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The Goldberg Rationalizations
“It may be that once Trump is no longer the commander in chief in the war against Blue America, the ardor of his troops will give way to a better understanding of the price the GOP paid on his watch.”
This is the last paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s latest, edifying us with his crack understanding of history, wholly out-of-context. You can read it here. Most of it is written to advance his rationale for why Republicans are supporting Trump.
He deftly (he is a professional) inserts the idea that Trump is a wartime President, only the enemy this time is Blue America. Why is his popularity so high he asks? It’s because he’s a wartime President! See? You have to read the whole thing to understand, but it makes sense – as long as you don’t think about it too much.
There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven to be liars, leakers, framers, and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly, they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?)
Almost as noteworthy, Goldberg makes no mention of Trump’s accomplishments on behalf of his voting bloc as possible reasons for the strong support, nor is there any reference to likely alternatives which might be animating Trump’s support, all of whom are somewhere on the socialism spectrum.
He’s a wartime President. That’s it.
According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America” or who or what this Blue America is.
Taking issue with Jonah’s conclusion, I would say that Trump is the price the GOP paid for being weak, for being fraudulent, for being the party of perpetual war and globalism, and for misunderstanding and/or taking advantage of their base.
Mr. Goldberg is fantasizing that someday the ardor of his “troops” will better understand how wrong they were. On the contrary. The game Jonah, et al., have been playing is over for good. There will be no going back. It may well get a lot worse for the Nevers after Trump is gone. They will have to take refuge with Democrats. Some already have.
Now, for some real genius, edification and a palate-cleanser, I offer this:
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Published in General
This reminds me of the Cathy Newman/ Jordan Peterson interview:
Cathy Newman: So you’re saying….
He’s not doing that. It doesn’t seem like you are reading words on virtual paper.
We need to be careful about over-romanticizing the Tea Party movement. What cracked it up was what usually cracks up such movements – internal divisions were as much to blame as external pressures. For instance, when these newly elected idealists broached entitlement reform (the biggest cost in the entire budget), the rug got pulled out from under them by the very people who had earlier supported them. Things went from “let’s shrink the government!” to “Don’t touch my Social Security or Medicare!” I saw a lot of this first hand, as did others I know who were deeply and passionately involved.
I’m not lumping all criticism together. I’m speaking of that one specifically. It keeps coming up from people who should know better. Makes me want to bite things.
Ok, so my last comment actually ended up posting after this response. Real life got in the way of pressing the Comment button. There is a whole website that says it is Conservative, and pushes this stuff that Trump is clearly a racist all the time.
There is a world of difference between Trump is a “___” and Trump is wrong about “___”.
Of course not all criticism of Trump is Charlottesville. Some criticism of Trump is policy based not stupid Orange Man Bad stuff. We had these fights before Trump on things like immigration and foreign affairs/military action. While positions can be just as strongly held, they have less to do with Trump and more to do with the policy disagreements we have always had.
Passing an individual mandate that effects maybe 4% of the population of an uber blue state, and everyone else is unaffected. Sounds fairly conservative to me. Also, a workable conservative idea that a Democrat might find persuasive. But, we don’t do things like that anymore. We fight and own the libs on Twitter.
Not saying that it was all good, but what angered me was the way the Republican Party happily benefited from the movement, and then turned on it almost immediately. “Thanks for getting us elected, now shut up and go back to your corner.”
I agree to a point when you’re talking about personality instead of policy, but there’s not always a clear line between the two with anyone – not Bush, not Obama, and not Trump.
To use your example of the Taliban talks – it’s hard to say it was pure policy when it’s clear that Trump’s personality, as someone who is always looking to negotiate a deal, is exactly the sort that would even consider face to face talks with brutes. The policy and personality here are inextricable.
When personality is the only thing brought up? Different matter, and I agree those sorts of things are usually irrelevant.
See, if you can’t read, you lose credibility.
And I’m saying what I’m saying. Please just tell me what you’re saying and not what you believe I’m saying. Thank you.
Again, I have not called all disclaimers anything as you erroneously report.
The sentence is right in front of everyone’s eyes: I continually read through disclaimers …
This does not mean all disclaimers.
Read the words.
That does not seem at all Conservative to me. I don’t know what is conservative about forcing people to buy Health Insurance. Or looking at this the way the Court did on Obamacare, raising taxes on 4% of the people. As I understanding the majority of the people affected by this mandate could buy insurance but choose not to.
People making personal financial decisions for their families, we need the government to step in and do something about this, is not a real Conservative position.
What’s pointless about it? It is the single most reported reason why people cite Trump as a racist. It’s been completely debunked but it’s repeated constantly. It’s not even an opinion or an ideology or a preference. Those things may ultimately become pointless to debate. We are arguing facts in this case. So unless I’m misunderstanding your meaning, this is exactly the kind of thing we are talking about here.
A “personal financial decision” is personally covering your risk of at least a catastrophic illness you can’t possibly self insure. Else, society covers that risk. The idea was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation in 1989….back when conservatives actually had workable ideas on anything.
It’s very conservative. It’s fantastic at conserving the market position of Health Insurance and preventing any change in the healthcare marketplace. As for people’s freedom on the other hand…
I’m actually not disagreeing with you on Charlottesville. It’s pointless because there’s no “there” there in the attacks lobbed at Trump.
I see where you are coming from.
The policy goal as I see it is to end a 18 year old war. Trumps personality is to look for a deal. McCain might be to drop more bombs and someone like maybe Rand Paul might say just end it.
Each policy is related to the personality of the person. I simply don’t see this type of personality/policy intersection as the thing that would lead to the vicious comments and fights you were talking about, when the ultimate issue is the policy.
Meh, it got accomplished and cost government little….and Democrats even saw the merits of it. Those are 3 things we’ll never say about any Trumpian ideas.
The guy at the Heritage Foundation who worked on that policy would seem to disagree with you. First this was a compromise to avoid Clinton’s universal health plan, not a preferred or conservative plan, but a less bad plan. Next it looked a bit different in what it did, how it worked and what the “penalties” were.
Finally that same guy who actually had a “workable idea” now thinks it is not a good idea.
https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/commentary/dont-blame-heritage-obamacare-mandate
Is it a slur if it is a real characterization of the thinking by this elusive “we’re not elites, but we are so much smarter than you hicks” crowd. Sure, it is tried to be held in check, but it is there right below the surface …
I’ve recommended psychedelics because his ego’s attachment to Never Trumpism has not diminished. His Self needs a break from the idea that everyone but him and his oh so self-righteous “remnant” are idiotic, sell-out, delusional peasants with pitchforks. Of course, Rob Long’s tripping hasn’t been a miracle cure, but it can’t hurt. ;)
Has anyone dug into the possibility that PR firms (e.g. Fusion GPS) used Twitter accounts to drive antisemitic attacks at Jewish Cons in 2016? It seems passingly odd that whatever narrative the D’s put on Republicans & Trump, in particular, gets confirmation on Twitter – from hoards of vile Tweeters.
It is known D’s & leftists need Trump to be racist to justify how they act and to convince the poorly informed that a “return to normalcy is needed” so they obviously misquote him and never let go of the falsehoods. It is basically done out in the open across news outlets – Jonah’s done it by characterizing as Russian collusion the obvious joke/attack-on-Clinton “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” I saw it on the TV in my company’s cafeteria – live or replayed the same afternoon Trump said it, and I laughed my ass off at it.
Trump has to be an anti-Semite, so Jewish Cons get bombarded with antisemitic tweets from “Trump supporters,” which drives them firmly into NeverTrumpLand. A “wave of antisemitic attacks/threats” rolls across the nation after Trump’s election, which turn out to be the work of a mentally-touched Israeli teenager or twentysomething and of a progressive or his girlfriend (some nutty relationship thing or some such between them), yet the narrative of Trump supporter antisemitic wave remains – backed up by the statistical jump in antisemitic hate crimes……in fact, mostly Blacks and Latinos attacking Jews in New York, it seems.
Anyway, it only takes a handful of people to feel like the whole world if they direct a few dozen or scores of hateful tweets at a person. Given the lengths to which political campaigns and PR firms have gone to drive public hysterias, I’m deeply skeptical that JPod, Jonah et al were twitterly assaulted by real Trump supporters, but the work was done.
You know, this whole conversation reminds me of Ricochet in July, 2016 …
The only thing different was that the ‘roles’ are now reversed.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/dems-secretly-fielded-thousands-of-activists-to-manipulate-media-clinton-library-docs-show/
That’s what they were doing in the 90’s. It’s a safe bet that the same people are up to the same tricks in new media.
Citizen-
We’ve come a long way when psychedelics are recommended for sanity, but as a psychonaut myself, I agree!
I believe you are absolutely correct in your suspicion that these Twitter messages (and also comments on forums) are the work of sock puppets masquerading as Trump supporters. I’ve seen it in real time and it’s pretty easy to detect, as you have laid out.
Trump is a very pathetic racist and anti-Semite if you ask me.
By the way, wouldn’t the media and Democrats easily be able to ‘sabotage’ Trump with his massive following of white supremisists and anti-semites by highlighting his meetings with African Americans, him hugging black folks, his getting funds for HBCS, his daughter and son-in-law, his support for Israel?
Why, they’d scuttle his 2020 chances with one simple ad campaign!
Why aren’t they doing that?
I disagree with the characterization or the worthiness of literally everything you’ve said in this latest post. I hardly even know where to begin. I guess I’ll go quickly and in order:
“got accomplished” – only if you mean “enacted in to law” as it’s failed its goal
“cost government little” – the primary cost is in people’s freedom, with a side of greatly increased government power, but I would not say the whole package cost government little either
“Democrats even saw the merits of it” – I really don’t care what other people think of a bad idea. Especially not people who are usually wrong.
“3 things we’ll never say about Trumpian ideas” – It seems like he’s getting quite a bit accomplished: tax cuts, deregulation, and constitutionalist judge appointments all seem pretty great to me. Likewise, none of those cost the government much. And see my prior response about what Democrats think.
I wonder how much those two health care issue are related.
I think that it is at least possible that the ACA is at record high approval because single payer is on the table. People maybe more approving of the status quo because they are not interested in single payer.
The Tea Party’s initial success was the fact it was grass roots and leaderless — Obama was elected in large part because the Democrats had strategized that he would allow them to throw the race card at any politicians or pundits who challenged his and their ideas and write them out of the political conversation. They weren’t prepared for a movement with no leaders who could be identified and demonized.
Once the grifters showed up and started to claim they were the leaders of the movement, in order to get donations, the left had some people it could demonize. But the other after-effect was they eventually demonized the name Tea Party, and — realizing that conservatives were perfectly capable of mobilizing without any set group of leaders — they then set about demonizing the grass roots people who originally responded to Rick Santelli’s CNBC protest and others who were sympathetic to the movement.
That’s where Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ came from, and why the Democrats have lost any inhibitions about branding anyone who voted or even supports Trump as a racist. They’ve decided the only way to get the permanent Executive Branch control they thought they had achieved after Obama’s re-election is to write 60-plus million adult voters out of the political conversation (something Kevin Williamson noted in his NR column on Wednesday, identifying it as a desire by the angry left for single-party, no dissent governance).
Exactly. Journo-list was active in the 2008 cycle. As I recall to – among other things – war game strategies for deflecting Jeremy Wright-based criticisms against BHO. There were – what? – 450ish journalists, D-operatives (but, I repeat myself [I slay me! ;)]), professors, etc. there working to coordinate “journalism” in order to shape public opinion.
I continually point people to “Manufacturing Consent” so that if their bias is to not hear conservative criticism of media-manipulation, they might hear the America-hater, anarcho-syndicalist, morally obtuse Chomsky describe the coordination that is done to create the “correct” public opinions. Also, the No Agenda Podcast with John C. Dvorak & Adam Curry specialize in “media-deconstruction.” This bit of a 2015 No Agenda podcast where they play audio of Obama vs. how CBS packaged the incident is particularly on point: http://naplay.it/733/2:19:34 [in an episode coincidentally named “Fusion Cell”]
And the Journo-List story is very relevant. In that list, were so-called republicans and consultants/media advisers to the highest levels of leadership in the GOP. These folks had direct connections to Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace on John McCain’s 2008 campaign. Schmidt and Wallace torpedoed McCain’s own VP running mate Sara Palin from inside. Noted conservative (sic) Jenny Rubin was outed. Kristol and the Weakly Standard and many of the Never Trump behind the NR issue were most happy to publicly proclaim their ‘gospel’ as the true conservatives. Uh huh.
Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller pulled the curtain back and the disaffected in the GOP voting base said “never again” will we trust the leadership of the GOP to do what they say. It was pointed out upthread that the GOP took advantage of the Tea Party and lied to them. It was all Kabuki Theater. As soon as they were in office, they played footsie with 0bama.
This impacts how the so-called Trump Supporters are where we are, and why we are so distrusting of the anti-Trump voices even today. We know from the most outspoken that they do indeed intend to go back to the Bush/McCain/Romney party. No thanks.
Compromise? You mean….like how actual ideas get accomplished? Anyway, he doesn’t say its now a bad idea, just that he’s come up with better ones since 1989….none that seemingly have seen the light of day. On top of that. he says the mandate wasn’t only their fringe idea. All conservative think tanks liked it. So yes, its a conservative idea.
Wow. I can’t wrap my brain around this concept. Doesn’t sound like music? Bach IS music.