Donald Trump Comes to Georgia
And
what a speech.
‘Our country does not win any more. We don’t win against ISIS. We don’t win with health care….We don’t win at the border with Mexico. We don’t win anywhere. But we’re gonna win. Oh, are we gonna win. You’ll get so tired of winning, you’re gonna get so tired, you’re going to say, ‘Please, please, Mr. President, we can’t stand it anymore. We don’t want to keep winning. We can’t stand it.’ And I’m going to say, ‘I don’t care, we’re going to keep winning, we’re going to make America great again.’”
i have become convinced that's his appeal. He punches back against the toffs and elites, he is willing to do battle, he won't let his people be disrespected.
ReplyDeleteNone of his positions on anything matter. He hits back. some of his supporters have more rational positions (or rationalisations, but don't we all), but for most of them, that's the whole story.
And ya know, America has been losing for a long time now, and a lot of people have woken up to the fact that we aren't losing to foreigners, but to some of our fellow Americans. Whatever our faults may be, we don't like losing.
ReplyDeleteSo, what's his plan? He's always evasive on the few times he's asked that.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
I listened to the whole thing, thinking "But what would you actually do to make any of this happen?"--but I can't deny it was a very stirring speech nevertheless. Head and shoulders above what I heard from the other candidates in both parties.
ReplyDeleteTrump is the plan. He is another Obama, but one who represents the hopes of a good chunk of America that feels isolated and in danger of destruction. They aren't looking for a president; they're looking for a savior.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, I could use a good "Let's kick some butt!" speech from a candidate with a solid plan for planting the boot where it needs to go.
Maybe it's just the lateness of the night talking, but if we see Trump as Obama's mirror image, then maybe Obama was elected because a lot of people felt isolated and hopeless during the Bush administration.
ReplyDeleteMaybe now we have two mutually exclusive ideas of what constitutes hope.
Donald Trump sure has a way with words
ReplyDeleteI agree that his policy positions aren't what turn on this supporters, but he is not without substance. His policy positions are posted on his website. (Has anyone seen a rating of his tax plan?) I think his attraction is the recognition that government is increasingly self serving and incompetent, that it has been coopted by the mega corps and transnationals, in addition to a rejection of national self abasement, as foreign policy. I don't think his ideas are unique or new or exclusive to him, but somehow it's his rhetoric that has gotten traction.
ReplyDeleteWhen his supporters write about him, it sounds like a Chuck Norris meme.
ReplyDeleteValerie
I'm not a fan, by any stretch, but I agree it's a powerful thing to hear someone identify exactly the ways I believe we've gone wrong and rail about them. There are too many candidates out there who don't even seem able to identify the right problem; it's very frustrating. I think Tom is right, that many of us voters are hungry to have someone address the feeling of having been isolated and helpless during a disastrous leadership. But I keep thinking of desperate Germans in the 1930s. "We want a change, any change, as long as it's dramatic!"
ReplyDeleteBut I keep thinking of desperate Germans in the 1930s. "We want a change, any change, as long as it's dramatic!"
ReplyDeleteI haven't encountered this? Have you?
Full disclosure, I have already voted and not for Trump, but for the one that I think would make a decent CIC. I try to avoid voting for Senator/Lawyers or candidates who have spent their entire adult lives at the public trough. I'm not all that proud of my vote. That said, I do have empathy for the Trump fans even if I do believe they have invested too much faith in him. I think he wouldn't be any worse than the others.
I have encountered it, a bit. Faced with the knowledge that Trump holds a number of policy views they can't really tolerate, people still tell me they're going to support him anyway, because he's the only one pushing back against the prevailing current and raising the issues no one else will raise. He'll shake things up, he'll tell the Republican establishment what we think of what they've been trying to shove down our throats. And I sympathize entirely. Like you, I suspect he wouldn't be any worse than the others: a sad state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that any "plan" proposed by a candidate is DOA unless that person can convince Congress to buy into it, or some reasonable facsimile of it.
ReplyDeleteI kind of think it might be fun to let loose the more conservative in Congress to write up some passable legislation that tightens up the budgets of executive agencies (put the Beast on a diet, so to speak), rolls back some of the 'way overreaching social programs, energy loan programs, ethanol mandates, etc., inserts some sane reforms into the big three entitlements (SS, Medicare, Medicaid), replace Obamacare with consumer-oriented law, and then...
send Trump out on the stump to sell it -- he's a salesman, he loves standing in front of the crowd spewing words (they don't have to make sense - he simply oozes enthusiasm.) He could get it done (if anyone can).
maybe
"Maybe now we have two mutually exclusive ideas of what constitutes hope."
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't portend good things, Tom, but you may just be right. Bernie is more of the same from the other side, I think.
Colorado, that's the most hopeful take I've heard on a possible (though in my estimation, very, very longshot) Trump presidency.
When his supporters write about him, it sounds like a Chuck Norris meme.
ReplyDeleteYeah, now that you mention it, that's true.
I think he wouldn't be any worse than the others.
Really? Why? I assume Rubio, Cruz, and Carson would all be better, but I don't know. What's your reasoning?
douglas, it's struck me for some time now that the very things I celebrate send my progressive friends into the doldrums, and vice versa. Increasingly, it's an effort to speak the same language when we talk about politics and social issues. We have completely different assumptions about how the world works. I guess it makes sense that our hopes would be greatly different, even contradictory. But I don't like where that might lead.
ReplyDeleteI support Cruz and would like to think he'd do a better job--but although I find his ideas persuasive, they don't seem to be catching on. No matter how right I think he would be, he wouldn't get far if he couldn't get people to go along with him. Also, I've nearly lost faith in Congress to do a darn thing, with or without a president to support. Carson seems like a very nice guy, but I question whether he has much idea how things work or any clue how to be an executive. Rubio I can't account for. Often he sounds like he's on my wavelength, but when the chips are down he caves and supports deals that won't work. Still, I'd support Rubio if he took the nomination and would hope for the best in Supreme Court nominations. I truly have no idea what kind of justice Trump would nominate. I don't know where he's coming from.
ReplyDeleteBernie and Trump do tap into a similar POV. As my favorite commentator on Althouse says" I'm an American; I want to live in America, not Sweden, not Zimbabwe, not Brazil North." Even though I am pro free trade, I recognize the reasons for the push for transnational institutions and open borders, as well as the downsides. Even so, I am not willing to give up my Bill of Rights, or American sovereignty, or American economic well being, or American jobs to the benefit of the transnational elites and transnational corporations.
ReplyDeleteI think Carson would be better than Trump, though. Also, I don't think Carson's a nice man; I think he's a good man, and there's a big difference. He hasn't held an executive political office, and that's a big drawback, but he has had some management experience, and surgeons are team leaders: They have to run the show during surgery.
ReplyDeleteHe's also the only one up there whose job has been literally making life-and-death decisions. Experience as a combat commander would be better, but he knows what it's like to have lives hanging on his decisions, and I'm sure he's lost patients, so he knows what it's like to make the best decisions you can and still have people die. Whether it's gained as a combat commander or a surgeon, or some other job, understanding these things at a deep, personal level gives him the empathy and mental / psychological ability he needs to make the hard calls. No other candidate up there has this. I believe that no matter how real someone intellectually knows things are, war is still psychologically like a sporting event until you've worked with life and death close up.
Like you, Tex, I'm leaning toward Cruz, but I think there are a lot of reasons Carson would be better than Trump.
I believe that no matter how real someone intellectually knows things are, war is still psychologically like a sporting event until you've worked with life and death close up ...
ReplyDeleteI should probably amend that with "or you have people you love and care about fighting one."
"...war is still psychologically like a sporting event until you've worked with life and death close up..."
ReplyDeleteYou aren't the first to think so.
That's an interesting article, but I don't think Dr. Taylor is saying the same thing I am.
ReplyDeleteI'm saying that I don't think people understand the real seriousness of war without becoming familiar with people dying. When you become familiar with death, you gain a certain perspective, and if you're open to it, an empathy, that isn't fully available to those who haven't. When your job is making life and death decisions, if you handle it well, you develop an ability to be both decisive and empathic with all those involved. You can make good decisions in an appropriate time frame while fully understanding the potential consequences of those decisions.
Well, the problem -- which goes back to James -- is that war is ugly, but it is also both (a) fun, and (b) apparently important to developing some core human virtues. James' question is whether it is actually necessary to developing those virtues, or whether something else -- like sport -- can be imposed instead.
ReplyDeleteYou're floating what I take to be a near but dissenting view. Yes, war develops virtues, but anything short of war is really just sport. It doesn't develop the virtue of empathy that comes from encountering human mortality in wide and direct ways.
Well, anything short of life and death. My point was that a surgeon could develop that particular virtue. By extension, a police officer, EMT, firefighter, ER nurse, etc.
ReplyDeleteI do think sport can develop many other virtues, as can other types of work and play. I'm just claiming that a job making life and death decisions develops something in a person that other jobs do not.
I think it's possible that dangerous but controlled training, such as live fire exercises, or classical weapons arts where you can get seriously injured or seriously injure others if you are not disciplined about it, can develop this as well, maybe. But not basketball, really.
It's actually similar to some things you've written about riding horses.
The wages of sin is death. Similar problems for worshiping idols and false prophets.
ReplyDeleteWashington refused the throne when his troops lobbied him for it, to remove the chaos afterwards.
This time, ironically, Americans are repeating the same mistake. They won't have any Washingtons around though, they no longer deserve such leaders.