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Yep, it another run through the cultural landscape with your podcast pals Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz. This week, the guys jog through a preview of The Dispatch, Jonah’s new media venture, sprint through some thoughts on The Joker (a movie the guy at Rob’s UPS store insists that he sees ASAP), and examine the various controversies it has spawned, and finally, a fast walk through why it’s just fine for Ellen Degeneres and George W. Bush to be friends.
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Trump’s personal peccadillos and/or failings are arguably irrelevant when it comes to policy, governance, etc. Yet when Jonah and others continue with the “loathsome” talk let alone the “mentally ill” talk, they open the door to characterizing Trump’s ACTIONS – including/especially those Jonah agrees with – the same way.
Abandoning the Kurds is complicated because so many of them belong to a Communist terrorist group. His Executive Orders orders actually don’t seem as bad as Obama’s and doesn’t seem anything worse than George W. Bush, pressuring foreign governments to expose corrupt politicians suits me just fine, I like the TPP but Hillary would have abandoned that as well.
So far the actions are actually pretty good. Especially his domestic and judicial policy.
As to whether or not he makes young people democratic for the next twenty years. No one has any idea about that. I also remember how no one thought he could win. I’ll take the victories that I can get.
Yep. And that’s the likely consequence that so many GOP’ers refuse to even acknowledge, let alone reckon with. They are in total denial about it. They never even talk about it. And that kind of short-sightedness will not lead to the end of the Republic in our lifetime, but it will lead to our becoming more and more “woke,” statist, and in most respects European-ized.
Maybe it would help if “some people” concentrated more on the good actions and less on the “loathsome,” “mentally ill” person making them? Jonah talks and writes a lot about how Western Civilization was basically just “talked up” from nothing, and the dangers of how it could be “talked down” again, but he seems completely oblivious to his own offenses in that area.
It also reminds me of how people like George Carlin were talking up using drugs etc, then they seem surprised by one or more generations of addled dunderheads and then want to portray themselves as detached observers and act like THEY had nothing to do with it.
Put another way, if Jonah says Trump abandoned the Kurds because he’s loathsome and mentally ill, he shouldn’t be surprised if his tax cuts, court nominees, and other things Jonah approves of are described the same way by the left. And that’s a self-inflicted wound not by Trump, but by Jonah and others like him.
No, abandoning the Kurds is simple because so many of them are innocent people now being slaughtered by the Turkish army.
This is the single biggest problem with the pro-Trump side: you refuse to look at his actions objectively. You’re constantly comparing him to Hillary. Why not compare them to all of the other Republican candidates in 2016? Or all of the potential Republican candidates in 2020? Or to the ideal president we should strive towards, a standard we used to feel free to criticize presidents for not living up to, Republican or Democrat, but which it is for some reason no longer acceptable to do with Trump?
This is the same logic as, “I just won a million dollars in the lottery – I’d better spend it all on more lottery tickets!”
I’m constantly hearing that Trump isn’t conservative. So how could Trump be turnign peopel away from Conservatism.
I don’t disagree that he may be turning people away from Republicanism (the party). But that’s different.
Because the only people you’re hearing this from are those who remain true to the philosophy behind conservatism.
When both the general left-wing media and the general pro-Trump right-wing media keep saying that Trump and his supporters are conservatives — when upwards of 90% of the people in the world are actively redefining the word “conservatism” as meaning “in support of Trump” — the entire brand, along with the philosophy that it used to represent, become tainted with his mercurial behavior, his racism, and his corruption.
Are you sure that is his work and not the work of certain other people? One might even think of it as an act of love.
Politicians aren’t objective. They are the least bad option available. I think there is more evidence that Trump is the least bad option. Interpretations may vary of course.
As for the Kurds, the Turks are bombing the Kurds of Syria because some of them are legitimately Communist terrorists. The Turks are sadly, very comfortable with going through women and children to get to them. Everyone is bad in this situation and there aren’t any good guys. Maybe the other Republican candidates would be better or maybe not. I’m not sure what to do. We do need to preserve the Kurds in Northern Iraq/Southern Syria but Trump seems to be doing that.
As for Trump winning is like a lottery ticket statement, I agree that Trump had immense luck with getting Hillary as an opponent but the guy has been too successful on too many Trumps for it to be just luck.
Even if I were to agree with this statement – which I don’t, because Trump has won exactly twice: against 15 jostling other candidates who were all too self-serving to consolidate for the good of the party, and against the second-most-unliked politician in the history of polling – this only helps you win one election: the presidential one in 2020.
I spoke about the next twenty years of elections. The hundreds of senators and thousands of congressmen, the five presidential elections that will not involve Donald J. Trump. Even if Trump really does have some kind of magic immunity to political consequences, no other candidate does, and by following him in lockstep and refusing to criticize him the Republican party is following him into the abyss.
There’s a 60%-30% advantage to Democrats among both Millennials and Generation Z – the most lopsided generation in history. In 2018 the Republican party was blessed with the most tilted Senate electoral map ever and threw that advantage away. For God’s sake, we have a Democratic senator in Alabama now! Do we need a literal flying pig to wake up to the fact that this man is destroying the Right?
Wasn’t that Smallville?
Not a movie.
Does it REALLY matter?
some of them should be more genre based
like Suicide Squad is the most obvious late 60/early 70s “guys on a mission” property out there. Dirty Dozen, Wild Geese, Devils Brigade. Establish a singular threat, bring in a bunch of characters, make them interact and have people care, then kill a few of them
For those who enjoy “deep cuts” on comics, look up Marvel Supervillain Team Up: Modok’s 11. It would be a great throwaway non-franchise Marvel heist movie.