The Problem with Trump

Yuval Levin gets us to the heart of the problem with Trump. In doing so, he actually pinpoints the problem with the conservative movement the last decade or so.

"Chaos is the essence of [the Trump] problem ... even more than his failure to quite grasp the role of the president in our system of government, or his petty malevolence, or his nasty inclination to punch downward, or whatever in the world the Russia madness is about. It is the simple inability to keep his attention focused, to be disciplined and ordered in a persistent way, to resist even the smallest provocations and insults, and to see decisions through, that has been undermining his administration."

Keeping his attention focused, maintaining discipline and order in a persistent way, and especially resisting the smallest provocations and insults, is what George W. Bush was good at. So much so that he and his administration (and via association the modern conservative movement) were engulfed to the point of oblivion by the Democrat/media attack on his integrity. "Bush lied, people died" is all but a fixed truth in history for much of the American public, in large measure because Bush resisted the impulse to respond to this outrageous lie, this terrible slander, on his reputation and legacy.

And now, Trump is facing a media complex that is so much worse than the one George Bush faced, precisely because the media learned and honed their character assassination tactics on that largely quiescent administration. The media complex is at the top of their destructive game now, and the only one who seems to realize it is President Trump. The lies, the smears, the outrageous slanders and libels roll daily across the news, and the wonder is that Trump is still standing and fighting long after a George Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney  or Bob Dole would have lain prostrate, waiting for retirement to  a post-Presidency.

Meanwhile, the stalwart conservatives who should know better, like Yuval, mischaracterize Trump's push back against the media as "petty malevolence," a "nasty inclination to punch downward," or a "Russia madness." As if punching the immensely powerful American media is in any  way a downward stroke. In truth, if there is any madness out there, it is the media that is all but frothing at the mouth. Is there one single reason why Trump should not push back, with all the strength he has, against the outrageous idea that his campaign 'colluded' with the Russians to deny Hillary the Presidency? It's been more than a year since the investigations into this allegation have been  pursued by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security, and various Congressional committees. We either have supreme incompetence in all these investigations or willful maliciousness, but in either case, we have zero  evidence of any collusion by the Trump campaign, and even some evidence that the Russians did not hack the DNC or anyone else for that matter. And yet the media still runs this story, breathlessly reporting that real evidence of collusion is within days of surfacing.

I do not know  why smart guys like Yuval continue to  obsess over the Trump eccentricities, when they ought to  be outraged over the absolute malefactions of the Democrat/media complex. I am by no means a Trump guy; he was not my preferred candidate. Could another candidate have run this administration better? More tightly focused its messaging? Better managed the roll-out and execution of its legislative agenda? Undoubtedly; Trump is after all a novice at this sort of  thing, and has much to learn. But for the life of me I cannot see any other candidate confronting and enduring such a media assault, and most definitely cannot see any of the  others being able to push back as effectively as Trump has.

Unlike Yuval, I can separate out his personal ticks from the substance of what he is facing - and what Trump is facing is nothing less than a brutal all-out assault on the will of the American voter last November. Thank God we finally have someone who  will fight back against that sort of thing. 

Re: Monumental Mistake

It's nice for the Left that they have finally found an opponent who won't fight back. They have been shouting 'Shut up!' at anyone who disagrees with them and are noticeably frustrated at the lack of cooperation they usually receive.

But statues are perfect: the Left knocks them down and they quietly stay down, in complete compliance with the Left's wishes. They are the perfect political opponent, surpassing even the servile acquiescence of their other favorite opponent, the Straw Men. Straw Men however can occasionally tie the Left up by exposing their illogic and hypocrisy, but not statues. Statues are stoically quiet and accepting, whether attacked by pigeon droppings or their political equivalent, the vituperative rage of a Social Justice Warrior.

I would caution them however. When approaching a statue, don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. If instead of a statue honoring some dead white male you have stumbled on a Weeping Angel, you could find yourself back in time facing a live confederate soldier who most definitely is willing and able to defend himself against your puny sledgehammers. Live white males were made of sterner stuff back then, and they will not be intimidated by some basement boy wearing sandals and a Che Guevara t-shirt.

So, don't blink; don't even blink.

Re: Monumental Mistake

Well done, Whit. And although you make cogent points, I'm a little more straightforward about this whole affair.

Whoever owns these statues, whether it's the state, local governments, local communities, the Feds or whoever, I want a democratic process of public discussion in which all sides are heard from. Then whatever a majority of the people decide, I want a proper law or ordinance passed by politicians who have voted and gone on the record. At that point, I for one will be satisfied, whatever action is taken, whether to leave them standing or tear them down.

But if we've got to do something about vestiges of slavery immediately, then I would be all in favor today of dismantling that greatest vestige of slavery in the world today - the Democrat Party. Regarding slavery, the Democrat Party is about as vestige-ridden as they come. It was the Democrat Party that was the political party of slavery, supporting it,  promoting it, and trying to expand it before the war. It was the political party that advocated for secession and war. It was the political party that refused to accept the results of the war. And it was the political party that invented and enforced Jim Crow segregation laws, and created its own paramilitary wing, the Ku Klux Klan, in order to intimidate both blacks and whites in the South to maintain a one party political hammerlock on the region for more than a hundred years.

As Mark Steyn has said, the Democrat Party is the one segregationist and white supremacist organization that has survived into the modern world. You go to South Africa, you go to Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, and the formerly powerful white segregation parties have long since disappeared.

But the Democrat Party has survived and they've done so by telling lies about their sordid history and their political opponents and engaging in demagoguery to provoke fear among blacks.

This is a vestige of slavery that we could all do without.

Monumental Mistake

And now, for the next chapter in the Left's continuing story of the desecration of all things American. As the chapter unfolds, we find a seemingly indefensible piece of American history being targeted for elimination - the 1,000's of memorials and monuments, mostly in the South, but also dotting the rest of the Country too, of the Confederacy.

Except, as the estimable Arthur Herman (Pulitzer Prize finalist historian, bestselling author, to name a few of his achievements) reminds us, the statues are not of the Confederacy per se, but of the dead soldiers who fought on the Confederate side. This is an important distinction - we do not generally ascribe the wrongfulness of a war against the soldiers thereof, for the simple reason that soldiers in whatever cause are doing those things that characterize a soldier: acting on the virtues of duty, honor, courage, and self-sacrifice even to the point of death. This kind of behavior is laudable, whether exhibited by a fighter of the Confederacy or the Union, the Allies or the Germans, the Cowboys or the Indians. Courage in the face of death is rare and always eminent, especially when that courage is in the service of the protection/preservation of others - even if 'the others' are not deserving of protection (x-reference Russians who died protecting Stalin's Russia, a bloody regime without parallel in history to that point, from the German Army).

This was the original shameful stain among many in the Leftist movement of the 60's, which openly despised and dishonored the Vietnam soldiers because the Left hated the war they fought. And then flash forward to the Left's attempt to do the same to the soldiers in the 2000's - e.g. John Murtha, John Kerry, and Hollywood, slandering our people as rapists and terrorizers of women and children in Iraq - and it is obvious they have learned nothing, and indeed, do not want to learn. They simply want to tear down America, beginning with its most obviously impressive part, its soldiers.

Let's get straight about what monuments and memorials are. They are historical memory markers. A society bent on erasing all artifacts of its history is in a state of denial, and thereby (as the saying goes) doomed to repeat its mistakes. None of us appeared pristine into the world upon birth, but instead are a complex product of the history which preceded us. And that history contains mistakes made and lessons learned that, if we are to leave the world better after we are gone, will inform and guide us.

And that points us to the dynamic essence of a monument: a statue is sculpted and the materials used are thereby frozen in time. But beyond the materials, what is sculpted is also a hope, a hope that the reasons this statue was made will endure to remind and inspire those who come after, that it will be an enduring memory marker. But the original meaning of the statue changes and morphs with the changing times in a way that mirrors all other interactions between the present and the past. In the flux of time we seek eternal verities, and over time certain meanings from the past reveal themselves as cheap flint to be chipped off and discarded, others as rough stone that need rounding and smoothing, and some, very few, as fine cut diamonds that cannot be improved upon, only admired.

No one looks at a pyramid or the Sphinx and sees an eternal paean to the value of a slave working class, nor as an example of the greatness we could all achieve if we just brought back Pharaohs and their gods to rule us. Something like that may have been the original impetus to these massive projects, but these meanings are consigned to  the dustbin of history. Today, they represent the marvel of human society, what it can do if it has the will and strength to strive for something great.

And so too with Confederate statues. It is not disputed that many of these were built to revere the Lost Cause of the South, which in large measure (albeit not totally) was the maintenance of slavery as an institution. But this is a meaning that has not survived subsequent history; whatever hope the creators may have had in this respect has been dashed against the confirmed Southern belief that slavery was an evil and had to end. So, these statues,  some begun with infamous purpose, have morphed in their meaning as a diamond core was discovered after chipping away the flint.

A diamond core of multiple, enduring meanings.

First, reverence for our forebears. These statues were made to last. As such they were created by our forebears essentially as a conversation with the future, or better, an offer of a dialogue that we entertain out of respect for those who came before  us.

Continue ..... 

Uncovered

As our esteemed Republicans sally forth in defense of the Republic's Healthcare system, they keep foundering on a seemingly insurmountable battlement: the Congressional Budget Office. This is the office that analyzes proposed Congressional legislation to determine what impacts it will have on various measures deemed relevant to the CBO. This analysis - termed a 'score' of the Bill - becomes somewhat of a sacred writ for the politicians, who will quote it as undeniable objective truth. When the CBO speaks, apparently, the science is settled, and there shall be no deniers allowed into the sacred spaces of Congress.

With regard to Healthcare, the CBO says many things, but the most important score is that of the number of citizens who will  lose their health insurance coverage should the Republicans make any changes to Obamacare. This number hovers around 20 million, about 6% of the population.

So for want of the 6%, the politicians feel the need to restructure the Healthcare of the 94%. As absurd as that is, the 6% is the fulcrum around which all Republican proposals circle. But there is a problem, and the problem is not the 6% per se, it is the CBO.

Avik Roy of NRO gives us the skinny, based on some new information recently disclosed by a(nother) Washington leaker. Apparently, the super majority of those losing insurance are … wait for  it … due to the proposed repeal of the Obamacare mandate to purchase insurance. That's right; the uninsured results, not from losing any particular coverage, but from  the CBO's estimate of how many citizens will choose to forego insurance when they are no longer required to purchase it.

Thus, if every jot and tittle of Obamacare were left in place, but the insurance mandate was repealed, the CBO would score the result as 20 million 'losing' coverage.

But that's not losing coverage; that's citizens exercising their right to pursue their own happiness. And therein lies in microcosm the warp and woof of our public discourse on issues major and minor: instead of arguing the substance of the policy, our betters substitute loaded rhetoric for honest description - e.g.  'losing coverage' for 'refusing coverage.'

And here's a question: how much are we paying these experts at the CBO? We should fire the economists and replace them with entry-level PR flacks. At least then we would all be honest about our dishonesty.