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In Defense of the Indefensible
Despite being a member for almost two years, this is my first post on Ricochet. I am currently in the middle of a two-month hiatus from my work as a Data Analytics and Visualization Consultant, and I wanted to take on the challenge of writing once a day for an entire month. I’m making no guarantees on quality, consistency, or readability on any of my posts. This is mainly an exercise to ensure my time off is (at least partially) well-spent.
So now the meat.
I have friends across the entire political spectrum, from ultra-conservative (American) right-wing, to full-Bern socialist supporters (note that they are not ACTUAL socialists as they still live comfortably in American Capitalism). This morning, I woke up to a post from a former childhood friend who was upset that one of her neighbors had recently erected a flag featuring President Trump superimposed over the American flag (available at Amazon). While I personally find the item to be in poor taste, I was a little surprised at how much attention the post got, most of it agreeing with the author of the post that it was in poor taste. However, I couldn’t help but ruffle a few feathers by pointing out that this wasn’t the first time we’d seen the American flag “enhanced” in such a way. In fact this flag was seen flying over the Lake County, FL Democratic Party HQ in 2012 (and is also available on Amazon).
That prompted me to post a (mostly coherent) rant on Facebook, in which I admonished my friends and blamed them for putting me in the unenviable position of defending President Trump.
In 2016, I attended the Republican National Convention as an alternate delegate representing the Republican Party of Washington state. Some of you may remember that Washington’s delegation was staunchly in favor of Ted Cruz, despite the fact that he had officially dropped out of the race by the time Washington held its primary. Washington has an open Primary, and as such, I personally see no reason why a party should bind it’s delegate votes to the popular vote in the state. That being said, I was among a vocal group that actively spoke out against the nomination of our current President, and proudly declared myself as part of the #NeverTrump movement.
However, after the election, like many others, I took a more measured “wait and see” approach, judging him on his actions since the elections. And to borrow from Ben Shapiro, I believe in the “Good Trump/Bad Trump” philosophy, which is to praise him when he does well, and call him out when he acts stupidly.
Effectively, I called out my friends for being hyperbolic and subject to TDS. Below are some excepts from my rant.
TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is a real, legit thing. He could literally tweet about how water is wet, and my FB and Twitter feeds would be filled with claims about how “water” was a dog whistle for white nationalism, and a flood of “experts” would come out and explain that the properties of water actually made it dry, and Snopes would fact-check the claim as “partially true.”
You have put me in the unenviable position of defending that crass jerk. And do you know WHY I will defend him?
Because for all of his asinine tweets (and let’s face it, most of them ARE asinine):
-The economy is booming: unemployment is at a FIFTY (50) year low
– His administration is tougher on Russia than any administration since Bush the Elder (yes, for all the talk of “collusion” look up his record on sanctions against Russia).
– He upheld the promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the undisputed capitol of Israel
– Threats of tariffs against southern neighbors like Mexico and Honduras are forcing those countries to toughen their own border security and illegal immigration problems.But by all means, keep pretending that he’s worse than:
– FDR, who literally put American citizens in internment camps
– Woodrow Wilson, who reinvigorated the KKK, screened Birth of a Nation in the White House, and re-segregated the government and military
– Andrew Jackson, who forced Indigenous tribes to move from their ancestral lands to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears
– LBJ, whose “Great Society” created a welfare state that destroyed minority families by incentivizing single motherhood, and created urban ghettosI challenge any of you to name ONE thing this president has DONE (not just said, but actually acted on) since he took office that is as bad (or worse) than those four things listed above.
It kills me to defend Trump, especially as i remember what it was like at Cleveland three years ago. Seeing the ushers in the neon green hats trying to “whip” (in the political sense) the delegation into getting on board the Trump Train, and strong-arming (in the literal sense) those who refused to drink the Kool-Aid. That experience made me revile party politics and swear off participating in future events.
But if I’m being honest with myself, and my friends, I will defend the President on his actions, even if I can’t defend his tweets. For the record, I’ve not committed to voting for anyone in 2020, and will wait and see what the landscape looks like closer to the election.
Thanks for reading my first-ever post on Ricochet and I look forward to discussion and feedback.
Published in Politics
Welcome to posting. I look forward to the rest of what you have to say.
Welcome to the R>scrum. But, if you’ve been reading Ricochet, you probably know yours is a minority position among the members (not necessarily the contributors). There are a handful of holdouts who won’t commit to voting for Trump in 2020 (even though the alternative is likely to be a “progressive” socialist). Expect some push back.
I’ll start. What you and so many of Nevers don’t seem to understand is that Trump’s boorishness is freeing us from political correctness — defined as lying so as not to offend the tender sensibilities of someone on the Left by telling the truth. Baltimore is a s-hole, but only Democrats are allowed to say it (like the former mayor and Elijah Cummings himself in the past). Unfortunately, our society has been bullied into PC submission for so long, it takes someone like Trump to break the cycle and get things done.
Listen to more Andrew Klavan.
Well stated. Hope you don’t get strung up.
Why do you feel the need to call out the President when he acts stupidly?
I mean this as a genuine question. What do you get out of doing so? What do you think that you are accomplishing?
I’m not saying that I approve of everything that the President does, or says, or tweets (especially tweets). But I generally ignore it, or look for the strategy inside it (which generally appears to be an attempt to troll the opposition into embarrassing itself).
Hello from another WA state citizen who cast a protest vote for Cruz in the 2016 primary. I agree with your reasoned defense of Trump. And I second the Andrew Klavan podcast recommendation.
Post more.
I am constantly amazed at the ludicrously unsupported claims made by the party that is ‘more nuanced’ than we are.
Are they too stupid to see that these things can’t be true or just too angry to examine anything critically?
Or do they know but have decided that The Cause outweighs facts and ethics?
More thoughts.
He is a crass jerk. And I sometimes revel in it. He calls black people black people instead of ‘African-Americans’. He picks fights with the press.
He refuses to accept constraints that have been gradually accreted over many decades, into things like decorum, PC speech, deference to various institutions, politeness, decency….
In no way would I wish to jettison all of these things, but all of these are now largely arbited by liberals, for liberals; they change with dizzying rapidity and are applied unevenly in any case with benefits of doubt, mulligans and free passes handed out in ways that would make a Medieval indulgence salesman blush.
Is he coarsening the political landscape?
Yes. And we will be better for it.
The left is so nasty that President Trump’s combativeness strikes many of us as a breath of fresh air even as we may wish some of his tweets were more … measured.
Keep posting, but you will need a thick skin if you post material using insulting language about the president. Be prepared to defend it — among friends here.
You make a good point, Jerry. I think my temperament tends to make judgments all the time. But at this stage, I likely won’t write a post about “bad Trump”; I’m just not interested in doing so. I will discuss it with my husband at times, usually in regard to a tweet that makes me roll my eyes. (I’m not on Twitter so I see his tweets second-hand.) But I guess I’m concerned about larger issues than tweets, because as much as people worry about them, I doubt they will have global impact, even if they’re about China or North Korea. Since Trump and his administration don’t care what I think of his work, I prefer at this point to look at the overall effects of his work ( e.g., good economy), wait out the final results of his policy-making (e.g., like China and North Korea) and hope that the Democrats keep acting foolishly. And I already know I will vote for him; I want time for him to do things that he may have planned for a second term.
Pretty dern good for a first post and FWIW I share your sentiments about both our president and his detractors almost exactly.
It seems to me that Trump’s tweets are designed in large part to short-circuit his opponents’ OODA loops. I happily ignore them for the most part because I am not the primary or intended audience.
Welcome, and great first post. There are a lot of us who are reluctantly defending the president these days. I try to defend his policies and not his personality. And then I remind my more left-leaning friends that we would likely not have a President Trump were it not for the gross overreach of his predecessor, the out-of-control runaway looniness of the Left, and the nomination/presumed coronation of HRC.
That is an interesting point – not being the intended audience.
Similarly, hot mics, long-unreleased recordings of Reagan, privately told jokes – there is a hierarchy of communication that used to be understood. It was part of ‘nuance’.
Tweets are supposed to be off-the-cuff and are often made up of snark. A panel of professors trying to poke holes in a student’s master’s thesis is a worthy excercise; fact-checking a tweet is farcical.
Press conferences are official business; tweets are ex cathedra.
This part made me laugh. Snopes has been fact checking the satire site “Babylon Bee”. If you are fact checking a joke site then, yeah you probably will find a way in which water being wet is only partially true
Except that nothing is off-the-record anymore. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
I pretty much agree with this. Like the OP, I was in favor of Cruz in the start and Trump was way down on the list (but above Hillary). When he won, I figured I would watch and see what happened and have been pretty much happy with what he has done.
Yes, some of the tweets make me cringe, but he seems to love the country and is willing to fight for it. The morning talk host this morning (Chris Plante on WMAL ) talked about the tactics of the the liberals and how we kept sending in polite guys to represent our side like McCain and Romney. They lost politely.
Finally, we decided “Let’s send in Mongo!”… and that is Trump. He just keeps on coming.
Uh, ex cathedra is purty cotton-pickin’ official.
You’re right, I used a word that meant the exact opposite of my point.
So, what’s Latin for non-ex cathedra?
“ad lib?“
Love it!
By the way, Leiterfluid:
First, clever pseudonym!
Second, like you, I voted for Cruz in the primary, in Arizona, even though by that time the President had it in the bag. I was very critical of the President during the primaries. He has grown on me considerably, and I am now a solid supporter. As with any politician, I don’t agree with him about everything.
Is there a category for “I find myself approving of a good portion of his decisions” that doesn’t include “he’s grown on me”? Because he definitely hasn’t grown on me. I wouldn’t let him in my living room. I wouldn’t let him hold my wallet. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let him near her. I honestly continue to believe he’s a person of absolutely appalling character and some of the charges of his detractors seem to me to hit the mark or come close enough to it. I don’t think he’s a patriot. I think he’s a xenophobe who borders on racist. And I don’t think he gives a flying you know what about anything but himself.
He’s nonetheless been a better president that she would have been, and is likely to be better than whatever sanctimonious woke socialist the other party upchucks next year. So there’s a very good chance I’m going to vote for him next time. But it’s not because he’s grown on me.
Yep, that’s a perfectly fine category, and I’m glad you’re in it.
I hope we’ll be able to toast a victory together next November, misgivings and all.
Second that motion.
I’d fight you on ‘patriot’ but I have a fairly loose definition of same.
Added: Perhaps we could agree that he loves America for reasons that certainly include the self-serving.
There is an interesting review of Victor Davis Hanson’s book “The Case for Trump” in the Federalist (https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/02/examining-the-triumph-and-the-tragedy-of-donald-trump/ )
One of the best quotes from the review is:
another quote from the review is:
The review is well worth reading and I guess I will move Hanson’s book up on my reading list.
There is often talk of a president’s ‘legacy building’. I sincerely hope that isn’t much on their minds as actively seeking immortality is not what I’d call public service.
Still, when the history books are written, the quotidian disappears, the pop-opinions are irrelevant and what stands is what was accomplished or perhaps endured.
If, in the grand scheme of things, Trump is rememberd for twitter comments, that will reflect much more poorly on the future America than it will on Trump.
Great first post, Leiterfluid, keep them coming.
Yeah. I’m sure there are quite a few members who keep their thoughts about Donald Trump to themselves because they just don’t want the battle.
See now, you’re leaving us with a cliffhanger at the end of episode #1 “Orange Man Not Bad.”
My brother is the leader of an Orthodox Jewish community in ultra-Liberal Marin County (just north of San Francisco). While he’s always listened to my increasingly conservative rants he’s also been increasingly hesitant to agree. I understand if my younger brother doesn’t want to follow me down the road of socio-political rationalism, the taint of conservatism could jeopardize his position with the community. That, btw is one of the reason I abhor leadership … I’d hate to find myself in a position where I couldn’t change my mind due to external pressures.
So Trump gets elected and his team are heroes of the right in pulling off a “miracle” victory. And before the Liberal tears even hit the ground, social media is awash with accusations of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and all the other ingredients necessary to make Trump Derangement Syndrome possible.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the Rabbi who’s been asked to reconcile an issue between two community members. Moishe tells the Rabbi his side of the story, the Rabbi strokes his beard and says “Moishe, you’re right. Yaakov, what do you have to say?” So Yaakov tells the Rabbi his position to which the Rabbi responds “Yaakov, you’re right.”
The Rabbi’s wife Gittel, overhearing the the whole thing can’t restrain herself and calls out indignantly “Husband, how can they both be right?” To which the Rabbi responds “You’re right.”
The anti-Trump social media hysteria in my brothers environment keeps rising and in an attempt to cool things down he comes to the defense of Trump and Steve Bannon making him an instant pariah, a hole he is still digging himself out of.
So my question to you @leiterfluid is, what happens in episode #2 “The Villagers Revenge” what was the response to your cool headed interjections on the subject?