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James Taranto, Best of the Web column on the Wall Street
Journal site:
If
you’d told us in 2013, when we identified the problem of liberal-left
authoritarianism, that Donald Trump would be the solution, we’d have laughed
along with everyone else. But he was probably a necessary corrective. The left
has waged asymmetric political warfare, routinely traducing the same norms is
was demanding its opponents respect. Trump beat them at their own game, and
that might have been the only way it could be done.
8 comments:
You know, Schneiderman, it's interesting that you post that. I'm a big Taranto fan, though I usually save his columns for a lazy Sunday lunch. But he's right.
Just yesterday, I was reading about Pence's response to the "Hamilton" debacle. And, as always, Mike Pence was the perfect gentleman, the voice of reason, an honorable man. And that is exactly the problem.
Mike Pence was urged to run for President in 2016. And thank heaven he didn't. The Clinton hate machine would have eaten him alive, just like the Obama innuendo machine smeared the smiling, affable, unflappable uber-technocrat, Mitt Romney.
Of the 17 Republicans out of the gate, Trump is the only one that could possibly have beaten Clinton in the Rust Belt. And he is the only one, if he chooses to, who can begin to drain the swamp. Because he was, and is, the only one who knows they're in a war, and not in a political debate. Trump is a dirty fighter and a counterpuncher. There's an old military chestnut that goes something like this: "If you find yourself in a fair fight, somebody f***ed up."
Trump strikes back like a rattler. And that attitude is exactly the right prescription for survival in that den of serpents called DC.
Indeed. I said it before, and I'll say it again: intelligent, respectable and reasonable Republican candidates have no chance -- not a single chance -- at taking on the mainstream media juggernaut that serves as the communications directive of the Democrat Party.
You cannot fight a conventional war against asymmetric resistance unless you wage a brutal, scorched-earth total war to exact unconditional surrender. It is impossible. This is why we have soldiers trapped in horrid places all over the globe. If we go in, we have to go in to win.
Republicans can learn from this, instead of the listening to the sniveling of Kristol, Hayes, Williamson, Brooks, Will, et al. Today's fight needs a voice, not a pen.
TW's absolutely right: Republicans have to get out of the country club cocktail lounge and scrap for what they claim they want. Because Democrats and the Left will fight it out on every block, house-to-house. You wanna fight that kind of a war? You have to, if you want to win. America is divided because we have a Grand Canyon-sized rift in values and what kind of nation we have been, are and will be. As long as we cow to the "narrative," we will be impotent and emasculated in the face of the Left's hysterical insanity. It starts with one word: "No." What Pence faced at "Hamilton" the other night was nothing new -- ambush-style nutty civil disobedience (absent of any standard of decorum or boundary) has been going on since the 1960's. Our side continues to lose ground. Trump's support embodies the will to fight back.
Respectable bearing in the face of intentional, coordinated attack is not viewed as respectable. It's viewed as weakness. It does not impress people on the other side, only your own. And we wonder why we've lost ground. We live in a nihilistic age, and we're trying to fight back with solemn, intellectual replies. It doesn't work.
The Rust Belt Revolt is real. Take the gains and build. When we give away our nation's manufacturing capacity/capability, we give away our wealth. D.C. is sucking up resources we don't have, and mortgaging our grandchildren's future. They follow the Nietzschean will to power. You cannot bargain with them... their needs are unscrupulous and insatiable. We have to drain the swamp. Enough is enough.
The battle is real. Time to man-up and act like it.
From the cast of "Hamilton" to Mike Pence:
"“(W)e are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values.”
Another artistic profession so fully controlled by a single political ideology that it might as well be totalitarian. Ah, the sanctimony. The smugness. The moral magnificence.
They're children.
IAC,
Along those lines: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hamilton-and-the-implosion-of-the-american-left/2016/11/21/acc6a45c-aff8-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html?postshare=7091479743094527&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.6a0e8c8e49b1#comments
What's remarkable to watch is the behavior of the victor's voters and supporters these last two weeks. There's something quietly powerful happening "out there."
There is a key difference with Trump's victory en lieu of Obama's. There were not large crowds in public spaces like Grant Park in Chicago, having some group liturgy. There were no photos of Trump supporters weeping openly with joy. There was no universal media euphoria. Headlines did not speak of the end of some giant social ill. Students in schools aren't sucking up time and energy in the classroom carrying on about how much this means to them as a _____-American person. There is no mass catharsis.
It is a stunning contrast, really. No lofty goals, no "end of history" proclamations, no vanquishing of gargantuan social ills, no chanting about saving spaceship Earth. No talk of some messiah figure, draped in Oprahesque titles like "The One."
Trump voters want to be able to make a living and take care of their families. It's not that difficult to understand. It's a cause very close to home, because it is home. It's about community, based on a city or town, not some label or gaggle of malcontents. It's about skilled tradesmen or manufacturing workers who want work, not slogans about how great it's going to be when we inoculate society against countless social ills. Trump's win is parochial... it is insular in many ways. Let's take care of ourselves first. Charity begins at home.
It's refreshing.
I have two cats, Miles and Misty and Miles has now decided to stand in front of the computer screen and tap dance on the key board.
It would seem to me that Trump uses occasions like Hamilton to further cement in his supporters minds that they were right to vote for him. There is no way that he even considered or expected and an apology, but why look a gift horse in the mouth when the Left is willing to help him prove who they are as intolerant people. As David Burge states, "I'm telling lefties this as a favor: Many people voted for Trump reluctantly and with a tinge of regret. /1" "What you're doing right now simply confirms they made the right choice. 2/."
The arts are a perfect metaphor for why most supposed artists never understand the ramifications of their actions. In order to be a truly good artist one has to live in that part of their mind that is emotive at the expense of their more rational side. It is the "Child" where creativity resides. Mozart anyone. Also why I enjoyed being call a child by feminists.
As an aside, the more rational I became the slower jazz ideas would happen. This was also true with speed. Analysis leads to paralysis. This explains why the Arts community, in many cases, does not function in the real world very well. Idealism always trumps realism. Depending on how one defines smart this is not a good thing for it is the audience that determines their success.
Every action by the Left denotes why they should not be in power. My one true fear is that in their desire for power they would start a civil war in which they would be the big losers. I would ask, "How many people are you willing to watch die in your quest for power? Do you really think that those who protect us should be summarily executed? Fact: Black Policemen are more likely to kill Black perpetrators.
Much of Trump's victory is built on the growing frustration with government that has been building over the last 10 to 20 years. It either finds a release valve in Trump or it proceeds to its ultimate conclusion which would not do any of us any good.
I know this is a waste of time, but please start thinking and not emoting.
Dennis @november 22, 2016 at 6:05 AM:
"Much of Trump's victory is built on the growing frustration with government that has been building over the last 10 to 20 years. It either finds a release valve in Trump or it proceeds to its ultimate conclusion which would not do any of us any good."
Outstanding, Dennis! Truly.
Dennis: It would seem to me that Trump uses occasions like Hamilton to further cement in his supporters minds that they were right to vote for him. There is no way that he even considered or expected and an apology, but why look a gift horse in the mouth when the Left is willing to help him prove who they are as intolerant people.
IAC: From the cast of "Hamilton" to Mike Pence: ... Another artistic profession so fully controlled by a single political ideology that it might as well be totalitarian. Ah, the sanctimony. The smugness. The moral magnificence. They're children.
So which is it? Are the Hamilton actors intolerant, or are they children asking for comfort?
Is it wrong to feel afraid when someone like Trump acts like an asshole and gets elected president of the United States? But it may be Pence's intolerance via his religious convictions, that only he knows best what's right for other people's preferences, that's a legitimate and yet hidden concern from most Americans, and he might be running things more that figure head Trump.
Myself, I'm still of the opinion that 2020 is the more dangerous election than 2016. And had Trump lost the Right would have simply found an even more unfit character to lead us, and at least there are no big issues that a President Trump has to face at the moment. He can play in the sand for a while with luck before anything really serious.
Trump for all his bluster is still a pussycat, desiring to be loved, solving world problems by is magnificence alone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/opinion/donald-trumps-demand-for-love.html
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The Trump who visited The Times was purged of any zeal to investigate Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation, willing to hear out the scientists on global warming, skeptical of waterboarding and unhesitant to disavow white nationalists. He never mentioned the border wall.
He more or less told us to disregard all the huffing and puffing he’d done about curtailing press freedoms, and he looked forward to another meeting — a year from now — when we’d all reunite in a spirit of newfound amity to celebrate his administration’s uncontroversial accomplishments. I could see the big group hug. I could hear “Kumbaya.”
And though one of his splenetic tweets just seven hours before our meeting had again branded The Times a “failing” news organization, he said to our faces that we weren’t just a “great, great American jewel” but a “world jewel.”
There was a lesson here about his desire to be approved of and his hunger to be loved. There was another about the shockingly unformed, pliable nature of the clay that is our 70-year-old president-elect.
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It was as if he’d never really thought through the issue during that endless campaign, and it suggested that the most influential voice in Trumplandia is the last one he happened to listen to. That’s worrying, because some of the voices he has thus far put closest to him — those of Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions — aren’t the most constructive, restrained, unifying ones.
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And to my eyes and ears, Trump still has grandiose intentions in lieu of concrete plans. Toward the end of our meeting, he went so far as to prophesy that he might be able to accomplish what his predecessors couldn’t and broker a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
That’d definitely do the trick. We’d all be writing nothing but very, very good stuff about him then.
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