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“I don’t forgive you, Jonah Goldberg,…”
“…because there is nothing to forgive.”
Jonah’s column today addresses whether a NeverTrumper needs to be forgiven. He doesn’t think so, and I agree. I voted for Trump, he didn’t. Trump won; thank G-d given the choice we had.
I don’t think Trump hung the moon and I don’t expect him to restore limited government. I do expect him to make mistakes, and I am hoping those mistakes are survivable. I do think we will be better able to assess what we will get on the 101st day of his administration than we are now. We are sitting at the starting line with engines revving and imagining how it will be. No one really knows.
2017 could be a really weird year. The one thing I am counting on is that Trump is determined to be consequential. I want that, too, because the headwinds from Democrats, academia, media, and the useful idiots and paid activists is going to be fierce. So at a level I think the Trump “true believers” (of which I am not one) will have an important role to play in sustaining the Trump momentum.
Jonah has legitimate fears about Donald Trump:
What I have chiefly in mind is that rich nexus of unrestrained ego, impoverished impulse control, and contempt for policy due diligence. I firmly and passionately believe that character is destiny. From his reported refusal to accept daily intelligence briefings to his freelancing every issue under the sun on Twitter — including, most recently, nuclear-arms policy — Trump’s blasé attitude troubles me deeply, just as it did during the campaign.
The sad truth is that people of sterling character rarely run for President, much less win. At a minimum they all must have egos that blind them to some manifest flaws. But as history has taught us this does not disqualify them from being heroes.
I am hopeful, but I am not expecting it to be pretty. As Jonah is a culture buff I commend to him the movie The Dirty Dozen. We need to secure the border, secure the Court, and re-establish the rule of law. But pocketbook issues will “trump” fidelity to constitutional reformation. So the Trump administration will not be a paragon of federalism and the Commerce Clause will continue to be abused. Conservatives will continue their sojourn in the wilderness, but hopefully will remain closer to the Promised Land. Under Hillary they would have been driven into the Red Sea.
Published in General
Yes, Moderator She, you have already scolded me for doing the polite thing and putting my criticism in my own post rather than taking over Rodin’s post. I was trying to be nice.
I was more concerned with being nice and not tromping on Rodin’s post, and with trying to keep the heat confined to my post, and did not consider the convenience of the Moderator.
But if you want to make a rule or a guide, or simply scold me some more, go right ahead.
Then why not scold me at my own post ?
Lordy, if someone were to put up a post to discuss Jonah Goldberg, and everyone at Ricochet were expected to only discuss Jonah Goldberg at that one post, you would not like the result.
Neither I nor Rodin threw down any gauntlets, nor did either of us heap opprobrium. We did take issue with criticism that amounted to criticisms aimed at us for things long past that were not the topic of our posts.
No, but changing the topic with a long series of comments is, which is what I would have had to have done if I was going to present my criticism of J. Goldberg at Rodin’s post. His criticism was subtle, delicate and generous, while my criticism was blunt and direct. I assure you that if I had followed that course I would have been accused of hijacking.
When I was a kid, my family lived in Massachusetts. I didn’t enjoy it much, as we’d just moved to the States, President Kennedy had just been shot, I was quite young, and things felt very strange.
We liked to travel and see the sights, and I remember fondly trips to a large, quite well-known lake which I believe is now called Lake Webster. At the time, though, and especially in the tourism industry, it was known by what’s thought of as a version its Native American name, the longest place name in the United States.*
It was called Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.
The loose translation of the name is said to refer (probably apocryphally) to the ultimate conclusion of a battle between two Indian tribes who could not sort out the fishing rights to the body of water. The translation goes: “You fish on your side and I’ll fish on my side, and nobody will fish in the middle.”
Perhaps good advice for warring Indian tribes.
But lousy advice for a website dedicated to productive, polite, and civil conversation among its members.
Happy New Year, MJ.
*The only place I’ve ever been with a longer place name is in Wales, and it’s the longest, or second-longest, can’t remember which, place name in the world: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
I did not disagree with Rodin, so under this reasoning I had no reason to confine my remarks to Rodin’s post.
Whoa. I never judged motivations of Jonah Goldberg. I only questioned the motivations of hostile members whose attacks seemed aimed at stuff long past.
In my post I reviewed Jonah Goldberg’s column, and assessed that his presentation of the reasons why conservatives would offer him forgiveness was lacking because it omitted the chief reasons. By asserting he did this in a “clueless” way, I was being generous. I asserted no malice, nor did I assert any lack of intelligence. I simply charged him with not listening, generously assuming that if he had been listening that he would not have made such a mischaracterization of conservatives’ concerns.
Slow down again. I did not “judge” motivations; I questioned motivations, in the most polite way, which is, I directly inquired as to the motivation of a challenger who seemed to have missed the point of my post, but disputed my standing to offer criticism with emotionally-charged rhetoric.
Moderator She, rather than guess, I put a question to my challengers. I hope to get an answer, but they are likely to give up on this post on account of all the words spilled in your scoldings. Is that the new Moderator strategy? Slow down the discussion by pouring a thick molasses of words all over it?
Not just lots of words, but the longest known words of all.
I hope you don’t tire of Moderating, Ms. She. I want Ricochet to thrive in the new year.
I am convinced that NeverTrumpism was a misguided business decision, and harmful to Ricochet as a business. I am hopeful that the new year will be good for America and good for Ricochet.
Make Ricochet Great Again.
No, he didn’t, and if all the Trump supporters were acting like him we’d all be better off.
Please. “Shut up,” is all NeverTrump, again not just the Pundits, all of us, have been hearing since Ted Cruz dropped out. So when the Shut Up Brigade stomps into one of the precious few gracious posts from a Trump voter and start yelling, “No forgiveness!” how are we supposed to react?
You can give all the justifications you want, but the fact is you still want to hang Hillary Clinton around our necks no matter how many times we tell you we didn’t want her either. You still insist that this “Binary” meme is an indisputable fact rather than your own opinion.
You and your allies are the ones who want to keep this wound open.
Every time someone said, “Criticizing Trump helps Hillary,” they were saying, “Shut up.” It may not have been universal, but it sure as hell wasn’t a minority.
It sure sounds like you are hanging on to this . Fine. See you around, and do not shut up.
I’ll let it go when it stops happening.
binary
When what stops happening?
When we stop telling the truth, then what will take its place?
Well, we think it is entirely true that there were only two possible electoral outcomes that had anything other than vanishingly small probabilities. This is clearly demonstrable from data from before the election, and it is now demonstrable from the actual vote results data.
You are the ones who want to have us shut up about the true situation that we were in.
Are you going to continue to accuse us of personal attacks every time we repeat the truth of the Campaign of 2016?
binary
No Ricochet members were attacked or even alluded to in either my post or Rodin’s. We simply commented on Jonah G.’s column. Are you going to continue to take every criticism offered to your NeverTrump Champions as a personal insult?
Emphasis added.
@she,
The above is how I questioned their motives. Are you saying that this is somehow out of line?
Is there any circumstance in which I can criticize a NeverTrump pundit, without triggering personal defensiveness from the NevrTrump members ?
Also, it seems unfair to Rodin to drag me here onto his post for a scolding. Why couldn’t I receive my scolding at my own post?
I’m responding on this thread, because that is where we are at the moment.
I am glad you asked. Yes, MJ, that is exactly what I am saying.
Please see this link:
http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacies.htm
for a rather comprehensive list of logical fallacies. I will quote from #58, “Mind Reading,” below:
Now, there are those who scorn the fact that I object to “mind-reading” as a particularly offensive form of logical fallacy, but I stand my ground with the University of Texas at El Paso, and this list.
You have no business speculating as to another member’s level of “distress,” at your criticism. You should not accuse another member of being “worked up.” You should not assume that another member wants to “internalize” your criticism “personally.” And you should not state that the member takes on an “emotional investment” in every instance in which the critics of Trump are criticized. Because you do not know that any of these things are facts. You are projecting thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs onto the other member, and thereby distorting and diminishing any contribution he might make to the conversation. You should not do that. Such projection is not an argument. Such projection derails the conversation. Such projection proves nothing.
And after so much back-and-forth about how we are “only talking about the pundits,” or “only talking about Goldberg,” it’s particularly unfortunate that you’ve made it clear that you really are talking about another member here.
The comment from another member that generated your lengthy episode of what I’ve identified as “mind reading” about his “worked up” “internalizing,” “emotional, “distressed” state was (quoting in full):
As a moderator, it is my job to try to keep members focused on the argument, and not on each other. Sometimes, that makes me the focus of attention for a bit. That is the gig I signed up for, and I don’t mind a bit. But things do not seem to be moving off dead-center here, and they have not for several days.
So, for once, I’ll speak bluntly:
Yes, “mind reading” is a logical fallacy and it is out of line. On this post, or any other. On one side, or the other. Now and forever.
Note that absolutely nothing I’ve said scolds you for your stated views, or prohibits your from having an opinion on Trump, NeverTrump, Jonah Goldberg, a conversation, a post, a comment at Ricochet, or anything else. Nor does it cast either a positive, or a negative, or any sort of, light on any opinion you may have. As a moderator, though, I must ask you to refrain from projecting your own ideas onto the minds of other members and then claiming to know what they are thinking better than they do themselves. All you can know of another’s mind is what he shares with you. Best to leave it at that.
I do not believe there is anything else to be said on this matter. Thanks for asking.
MJ, let it go, man. You have made your point. There is nothing be gained here.
Clearly the only response you have is to repeat a meme you know we’ve already rejected.
This conversation is over.