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This week, partly due to the post-Oscars dearth of pop culture news, we’re deep into the news cycle as this show was recorded the morning that Rex Tillerson was shown the door. We cover that story, the continuing evolution of Hillary Clinton’s political skills, a little more on the economics of Wakanda, and yes, some good old fashioned Rank Punditry®.
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I do disagree. Emphatically. Who are the devil are you to be so disrespectful of someone? That is what it comes down to. Your ordering his book is good. It doesn’t change the fact of disrespectfulness. Nor of your high regard for yourself, to decide what is another man’s heart.
This is getting tedious.
You are right on this point. But it has nothing to do with being disrespectful of Jonah, and his thoughts.
Dude we are cool. It’s a free country and freedom means disagreeing about everything.
It certainly is…
On whom would you confer the ability to judge whether someone is speaking or writing honestly? The speaker? The writer?
You’re being silly. An honest Trump skeptic would have to admit by this point that Trump has been a strong net positive in favor of federalism and conservative principles.
SockMonkey makes a good point, that Never Trumpers gave themselves that name. Jonah Goldberg’s magazine – National Review – started the movement with their “Against Trump” issue, to which Jonah contributed, I believe. NR Never Trump issue contributor Steve Heyward of the PowerLine blog at least admits his mistake (he thought Donald Trump would not act sufficiently boldly, were he to be elected president).
Like all but a handful so-called NeverTrumpers (including myself) Jonah’s reaction to the election was to graciously admit defeat, declare the label obsolete, and say, “I hope I’m wrong.” The continued use of a label which almost everyone to which it formerly applied has abandoned serves no purpose other than to dismiss dissenting opinions without having to argue against them. Jonah does not believe he has been proven wrong. You’re free to disagree with his assessment, and I’m sure Jonah would welcome a civil attempt to change his mind, but that’s not what he’s getting. Instead his concerns are simply dismissed as knee-jerk opposition to the President in furtherance of a cause that Jonah would readily agree hasn’t been relevant in well over a year. NeverTrump has become nothing more than a way of labeling Trump critics as heretics whose concerns are unworthy of consideration.
Calling a Trump critic NeverTrump is like calling conservatives writ large bigots. We all recognize that the Left’s propensity for shouting dissidents down and calling them names is counter-productive. Why can’t Trump’s supporters see that they’re doing the same thing. Who is yelling outdated labels at Jonah Goldberg and Rob Long supposed to convince? We all agree that Trump is a backlash against the Left’s attempt to stigmatize rather than debate certain opinions. What makes you think that doing the same thing to anti-Trump or Trump-skeptical conservatives will be any less off putting?
Um, what? I don’t recall labeling myself a bigot. If conservative pundits were calling themselves bigots, and using “bigot” as a hash-tag, I guess I missed it. So that’s a non-starter.
I’m not above criticizing Trump myself, and if that causes someone to call me a NeverTrumper, I’ll just respond that I’ve never been of that persuasion. No tears. No petulant demands for respect. Just a polite correction.
I should probably read more from National Review, but I don’t. And you’ll forgive me if I don’t know what everyone’s prefered pronouns or labels are. You’ll forgive me if I’ve never heard anyone say that NeverTrump ended with the election of Trump. There are obviously plenty of people still NeverTrumping. If you, or Jonah Goldberg aren’t on that team, good for you. Just don’t take offense if I call you NeverTrump, because I don’t know everything about everybody.
I guess some people use NeverTrump as an insult. It never crossed my mind to do so. It’s a label for a point of view; nothing more. If people dismiss Jonah’s viewpoints as knee-jerk, because he used to call himself NeverTrump, well, that’s a fact of human nature. We can’t know with any certainty that he’s being objective. As he’s a human being (I presume), he’s capable of prejudice. We all are. People who defend Trump are accused of the same thing. Wadda-ya-gonna-do?
Then you quite simply haven’t been paying attention.
But, hey, if you’d rather virtue signal your opposition to the heretics, that’s not my problem. Just don’t be surprised when no one finds you all that convincing.
I desperately want to share your sentiment, as I was once a proud subscriber to both NRO – National Review Online – and NRODT – National Review on Dead Trees. But there’s a reason that they’ve lost 60% of their readership. They continue to promote an establishment brand of conservatism that grass roots conservatives have properly rejected.
After conservatives voted in a maojrity of Republicans in both the House (2010) and the Senate (2014), those conservatives expected what Speaker Paul Ryan called “a return to regular order.” The House and Senate would pass bills to enact conservative reforms, and force Democrats and President Obama to go on the record opposing such reforms as free enterprise, reduced government regulation, individual liberty, school choice, free exercise of religion, … you get the idea. But Mitch McConnell didn’t even bring a single such bill to the floor for a vote. From the grass roots level, it looked as if the establishment conservatives didn’t even try to keep their promise.
If National Review were to renounce “Against Trump”ism and adopt a Victor Davis Hanson-led editorial perspective, I might return. But Mona Charen is more reflective of their outlook these days. Mona Charen criticized Trump’s inauguration speech for claiming that the government-connected class has prospered while the heartland of America has stagnated or declined. Mona made that criticism from her tony northern Virginia neighborhood where median incomes – among the highest in the nation – have steadily risen and property values have skyrocketed over the past ten years, and especially over the past twenty years. Why should I read a magazine that denies the obvious truth, that the government-connected class has prospered while “ordinary” middle class Americans have seen their opportunities and their fortunes dwindle?
*I* was a Trump skeptic. I voted for Trump with high anxiety – because he was not historically a Republican or a conservative – but enthusiastically, given that Hillary was the only reasonable alternative in our binary Presidential election system. As a Trump skeptic, I am overjoyed at the progress Trump has made in promoting and enacting conservative policies. I remain anxious, but optimistic.
That’s what I said. I have not been paying a lot of attention to the minority faction in the recent Republican in-fighting. [shrug] So you won’t forgive me? Let’s not play the game of, “you must read/listen to this commentator, or you’ve no right to speak.” Do you really expect everyone to take in the same content you do?
And, again, how am I to know who has or has not abandoned NeverTrump, when we still have people talking about how we can get him to resign, or hoping he gets primaried?
“Virtue signal my opposition”? If I disagree with someone, I’ll say so. What is this virtue-signaling of which you speak? (If I want to signal virtue, I point out that I voted for Cruz in the primary. Trump’s not my fault! I wash my hands, etc.)
My opposition is to those who claim to be insulted by something that’s not an insult. That is what no one finds convincing.
Who hasn’t been paying attention?
Bret Stephens in 2016 was one of the most astute conservatives on the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
If you’re going to comment on someone’s supposed inner thoughts, I expect you to at least be familiar with their public statements, yes.
You’re wrong. NeverTrump, in 2018, is a term of dismissal and therefore an insult. With only a tiny handful of exceptions, it is invariably used by Trump supporters to mean, “Person whose opinion may be safely ignored.”
No one’s claiming to be familiar with your inner thoughts. I would never deny that you take it as an insult. I’m just telling you that it isn’t an insult, even if some people use it as one, or hear it as one. Words don’t always mean what some people think they mean.
I’ve just now been publicly stating that I don’t use it that way, so not “invariably.” Or perhaps you didn’t think of me as a Trump supporter. I would so classify myself.
I’m a little disappointed with Rob’s failure to apply his hard-won Hollywood wisdom. He kicks off the show by explaining to us how projects get started: everyone is on board, the sky’s the limit, nothing is too outrageous. Only later, after this is something that’s really happening, does reality nose its way into the tent.
But then, half an hour into the podcast, when John Podhoretz pitches Jessica Chastain as himself in the leading role of The John Podhoretz Story, does Rob give the idea his enthusiastic support? He does not.
On a tangentially related note: as John is describing how he (“in the body of Jessica Chastain,” to use his own rather evocative words) saves the day from terrorists armed with a “thermonuclear suitcase bomb,” I naturally assumed that, as the old saying goes, “a suitcase introduced in the first act will be used to blow up D.C. in the third act,” and therefor it must be an Away Travel Thermonuclear Suitcase Bomb he imagines. I think you folks should pitch that to the Away Travel ad department: “It is daring. But is it too edgy?”
Here’s hoping Rob shows some enthusiastic support this time.
I assumed they’d finish that up by saying “The Away suitcase is so strong, when the nuke goes off the blast is contained and DC is saved!”
Thank you, German polycarbonate shell.
Aw, man, those Away bags are so pricey. I just have to use my no-name bag, with the Latvian polycarbo.
Since we’re talking Hillary highly productive voters and cheeseburgers:
You get the same Big Mac in Peoria and Manhattan, but one costs more than the other. Same for automobiles, apartment rentals, insurance, appliances, movie tickets and coffee tables. Everything in San Francisco costs more than everything in Boise.
Gross Domestic Product, which is what I assume Hillary was referring to, is essentially retail sales. So yeah, Clinton won practically every substantial city in the country and thereby gets a greater share of higher priced retail sales. Big old “So what?” in my book.
And it’s worth mentioning that that some large proportion of wealth (3 of the top 4 wealthiest counties in the US) surrounds Washington DC. The District doesn’t really create much, invent much or build much, but it does oversee the distribution of wealth forcibly taken from a lot of that red map.
So I am not convinced that Hillary really captured the core dynamic of the US economy in the first place. It’s a terrible message if it were true, but I am not sure it was even that. And I will gladly pile on by saying that criticism of her countrymen ought to be limited to speeches given within the US.
Almost like Hillary’s deplorable.
When was the last time a Diplomat or Ambassador was critically important to foreign policy? That would be “Fail Safe,” from 1964.