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On Trump, Shepherds and Wolves
The Shepherd Boy & the Wolf
A Shepherd Boy tended his master’s Sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found life in the pasture very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd’s pipe.
One day as he sat watching the Sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a Wolf, he thought of a plan to amuse himself.
His Master had told him to call for help should a Wolf attack the flock, and the Villagers would drive it away. So now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a Wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, “Wolf! Wolf!”
As he expected, the Villagers who heard the cry dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the Boy doubled up with laughter at the trick he had played on them.
A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, “Wolf! Wolf!” Again the Villagers ran to help him, only to be laughed at again.
Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep.
In terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” But though the Villagers heard the cry, they did not run to help him as they had before. “He cannot fool us again,” they said.
The Wolf killed a great many of the Boy’s sheep and then slipped away into the forest.
I was a Reluctant Trump voter. Very reluctant. I voted for him only because Hillary was a still worse choice. I feared he would hurt down-ballot Republican candidates. I voted for him certain Hillary would win. I also viewed Trump as the Republican Obama. That if he did win he would reprise the Obama behavior of viewing the Presidency as an elective absolute monarchy, and serving as the President of only those who elected him. I won; you lost. Get over it.
Turns out I was wrong about a lot. Trump won – pretty handily. We had a Republican wave election. The Republicans hold both chambers of Congress, most of the state legislatures, and picked up three governorships. What seats were lost in the House and Senate were lost due to demographics (Illinois) or potential vote fraud (New Hampshire). Trump gave a gracious acceptance speech pledging to be President for those who voted against him as well as those who voted for him. The majority of his picks for his cabinet and staff seem reasonable.
I spent 30 years doing space navigation. I would take observations and predict where things were going. Generally the more observations I had the more accurate the prediction got. Every once in a while my predicted trajectory went bad – sometimes very bad. It usually meant erroneous data or assumptions had been introduced into the solution. The only thing you could do was dump the solution, dump the data, and start over with new data going forward.
That is what I did after Election Day. I dumped every previous assumption and observation about Trump, and started building a new set of observations. It may be my original conclusions he would make a bad President will eventually be proven right. Equally it may be I was very wrong about that, and he turns out to be a good – or even great – President. At this point I lack the observations to know which trajectory we will take.
Which takes me to the Aesop’s Fable at the top of this conversation. A lot of #nevertrump and #reluctanttrump folks seem unwilling to let go of their negative feelings towards Trump. I understand that. They remain convinced Trump will be an unmitigated disaster. I understand that, too. They may be right. At this point I lack the data to make a conclusion, but unmitigated disaster (like absolute triumph) lies within the solution space as of today.
However, many of them seem to be snapping at every negative anti-Trump story peddled by a hostile media, and putting it forward as a reason why all Right-Thinking Conservatives (in both senses of right-thinking) need to immediately and vocally disavow Donald Trump. The problem is most of these stories turn out to be more fury than substance. Many fall into the category of spoon-banging by a media furious at Trump’s election. (No – Donald Trump is not a homophobe. His chief strategist is not anti-Semitic. There is nothing improper about ditching the press for a family meal. And so on.)
There will come a day when we need credible critics of Donald Trump to point out where he is erring. (And to offer suggested mitigations . . . other than resign immediately.) Those who continue fussing about non-issues, especially those immediately seizing the media’s outrage de jour committed by Trump to club Trump and his supporters will not be credible when that day comes. Everyone will tune them out because they have cried wolf too many times previously.
The wolf will be among the flock, and no one will heed the warning.
I am not saying never criticize Trump. Rather, pick your fights carefully. Make sure it is a fight worth having, and make sure the facts are on your side. Especially that. Flog false narratives enough times and you will be ignored.
When people stated Trump fights, my initial response was “so did the French knights at Cressy and Agincourt.” It turns out Trump fights more like Grant than the French knights. But his critics are also in danger of behaving like the French of the 100 Years War.
The next time the press releases a negative story about Trump, please view it skeptically even (or perhaps especially) if it confirms your worst fears about Trump. At least one contributor has worried publically about Russian disinformation without considering the damage done by mainstream media disinformation. If you do not, when you are most right and we most need to listen, no one will listen.
Seawriter
Published in General
Well said, although my reluctance was diminishing well before November. I have generally followed the same trajectory as you, and for many of the same reasons.
I have also noted that many professional commentators mistake his tendency to say different things on the same topic in public as instability. In fact this is a behavior pattern typical with powerful and successful business builders (broadly defined). This sort of person tends to think out loud. The successful ones do so to gauge reaction from others (they don’t want yes-men, or to live in a bubble), and also to be sure all the options are tested, even the “crazy” ones. Political folks, commentators and writers are used to all of this happening in quiet and behind the scenes. They don’t have the experience of interacting with big entrepreneurs/business-builders.
Hear, hear!
Very good post.
At some point ( a lot earlier) I began to see the real DJT and we will see more.
It does show how some of these folks have TDS though, and have already lost credibility. There are still many others who remain objective, myself included, I hope…
I remember several people in my surrounding circles being up in arms when a picture of Obama surfaced with his feet up on the desk on the Oval Office. They said it showed that he didn’t appreciate this country, didn’t respect the office, etc. My argument was that in the grand scheme of his tenure, this should be the least of their worries. Sure, it may show a lack of manners, as my mother would have swatted at my legs for doing that in her home, but it shouldn’t have been seen as indictment upon his time as our president. He had plenty of actual problems that could do that. Making issues out of things like that is what made it hard for him to be held accountable when he actually did senseless things like golfing while Americans were being executed by terrorists.
This describes me, too, pretty much.
I have observed before that the skills required to campaign are different from those required to govern. I see it as a basic flaw in our system; we elect people who are good at getting elected.
My — ‘hope’ is too strong a word — hypothetical somewhat optimistic alternative is that Trump may understand this and is able to use campaign skills for campaigning and will now switch to management skills for executing the office.
Mine also. But I plan to stand back and gather more data before I come to any conclusions.
Seawriter
Trump is fully capable of being a sober and strong leader. I’ve seen him in action.
He now is wearing his serious executive hat.
The MSM did a terrific job of showing us his worst side exclusively.
They are trying to keep the negative narrative going and it smacks of desperation.
Now America will soon see a “different ” Trump. But he’s been there all along.
Excellent post. I just recommended it.
But you’re an editor! How does that work exactly?
Let me say, as one of those people who remains in opposition to Trump and thinks that both he, and Steve Bannon, are cretins:
Dark arts best not discussed…
This entire paragraph is hokum. Our reticence to remain off the bandwagon and keep vigilant watch over the man has nothing to do with feelings, and it is not motivated in any way by stories from the hostile press that daily beclowns itself by what you accurately describe as spoon-banging. We are taking the approach you recommend, save dumping known good data points. We are incorporating the new data such as his well given victory speech and reasonable personnel choices into our evaluation of him. We are adjusting course based on both the new data and the proven old data. Winning the election may have miraculously changed his character in its entirety, but it will take way more than a week to prove such an event.
I don’t think I was talking about you. I am talking about those snapping after those stories like trout after a tied fly and posting them as coversations demanding Immediate Action. Skepticism is good. Blind opposition? Not so much.
Seawriter
More likely: if he exhibits a changed public character, the campaigner-character was largely an act. If so, it worked.
Agreed.
But the campaign character is the type of character he seems to have demonstrated his whole life. I can’t say for certain because I never gave two craps about the guy until last year. This is an aspect of the matter on which I have limited data.
Me, too. We will both have more information by January 2017, when the new Congress is sworn in. I prefer to accumulate data until then.
Seawriter
All I want at Ricochet is for posters who are angry or scared not to resort to name calling. Trump supporters like me are not stupid, many of us have advanced degrees and I do not appreciate anti-Trumpers who express their fear of the Trump Administration in terms of nasty name-calling.
I still advocate for not throwing out the old until we have the new. We should always be skeptical of politicians, especially our own because they get their stink on us.
Agreed. I don’t think I have resorted to name-calling towards Trump supporters in the past. My concerns were rooted more in terms of his policies than rather than his personality. I would not hold him out as a role-model, but any ethical shortcomings Trump has when compared to Hillary put him in the apprentice category to Hillary’s grand master status. His words – her deeds.
I also understand Trump supporters disagree with me. That is fine. I would suggest they emulate George Washington in New Jersey rather than Santa Anna in Zacatecas when dealing with those who disagree with them.
Seawriter
Sea,
You are honest and honorable. Your advice is well taken. As for the wolf, if we get a real wolf at our door we’ll be forced to take matters into our own hands. If we follow your advice we’ll be ready for that too. Probably if we really start to concentrate on moving this country forward there will be no need for this.
Regards,
Jim
I have also been thinking of the boy who cried wolf.
But with Trump what really happened, is the villagers got tired of the little sheppards boys bs, so the villagers went off in the woods. Found the biggest meanest wolf they could find. Captured him, held him in a cage, starved him, poked at him with a stick and sang off key. Then they took that wolf down to the meadow and released the wolf, “yelling get him! Get that lying little *blank*!!!”
Trump is that Wolf.
I agree. I am curious to see if his prior public persona (after all, I never saw — or cared to see — his private persona) was (also) an act and if he can now drop it. I suppose if he can just fake a serious mien, that might work also. Time will tell.
One concern I am trying not to have is based on my memories of Nixon’s intentional political strategy of preempting liberal policies to defuse them as campaign issues. His organization actually bragged about this. Hence: affirmative action (we used to call them ‘Califano points’), EPA, etc.
Those of us without advanced degrees – or any degrees at all – don’t appreciate it either.
It’s been weird to hear myself spoken of so often of late: “uneducated white”, but apparently you can thank (or condemn) me and my ilk for our president-elect.
Great post @seawriter.
Amen! Seawriter. What a well-reasoned, persuasive post. Thank you.
I don’t think that Trump won handily, or that this was a wave election. It was a close election at the federal level.
Figures are not final yet. Wikipedia shows Trump losing the popular vote 46.7% to 47.8%. We don’t yet know who won Michigan (Wikipedia shows Trump leading 47.6% to 47.3%). It appears that a swing of about 67,000 votes, in key states, would have given a Clinton victory.
You can get this 67,000 figure in two different ways. (1) Clinton wins MI and FL (current margins about 7,000 and 120,000, a total of 133,000), or (2) Clinton wins MI, WI, and PA (current margins about 7,000, 27,000, and 73,000, also a total of 133,000). That is less than 0.05% of the total votes cast (over 125 million).
In the Senate, the Republicans will probably hold 52 seats. That’s not much of a wave.
In the House, the Republicans will probably hold around 239 seats, the the Democrats’ 193. The popular house vote is around 50%-47%. A good result, but not much of a wave.
OK, my math was wrong above. Clinton willing MI, WI, and PA would have required a swing of about 62,000 votes, as the total margin was about 123,000 (7,000, 27,000, and 73,000).
Exceeded all expectations and he’s got momentum. And the other side is freaking out.
Big enough wave for me and I’ll warrant a big enough wave to make a difference.
290 to 306 electoral votes is winning handily. It is winning the World Series in six games.
The Republicans picked up three governorships, Republicans control both chambers of the legislature in 32 states, and Democrats now control the governor’s mansion and the legislature in five states. Despite defending 24 of 34 seats they lost only two – one in a deep blue state. What more do you want? To take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women?
Seawriter