Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This week, the men of GLoP ruminate on questions existential, political, pragmatic, and legal: John reveals his long ago brush with the law, Rob admits he’s a union man, and Jonah ponders this podcast as a 5 day a week commitment. Really!
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Published in: Culture
I’m a cartoonist! Love you guys.
It’s not trump worship – it’s the fact that they allow corporate media to drive the narrative – Trump is not president. we have a president who has questionable ties to the CCP – who many in conversative media consider the face of the enemy of the new cold war. When did the last time the son of a president took money from the USSR controlled business?
From the references, it sounds as though Mark Steyn had a show with Jonah and Rob. I don’t remember it but Mark was part of the flagship podcast at the beginning, I think, so maybe that was the predecessor show.
I don’t know why mentioning Mark Steyn is like mentioning Voldemort in the Harry Potter world.
The first iteration of the GLoP Podcast was Long, Goldberg and Steyn. It was hilarious. The week they put that show behind the paywall was the week I joined Ricochet.
I guess there was a hard falling out of some sort.
Yeah, I was wondering about that, and I have a dim memory that it was Mark Steyn as well.
I like Steyn a lot, but given his departure from Ricochet, and then the debacle with the Levin/Steyn/Malkin T.V. network falling apart, my sense is that Mark does not play well with others.
Ever Trumpers and Never Trumpers are equally tiresome.
What you describe above about John and Jonah’s motives is debatable, but let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that they represent one of the defects of the Never Trump mindset. One of the defects of the Ever Trump mindset is that nothing he did was wrong, or if it was, it was of no consequence. Now, the Ever Trumpers always say that they recognize that he’s not perfect, etc, etc, but then will not tolerate any criticism of him, no matter how valid. I’ve seen it here over and over and over and over and over…
Ever Trumpers and Never Trumpers have brought meaningful discussion of American politics and current events to a halt here for the last several years.
DJT is not the devil, and he’s not a saint. He’s a politician, and he should be treated like one.
That sounds correct to me.
@archiecampbell — “Ever-Trumpers”, if they exist (I’ll have to take your word for it), might say that it’s impossible to criticize Trump without joining a vast lynch mob. And that, for the sake of fairness, Trump needs defenders, not more critics added to the oversupply he already has.
An honest critic of Trump, if such a person exists, is sort of in the position of a German journalist writing true negative stories about Jews, and patting himself on the back for his integrity; even as the Nazis are spewing out a huge volume of false negative stories about Jews, which his true stories make more plausible.
In the current context, an honest critic may conclude, it’s simply not the right time to pile on.
“[M]ight say that it’s impossible to criticize Trump without joining a vast lynch mob.”
Yep, that’s exactly how they rationalize their point of view: There’s nothing in between total approval and the lynch mob.
Aaaand there it is.
Wow, you went Godwin immediately. The Jews were a blameless object of hate, while Trump is a pretty sleazy politician in another time, in another land, under another form of government–which he led for a while–with plenty to criticize. And as crazy a notion as it is, the U.S. even today is not quite like Nazi Germany.
And that’s the problem with the ET/NT thinking: it is now only partisan, and usually tribal as well. There’s no more discussion; it’s just combat.
It’s also weird: Who even notices Ricochet posts who has any sway in the corridors of power? Who are you worried about noticing the alleged “piling on?”
Maybe, but I’ve gotten the impression that Mark Steyn tends to be busier than most people on earth. So scheduling podcasts etc could be more difficult for him than even Mark Levin.
True today. I don’t think it was because he was too busy ten years ago
He’s been a famous #1 author for some time.
{{For example, The Week publishes fake, Never-Trump conservatives like Jonah Goldberg and David French as representing the conservative side. And when CNN brings Jonah on as a “conservative” commentator, it’s not to present the pro-Trump argument — but to pretend there is no pro-Trump argument to be made.—Taras}}
So none of us can suss out the truth from the lies here. Odd.
It’s pretty clear from the context that the Jews are blameless as a people of the charges leveled at them by Hitler and the Nazis, and not that individual Jews are blameless of misdeeds/sins/crimes. I guess that doesn’t count as common sense.
Both analogies boil down to assertions that criticism of DJT (but curiously, no other politician on “our side”) cannot be tolerated because the other side is so immensely powerful and evil that any criticism will be instantly heard and used to weaken “our side.” I’m skeptical of that claim, to put it mildly.
That claim becomes ludicrous when applied to the discussion of same on a low-membership, paid subscription forum chartered primarily for the purpose of “center-right discussion” of politics and current events, and where many of the discussions happen hidden from the view of non-subscribers.
That has nothing to do with the two questions listed above your statement.
If people on our side were capable of voting for someone who they have seen is a good politician with good policies even if they think that person is “not nice” or whatever, it could be different. But we’ve seen that a lot of people on our side don’t seem capable of that. Although the Dimocrats have much less of that problem, perhaps none at all. So they can win.
@archiecampbell — “So none of us can suss out the truth from the lies here. Odd.” In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time”.
Ignorance is far more common than omniscience. During the Clinton scandals of the late Nineties, I remember Rush Limbaugh dejectedly concluding that the American people must be simply OK with Bill Clinton’s many offenses. But ordinary Americans had only a tiny fraction of Rush’s knowledge. All they “knew” was that Clinton had, in some fashion, “lied about sex”; and that the Republicans objected to this, undoubtably for some Puritanical reasons.
Similarly, to infallibly distinguish the many false accusations against Donald Trump from the few true — or partly true — or arguably true — or possibly true ones: there are not enough hours in the day.
@archiecampbell — “It’s pretty clear from the context that the Jews are blameless as a people of the charges leveled at them by Hitler and the Nazis, and not that individual Jews are blameless of misdeeds/sins/crimes. I guess that doesn’t count as common sense.”
If a group is blameless of the misdeeds carried out by members of that group, then it would seem that all groups are blameless (unless misdeeds define the group; e.g., “group of murderers”).
N.B.: Personally I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I get the impression most people do, to varying degrees.
@archiecampbell — “Both analogies boil down to assertions that criticism of DJT (but curiously, no other politician on ‘our side’) cannot be tolerated because the other side is so immensely powerful and evil that any criticism will be instantly heard and used to weaken ‘our side.’ I’m skeptical of that claim, to put it mildly.
“That claim becomes ludicrous when applied to the discussion of same on a low-membership, paid subscription forum chartered primarily for the purpose of ‘center-right discussion’ of politics and current events, and where many of the discussions happen hidden from the view of non-subscribers.”
One of the more entertaining podcasts on Ricochet is “Mock and Daisy”, a.k.a. “Chicks on the Right”. Now, the cohosts are big fans of Ron DeSantis; indeed, following your nomenclature, one might even call them “Ever-DeSantisers”.
However, in a recent episode, they were despairingly hoping Ron DeSantis would not run for President in 2024: because he has been so smeared by Trump supporters and Trump himself that he can’t win. So the argument against criticizing a Republican does not apply only to Trump.
It’s a lot like the problem of the patriotic press during wartime. How far can you criticize the government and the military, without helping the enemy? (This is, of course, not a problem for the progressive media, which all too often look forward eagerly to the defeat of their own country.)
N.B.: The question I thought I was answering was why some Trump supporters might disapprove of attacks on their candidate. I was not specifically addressing the issue of whether our discussions here on Ricochet have any influence on the outside world.
I sometimes like to joke that the real purpose of Ricochet is to keep a lot of smart conservatives talking to each other, instead of posting on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, where they might do some damage to the liberal cause.
You’re missing the point here. I’m not talking about the product of said sussing, just being able to do it here without both sides freaking out.
It’s a generalization.
We’re talking at cross purposes. I don’t care what podcasters here do, I’m just talking about regular subscribers here. The idea that our conversations are damaging to conservatism is paranoid and more than a little hubristic. It’s also tribal in the sense that telling the truth (as individual subscribers see it) shouldn’t be subordinated to some perceived advantage it gives to the “other side.” That’s the gist of the thing. Not actually arguing about Trump now.
But it does seem to lead to electoral disadvantages when the other side insists there’s absolutely no problems with any of THEIR candidates, no matter how obviously wrong they are about that.
@archiecampbell — “We’re talking at cross purposes. I don’t care what podcasters here do, I’m just talking about regular subscribers here. The idea that our conversations are damaging to conservatism is paranoid and more than a little hubristic. It’s also tribal in the sense that telling the truth (as individual subscribers see it) shouldn’t be subordinated to some perceived advantage it gives to the ‘other side.’ That’s the gist of the thing. Not actually arguing about Trump now.”
Who ever said Ricochet subscribers must not violate Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, to whit, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican.” (On the other hand, if someone thinks what they say is false, they will experience some pushback.)
From the very first comment here, I’ve been addressing the podcasters; and they (and their ilk) definitely do have an impact on the real world.
It wouldn’t have taken much. According to Mollie Hemingway, the margin of victory in 2020 was only 40,000 votes in three states.
It happens everywhere at Rico exactly as it’s happened here.
Can you give me an example of what do you mean?
You may be interpreting criticism as some kind of … command?