Ask The Founders

Thanks for taking my question. Peter is still mostly wrong about Mars (NASA) spending.

I think that Donald Trump will have a very limited long term effect on the Republican Party or the body politic in general, as a philosopher. Donald Trump is likely the most genuine politician of our time - the problem is that he's genuinely a Jerk. This is the point that politicians who steals his act are missing. Taking on this light "Andrew Dice-Clay" persona of a crude, bellicose New Yorker doesnt work for politicians who arent naturally those things. In the future Trumpism is more likely to be listed in the DSM as a personality defect, than anywhere as a political philosophy. He will probably be better remembered as a strategist who countered Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" play book, that has been playing an increasingly larger role in democratic strategies over the past 40 years. He has shown democrats that the game isnt as fun, when both play by the same rules.

Great podcast..

To Blue Yeti,

Thank you.

OccupantCDN (View Comment):

Thanks for taking my question. Peter is still mostly wrong about Mars (NASA) spending.

I think that Donald Trump will have a very limited long term effect on the Republican Party or the body politic in general, as a philosopher. Donald Trump is likely the most genuine politician of our time – the problem is that he’s genuinely a Jerk. This is the point that politicians who steals his act are missing. Taking on this light “Andrew Dice-Clay” persona of a crude, bellicose New Yorker doesnt work for politicians who arent naturally those things. In the future Trumpism is more likely to be listed in the DSM as a personality defect, than anywhere as a political strategy. He will probably be better remembered as a strategist who countered Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” play book, that has been playing an increasingly larger role in democratic strategies over the past 40 years. He has shown democrats that the game isnt as fun, when both play by the same rules.

Great podcast..

I guest I mostly agree with this. I sure do hope you are right. Because I see Trump as a crude representative of someone we always try to hide from the kiddies, for fear that his vulgarisms may rub off. And while I realize that much of it is an act, I fear that it poses a danger to our future, in that he is poisoning the well of meaningingful and civil discourse. And this does not pose good things for Reagan conservatism.

On NASA: I also agree that Peter is wrong. While I hate taxpayer spending as much as anyone, exploration is in American's blood, and we already spend public monies in far, far worse ways.

Thanks for a great podcast. For once I find myself more in agreement with Peter than Rob: I think the social anarchy caused by the breakdown of the family is far and away our greatest challenge. The wonderful Aretha Franklin is a good example: how many obituaries will note that she had her first child at age 12, her second at age 15, that her mother finally abandoned the family and moved to Buffalo NY because of the constant philandering of her father, the Rev. C. L. Franklin, who impregnated a different 12 year old girl? In her entire life no man treated her with the respect that a woman deserves. The most touching line she wrote, for me, was in the song Think, where she says "it don't take no high IQ to see what you're trying to do to me." The pain and the power she expressed with that voice had to be formed by that kind of personal history.

George Townsend (View Comment):

I guest I mostly agree with this. I sure do hope you are right. Because I see Trump as a crude representative of someone we always try to hide from the kiddies, for fear that his vulgarisms may rub off. And while I realize that much of it is an act, I fear that it poses a danger to our future, in that he is poisoning the well of meaningingful and civil discourse. And this does not pose good things for Reagan conservatism.

On NASA: I also agree that Peter is wrong. While I hate taxpayer spending as much as anyone, exploration is in American’s blood, and we already spend public monies in far, far worse ways.

The well of civil discourse had long been poisoned, the media didnt care because it was only republicans who where being poisoned. When they both play be the same rules, suddenly the democrat-media complex sees the problems with their own behavior.

NASA could be run much more efficiently, this is actually one of the few victories of the Obama administration. Mostly because Obama himself doesnt give a flyin-rats about space exploration he left NASA mostly alone, to complete the COTS programs. When NASA gets serious about actually going to Mars, I think they'll have to use the Commercial Space technology development strategies to contain costs.

Peter is right about one thing, if NASA manages a MARS program in its standard management paradigm it would be unspeakably expensive and dangerous.