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I Don’t Trust the American People
Politicians on both sides of the aisle insist that they can trust the American people. Since I have also believed there are reasons to have faith in our citizens, I always silently nod in agreement at these words. But this morning, I asked myself: What does that statement even mean?
At first glance, I assume that those of us who make this remark believe that ultimately citizens will learn/recognize/figure out the truth of a complex political situation. But do we really believe they will make that effort? Do we honestly think that the American people will get through the maze and hyperbole of the information they receive from the media to get to the “truth”?
If we review the last hoax perpetrated on the American people, also known as the Mueller Report, do you think that most people know at least the final results? Or in spite of the report’s conclusions, do they still believe that Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice?
The sad news is that a poll was taken to get people’s reactions to the report and the results were no surprise: for the most part, no one’s mind was significantly changed, even though Trump was not found guilty of obstruction or colluding with the Russians. The poll also points out, however, that few people had reviewed the results of the report. That suggests that most of the people polled had only received input from social media, the mainstream media or their friends (who more than likely share their views).
You may not be surprised by these results, but I’m greatly concerned about them. Once again, the Democrat and media partnership are attacking Donald Trump and his administration through their impeachment fiasco. (I refuse to call it anything else.) To some degree, the Republicans and President Trump are pushing back.
One example of this push-back is the eight-page letter sent from the White House defying the illegitimacy of this action. In part, it said:
Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it. Because participating in this inquiry under the current unconstitutional posture would inflict lasting institutional harm on the Executive Branch and lasting damage to the separation of powers, you have left the President no choice. Consistent with the duties of the President of the United States, and in particular his obligation to preserve the rights of future occupants of his office, President Trump cannot permit his Administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances.
And yet the letter is described by some as a “tantrum.”
And this was Nancy Pelosi’s response, in part:
For a while, the president has tried to normalize lawlessness. Now, he is trying to make lawlessness a virtue. The American people have already heard the President’s own words—‘do us a favor, though.’ The president’s actions threaten our national security, violate our Constitution and undermine the integrity of our elections. The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the president is above the law.
It makes sense for the President to refuse to cooperate. At the same time, you can be sure that the Democrats/media will continue to chastise Trump for his lack of cooperation, stating that he has something to hide. We can see the results of the propaganda being disseminated in this latest Fox Poll:
For those who prefer the 538 polls, here is a partial statement from that site:
According to our average, 48.8 percent of people support impeachment, while only 43.6 percent don’t support it.1 That’s an increase even from last week, when the share of people who supported and opposed impeachment were roughly the same. What’s changed? Early this week, we got a couple new, high-quality polls that showed a majority of Americans in favor of an impeachment inquiry. Most notably, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 58 percent of Americans agreed with the House’s decision to start an impeachment inquiry, and only 38 percent disagreed with it. And an Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP found that 55 percent approved of the House’s decision and 44 percent disapproved.
We can hope that the Inspector General’s report and the DOJ report authored by John Durham will have an impact on the current chaos and misrepresentations. But I’m not optimistic. The media will challenge the legitimacy of the information, mischaracterize it, or ignore it.
The public has demonstrated that even though it doesn’t trust the media, it continues to go to them for information. The public insists that it can weigh all the information and come to a legitimate conclusion, even though it doesn’t actually read the original sources or trust those who publicize this information. As long as the Left continues to control its message, we need to worry about the 2020 election.
Frankly, I don’t trust the American people.
Published in Politics
Suzy,
This is the wrong thing to say. What you mean is that you are afraid that the American People won’t be able to cut their way through the propaganda and make the right judgment. I admit that sometimes I get this way and when I do I realize that my only political plan involves Divine Intervention. Actually, when you really are feeling this down a little prayer for Divine Intervention isn’t such a bad idea.
If we believe that the American experiment is right and that Democracy is right, then we must believe that the people can smell a rat no matter how much perfume it’s wearing (wow did I just actually make that analogy?). Take Beto’s most recent blusters and we ought to put them into a political commercial. Let him scream out: Hell yes! We’re going to confiscate guns. Hell yes! If Churches won’t accept gay marriage then they can’t be tax-exempt. The Left/Dem Press will try to put out false polls that make it look dire but don’t you believe it. There will be a huge backlash.
There aren’t 100 genders, men aren’t women and women aren’t men, the world isn’t coming to an end in 11 years, socialism doesn’t work, and the case for the right to armed self-defense is made over and over every day on almost every newscast by the events that are happening all the time.
However, if Gd wants to intervene then who am I to say no. Remember Gd helps those who help themselves but I’m not so proud that I’m gonna refuse. C’mon Suzy this isn’t like you.
Regards,
Jim
No she is right. The left systematically took over the media, education, Hollywood and began changing minds of folks who mostly just go along and don’t pay a lot of attention. They simultaneously set out to erode institutions. The left in those days was not very large but they knew what they were doing. If we do not want them to win even more, people who believe in the constitutional republic have to do something about it more than talk. We have a President who is moving mostly in the right direction and too many people on our side seem oblivious to the threat posed by what we call left, but what is centralization without broad ideological content, mostly just interests, biases, and tendencies but it’s the direction all civilizations have taken as they ended.
The day after the 2016 election the Republican Party was in control of or was about to take control of the House, Senate, White House and 37 state legislatures. Under Obama Democrats lost 13 governor’s mansions, 64 House seats, and 12 Senate seats. The Left certainly did set about to change people’s minds, but it didn’t go as planned. This mentality where the people with all of the power constantly paint a picture of them being the victim is really tiresome. “Voters are dumb and can’t be trusted, they’ll fall for anything, even Obamacare” they say. Meanwhile, a scant year later, those dumb voters tossed out Democrats by the barrel. Those dumb, untrustworthy voters said “Hell NO!” to a Clinton presidency and gave the GOP the Senate. Maybe these folks—the ones who kept handing us victory after victory—aren’t actually that dumb and disengaged. Maybe people aren’t quite so two dimensional. Give them some credit.
You don’t trust people, you trust a person and in this environment only a crazy person would publicly express support for the current administration, so I think all polls are pretty suspect at this point.
. . . a-a-and, it turns out the poll showing 51% of the public supported impeachment grossly oversampled Democrats. 48% of the respondents to the poll were Democrats, while only 31% of the voters are Democrats, That is a 65% oversample.
The actual numbers are 45% favoring impeachment and 44% opposing it.
Like I said. Don’t trust pollsters.
I used to have your faith in people, Jim, but I’m not sure anymore. I don’t count on G-d to change people’s minds or help them make the right decisions, especially if they don’t call out to him for wisdom. I pray that I’m wrong, but I’m just not sure anymore. And nothing you’ve said convinces me that I’m wrong, at least regarding politics. People I know who show great wisdom in other areas are naive and uninformed regarding politics.
So the obvious question is, is there anyone to be trusted anymore? Or do we just take everything with a keg of salt? I do know that there are writers that I do trust: Bryan York, Kimberly Strassel and Mollie Hemingway. (I had the honor of speaking briefly with Mollie at a conference, and I had to thank her for setting the bar so high for all writers!) I know that even these writers bring a bias to their writing, and they know it and acknowledge that fact. But I know that they do their best to be objective. I do trust that.
Your comment is settling into my brain, @reformed_yuppie. I want desperately to trust the American public. Maybe I should consider that there are individuals who are fools, who are careless and uninformed. But maybe I need to consider that one way or another, people get the information they need. Your points are more than fair and are prodding me to reconsider, especially with the other comments such as @seawriter and @jamesgawron have made. Perhaps I need to be willing to stand back and reflect on outcomes that discount my thinking, consider how the Left would love to know that I’m wavering, and take a deep breath.
The counteracting forces at play here can be quite interesting. For example, if you compare the reception of the first couple of IPCC reports (as filtered through the reliably incurious media) to the broader skepticism they get today, you see how human nature wants to learn from prior mistakes. Too much of that and “trust in the American people” would be a sound basis on which to form a stable, liberty-based governing system.
That is why the other side has been trying to game the system almost since the beginning. The most recent, large-scale push has been the take-over of the educational system (see The Comprachicos of the mind) and the creation of generations of We the People who are programmed to be told what to think instead of how to think. But that is just the fine tuning, the real tools for success are already largely in their hands…
I’m sure there are better sources more finely focused for this application but I have been orders of magnitude more skeptical and less hopeful since reading The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo, specifically the sections on mass delusion / mass submission. Here I will resist going to the pages of notes and highlights (at least for now) but, as of my first reading of it in 2015, it was hard not to see the whole game in play in then recent history with the Democrat-pseudoRight-media complex, Failure Theater, “Hope and Change,” and a shallow candidate with a resume thinner than my fifth grader.
The sad truth is that the deck is largely stacked to continue the progressive demise of the Republic after Trump. Much of today’s noise is to distract and hopefully score an early end for him. But eventually, whether it be 2021 or 2025, they will take over again. And they know it. At that point they will openly brag about how they stalled and distracted and ran out the clock…and the vast majority of We the People wont even recognize that they have been played the fools yet again. But, then again, that is what they were trained to do.
As Reagan said, “trust, but verify.” I don’t even trust myself. Whenever I write something or do an engineering analysis or really anything, I start with the assumption that everything I know is wrong and has to be verified before I act on it. If I do that with myself, why should I do less with the rest of the world?
Nor did the Founders. That’s why they created a Republic, not a Democracy. I think most would be surprised that the Constitution is still our governing document (at least nominally) 230 years later.
That’s an interesting thought, @gumbymark. Since they knew how fragile Democracy would be, even a democratic republic, would they have doubted it’s continuance? Hm.m.m.m…..
Really, though, Susan, I think the point is that ultimately none except G-d is deserving of our trust.
Thus said the Lord: Cursed is he who trusts in man, who makes mere flesh his strength, and turns his thoughts from the Lord. (Jeremiah 17:5)
Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord alone. (Jeremiah 17:7)
Here is commentary from Ibn Ezra (1089-1167):
“Without G-d’s consent, man cannot even save himself; how, then, can other men depend upon him for salvation?”
Still, we hope others (e.g. other voters) will make the right choice, but we know that what happens is ultimately in G-d’s hands, so we pray to G-d to provide enlightened guidance to those voters.
And don’t even trust It.
Susan,
I’m not that far from how you feel about things either. However, we need to dig down deep for our strongest will to resist. Let’s remember Old Abe’s admonition.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time. You can fool all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
The Democrats are so full of it on so many different issues we must be creative and find ways to make them look as bad as they really are no matter what the media monkeys have to say.
Regards,
Jim
But old Abe Lincoln, to whom the quote is unreliably attributed, has been fooling almost all the people for more than 160 years.
Skyler,
Whoops, I forgot about the War of Northern Aggression. Sky please lighten up a little would ya. Please just think about waking up to President Elizabeth Warren and how we are going to prevent it. We need to hold together here. I’ll do a little whistling Dixie if you will do a little Marching Through Georgia.
There that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Regards,
Jim
I do not know where you reside on the political spectrum.
However, it is a fact that the greatest mass murderers in history — the 20th century barbarians known as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao — had no trust or belief in G-d.
Without a sense of obligation and accountability based on an awareness of divine judgment, human beings are capable of the most atrocious acts.
And, in our own time, it is well-documented that the rise of Leftism, wherever it may be found on a world map, has been accompanied by a decline in religious practice and belief among its adherents.
It’s a long game. Does Washington run most government matters that were not given it in the constitution? Have Republicans managed to return important powers too the States, or removed the government role to status quo ante? It’s not a crafted coordinated strategy, it’s what powerful economic and political interests find convenient and those interests use it to their benefit and seek to lock it in. What historical examples are there to the contrary?
OT, but this reminds me of one my favorite scenes from “All in the Family.” Lionel says something, and Archie says, “You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie, Lionel.” Lionel responds, “Oh, no, Mr. Bunker. I never do that.”
Randy,
I’m in enough trouble as it is. Don’t help me.
Regards,
Jim
Well, some of the greatest murderers in history believed in a god too.
It matters not if you believe in a god. Magic is not real, and if you believe you are deluding yourself, so you shouldn’t trust it.
My point is that Lincoln succeeded in starting a war, pretending it was only about slavery and making people believe that he was “honest.”
Lincoln was as corrupt as Liz Warren wants to be. Lying works. It works for a very long time, sometimes. When you read history, going back as far as we can, you should always keep in mind that the person writing the history is very likely to have a bias, and despots frequently get away with their oppression and crimes — forever.
Gene Wilder gets bonus points for proper use of the word “whom.”
I believe that particular rendition of Dixie is by the 2nd South Carolina String Band.
Sky,
Are you so sure it was Lincoln? He desperately tried to talk S Carolina out of firing on Fort Sumter. What if the South had just sat there doing nothing? What could Lincoln do? The Dread Scott decision put the South ahead of the game. I suspect an enterprising Virginian could have started the Hertz Rent-a-Slave corporation and rented out slaves he owned in Virginia to residents of Pennsylvania. When the lease was up, according to Dredd Scott, they’d be required to return the property.
Besides, what do you think a Boston Brahmin extreme abolitionist really thought of Old Abe the Rail Splitter? Odds are they would have stabbed Abe in the back as a Deplorable (like never-Trump). McClellan could have beat Lincoln in the election of 1864.
Nobody was willing to compromise anymore North or South and Old Abe got stuck with the responsibility. Then they shot him. Not so nice.
Regards,
Jim
This is not the place to rehash the cause of the war. I will rest simply on my assertion and that will suffice for this thread.
Haven’t you been rejecting that same sort of defense for Trump?
Meanwhile, Obamacare is still with us. As is most of Constitutional damage from previous left-wing administrations and Supreme Courts. The youngest generations have a higher opinion of socialism than capitalism.
People might not be complete morons, but their innate weaknesses haven’t changed since the Founding days, and even the smartest people, compared to the totality of all the information and variables they have to process, are dumb.
Whoa, let’s change the subject, shall we?
Peoples’ innate weaknesses haven’t changed since the days of Sargon of Akkad.