|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On July 02 2018 12:36 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +"Colourblind" is the PC way for racists too cowardly to say they're racists to identify themselves to others. That may be true for some. But it seems to me, on the whole, what many people who identify themselves as 'colorblind' are trying to say (perhaps inelegantly) is that they see people as individuals rather than classes. That they see Ben as 'my friend Ben', or 'Ben the next door neighbour' first and foremost. Not Ben the Black Person. Not that they are literally blind, but the claim to colorblindess is (for many) signalling that their judgement is on content of character, not colour of skin. Whether you believe them is another thing, but from the people that I've heard using 'colourblind' unironically, I'm very confident that is what they intend it to mean.
I'm very confident Kwarks critique applies to everyone using that descriptor. It addresses your modification in the part of the quote you cut out.
|
We get it you think all conservatives are racist bigots. You won't be convinced you're wrong we won't be convinced you're right. Just move on already.
|
On July 02 2018 10:02 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 09:28 kollin wrote:On July 02 2018 08:54 xDaunt wrote:On July 02 2018 08:18 kollin wrote:
What's the correct course of action for those who see fascism no longer disguising itself in modern America? Even if you disagree with what they see, what do you sincerely counsel them to do except resist it through every avenue available? Tell them to go see a psychiatrist because something is clearly wrong with people who think that fascism is emerging in the US. This kind of hyperbole doesn’t serve any legitimate purpose. Would you agree with a restaurant owner kicking out someone who marched in Charlottesville on that ground? The problem with so many y'all on the Left is that you see Nazis like children see the boogeyman. You imagine that Nazis are everywhere and growing in significance, when in reality, they are just as marginalized as they have always been. Where these delusions become dangerous is when you start alleging that the the mainstream opposition party has been taken over by Nazis. All of that said, I have no problem with refusing to serve Nazis. Show nested quote +EDIT: also, 'embracing identity politics' is the broadest definition possible of Trump's actions. When the identity embraced is one based in a mythological, folkish idea of Americanism (whiteness) that excludes those who aren't a part of this group from possibly being a member of 'the people', whilst simultaneously rallying against the global conspiracy of the establishment (rather than just, y'know, capitalism) it is hard to see the difference between Trump's identity politics and fascism. The smug defence that Trump is just using the Democrat's weapons against them betrays ignorance or a deeply held desire to enable (collaborate with?) the fascists - I'm sure people can guess which one. It's not the "broadest definition." It is the definitive definition of what Trump is doing. Every policy that he pursues has been tailored to serve white interests. The same is true of his rhetoric. It's not hard to see why he's doing it: it works. This is why I and so many others referred to Trump's election as "Whitey's revenge." Democrats have been playing with the fire that is identity politics for so long -- and in doing so, have neglected and demonized the white American majority -- that it was only a matter of time before someone like Trump came along to rally them. Trump is the inevitable result of leftist identity politics. And as I have said before, this is the one thing about Trump that I don't like. I hate identity politics, and I sincerely wish that we could just retire them to the dustbin of history. But the problem is that what Trump is doing may, unfortunately, be necessary for as long as the Left makes it bones on the back of identity politics.
Trump is quite the opposite of necessary, he's just gas on the fire. The "necessary" argument fails because he only makes matters worse.
|
Canada11279 Posts
On July 02 2018 12:42 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 12:36 Falling wrote:"Colourblind" is the PC way for racists too cowardly to say they're racists to identify themselves to others. That may be true for some. But it seems to me, on the whole, what many people who identify themselves as 'colorblind' are trying to say (perhaps inelegantly) is that they see people as individuals rather than classes. That they see Ben as 'my friend Ben', or 'Ben the next door neighbour' first and foremost. Not Ben the Black Person. Not that they are literally blind, but the claim to colorblindess is (for many) signalling that their judgement is on content of character, not colour of skin. Whether you believe them is another thing, but from the people that I've heard using 'colourblind' unironically, I'm very confident that is what they intend it to mean. I'm very confident Kwarks critique applies to everyone using that descriptor. It addresses your modification in the part of the quote you cut out.
I don't think so. Because
"Willfully choosing not to see that society is treating people of different races differently is racism, even if you lie about not even knowing that there are other races."
is describing how a system or how general society is treating a group of people.
Whereas, when people say 'I am colourblind', they are not making a societal claim, but they are making a claim (again, perhaps inelegantly) about how they as an individual treat other individuals. Colourblind policies are another matter.
|
On July 02 2018 12:56 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 12:42 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 02 2018 12:36 Falling wrote:"Colourblind" is the PC way for racists too cowardly to say they're racists to identify themselves to others. That may be true for some. But it seems to me, on the whole, what many people who identify themselves as 'colorblind' are trying to say (perhaps inelegantly) is that they see people as individuals rather than classes. That they see Ben as 'my friend Ben', or 'Ben the next door neighbour' first and foremost. Not Ben the Black Person. Not that they are literally blind, but the claim to colorblindess is (for many) signalling that their judgement is on content of character, not colour of skin. Whether you believe them is another thing, but from the people that I've heard using 'colourblind' unironically, I'm very confident that is what they intend it to mean. I'm very confident Kwarks critique applies to everyone using that descriptor. It addresses your modification in the part of the quote you cut out. I don't think so. Because Show nested quote +"Willfully choosing not to see that society is treating people of different races differently is racism, even if you lie about not even knowing that there are other races." is describing how a system or how general society is treating a group of people. Whereas, when people say 'I am colourblind', they are not making a societal claim, but they are making a claim (again, perhaps inelegantly) about how they as an individual treat other individuals. Colourblind policies are another matter.
You say inelegance, I say ignorance, both end up in the same place in my experience.
|
Given that we're somewhat back on the topic of the motivation for Republicans to support Trump, let's put a bow on the conversation that we had a couple days ago about the Never Trumpers. This article from the American Spectator has been making the rounds over the past few days and is on point. Here it is with a little commentary:
With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named reliable replacement for the unreliable Anthony Kennedy, Donald Trump will have confirmed himself as the most consequential conservative president of the modern era (or a close second to Reagan if you’re nostalgic). This will be complete vindication for Trump supporters, which means it’s really the end for the so-called Never Trump conservatives. Of course, there have been so many humiliating defeats for that crowd that we are spoiled for choice. What was your favorite blunder, or blown prediction, which marked their ignominious end?
This first line deserves some emphasis. Trump has been a more conservative president than either of the Bush's that preceded him. It's not just about the Supreme Court nominations, either. Trump has been thoroughly conservative across the board with the exception of his trade policy, depending upon how you want to look at it. This track record alone makes the Never Trumpers look hilariously foolish in retrospect, to the extent that they deserved any respect at all.
For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. With the death last week of Charles Krauthammer, the revered neocon commentator and prominent Trump skeptic, the eclipse of the neocon intellectuals is complete.
One thing’s for sure: it wasn’t really a war so much as a rout. The Never Trump intellectual crowd has no momentum and no popular following these days. Consider the trajectory of their would-be leader Kristol, who appears to be indulging in a personal fantasy by putting himself forward as a candidate, as his rapport with GOP voters includes trying to run Evan McMullin in Utah to throw the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton. When that stunt failed, Kristol personally insulted the pro-Trump writer Michael Anton for his influential essay “The Flight 93 election.” Then Kristol’s commentator gig with Fox was not renewed, and he was soon accusing Tucker Carlson of “ethno-nationalism” and “racism.” Overshadowing all of these breaks was Kristol’s personal history of being the conservative’s answer to Bob Shrum, a political “pro” who was always very wrong about politics.
Of course, Kristol was not alone in his contempt for Trump — he was only the most vocal and unhinged. Alongside him were other conservatives like Jennifer Rubin and George Will and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post; Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal; David Brooks and Ross Douthat at the New York Times; Jonah Goldberg and David French at National Review; Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg; and Erick Erickson at RedState. A number of others, people like David Frum and Ana Navarro, committed political seppuku early and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, the careers of most of these people have been curtailed dramatically.
Anyone who despised the Bush-era neocons should be absolutely thrilled with Trump's arrival on the scene.
What happened? If these intellectuals were so influential in the conservative movement, then why has their apostasy garnered so little attention? A Ramesh Ponnuru editorial in Bloomberg blurted out this truth: “In 2016 we found out that conservative elites didn’t speak for Republican voters.” This split between the party’s base and its donor class (as well as the donor-funded intellectuals) was years in the making, but it became obvious once Trump became the nominee. Then the truth became obvious and damning: the Never Trumpers represented no one but themselves.
Looking back, it now seems self-evident that conservative pundits were preposterously out of touch. (Who isn’t amused by the poindexter pretentiousness of George Will’s bow-ties or the pseudo-scholarly piffle of Jonah Goldberg’s byline as “the inaugural holder of the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty?”). These intellectuals barely noticed the opioid crisis running through small town America; or the base’s anger regarding illegal immigration; and they were adamantly opposed to any restriction of free trade while working class frustrations mounted over NAFTA and its ilk. (This explains why J. D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy was Washington’s must-read book of 2017: it provided a portrait of rural America that the political class could digest without condescending to visit such places or talk to such voters.) It turns out that conservative intellectuals, living inside the “Acela Corridor” and funded exclusively by think tanks and foundations, are poor barometers of Republican voter concerns.
The big tell here has always been the illegal immigration debate. No issue more clearly laid bare the disagreements between the establishment and the base of the GOP. The major rift dates back to the W administration, and it has only gotten worse as the establishment, fueled by big donor money, has continued to push it upon an unwilling base.
This myopia has several causes. The first is a kind of cultural “capture” that occurs when conservatives live in blue districts and big cities too long. They become, in other words, clueless (RINOS). The second reason is more obvious: many of these people are paid to be openly hostile to Trump’s agenda. The free trade absolutists at AEI and Cato are on salary to oppose any protectionist trade policies. Likewise, hawkish interventionists such as Max Boot knew they had no professional future once Trump’s isolationist instincts became policy.
Speak of the devil. This is exactly what the Flight 93 article was attacking conservative intellectuals for.
There is also a low-testosterone, dilettantish strain of conservatism that has overdeveloped in the “mainstream” media to create such sterile hybrids as Michael Gerson and George Will and David Brooks. Nothing sunk these so-called wise men lower in the estimation of their fellow conservatives than their blithe indifference to the Clintons’ gangsterism. While Trump threw wild verbal haymakers at Hillary at campaign rallies, these intellectuals were basically on TV announcing they would be accommodationists for the Clinton Machine’s inevitable victory. Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea. The contrast in styles of conservatism was stark: it was the pugnacious billionaire against the stuffy wimps.
I can't stress the importance of these comments enough. Conservatives rallied to Trump because, unlike the rest of the GOP, Trump fights. Most of you probably are too young to remember the Bush years, but little in politics made conservatives angrier than Bush's refusal to fight back and respond to the relentless barrage of unfair criticism that was thrown his way. W just took it on the chin. Repeatedly. Romney following W's class act, and it didn't get him anywhere. Though I don't like to use the term, conservatives felt somewhat collectively bullied and instinctively yearned for a champion. We got one with orange hair.
The greatest disconnect is religious and cultural: the Republican Party is overwhelmingly Caucasian and Christian and traditional on social issues, while its pundits skew Jewish and agnostic and libertarian. Krauthammer wanted to have it both ways, which is not unlike the hedging that Brooks and Goldberg have displayed. George Will went so far as to say: “I’m an atheist. An agnostic is someone who is not sure. I’m pretty sure. I see no evidence of God.” Meanwhile, Gerson is a liberal Episcopalian who took to the pages of the Atlantic to attack evangelicals for supporting Trump. In sum, the conservative intellectuals didn’t understand the base’s concerns about religious liberty because they hardly cared for religion — which should have disqualified them long ago.
Pay careful attention to this paragraph. This is where we see conservative identity politics rear its ugly head.
The curious uniformity of the Never Trump crowd extends beyond them being heretics who claim to be spokesmen for the Christian base. On every important issue of the election, it was hard to find one of them who could even articulate Trump’s position, let alone support it. Tucker Carlson was one of the few to see this stupidity early and he registered his dissent well in a break-out essay: Show nested quote +Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal. The sad truth was that the Never Trumpers were not safeguarding the ideas of conservatism so much as themselves. Carlson nailed the heart of the matter: “If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart.” That is why the continuing success of the Trump Presidency has been met with escalating anger and vituperation from the Never Trumpers — the news cycle is a daily reminder that they were wrong about everything. Can you be wrong about everything and still be part of the elite?
Yeah, Tucker nailed it. The Never Trumpers -- so called champions of conservatism -- aren't even really all that conservative. Perhaps now you have a better understanding of why I used previously used the word "charlatans" to describe them. Oh, and notice how Tucker's career has exploded while most of the Never Trumpers' careers have gone down the toilet. The people know what the score is.
That is a question being asked in front of many mirrors inside many Washington mansions today. Many people mistook their policy positions for principles, and Trump has made them look foolish. What do they stand for now? What does it mean to be conservative if you’re not clear about what you’re conserving? Credit David Brooks, of all people, with waving the white flag first this April, and with some humility when he admitted that “Part of the problem is that anti-Trumpism has a tendency to be insufferably condescending.” Brooks then basically summarized the great failure of the Never Trumpers as “an epic attempt to offend 40 percent of our fellow citizens by reducing them to psychological inferiors.”
Meanwhile his former comrade, George Will, was not for surrender or appeasement. He had finally found an enemy to relish: his fellow conservatives. One measure of Will’s self-exile was the indifference his most recent column elicited, though it urged Republicans to vote against the GOP at the midterms “for their own good.” Was anyone still listening? It was Will who sagely warned the world mere days before the election: “Until the Republican Party gets right with minorities in this country, it’s never going to win another presidential election.” Not content with that spectacular blunder, Will had doubled down with attacks on Billy Graham and Vice President Mike Pence. The symbolism of such stunts, at least, was clear. As a model conservative, Will stands alone in his own estimation. And what could be more conservative than voting for liberal Democrats?
In that sense, Will’s latest column was merely the fitting coda to a long career of effete snobbery — one that had led him to “leave the party” before it won the White House and march off into the wilderness. (Someday, his columns from the Trump years will be collected and they should be titled: “An Apotheosis of Narcissism.”) He would take his tea and his bow-tie elsewhere. The headmaster of the stuffy wimps would not take part in the victory of the counter-punchers. At last, like so many of his fellow Never Trumpers, he was a pundit without a party and, ultimately, without an audience.
I hadn't previously seen that David Brooks piece before, but it is quite delightful. Here's how Brooks concludes the piece:
The main reason Trump won the presidency is that tens of millions of Americans rightly feel that their local economies are under attack, their communities are dissolving and their religious liberties are under threat. Trump understood the problems of large parts of America better than anyone else. He has been able to strengthen his grip on power over the past year because he has governed as he campaigned.
Until somebody comes up with a better defense strategy, Trump and Trumpism will dominate. Voters are willing to put up with a lot of nonsense for a president they think is basically on their side.
Just after the election, Luigi Zingales wrote a Times op-ed on how not to fight Trump, based on the Italian experience fighting Silvio Berlusconi. Don’t focus on personality or the man, Zingales advised. That will just make Trump the people’s hero against the Washington caste. Focus instead on the social problems that gave rise to Trumpism.
That is the advice we anti-Trumpers still need to learn.
As for George Will, good riddance to him. He should go back to hosting dinner parties for Obama.
|
Mexico2170 Posts
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting..
|
On July 02 2018 13:47 xDaunt wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Given that we're somewhat back on the topic of the motivation for Republicans to support Trump, let's put a bow on the conversation that we had a couple days ago about the Never Trumpers. This article from the American Spectator has been making the rounds over the past few days and is on point. Here it is with a little commentary: With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named reliable replacement for the unreliable Anthony Kennedy, Donald Trump will have confirmed himself as the most consequential conservative president of the modern era (or a close second to Reagan if you’re nostalgic). This will be complete vindication for Trump supporters, which means it’s really the end for the so-called Never Trump conservatives. Of course, there have been so many humiliating defeats for that crowd that we are spoiled for choice. What was your favorite blunder, or blown prediction, which marked their ignominious end? This first line deserves some emphasis. Trump has been a more conservative president than either of the Bush's that preceded him. It's not just about the Supreme Court nominations, either. Trump has been thoroughly conservative across the board with the exception of his trade policy, depending upon how you want to look at it. This track record alone makes the Never Trumpers look hilariously foolish in retrospect, to the extent that they deserved any respect at all. For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. With the death last week of Charles Krauthammer, the revered neocon commentator and prominent Trump skeptic, the eclipse of the neocon intellectuals is complete.
One thing’s for sure: it wasn’t really a war so much as a rout. The Never Trump intellectual crowd has no momentum and no popular following these days. Consider the trajectory of their would-be leader Kristol, who appears to be indulging in a personal fantasy by putting himself forward as a candidate, as his rapport with GOP voters includes trying to run Evan McMullin in Utah to throw the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton. When that stunt failed, Kristol personally insulted the pro-Trump writer Michael Anton for his influential essay “The Flight 93 election.” Then Kristol’s commentator gig with Fox was not renewed, and he was soon accusing Tucker Carlson of “ethno-nationalism” and “racism.” Overshadowing all of these breaks was Kristol’s personal history of being the conservative’s answer to Bob Shrum, a political “pro” who was always very wrong about politics.
Of course, Kristol was not alone in his contempt for Trump — he was only the most vocal and unhinged. Alongside him were other conservatives like Jennifer Rubin and George Will and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post; Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal; David Brooks and Ross Douthat at the New York Times; Jonah Goldberg and David French at National Review; Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg; and Erick Erickson at RedState. A number of others, people like David Frum and Ana Navarro, committed political seppuku early and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, the careers of most of these people have been curtailed dramatically. Anyone who despised the Bush-era neocons should be absolutely thrilled with Trump's arrival on the scene. What happened? If these intellectuals were so influential in the conservative movement, then why has their apostasy garnered so little attention? A Ramesh Ponnuru editorial in Bloomberg blurted out this truth: “In 2016 we found out that conservative elites didn’t speak for Republican voters.” This split between the party’s base and its donor class (as well as the donor-funded intellectuals) was years in the making, but it became obvious once Trump became the nominee. Then the truth became obvious and damning: the Never Trumpers represented no one but themselves.
Looking back, it now seems self-evident that conservative pundits were preposterously out of touch. (Who isn’t amused by the poindexter pretentiousness of George Will’s bow-ties or the pseudo-scholarly piffle of Jonah Goldberg’s byline as “the inaugural holder of the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty?”). These intellectuals barely noticed the opioid crisis running through small town America; or the base’s anger regarding illegal immigration; and they were adamantly opposed to any restriction of free trade while working class frustrations mounted over NAFTA and its ilk. (This explains why J. D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy was Washington’s must-read book of 2017: it provided a portrait of rural America that the political class could digest without condescending to visit such places or talk to such voters.) It turns out that conservative intellectuals, living inside the “Acela Corridor” and funded exclusively by think tanks and foundations, are poor barometers of Republican voter concerns. The big tell here has always been the illegal immigration debate. No issue more clearly laid bare the disagreements between the establishment and the base of the GOP. The major rift dates back to the W administration, and it has only gotten worse as the establishment, fueled by big donor money, has continued to push it upon an unwilling base. This myopia has several causes. The first is a kind of cultural “capture” that occurs when conservatives live in blue districts and big cities too long. They become, in other words, clueless (RINOS). The second reason is more obvious: many of these people are paid to be openly hostile to Trump’s agenda. The free trade absolutists at AEI and Cato are on salary to oppose any protectionist trade policies. Likewise, hawkish interventionists such as Max Boot knew they had no professional future once Trump’s isolationist instincts became policy. Speak of the devil. This is exactly what the Flight 93 article was attacking conservative intellectuals for. There is also a low-testosterone, dilettantish strain of conservatism that has overdeveloped in the “mainstream” media to create such sterile hybrids as Michael Gerson and George Will and David Brooks. Nothing sunk these so-called wise men lower in the estimation of their fellow conservatives than their blithe indifference to the Clintons’ gangsterism. While Trump threw wild verbal haymakers at Hillary at campaign rallies, these intellectuals were basically on TV announcing they would be accommodationists for the Clinton Machine’s inevitable victory. Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea. The contrast in styles of conservatism was stark: it was the pugnacious billionaire against the stuffy wimps. I can't stress the importance of these comments enough. Conservatives rallied to Trump because, unlike the rest of the GOP, Trump fights. Most of you probably are too young to remember the Bush years, but little in politics made conservatives angrier than Bush's refusal to fight back and respond to the relentless barrage of unfair criticism that was thrown his way. W just took it on the chin. Repeatedly. Romney following W's class act, and it didn't get him anywhere. Though I don't like to use the term, conservatives felt somewhat collectively bullied and instinctively yearned for a champion. We got one with orange hair. The greatest disconnect is religious and cultural: the Republican Party is overwhelmingly Caucasian and Christian and traditional on social issues, while its pundits skew Jewish and agnostic and libertarian. Krauthammer wanted to have it both ways, which is not unlike the hedging that Brooks and Goldberg have displayed. George Will went so far as to say: “I’m an atheist. An agnostic is someone who is not sure. I’m pretty sure. I see no evidence of God.” Meanwhile, Gerson is a liberal Episcopalian who took to the pages of the Atlantic to attack evangelicals for supporting Trump. In sum, the conservative intellectuals didn’t understand the base’s concerns about religious liberty because they hardly cared for religion — which should have disqualified them long ago. Pay careful attention to this paragraph. This is where we see conservative identity politics rear its ugly head. The curious uniformity of the Never Trump crowd extends beyond them being heretics who claim to be spokesmen for the Christian base. On every important issue of the election, it was hard to find one of them who could even articulate Trump’s position, let alone support it. Tucker Carlson was one of the few to see this stupidity early and he registered his dissent well in a break-out essay: Show nested quote +Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal. The sad truth was that the Never Trumpers were not safeguarding the ideas of conservatism so much as themselves. Carlson nailed the heart of the matter: “If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart.” That is why the continuing success of the Trump Presidency has been met with escalating anger and vituperation from the Never Trumpers — the news cycle is a daily reminder that they were wrong about everything. Can you be wrong about everything and still be part of the elite? Yeah, Tucker nailed it. The Never Trumpers -- so called champions of conservatism -- aren't even really all that conservative. Perhaps now you have a better understanding of why I used previously used the word "charlatans" to describe them. Oh, and notice how Tucker's career has exploded while most of the Never Trumpers' careers have gone down the toilet. The people know what the score is. That is a question being asked in front of many mirrors inside many Washington mansions today. Many people mistook their policy positions for principles, and Trump has made them look foolish. What do they stand for now? What does it mean to be conservative if you’re not clear about what you’re conserving? Credit David Brooks, of all people, with waving the white flag first this April, and with some humility when he admitted that “Part of the problem is that anti-Trumpism has a tendency to be insufferably condescending.” Brooks then basically summarized the great failure of the Never Trumpers as “an epic attempt to offend 40 percent of our fellow citizens by reducing them to psychological inferiors.”
Meanwhile his former comrade, George Will, was not for surrender or appeasement. He had finally found an enemy to relish: his fellow conservatives. One measure of Will’s self-exile was the indifference his most recent column elicited, though it urged Republicans to vote against the GOP at the midterms “for their own good.” Was anyone still listening? It was Will who sagely warned the world mere days before the election: “Until the Republican Party gets right with minorities in this country, it’s never going to win another presidential election.” Not content with that spectacular blunder, Will had doubled down with attacks on Billy Graham and Vice President Mike Pence. The symbolism of such stunts, at least, was clear. As a model conservative, Will stands alone in his own estimation. And what could be more conservative than voting for liberal Democrats?
In that sense, Will’s latest column was merely the fitting coda to a long career of effete snobbery — one that had led him to “leave the party” before it won the White House and march off into the wilderness. (Someday, his columns from the Trump years will be collected and they should be titled: “An Apotheosis of Narcissism.”) He would take his tea and his bow-tie elsewhere. The headmaster of the stuffy wimps would not take part in the victory of the counter-punchers. At last, like so many of his fellow Never Trumpers, he was a pundit without a party and, ultimately, without an audience. I hadn't previously seen that David Brooks piece before, but it is quite delightful. Here's how Brooks concludes the piece: The main reason Trump won the presidency is that tens of millions of Americans rightly feel that their local economies are under attack, their communities are dissolving and their religious liberties are under threat. Trump understood the problems of large parts of America better than anyone else. He has been able to strengthen his grip on power over the past year because he has governed as he campaigned.
Until somebody comes up with a better defense strategy, Trump and Trumpism will dominate. Voters are willing to put up with a lot of nonsense for a president they think is basically on their side.
Just after the election, Luigi Zingales wrote a Times op-ed on how not to fight Trump, based on the Italian experience fighting Silvio Berlusconi. Don’t focus on personality or the man, Zingales advised. That will just make Trump the people’s hero against the Washington caste. Focus instead on the social problems that gave rise to Trumpism.
That is the advice we anti-Trumpers still need to learn. As for George Will, good riddance to him. He should go back to hosting dinner parties for Obama.
This presidency is less than halfway through, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.
One of the things that irks me most about these pieces is how every Never Trumper or, shall we say, Trump skeptic, is thrown into the same boat. There is certainly truth in that piece, but as an example the George Will column that I assume he is referencing (the one that says the Republicans must lose in November) has been endorsed by precious few, even from Never Trump side.
I think the truest things out of what you posted has to do with topics like immigration and religious liberty. The higher up one is in the conservative thought bubbles, the more one seems to take a particular view on these topics, immigration especially. As for the latter, well I've tried to make that point in this thread, but we all know how that turns out. People like KwarK are super predictable when that comes up.
Some critics are charlatans, like Jennifer Rubin at the WP. Some are just losing their minds, like George Will. And some didn't believe a word Trump said and voted accordingly, like myself. And there might be a proxy between how obnoxious one is and how much of a charlatan that person is. But these pieces read more like gloating victory speeches given in the midst of a war. It's not over, and people are still disagreeing on how to fight.
|
That article doesn't even gloss over one of the greatest criticisms of Trump from never-Trumpers, which is his conduct. How his influence affects the national dialogue and reflects back on the people who have to cast their morals aside for policy wins. Whatever means to justify the ends.
|
Trump doesn't have a conservative track record when he hasn't gotten anything lasting done in his entire presidency. If he and pence die tomorrow everything goes back to the way things were before he was elected.
I say this again. Trump has done nothing that will outlive him other then be a huge dick to people. If anything hes been helping liberals ever sense he got into office. Reagon did things Trump hasn't. It doesn't get clearer then that.
I get how you want Trump to be a thing xdaunt but it isn't going to be a thing. When hes gone the GOP will go back to the way it was and might have a chance at actually advancing conservatism in this country.
I mean even the worst people say about W they have to admit that he did things in his presidency that outlived him and advanced the conservative cause. He had history hyjack his presidency like few leaders have but he managed to get legislative efforts done even in the later years of his presidency when the democrats were out for blood.
Trump on the other hand has bungled everything from day one refuses to meet basic competency standards like staffing his administration. Hes angered the world and is now sliding into a trade war he can't win. You can bash the intellectuals all you want but at least they know basic things like how to govern and get what you want.
|
As it looks atm he will change the supreme court for years to come. How is this nothing?
|
On July 02 2018 14:44 Velr wrote:
As it looks atm he will change the supreme court for years to come. How is this nothing?
Every president has changed the supreme court for years to come. Thats a basic D vs R voteing reward. Obama decided he didn't want to appoint one at the end of his presidency so trump gets a free one.
If roe vs wade gets overturned it'll spark a public backlash like few things in this country. Do you really think Trump has the ability to get a nominee through that will overturn it?
|
On July 02 2018 14:44 Velr wrote:
As it looks atm he will change the supreme court for years to come. How is this nothing?
A monkey throwing shit at a wall could pick a SCOTUS justice conservatives loved if you put a list of the Fed Soc picks in front of said monkey (which is actually more work than Trump is doing since he is just picking whoever the Fed Soc tells him to). Literally any choice in the 2016 primary would have accomplished this goal. That Republicans picked Trump from a list of over a dozen candidates speaks to their values.
|
And man do you have to be off base to try and be the one true scotsman in a party that you want to represent more then half the nation with. The whole nature of the two party system is to force either side to expand their ideological footprint on the electorate and yet some people want to be high and mighty with their "well we're the only real conservatives because we seriously support the asshole instead of all those rational people".
|
On July 02 2018 14:49 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 14:44 Velr wrote:
As it looks atm he will change the supreme court for years to come. How is this nothing? Every president has changed the supreme court for years to come. Thats a basic D vs R voteing reward. Obama decided he didn't want to appoint one at the end of his presidency so trump gets a free one.
Wait what? That is an interesting twist on the situation.
On July 02 2018 12:36 JimmiC wrote:
I wonder if the tea party had split off the republicans, would have the dems kept there 50? Or would have the repubs become the american center with tea far right, dems far left (for usa). Also, im talking in 20 years not day 1.
This is an interesting question, but sadly not something that may happen in a two-party system like the US. In a multi-party system, that is exactly what would have happened.
|
On July 02 2018 12:58 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 12:56 Falling wrote:On July 02 2018 12:42 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 02 2018 12:36 Falling wrote:"Colourblind" is the PC way for racists too cowardly to say they're racists to identify themselves to others. That may be true for some. But it seems to me, on the whole, what many people who identify themselves as 'colorblind' are trying to say (perhaps inelegantly) is that they see people as individuals rather than classes. That they see Ben as 'my friend Ben', or 'Ben the next door neighbour' first and foremost. Not Ben the Black Person. Not that they are literally blind, but the claim to colorblindess is (for many) signalling that their judgement is on content of character, not colour of skin. Whether you believe them is another thing, but from the people that I've heard using 'colourblind' unironically, I'm very confident that is what they intend it to mean. I'm very confident Kwarks critique applies to everyone using that descriptor. It addresses your modification in the part of the quote you cut out. I don't think so. Because "Willfully choosing not to see that society is treating people of different races differently is racism, even if you lie about not even knowing that there are other races." is describing how a system or how general society is treating a group of people. Whereas, when people say 'I am colourblind', they are not making a societal claim, but they are making a claim (again, perhaps inelegantly) about how they as an individual treat other individuals. Colourblind policies are another matter. You say inelegance, I say ignorance, both end up in the same place in my experience.
Perhaps Falling will also say that #alllivesmatter people are just inelegantly expressing the same sentiment?
There comes a point where bring a clueless white person ignorant about structural racism is politically indistinguishable from being actively racist. I mean, most republicans can’t be bad people, there are too many of them. They can’t all openly delight in being racist, fascist etc. They need their justifications and plausible deniability.
|
On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting..
Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds.
I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert.
|
On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds. I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert.
From a very, very brief skim, it seems a somewhat mixed bag.
- He was Mayor of Mexico City for several years and was received fairly well, but there were corruption scandals around him (but never tied directly to him). Some supposed stuff about him hiding wealth with his family as well, assumedly for public image.
- He's run in the last 3 elections (including this one). The 2006 result was really close (less than 1% difference), and him and his supporters wanted a recounted and said the results were illegitimate. They blocked off main areas of Mexico City for a month and a half and basically shut down major parts of the city.
- Has some very left-wing ideas, like amnesty for cartel members, and a lot of spending on infrastructure and social programs.
- Made a lot of the typical "fix everything" promises. Said he'd solve extreme poverty in his 6 year term, and would end government corruption. Dodgy on answering the "how".
Of course, any issues with him do need to fed through the lens of the competition. I'd say the guy saying to chop off the hands of thieves, creating a presidential directed cyber police and militarized prep schools trends further on the extreme side of things. He came in at a negligible percentage at least.
|
On July 02 2018 12:56 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 12:42 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 02 2018 12:36 Falling wrote:"Colourblind" is the PC way for racists too cowardly to say they're racists to identify themselves to others. That may be true for some. But it seems to me, on the whole, what many people who identify themselves as 'colorblind' are trying to say (perhaps inelegantly) is that they see people as individuals rather than classes. That they see Ben as 'my friend Ben', or 'Ben the next door neighbour' first and foremost. Not Ben the Black Person. Not that they are literally blind, but the claim to colorblindess is (for many) signalling that their judgement is on content of character, not colour of skin. Whether you believe them is another thing, but from the people that I've heard using 'colourblind' unironically, I'm very confident that is what they intend it to mean. I'm very confident Kwarks critique applies to everyone using that descriptor. It addresses your modification in the part of the quote you cut out. I don't think so. Because Show nested quote +"Willfully choosing not to see that society is treating people of different races differently is racism, even if you lie about not even knowing that there are other races." is describing how a system or how general society is treating a group of people. Whereas, when people say 'I am colourblind', they are not making a societal claim, but they are making a claim (again, perhaps inelegantly) about how they as an individual treat other individuals. Colourblind policies are another matter.
Like Tomi Lahren, the 'colourblind' millenial Republican show host who never stops talking about Black Lives Matter and kneeling football players?
Interesing 'coincidence' there...
|
On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds.I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert.
Sorry to start this up again but where did you get this from? A few pages back people were saying the opposite.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
