I haven't followed it, and there may be more to it than what I am hearing. But Ann Althouse, who doesn't much like Trump, is quoting Andrew McCarthy, who doesn't much like Trump, and Glenn Greenwald, who doesn't much like Trump, who all say these indictments are put up jobs. His accusers want to stick it to The Man, but they are The Man, not him.
I said eight years ago that there was (and is) plenty of reason to dislike Trump, but somehow his opponents have to keep making stuff up to drive that spike to the center of the earth anyway. He can't even just be Hitler, their usual comparison. He has to be Hitler and Putin and Bull Connor and Sauron. His opponents are the ones who made him, not his supporters. If they could have just treated him like an everyday opponent he would have had much less power. Their desire to allow him no power gave him power. He leveraged popular hatred of their hatred into support for his campaign. Those who felt kicked around reasoned that if the Chosen Ones hated him so much, he must be pretty good.
He isn't Pretty Good, but he's doing it again. They have sown the wind and are reaping the whirlwind.
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ReplyDeleteHe's the Goldstein of the narrative. However, the Powers that Be don't have everyone eating out of their hands like Big Beelzebub did in 1984.
ReplyDeleteI didn't trust him--he seemed to love himself and making deals, and I figured he'd happily deal away things I cared about for the sake of Making The Deal. I still think that if the Democrats in the legislature had bitten their tongues and negotiated with him they'd have gotten/kept pretty much what they wanted. "It's amazing what you can achieve if you don't mind that somebody else gets the credit."
ReplyDeleteI didn't and don't understand the insensate hatred he invoked. I'd be willing to suppose that there was something especially wicked about him that I was overlooking, but the attacks were, when pinned down to something specific, lies.
I've seen it proposed that he was threatening iron rice bowls, but without anything specific. That's a lot of vested interests to threaten at once, judging from the noise.
Wrong tribe (like Palin)? If so, why the howls instead of the usual snooty disdain?
About all I can think of is that he or something he represented threatened a select few insiders who then said "frog" to their clients. I'm not good enough at the American version of Kremlinology to guess who that would be--I'm not even sure who's running Biden.
Or perhaps the left is in an internal competition to see who can shout loudest and craziest.
Wrong tribe (like Palin)? If so, why the howls instead of the usual snooty disdain?
ReplyDeleteBecause he won. Palin lost, and was safely confined to the Halls of Disdain. Trump beat them, and had for a while real power in spite of them.
He’s a buffoon, never competent to the task. He did better than expected just because he was not institutionally stupid like our institutions have become. The Wise are now worse than the buffoons; but perhaps we could still do better than either.
If you think this is the whirlwind, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand what motivated the erratic, vehement, seemingly unrestrained reaction to Trump, either. But I think it caused many to scrutinize those people a bit more closely, and to question their fitness for holding office. I've never identified as a Republican until I had to commit in Texas in order to participate in the primaries - I've always been more moderate, and willing to vote the person instead of the politics.
ReplyDeleteTrump pulled the veil. It wasn't his rhetoric that attracted me, it was the reaction that repelled me. I never thought very highly of our Federal leadership prior to Trump, but I've been forced to revise my views downward, by a couple of log cycles, across party lines. While there are some great people in government service, there are too many standing by the levers of power that have no business being in any kind of authority at all. I don't think I'm anywhere close to being alone in this.
Aggie, I think you are an excellent illustration of this. There has been talk over the last decade about the radicalisation of the electorate, and those in power pointed to Trump as the cause and responsible. Many people previously cynical about government, especially federal government, thought ahem, civil servants were not always our best and brightest but always thought so, were more corrupt than the average citizen, were too expensive and free with the money, like being looked at and listened to, and became more liberal when they got to the state or national capital. They now think it is far worse than that, that they are manipulative and semi-openly scheming to break laws and abuse power, in addition to the previous problems getting worse. There have always been people willing to write off the government as a lost cause. Now there are more.
ReplyDeleteAs for the radicalisation on the left, the problem is not so much that they went farther left, but that the center-left has done nothing to stop them or rein them in. Or when they have, it is not for a return to sanity but to protect the continuation of their own power.
Trump followed Obama, and this may be more important than who Trump was.
He leveraged popular hatred of their hatred into support for his campaign. Those who felt kicked around reasoned that if the Chosen Ones hated him so much, he must be pretty good.
ReplyDeleteI didn't support Trump in the 2016 primaries. The above describes my position rather accurately, but with an additional factor. The standard Republican response to Democrat attacks has been to turn the other cheek- see Dubya, McCain, Romney. I liked Trump's fighting back against the Chosen Ones.
AVI's comments about our "civil servants" are well taken.
Through 2016, my take on Trump was similar to James's, above. I figured that what he'd say and what he'd do probably wouldn't often match up.
ReplyDeleteBut, a), that wouldn't be any different than any other Republican president, going back at least as far as 1988; and b), he wasn't Hillary (at the time, his biggest positive, to my eye).
Then two things happened:
FIRST: every. single. day. (it seemed like) some reporter, pundit, or politician would clutch their pearls and hyperventilate over some awful thing Trump had said. But whenever I took time to check and see, it turned out that Trump hadn't actually said the terrible thing people were claiming.
Now, it so happens that I've been in situations where people try to put words in my mouth. I've been smeared in public. Maybe that makes me oversensitive to this sort of thing, but I don't have much (like zero) patience for people who lie about what someone else has said.
So, I became pretty indifferent to critics of Trump. If the Trump-haters were going to make s**t up, then I'd just tune out their squawking.
SECOND: after he took office, it turned out that Trump was doing actual conservative things. He not only talked about conservative policies, he tried to get them done (seldom with any help from the other elected Republicans).
Now, I was not only skeptical of his critics, I was increasingly willing to cut him some slack. If a guy was going to do (rather than just talk about) conservative stuff, then I was willing to overlook a metric ton of personal flaws.
Today, I think Trump has allowed himself to be turned into such a circus, that I really hope he's not the nominee in 2024. I just don't see how his candidacy can be in any way constructive.
(I also see the anti-Trump machines gearing up to smear Desantis in the same ways they did Trump; and I'm even less amused this time around.)
[whoa, that was long, sorry]
Those who felt kicked around reasoned that if the Chosen Ones hated him so much, he must be pretty good.
ReplyDeleteDecent post until you go off the rails there.
Remember "The bombing starts in 5 minutes"? The folly of pronouncing "nuclear" with a cowboy twang? Caspar Weinberger? Scooter Libby? Iran-Contra? Hurricane Katrina? Anti-nuke demonstrations? Iraq war protests? Nuclear Freeze movement? Code Pink? Robert Bork? Harriet Miers?
When the Democrats weren't just making sh*t up, literally nothing that happened during the Trump Presidency was at all new in kind, only in volume of hysterical elite and/or Democrat reaction (and some of the reaction to GOP presidents wasn't any more reasonable back in the day).
As Thos notes, much of what Trump did during his Presidency was definitely 'pretty good'. I'm by and large a believer in the Zeihan 'global disorder' theory of the post-Cold War era, and Trump navigated those waters pretty well. He negotiated new trade deals with our major trading partners and established trade policies and tariffs that Biden has quietly left in place. He may not have any ended any wars but his was the first Presidency in nearly half a century to not engage in any new military action. His energy and foreign policy laid the groundwork for significant steps towards conflict reduction in the Mideast, and was a major contributor to Putin not engaging in any new actions unlike W, Obama, or now Biden. He was at least capable of doing no harm to the general economy, unlike the current administration.
Pretty darn good for an orange oaf, to hear some tell it.
It is just a flat out myth that the majority of Trump's support is 'deplorables', which while claimed by some of us as a badge of honor does play into elite demonization of Trump and anybody who even suggests they can tolerate him. He has broad mainstream support among Republican and independent voters. Look up the voting population and run the percentages of vote totals. In 2016, Trump got a greater share of the voting population than W in 2000, which represents the nadair of Republican candidates in the last twenty years (W in 2004 doing the best). He got more votes and a greater percentage than Romney in 2012 who did only slightly better than W in 2000. Trump in 2020, 31% of voting eligible population, was only eclipsed by Obama's 32% in 2008. Trump 2020 got roughly 5 million more votes than Obama in 2008, and roughly 11 million more than his own 2016 total. Compare that to Obama in 2012 who gave up almost 4 million votes and 3 percent of the voting population from his 2008 totals.
I won't say that Trump doesn't turn off some voters, or some voters don't hold their nose while pulling the level for him. I had to do the same for both McCain and Romney. There is just little general evidence that he turns off so many voters that his candidacy would be doomed before he starts, and there are polls (for what they may be worth) that already showing him running ahead of either Biden or Harris.
@ Christopher B - well, you start by preaching one of my own sermons back at me, so I can't complain. The Democrats have fought dirty with insults at least as far back as Truman insinuating that Dewey was a fascist. Yet I do think there was something with Trump's treatment. Perhaps it was only volume, but it penetrated to ears that had not heard the level of invective before.
ReplyDeleteI have consistently voted negative since the 1980's. I liked John Anderson, everyone after that was how much I didn't like the other guy. I don't even mind it and think it is probably preferable.
This seems relevant:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.racket.news/p/msnbc-sucks
Things have been bad in the past. Days of Rage: the bombers were funded by bank robbery and lawyers who supported them.
ReplyDeleteWhat seems weird now is how mainstream the lunacy is--and how coordinated.