Tag: Donald Trump
Thursday 12/29/16
Wednesday 10/26/16
Sunday 9/4/16
Dormition 2016
Things that frustrate me about the 2016 election
Here begins a collection of “things that frustrate me about the 2016 election.” It may continue for the next 12.5 weeks.
One is that one of my usual litmus tests for sanity has gone haywire. The New York Times Editorial Board is against Trump, but that’s a pretty obviously sane position for a change, because of the unprecedentedly abysmal character of the Republic nominee.
A second is that you cannot really nail down the contemptible meaning of a Trump incitement. I thank the often-scatological lawblogger Popehat for this insight, which came from his single use of the adjective “Joycean” to describe Trump’s language:
Trump’s staff quickly issued a press release saying that this comment was merely a reference to the vigorous political activism of Second Amendment fans, not to violence. I express no opinion about what Trump “meant”: I think trying to parse his Joycean ramblings is usually pointless.
An academic thinks he’s nailed it down, but ….
A third is that Trumpistas revel in the second, failing to realize that they, too, cannot rely on their interpretation of his Joycean ramblings to say “he stands for this-or-that.” The case for Trump remains, unbroken in my critical reading of innumerable apologias, that (a) he’s not Hillary and (b) he is a man, love him or loathe him, of great accomplishments based on toughness. Which leads to …
Fourth: the growing conviction that the entire Trump persona is a fraud. From the billions to the satyriasis to the magnificent contribution to the economy by employing tens of thousands to the whole sneering “what did your candidate ever do to compare with His Awesomeness?,” I increasingly think Trump is a myth of his own making — a man who is perfect for reality TV (and that’s no compliment).
As Mary McCarty said of Lillian Hellman, “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Yet here I sit worrying about the political meaning of this or that Joycean utterance of a Potemkin Candidate of whom nothing can be said to be real, true or reliable except (a) not Hillary and (b) the self-promotion.
Take a gander at this story about his deposition in a lawsuit:
It was a mid-December morning in 2007 — the start of an interrogation unlike anything else in the public record of Trump’s life.
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable — cornered, out-prepared and under oath.
Thirty times, they caught him.
Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove ….
Fifth, the fourth may make him the apotheosis of the United States, 2016.
Sixth, is that I might have to reconsider voting for Hillary (“She’s Less Abnormal!”) Clinton if the perfect storm arises:
- Indiana’s vote is in play. I fear that this may happen. Obama took the state in 2008. We’re pretty reliably red, but with Trump, all bets are off.
- The nation is in play to the extent that Indiana’s electors may matter to the outcome. This may be where I escape the feared fate.
I’m not sure, even then, that I could bring myself to vote for her, not because of her persona, or her dishonesty, or her grifting, but because she actually has coherent positions to which she is credibly committed but which are variously perverse (“free college!”) or even evil (“abortion, publicly funded, now and forever!”).
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“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)
Thursday, 7/28/16
Just politics
For those conservatives who wish to survive the election principles intact, however, the choices are really only two: Hold your nose and vote Trump to stop Hillary, or do not vote for president at all.
(Jeremy Boreing) I point out this dogmatic pronouncement to note the imaginative failure of the author.
Third party, Mr. Boreing, third party. If ever there was a year to say “We’re fed up with two corrupt parties and aren’t going to take it any more,” this is it.
It has been several weeks now, which is an eternity in our rapid news cycle, but it still sticks in my craw that a Muslim hot head (and possible closet queen) can go on a mass murder rampage against gays in Orlando and the instant reaction of the most influential newspaper in the country, if not in the world, is to ask Have Christians Created a Harmful Atmosphere for Gays?
In this space was snippets of people defending or excoriating Ted Cruz for getting up at the Convention and conspicuously not endorsing Trump. Was it heroic principle or boorish manners? It got to be overwhelming and muddy.
There are conservative Trump opponents who nevertheless think Cruz behaved badly, not just Trump supporters. If you care, you’ve probably seen plenty of conflicting spins, but here are most that I read:
David Harsanyi
Rod Dreher
Daniel Larison
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Michael Brendan Dougherty:
Peggy Noonan
Patrick J. Buchanan
I am very, very distressed by the situation in our country. I believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a catastrophe for the thing I care about most: religious liberty. Yet I believe a Trump presidency would be a different kind of catastrophe, one that would, among other things, make war more likely. (For example, even though I believe it was foolish to bring all those countries on Russia’s borders into NATO, I think it is foolish for Trump to put NATO’s security guarantees to them up for grabs. If Trump is sworn in, I foresee Putin sending tanks into the Baltics soon thereafter.) One of the core reasons that I am a conservative is fear of the mob. It’s why I loathe and despise what Black Lives Matter and other SJWs do on campuses, and this week, what Republicans aligned with Trump have been doing in Cleveland and beyond. American politics has entered a stage where the passions of the mob increasingly rule both sides, because emotional extremism is rewarded. I want no part of any of it.
Though we knew it was coming, many of us still can’t quite get our heads around the news. The same mindless media cycle that helped propel Trump to this place seems to dilute the truth somehow, making it all seem to exist in a virtual land of non-reality. Melania plagiarized her speech! Trump still can’t form a complete sentence! LOL!
But it’s real, and it’s not funny.
The Republican Party holds majorities in both houses of Congress and record numbers of gubernatorial offices and state legislatures. The last thing it needed to achieve near-unprecedented levels of control of government was the White House, and amazingly, the Democratic Party is about to nominate Hillary Clinton, its most unpopular nominee ever. But instead of nominating any of the countless Republican candidates who would have won against Clinton, the GOP chose the one candidate American hates more than it hates her. A man who embodies the qualities of both a carnival barker and low-rent Mussolini at once.
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“In learning as in traveling and, of course, in lovemaking, all the charm lies in not coming too quickly to the point, but in meandering around for a while.” (Eva Brann)
Thursday, 7/7/16
News you can’t use
Flash! This just in! A Charismatic Magazine says that James Dobson says that an anonymous businessman says that Donald Trump (says he?) fairly recently did something invisible, unverifiable, and equivocal that makes him part of The Tribe now.
And you can take that to the bank ballot box.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this humorously, but I think a direct approach is best: If Donald Trump was not the presumptive Republican nominee for President, his complete lack of mastery of the approved argot and the absence of any visible change in his life would be judged conclusive proof that his conversion is fake. There would be no “baby Christian” waving away of objections to his utter inability to articulate even the most basic Christian doctrine, like “sin” or the personal necessity of “repentance” (at least once).
That would not be fair, but neither was it fair for most of my life when Evangelicals at a minimum questioned the authenticity of Christian faith of anyone who couldn’t master the shibboleths — which ironically would exclude from the tribe virtually all saints through the ages. Sadly, I played that game myself.
Heck, if you took a Saint from before 1800 and plopped him down in an Evangelical church, he would have no idea that he was in a “church,” or that this assault on the eyes and ears is what they call “worship” now.
I should have seen this coming clearly. You can’t “help Trump more convincingly pretend to be an observant Christian” among Evangelicals without an “accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior” story.
These days (as in the last 20 years or so), I put virtually no stock in “accepted Jesus” stories, not because they’re exactly false, but because they are about as weak an endorsement, standing alone, as “he said he’d respect her in the morning.” Remember Eldridge Cleaver and Robert Allen Zimmerman? Remember when “born-again” Dubya announced as national policy the eradication of tyranny in the world?
If I were really convinced that Donald Trump had prayed the magic sinner’s prayer, meant it when he said it, and uncharacteristically did not change his mind the next day, it would make me maybe 5% likelier to vote for him than I am now (i.e., 1.05%). But if Trump’s elected President, I will pray for him as I pray for Barack Obama and would pray for Hillary Clinton if she should be elected.
You may insert “God forbid” into both options.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
