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This week, we get wonky, wistful, and weepy (but not because Ricochet Editor In Chief Jon Gabriel is sitting in for Peter Robinson). We get our wonk on with Washington Free Beacon Editor In Chief Matt Continetti, who gives us the elite media POV on the race, as well as a sobering look (here’s the weepy part, at least for @jameslileks) at Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Spoiler alert: don’t ever meet your heroes, folks. Later, we’re joined by the great Byron York, who details what it’s like covering a candidate whose primary method of communication is late night Tweeting. Case in point:
For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o'clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016
It’s a kooky, crazy world, ain’t it?
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Music from this week’s podcast:
They Call Me Big Mama by Big Mama Thornton
The brand new opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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Cool it, EJHill.
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Actually, I’ve had the blessed occasion of meeting a few of my heroes. It pays to pick them well.
Love the cover art, EJ!
It sickens me to see people I respect engaging in any more than a very minimal level of levity from the proposition that Trump may lose. I’ll take a Trump dumpster fire to Felony…I mean Hillary’s much larger fascist inferno.
This is what gave rise to Trump in the first place.
I think everyone has to acknowledge, that is one funny tweet.
Lileks: Great surgeon makes skilled scalpel incision into wound. Re-inserts. Re-insets again. Again. Then again. And again Again again and again again again over and over and over and over…here’s a fresh spot. Here’s a fresh spot. Turn patient over. Eureka! New spots.. Now it’s just stabbing motion. Egads, what a long day.
Basil: I’m confused, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a compliment.
Holmsian, my good man. Rest assured, Gulliver (Trump) is quite secure in his ropes for 1/2 of the Ricochetti, so I urge you to flourish your rhetorical cape elsewhere….so I can have fun again. For many, pain level is at 11 having to vote Trump. My facial ticks make Inspector Clouseau’s boss seem sanguine – and then I listen to the podcast. (Undertone: This is a cry for help.)
Rob Long invites Continetti on the podcast, then takes up much of the time with his own commentary/snark, and tops it off by demanding the guest announce for whom he is voting. Is that really your business, Mr Long, or is it your attempt at shaming? Anyway, I stopped listening to this podcast about a month ago and just thought I’d tune in again to see what’s going on. Now I know, and I’m off again.
Perhaps this is the reason why Minnesota is thinking about voting Republican.
“(Health insurance) increases range from 50 percent to 67 percent… The rate hike follows increases for this year of 14 percent to 49 percent…”
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/01/obamacare-rates-mn-skyrocket-60-stave-off-collapse/
After Rob Long’s extraordinarily eloquent “what Trump should have said” at the debate when Clinton brought up the Miss Universe story, James Lileks said something that I’ve been thinking for a long time (pun intended). People in the so-called punditry class who articulate what Trump “should” have said the next day only makes this whole sorry election all the more frustrating.
Coulda/shoulda/woulda…
What a wasted opportunity.
Oh well.
I have to stop listening to @roblong‘s recommendations. Rickles @ RR’s inaugural, that TV show about the Silicon Valley start-up, etc. Duds all. Then I remember his praise of Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers series and I start hoping that lightning will strike again.
There was one line in the podcast, I forget who said it, either Continetti or Gabriel, that the “left is out of control” and needs to be brought back to reality. The only argument for Trump, and the only argument that any Conservative [Upper-case C] should need.
I’m not saying Trump is a Conservative hero – far from it. But we can worry about his faults later. If you think the left is over-reaching now, wait until they have Hillary in office.
I agree, @miffedwhitemale! It was Continetti, and the only reason I know is because I skipped back a few times to listen and transcribe. I had the exact same thought as you, and I actually meant to mention it in the comments. Here’s the entire, word-for-word transcription (check me, if you like):
“I really detest Donald Trump. On the other hand, I feel that the left is getting out of control, and I sometimes think that maybe the only thing that would kind of arrest the left and its overreach would be the traumatic shock of a Trump victory.”
They are unarrestable, constitutionally incapable of reining in their overreaching, and respond to shock with redoubled efforts. Nothing would convince them of their virtue and historical correctness like a Trump victory.
That’s sort of depressing. Not even a little arrestable?
This horrible election season has made me realize that people may be forgetting–or may not even understand–what conservatism really is. Liberalism, or to be precise, leftism, is now the default worldview, and I’m afraid even well-meaning people of faith (Christians, I’m thinking) may be lured into accepting some of its tenets. Like an undertow or riptide, you just get pulled along (or sucked down). I see this happening with believers who, because they despise Donald Trump, are therefore fine with Hillary Clinton, maybe even think Clinton is a good choice, as opposed to saying, essentially, a pox on both your houses. So the underlying truths of conservatism get lost in the battle of personalities.
What to do, what to do? Is there really no antidote?