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Simple Solutions?
I just finished reading Kevin Williamson’s latest piece at NRO, The Stupid Psychopath Problem. Before I continue, I’d like you to have this Reagan quote in the back of your mind: “They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple.”
Williamson argues that Trump and people like Trump suffer from a severe case of what he calls “The Stupid Psychopath Problem:
The Stupid Psychopath Problem is the political distortion resulting from the fact that a great many people — some of them on barstools, some of them dangerously close to the levers of real power — believe that there are obvious, simple, straightforward solutions to complex problems such as the predations of the Islamic State or the woeful state of U.S. public finances, but that these solutions are not implemented because people in government are too soft, unwilling or unable to get tough and do what needs to be done.
I would argue that a simple solution to our national financial problems would be to borrow and spend less money. I happen to believe that some people on barstools might actually have some common sense that is severely lacking in people in Washington. I agree with William F. Buckley, that “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” Washington group-think could be a stand in for Harvard University in an updated version of that quote.
Williamson focuses the majority of his critique on his belief that Trump is unprepared to deal with Islamic terrorism in general and ISIS in particular:
Men such as Donald Trump, and a half a hundred million idiots just like him across the fruited plain, really believe that the reason we haven’t eliminated Islamic terrorism is that it never occurred to anybody in the federal government — including the people who run, e.g., the U.S. Special Operations Command — to get tough. These people imagine that the trained killers in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and the often ruthless men who oversee them in Washington, simply are not willing to do what it takes to win. What that means, these people have no idea, because they are unwilling to think very hard about these sorts of problems and generally have no experience themselves. Trump is famously a physical coward who lied to stay out of the military during the Vietnam war, and he knows nothing about foreign policy, national defense, or the workings of the military, which is why all we ever hear from him is “get tough” and “win.”
It’s hard to read this paragraph and then read this story about the Marine Corp, which rather makes the case that those who know how to defeat the enemy are not running our military:
Marines across the Corps will be challenged on their unconscious prejudices and presuppositions as women get the opportunity to become grunts for the first time.
I am not a foreign policy expert, but I do have some knowledge and common sense. Many Japanese wanted to continue the war even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were annihilated with atomic bombs. A similar type of fervor has been alive and well in the hearts of Islamic radicals for 1,400 years. The idea that our current strategy of drones, targeted precision attacks, think-tank discussions on hate, policy papers, and mass immigration will eventually defeat them for good does not have any basis in reality. In the meantime we should continue turning the military in to a blotted social justice project.
Williamson concludes his piece with this:
The problem is that while there is an effectively endless supply of stupid psychopaths, there is no secret cache of simple, straightforward solutions to complex problems just waiting in a filing cabinet somewhere in Washington until a sufficiently tough guy comes along willing to be as cruel and as vicious as the hour requires.
Kevin Williamson attacks Trump as a “witless ape” and a “stupid psychopath,” but he has become just as insufferable. It’s as if he thinks that we are just one more browbeating away from ridding ourselves of Trump.
Finally, returning to the Reagan quote and the question for the Ricochetti I opened this post with: Are there simple solutions to complex problems?
Published in Politics
That’s assuming American acquiescence and the ability to secure the island before a US carrier battle group arrives doesn’t it? From what I read about this a long time ago the plan is to develop weapons to effectively zone out any reinforcements to Taiwan.
I think that the US would probably back down but that’s not a given. The downside risks would be extremely high.
This. Williamson is often brilliant. I think his “U-haul” piece was especially good, and completely mis-read by many.
This is a ridiculous description of Williamson’s words. He certainly didn’t “condemn” the white working class, but rather, he did a masterful job of describing its problems, which are deep and depressing. He also didn’t “wish genocide” on anybody. Please stop the nonsense.
Concur – when you read it without a thin skin, all he is saying is that the reason your community isn’t doing well is that it is no longer economically viable.
Kind of like Detroit.
Sounds great. How? BTW–who exactly is them?
Outstanding!
Amazing. We still have people who think that if we were only tough enough, we would throw away all the rules of engagement, blow the Middle East into smithereens, and there, that would show them not to mess with us, etc. And we need only do something simple like adopt a balanced budget amendment so we will tax an spend less. These are the same people who tell us that Paul Ryan is a spendthrift liberal and a betrayer of True Conservatism.
Then we have people bemoaning the fact that National Review has through the years eliminated people like Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, and John Derbyshire, who each adopted the persistent habit of expressing loudly both nativist and unwise expressions that do not work in today’s political environment. Mark Steyn was not kicked out of NR, he walked away because of a disagreement over how to handle a legal situation.
The poster says, “Williamson focuses the majority of his critique on his belief that Trump is unprepared to deal with Islamic terrorism in general and ISIS in particular”
Er, hasn’t it been pretty well shown- by the words out of his own large mouth- that Donald Trump is unprepared to deal with much of anything relevant to the presidency? He has not even bothered- after three very public questioning opportunities- to learn the basics of the nuclear triad, or anything else regarding policy- which is the, you know, job for which he is auditioning.
Facts matter, policy matters.
My opinion obviously differs. I see an establishment that has continually failed to challenge the left, instead giving us an endless series of kabuki theater productions of no importance. For example, congressional hearings that get a lot of attention, yet never actually amount to anything- Jim Inhofe on the climate change scam, Trey Gowdy on Benghazi, Darrell Issa on various issues- all political failures.
I assure you the GOP has been working very hard to chase me out of their party for many years. They have now succeeded. And you should be able to discern the most infuriating party of Williamson’s screed by noting what I wrote about.
Thank you for providing me with an example of exactly the sort of PC non-criticism I was railing against earlier. I have retained a few snippets of Williamson’s most PC- soaked verbiage as examples to contrast against his loathing and contempt aimed at the dead-eyed janitors who infest flyoverland, lacking Ivy League degrees and a political party to represent them:
Of course, ymmv.
I refer you to my comment #70, freshly posted.
Well, yes. If you kill enough of our enemies the survivors will lose the desire to kill us, as well as the means. Please google “World War II.”
Also, I’d like rules of engagement that do not result in the prosecution of American soldiers because they shot at someone who was shooting at them, because that person was not wearing a uniform.
Because of late he has shown himself to be a spendthrift and a betrayer.
Thank you for providing a real, live example of how politically correct modern day Republicans usual are.
True. It isn’t really about Trump, a rather awful candidate in most ways.
It’s about the shocking miserable failure of the Republican party, whose incompetence has by design left myriads without representation, leading to a vast yawning gap filled by Trump.
The party should have been paying attention to the base, instead of simply assuming that they would always show up.
Too late now.
Well, if you’re going to clip out all the fun stuff — e.g., “black Americans never seem to get tired of being condescended to or being used as props by dopey and sanctimonious white political careerists such as Senator Sanders and, more important, Mrs. Clinton” — then of course it comes off that way.
Read the above, folks. The perfect example. Joe Sobran and John Derbyshire as victims of National Review’s “surrender to political correctness” rather than their own VDare-worthy stupid statements. Forget Petraeus’ counterinsurgency manual, just do LeMay carpet bombing. Bludgeon, no detailed factual look at the actual situations, sort of like those who rail non-stop against RomneyCare while knowing absolutely nothing about that other than slogans about entitlements.
Sobran and Derb are (“were” for Sobran) two of my favorite writers. I read the piece for which Derbyshire was sent packing, and still find nothing wrong with it, though I’m capable of being argued out of that opinion.
Maybe NR thought they would save their magazine and web site for the bigger, longer-range battle with the left by booting Derb, but Derb seemed to be honestly writing the truth, and with too little of that, we’ll lose the battle. Someone has to continue speaking the truth, opinion to the contrary be damned.
Here’s an example: store owners and landlords have a right, and should be free, to refuse hiring and renting for any reason that does not breach some contract, even if it’s a racist reason. No one has a right to a job or an apartment. Period.
I suppose, but I did note that ymmv…
Thank you for providing yet another sterling example of the reflexive political correctness of the mainstream so-called conservative movement.
You’ve hit all the high notes- the nasty hostility aimed at people on your own side, the typical accusations of ignorance simply because people disagree with you, the silly implied assertions that you know better made laughable because you haven’t even managed to notice that your side has been failing miserably.
If I was attempting to write a parody I couldn’t have come up with anything better.
You’re a real man of genius, and I salute you.
Oh, I agree that no one has a right to a job or an apartment, something that Derb should have remembered; and it was WFB who wisely let Sobran go. Was WFB a disloyal establishment hack? Was it bad that NR cut ties with ultimate determinist Steve Sailer? Or was WFB a smart man who recognized reality about expressive life being unfair to the Right?
This is the same thing that the “alt.right” needs to remember- when the other side has the megaphone, we don’t get two chances to tell our story. Fair? No. Nuances lost? Yup. That means we need to be smart, even if we’d get emotional satisfaction from being sassy.
Read the above, folks. Another very good example, railing against reality while pretending it is not reality. Life and politics aren’t fair- we need to be smart about strategy and tactic, not throw three-year-old temper tantrums over the unfairness of it all.