April 16, 2011
More thoughts on Donald Trump (in light of Mark Levin's Friday program on Trump's various opinions of presidents), and my AT article yesterday.
I received a good bit of mail yesterday on the Mark Levin show, regarding former statements of Trump's. These seeming Trump flip-flops were also featured on the Drudge Report. I also listened to Trump on Rush's show yesterday.
I must confess, as I hoped to at the start of my article yesterday, that I really do not know nearly all there is to know about Donald Trump. And, of course, I follow Mark Levin faithfully, as I, too, regard his voice as one of the most thoughtful and accurate of our age.
From what I have been able to gather, Donald Trump has not been, through the course of his life, a particularly ideological, nor what many of us would consider a fervent patriot or political observer. And, from what I have observed myself, Trump has a known proclivity for speaking his mind with nary an ounce of regard for what others may think. Now, these may be terrible qualities in what one considers "presidential" behavior, and that is a matter for each individual voter to determine.
However, I don't particularly hold Trump in low regard because he has, in the past, spouted off about this or that president's policies at a given moment. I, personally, think there is societal danger in our present habit of giving every word ever uttered by prominent people equal weight. This demonstrates, in my opinion, a disregard for the logic we like to be known for, in that looking at the circumstances, the occasion of the words spoken and the events on the table at the current moment, all have bearing on what exactly that person said. I, too, am sometimes guilty of those "gotcha" moments and do tend, to my own regret, on occasion, to use one's ill-uttered, offhand statements against those with whom I politically disagree.
Alas, this is another symptom of our frayed civilizational bearings. Decades ago, we killed civics and replaced it with politics. We shall reap the rotten harvest of this national folly for generations, I fear.
I actually know a number of men, very successful entrepreneurs and businessmen, much like Donald Trump. They aren't political animals; they are American builders of enterprise.
These people have gotten such a shaft in public politicking for so long, they literally despise politics. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't make great leaders for America. We used to believe that these were the sorts of citizen-leaders we wanted for our government. Alas, politics has gone from public service as a temporary sacrifice for the Country's benefit to a get-rich-off-the-public, full-time career. The situation has become so contorted from the original citizen-statesmanship model that now professional politicians don't even just get rich off the public during their tenures, but turn elected office into lifelong post-electoral dynasty-building enterprises. Think Carter, Clinton, Gore and soon to be followed by Obama. Throw in every federal, high-level bureaucrat or appointed official who becomes a lobbyist or media personality, and the list is nearly infinite.
Anyone, with an outside-the-career-politician model is now seen by all those within this model (including the media, the lobbyists, the political operatives) as a huge threat to their monopoly on government. Therefore, I take everything said by both career politicians and those that feed at the teat of year-round, full-time politics, with an ample grain of salt.
Now, back to Donald Trump. I doubt, sincerely, that I would cast my vote for him. (However, if things keep going the way they are now, I just might.) On the other hand, I am delighted to see him stirring the pot on all issues that face our Country. I am happy to see him make mincemeat of those who have closely guarded the "acceptable" messages of both political parties. And I think it is a truly dangerous thing when those who disagree with someone's stated opinion fail to respond to the issues and arguments brought forth, and instead, rush to denounce the person as a "clown," a veritable nincompoop and a disgrace to the Country.
These are all just different faces of the same "card," which states, "We don't have an answer to that, so we will trump your argument with a hissy fit." Think the "race card," the "gender card," the "fill-in-the-blank phobia" card, the "hate-speech card," the "idiot" card, the "religious" card, which are all very simplistic emotional triggers that have no bearing whatsoever on the facts at hand. These are just ancient female-wile type tactics, which attempt to throw reason on its head by going outside the domain of reason into pure, unbridled passion and emotionalism. If allowed to continue, we will most likely die due to one inexplicable, uncontrollable, non-stop hissy fit. But that is another topic for another day.
I do believe that since the Democratic Party has become a full-fledged socialist party, Republicans do a grave disservice to this Country by continuing to believe that this is not the case and that Democrats can be compromised with, in the matter of just how fast they get us to the end goal of complete socialist utopia. I truly believe that it is insane to continue to pursue the same policies which have literally destroyed the once-great Western European democracies. The Tea Party movement, in my opinion, is merely the long-awaited response by true Americans to the 60s radical-communist takeover of the Democratic Party, which began in the late 60s (with the McGovern commission primary rules changes), and which has seen its culmination in the election of Barack Obama. Any Republican who does not understand this reality is, in my opinion, not only ignorant, but willfully blind.
For this reason, I think that Donald Trump serves the public interest by being willing to go outside the currently acceptable "box" of ideas, that he is bringing new ways of thinking into the mainstream and that all Americans -- other than the true Statists (Levin's word) among us -- ought to be sending Trump thank-you notes for this one thing alone.
I do believe that the Obama narrative is complete hogwash and that Republicans made a huge error in '08 by allowing it to stand. Sarah Palin, God bless her, tried her mightiest to go against this grain, but was held in check by the fraidy-cats in the McCain campaign who didn't want to be accused of racism. Well, we see how that turned out. In striking at the Obama narrative, I do believe Trump is onto something important, perhaps even crucial, in bringing the Obama house down in 2012. The narrative seems to be a support beam. And if it can take even a moderate hit in its foundation, then no one this side of heaven will be able to amass the turnout of die-hard Democrats necessary to take Obama to his second finish line. Trump does not need to destroy the narrative; no one does. But the narrative needs to be shown to be shaky at best, questionable in the least and that perhaps Obama got his symbolic "first black president" creds on faulty premises. Putting tarnish on the golden narrative is enough, in my opinion, to cause sufficient disillusionment among the Obama faithful to hamper turnout in 2012.
Didn't mean to ramble, but for me, the bottom line on Trump is that he is tapping into decades of frustration by thinking people (especially the men and women, who have built businesses in this country). Right now, as evidenced by the groundswell of the Tea Party movement, there is a critical mass of citizen frustration with the incompetency and short-term, self-interested thinking that has existed at the federal level, especially, for about a century now. Which is, in my opinion, why we see Trump's polling going through what any sentient observer would call the "roof." The more Trump gets mocked and slammed in hissy-fit fashion by establishment politicians and media elites, the more he surges in the minds of the frustrated populace.
Now, this is just my own 2 cents worth, mind you. It's certainly no holy grail, and I don't pretend that it is.
But these are things we need to be considering, again in my opinion, if we do want to save this Republic from the ash heap of civilization.
I received a good bit of mail yesterday on the Mark Levin show, regarding former statements of Trump's. These seeming Trump flip-flops were also featured on the Drudge Report. I also listened to Trump on Rush's show yesterday.
I must confess, as I hoped to at the start of my article yesterday, that I really do not know nearly all there is to know about Donald Trump. And, of course, I follow Mark Levin faithfully, as I, too, regard his voice as one of the most thoughtful and accurate of our age.
From what I have been able to gather, Donald Trump has not been, through the course of his life, a particularly ideological, nor what many of us would consider a fervent patriot or political observer. And, from what I have observed myself, Trump has a known proclivity for speaking his mind with nary an ounce of regard for what others may think. Now, these may be terrible qualities in what one considers "presidential" behavior, and that is a matter for each individual voter to determine.
However, I don't particularly hold Trump in low regard because he has, in the past, spouted off about this or that president's policies at a given moment. I, personally, think there is societal danger in our present habit of giving every word ever uttered by prominent people equal weight. This demonstrates, in my opinion, a disregard for the logic we like to be known for, in that looking at the circumstances, the occasion of the words spoken and the events on the table at the current moment, all have bearing on what exactly that person said. I, too, am sometimes guilty of those "gotcha" moments and do tend, to my own regret, on occasion, to use one's ill-uttered, offhand statements against those with whom I politically disagree.
Alas, this is another symptom of our frayed civilizational bearings. Decades ago, we killed civics and replaced it with politics. We shall reap the rotten harvest of this national folly for generations, I fear.
I actually know a number of men, very successful entrepreneurs and businessmen, much like Donald Trump. They aren't political animals; they are American builders of enterprise.
These people have gotten such a shaft in public politicking for so long, they literally despise politics. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't make great leaders for America. We used to believe that these were the sorts of citizen-leaders we wanted for our government. Alas, politics has gone from public service as a temporary sacrifice for the Country's benefit to a get-rich-off-the-public, full-time career. The situation has become so contorted from the original citizen-statesmanship model that now professional politicians don't even just get rich off the public during their tenures, but turn elected office into lifelong post-electoral dynasty-building enterprises. Think Carter, Clinton, Gore and soon to be followed by Obama. Throw in every federal, high-level bureaucrat or appointed official who becomes a lobbyist or media personality, and the list is nearly infinite.
Anyone, with an outside-the-career-politician model is now seen by all those within this model (including the media, the lobbyists, the political operatives) as a huge threat to their monopoly on government. Therefore, I take everything said by both career politicians and those that feed at the teat of year-round, full-time politics, with an ample grain of salt.
Now, back to Donald Trump. I doubt, sincerely, that I would cast my vote for him. (However, if things keep going the way they are now, I just might.) On the other hand, I am delighted to see him stirring the pot on all issues that face our Country. I am happy to see him make mincemeat of those who have closely guarded the "acceptable" messages of both political parties. And I think it is a truly dangerous thing when those who disagree with someone's stated opinion fail to respond to the issues and arguments brought forth, and instead, rush to denounce the person as a "clown," a veritable nincompoop and a disgrace to the Country.
These are all just different faces of the same "card," which states, "We don't have an answer to that, so we will trump your argument with a hissy fit." Think the "race card," the "gender card," the "fill-in-the-blank phobia" card, the "hate-speech card," the "idiot" card, the "religious" card, which are all very simplistic emotional triggers that have no bearing whatsoever on the facts at hand. These are just ancient female-wile type tactics, which attempt to throw reason on its head by going outside the domain of reason into pure, unbridled passion and emotionalism. If allowed to continue, we will most likely die due to one inexplicable, uncontrollable, non-stop hissy fit. But that is another topic for another day.
I do believe that since the Democratic Party has become a full-fledged socialist party, Republicans do a grave disservice to this Country by continuing to believe that this is not the case and that Democrats can be compromised with, in the matter of just how fast they get us to the end goal of complete socialist utopia. I truly believe that it is insane to continue to pursue the same policies which have literally destroyed the once-great Western European democracies. The Tea Party movement, in my opinion, is merely the long-awaited response by true Americans to the 60s radical-communist takeover of the Democratic Party, which began in the late 60s (with the McGovern commission primary rules changes), and which has seen its culmination in the election of Barack Obama. Any Republican who does not understand this reality is, in my opinion, not only ignorant, but willfully blind.
For this reason, I think that Donald Trump serves the public interest by being willing to go outside the currently acceptable "box" of ideas, that he is bringing new ways of thinking into the mainstream and that all Americans -- other than the true Statists (Levin's word) among us -- ought to be sending Trump thank-you notes for this one thing alone.
I do believe that the Obama narrative is complete hogwash and that Republicans made a huge error in '08 by allowing it to stand. Sarah Palin, God bless her, tried her mightiest to go against this grain, but was held in check by the fraidy-cats in the McCain campaign who didn't want to be accused of racism. Well, we see how that turned out. In striking at the Obama narrative, I do believe Trump is onto something important, perhaps even crucial, in bringing the Obama house down in 2012. The narrative seems to be a support beam. And if it can take even a moderate hit in its foundation, then no one this side of heaven will be able to amass the turnout of die-hard Democrats necessary to take Obama to his second finish line. Trump does not need to destroy the narrative; no one does. But the narrative needs to be shown to be shaky at best, questionable in the least and that perhaps Obama got his symbolic "first black president" creds on faulty premises. Putting tarnish on the golden narrative is enough, in my opinion, to cause sufficient disillusionment among the Obama faithful to hamper turnout in 2012.
Didn't mean to ramble, but for me, the bottom line on Trump is that he is tapping into decades of frustration by thinking people (especially the men and women, who have built businesses in this country). Right now, as evidenced by the groundswell of the Tea Party movement, there is a critical mass of citizen frustration with the incompetency and short-term, self-interested thinking that has existed at the federal level, especially, for about a century now. Which is, in my opinion, why we see Trump's polling going through what any sentient observer would call the "roof." The more Trump gets mocked and slammed in hissy-fit fashion by establishment politicians and media elites, the more he surges in the minds of the frustrated populace.
Now, this is just my own 2 cents worth, mind you. It's certainly no holy grail, and I don't pretend that it is.
But these are things we need to be considering, again in my opinion, if we do want to save this Republic from the ash heap of civilization.
