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Give Him a Horse
Okay, I’m pro-Trump. I think any sane conservative must be, given the alternatives. He’s a guy who has been trying to take the country in the direction I want the country to go, rather than into the maelstrom in which the left seems hell-bent on drowning us.
So, yes, I support him, and strongly. But I’m not going to be all hagiographic about it.
He’s no Reagan.
But….
But he got the virus, the same virus that has so much of our nation, all these mewling puking babes, paralyzed with fear, huddled in their homes with their unschooled children, terrified that any one of them could be among the 0.05% who don’t recover from this bug. He got it, he went out to greet his supporters, he flew home, and he walked into his house. Without a mask on, because, dammit, we can’t all be the public personification of baseless terror.
He’s no Reagan. But I wish he’d ridden in on a horse. It would have felt right for the moment.
Published in General
Is it not sufficient for one to be Trump-tolerant? Why put so much pressure on folk?
;-)
The Left side of my social media is having a cow over how uncaring he is and dangerous as well as disrespectful of anybody that has ever died.
This argument is uncharitable, at best, insulting at worst, and if it becomes the argument of the campaign it will be a disaster. It’s basically just an ad hominem with no real substance to it.
It’s uncharitable because there are very very few people who can fairly be called “mewling puking babes, paralyzed with fear, huddled in their homes..” The vast majority of people concerned about the virus are not looking for complete shutdowns – they know there is some kind of balance that must be struck. They’re going about their lives like everybody else, but want peopel to be more careful. Virtually everyone understands the death rates, etc…, they just come to a different conclusion than you as to the level of precautions people ought to take. Insults in response to that won’t go very far.
The argument is also uncharitable because it forgets that this is not something people are merely watching unfold on tv. Most people, by now, either have had it or know people who have had it. With over 200,000 killed (in 7 months – with all the precautions that slowed the spread), that means several million who were close to people who have died, probably tens of millions who knew people who have died. I know I did. And then when you add in all those who know people who, although they survived, had a close call, or who have lingering effects, and the people who were close to them or knew them, you are really talking about many, many, millions of people who have very good reason, based on personal experience, to be concerned about this disease. If the Republican talking point is that they’re all mewling babes and cowards for wanting people to be cautious, I don’t think that will go over well.
Nah. If He was on a horse, then all the NTs could say,” ef Trump and the horse He rode in on.”
We don’t need to tee it up for Them.
DA, I appreciate your perspective, but I don’t share it. I think the continuing restrictions are indefensible and destructive, and have been for quite some time. They’re supported by a mix of ignorance, cowardice, and political expediency. Yes, many people know someone who has had the disease; far fewer know someone who has been seriously injured by it. But far more, I’ll wager, know someone who has been economically wrecked by the shutdown, whose kids are being deprived of an education, who have been isolated from sick and dying loved ones, or who have otherwise suffered as a consequence, not of this less-than-horrific bug, but because of our overreaction to it.
So I applaud those who choose to demonstrate that this isn’t the horror our hyperventilating media would like us to believe it is.
I’m not arguing for strict lockdowns, for all the same reasons you mention. I am saying that reasonable people, based on their personal experience, who argue for masks, or simply for people to behave in responsible ways to avoid unnecessarily spreading the illness, for people to take it seriously and not recklessly, are not cowards. Calling them cowards is a losing strategy. That’s my point.
The number of people, left or right, who want to go back into a strict lockdown without paying attention to economic harm is infinitesimal. There is enormous difference between encouraging masks and social distancing and caution, which vast numbers support, and total shutdowns which hardly anyone supports. With this style of argument, which is really a bullying strategy, you are lumping those groups in together and pushing huge numbers of reasonable people out of your cohort. You are essentially hoping that insults and shame will prevail over personal experience. It’s a losing strategy.
People on the other side, by the way, have the same problem when they try to define their opponents as anti-science conspiracy theorists.
Fair enough. The President, of course, isn’t just another person. He represents things — and one of the things he represents is the view that we need to re-open the country. Around the nation, petty bureaucrats are keeping businesses closed and children out of school, while relying on the media to feed a narrative of exaggerated fear.
I wear a mask when I’m around strangers in indoor settings. I understand that this disease is dangerous to some people. But I think the fear is wildly exaggerated, and people need stop mistaking paranoia as “responsible caution.”
However, the number of people who are willing to continue to tolerate economically devastating restrictions is far from infinitesimal. As long as the message remains that with which the President’s brief recent motorcade trip was greeted (“he’s endangering the lives of his Secret Service detail”), people will continue to support those restrictions. I applaud the President putting the virus in a more realistic perspective, even if there was a bit of bravado in it.
It doesn’t require a “total shutdown” to impoverish people. If my business is closed, my business is closed; if my kid can’t go to school, my wife has to stay home to supervise his education.
My impression, my suspicion, is that people are reluctant to speak up against mandated restrictions, for fear of seeming insensitive, irresponsible, anti-science — in short, for fear of being treated like the see the President treated. And so, once again, I like to see someone standing up to the scolds and harpies of the press and elite opinion-makers.
Or a donkey.
No, not really. Not if you believe, as I do, that Trump is doing long-term damage to the Republican Party and Conservatism. Short term, Trump makes sense. Strategically….I think we need to take our licks and regroup.
The Republican Party and Conservatism deserve some long-term damage. I hope the damage is permanent. Think of it as removing a cancer and following up with radiation treatment to make sure it doesn’t come back. The country and its people are more important than the Republican Party or any ism.
I understand the argument. And no, I don’t think anyone who therefore votes against Trump is “insane.” Not in a clinical sense. Just deeply, profoundly wrong.
Under Obama, the Democratic Party lost a net total of 13 Governorships and 816 state legislative seats in eight years. Under Trump, Democrats gained back 8 Governorships and state legislative seats are following suit. Congrats, Mr. Trump! You hurt the Republican party more than Obama hurt the democrats in state executive offices and legislatures! Is this “winning?” Where have conservative gains on the question of abortion happened in the past decades? That’s right, the states, not some mystical power wielded by an ostensibly pro-life President.
And for those poo-pooing the Party and Conservatism…I don’t know what to say to you. The party is the party, but ideals exist apart from parties or people. Cast your conservative ideals aside for strong men at your peril.
True. Reagan is the Gold Standard of modern presidents. But Trump is at least the Orange Standard.
I don’t think he’s a strong man. I think this is a common misunderstanding. I think he’s a pugilistic man, but I don’t think he has the charisma or the resolve to be a strong man. I think he’ll fade as soon as he’s out of office, whether he wins the next term or not.
I believe that, had the Democrats embraced him four years ago, he’d have signed almost anything they gave him. I could be wrong, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I don’t think he’ll leave a lasting negative impression on the party. I do think he’s done something good to the press, by drawing it out into the open. He’s also been an example for others that you don’t have to conform to the left’s narrative or take the left’s virtue signaling into account. I think that’s good.
I also don’t think that he’s betrayed conservatism — even though I kind of expected him to. I think he’s been remarkably conservative.
No, they don’t. Too many people still believe Governor Cuomos’ “Virus=death”.
The innumeracy of the American Public cannot be underestimated. Saw people on twitter Friday night after Trump announced he had the virus that said he had an 80% chance of dying. Near as I can figure, they were confusing the “80% of those who’d died are above the age of 75” with “people above 75 have an 80% chance of dying”.
This year has really made me question the whole concept of universal sufferage.
LOLing out loud.
And I’m going to credit that to your comment, and not to the bourbon.
I know I was educated in public schools, but isn’t 13 more than 8?
And isn’t 4 years fewer than 8?
You’re assuming we’ll lose another 8 in four years. Michigan and Wisconsin just might have a change of heart.
Obama lost 13 governorships over 8 years, 1.625 governorships per year. Trump has lost 8 governorships over 3 years, or 2.667 governorships per year. 2.667 > 1.625. QED
Really? What damage, exactly, is Trump doing?
Really now. You’ve got to expound on exactly how the President loses a governorship. I’m interested in exactly how that works.
Let’s compare the first four years then. Obama lost 11 governorships in the 2010 election.
I take the virus very seriously and always wear a mask but do not know anyone, either friend or family, who has had the virus here in blue Seattle. Every day the Seattle Times posts a list of new cases; we had 103 new cases today in King County, the largest in Washington, with a population of 2,291,030.
Living with fear is not a good thing for society, so it helps to look back through history to see how other generations managed to get through various plagues and still survive. Descendants of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed millions throughout the world are still around today. Interestingly, the first vaccine for it was given to soldiers in 1945, almost 30 years after it almost scared the world to death, just as the fear of Covid has done to us today.
Although we may never totally eradicate this virus anymore than we have been able to rid mankind of the common cold virus or the various strains of flu that invade us from time to time, we can learn to treat it with therapeutics without all the hysteria until a vaccine comes along to slow its progress. The president is trying, in his own inarticulate way, to make this point.
Yes, and the reason many are left with that impression is that the vast majority of the mewling, puking babes have press cards and appear ubiquitously on every news station, so one can be excused for thinking that mewling puking babes are a substantial demographic.
@drusus: the difference between a risk and a gamble is that one can plan contingencies and carve out extant resources to mitigate the damage of losing to a risk. A gamble leads to catastrophic failure and consequences.
If you take the Dems at their own words you’ve got, more or less in sequential order, the full extermination of the filibuster, the packing of the court, the introduction of Wash DC and Puerto Rico as states, the expiation of the 2A and probably most of the 1A (how much deference has it been paid during these COVID days?).
Sorry, brother, I assess that as catastrophic, unrecoverable damage–not to the GOP, but to our Constitutional representative republic.