “Next year” turned a braingear, with “next year in Jerusalem” the output; which in turn turned another, with “If not now, when?” the output — though I wouldn’t blame any of that on Hillel. Perhaps we too find ourselves the dispersed?
Just as an exercise, Is there anyone that Trump could pick for veep that might get anyone to pull the lever? I just see myself in year three or so of a Hillary presidency no longer feeling so smug that I didn’t vote for Trump.
If you’re interested in thought exercises, then who would plan on feeling smug (and thus revealing themselves a moral cretin) in the face of what cannot be other than disaster, whichever of two proposed vile alternatives comes to pass? Oh, does that give away your game?
No game, trying to figure out what to do. Was holding out hope that as Trump look the lions share of the fire that Cruz could sneak in and get the nomination. Smug because I wouldn’t just vote for the nominee my party (yes, my party) decided on.
Smug won’t be a thing for opponents of these ongoing events. Simply cannot be.
Tallis‘ account of Jeremiah’s sense will be much closer, I think. Lament. Lament for a past now closed by death to change; leastwise any near term or immediate sort of change.
1) I’m too depressed to talk politics
2) New Radiohead album – YEA!!!!
3) It’s been 10 years since Tool has released an album
4) My IQ is probably below 143.
Maybe I’ll be able to discuss these things in the future, but for now I see no good.
I do feel smug, though. In my superiority to most of the voters in this country.
Trump is full of electrolytes, though, so he has that going for him.
Ya know the popular movie formula “You fucked up: you trusted us!”?
That may be where the problem lies, in that the formula gets the fundamental thing wrong: it works better if it reads “You fucked up: you trusted yourselves!”
Me too Carin, but I know there is going to come a point where I roll my eyes and say in my most cultivated facetious voice “Well at least Trump didn’t get elected” Right now I feel the pain of the Minnesotan who woke up to “Jessie Ventura?!”
Lush, beautiful, depressing, and fitting Sdferr. Once had the opportunity to sing Palestrina at St. Peter’s.
If Mr. Trump gets elected and nominates a decent constitutional supreme court justice I will not feel smug but, relieved.
@ Zelsdorf Ragshaft III
“This is in response to those who say Trump supporters are stupid. I have an IQ of 143.”
Your refutation, if properly formulated, would have to rely on the fallacy of division. A general statement true of the whole may not be true for each and every individual element of the whole. I would hope that someone with an IQ of 143 would have received a sufficient education to know that. So how would you prefer that I regard you — as ignorant, as insufficiently educated, or as deceitful?
“In reading the comments here there are many with double digit IQs.”
You will now be expected to produce their certified IQ tests to prove your claim.
“There are two choices.”
Looked at from one perspective, there are far more than two. One could not vote. (That’s three.) One could vote for the Libertarian. (Four.) Depending on jurisdiction, one could write in a candidate. (Five.) So your statement is literally false. But even looked at through your preferred lens — that Trump or Clinton will be president, and whatever action we take is ultimately the same as supporting one or the other — you are wrong. Because there are not two choices. There is only one. You have been deceived because sometimes your solitary option looks like it is wearing a pantsuit, and sometimes it looks like it has a combover. So the illusion of choice is there. But make no mistake, an illusion is all it is.
“One will appoint judges who are like Scalia and Thomas…”
Maryanne Trump Barry != Antonin Scalia.
…”the other will appoint judges left of Ginsberg.”
Will she? Possibly. But your proof is wanting. She might also be willing to support a judicial moderate (read: leftist on most of the “important” issues, but one who casts a few idiosyncratic votes with the right-leaning justices). Either way, though, I concede your point that I will hate Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees. Which is not the same thing as convincing me that Donald Trump’s will be better, or even that I should vote for him on that basis.
Also, as someone with an IQ of 143, you should probably be aware that there is no “e” in “Ginsburg.”
“If you do not support Trump, you are supporting Hillary Clinton. That is a fact.”
Bite me, Zelsdorf Ragshaft III. We do not live in a benighted and fallen democracy like France, where there is one national election for president. There are fifty-one separate elections for presidential electors. And I live in one of the reddest states in America. If Donald Trump needs my help to win here, he’s already lost the election, and the only question will be whether Hillary breaks 450 in the Electoral College. And if Trump wins the election, he’ll have carried my state by so much that my protest vote would be meaningless. So even if I were to accept your ridiculous false equivalence that I should cast my vote for lung cancer to keep liver cancer at bay, you would have to concede that what I do doesn’t matter.
As it happens, though, I do reject your false equivalence. Refusing to support Trump is not supporting Hillary. Supporting Hillary is supporting Hillary. Refusing to support Trump, while also not supporting Hillary, is just the baseline condition for supporting conservative principles and values. Don’t pretend you’re doing us a favor by backing Trotsky against Stalin.
I’d pick a name out of the phone book ala the movie The Jerk and have a better chance of that and Hillary. If Trump is gunna tear apart the Republican party I want a clean cut, with the constitutionalists following Jeff’s pillars. I saw a blurb from Mr. Newt saying he would be hard pressed to say no if asked to be the running mate. At least the Buckley rule would be back in play.
@ LBascom
“Well, we’re going to find out how good of a president Trump is, I’m pretty sure he will be elected. If he is as bad as the nightmares you all have I’ll eat a lot of crow. If not I won’t gloat, promise.”
Considering the likelihood of Hillary getting elected now, this is awfully big of you.
Tell you what. I’m pretty sure that the herd of space unicorns coming to Earth right this minute will use their magical rainbow powers, not to conquer the planet and enslave the human race, but to cure all disease and usher in a new era of peace and harmony. If we do end up in chains, I’ll totes say sorry, LOL. But if I’m right, I promise I won’t carp on it incessantly as we all stroll along the Promenade of Eternal Brotherhood toward the Crystal Tower of Belonging to receive our daily fuzzy allowance.
Trump is full of electrolytes, though, so he has that going for him.
yes yes he’s a good choice as opposed to pee-stank, who is a foul, damp and malodorous choice
I qualified on all three, and at least one of them was higher than 143. Do I win?
Sorry, no. Mine ranged between 149 and 168. In a crowd of up to 500 random people, it’s more likely than not that mine is the highest IQ in the bunch. Not bragging, just Bell Curve statistics at work. (Einstein was reported to have a 163.)
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard.
Remember how Nishi turned out to be completely wrong about how great Obama was gonna be, and she came back and admitted it?
Oh wait …
Can’t we all just get beyond Thunderdome?
MST3K REF!
You win the thread!
I’m in a deep-red state, too.
It won’t matter how I vote: I have that luxury. I could vote for Daffy Duck and it wouldn’t tip the scales either for or against Trump or Hillary.
Please, if you would, stop telling me that I’m a de-facto Hillary supporter when there’s no conceivable way that my vote could have that effect.
“But if I’m right, I promise I won’t carp on it incessantly as we all stroll along the Promenade of Eternal Brotherhood toward the Crystal Tower of Belonging to receive our daily fuzzy allowance.”
With the exception of the Butlerian Jihad, I have never before read anything that made me want to toe-feed myself a 2-3/4″ 20 gauge slug quite so much.
Wow.
I fell for that in 2008. It does actually get old.
Those are two very different questions. “Cui bono?” means “who benefits?” It’s normally invoked by conspiracy theorists to “prove” that some horrific event was engineered by a vast cabal with the superhuman power to ensure that all the thousands who would have had to participate in the plot (such as, all the WTC employees who would have seen the demolition experts wiring the towers with explosives and det cord), kept the secret.
“Who, whom?” was Leninist shorthand for “who shall rule over whom?” This is a question I’m sure the Bolshetrumps like to ask, even as they plot to mass murder the GOPe Menshetrumps after the election.
Meanwhile…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CinRAsoUgAArGQn.jpg
dicentra asked:
Ah, but by doing so you are going against the hive mind and that cannot be allowed. *facepalm*
Meanwhile…
So the cake really IS a lie, after all?
With the exception of the Butlerian Jihad, I have never before read anything that made me want to toe-feed myself …
… into a 12-in. chipper-shredder.
Slowly.
FTFY
DemosthenesVW at 12:21 and 12:37 – Bravo.
nishi you a song you make me wanna roll my winder down
I take it this means that the plan is to let Newt Gingrich and Alan Greenspan tell them what to do.
I wish that I could add something witty, erudite and/or incisive, but I got nuthin’.
This whole post and its comments are terribly depressing – we have like-minded brethren and sisteren (?) clashing over the form of our destructor when nothing any individual can do will make a difference.
I understand serr8ed and others’ last gasp and grasp for a lifeline; Trump perhaps will be payback for years of liberal tyranny. He looks like the “F you” candidate to both the Dems and the GPOe. But there’s no historical clues that he is/will be a president in the image of Reagan or Coolidge, or even Eisenhower. Clearly, Clinton is not a legitimate choice and it is a binary presidential election. I suspect that a vote for Trump will not be a “hold your nose and vote” as in the last few elections; rather, more like “duck and cover” and see what happens.
Point being that a single presidential election is not a panacea. The point we’ve reached is too far advanced, too far corrupted, too far gone to salvage by elections only. A major reset has the only chance of success and, even then, there is no predicting what comes after.
Rather than have us at each other’s throats, we’d better spend time looking beyond this single election. I’ve always considered PW a station on a future underground railway. For surely if we don’t hang together, we shall all hang separately (some old white guy said that).
Not going to get into brain size. It’s been many years, brain cells and drinks since I tested.
totally OT but I want to announce #3 daughter has reproduced.
Harper Shay was born this morning 11:09 am, 8 lbs 19.5 inches long … 2nd grandaughter bringing my crop count to 5; 3 grandsons 2 granddaughters.
And, oh, yes, being a grandparent is the Best.Thing.EVAH.
That is all.
Carry on.
:)
Thank you RI Red, a touch of humanity in a sea of hate is a welcome relief. I hope I haven’t turned the venom on you by saying so. I still feel bad about bg bear…it don’t take much around here.
@ palaeomerus, @ dicentra
Thank you. That was the effect I was going for. I do hope, however, that you don’t actually off yourselves. I enjoy reading your comments too much.
@ Bob Belvedere
Thank you.
And the Oscar for Best Poor Little Put-Upon Commenter goes to LBascom for his performance in “A Touch of Humanity in a Sea of Hate.”
“You hurt my lil’ Trumpkin feelz!” = Hate.
Frozen swordfish, Lee. You know what to do with it.
Lie down with dogs, wake up with YUGE fleas.
My feelings aren’t hurt, it’s not my guy that lost.
I pity you in your rage, that’s all.
I pity you in your rage, that’s all.
Rage or outrage or OMFG WE’RE HEADING STRAIGHT FOR THAT MOUNTAIN AND THE PILOTS ARE DEAD!!!
I do hope, however, that you don’t actually off yourselves.
If I do off myself, it won’t be over the loss of the Republic. It will be over something else, probably intensely personal and trivial, tbd.
And, oh, yes, being a grandparent is the Best.Thing.EVAH.
Of that there is no doubt.
THAT’S it! I’ll off myself after I get old enough that Not Having Grandchildren makes my creaking, achy, dreary life Not Worth It Anymore.
Not until after retirement, though, and that’s 8+ years off, still.
“If you do not support Trump, you are supporting Hillary Clinton. That is a fact.”
Contrariwise, if you do not support Hillary, you are supporting Trump.
Ergo, since I am supporting neither Trump or Hillary, I am supporting both! Ye gods, it must be a wondrous things to have a triple digit IQ.
Indeed. The evidence points in the opposite direction.
Made it Ma! TOP OF THE WORLD!
That’s an argument for doing what P.J. O’Rourke is going to do, vote for the devil you know.
Glad you asked.
Seriously sensitive souls?
The Trumpets!
My vote for neither-of-the-above means I’m abstaining from voting for either candidate rather than against one because I’m against both.
Yes, Hillary is as evil as Obama. There is little she won’t (and hasn’t done) on her quest to the Presidency and she’s left bodies behind to show for it.
But because she’ll be a Democrat, she’ll be of the Other Party and easier to stand against – that’s assuming the GOP gets lean, mean and willing to take an axe to the Imperial Presidency. I do have my doubts.
However, with Trump we do know we are getting another Obama – someone who looks at the Presidency as “There be so much winning you’ll get tired of winning” just another refrain in the fundamental transformation/the seas will stop rising opera. First act, tragedy; second act, farce.
Will we survive a 3rd act? With Trump as President, he becomes the head of the GOP and it becomes infinitely harder to reign him in than oppose Hillary.
I may be completely wrong, so rather than voting for Hildabeast, I’m skipping the President vote and working it down ticket.
Mark 8:36
/2 cents
You don’t need to skip voting for POTUS. Write in Cruz or SMOD.
Might as well. Then you can say: Don’t look at me, I voted for X in the presidential.
Instead of, I didn’t vote.
di
In California, you can only write in “certified write-in candidates” for President and Jerry Brown signed into law that write-in candidates are not allowed for Congress & state partisan offices in 2012.
Please, cuckservatives, please, stop me before I microagress again!
And stop yourselves, too, while you’re at it.
Think of the children.
Not to mention the grandchildren.
Woot, dc!
Believe you me.
if a vote for Mr. Trump will help make it to where that vile pee-stanky old woman isn’t president on us
I think that’s probably one of the better votes you can ever cast in your whole life
“Cuck” is the alt-right’s “racist” — it’s what they call you when you’re winning the argument.
Yellow hamster offers up decades-old GOPe fundraising rhetoric at a Trumpkin-safe intellectual level.
Go Team R!
You’re wrong.
Trump blamed Pam Geller for inciting a hit on her by Islamists. He was “won over” by Dreamers. His refusal to take a position on bathrooms is a dodge : that he’s been taught to parrot some line about federalism is nonsensical, given his position on federal lands, raising the federal minimum wage, providing universal health coverage, and the like; if he wishes to be a leader of a party he needs to take a position. And the position to take against the federal government blackmailing every last school district for a dangerous social engineering power play is “fuck off, not a chance.”
He’s likewise pro-race-based affirmative action — or at least, that’s what he’s learned to say because he wants to be both a Republican and a Maverick while he is in fact neither. So he’s not “brutally un-PC.” He’s just crass and obnoxious and boisterous; he picks on those he believes he can dominate, generally thru use of lawfare. He’s a pussy. A beta-male. An intensely needy sadsack. A broken thing. That he doesn’t know it — and nobody he surrounds himself with will tell him — makes him dangerous.
Trump is not destroying the left. He IS the left. He’s not giving a clinic on how to fight the media; he and they have a symbiotic relationship — he gets coverage, they get ratings, and in the end, he doesn’t really even care if the coverage of him is good or bad, though he whines incessantly and floats upending 1A because he’s been personally attacked.
We had a constitutional conservative in the race. Trump (and to a lesser extent Rubio) did everything possible to destroy that man’s reputation, harm his family, and rebuke what many of us have for years been hoping to bring back to representative governance.
Trump isn’t fighting progs. He is one. He can have the wretched party that nominates him, and you can whine on all you’d like about the “hatred” from those of us not keen on being forced to defend “racial realism,” attacks on “renegade Jews,” wealth taxes, Kelo, et al.
Just call me Lyin’ Jeff the cuck Hillary supporter and anti-American globalist Jew standing athwart a return to American Greatness yelling “but Israel!,” and get it over with. I don’t give a fuck.
Trump will NEVER represent me, not even if he winds up taking every constitutionalist position because all the greedy fucks thinking they’ll be the real power behind the throne manage to convince him not to do what HE wants for the first time in his life.
He’s an awful human. He’s unprincipled. He doesn’t care who he destroys to get what he wants and has spent his life running roughshod over anyone who’d let him get away with it. He’s a monster, and anyone who supports him can eat a sack of rancid orange dicks.
Look, it’s really simple: “A vote against Trump is a vote for Hillary” is weak lazy mendacious bunk.
It’s a variation of “you owe us, and if you don’t support us, you’re off the reservation thus an inauthentic x” or ” If you aren’t an ally then you’re part of the problem thus an enemy.”
It’s trying to shame someone into unconditional party unity no matter how you feel about the party or its likely chosen representative.
It’s typical leftist “join the machine” crap.
Resist.
I have no way of knowing of course, but my hope – a very slim hope, I admit, is that an election of Trump will be the tipping point against the imperial presidency and that Congress will re-assume it’s mantle as a check against the exec branch. I think with Trump in office there may be partisan support to reign in out-of-check presidential powers. If Hillary is elected, there is no way that any republican congress will attempt to cock-block her, lest they be painted as anti-women. No matter who is elected, unless the Congress act as representatives of the people and the states as a check against an imperial president, then our assent into tyranny is assured. Never thought I’d see it in my lifetime.
You’re seeing it. Don’t double the damage by supporting it, too.
At the very least we can avoid ever giving it our imprimatur.
Never thought I’d see it in my lifetime.
See it now, as Ed Morrow used to say, ’cause it’s here already, in spades. And there are no signs, none, not one, that tyranny will be going anywhere anytime soon, for Americans seem to like it, and will vote for it again.
*assent* into tyranny? Re-reading my post, I see I have a typo.
Or maybe not… I meet a lot of people who I think would choose to live in chains, just as long as a celebrity chef is cooking the prison meals.
bosh and pickles Mr. McG
it’s entirely possible for a pikachu to loathe a hillary more than he loathes a donald
but honestly I just want the era of food stamp brought to a close that’s all i want
and Mr. The Donald will do that
pee-stanky Hillary won’t
Cruz was the first political candidate in my times that I felt positively about, and that’s understating it. That Donald Trump is a presumptive nominee for president of the United States is surreal. It’s an absurd joke.
But, nobody thought that an Obama (may his name be obliterated) presidency was surreal. Reason being was that nobody paying attention was really fooled. The left got what it wanted, and he succeeded in the furtherance of that agenda beyond the left’s wildest dreams. He is as malicious as the left is malicious.
Here is why I will vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming election.
1. Rhodes revealed that Obama (may his name be obliterated) initiated the entire Iran deal in order to extricate the United States from her traditional MENA alliances. He and the left hates Israel. I see no reason to believe that HC is any different and a lot of reason to believe that she is the same, not least of which being that she is the representative of the Left. Trump prioritizing the destruction of Israel would be a surprise at the very least — thus that’s one very tangible reason for me to vote trump.
2. 3. 4.
= military
= courts
= federal bureaucracy
I am not going to flesh out the arguments–I don’t believe there is ton of objection here to them — though I’d love to see it if so, but they boil down to same template:
Obama’s radical re-imagining the make up and scope of these institutions isn’t an outgrowth of his peculiar toxic world view but rather is in lockstep unison with general leftist ideology. HC is of the same mind by all indications. I’ve not seen it argued that Trump is in lockstep unison with the Left — He is no conservative and he may well share many of the same kernal assumptions that underpin the left wing philosophy but that’s still a very far leap from saying that he is an actual malicious Left wing warrior who is going to actively pursue what amounts to the destruction of the United States of America.
So I get your argument: refusing to lose slowly is a first necessary step to building something that may actually win. I am sympathetic, which is why I lurk on this website, but by G-d do you not see the possibility for another approach.
I am that this country can vote itself into good health at anytime in the foreseeable future. It would take a religious revival for that to happen in my opinion because if you trow the absolute source for the true, you’ve thrown out the truth itself, and a down slide into nihilism is just a matter of time. It’s a slow descent, no doubt, because society can continue on the fume of the intellectual institutions it they have inherited from the previous more healthy generations, but there is a limit, and we seem to have reached it.
So yeah, there may well be some sort of revolution, hopefully peaceful, with a convention or something else entirely unforeseen, but in the meantime, and in order that there BE time, I believe we need to stop the bleeding, and keep the very, very wicked left out of office. Even if that means electing an imbecile.
I am not arguing that I am right, I am arguing that there is room to reasonably support Trump for the upcoming presidency
How?
Show your work.
Mr. Trump’s agenda will be a huge departure from food stamp’s
i think we all agree that Mr. Trump isn’t an ideologue even if we can’t agree on what he *is*
ergo a new era
praise lutheran Jesus
What does that bullshit even mean? Are you high? Is there a gas leak?
what’s not to get with what HF said.
Obama has an agenda. that agenda neither begins nor ends with Obama. There is every reason to believe HC actively serves that agenda. We hate that agenda.
No one suggests that Trump actively serves that agenda. What agenda he does serve is arguable to the extent that it is knowable, but nobody believes it is the agenda of the Left.
So with Trump you will be getting something … else, possible better, by definition if we accept that his agenda is unknowable, likely better, by some argued understandings. But nobody here has argued that it will be the same or worse. (Or so I believe).
What’s so hard to understand about that.
I see the losing slowly position. But if you can argue that it will be worse 4-8 years under Trump than it would by under HC, I like to see it.
re-reading:
“So with Trump you will be getting something … else, possible better, by definition if we accept that his agenda is unknowable, likely better, by some argued understandings. But nobody here has argued that it will be the same or worse. (Or so I believe).”
it’s inconsistent. I can’t use ‘possibly better, by definition if we accept that his agenda is unknowable…” because by that very reason I’d have to accept that it may be worse.
I must concede that I believe that we know enough about who he his to suspect that it won’t be worse. I’m comfortable with that.
Will anyone argue that it will be worse?
(I won’t troll this site much more, I get that this isn’t the train of though here and I like the website as is so I will soon go back to lurking, but I am trying to find out whether this all really boils down to the classic lose slowly to stop the bleeding vs tear it down, or let it fall, to build up something better debate)
” Mr. Trump’s agenda will be a huge departure from food stamp’s ”
Based on what? What’s “huge” mean here? Trump’s already moved his stakes once. He didn’t move them staunch-ward. What’s he going to fight and reverse with his political capital?
” i think we all agree that Mr. Trump isn’t an ideologue even if we can’t agree on what he *is* ”
Not sure how not being an ideologue will lead to anything new what with momentum, not caring, and pressure to continue Obama course. Any GOP resistance assuming we maintain any majority in the house and senate will be less effective than resistance to Obama given this is THEIR GUY doing it. Trump wants to make deals and considers the left the people to deal with. He wants to put “the best people “in charge of issues and let them handle it. You think he’s going to roll us back to sanity, uphill, with lighting and thunder coming down, in a cold wind?
” ergo a new era”
How so? Assertions are whatever erts out from an ass I guess.
” praise lutheran Jesus ”
This gibberish has been brought to you by the letter H and the number pickles.
Seeds, mean mister moustache, seeds.
That’s how.
And they’ll all be marvelous seeds, simply marvelous.
Sesame? Carraway? Sunflower?
What I am sensing is that beyond the major stop the bleeding vs make our stand argument, there is a general objection against the hopefulness and belief in Trump that he seems engenders in his supporters, being as that stands on very weak to non-existent foundation (hence the con-man epithet). But I sense no objection to a resigned sigh and vote for the lesser of two evils approach other than objecting to voting for the lesser of two evils itself. If that’s the case, you certainly have two general kinds of Trump supporters with the division treading that line, namely, will Trump be a good candidate or will he simply be less bad than HC.
If that is correct, then most of this heat is aimed is at the primary support rather that at what people may hold with respect to the general election.
Of course most of his supporters don’t sit cleanly on either side of that line.
Going back to lurking..and thank you for reading.
y’all are being super over-dramatic and denying yourself the simple innocent pleasure of contemplating life in an America free of the criminal molestations of that nasty malodorous pee-stanky old woman
You should consider putting that on your own line of merchandise: bumper stickers, coffee mugs, t-shirts, ball caps (red ones, for teh irony).
It’l be yuge!
A politician died and was sent to the Pearly Gates where he was met by a somewhat embarrassed St. Peter. “Look, I’m embarrassed because this happens so very rarely, but you have an EXACT 50%-50% balance between Good and Evil, and we’re not really sure what to do with you. So I think we’re going to let you decide where you will spend eternity, either here or in Hell. Fair enough?”
So the politician is shown around heaven, where he is shown the Throne, the jeweled mansion where he would live, and a quick flying tour of the Great City. Then, when the 24 hours was up, he was escorted down to Hell, where he was met by Satan. Satan welcomed him with a nice cigar and a beautiful aide to follow him around. He was shown the nicest restaurants, where some of history’s best musicians were playing quietly in the back ground, and the politician met up with some of his old friends who assured him that things weren’t as bad as he had always been told. Great food, great wine, great music, pleasant view, and the aide was VERY accommodating.
After 24 hours, he was escorted back to the Pearly Gates where he was asked for his decision, and he said, “Well, yes, heaven is very pleasant, but I saw a lot of my friends down there, and the food was really good, the liquor was top notch, and the rest was … ahem … very pleasant, too, so I think I will choose there.”
St. Peter sighs regretfully and as he turns away, two big burly demons grab the politician and haul his straight to Hell, where he is shocked to see the fire and brimstone, and sees his friends slowly drowning in a pit of burning quicksand. He feels the sting of a lash across his back and as he collapses in pain, he sees Satan draw back for another strike. He gasps out, “Wait! What happened to all the good things I was promised?”
Satan laughs evilly and replies, “That was when we were campaigning. Today you voted.”
A little music for you Trumpers, reluctant or not, to set your rationalizations to.
I guess so. I laid out out my reasoning and asked civilly for a position clarification. I got it. I had hoped for maybe a point counter point but got a video. It’s a bit sad. The last man standing in American politics gave us Donald Trump and one of the few remaining forums where they use full sentences and try to discuss ideas is what this is. If there is an argument behind the youtube video, please flesh it out, I have that site blocked.
The objection isn’t to hopefulness (there’s that word Hope again!) or belief (in what? Trunp? To do what? Make America Great Again? What’s that? Change –ZOMFG! there’s that other word). It’s to a medicine drummer selling snake oil.
Because, like Jeff pointed out, we know he’s a medicine drummer selling snake oil.
You misread the argument. I have no hope that Donald Trump will be a good president. And I do not believe he hill be a good president. Because there is no reason to. The nouns are still in the dictionary. So you’ve attacked a position I do not espouse. Indeed my question was whether it was to *that* opinion, you had so much heat for.
My position, and I believe it is a strong one, is that it is logically likely that he will be less bad than Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Do you disagree?
It’s hard to respond to rationalizations. I can’t talk you out of something you talked yourself into.
1. Trump = friend of Israel? Maybe, but based on what? What happens if he decides he needs to make a deal? Who are his foreign policy advisors going to be? Will they be pro-Israel, or stereotypically pro-Arab striped-pants types straight out of Foggy-Bottom finishing schools?
2. Trump = pro-military? Based on what? Isolationist-like rhetoric? Obama’s anti-military actions tend to make a non-interventionist foreign policy (and Trump’s been fairly critical of our foreign policy from both ends of the spectrum; that is to say, his position is we’ve intervened ineffectualy, and we shouldn’t have intervened in the first place) more likely, not less likely.
3. Trump = better judicial appointments. That one we know we can’t trust. My pro-abortion sister’s great –like Scalia (to conflate his waffle)
4. Trump = chastened bureaucracy. That’s just straight-up wishful thinking, maybe my girlfriend will let me have a three-way with her and her hotter, younger sister level wishful thinking —to put it in Trumpese. Or Goldsteinese, as the case may be.
My position, and I believe it is a strong one, is that it is logically likely that he will be less bad than Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It may be a POPULAR opinion, but you have no evidence with which to manipulate (using that “logic” you brag of) to support such a bare-faced opinion. Because of what Trump says? “That was when we were campaigning!” He was supporting Hillary’s positions just a (very) few years ago, and advocating her positions just a few months ago (until he found out how unpopular those are supposed to be when you are Mobying your way into the Oval Office).
As P.J. O’Rourke quipped, “Hillary Clinton would be the second-worst thing to happen to the United States, which is why I am endorsing her for President.”
Both candidates are detestable and morally repugnant human beings. Both candidates will use the executive branch to destroy their enemies and enrich themselves. Trump has agreed with ALL the positions that Hillary has taken over the years, but now because he is on the other side, we are supposed to believe that he is a conservative. You can piss down my neck and tell me it’s raining, but it’s still going to smell like pee stank to me.
I’m voting for the Libertarian candidate. Whoever that turns out to be.
You should cut out the rhetorical cheating.
Trump is not pro-Israel.
(Cruz is pro-Israel.)
Obama is aggressively and passionately anti-Israel. In lock step with the Left.
HRC is the Left.
There is no *reason* to believe Trump is anti-Israel generally and specifically in the manner in which the Left is anti Israel.
Do you disagree with that? Can you distinguish between pro-Israel and *not* aggressively and passionately anti-Israel?
Pro-Military:
Ditto. Seriously Ditto. Replace the word Israel in the above argument with the word Military.
Judicial appointments.
HRC will seek out (and perhaps consider it her most important task) the most radical anti-human anti-constitution justice (spit) to fill every and any open position.
Do you have an reason to believe Trump would do the same?
Bureaucracy. HRC will for structural and for ideological reasons seek to expand any and every super constitutional agency existing or as yet to exist.
Will Trump do the same. Note: ( warning this is subtle and you’ve showed no willingness to engage with what I’m actually writing) — this is probably the area where Trump is closest to the left. I can absolutely see Trump trying to put the clamps on anything that opposes him, by any means necessary including the FCC and the like. He is a dangerous president and I’m sickened that we’ve come to this. But he has no affinity for the likes of the EPA or Dept of Ed. so while I see it a wash with respect to subset of the agencies, I just don’t see the ideological motivation behind Trump to turn the US into a Federal Bureaucracy.
You continue to argue against a strawman.
I say not ” aggressively and passionately anti-Israel.” — you say pro-Israel
I say not “” aggressively and passionately anti-Military.” — you say pro-Military
Judicial appointments you worded correctly.
I say that he wont ” for structural and for ideological reasons seek to expand any and every super constitutional agency existing or as yet to exist.” — you say a chastened bureaucracy
I think at this point I know where you stand.
Mr. Drumwaster: about the logic thing, I didn’t mean to brag, I’m just doing my best.
I’m going to try something subtle.
You are correct I have no evidence that Trump will be better in any way than HRC. I have plenty of evidence that HRC will be a disaster, like her predecessor. My theory is that they are as disastrous as they are because they are radical Left wing agitator. I have no evidence that Trump is a left wing Agitator (for the sake of argument) hence I have no reason to believe that he will be as bad.
So I don’t.
Do you?
nicely argued naftali
i’d add there’s a lot to suggest that a whole lotta chickens are coming home to roost in failmerica no matter who gets put in the white house
dark days are coming
Hillary Clinton will be a disaster. At best, according to you, and if I’m not cheating rhetorically, Trump will be a disaster on the same or smaller scale. That’s still voting for disaster.
And I’m done endorsing evil.
To mix metaphors.
I’ve been saying for months that arguing with a Trump supporter is EXACTLY like arguing with a Leftist: they’re vicious, infantile, smug, snarky and rarely have an actual point other than “You’re a stupid-head because you don’t agree with me!”. There are NEVER any specifics regarding policy.
Their “debating” tactics are so amazingly similar that I honestly have to wonder if the “Leftists-for-Trump” aren’t being severely under-counted. Read their comments and substitute the word “Obama” for Trump and you’ll see what I mean. It’s pure fucking hero-worship.
Which makes it hilarious when these fools accuse us of being big, stupid meany-heads.
Obama and Trump were/are cult-of-personality figureheads. I keep being amazed that the Right is falling into the same trap, but then I go back to the debating styles and have to wonder, again, if a very large portion of Trumpistas aren’t, in fact, Leftists.
Come November, we can either vote for Hillary or The Guy Who Donated to Hillary.
Trump is a used car salesman who promises to throw in a free bottle of snake oil with any purchase.
The fact that so many people supposedly of the Right can’t see this saddens and terrifies me.
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”
I always wondered what that meant. Think I know now.
Actually, that’s exactly what I believe it is. Big government, protectionist, populist progressivism in a metrosexual candy shell.
And we’d be forced to defend it.
Also: in case you missed it, Trump said he’d be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians. And Trumpers don’t have much stomach for “rootless cosmopolitans” or “globalist bankers” like — evidently — me.
Pro military? So he says. Yet he says he’d cut military spending. When he isn’t bombing the shit out of people and holding on to charity fundraising money supposedly earmarked for vets.
Maybe he thinks wars are fought with mean Tweets and free appearances on Hannity.
“Trump will NEVER represent me, not even if he winds up taking every constitutionalist position because [blah blah blah]”
Jeff, you’ve become irrational. You’ve created a monster in your own mind and a story where even if Trump is wildly successfully in accomplishing everything you hoped for in Cruz, you will still be right and everyone else that doesn’t see things your way wrong.
It’s like you have taken everything the political left has fucked up and made Trump responsible for it when the guy has hasn’t been elected to ANYTHING yet.
And I haven’t called you or anyone else any names, despite being told twice to fuck myself with a frozen swordfish sideways and to eat a sack of dicks. Among other quaint and less imaginative insults. And that’s not whining, just making a point.
Anyway, it’s clear most here can’t see any daylight between Trump and Hillary, which I find incredible but nonetheless, so there’s nothing to be done for it. I’m not going to waste anymore time trying to reason with the irrational.
While I’m somewhat open to the idea, Warmongerel, that there are dyed-in-the-wool Leftists supporting Trump Magnus, I’m not convinced at all, at this point.
It’s clear by your remarks that you understand how the Trumpists think and act, but I assign another cause to their behavior: they think like Leftists, because the Leftist Way Of Thinking has triumphed in America.
The Left’s Abnormal way of looking at things, large and small in importance, has become the New Normal, as it were.
The thinking of The Founders, on the other hand, has become the New Abnormal. Right Reason has been delegitimized by over a century of brainwashing propaganda aimed at all Americans.
Leftism has spread it’s vile poison into every nook and cranny of our lives, so that, even the strongest-willed of us engage in some Leftist Thinking here and there.
The Trumpists have merely allowed themselves to be more poisoned than most non-Committed Leftists. In other words, like all Leftists do in their own way, the Trumpists have let the poison spread without seeking an antidote. The people here – we few…we Band Of Outlaws – are fighting externally and internally every day to eradicate that degenerate, depraved, and dastardly poison from this World.
And we’d be forced to defend it.
that seems like a non sequitur to me
“I’m not going to waste anymore time trying to reason with the irrational. ”
And out the revolving door again he goes, with a flourish of his cloak, and a frenetic pantomime of delivering a telling sting.
But he heareth not MY cuck words, for I hath not lurked and posted for the requisite ten years, only for nine, and also I kisseth not his feet with sufficient fervor. Probably I am also a secret Canadian, owned by a naughty bank, and consort with known assassins which is, as we all know, a vote for Hillary, because SCIENCE!(TM) in bright orange classy letters.
No, the monster is real and he’s been living among us for nearly 7 decades, using lawfare to punish people who wrote about his net worth or didn’t find merit in his “university,” or using his buddy at the Enquirer to try to ruin families and marriages. He’s been funding the people fighting the TEA Party. He’s been funding leftists and using government to make money for years — learning how from his Daddy. He backed John Kerry for President, and people here argue with a straight face that he’s pro-military.
He won’t ever represent me.
I don’t care whether you agree with me or not. At the end of the day I answer to me.
Of course it does, because you’re a contrarian phony attention whore.
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”
->His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever, which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners. The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous. The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. The LORD shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the LORD.
Of course it does, because you’re a contrarian phony attention whore.
see that’s not even a nice thing to say much less being a good argument
I don’t see why anyone would be forced to defend Mr. Trump
he’s already healthily bracketed as a not-for-reals Republican
if he does stupid stuff we can all call him on it i sure plan to
I don’t see any reason people would have to defend him unless they thought what he was doing was defensible
nobody defends Paul Ryan (quite properly)
Eight years ago, I held my nose and voted for the guy who chose as his running mate a fresh faced Alaska governor, despite the fact I detested the nominee himself. The thought of how having her as vice-president would make lefties’ heads explode lured me into doing what I had sworn I wouldn’t, from the moment that man entered the race.
Four years ago, I didn’t vote for anyone, but rather voted — as the party clearly wanted it because it offered no other rationale — against Obama. It took me a lot of soul-searching before I could make that decision, but I made it.
This year, it just ain’t happening. The only reason I can see to vote Republican in 2016, if Donald Trump is the nominee, is either blind party loyalty, or blind personal loyalty. In neither case is there even a pretense that the loyalty would be reciprocated.
Trumpkins and party apparatchiks can claim until Judgment Day they need my vote this November, but they don’t mean it. I know when I’m not wanted, and I feel great.
Mr. McG that’s all cult of the presidency type talk
the president of the US ain’t nothin but a thang
if we learned one thing from the last 8 years it’s exactly that
the president is a twat-waffle at best
BUT
the presidency is vast
the number of appointments are many
oh so so many
and Mr. Trump would do a better job than pee-stank of filling these offices and departments with people who have the best interest of America at heart
Pee-stank’s already sold 80-90% of her appointments through the Clinton Global Criminal Cartel – we know exactly what kind of trash she’ll appoint as our overseers
i oppose this
I think McGehee and I are on the same page and in the same paragraph. 8 years ago I voted for that Alaskan chick and the loathsome man who didn’t want to choose her. 4 years ago I was so offended by Benghazi that I voted for Romney. Before that I was not going to vote for any presidential candidate.
This time, I’m inclined to not vote for the lesser of two evils because I have no idea if a lesser evil exists.
Trumpers and GOPe’s say we don’t need to fall in love, we just need to fall in line.
Where have I heard that before?
So do I, but it’s going to happen regardless who wins, so I’ll keep my fingerprints off it TYVM.
ok well what pee-stank do is not on me
I’m a plum lolly!
Plum loco.
Eh happy feet, I’m pretty sure Trump is going to win. I think Sanders people hate Hillary as much as we do, and will vote for Trump rather than her. Or stay home.
I totally agree with you about the chickens thing though. This country is in deep shit thanks to the political elite geniuses. Even if the economy doesn’t crash in the next few years, the press will start reporting the real situation when the republican takes office, and it’s going to be ugly. High unemployment, rampant homelessness, blacks doing worse than ever, crushing student loan debt, foreign affairs in crisis, and on and on. And it will all be Trumps fault.
Seriously, I question the sanity of all the people that want the job.
wow it was a long long journey to get on the same page with you Mr. Bascom
Your point has been that objection to this obviously progressive, wildly dishonest orange megalomaniac is hate and/or rage. That’s bullshit and you can cram it up your ass. Now, since you’ve been so victimized here, perhaps it’s time you saved yourself. You might want to get out before your new pals show up for the Jew.
No Hillary and the global initiative for me. That is it. You will find no pro Trump talk in any of my prior comments until he became the nominee. Heck, I am not even a registered republican so, I am not sure how good at would be in walking in lockstep. This kind of stuff is why I don’t join organizations.
I will not take the dietary suggestions but, have fun imagining it.
Sorry, Trumpers. I just can’t be on the same team as John Boehner and the Klan.
If you’re voting for him, that’s one.
Not in my experience.
No Pablo, objecting to the Donald is not what I characterize as hate. Your attitude to me because I don’t is what I’m talking about.
Despite what you think, I’m not your enemy.
Yeah happyfeet, but it doesn’t mean we’ll be taking warm showers together until the wee hours of the morning.
How about pina coladas and walks in the rain?
I might could go for boilermakers in a shitkicker bar.
Not in fucking Chicago though.
“Not in fucking Chicago though.”
Good call. That’s where the Space Unicorns are supposed to land.
Prepare for warm fuzzies, or possibly eternal servitude!
heh
I have never drank a pina colada, boilermaker, or been in such a bar but, I have walked in the rain. Don’t always like it.
OK, here’s a good place to start. Take a shot glass and fill it half full of Jameson Irish whiskey, top it off with Irish cream, drop it into a glass of Guinness Stout and immediately drink the whole thing down.
Called an Irish car bomb. It’s like mudda’s milk…
Speaking of Pamela Geller:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/05/17/geller-trump-jews-david-horowitz-right/
The book to read is Kenneth Minogue’s Servile Mind.
If, like Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles, you want to know what the hell happened, and if, unlike the gutshot McQueen, you have time to read before you pitch over dead.
“Death Wish” might make another good name. You would have to drink it while watch a Charles Bronson film.
Cranky-d Johnson is right about McGehee Johnson being right. And I ain’t votin fer no side windin, hornswagglin’ cracker-croaker, no-how.
rehrund
That’s not daylight you’re seeing. It’t twilight.
You obviously are oblivious to the Civil Service Act, willfully dismissive of union protections, and have not the slightest clue to how large & entrenched the Federal Bureaucracy is compared to the number of appointments at the President’s disposal.
In sum, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Paul Kengor get’s his Lloyd Bentson on:
Who cares as long as he don’t stank of pee, though, right?
Off topic:
When I hear or read that someone reads, writes or speaks at a 4th Grade reading level I usually assume it is a somewhat hyperbolic description than means words used are common, and short, and the sentences are brief, with one thought in each one. This phrase is most often used to mark the author as semi-literate or a condescendingly simplistic in presentation.
BUT if I wanted to write at a 4th grade level for a 4th grade audience, what sort of editorial resource would I use to guide my style and meet that standard?
Is there a serious “4th Grade reading level” manual I could consult that publishers and editors would use to advise writers ?
Given the quality of your perceptions and judgments, this is neither terribly surprising nor accurate.
Thank you, Ernst for the book suggestion.
I seem to recall that it was once listed by me for future purchase on one of those scraps of paper I have scattered on my home desk. Where that fragment ended-up, only either my Wife or Heaven knows.
palaeomerus:
I once had to re-write something into a children’s story. I used the children’s books we have around the house for a guide, but it’s a floor, nothing more.
For 4th grade, I might take a look at a Hardy Boys book, the basic idea being that the best approach is to use what has actually worked for the purpose. Any modern style guide would be a crap shoot at best, because modern man has lost his mind.
Any Trump speech transcript. A collection of happyfeet comments would be too far down.
To add to naftali’s suggestion, head over to your public library and speak with the children’s librarian. Get about a dozen or so books related to what you want to write by genre and topic. Take note of things like publication date, text to illustration ratio, paragraph length, sentence count, word count, etc.
Then go back to the library and get a dozen or so more books and repeat.
When you’ve got yourself a nearly final draft, have a couple of fourth graders read it.
Normal and new normal. Like, uh, Ptolemaic system and Copernican systems of the world, is it? So what distinguished the leftist mode of thinking (so-called), then? Where does it begin (with what presumably proud distinguishing characteristics?); and then how develop into the current confusion?
For what it’s worth:
As an evangelical Christian, I believe that the outcome of the election is in God’s hands, not mine. Ergo, in the big picture, my vote matters not a whit.
However, I also believe that I will one day stand before him and answer for my actions, great and small. I’ve got enough to explain without adding “Why I voted for someone I knew to be a dishonorable, unprincipled, dishonest, backstabbing narcissist for the highest office in the land” to the list.
VDH on fire re Pajama Boy White House at Nat. Rev.
Sdferr, please guide me through his concluding paragraph. Is he predicting or encouraging that particular denouement?
Sorry, linkee no pastee.
YMMV, of course.
This, then, RI? First I’ll go read it.
RI Red:
Very disturbing article.
It all starts and ends with:
GG:
Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA:
Yes.
GG:
What is sin?
OBAMA:
Being out of alignment with my values.
Pure evil.
That’s the one. Figured you know your Euripides better than I.
After a very (perhaps too very) quick read of that RI, I’d say no way Hanson would encourage what he sees coming. He’d encourage what he sees missing as having caused what he sees coming, rather. But does he predict? Yes, I think, in the sort of way that the skeptic (and ironically in this context, the hipster cool leather-jacketed Jeff Goldblum) character in Jurassic Park says [gisting] you shouldn’t fuck with creation that way, because just when you don’t expect it, nature will out, and you won’t like the results.
Naftali, that certainly goes to my earlier comment about needing a religious and moral people for our constitution to work. I’m coming to the conclusion that amoral is much worse than immoral.
I try not to take the political personal.
VDH has certainly been cataloging the decline of the American Empire. This prediction is as close as I’ve ever seen him say that there WILL be a reckoning and it WONT be pleasant.
Makes the issue of voting rather pointless.
Trespassers W:
If more people thought like you we’d be in a better spot.
About that amoral-immoral distinction, what sort of human beings are amoral as such? I’d suggest possibly microcephalics (the actual and not the metaphorical sort). Others who say they’re amoral (who in “saying” demonstrate the capacity to speech which microcephalics lack) are lying about themselves: they don’t like people taking their stuff, they aren’t indifferent, any more than any thieves ever have anywhere.
Shoot, just lost my reply into the ether.
When Obama defines sin as when not being in alignment with his values, what bothers me is that he sets those values. There is no indication that those values are “natural” values or ones developed through religion, philosophy or common understanding. Perhaps amoral is too strict a definition. But is pure evil being purely amoral? Dunno.
Think I’ll take a break and go beachcombing. Good place to ponder.
Values is one of those terms Bob Belvedere referred to above, terms which have entered and then gone on to dominate our thinking, and particularly our political thinking: terms which Leo Strauss would have referred to as received by us along with our mother’s milk, terms which we do not question at receipt. I’d include others, many, even, which good people are tired of hearing repeated at this point — culture, for instance, which Darleen suggests causes a near apoplexy in me, was it, Darleen? But apoplexy or no, it along with those others remain to be confronted face on.
Look, let me tell you something, our nutrient agars are going to be outstanding, and cultures, because frankly, I’ve been dealing with these things all my life, simply outstanding.
So glancing back, it was anaphylactic shock, not apoplexy — heh, my memory is so corrupted all I could recall was the “a”.
I’ve had some decent friendships built on “agree to disagree.” We would trade good-natured barbs about our differences but avoid getting into arguments over them.
I don’t mind engaging good-faith arguments, but I’ve had a lifetime of dealing with bad-faith arguments made by people who had no clue what “good-faith” means. For the record, it doesn’t mean “I believe what I’m saying is true and you have no right to tell me it isn’t — and stuff your evidence because I don’t want to hear it.”
It would be nice if this whole business could simmer down to “agree to disagree” mode, but none of us knows what might happen tomorrow to restoke the war. For many of us Trump skeptics, every time the guy opens his mouth we want to grab his supporters by the collars — followers and reluctants alike — and shake them until it makes a difference. Even though we know it won’t.
It’s a mystifying phenomenon. Never having jumped on a bandwagon out of blind personal loyalty, we have no way to understand the followers. And having been burned so many times by blind partisan loyalty, we are utterly closed off against appeals to same and don’t see why others aren’t.
I mean, I can understand not wanting to see Hillary get elected — but I’m telling you, way too much of that is the stuff of GOPe fundraising mailers. It’s sweet schadenfreude that it’s being employed to elect a guy who spent millions on helping Hillary win elections, but y’all are putting way too much faith on the “R” imprimatur somehow making it different.
The only way Donald Trump achieves his goal of destroying the GOP Establishment is if he loses and drags them down as he falls. Are you now going to tell me after all this Sturm und Drang over how horrible they are, you want to throw them a lifeline based on twenty years of scare stories they told you?
I don’t know if amoral or immoral is worse. But morality is is impossible under the conditions that allow for amorality.
If there is no positive Truth that is beyond our experience–‘beyond our experience’ meaning to say a Truth that isn’t determined by our experience, and ‘positive’ meaning to say a Truth with some aspect of definition, with which one can be in or out of alignment, then there is no absolute basis for any code of conduct whatever but only a conventional. I choose to call that nihilism.
Now is nihilism worse than islamism? On it’s face I would say that no, no it is not. Because an experiential/conventional based ethics may be more an alignment with the Truth in a greater number of aspects, than is islamism.
The unique problem of nihilism is structural — because nihilism is intellectual/spiritual death. When there is no Truth there simply is nothing to think about and nothing to pass along to the next generation, indeed no reason to have a next generation.
But in the end, there is no reason to be fatalist. Any Jew grounded in his history can assure from his tradition that the world has seen much worse but that there has never been a time where there was ample representation of the True and the Good and that no matter how powerful the forces of evil were at any point, the real invisible hand has left them in the dust while the True and the Good is as strong as ever.
‘fatalist’ was a lazy adjective what I meant is fatalistically pessimistic.
Unfortunately, the personal has been politicized, and in the name of equality and fairness for all, you will not only be made to tolerate the personal, but to approve of it. For liberty. Because none of us are truly free until all of us are exactly the same.
Big Brother is watching, Praise Ford.
Immorality & Amorality
Functionally, in an antinomial, primacy of the radically subjective
culturevalue system, as we seem to have become, amorality and immorality are indistinguishable. Not only from each other, but from morality as well.The transvaluation of all values, I think Nietzsche called it.
In a society where the government stands ready to coerce and punish you for refusing to participate in another person’s charade (lady, whatever you think you are, you’re just pretending, playing a role —like Hillary Swank— now get the hell out of the men’s locker room), can sex play and orgy porgy be all that far behind?
German Nihilism (p. 43 in the pdf, though p. 353 in the volume).
…and the Soma – don’t forget the Soma, Ernst!
Cool. I have some homework.
Sdferr wrote:
The Leftist Way Of Thinking is distinguished by it’s product – the thought or the belief or the action — not being based on Wisdom gained and the influence of shared Absolute Truths. Said product cannot help but be Perverse, cannot help be Anti-Normal.
The Leftist view of the World has been formed in the sterile laboratories of the minds of those who dreamed it up, far away from Reality. This view, in all of it’s manifestations, is Utopian and, let us never forget, that the word ‘Utopia’ means ‘nowhere’.
The Leftist perception of the world is unreal, fantastical. It ignores Truth in it’s desire to bring about Heaven On Earth because it has to, because Perfection is not possible in the Real World. Leftism in all it’s forms must deny that A is A, that a thing is what it is, otherwise it’s structure collapses.
It is a creature — a mutation — that cannot live outside of the sterile laboratory it was conceived in. Leftism, therefore, is a perversion, a deliberate deviation ‘from what is regarded as normal, good, or proper‘, from what is Real. As with all perversions, Leftism leads one to hold unrealistic expectations and to deny Truth.
Ideas that for millennia were considered and known to be Abnormal are now seen as perfectly Normal. The result is that we all now think like Leftists to varying degrees.
They have seized the premises that once were written by Right Reason and rewritten them to conform with their fun house mirror views. The result is that Leftism has continued it’s slow and steady march down the road to perdition, occasionally slowed-down for pragmatic reasons, but never halted, never losing much ground.
All of us, whether Sons and Daughters of Freedom and Liberty or Know-Nothings or Inner Party Members, have, since our first waking hours outside of the womb, been the subjects of Leftist propaganda, often intense, often subtle. As many have pointed out, the Public School System should rightly be called the ‘Public Indoctrination System’ because said System has been nothing but a propaganda arm of the Left for a century.
Further, the Left has been dominating our Culture for almost just as long. Everywhere we go, both physically and mentally, we are enveloped by Leftist Thinking, with the degrees of suffocation being the only variable. This type saturation cannot but be successful to some degree.
Even those of us who revere The Founders and everything they stood for and gifted us will find ourselves slipping into perverse thinking now and again. No Soul is safe from it — no Soul could be given the deepness and thoroughness of the metastisizing of the Leftist Cancer.
NOTE: I’ve distilled the above down from a much longer draft, so I may have failed to answer all of your questions, SD, coherently enough. —Apologies if that is so.
McG, funny how most people never make new friends based on politics but, we can lose them that way.
Ernst, we are in a Orwell vs. Huxley Celebrity Death Match aren’t we?
I am not afraid of Hillary. If she becomes Bill’s third term in office, I could live with that. She does not deserve to be rewarded with the coronation but, who does?
I do not want Hillary’s choice for the Supreme Court. Donald is a crap shoot but, at least there is a chance he will get it right. If we are lucky Kennedy will sense the need to lean right no matter who is elected.
Leftist in that account names no names, Bob.
In that respect, Odysseus’ says to Polyphemus “My name is Outis”. No-one, no-body. Human beings don’t like to leave it at that, so, Odysseus being one of those he shouts back at Polyphemus as he and his men make their escape: my name is Odysseus. Tell your acquaintances, it was Odysseus who bested me and put out my circling-eye.
Let’s make the leftists more concrete. Let’s let them shout their names.
Hard Thinking and Soft Thinking
Both Clinton and Trump will be constrained by what the Senate is willing to confirm. Arguably, it will be harder to stop a bad Trump appointment than a Hillary one.
But that too is a crap shoot.
I’ve not seen it argued that Trump is in lockstep unison with the Left
He doesn’t need to be in lockstep with them to go along with every damn thing they want. The praise of the MSM is enough to turn any narcissist’s head, as we’ve seen for DECADES, and Trump craves praise just as every other narcissist does.
He believes in NOTHING, and therefore has no basis to oppose ANYTHING, except insomuch as it hurts Trump Enterprises.
The rest of us will have no recourse but to take the swordfish out of the freezer and use it according to standard instructions, because THAT will hurt less than the collapse of the Republic.
It’s completely understandable to withhold the vote from a bad man who will do bad things.
I do believe that the case for him being the same or worse than an aggressive Left wing radical, who is surrounded and has only been surrounded with Left wing radicals, who is supported by Leftwing radicals stands on weaker ground.
I see your logic, I just contend that opposing nothing and dedicating your agenda in the pursuit of Left wing dominance and staffing your administration top to bottom with true believers dedicating their everything in the pursuit of Left wing dominance aren’t identical, and I find the latter more ominous that the former, even if the paths will converge at some value in the future. I am Jew, so I believe in the coming redemption and a messianic era and I don’t believe the solution to this madness will be political. So my interest is in decelerating the decline.
But I didn’t come here to argue with the host and I certainly have no love for this candidate or his fervent supporters. I come here because a lot of interesting stuff gets said on the front page and in the comments. So aside from presenting my general argument in deference to your earned position in the world that is this blog, I will stop commenting on this sad, sad turn of events and comment or not comment on other matters.
Luck be a lady tonight
Speaking of Supreme Court picks…
http://donsurber.blogspot.ca/2016/05/trump-list-of-supreme-court-nominees.html#more
Interesting read on German nihilism, sdferr. Do you think that the American left has a touch of its own form of nihilism (definitely without the militarism) or is it just plain old socialist utopia thinking?
You’re answer, RI Red, may be found in Bobby Darrin singing “Mack the Knife.”
I don’t know the people on Trump’s list but, I like the fact that they are spread throughout the country.
So my interest is in decelerating the decline.
Should I ever decide to commit suicide, I will not jump off my office building. It’s only 4 stories tall: I might just come out maimed. Better find something at least 30 stories tall and be sure.
I am not sure why prolonging the agony is beneficial, given that we’re past the point of no return.
Vote for Trump if you must. I will not.
Ok, Ernst. I’ll go ask him to.
I couldn’t say RI Red (about the current leftists being somehow nihilists, on top of being imbeciles — though the adolescent aspect to which Strauss alludes in that essay seems prominent enough to give one pause). The idea of plain old socialist utopian thinking though, as regards the current run of those advocating anything remotely resembling that name plain old socialist, seems to me well emptied of serious content. The reason being, the socialists own professed standard of judgment (history), has already shown their project a nullity.
A clever chap coined the phrase losing more slowly to describe what you’re talking about naftali.
I’ve been lurking for a long time, so I remember that. I am sympathetic to that argument ,too.
I am as politically pessimistic as Dicentra in that I believe we are past the point of no of return, but I am completely optimistic that it will work out well because man is not running things and the world was created for a divine purpose that ends well for mankind. (And I believe that we are very close to that moment (I am a Chabad chossid) which is all that need be said on that now).
So I will vote to keep breathing as long as possible. I am not trying to convince anyone, in fact, it would alarm me would no one be taking the principled hardline on this, given from where everyone is coming.
Normally, this is where my Phil Hartman as Frank Sinatra would finally agree with where your Chris Rock as Luther Campbell is coming from.
Except the sentences are backwards.
And I’m not sure it’s worth trying to slow the decline anymore, since it’s increasingly apparent that the trying to delay the inevitable is only making the inevitable worse (e.g. 10.6 trillion in debt when Obama took office to 20 trillion in debt when he leaves), and leaving us less equipped to deal with it.
Which is kind of what I had in mind in another thread when I suggested that either the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians or some combination thereof would sort our shit for us if we can’t or won’t do it for ourselves.
Sorry. That was an Allan Bloom Closing of the American Mind reference. I was hoping you’d pick up on that, and save myselg the trouble of having to dig out the exact quotation. Basically, Bloom argues we imported German Nihilism (along with the rest of continental philosophy) without understanding or appreciating what is was we were importing. Consequently the culture took a a dark and nihilistic Berthold Brecht song from Weimar era Germany
——and turned it into a fricken dance tune.
save myself the trouble
p. 151
Losing more slowly has its points if you have young children or, in my case, grandchildren. Americans may have pissed away their trust fund, as it were, but better poor than dead. Besides, maybe another depression and the hardship that goes with it is what’s needed to get the people’s minds right. Spoiled children ( http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/18/seeds-revolt-american-families-owe-trillions-dollars-debt-cant-pay-off/ ) sometimes need a good spanking. Never have so many had so much and and appreciated it so little.
Just a thought.
Ernst and sdferr (and Jeff, of course) and all of the others, that’s why I like it around here. Smart and wise people.
Mr. Trump is mean Mr. Trump is green
i gotta tell you i’m becoming rather fond of him
…but better poor than dead.
Hmmm…that rings a bell……oh, yeah: ‘Better Red Than Dead’.
‘[B]ut at the length truth will out.’
After watching Rickard’s one out, bases loaded first pitch gidp in the bottom of the 6th, and then Tillman coming out again for the 7th carrying the previous 102 struggling pitches with him, then to deliver a first pitch double to the leadoff hitter . . . some days I think Buck just hates all us dumbassed O’s fans. Anyhow, that’s to say, I don’t think smart people root for the O’s, nor wise people for anybody in particular; apart from maybe rooting for everybody in general.
While gathering some articles that Samuel Adams wrote, I can across this from 14 October 1771, written under the name ‘CANDIDUS’ [re-paragraphing mine]:
“Better red than dead”
Actually Belveder, I was going for a “love of money is the root of all evil” thang, in the context of the conversation.
Contempt is not an ingredient of virtue.
On the contrary, contempt is properly a part of pagan virtue, of a virtuous man toward a contemptible thief, for instance. Perhaps Christian charity wouldn’t recognize that as right, but I don’t believe Aristotle would have any trouble with it at all.
But is contempt for the dishonest a part of the virtue of honesty? They seem to be separate things to me.
You’ll have to be more explicit what “the dishonest” is that you’re referring to. Seems to me though that Aristotle’s excellent man would think himself contemptible to stoop to dishonesty, so aiming to do right by (toward) himself (and so to honor his own aim at virtue) he refuses to be dishonest. In that sense the man’s high view of honesty is of a piece with his low view of dishonesty. But we can read the Ethics and see — I could be mistaken about it.
I am completely optimistic that it will work out well because man is not running things and the world was created for a divine purpose that ends well for mankind.
But before that end, we’re going to get hammered by our wicked choices. God permitted the 10 tribes to be carried off by the Assyrians, never to be seen again (as themselves), then let the remaining tribes be conquered by Babylon, and all because they wouldn’t quit worshiping nature gods, who demanded no ethical behavior but boy howdy did they love the blood of children.
The god called Statism is a similarly bloodthirsty god who is happy to slurp up the blood of the unborn or of shahid (splodey-dopes) or of “cleansed” ethnicities.
But demands no ethical behavior of its adherents — in fact, the State doesn’t want its children to hew to internal ethical controls — because a moral people is damned difficult to gull into turning over its liberty to MamaState.
Good and hard, is what. Good and hard.
Contempt is not an ingredient of virtue.
The phrases “generation of vipers” and “whited sepulchers” come to mind.
Matthew 12:34-37
Look up “lying” as in the saying of untruths in the Bible and you’ll get a ton of contempt for lying and dishonesty.
It depends on what you’re contemptuous of, doesn’t it?
I used dishonest just going from your example of the thief.
I can see contempt for the lack of whatever virtue being one possible motivation to practice the virtue in question, but I still don’t see it as part of the virtue itself. Otherwise could one be considered having the virtue of honesty absent the dishonest readily available for comparison?
I’ll paste from an English rendering of Rambam. It is the Jewish (halachic) approach to the onset of the Messianic era. The bottom line relevant to our discussion is that we Jews have no basis on which to stand to do anything other than to further the Truth and the Good. Where the halacha as decided, the halacha has decided but where it is silent, we are afforded the agency to do in accordance with our personal understanding. But there is no room for the Jewish people to ever take an it”s all going down so let’s let it burn approach.
”
Halacha 1
Do not presume that in the Messianic age any facet of the world’s nature will change or there will be innovations in the work of creation. Rather, the world will continue according to its pattern.
Although Isaiah 11:6 states: ‘The wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the young goat,’ these words are a metaphor and a parable. The interpretation of the prophecy is as follows: Israel will dwell securely together with the wicked gentiles who are likened to a wolf and a leopard, as in the prophecy Jeremiah 5:6: ‘A wolf from the wilderness shall spoil them and a leopard will stalk their cities.’ They will all return to the true faith and no longer steal or destroy. Rather, they will eat permitted food at peace with Israel as Isaiah 11:7 states: ‘The lion will eat straw like an ox.’
Similarly, other Messianic prophecies of this nature are metaphors. In the Messianic era, everyone will realize which matters were implied by these metaphors and which allusions they contained.
Halacha 2
Our Sages taught: “There will be no difference between the current age and the Messianic era except the emancipation from our subjugation to the gentile kingdoms.”
The simple interpretation of the prophets’ words appear to imply that the war of Gog and Magog will take place at the beginning of the Messianic age. Before the war of Gog and Magog, a prophet will arise to inspire Israel to be upright and prepare their hearts, as Malachi 3:22 states: ‘Behold, I am sending you Elijah.’
He will not come to declare the pure, impure, or to declare the impure, pure. He will not dispute the lineage of those presumed to be of proper pedigree, nor will he validate the pedigree of those whose lineage is presumed blemished. Rather, he will establish peace within the world as ibid. 3:24 continues: ‘He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.”
There are some Sages who say that Elijah’s coming will precede the coming of the Mashiach. All these and similar matters cannot be definitely known by man until they occur for these matters are undefined in the prophets’ words and even the wise men have no established tradition regarding these matters except their own interpretation of the verses. Therefore, there is a controversy among them regarding these matters.
Regardless of the debate concerning these questions, neither the order of the occurrence of these events or their precise detail are among the fundamental principles of the faith. A person should not occupy himself with the Aggadot and homiletics concerning these and similar matters, nor should he consider them as essentials, for study of them will neither bring fear or love of God.
Similarly, one should not try to determine the appointed time for Mashiach’s coming. Our Sages declared: ‘May the spirits of those who attempt to determine the time of Mashiach’s coming expire!’ Rather, one should await and believe in the general conception of the matter as explained….”
[Me again… if you’ve read this far I owe it to you to mention that ‘wicked gentiles’ is a general description. Here is the Rambam with respect to the individual:
“Everyone who accepts the Seven Laws and is careful to do them, this person is one of the Chasidei Umos HaOlam (very pious of the nations of the world), and he has portion in the world to come. This applies to one who accepts them and will do them because the Kodosh Baruch Hu commanded them in the Torah, and informed us by means of Moshe Rabbenu, that Noahides were previously commanded concerning these laws. But if he does them because of an intellectual decision, then he is not a Ger Toshav, and is not of the Chasidei Umos HaOlam, he is [only] one of their wise men (of the nations of the world).”
LBascom wrote: Contempt is not an ingredient of virtue.
Contempt is a neutral conclusion. It can be held/felt and believed for justified or irrational and petty reasons.
The premise of the Contempt is the key to marking it as either justified or uncalled for [ie: worthy of the former kind of Contempt, actually].
As a man who struggles every moment of every, single day to be Virtuous and worthy of Respect, I seek to base all of my Contempt for the actions of others on the answer to the question: Is the action in question an act of Moral Treason.
To be guilty of an act of Moral Treason one must betray ones obligations to God and to his fellowmen.
I have Contempt for any man who is willing to make himself Servile to any Despot, would-be or actual, in order to be allowed to simply continue to exist. I have Contempt for any man who willingly chains himself in Enslavement for the sake of survival, forsaking his Duty to his Posterity [which is every American, be he or she of his own blood or not, that shall come after him].
Virtue is, as the OED states: Behaviour showing high moral standards. A quality considered morally good or desirable in a person.
I hold to that ‘high moral standard’ which demands of every Man that he guard and fight vigorously, voraciously, and relentlessly to preserve those Natural Rights gifted to Mankind by God.
Therefore, as someone who strives to meet his obligations to God and to his fellowmen, I have no choice but to hold in Contempt anyone failing to meet those Duties and Responsibilities because those demands are Sacred.
To be in my Contempt is not to be subject to my Hate, but, rather, my Pity – after all, though not a believer in The Resurrection, I do try to live as a Christian [specifically, Catholic] Man.
So now Nihilism means more the desire for nothingness. But not nothingness such as it is but rather to destroy the current state of civilization. The motivation is a positive or ‘moral’ motivation rather than a driving interest in nothingness in and of itself. It to destroy the present state of civilization inasmuch as that is precludes or leads to something that precludes a state of civilization that is in alignment with whatever that ‘positive’ or ‘moral’ driving motivation happens to be. The ‘nothingness’ owes to that the destroyers don’t have any defined state of civilization with which to replace the current marked for destruction. To put it simply it is an infantile ‘this sucks I’ll smash it’
Perhaps I would have profited from reading more than the 5 first pages, but what I was really ever after was some sort of general idea as to the meaning of this term that I once found very useful, and delving deeply into mental illness is not where I want to go with my mind.
So now, what word, if any, denotes the belief that there is no absolute truth?
“So now Nihilism means more the desire for nothingness” I phrased that wrongly.
It’s is the desire to destroy the something. because that something is out of alignment with what the destroyers believe the something should reflect. What they want is that. But they have no vessel in which to draw it down.
A friend of mine related to me how he had a discussion with a little girl on a subway. Upscale family.
The girl had never heard of G-d.
Only half in jest, one might say phenomenology is such a word to denote no absolute truth for human beings. What god knows, only god knows.
“Phenomenology is a broad discipline and method of inquiry in philosophy, developed largely by the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events (“phenomena”) as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness.”
Wow, that didn’t/doesn’t end well. But just, wow, how utterly small and dismal. We get but a narrow glimpse into an infinite reality; they are entirely self-contained.
Doesn’t sound like any illness they had in ancient world. I dare say everyone then knew that there was a truth, the outer extreme of which was experienced. Is this is modern creation.
“Is this a modern creation?”
I put the question mark because I assumed its unintended absence. So to answer, I’d say yes, though only in a qualified sense. We can trace one thread to David Hume. See this chapter of his Enquiry on cause and effect.
So now you think pity is a product of contempt?
I think Belvedere, you might heed the warning ” judge not, lest you be judged”, else risk being likened to those “whited sepulchers” dicentra mentioned.
And look up the definition of contempt.
While we’re looking things up, let’s look at the antonyms for contempt too.
Why, is that what Aristotle would do?
Speaking of contempt and the divergence of good faith approached and in this interesting but refreshingly open thread, I’ll share fairly well known episode that I’ve heard from Reb Amromke Kozliner who heard it from his father R’ Mottel. The story concerns Reb Mottel’s father Chazak (Chaim Zalman Kozliner). Chazak never left Russia but Reb Nissan eventually got out and went on to head the Chabad yeshiva in brunoy France.
Chazak and Reb Nissan Neminov (Chabad footsoldiers in the war for Judiasm under the soviet oppression) ‘sat’ together for some time for counter revolutionary activities (like setting up underground yeshivas and distributing matza and the like). After release Chazak was despondent for some time because he ‘ate eaten non-kosher food while sitting.’ Chassidim, knowing Chazak, didn’t believe him and at some point the truth came out: R’ Nissan and Chazak were approached by fellow Jews asking them to give them the rations (“you are big chassidim, but we are simply Jews, and since eating non-kosher is permitted under life-threating situations, which soviet prison certainly was, please give us the food.”). Reb Nissan refused, reasoning that what he would not eat he could not give a fellow Jew, but Chazak gave the food, saying, “eat, eat, but don’t suck the bones!”
Giants, the both of them.
Whatever, Christian virtue has nothing to do with having contempt for others.
Naftali, interesting comments, I’m enjoying them.
Why, is that what Aristotle would do?
In the sense that he’d certainly take into consideration opposites to the concepts he had under examination, sure. At a guess on my part, so would Maimonides. We wouldn’t happen to have some prejudicial contempt for these pre-modern men on any basis of our own times though, would we?
Nope, no contempt for them at all. They just aren’t MY go to guys on all questions.
Ha. They wouldn’t be your go to guys on any questions now, would they? And this is because? Could that have anything to do with your refusal to take them seriously and therefore to read their works?
No, you’re right, they aren’t my go to guys on any questions. Not because I don’t take them seriously though, but because I have different go to guys I study in the limited time I have for such.
It’s kinda the same thing with Budda, a wise fellow I’m sure, and the go to guy for millions. Just not my cup of tea when it comes to studying.
The double negative is nice. Remains open to some possibility, right? Is it difficult to see how though? Nah, not a chance. But that isn’t anything. It’s nothing. Empty. See? Nothing isn’t serious, being merely nothing, i.e., not being at all.
@ Mr. Belvedere:
“To be guilty of an act of Moral Treason one must betray ones obligations to God and to his fellowmen.”
I would add the word “consciously” at an appropriate point…it’s not quite fair to call an act treasonous if it is merely a gross error born of a lack of knowledge. But otherwise, I endorse your entire post, which is well-reasoned and well-articulated.
@ LBascom:
“So now you think pity is a product of contempt?”
The two are clearly related.
To hold someone in contempt is more than simply to disapprove of them, but it does not reach the level of dislike that defines hatred. Contempt instead implies a judgment of inferiority due to a moral lack.
Feelings of pity are aroused when we judge that a person’s bad fate is in some way morally deserved. It is a type of sorrow, true, but it is distinct from an expression of compassion, which is sorrow for the bad fate of the undeserving.
If I judge that a person has failed in a moral duty — perhaps, to use Mr. Belvedere’s phrase, committed Moral Treason — I may well feel contempt for that person. If their moral failing has also brought them to a bad end, I will feel pity as well, as a matter of course.
Sweet bleedin’ jeebus, Jeff. Your inner 3-year-old is still stamping his feet and holding his breath. Utterly fucking amazing.
con·tempt
[k?n?tem(p)t]
NOUN
the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn:
“he showed his contempt for his job by doing it very badly”
synonyms: scorn · disdain · disrespect · scornfulness ·
contemptuousness · derision · disgust · loathing · hatred · abhorrence
You do realize, I hope, that there is more than one English dictionary in the world?
Oh, and to add: even if you disagree with my definition of “contempt,” the argument was whether pity and contempt are related — or, to be more precise, whether “pity is a product of contempt.” Your words.
I’m not even sure that your definition of “contempt” necessarily challenges my definition, because I was more concerned with the origins of the feeling — which your diagnostic definition does nothing to address. But one thing I do know is that you have completely sidestepped the question you raised, which I was actually attempting to answer. So tell us all…why can pity not be a product of contempt? Is there no relation whatsoever between the two?
Thank you for the kind words, DVW. And you’re quite right, the word ‘consciously’ should be in there.
Pity is the product of compassion, not scorn.
When Paul, in Romans 7:24 declares “what a wretched man am I”, was is it due to moral Treason worthy of contempt, or the natural state of man in need of compassion?
Sorry, any virtue you boast of is not of yourself, but by the grace of God. We are saved by Grace, not works, least any man boast.
(Ephesians 2:9)
what word, if any, denotes the belief that there is no absolute truth?
Insanity?
Oxymoron?
Lie?
Yuse guys should switch from contempt to scorn and abhorence, depending on which side the arguement you’re taking.
And because pity can lead to contempt when it comes from, or leads to, a place of pride, Lee would do well to switch to compassion.
Why? Because I won’t just fall in line with what Team R declares?
That’s me acting the adult. I let inner 3-year-olds talk themselves into why they simply must follow the herd.
I think Belvedere, you might heed the warning ” judge not, lest you be judged”, else risk being likened to those “whited sepulchers” dicentra mentioned.
Lee, you should know better than to quote only one verse from a longer passage, especially a verse that is so often used as shorthand for “shut up”:
In other words, if you judge unjustly, you will be judged unjustly; of you judge mercifully, you will be judged mercifully
Notice how the desired result is to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye.
Which you can see clearly, having engaged in sufficient self-examination and repentance that you can help your wayward brother get back on the straight and narrow.
It doesn’t mean “if your brother has a mote in his eye, don’t mention it or you’re a filthy hypocrite.” It means that you can’t help someone out of the ditch if you’re already neck-deep in the muck.
Whatever, Christian virtue has nothing to do with having contempt for others.
With having contempt for YOU, as a Trump supporter, is what you mean.
When Jeff and his commenters aim their firehose of contempt at proggs, moonbats, trolls, and other undesirables, I don’t recall you protesting that it’s “not Christian” to hold those folks in contempt. Not Christian for Jeff Goldstein to be contemptuous, I guess.
You’re just sore because you’re on “the wrong side” of this blog and it hurts.
Nothing to do with general principles; everything to do with getting as good as you’ve given.
I thought, and still kinda do, that no one was voting for trump because he’s a Republican or a conservative. Some people might be telling themselves that, but he at best will be president Schwarzenegger and at worst hell be Clinton 1 part 2 The Buggering. Honestly, the best thing that could come out of this is the final destruction of the Clinton wing of the Democrat party. If she loses to Trump, a Democrat in all but name, there is no way the establishment dems nominate anyone as far left as the idiots running for at least a couple years. I’m not too upset at what people call themselves anymore, they tried to get me to vote for Romney, and they gave us the Ryan budget. There’s no “true conservatives” left, if there ever were any.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not too worried about President Trump. He’ll probably steal less than President H Rodham Clinton, but not act much different.
“Pity is the product of compassion, not scorn.”
Hmm. But I’m not arguing that pity is the product of scorn. Scorn was part of your definition of contempt, but it was not part of mine. Here’s what I said about pity:
“Feelings of pity are aroused when we judge that a person’s bad fate is in some way morally deserved.”
And here is the fuller context of Romans 7, verses 15 through 25. The single quote you pulled from Paul has been bolded. Other telling parts of the passage have been italicized:
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
It sounds very much like Paul is confessing to a lack of fortitude, one of the cardinal virtues. He knows the right, but does not do the right, because his nature is simply too weak. A lack of fortitude would be a…moral failing. As I said. So a feeling of pity is clearly justified.
Now, do I feel contempt for Paul? No, I do not. Not on your definition, and not on mine either. Because his failing is my own, as well. In fact, it is a failure endemic to the human condition. What did I say about contempt? “Contempt…implies a judgment of inferiority due to a moral lack.” But how can I judge Paul to be inferior, since we share the same moral lack? To feel contempt for him, I would also have to have contempt for myself if I were to extend the argument. And it is very hard to make a person feel self-contempt. Self-pity, sure.
Let me put it this way: I said that pity and contempt were related, but they are not always present together. I feel pity for St. Paul, but not contempt — because I share his moral failing, and so cannot judge him inferior. I feel contempt for Donald Trump, but not pity — because his fate has not been a bad one, yet I judge him inferior. I would feel pity and contempt for, say, a wealthy and well-respected lawyer who became a drug addict and lost everything.
Just as, I think (I don’t want to put words in his mouth), Mr. Belvedere feels both pity and contempt for those whom he believes have committed moral treason. The pity comes, again, from seeing people come to a bad end through some fault of their own. The contempt comes from not sharing the sin — a mark of superiority. (These two judgments do crop up again and again, in tandem, which leads to a correlative relation between the two feelings, but not a causative relation.)
YMMV.
@ dicentra:
“Lee, you should know better than to quote only one verse from a longer passage, especially a verse that is so often used as shorthand for “shut up” “
He does seem to have a problem with situating quotes in context.
I would joke at this point that I feel pity for him, but that might be rubbing it in.
You are not putting the wrong words in my mouth at all.
Cripes dicentra, I provided chapter and verse, I wasn’t trying to hide the context. What do I have to do, quote the whole chapter? I DO have respect for your intelligence. Though your sentence bolding Goldstein has me reevaluating.
And yes, holding someone in contempt based on the premise that not voting for Trump is virtuous in the eyes of God is what I have a problem with. Despite Glenn Beck’s pronouncement that Cuz is the anointed one (if so God got pawned) that’s not gospel and it’s the height of arrogance (and sacrilege)to presume to speak for Him on the matter. That self righteous contempt is pride, not virtue.
And saying so is not at all like flaming a troll.
As for being sore, no, like I said my guy won. I’ve always been an independent sort, and this isn’t the first time I’ve been against the consensus of this blog. Your amateur psychoanalysis doesn’t define me, so give it a rest.
Trump’s judge list is just more noise.
First, no evidence his campaign has spoken to any of them, so it’s the equivalent of flipping open a phone book.
Second, according to Trump’s own masterwork, “The Art of the Deal” , this is only his opening position, from which, as with the Wall and Deportation he fully intends to retreat as he negotiates. You will never see any of these things.
Well this is depressing. I also voted that one time for Palin. Then gave up before romney. Then tried to figure out who the heck to vote for this time only to get there too late and end up with two more shitty choices. And Palin endorsed Trump!?
It’s another no-vote election for me i guess. Dh has decided to vote for Trump (and then duck and cover?)
What a mess. It really is a great time for a third party to take the reins.
One vote today demonstrated why it doesn’t matter which of the major party candidates you vote for because Jeff is right.
It’s the ruling class against the rest of us. The GOPe’s role in the ruling class is to give the Democrats cover while they make slaves of us.
And there’s no plausible reason to believe Trump isn’t part of the ruling class.
I think lost my cookies got the gist of it when he blew this chunk:
There ought to be a “Savage” in there. Whether a noun or an adverb depends, I suppose on whom you think he’s more inclined to stick it to.
In the absence of a viable third party alternative, I’m starting to come around to P.J. O’Rourke’s point of view.
I’ve got a useless time serving Senator and a useless time serving Representative up for reelection. Both of them are just waiting for the people in front of them to retire, lose reelection or (especially in the case of my useless time serving Senator) die in office) to move up the ladder. I can’t really support either one of them in good conscience anymore. But I can oppose their Democrat opponents.
You’d think they’d have learned something from Eric Cantor.
If she loses to Trump, a Democrat in all but name, there is no way the establishment dems nominate anyone as far left as the idiots running for at least a couple years
I don’t think anyone can predict anything anymore. Things are so crazy we can’t rule anything out, especially when it comes to what politicians might or might not do in reaction to what happens today.
Cripes dicentra, I provided chapter and verse, I wasn’t trying to hide the context. What do I have to do, quote the whole chapter?
No, you just have to refrain from using “Judge not” the way you did—incorrectly—which is how that verse is most often used.
Providing the whole chapter is unnecessary if you conserve the original meaning of the scripture in your quotation.
If you were enjoining Bob to remove the mote from your eye, for example, and you were concerned that he wasn’t meting out what he would like to be meted out to.
holding someone in contempt based on the premise that not voting for Trump is virtuous in the eyes of God is what I have a problem with. Despite Glenn Beck’s pronouncement that Cruz is the anointed one (if so God got pwned) that’s not gospel and it’s the height of arrogance (and sacrilege) to presume to speak for Him on the matter
I am fairly sure that Glenn Beck has never commented on this blog, nor has he addressed himself to you personally on Twitter or Facebook.
Nor has Jeff or anyone else here invoked deity as endorsing or not endorsing a candidate.
As for God getting pwned, that kinda happens all the time, such as when the Hebrews didn’t want to live under judges anymore, what with the rule of law being so boring, so they begged for a king, and God gave them Saul—against God’s explicit advice—who wasn’t exactly a great guy, even though God gave him every chance.
And then David, also anointed by God, murdered Uriah because of some naked babe on the roof, and then the people didn’t really get the message even after Elijah called down fire from the sky…
So even if God did support Theodore of the Cross, that wouldn’t stop the electorate from voting for someone else.
God has a sick sense of humor that way: He lets us get exactly what we want.
Good and hard.
Further to Di’s point they may decide that they should have nominated the further around the corner and down the block to the Left Bernie Sanders.
They still might.
There’s something for everyone in this WaPo editorial. On the one hand, you can’t say that they’re wrong about Trump and his “contempt for truth and essential political standards,” his ” mockery of these precious political values [of ” adherence to the truth and respect for openness”] because . . . politics matters more than principle.”
On the other hand, the Washington Press corpse [STET!] and the rest of the dying lamestream media can blame the GOPs nihilsm all they want, but at the end of the day, it was their own nihilism, and cynicism, and partisan jobbery, that drove the GOP to it.
By The Way…
I fully expect to be held to the same standards I demand of others and am harder on myself than on anyone else [you’ll have to take my word on that]. I was brought-up Catholic and Catholic Guilt is a powerful thing.
re: the post op-ed.
As thoughts of Ben Rhodes’s foreign policy expertise came to mind, it occurred to me that perhaps this is the true sense of Jeff’s “And we’d be forced to defend it.”
But if new forms of ominous potentialities…http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-The-Koch-Brothers-meet-the-crackpots-454481
The gemorah says that rats stay away from the new born infant but the dead og king of bashan gets eaten right away.
Interesting times.
test
If this were an actual alert, &c, &c.
*was*
Or these and alerts.
Minus an.
Merely suggestions.
The op-ed reads just as well by substituting Clinton for Trump and Wasserman-Schultz for Priebus.
It also works as a suicide not for the mainstream media if you rewrite in the first person plural and pick any number of examples of the media’s partisan attitude towards truth and openess and basic rules of decency.
note
Madam H claims I’m unfit.
Tune in to megacycles on your radio dial.
There, I said it
Period.
Plus, we’ll balance the ticket with Doris Don.
Bitter clingers?
Buy Australia.
Donald J. Sobol was my favorite author at that time of life. Even though some of his plots were a little far-fetched, I dimly recall that he tried to slip in some more complex words, that would prompt me to use context clues, and helped me to develop the skill at a young enough age to benefit me even to this day. You could tell from the subject matter of many of his stories that he liked vintage aviation and cars: the kind of stuff it probably wouldn’t be too hard to interest youngsters in today, or any day.
Interestingly, I found his books though the recommendation of school peers, rather than the teachers, who were trying to turn us on to stuff by Judy Blume, whom I found utterly repulsive.
So…the NRA has endorsed Trump.
#Frauds #Clarity
Glenn Beck done runned out of sharks to jump he’s having to make do with grouper now and the odd tarpon
The NRA has figured out the next president is Trump, or someone that will do all in their power to disarm honest American citizens. #clarity
Never mind voting, or not, if at this point you are still actively fighting against Trump, you are helping pinko commie fags. #frauds
Back has forsaken the sea altogether and is now jumping goldfish.
Dead ones. Right before they get flushed.
i saw him at disneyland once
riding the matterhorn
there goes a man i remember thinking as his bobsled ascended higher and higher
i was deceived
Beck, not back. Stupid autocorrect.
Oh, like Churchill.
Trump is a piece of shit. We don’t need another piece of shit in the White House. I am 100% anti piece of presidential shit.
You know who really sucks, who’s really killing America? You know who’s to blame for this fine mess? Everyone who helped bring us to this choice between these two dirtbags.
Beat me to it, Pablo.
Casting Crowns Praise You In The Storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHdcyue0bSw
Casting Crowns – Set Me Free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2HwtWLokSc
Churchill helped a pinko commie fag become the leader of his country? Don’t think so.
Glenn Beck done runned out of sharks to jump he’s having to make do with grouper now and the odd tarpon
Didn’t stop Tucker Carlson from lying his ass off about the Facebook convocation. Here’s Glenn’s side of the story:
That was from yesterday’s program. Today he was more explicit: some conservatives were engaging in outright shakedown: donate to our org or we’ll pitch a fit.
Beck called them out on that shit, and now they’re accusing him of being a suck-up.
Because that’s who they are. Our glorious side.
Furthermore, one of Beck’s favorite people in the world said on Glenn’s program this morning that Trump is the lesser of two evils and that he will vote for him.
Rabbi Lapin does one of the podcasts on The Blaze. Glenn won’t fire him for supporting Trump.
Go ahead and disparage Beck, you two, but you never liked his act and never will. I should care?
oh man
dicentra it’s facebook
The NRA has figured out the next president is Trump, or someone that will do all in their power to disarm honest American citizens. #clarity
The NRA membership this week refused to oust Grover Norquist—notable Muslim Brotherhood enabler—from its board of directors.
Our glorious side, again.
Clarity, indeed.
dicentra it’s facebook
And?
(facebook = harvardtrash skankwhores what want to codify market and leverage human relationships)
On pinks commie flags:
http://rense.com/general32/americ.htm
Or, before auto correct, pinko commie fags.
Casting Crowns – Until The Whole World Hears
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7qi2KlUffs
>5. Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ’s power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind. Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows “what is in man”. He alone knows it.
So often today man does not know what is within him, in the depths of his mind and heart. So often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt which turns into despair. We ask you therefore, we beg you with humility and trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life. <
https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19781022_inizio-pontificato.html
The NRA is very determined to be a single issue organization. They have even endorsed Harry Reid in the past. I f it wasn’t for the NRA citizens would have lost their right to possess guns long ago. #nevertrumpershavelosttheirminds
‘feets, I was on Facebook for 5 months before I stormed off more than a year ago, never to return. I hate the thing with my whole soul, and not just because the color scheme is Dreadfully Dull and the interface unwieldy and unsupportive of basic HTML formatting.
My point is that Beck gave Facebook the benefit of the doubt with regard to the purpose of that meeting. He’s well aware that it could have been elaborate Kabuki but then why even do that, if there’s no semblance of sincerity?
I don’t actually think that Facebook will ever be fair or even-handed, even if their shiny new AI squelches conservative topics by accident. Or by “accident.”
Carlson was lying like a little bitch, not that anyone here is wearing their surprised face.
I really don’t like people who tell self-serving lies.
In fact, I hold them in the deepest of contempt.
Alison Krauss & Union Station Live Louisville 2002
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKgTra0QldE
i’ll read this again tomorrow
but me i never traveled distances to meet w facebook
i helped out with some ppts is all
bookmarked
LBascom: chiding people for showing contempt, while calling other people “pinko commie fags.”
Just gonna leave that out there.
The NRA has been incredibly lucky to this point that the courts have been balanced, and even slightly weighted toward the pro-gun side of the argument. Their entire strategy has been legislative, but like most single-issue organizations they haven’t considered that for Constitutionally protected rights the primary threat isn’t legislative, but judicial. Therefore supporting a senator who mouths platitudes about guns, and won’t vote against them is meaningless when he will happily support a judge who can tear it all down with a single ruling.
That ends here in this place where the “pragmatists” have placed us: a choice between two progressive democrats, one with a shiny new (R) by his name, marking him as the *correct* candidate to vote for. There is no rational reason to believe that Trump, who cares for nothing beyond himself, will support anyone for the Supreme Court who isn’t for the furtherance of Trump, and Trump doesn’t like guns.
Fortunately (I guess) Trump’s hypothetical high-court nominations don’t really matter, because nominee Trump is losing in pretty much every poll but Rasmussen just like the last two Republicans, and that is before Hillary’s post-nomination bounce comes into play. Angry Bernie voters will fall in line, the same way angry Hillary voters did for Obama after saying much the same about him, in part because Bernie’s supporters are mostly young, and the young don’t like Trump, either.
Churchill helped Stalin stop Hitler. At the same time, he was teamed up with progressive pinko fag FDR. Duh.
Next time, put your qualifications in your declaration. Adding them afterwards doesn’t work.
Rense? Well, as long as we’re citing whackadoodle websites regarding Cleon Skousen. I’ll just leave this right here.
And your evidence for this is that the NRA has previously endorsed Harry Reid?
http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/17/reid-announces-support-for-assault-weapon-ban/
Up is down, hot is cold, Joanie is Chachi.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/280754630047199232
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/27/donald-trump-in-2000-i-support-the-ban-on-assault-weapons/
So, let’s do the math here. Because Trumpkins were ANGRY!!! and thus passed over an actual Constitutional Conservative, nominating a loudmouth NY Progressive for the GOP nomination because he makes their feelz roil, now I’m obligated to vote for him so as to save us from the Commies?
Fuck. That. Next time, try jacking off instead of voting. The payoff will be quicker and more genuine.
Precisely. Certain organizations have to deal with what the people chose to give us. But I don’t.
Fuck Trump. Not a chance, ever.
By the way, McConnell, whom Trump funded in his effort to “crush” the TEA Party (because OUTSIDER! And HE FIGHTS!) just helped the progs and HUD orchestrate a takeover of all local zoning laws. Nationalized neighborhoods. Essentially decided it can determine the market value of private property by importing disparate impacters. Mitch and Co. made sure the Lee amendment was defeated, and passed a toothless Collins amendment for cover.
That’s who these people are. And Trump funded them. In both parties.
You Trumpers own all this. All of it. Enjoy. #clarity
This entire election season has been clarifying. We’ve always known who happyfeet is. But so many others have outed themselves. And frankly I’m thrilled.
I didn’t “chide people” for showing contempt, I argued contempt is not a an ingredient of Christian virtue.
You can have all the contempt for me you want, but you kid yourself if you think your contempt is virtuous.
My contempt for Trumpers is righteous. They’re frauds who’ve exposed themselves as such.
I’m proud of having helped tease them out.
Scrambled eggs aren’t a component of virtue either. So fucking what?
While I’m grateful for the knowledge, I’m simultaneously aghast. The conservative movement is far smaller than I thought it was. I’ve lost all respect for some people I never imagined I’d be saying that about.
Me too. But I at least know who they are now.
i don’t want people to do hillary on america especially in the absence of meaningful political opposition to her
Rs have already proven they can stand up to Mr. Trump way more energetically than they can stand up to that pee-stanky old woman
so yeah i know what side my toast is buttered on (the top)
No, they most certainly did not.
i think they’ve done a very good job Mr. Pablo that one goofball in utah was croaking about Mr. The Donald from his deathbed even
-Pablo wrote: While I’m grateful for the knowledge, I’m simultaneously aghast. The conservative movement is far smaller than I thought it was. I’ve lost all respect for some people I never imagined I’d be saying that about.
It seems that we make up a decent bit less than thirty-percent. If true, we have, perhaps, a harder road ahead then did The Founding Fathers.
However – I’m still looking into this, so please bear with me – I’m getting the impression, in reading the writings of some of The Founders and in legitimate biographies of them, that the long-touted thirty-percent figure may be wrong, too large.
From late 1770 through late 1772, Samuel Adams was reduced in the number of supporters in his fight to defend our rights as Englishmen: John Hancock had abandoned the Cause, John Adams had retired to Braintree, and a good number of others conceded key points to Gov. Hutchinson and the British Government [all in the name of Pragmatism and Moderation]. This period has been labeled by Historians as ‘The Quiet Period’ -and the Servile Silence that resonated throughout Massachusetts was deafening.
In his correspondence with fellow ‘die-hards’ [such as James Warren, James Hawley, and Dr. Joseph Warren], Samuel Adams counseled Patience in waiting for the right issues to come along that could be used to re-rouse enough people to reignite the ‘Flame Of Liberty’ [he was prophetic in his belief that the Royal Government would continue to misunderstand The American Mind and keep on committing misstep after misstep]. That is, of course, what happened in 1773 – and the rest is Glorious History.
So, as Mr. Adams wrote to James Warren on 09 December 1772: ‘Nil desperandum. That is a Motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a Spark of patriotic fire, we will enkindle it.’
-Jeff wrote, in response to Pablo: Me too. But I at least know who they are now.
I’d rather know where we True Constitutionalists stand then not know. I subscribe to the philosophy of Chesty Puller: ‘We’re surrounded. That simplifies the problem’. Indeed.
-Speaking of Contempt: Historians of all stripes agree that Samuel Adams was a Devout Christian, yet, it seems, they’re all horribly mistaken, witness what he wrote to James Warren on 25 March 1771:
What a loser, eh, Bascom?
Good news everyone. Brave alt-right sympathetic #gamergate spokesmen who are fighting the culture war for us, like Professor Nick Flor, want the US Senate to step in and fix Facebook because antitrust or something. Then they won’t censor or filter conservatives. MAGA
And the rock cried out no hiding place.
Really? Is one of these that goofball? Which?
http://fox13now.com/2016/05/12/sen-hatch-endorses-trump/
Well said, Bob, though I’d suggest that S.A.’s “may posterity forget you were our countrymen” line was a tad more pointed.
Agreed.
FINAL MISSION
Dying GOP Senator Apologizes to Muslims for Donald Trump
gack
“The Tea Party wave that ousted Bennett from the Senate in 2010 was one of the first signs of popular discontent ”
Palin lifeydoodle Jesus momos ousted him. Pickles.
Bob Bennett’s deathbed musings about our beloved Death Cult friends are a right shitty example of standing up to Trump.
Needless to say, I have great Contempt for Bob Bennett.
he was a pooper
That’s why I think the Rs in the Senate, the Ds in the Senate and Mr. Trump will work very well together. In fact, a golden age of bipartisanship, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Republicans were led by Bob Michels and Howard Baker —those two knew how to keep their place— surely awaits us if Trump becomes President.
At least until the mid-terms.
@ LBascom:
“You can have all the contempt for me you want, but you kid yourself if you think your contempt is virtuous.”
I never said I had contempt for you. If I did, I would not have tried to discuss a complex moral issue with you. I wouldn’t have wasted my time. I have utter contempt for your stance…but it takes a lot for me to apply that label to a person, especially one I don’t know.
That said, contempt can indeed be virtuous…if it is the proper reaction to someone else’s display of vice. Aristotle never says that, but it’s readily derivable from his moral principles. And you really should crack the Nicomachean Ethics sometime if you like to engage in debates like this.
C’mon, proteins, lighten up and we’ll all mambo jambo.
Ich bin deine oberst el ruletero!
And look, we’re in this fix because we’ve, let’s be frank, we’ve let everybody, the Japanese, for instance, without even, and let me tell you something, and I’ll be honest with you, cultural appropriation alert, and tariffs, believe you me.
DemosthenesVW, thanks for that. I don’t look to Aristotle for moral principles though, I’m a Christian. From there Ill agree with you that contempt is appropriate for a vice, or a stance, but not for a person. Not only is it unbearably arrogant to the one whom contempt is being heaped upon, it is counterproductive if the contemptuous wish to build future coalitions. You might gather a few sheep, but most people stay clear of the contemptuous. This election is the example. The more people that didn’t like Trump scorned the people that supported Trump, the more intreanched the Trump supporters became, and the more leary people in general became of those oozing contempt.
To you all that insist on holding tight to your contempt as a virtue, remember, the humble shall inherit the earth.
By the way, I went to the API Liberty Sommit in Fresno yesterday, and it was pretty awesome. Got to shake the hand of one of my heroes, Captain CLay Higgins. In case you missed it, he came to national attention with this: https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=m1lc7i7BaG8
He’s running for congress now, has this out, I recommend: https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=fCo4xJynCZ8
Levin was there, he confined himself to discussing an article V convention, exhorting the audience to pressure their state legislatures to get it done. I was persuaded this would be the most productive use of the involved citizens time at this point.
contempt as a virtue
You are very much mistaken if you think anyone has suggested that contempt as such is a virtue. But then, that seems to be your way with these sorts of ideas.
My mistake, the a shouldn’t have been there.
That wouldn’t help either.
And taking these things and making it personal seems to be your way sdferr. Self esteem issue of some sort?
Sure it helps. Your claim is that contempt is a ingredient of virtue. At least that’s what I’ve been arguing against. Perhaps your agenda is different altogether…
No, at least I don’t think so on this question. The particular concern here is in a sense, what does a virtuous man exalt (hold in contempt) and what does he disdain? Take the evangelist Paul, there, for an example of a virtuous man: he contemns his own failure to do what he ought when he does what he ought not. He exalts, on the other hand, that which he ought to do always, which is in his case something in the manner of piety and scope of the good.
But I’ve said contempt for sin may be a motivation for one to be virtuous; others may be fear, or love. Contempt for the sinner is a no-no. We are exhorted not to compare ourselves among ouselves (2 Corinthians 10:12). First, it is a display of the decidedly unvirtuous sin of pride, and second it hardens the sinner in his sin rather than reason or support to turn from the sin. In short, not wise.
This by the way is why I quoted “judge not”, saying the same thing differently.
You seem to hold contempt for men who are not Christians. Odd, that.
Wishful thinking
If only this *were* a function of civics knowledge.
“On two occasions I have been asked, — “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
Charley, izza demon in yo box a smaht’n o’ is he a dumb’n?
First thought on the WaPo op-ed naftali linked:
Pity you sonsofbitches didn’t think of that before you decided all literacy tests were inherently racissssst
Second thought on the WaPo op-ed naftali linked:
The primary reason we’re in the mess we’re in today is the elitist political class gumming up the system trying to outsmart the idiot voters who don’t know what’s good for them (else their betters wouldn’t have to keep tinkering with the rules to get the outcome the idiot voters are too stupid to desire, like they would if they were smart like the elitist political class).
“I don’t look to Aristotle for moral principles though, I’m a Christian.”
Then read Aquinas. He based much of his work on Aristotle anyway.
“From there Ill agree with you that contempt is appropriate for a vice, or a stance, but not for a person.”
Hmm…woah, now. I didn’t say THAT. I said it would take a lot to drive me to hold a person in contempt. But there are some people I have contempt for nevertheless. Hillary Clinton is one. Donald Trump is another.
naftali says May 17, 2016 at 4:02 pm
THIS. I’m no Trupmista, and will not vote for either candidate, but that makes more sense than anything else I’ve read in PW’s Civil War. Of course, I’m only halfway through the comments and dumber than a box of rocks ( SORRY ROCKS) BTW? I have an extremely high IQ also, just chose my line of work carefully. 143? Meh. Just never cared really.
Naftali’s argument is a variation of what a lot of folks are saying, and maybe they are right, but I’m still leaning strongly toward the fact that Trump is a New York prog, with all that entails.
Even if my assessment is wrong, it doesn’t make me feel any better because of the actual words coming out of his mouth; they aren’t exactly reassuring. The guy is giving off a strong vibe of “off his rocker”, which carries a whole different (and unsettling) set of calculations. Is literally crazy (and evil) supposed to be better than just evil?
I think the problem of people and political leaders boils down to people seeing a sign that says “We rip off the other guy and pass the savings on to you” and think that they’re “you” when they’re actually “the other guy.”
You know how we’ve oft said that everything Obama says comes with an expiration date? With Trump, he often can’t make it out of the sentence before his promises and declarations go bad. F’rinstance, Trump barfed this up yesterday:
Whatever your position on the issue, The Orange One has you covered. Twice.
>“I don’t want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms. I’m not advocating guns in classrooms. In some cases, and a lot of people have made this case, teachers should be able to have guns, trained teachers should be able to have guns in classrooms.”<
hillarity will explain it with a venn diagram
Hillary will explain it with a Vin [Foster] diagram.
>The key question is not which federal programs should we expand, contract, or reform, but under what social framework—inevitably different from the one in place in 1950—will America thrive? Neither Left nor Right has answered this question. [Yuval]Levin seeks to offer a plausible vision of an American future that sounds different from LBJ-era progressivism or Reaganite smaller government. Paraphrasing James Madison, he argues that “we must seek diffusing, individualist remedies for the diseases most incident to a diffuse, individualist society.” He calls his own vision “subsidiarity,” which he defines as “the entrusting of power and authority to the lowest and least centralized institutions capable of using them well.”
Subsidiarity demands a reinvigorated role for what Levin, following figures like Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhas before him, calls the “mediating institutions” of society—family, work, community, religion—that operate in the middle ground between individuals and their government. These institutions have, he says, been “hollowed out” by the complementary ascent of centralized government and radical individualism. Forcing interaction “face to face” or “living more of our lives at eye level with one another,” as he puts it, “can help build stronger habits of engagement and participation at the local level, where, too often, meeting spaces now stand empty, because what happens there is not allowed to matter.” This is a federalism of sheer necessity: localized problem-solving is uniquely responsive to the challenges of fracture.<
http://www.city-journal.org/html/no-more-nostalgia-14451.html
Is ours an individualist society? I would argue that our present president’s, and the presumptive GOP nominee’s respective appeals would indicate differently.
>Is ours an individualist society? He calls his own vision “subsidiarity,” <
nah just took from the catholic church.
>Is ours an individualist society? <
don't know
>He calls his own vision “subsidiarity,” <
nah he just took it from the catholic church
the “knowledge problem” is funny when you have wiki:
>Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that originated in the Roman Catholic Church. In its most basic formulation, it holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution.<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
https://seekerblog.com/2006/01/31/the-murray-gell-mann-amnesia-effect/
for eddie driscoll @ instapundit
THELONIOUS MONK – ‘Straight No Chaser’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5SsLFCBi70
more american music
Alison Krauss & Union Station Live Louisville
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKgTra0QldE
Japanese bluegrass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL828fJ2MJg
It seems the great Dr. Joseph Warren understood why #Clarity was important in the struggle to Restore Freedom and Ordered Liberty [emphasis in the original]…
Source: Dr. Warren writing as ‘A TRUE PATRIOT’, Boston Gazette, 04 March 1768.
http://www.drjosephwarren.com/2015/12/i-hear-the-voice-of-the-people-in-favor-of-freedom/
Complete historical revisionism. For my part — and I wasn’t alone, because I’ll count Mark Levin here as well as others I saw on Twitter — I was critical of many who out of the box dismissed Trump on anything other than substance. I heard him out. I watched him operate. And beginning with his personal attacks on Fiorina and Carson, it became apparent to me this guy was slime. As the field narrowed, his debate performances became more and more embarrassing — there isn’t a conservative thing about him — so he simply decided to stop debating. And few people cared, because we no longer give a shit what our “leaders” advocate for; we simply chose one and then follow and root, in the case of Trump, blindly and stupidly. So yes, the early unfair attacks on Trump entrenched certain of his supporters; but that simplistic and air-brushed narrative dismisses the contempt those supporters have always held for people who have demonstrated for years a fidelity to the Constitution, to liberty, and to individual autonomy. To Trumpers, not only am I a cucking cuck whose cuckiness cucks cuckdom, but my support of free trade and the Constitution marks me as barely eligible for citizen status, given that I believe Americanism is based on propositional support for an idea and not tribal support for a erstwhile European clan. That I’m educated means I’m an “elitist”; that I’ve worked to defeat the establishment marks me a “failure” who needs to “get out of the way.”
By the time Trump was attacking daily the character of Cruz — or attacking his wife, his father, etc. — I was done with both him and his supporters, particularly those who had previously playacted as conservatives (Hannity, Hoft, Igraham, Coulter, et al) and who didn’t jump to Cruz’s defense. And I’ve been assailed for having done so for months by ignorant assholes who think they can shame me into backing the Orange louse by reminding me of my Jewishness and of their deference to it by, so far at least, allowing me to stay in their country, which Trump is taking back for them. From the “globalists” and the “bankers” and the “rootless cosmopolitans,” mostly. While banishing all but “the good” brown people. To purify America. And return it to its proper white Christian place. Making it Great Again! By turning it into the very pure, white-led Europe that has allowed itself to be eaten alive by multiculturalism and socialism!
Go to hell, fuckers. I snack on Nazis.
There’s a definite tribal vibe or aura coming off of the Trump campaign hiding behind the sloganeering which substitutes for an idea (or ideas). Somebody at the Federalist referred to it as “identity politics for white people.”
Anyways, it seems clear that the Right (what passes for it) has decided to become the Left in order to beat it. That only ends well in the movies.
this guy’s usually worth reading.
thesis is that Trump is the nihilist candidate (see up-thread, the doc provided by sdferr):
lot of bad people on both side of this, anyone can predict where the stormfront and digitaljihad brigades are going where their votes.
Revolutionary American’s had a ton to lose to the Crown. They were fighting for their lives, lives which required liberty. I’m not sure that liberty in the abstract was a sufficient motivation to wage war. We can’t exactly know what they would have done in a vacuum.
What’s going on in the modern world is terrible. People have nothing to live for, they don’t marry; they don’t have children and if they do, they’ve nothing to teach them. Until that’s fixed nobody is going to vote right. They going to go nihilist all the time, because they know not what ails them, but they know their in a bad spot.
It’s not get out the vote, it’s get out the G-d.
WRM is of course well worth reading. Whereas this mess of jargon-laden leftist cant and pseudo-intellectual puffery is only good for laughs. Or perhaps as a real world example of what Orwell was talking about in a class on english rhetoric.
Of course, that assumes they still bother to teach about rhetoric in high school english. Come to think of it, do they still teach english?
Are you telling us all those icky, divisive social issues that nobody cares about so Republicans should just shut up about them because they don’t amtter and only cause them to lose really matter after all, matter so much in fact, that maybe they’re the only thing that matters?
I’m flummoxed to discombobulation I am!
Me?…I’ve been combobulated about this for sometime now.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
-Johnny A.
This is where conservatives will have some problems with the Classical Liberals, who tend to be Agnostics.
Jerusalem and Athens
Frictions are an ongoing problem. Possibly much to the good of all, so long as the positions are faithfully preserved as opposed to unfaithfully corrupted into nothings.
I may not have been as verklempt as I let on.
Friction between social conservatives and classical liberals is unavoidable; probably inevitable too, since (at the risk of overgeneralization here) broadly speaking* social conservatives are more likely* to understand liberty/freedom as a means toward an end whereas classical liberals are I think somewhat more likely in general* to understand liberty/freedom as an end in itself. The latter raises the prospect that, over time, classical liberals evolve into social liberals (using the social qualifier here to cover every strain of leftism presently at work in our politics) because, to borrow from Sowell, there vision of liberty/freedom is unconstrained—
—and thus none of us are truly free until every last boy named sue can pee sitting down (and cry when he wants to!) without judgement.
That way lies madness, as we’re all starting to find out. My guess is that the classical liberals who understand the need for a constrained vision of freedom/liberty become closet social conservatives.
The solution is two-fold: a respect for a pluralistic understandind of the good life on the part of social conservatives, and a Straussian** attitude toward social conservative mores on the part of classical liberals.
*I hope I qualified that enough to not step on anybody’s SACRED HONOR!
**Meaning an outward show of acceptance, even if one privately disagrees, because one recognizes the social utility in “traditional values”—I think I described Strauss’s thought here accurately.
C’mon, Bob. He was obnoxious and disliked. Total loser. Sad!
More than simply an outward show of acceptance, Strauss’ aim or position in interpretation was, I believe, one of making the inward effort to take the faith of the faithful seriously, and to see their faith as the faithful themselves see their faith. Doesn’t mean those of us who do not share the precise faith of the faithful will always succeed at those efforts, but that as earnest seekers of truth that we keep to our aim to take them at their word.
This thread is dangerously coming close to capsizing Fiji.
That is, if the sharks don’t chase it down, first.
Don Surber replies for me.
http://donsurber.blogspot.ca/2016/05/trump-endures-another-trite.html#mor
Even a good man with a large following, and no particular restraints, limitations, or concrete expectations placed upon him can become corrupted and dangerous, and I have seen no evidence that Trump is a good man.
If you wonder why people continue to draw the comparisons, look no further than the fact that pretty much the only time either he, or his followers have voluntarily mentioned the Constitution (that thing which would limit him) is to make a birther argument against Cruz.
As for the white thing, what are you trying to do, recruit for the Klan?
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/23/how-anti-white-rhetoric-is-fueling-white-nationalism/
Mondamay, evidence Trump is a good man can be found in looking at the children he has raised, and the loyalty of his employees. The people that actually know Trump respect and like him.
As for the constitution, I’ve mentioned examples of his federalist leaning, only to be told it’s just an act, a con, or a soundbite he’s been taught. I’m sure this comment will draw the same reaction.
One thing you can count on, Trump will be held to account for what he does by the media, the left, AND the right. I doubt he’ll get away with ant shenanigans.
One thing you can count on, Trump will be held to account for what he does by the media, the left, AND the right. I doubt he’ll get away with any shenanigans.
I thought that:
a) NOT caring what the media says
b) NOT changing course or apologizing just because the MSM howls
c) Getting away with shenanigans, despite the howling
IS WHAT YOU TRUMPERS LIKE ABOUT HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If he’s evading media scorn NOW, why would media scorn have any effect on him once in office?
a) I care what the media says because they still are very powerful in shaping public opinion. I personally (as a “Trumper”) just don’t believe what they say. The people that hate Trump will believe any lie they make up. See: Michelle Fields.
b) Yeah, I like that.
c) what shenanigans has he gotten away with? I’m sure you can name 20, which means he didn’t get away with them, it’s just that that what outrages you amuses me. Now if he gets elected and fails to secure our borders, his support will evaporate and he will be the most despised man in America. I count on him knowing this, and acting accordingly.
By that standard Obama hasn’t either…
Oh I notice you didn’t mention “wives” in your charming description of Trump’s idyllic and virtuous life. Probably for the best.
Apparently his ex wives hold no grudges. Which is saying a lot for ex wives. I’m on my third marriage myself, and get on well with my first (whom I had kids with). The second I haven’t heard from since she took me to the cleaners in 1990. Been with the third for 9 years next week.
This probably makes me an evil demon too…
“By that standard Obama hasn’t either…”
True. Thing is though, ANY Republican president would have faced impeachment 20 times over having done what Obama has. Trump even more so, being from outside the establishment elite club. Is what I’m trying to say…
Ernst wrote:
Agreed, but, in these highly emotional times, diplomatic skills and Patience will mandated.
If that is true, I would say it is a function of their attitude and capacity to forgive, rather than something particularly wholesome about Trump himself.
I wouldn’t consider you to be particularly demonic, unless your own marriages were also attenuated by your own serial adultery.
JOHN
The entire South has walked out of this Congress — George Washington is on the verge of total annihilation — the precious cause for which I’ve labored these several years has come to nothing — and it seems —
(A pause)
— I am obnoxious and disliked —
ABIGAIL
Nonsense, John.
JOHN
— that I am unwilling to face reality —
ABIGAIL
Foolishness, John.
JOHN
— that I am pig-headed —
ABIGAIL
(Smiling)
Ah, well, there you have me, John — I’m afraid you are pig-headed.
JOHN
(HE smiles, a pause)
Has it been any kind of a life for you, Abby? God knows I haven’t given you much.
ABIGAIL
I never asked for more — after all, I am Mrs. John Adams, that’s quite a lot for one life-time.
JOHN
(Bitterly)
Is it, Abby?
ABIGAIL
Think of it, John: To be married to the man who is always first in line to be hanged.
No, Adultery on my part was not the cause of my divorces, but as Dr. Laura would tell you, a divorce is rarely the fault of just one spouse. I take my share of responsibility.
Yeah, the thing is, Trump doesn’t raise his children, that’s what wives are for. He just funds the whole thing, and he’s said so. Which also makes him a shitbag. Kudos to Ivana, tho.
She was writing for Trumpbart, ferchrissakes. You’ve got the disease, dude.
Those who were paying attention recall the uncomfortable question Fields had just asked Trump about Antonin Scalia and his oral argument questioning on affirmative action which Trump had criticized against Scalia, which was why she was arm-dragged aside by the henchman.
SAYS YOU, HILLARY CUCK!!!!!
Really, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?
You’re absolutely right, of course. But that just won’t do in our Brave New Community Based Reality.
Coupla three things:
Good man is such a loaded (and suggestive) meme in these parts, folks might have done better to refer to the presumptive Republican nominee as “our sonofabitch.”
There’s a fair amount of doublethink in the proposition that Trump is the candidate to beat Clinton because the media can’t stop him/ Trump will be constrained in office because the media can stop him.
It has yet to be determined whether or not Republican primary voters did not in fact allow the media to choose their candidate for them —again.
The whole Fields thing kind of pushed me over the “not my circus, not my monkey fucking a football” line. One item of many, mind you.
That is, the months-long hysterical overreaction by many Trump supporters to something that could have been settled in *minutes* by a sane person. And the inability to recognize the overreaction as a problem.
People who attach themselves to some trivial event and turn it into a circus are basically toxic in actual real life and I avoid them like a plague.
Toxic tribalism is kind of a canonical civilizational endgame, and we have more than enough of it already
I think doublethink is out of fashion, quadruplethink is the new thing.
“Everyone who helped bring us to this choice between these two dirtbags.”
I had this conversation with a fatalistic, reluctant Trumpalo just yesterday. My final reply to him was, in effect: we’re stuck with this choice between HELL no and WTF, NO! because of people like you who voted in the first place like this was the only endgame available.
I don’t care if you think Cruz could win against Hillary or not. You voted for the wrong guy. You voted for a guy who you’d be best off fact-checking every time he says the sky is blue, because anything he says can be a lie. You voted for a guy who, in short, has narcissism turned up to 11 vs. Barry’s 8.5.
But he’s got an R behind his name, so that’s ok. He is, in short, OUR bastard.
Provided you can believe him when he tells you that he is. See my sky-is-blue comment, above, for how well that’s going to work out.
One of the many disappointments I have had over the last few weeks is the discovery that Don Surber is a Trumpalo.
It’s a contagious mental illness, is what it is.
If I were king for just a day, I’d force Trumpalos to read Teh Donald’s twitter feed until they snapped out of it. For me, that only took a half-dozen tweets; probably bashed out in 30 seconds of wall-clock time.
Others may be more attached to the illusion of Good Man-ness.
Was anyone besides me completely unsurprised to discover that he did not, in actual point of fact, raise any millions of dollars for veterans?
But he’ll keep the rest of his promises; he promises to do that.
Well, it seems the majority of the American Electorate has decided they want their Democracy ‘good and hard’.
Trouble is: they all have Electoral Dysfunction that’s lasted waaay longer than four hours.
Don Surber’s mental breakdown is one of those grand disappointments that puts one in Despair for a few moments until you remember good men like John Dickinson suffered a similar collapse [as for Mr. Dickinson: he provides an example of Hope because he did recover his senses and serve honorably in the Fight for Independence].
Surber has gone the way of Ken Layne, in short.
Agnostics can be moral and accept as a contract the idea of rights granted by an authority higher than man as a means toward protecting liberty.
Poorly. Maybe try thinking for yourself.
And while you’re at it, look up Trump’s other daughter.
What “anti-white rhetoric” thing are conservatives supposedly responsible for, or responsible for allowing to go unchecked? More bullshit from neo-tribalist identitarian nationalist populist agrarian Trumpers. I have fought identity politics for years — always on the basis of promoting individualism and individual autonomy against tribal narratives enforced by mostly activist groups who seize the master narrative for a particular identity group. This includes fighting silly leftist attempts to demonize “white” people as if they are some homogeneous incarnation drawn up by the Wayans Brothers.
I don’t believe doing so in any way aids the Klan. Whereas promoting white nationalism? That IS the Klan, when it isn’t one of history’s various official governmental iterations.
Must protect the Precious!
So fucking pathetic.
Let me put this as clearly as I know how: Trump is a world-class douche. If you support and defend him, you are a world-class douche apologist. Sad!
Incidentally, and I do this for the Trumpers, we have 12K tariffs already. So “unbridled free trade” is not really a problem.
And yes, I’ve listened to Trump’s speeches. And heard him take both sides of an issue in a single rambling sentence more times than I can remember — the takeaway nearly always being not that he is giving everyone what they want (that’s only a happy coincidence for those who like to see in Trump a blank canvas for hope and change!), but rather that he has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s used to getting away with utter bullshit if he simply festoons it with enough adverbs and superlatives.
Nothing says “I’m a federalist” more than supporting Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton for the presidency!
And of course, Trump is all for the states! Except when the federal government does a terrific job with public lands. Just terrific! All the best people administering all the best lands! Publicly! Believe me!
Incidentally, the role of the federal government, per Trump? Healthcare, education….
Because Federalism! And Constitutionalist! The latter of which Trumpers tell me relies on an old parchment that has failed us and as such, is a flawed document fetishized by failed cuckservatives.
Which sounds somehow familiar to me, as well…
Trumpalo
I like that, but I’m going with Trubes:
as in, “another Trube self-identifies.”
As for Surber v. Kagan, I need to do more than skim them, but to the larger
Is this Fascism that I’m feeling/Is this the Fascism I’ve been searching for/Is this Fascism or am I dreaming/This must be Fascism, ‘Cos it’s really got a hold on me
duet we’ve got going on, one should remember (per J. Goldberg, Liberal Fascism )Mussolini and Cole Porter, or FDRs advisors telling him to be an American Mussolini. Because it’s too easy to skip over the Black Shirts and go straight to the Brown shirts in order to dismiss the suggestion. Clearly, Trump isn’t Hitler.
But then, neither is Hillary Clinton.
Besides, we’ve been living with a creeping strain of a liberal sort of fascism since LBJ or FDR. Sooner or late, it’s bound to metastasize if we don’t cut it out first.
Okay, can’t help myself:
(Trump can handle things! Trump’s smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… Trump’s smart and He wants respect!)
-Jeff wrote: Agnostics can be moral and accept as a contract the idea of rights granted by an authority higher than man as a means toward protecting liberty.
This is certainly true — hence the reference in the DOI to ‘Nature and Nature’s God’, a phrase that diplomatically covered both views. I never meant to imply differently, but Ernst’s expressed concerns [at https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=58498#comment-1276056 24 May at 1:20 PM] are my own.
-I’ve been advocating for ‘Trumpist’, but clearly ‘Trube’ is more spot-on as a descriptor, so I yield [and it sounds more, dare I say it, Contempt-filled].
-When I label Trump a wanna-be Caesar or Fascist, I do think of Mussolini first. Certainly, Trump’s personality reminds one of Il Duce [although, our present fellow is more Il Douche] and, like Benito, Trump sees no problem with Corporations partnering with Government in a Hobbsian Corporatism scheme. No, The Donald is no Hitler — The Final Solution is not his bag.
Hillary, on the other hand, while reminding one of the Italian Fascists reminds one also of the Soviet Politburo type of cur’sed memory. She’s, perhaps, a newly engineered mutation of Totalitarianism.
Yes, Ernst!
Trump as the Fredo of the Corporate World.
As it happens I read as a matter of course neither Don Surber nor Robert Kagan, though I have a vague sense of who each of them are. On the other hand, I do read Michael Ledeen quite often. Ledeen is among other things a historian of politics, and of fascism in particular. He has been writing cautions to those of us who are not scholars of fascism for some time now: here are a couple of those.
“Trump happens to hold a couple of degrees himself including one from Wharton”
Besides the BS in Economics from Penn, what other degree has he earned?
And where are his transcripts?
This made me do my Beavis and Butthead imitation.
“Agnostics can be moral and accept as a contract the idea of rights granted by an authority higher than man as a means toward protecting liberty.”
I am not sure (more honestly, actually, I do not believe) that that has any lasting power. It’s possible to fly a long distance on the fumes of a spiritual/intellectual inheritance whose generating principles have been forgotten. Meaning to say (great Orwell essay up-thread btw) that the definition of the good and the moral may persist beyond the memory of the generating principles that brought about those definitions and generated and invigorated motivation to pursue and adhere to a life under those definitional constraints. So in effect, it’s possible to live in fervent adherence to a good and moral ethical code without any positive intellectual relationship with its true theoretical basis, and it is even possible to create and apply to that code a new theoretical basis, but that leaves open the doubt expressed in this paragraph’s first sentence, namely: that while it’s possible be agnostic and to act ethically, whether it’s possible to generate a moral posterity from current agnosticism remains to be seen and I believe the evidence is mounting against it.
I would think that purpose of the intellect and of learning is cure oneself of agnosticism, and I believe that that is line with what the ancient intellectual world believed.
I honestly wonder the proportion of agnostics to believers, including non-denominational believers in an actual higher power at the time of the founding.
To throw it out there I just found this vignette concerning the Entebbe miracle:
Is it fathomable that sentiment could ultimately derive from anything but a positive belief and/or knowledge in/about a very real higher reality?
(I know it isn’t polite to discuss things anymore, but in line with my belief and understanding that the solution to what ails us in a religious awakening, I’ll do it anyway)
Forgot to link: Entebbe miracle
The “gnosis” root of agnostic (the “a” there is a case of the so-called “alpha privative” prefix, indicating the absence or lack of the thing to follow) indicates something like knowledge or knowing, something different from simple belief about things or trust in things (pistis). Take for example our learnable knowledge concerning the relation of the three angles in the plane geometry of a triangle. We say we know the three angles taken together are equal to the measure of two right angles. How, we might ask, are we to know in the same sense as we know about the measure of the three angles of a triangle the case about the gods Horus or Osiris, should an Egyptian priest assert this truth of his pieties to us, or the gods Zeus and Pluto, should an Attic priest assert something similar about his gods? So of each of the gods as they come. No one suggests that there is no cosmos (quite apart from each of the gods of the believing human beings who tell us of their gods), and certainly not the agnostics. But that cosmos, that much bigger all-encircling whole, I think the agnostics will tell us, is something about which they do not know in the human sense of knowing and must take on trust or faith with little choice in the matter. Choosing to do bad (or good), on the other hand, one human being toward another, is another thing altogether.
Excellent staring point.
Every field of intellectual inquiry has its own standard for what constitutes proof and thus what renders an object known. Geometric deduction as the defining standard for what constitutes being ‘known’ is too high a bar, unless you are willing to exclude from being known things like parental lineage, or modern history, not to mention ancient history, and not to mention any thing that just plain ‘makes sense.’ Also I argue that nobody claiming to be agnostic actually consistently holds to that to standard for know-ability. So we have to come to a reasonable standard given the gamut of things we do in fact except as being known.
On the other hand, basic truths such as a primal cause, or an intentional creation, stand on firmer theoretical than the ancient systems. The arguments have been made, as you know, and it’s up to the human being learn them and to judge them and to decide between them what makes the most sense. The truth will win out. (more on this perhaps in the future) — and this is the main part, we need to start re-thinking about whether the current anything can happen with enough time view of human life actually makes any sense, but that would require a re-validation of our intuition as valid source for knowledge. It take years of academia to teach the person or to change the culture to believe that he/she is no longer a credible judge for what is true or not what makes sense or doesn’t and honestly once that trend changes, we will all get to that better place, because the current prevalent understanding of existing is absurd on its face.
Matters beyond the basics require revelation as a source and while they aren’t knowable to regular men (there are and have always been men who are beyond regular men), the reliability of that revelation is most certainly subject to standard forms of intellectual inquiry. They would be arguments along the lines of the kuzari’s sinai argument. It’s also possible to validate, intellectually, the reliability of the relations of men who are or at least are believed to be from at least that allegedly existing set of men who stand above the state of regular men and partake in part of the reality that lies beyond the material, but that method is hardly available to those coming from a distance.
Good. So before we ever get to the triangle Euclid (and in the following likely simply accepting something which he has already been told by some other human being, we should perhaps note here) begins with a definition of point: “A point is that which has no part”. There is something, but not much, we can say about that. First an assertion: this (point) “is”. By definition, if by nothing else. Then, no divisibility. We can’t cut it up. Third, it’s what? A location. Where? Nowhere. Just a nowhere location.
The point:
Rambam: Yesodei haTorah – Chapter Two
Halacha 1
The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of His being.
Halacha 2
If one would imagine that He does not exist, no other being could possibly exist.
Halacha 3
If one would imagine that none of the entities aside from Him exist, He alone would continue to exist, and the nullification of their [existence] would not nullify His existence, because all the [other] entities require Him and He, blessed be He, does not require them nor any one of them. Therefore, the truth of His [being] does not resemble the truth of any of their [beings].
This is a world in itself but at a low basic level you could say this about the point. If we would all give kids just this, even in the public schools we would be in a better place.
Actually, I had Surber in mind more than Trump.
In a leave
BritneyDonald alone! sort of way, that is.We can ask Euclid, “Euclides does a point have an odor?” “No.” “Does a point have color or a color?” “No.” “Does a point have a shape?” “No.” “Is a point scratchy feeling, or smooth like a kitty’s fur?” “Neither, and has no feels at all.” “Damn Euclides, that’s one abstracted motherfucker, that point. Say, Euclides, y’know how K.C. Douglas was crazy ’bout a Mercury . . . had the Mercury Blues? Are the Egyptians that way about geometry?” “Oh yes, yes they are.”
I’ve managed for 50 years, so I assure you it does. To agnostics, our position is only logical. Everything else must rely on a leap of faith one way or the other. Knowing that we can’t know what is unknowable isn’t a condition that forces us to drift into immorality or unethical behavior.
I knew a man named Jeffjangles and he’d blog for you
With a long rebar clue
And he’d bend it round your head with a meaty thump
If you needed him too….
I am not an agnostic, but it has always struck me as an ethical (not to mention highly rational) stance.
Ethical and rational people usually behave ethically and rationally (insert appropriate pretentious Latin rhetorical phrase here). It’s really the same premise as what one would hope of a moral and principled conservative.
If the Trumpeters are bad (and they are), Establicans like Jonah Goldberg here, pining for Mitt Romney of all people, are worse. Presumably Jonah is still jonesing for Jebbie too.
Say what you will about The Donald, but the Bushyrovie GOP Establishment, as shown by Goldberg’s drivel here, is still butt-hurt. Remember your Venn Diagrams–just because The Donald is definitely NOT a principled “conservative” or “Classical Liberal” *doesn’t* mean the GOPee likes him.
And *again*, just to be clear, stating that I understand why Mr. Trump had such appeal, why so many well-meaning if misled people support him, and why his preliminary election campaign took off like a rocket, *does not* mean that I think Mr. Trump is Our Savior. far from it.
Much more thoughtful Republican people than Mr. Trump raised alarms about the immigration situation, and goo-goo for globalism in general, as early as 20 odd years ago, and they ranged from fair-weather RINOs like California’s Pete Wilson to the Colorado’s mercurial Tom Tancredo to Alabama’s sharp Jeff Sessions. They were all told by the GOP elites like Karl Rove in politics, and the Bush dynasty, to shut up, eat the “comprehensive” excrement sandwich, and like it.
“We’re going to tell the bigots to shut up,” the Bushyrovie knave we call Pansy Grahamnesty promised the La Raza Treason Lobby, the bigots being us, who simply want an immigration policy that is good for the USA.
Along came a loudmouth they just couldn’t shut up…..
The GOPee did this to themselves, and we are stuck on the political rollercoaster without barf bags. Hold your hands up and enjoy the ride. Wheeeeee!
By the way just in passing, today is the 25th of May, the day a quorum was obtained and the work began in concerted earnest. It was a Friday then. Geo. Washington was nominated and unanimously elected to sit in the chair at the front before all, so as to preside over the business. Other offices were filled, and in the last work of that day a committee was formed to make standing rules and orders for the body. Then, we can reckon, it was off to the pub with the lot of them.
Hey everyone who doesn’t like it here, but can’t leave because they have no place to go, I bring great news! Ace has molted from his dowdy #nevertrump form into a beautiful “OMG Hillary!” butterfly right on schedule.
Swing oh pendulum! Swing! Call your inevitable obedience to decaying periodic momentum “rational” !
And if you don’t molt with him, sayeth Le Ace, (aka Quoheleth 2.0, now with Bluetooth) then you’ve gone full Glenn Beck! As opposed to Full Ann Coulter.
Have I got shit on my shoes, or shoes on my shit?
Yes.
Also Marvel Comics wants me to spend $4 on a comic about how Captain America is a deep cover Hydra agent. They sent me an e-mail about it and everything.
Next I want a comic about Superman beating his wife. or Hawkman date raping a furry at a sci-fi convention by failing to prove he had obtained consent. Or maybe Spider-Man can paralyze someone by drunk driving.
We have to reach the kidz with these important truths somehow, ya dig? Eat the rich!
Carlson was lying like a little bitch
Really, dicentra? I read his piece, “Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar–And Right” zand he just hit the nail on the head.
The GOPee and even still IS stuck in its Wall Street Journal echo chamber, with this belief “that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy.”
Again, Ted Cruz would have been so much better, and I wonder if there were not crappy “open primaries” in so many states, where non-GOP yahoos could come vote for Trump, might Ted Cruz be the nominee?
But the GOPee has no one but itself to blame.
I think naftali is talking about staying power over the lifecourse of generations.
A good (or not) analogy would be to immunizations. A certain amount of free-riding is tolerable, too much free riding, and you lose herd immunity.
They do until the boundary stones come to be seen as irrational because nobody can remember why those stones are there. So they move them.
And what was once unethical becomes ethical.
Reason alone can’t save you, as Robespierre might have told you before he was eaten by his own revolutionary children.
If he hadn’t been shot in the jaw, that is.
Jonah Goldberg is an institutional conservative, not an establishment Republican.
But referring to Romney as an “authentic conservative” was a true bitchsaywhat? moment.
And? All one must do is consent to abide the foundational provision of our country — that certain rights are unalienable and cannot be altered by man, and that government exists to protect those rights — and that’s all it takes, generation after generation.
By incorporating the idea of natural rights into our system as a given, the Founders and Framers obviated a necessary fidelity to any faith-based belief system and turned citizenship into a contract between individuals and natural law.
Sdferr wrote: …Then, we can reckon, it was off to the pub with the lot of them.
Where, of course, a good portion of the business of The Convention was accomplished throughout it’s duration.
Madeira and pint of your best ale, kind sir.
Ace has molted from his dowdy #nevertrump form into a beautiful “OMG Hillary!” butterfly right on schedule.
My favorite line:
He excels at articulating a principled stance from a purely pragmatic PoV—and then later backpedaling when the pragmatics change.
CRIPES, how does he live with himself?
Really, dicentra? I read his piece, “Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar–And Right” and he just hit the nail on the head.
Carlson was lying about Glenn Beck’s behavior at the Facebook meeting. That article you linked predates the meeting by more than 4 months.
I hope this puts the final nail in the coffin of the Ace Admiration Society beastie.
Turns out that identifying Ace’s difficulty with standing on principle is moral posturing.
If he decided to be #NeverTrump on the basis that he thought he’d fail, why not say so RIGHT THEN?
I really don’t get that mode of being. It would have cost him exactly nothing to say “I’m joining the #NeverTrump movement provided he doesn’t win the nom and start beating Hillary.”
I will still read ace, but I know his politics are and will remain mutable, no matter how many times he apparently takes a principled stand.
He doesn’t seem to understand that principles aren’t just a rhetorical device.
He’s a lawyer, innee?
Figures.
A lawyer with feeelingz!
For Sdferr….
Another version of Madison’s Notes by day in HTML:
http://consource.org/library/?type=document&topics=&collections=james-madisons-notes-of-the-constitutional-convention&deep=&sort=date
Ace has molted from his dowdy #nevertrump form into a beautiful “OMG Hillary!” butterfly right on schedule.
“On Schedule”???
Ace and most of his readers, no matter how much they don’t like the GOP primary nominees, always hold their noses and vote for them in the general election anyway.
Mr. Jeff Mr. Jeff did you know Jackie Earle Haley’s in Preacher?
I’m so excitered!
And now it’s blogwars again.
Tribalism, all the way down.
It won’t be some technological terror that kills us off, it will be tribal warfare – because that’s what kills off *every* civilization.
Re: Generational Liberty
Maybe other people were closer to their grandparents and such than I ever had a chance to be, but I don’t think humans work that way. Children are influenced by their parents and family, but also by myriad other factors. Acorns can have amazing powers of locomotion from the old tree.
I have a hard time seeing parental influence over a single generation sometimes, even when the parents are principled. I’ve also seen, albeit rarely, a good person spring from a fairly lousy family.
It would be wonderful if conservatives were passing on a generational love and respect for liberty, but I’m thinking that’s kind of a good ‘ol days that never existed.
Given many of Bob’s recent posts (thanks for those, by the way), being strong, principled, and good has always been uncommon, and counter culture.
And we seem to have a problem getting people to consent and abide by those provisions after 226 years.
Not trying to pick a fight or question anyone’s ethics and morality, just trying to see where a particular idea might go.
Should have quoted “good ol’ days” for grammar…
I think there’s more to generational liberty than parents teaching their children well.
Politics is downstream of culture after all. Or so they keep telling me?
I do too, but my point was not so much about “teaching well” as it was “having significant influence at all”, at least generationally.
Culture is a big part of this, but conservative culture isn’t novel enough to stand up to the flashier and seedier offerings available:”Your own sweat” vs “other people ‘s money” kind of thing. Based on Bob’s links, I’m not even sure how much original buy-in there was to all this liberty business. Even if there was, how can you instill love of liberty, no matter your faith, in someone who knows nothing else but liberty, and takes it totally for granted?
I may not be fully getting the rhetorical stage you’re settling here. It just seems unlikely that agnostics or classical liberals or whomever, broke the country, particularly in view of the abysmal failures of believers (of which I include myself) over the same time span .
Honestly, I’m not sure what kind of stage I’m setting either.
I think I’m starting from Adams’s moral and religious people and then riffing off of naftali, who was responding to Bob’s musings and mine about the tensions inherent to a Social Conservative — Classical Liberal alliance.
My suspicion —if it can be called that because it’s more like a notion of interest than a suspicion— is that if we drill down far enough, we’ll discover that the Enlightenment ideals that our Country if founded upon are themselves either foundationless or built on erroneous assumptions.
Or maybe it’s just the the wheel of time turns and civilizations rise only to fall again.
I am not sure (more honestly, actually, I do not believe) that that has any lasting power.
Dunno about your theology but mine holds that people are born with a God-given conscience that causes them discomfort when doing Bad Things.
Provided, of course, that it hasn’t been stifled by (a) brain damage, aka Phineas Gauge; (b) repeated ignoring of pangs, thereby inuring one to pangs; (c) soul-killing abuse either in childhood or Extreme Duress, such as in a war zone.
No doubt ethical agnostics and atheists don’t like how it feels to be a liar or a cheat, and so they decide to Atone and Not Repeat The Mistake.
Otherwise, there would be no ethical leaders such as Confucius or the Buddha, who operate outside the Abrahamic tradition. (Nature gods don’t demand ethical behavior; only the God of Abraham did that.)
Culture is a big part of this, but conservative culture isn’t novel enough to stand up to the flashier and seedier offerings available
Norman Lear’s sitcoms changed the culture faster and more thoroughly than anything since the Depression.
When the beautiful, hip characters insist that there’s really no such thing as objective morality — that if it feels good, do it — that all the self-restraint that our parents and grandparents insisted upon is actually immoral or unhealthy, gooood luck persuading a prosperous, spoiled nation that self-restraint is still necessary or even desirable.
Just as astronauts inevitably lose bone and muscle mass in null gravity, peace and prosperity permits a society to indulge all its whims, thereby losing the ability to discern cause and effect.
When one guy sells the recipe for ice cream and the other guy is giving away ice cream for free, the first guy isn’t going to have many takers.
The conservative message doesn’t sell because it’s not the path of least resistance — you can sex it up all you want, but the free ice cream will always do better than a recipe you have to pay for.
Sorry but there it is: only a return to earth’s gravity will give us the means to toughen back up.
Or to become cynical and corrupt like post-Soviet Russia.
Societies don’t recover after a spell of tyranny. Just ask the French.
We have common ground:
“people are born with a God-given conscience that causes them discomfort when doing Bad Things.
Provided, of course, that it hasn’t been stifled by […] repeated ignoring of pangs, thereby inuring one to pangs[…]”
We need to educate children towards the pursuit of the good and the negation of the bad. We ultimately need come on to the ‘why’ that counters the childish ‘but I don’t feel bad, or I don’t care.’
But this is life of the spirit in only the lowest sense, namely, life of the flesh, duly constrained by the indirect impact of conscience.
The next step up the ladder is into that consciousness, itself, followed by stepping towards/into the x of which conscience itself is an impact. Towards a life of that x is what we need to give our children — and posterity, for humanity.
“Dunno about your […]”
For the elements of the post that were not directly addressed above, it’s best at this point simply to concede that “If one tells you there is wisdom among the nations, believe it. If one tells you there is Torah among the nations, don’t believe it.” Midrash [Lamentations Rabbah 2.13]
And to reiterate what was mentioned earlier:
A good deal of whom describe themselves as “evangelicals”.
Hardly. We never really left.
Those with principles hold to them; those without take in the latest disaffected traffic. Lee and Serr8d have a new place to go play — secure in the knowledge that everyone is ready to declare principled people “puristy TrueCons” yet again in order to dismiss them as impractical.
— Even as they prepare to actively vote for Donald Fucking Trump without recognizing the irony.
Ace Is The Place For The Helpful Pragmatic Folks!
I’m not singling Ace out. It’s just that both palaeo and di mentioned his new old position.
I can’t be surprised. This ain’t my first rodeo.
Soylent Green is People*
I am.
Awaiting Sen. Cruz’s coming or eventual settled position on Trump as party nominee is a more consequential concern it seems to me, though that event will probably be a number of weeks yet to pass — and, he’s a politician (perhaps a statesman, though that characteristic is yet to be more firmly established and thus confirmed in deeds), carrying a politician’s general burden. A fizz-blogger’s sudden shifts not so much, so long as any expectation of recurring transient effervescences would remain what they have been already for years now.
We, the un-partied, meanwhile, are still in an un-partied condition, despite our concurrence as to ends and means.
Aside: thanks for that link Bob. There’s a finer aesthetic to the page presentation there.
OMFG, He’s reached 1,238!
*thwacka-thwacka-thwacka-bu-bu-burble*
I’ve access to our Presumptive President!
Lee Smith: Ploughshares and the Iran Deal Echo Chamber
Washington Free Beacon: Obama Doesn’t Want to Answer Questions About Clinton’s Trustworthiness
Well of course not, since each of Clinton’s treasonable actions while in Obama’s employ lead directly back to his own, of necessity. He knows this. So questions must be silenced.
Let me redo my response to Jeff’s latest comment, so that it doesn’t seem that I’m naive about Ace Of Blades…
Jeff wrote: I’m not singling Ace out….
Ol’Bobby Bel: ‘I am.’
My problem with Ace is that he affects principled stands — knowing at the time that his motives are pragmatic — then when the circumstances change and he goes Full Pragmatic, he gets pissy when people point out that he’s Not Principled, and then attributes people’s objections to Moral Vanity.
While growing up Mormon in Utah, when I wanted to do something Kinda Naughty and my little friends balked, it made me mad, too. I saw them as prissy and fanatical.
And if someone decided to be a more naughty than *I* wanted, I saw them as unprincipled and disobedient.
George Carlin observed that while you’re driving down the highway, everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and everyone who drives slower is a moron.
Funny how that works.
Here’s the thing:
Because I live in deep-red Utah, my one vote will not affect the general election. Even if I vote for Hillary, Trump will still take all of Utah’s electoral delegates.
It means that standing on principle — for me, at this time — cannot and will not cost me a thing. It also means that if I don’t vote for Trump I’m not giving the election to Hillary. I will write in Cruz, but that won’t give Hillary anything because the logistics prevent it.
I fully realize that I have the luxury of being principled: I cannot affect the outcome, and so doing the right thing isn’t evidence of my Exquisite Integrity.
I cannot (and do not) pat myself on the back for Not Voting For Trump Come Hell Or High Water. (I didn’t adopt #NeverTrump because I don’t want to have to go back on “never” when the stakes are this high.)
Were I living in a purple state, and I knew that writing in Cruz could very well deprive Trump of enough votes to get the delegates (and they go to Hillary), then I could say “I am willing to accept that my actions will result in Hillary winning the election. I prefer that outcome to Trump winning because X, Y, and Z.”
See, THEN I could boast about being principled, and it would be A VALID BOAST, wouldn’t it? Because I would be accepting the inevitable — and painful — consequences of my actions.
If that’s moral vanity?
Ace pointed out that most people are vain rather than principled. He’s probably right. But then he sounds a lot like Alinsky, who stated that all claims to morality are poses that people affect to acquire power. Not “only a few people actually live up to their standards,” but “nobody really believes that stuff; it’s just a tactic.”
Which is one of the tells that Alinsky was a straight-up sociopath: he could not conceive of people acting on principle because it was Just That Alien to him.
So, Ace? The fact that you treat principled stands as a means rather than an end is awfully TELLING. I’m not saying you’re a sociopath. I’m just saying that you’ve acquired the worst characteristics of your profession, and it’s not moral vanity on my part to say so.
It’s just annoying as hell.
Is not the oath of office precisely that which has come to be what (the “stuff”) nobody really believes? And of course the corollary, that everyone suffering the consequences of that non-belief (which category is big enough to include everyone) will justifiably squeal when the pain hits their limbs?
“NeverTrump 2016” is definitely me. However, if he manages to be a conservative President I will consider voting for him in 2020.
However, he’s going to have to do a LOT to impress me. Way past “Scrooge discovering the True Meaning of Christmas” level of impressing. …and I’m talking about deeds not campaign promises, which is why I’m absolutely not voting for him this election.
(Hm. Can we arrange for three ghosts of Constitutional Past, Present and Future to visit whomever wins the election? Christmas Eve is traditional, but anytime before the inauguration will do.)
Though with his blather about making the GOP into a “Worker’s Party” I doubt he’ll impress me. More like he’ll depress me even further.
I don ‘t consider myself “never Trump” because there’s no way I’d support Sanders or Clinton.
But I’m not going to vote for him either.
That’s becuse idiots like Rhodes think the Iranians hate the same people that Rhodes hates. He can’t imagine that the Iranians hate us for their own reasons, rather than because of anything Rhodes thinks the Americans he hates have done to Iran.
Kind of like the pointy headed scientist in the original The Thing From Another Planet who thinks he’s so smart that anybody or anything as smart or smarter than he is would think differently than he does. That’s a more dangerous form of vanity than the neo-con (so-called) notion that being the world’s policeman is a dirty job that somebody —i.e. us— has got to do.
pointed headed scientist who’s so smart he can’t imagine anybody or anything smarter would think differntly than does he.
damn you grammar
Didn’t recollect a movie by that name so looked it up. Turns out to be — probably at least — known to me simply as The Thing (“From Another World”, as IMDB has it), the one with James Arness as the monstrous cabbage [which came from the short story “Who Goes There?”]. There was, at least as dimly as I recall it, something of an absent-minded innocence to that scientist character, foolish yes, though he aimed at getting to some truth of things; a piece of those times in the image, again, as it seems to me. Rhodes is nothing like innocent in that sense.
Ernst Schreiber says May 26, 2016 at 3:01 pm
If that isn’t an acceptable contraction for “different fern” it OUGHT to be.
No argument from me. I would say that’s because we’re playing willy-nilly with those boundary stones G.K. Chesterton talked about. Especially the little ones intermediate between ourselves and the big one’s marking the boundary of the Republic.
To the detriment of both the People and the Government of, by and for.
You need to see the movie and remember the context (1948). He wasn’t absent-minded, he was pointy-headed (and had the Van Dyke beard and turtle neck to prove it!) And he was so sure he was right about the peaceful intentions of the blood-sucking cabbage from another world that he damn near got everybody killed.
The day was saved by the ordinary common sense of the everyman army aircorps personnel who were too dumb to believe something only an intellectual (like Dr. Pointy-head) could have talked himself into.
It’s a Howard Hawks film. Hawks had no use for liberals.
My memory is poor and it has been a very long time since I’ve seen that production. Still, I think that Rhodes’ aim (following along with Obama) is to punish the wrong-doing Americans and their long-time allies, whereas that scientist? Was his aim to punish his fellow arctic sojourners?
dicentra says May 26, 2016 at 1:06 pm
Well… state polls for Utah, and most other red bastions that I have seen were decidedly less red than usual. Same for TN, the polls are only 5-9 points up for Trump. That’s why I still don’t expect a President Trump. Federally speaking, I have no reason to show up at all. The senators aren’t up, and they both suck anyway, and my representative will have the job as long as he wants it, just like his father did.
I would say that Professor Pointy-head’s objective was to surrender to a superior intelligence* so that we might benefit from its superiority, and so improve the species.
Probably there’s a cold war metaphor for fellow-travellers in there.
But then, I’m an unreconstructed cold-warrior of the Reaganite persuasion.
So maybe it’s just me.
*Superior because it was vegetable and thus not subject to all those annoying animal passions that keep a mastermind in check.
*thwacka-thwacka-thwacka-bu-bu-burble*
mega-dittos!
Ace uses principle as the opening position in a negotiation. Hey, you don’t like his principles, fuhgetaboutit, he’s got others.
In fact, he’s not unlike Donald Trump that way.
Excellent observation, Ernst – Bravo!
It clears-up a lot of things about Ace.
By the way, Ernst, Sdferr, and others, this looks interesting:
https://home.isi.org/orestes-brownson-and-unwritten-foundation-american-constitutionalism
I’m hoping to read it tomorrow.
“Je méprise Locke, too!” – Orestes Brownson
COMMENT!
600!
>“NeverTrump 2016” is definitely me<
"virtue signalling " doesn't do a gd thing in this political environment. trump is the "stop gap" measure taken so that in the 2018 state elections are solely about an article v convention of states. it would be nice of the so called conservatives who support #nevertrump to give us their game plan for reclaiming constitutional governance.
Neither does voting for the second democrat (or first) in a two-democrat-race.
Oh, how cute: You think I’m “virtue signaling”? Isn’t that precious.
I don’t care if people see that as virtuous, or, as some of the more rabid Trumpkins do: screech “TRAITOR!” though lamer than that guy from the recent Star Wars movie.
I’m not voting for a Democrat to keep a Democrat out of the White House.
Keep telling yourself that, and pretend you’re not like the GOPe who kept telling us we had to do X or all was lost. I’m done with that.
I don’t have to provide a solution (and gosh, isn’t that just like what the progs demand on things like healthcare and whatever other program they want to impose on us all) I’m saying I’m not going to kick the football again, Lucy.
@mondamay: Don’t bother. They won’t listen and they’ll make the most lame of excuses if Trump loses, or worse: If Trump wins and he makes the sudden but inevitable betrayal the people he sneered at saw coming. But hey, it’s a “stop gap” right?
Mondamay, let’s compare and contrast.
Trump, wall :: Hillary, amnesty in first 100 days
Trump, released SC picks that are constitutionalists :: Hillary, OMG!
Trump, repeal and replace Obomacare :: Hillary, move to single payer
Trump, endorsed by NRA :: Hillary, will come after gun owners HARD
Trump, rebuild the military :: Hillary, military as social experiment Petri dish
Trump, pro business :: Hillary, pro regulatory
Trump, more discretion to the states :: Hillary, consolidate Obama’s federal power grabs
Trump, something different to shake up the system :: Hillary, eight more years of the same establishment Kabuki theatre
Let’s not pretend Trump=Hillary, that’s foolishness.
Trump to dreamers: You’ve convinced me!
Not SC picks. People who are like the people he might pick, and the list is not comprehensive. Also, Trump never saw the list until it was announced. When he can’t pronounce the names…
Trump also for single payer.
This must be their first endorsement of someone who’s on the record supporting an assault weapon ban.
—Brokeback Bascom – ‘I wish I knew how to quit you, Jeff!’
—You might want to take a gander at this:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump/
This one might have some merit.
The guy who is going to make companies do business where and how he wants them to? No, he’s pro-Trump, not pro business, unless it’s his business.
Where’d you get that idea? Trump is a megalomaniac. You can bet your ass that he’ll be the decider whenever he can.
Ebola will be such a refreshing change from stupid old dysentery! (Don’t nobody mention that Ebola has been funding dysentery for decades, k?)
This is also a strong argument. Trump is obviously not Hillary. Trump is Orange Obama.
Trump positions: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions
…and Trump will give us all our own ponies!
He certainly has to have a lot of them!
I would pay good money to see Trump questioned on that full slate of issues. I’d put money that he’d oppose 70% of them, ad hoc.
BUT I SAW IT ON HIS WEBSITE YOU JEW CUCK!!!!
Hillary isn’t Obama, either. Trump isn’t Hitler, and the tooth fairy isn’t Santa Claus.
I’m still not voting for any of ’em!
At this stage, I am beginning to think that Bernie is our best bet.
Because few will pay him any nevermind. Although rudderless, we’ll at least commit few if any sins of commission.
I am, actually, only half joking.
I almost think Hillary would be worse than Obama, but such a concept strains my imagination. I know she would be no better.
I don’t think Bernie would be any worse than Hillary. I doubt the DNC will let him win though.
If the DNC SuperDs are smart they will.
Other than “the wall” (which is impossible, negotiable, and laughable) what position has this guy held even for the primary season? I’ve had bowel movements with more firmly held “positions” than Trump.
He doesn’t deserve to have anyone defend him. He is a known quantity whose toxic nature is being willfully excused and ignored for some imagined “greater good” that will never materialize, even if he is elected by some miracle. He has no respect for anything: history, the Constitution, the founders, or the office he is running for. It’s all just a set for his next obnoxious reality show.
Not “greater good,”mondamay, “lesser evil.”
All the smart, sophisticated conservatives are wearing it.
Instead of peestank, it smells like urinal cakes.
Eau d’Trube: like a warm summer rain down your back
I’m going to write in Calvin Coolidge as usual.
OT: With appos to Caps fans, once again.
“Here come the Pens like a bat out of hell…”
Woot!
I understand calculations and even pragmatism at this, “the lesser evil”, stage, even if I don’t agree with them.
What I can’t understand is the people, pundits, and politicians who hopped Trump’s crazy train between the towns of Rudely Ignorant, Iowa and Unavoidable Catastrophe, Indiana. The people who seized an all-important chance to show the world that they were ANGRY! rather than waste their vote on a big field that included several candidates who were a marked improvement over the last several offerings. Don’t vote for what you say you want, vote for a symbolic statement of disapproval of the status quo (and a lying pig-in-a-poke), because “greater good”.
Trump positions: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions
I like it, LBascom, but is it real?
He is a known quantity whose toxic nature is being willfully excused and ignored for some imagined “greater good” that will never materialize
Wait mondamay—isn’t it the exact opposite, namely, Trump is an *unknown* quantity who may not mean what he says, and appears to be a Johnny-come-lately to his issues, and thus cannot be trusted?
After all, even the leftist haters of Ted Cruz know that Ted means what he says and says what he means.
Other than “the wall” (which is impossible, negotiable, and laughable)
You know, for those of us who have lived down in places like Yuma and El Centro, reading that a good border barrier is “impossible” and “laughable”, just reads like another editorial from the Wall Street Journal telling us to eat our amnesty excrement sandwich and like it. >:-(
Taking Trump’s word for what he’ll do if elected is a job for relentlessly cockeyed optimists.
That’s just not me, I guess.
reading that a good border barrier is “impossible” and “laughable”, just reads like another editorial from the Wall Street Journal telling us to eat our amnesty excrement sandwich and like it. >:-(
“Impossible” and “laughable” come from familiarity with our political class, which has mandated barriers six ways ’til Sunday but nothing gets done.
Too many people afraid of being called rayciss.
Trump’s a known unknown, a real phony. i.e. we know we can’t know that what he says he means, or that he will do what he says. So in that sense he’s a known quantity.
Now Ben Carson? That would have been an unknown quantity.
Interesting to see what people think Trump’s words mean.
I’ve been in a twitterchat with a New Yorker who thinks that Trump is the very embodiment of AMERICA, F*CK YEAH! and that he’ll spend all his time in office delivering Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks to every kind of Beltway nonsense that has ever existed.
On the other hand, Glenn Beck and Brad Thor hear a Mussolini in the making because he’s an obvious bully (and narcissist) who thinks nothing of popping off “punch ’em back” and “arrest the liars” and other alarming, anti-Constitutional stuff.
Both sides are putting stock in only some of Trump’s words and utterly ignoring the others.
Isn’t it possible that all of Trump’s speech is vapid bluster and nothing more?
That you can’t use any of it as a measure of his specific intentions?
That neither the promises nor the threats carry an ounce of weight?
The only thing that you CAN reliably derive from his words are that he has no moral center, no political philosophy, no interests outside of Trump Enterprises.
At the very minimum he will blow with the wind, doing whatever he feels like doing at the moment, depending on how flattered he is by whomever is asking.
That could make him Bill Clinton II, except that Bill was being hammered by Newt and the GOP congress, whereas the current congress, no matter which party dominates, is feckless, corrupt, unprincipled, and anti-Constitutional.
Even if he rubber-stamps a GOP congressional agenda, that won’t redound to our benefit. Those rotten pukes in the leadership may not do exactly what Hillary would do, but they WILL do things that are just as bad — with the GOP brand on them.
Meaning that subsequent GOP congresses will probably NOT attempt repeal.
HOSED is what we are.
Totally hosed.
About Trump’s Wall:
When the 2018 mid-terms roll around, and either it’s a dead issue or part of a comprehensive immigration reform law with the Wall to be build at a date yet to be determined, who do you suppose will get blamed, Trump, or the Republican Congress that had to pass a comprehensive immigration reform on a minority-majority vote because conservatives refused to compromise in the Senate?
That’s why I’m hoping beyond Hope that the Trump/Sanders lala-stream-of-consciousness-palooza happens.
Not for someone with eyes and ears, and a memory or 30-40 years. I gave him his chance this time; I considered him for a 3rd or 4th contingency candidate. Trying to destroy Cruz by challenging his eligibility for his *current* Senate position over the birther thing was my “line of death”, and he’s been dancing in the minefield ever since.
So the reason we can’t deport invaders by following our existing immigration law is because we don’t have a magic wall built down the middle of a river? (Impossible)
If the magic river-wall was there, would it make Trump’s touch-back amnesty idiocy into something even as good as the laws we have now that we aren’t enforcing? (Laughable)
Plenty scary enough for me.
One minor quibble: He has a vast sense of entitlement that marks him as a creature of the Left. Look at the small businesses he has screwed out of business through his bankruptcies and lawfare.
This and your quoted point been observable for decades, and is the “known quantity” I referenced before.
Trump is still importing foreign workers and is in favor of touchback amnesty. Only HE gets to decide who the “good ones” are. Totalitarian, capricious, and still amnesty.
Within an hour he said he could go off list. Flip!
Trump favors the mandate for insurance companies but not for consumers. The result of which is that there is no reason whatever to buy insurance before you need to pay for medical services. Insurance companies must cover such pre-existing conditions. Making them no longer insurers, but an industry in charge of paying the nation’s medical bills. So they’ll cease to be. At which point we get government run single payer.
In short, Trump’s stated position is absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Ironically, the people who aren’t voting for Trump are the ones who are least likely to give up their guns because she says so. After the mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut, Trump took Obama’s side in the gun control debate. That’s where he really stands and that’s who he really is.
Trump won’t say feelz shouldn’t determine bathroom policy. He also said he won’t increase military spending. So he’s going to rebuild the military how, exactly?
This is a guy who backed John Kerry, Senator Greyhoundface McWintersoldier. This is a guy who dodged the draft. This is a guy who held a charity event for vets and hasn’t coughed up that money yet. This is a guy who wanted vet street vendors removed from his neighborhood. He thinks fucking coeds without a jimmy is like entering the Hanoi Hilton, and he thinks soldiers who got caught and endured torture are losers.
Fuck him.
At the very time he was trying to use eminent domain to build a parking lot for limos, he was trying to hire a lawyer to prevent competitors from using eminent domain in other areas. He’s not pro-business: his family money comes from graft and corruption involving government cronyism. He’s not even a capitalist. He’s pro Trump, nothing more. There’s nothing “pro business” about telling some businesses they must stay in the States under increased regulatory burdens and a higher federal minimum wage — though his own ties and hats can of course be made wherever he pleases. That’s just more pro Trumpness.
Trump is against giving federal lands back to the states. He’s learned to parrot the word federalism without believing in it for a second. He’s for giving states power he decides to give them. He gets to think of himself as a charitable king that way.
You don’t shake up the system by electing someone who’s spent years funding the system. You are being conned.
Foolishness is nominating in the Republican primary a guy who backed Carter (D), Kerry (D), and Hillary (D) for President, whose trade policies are Mondale’s (D), whose foreign policy is McGovern’s (D), and whose full-throated supporters admire Wallace’s (D) social policies.
Mondamay wrote:
Well put, although I don’t know whether that last sentence is true.
You see: I’ve given up trying to understand how Trump Magnus’s mind works because I’m afraid that, at the end of the Mind-Meld, my brain would emerge permanently damaged.
there’s a lot of hyperbole in america
i really liked Mr. Trump’s energy speech
here’s just a lil taste
how is that not delicious? it’s even tastier than this simple lil salad i been making for my bentos…. all you do is you slice up an orange and toss it with peanuts and nutmeg – la simplisme!
the more you know
The wall isn’t about closing the border, but controlling the border.
Trump will be advised on SC picks by people like Jeff Sessions, Hillary will put in the most radical leftists she can find.
The healthcare issue is the most complex one domestically on the table IMHO, with no perfect solutions, and personally I think it’s an area that can’t be totally in the hands of the private sector. I think that’s the way Trump sees it and neither of us want single payer. Hillary definitely wants single payer.
Trump isn’t interested in taking your guns, Hillary is obsessed with taking your guns.
I don’t know where Trump will find the money for the military, but I’m guessing no longer providing free security for the rest of the world has something to do with it.
Trump used all legal means to make his business successful, you might think that a bad thing, I see that AS capitalism. Hillary is not only a proven disaster as a politician, she never has and never could run a popsicle stand.
Your opinion on what Trump thinks about federalism is your opinion. When he says he will kill common core and turn education back to the states, I think he will. That’s my opinion.
Trump has already shaken the system, your protestations aside.
The shaking will continue. And I’ve donated to the RNC before, so I guess I’m guilty too.
Trump voted for McCain and was a big Romney backer. I think he really doesn’t like the Bushes is why he voted for Kerry.
Jeff, if memory serves you were a democrat before 9/11, did you vote for Clinton? You said you’ve been pro choice, and you voted to legalize recreational pot use in Colorado. I’m not trying to attack you, I’m just pointing out few people have toed the party line in every way their entire life. And I’m not making accusations about purity, but that we live in an imperfect world where sometimes the perfect must be sacrificed for the greater good.
Look at it this way if it helps; this election is a game of Russian Roulette; we will be playing with a revolver (Trump)*, or an automatic (Hillary). You can choose not to chose, but the choice will be made and the game played out.
*for myself I see Trump is really a hair dryer that will make America look fabulous again! Hillary would be sure national suicide.
how is that not delicious?
How is that not an illusion? What the ACTUAL HELL makes you think that Trump will deliver even ONE THING that he’s mentioned?
Lee, you are also in no position to predict what Trump will or will not do.
Nobody is. Not even Trump himself.
He will do what feels good and whatever benefits Trump Enterprises that day.
He does NOT have a track record of acting on principle, nor do his noble words ever correspond with his behavior.
You guys are projecting your desires onto him far more than the Obamabots did: Obama was at least a blank-ish slate; Trump’s been in the public eye for decades and his works are KNOWN.
I have never seen such reckless delusional thinking in my LIFE.
Mr. Trump accomplishes a lot when he puts his mind to stuff dicentra
a LOT
we have to be realistic though
if he just gets the ship sailing in the right direction after what food stamp done i’ll be very grateful
if pee-stank wins oh man
we deserve so much better than crotch-damp pantsuits and unapologetic criminality
I didn’t say Trump would accomplish nothing.
I said you have no reason to believe that his accomplishments as POTUS will be things that you like.
we deserve so much better than crotch-damp pantsuits and unapologetic criminality
We deserve whatever we get, good and hard.
nope
we don’t deserve to get pee-stanked on dicentra
at least i don’t
i been saying my prayers and i been walking the walk with the lord
God please don’t pee-stank me
in Jesus’ name i pray amen
“Lee, you are also in no position to predict what Trump will or will not do.”
Very true. I’m just going by what the man says he will do as president, and trusting his famous ego will compelled him to follow through. Plus, a year ago I thought Trump was a pretty admirable guy, as I dare say most people did. My opinion hasn’t changed, I just don’t see the horns and tail you do.
Mr. Donald Trump is quintessentially American in a way harvardtrash ted just can’t, and never will, touch
kiss today goodbye the sweetness and the sorrow
No, no don’t pee-stank me
No, please don’t pee-stank me
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtmJZ1ATFKM
lighters up
Yes, self-absorbed, blowhard douchebag New Yorkers are very American.
oh i know sweet pickle
cruz shoulda won
i feel you my brotha
>Keep telling yourself that, and pretend you’re not like the GOPe who kept telling us we had to do X or all was lost. I’m done with that.
I don’t have to provide a solution <
the solution at this point is obvious: instead of the "ruining class" eliminating us; we eliminate the "ruining class" via art v in 2018.
1) term limits on ALL federal employees
2) us debt limit raised by 3/4 state legislature approval.
cut the credit card up, get rid of " lois lerner" and her ilk.
the fed constitutional gov't is gone. don't look for solutions there. art v with 2 easy to understand amendments. 2018 @ the state level.
>I’m saying I’m not going to kick the football again, Lucy.<
the art v conv.? that football hasn't been played!!11!!
As evidenced by the fact Trump changed his mind about the Trump/Sanders lala-stream-of-consciousness-palooza late in the afternoon today.
Proving his latest political masterstroke (so all the smart conservative commentators tell me) was just another brain fart.
His ego doesn’t have a problem with bankruptcy, so I don’t think broken campaign promises will trouble it too much.
Boy, this just screams President of the United States, doesn’t it?
Trump Attacks Federal Judge in Trump U Case
…in a stump speech. For 12 minutes.
In another flash of his oratory brilliance, Trump also noted that even Ted Cruz would not bother to so much as have dinner in San Diego because the GOP would have no chance in California unless TRUMP!!!!!
Ted Cruz Holds Rally in San Diego
We’re all just so blessed that he consults with himself so frequently and that we get to enjoy the products of his very good brain.
Lee has bought into every last lie. Sad! The US doesn’t get anything out of protecting other western interests! What has it gotten us, really, save a country where the standard of living for our “poor” is higher than that of the “rich” in most countries. Why, we’ve been taken to the cleaners by Japan and fucked by Poland! Save us, Daddy Trump!
Before 911 I would have said I was a Democrat out of laziness, habit, and context, but no, I didn’t vote for Clinton. I supported Forbes in 1996, in fact. Before that I supported Reagan and Bush I. Truth is, I wasn’t paying enough attention to understand that the D party wasn’t where the true liberals — in a classical sense — were. When I discovered this, I no longer identified as a D.
And happyfeet, remember ethanol? MORE SUBSIDIES IF YOU VOTE FOR ME!
That Mexican Judge sure does have it in for Daddy Donald, not finding for him like that, repeatedly. Nothing to do with the law. No siree! He’s ruling against him because he’s Mexican and Obama! and he’s a hater, just like the plaintiffs for not giving him unbelievable reviews, and wouldn’t it be something if he were President and these people tried to fuck with him? Nice judgeship you got there, Speedy Gonzales. Be a shame if —
Oh forget it, Jake. It’s Kafkatown.
Oh forget it, Jake. It’s Funhousetown.
This is all a big fucking carney show, complete even with a Midnight Ramble.
To love Trump is to overlook his juvenile temperament, paucity of ethics, moral bankruptcy, his tremendous ignorance coupled with an attitude that he the smartest and most capable guy anywhere, and the endless easy and sometimes pointless lies (John Barron/Miller) he tells with each exhale. Sadly, I could continue this list…
I just don’t get it.
Well put, Mondamay.
Now, exit Belvedere to drink some more and watch the Adams Chronicles!
Just like Trump swore to the Jersey casino commission that the Taj Mahal would be financed without junk bonds; that bankers were practically jostling each other in an effort to give him low-interest financing…and then he turned around and junk-bonded it anyway.
His famous ego didn’t keep him from promising something that he didn’t have a prayer of delivering, and then leaving others holding the bag afterward.
What it did do is give him the chutzpah to publicly hold forth on how that deal was a real winner…for him.
That’s what you can expect: that Trump will get what Trump wants. Whatever that is.