Jonah Goldberg seems oddly clueless:
But observing common courtesy and civility is not what Team Trump does. And that’s the real issue here. Donald Trump and his campaign take great pride in overturning the basic rules of politics and democratic discourse. For those who want to see “the establishment” — however defined — torn down, this bull-in-a-china-shop stuff is celebrated. Trump’s fans ascribe a brilliance to his actions that is wholly underserved. Breaking the rules in ways large and small is seen as self-justifying in every case…
As Jim Geraghty has been writing, the problem with such second thoughts is the assumption that something is amiss with Trump or his campaign. This is Trump. This is his campaign. The Trump we see before us is the same Trump. It’s a bit like when Barack Obama said that the Jeremiah Wright he saw denouncing America wasn’t the man he knew. That was nonsense. Obama knew exactly who Wright was, having attended his church for 20 years. It was only when Wright’s act moved to a larger national stage that all of a sudden he became inconvenient to Obama.
The analogy isn’t perfect, of course. But the basic point is the same. The Donald Trump of the last week is the exact same Donald Trump many of us saw a year ago or five years ago. He’s always been full of sh*t. He’s always been a total ignoramus when it comes to public policy, lacking the simple sense of patriotic duty to do his homework on the issues. He’s always been a nasty and boorish cad. He’s always pretended to be a conservative while working on liberal assumptions of what conservatives want to hear…
It is easy to ascribe malevolent motives to Goldberg, given how it seems impossible for him to be this clueless. But I think he is just honestly conditioned by his position to not see anything wrong with nominating a guy like Romney, or seeing the GOPe win. Romney got nominated, and Goldberg had stuff to write about, the money flowed, there were no bad-feels at his cocktail parties. It was no big deal.
Most of the article is Goldberg highlighting Trump’s use of persuasion techniques and mental manipulation as if it is bad. It is as if the future of our nation depends on a no-holds-barred fight, and Goldberg is complaining that most conservatives want an MMA veteran to represent us, and he wants an Elizabethan boxer, who holds his fists with his palms facing him when he fights. God knows that MMA is just unfair and uncivilized.
The thing is, no conservative politician today will actually speak simple truths, like the fact liberals are traitors, let alone use these rhetorical tools to bury the enemy. We’ve seen the results of such losers before. Bush I, Dole, Bush II, McCain, Romney, and if they had their way, Bush III. All of them treated the opposition as an honest opponent with pure motives. All of them destroyed the movement, and left it looking like a bunch of pansy eggheads who were afraid to fight evil, or even talk meanly to it.
The best quote is,
We’ve all had dinner parties or family gatherings ruined by that oaf who refuses to bend to simple politeness. They force polite people to either swallow small — or large — insults for the sake of civility. “I didn’t want to make a huge deal about it because it would have just made things worse,” is a rationalization we’ve given voice to on the drive home.
Trump is doing this on a massive scale.
It is hard to read this without wanting to say, “Exactly!” That is what Trump’s supporters want. They have been forced to attend a dinner party filled with people they don’t like, and Trump is the fun guy who is about to make it all get interesting by ruining everyone’s cocktail party.
For decades now, conservatives have been getting kicked around by their party leaders, who gave the most corrupted, leftist candidate they could find the nomination, and then they demeaned the grassroots as a bunch of rubes after they lost the election. We’ve watched liberals attack us at will, as our leaders hide, and tell us to shut up. We watched Boehner surrender to Obama time and again. We hate all of them. Trump is the revenge.
Notice the rabbit-like attitude in the quote. A guy at a party is being an asshole, and all the cucks huddle in a corner and let him run roughshod, because to say something, might, like, make a big deal or something. Far better the entire night be ruined, and they just vent about it on the drive home. That is precisely not the kind of mindset I want in charge of the greatest nation on earth, and clearly that is the thinking of the majority of conservatives. I’d actually rather have a real man I disagree with lead this nation, than a cuck I agree with who hides under the table when he doesn’t like the discourse.
Times are turning K-selected, and that is why this is the right time for Donald. The older, more genteel conservative politician is about to give way to a new, more aggressive model. The only question is where that trend stops. Maybe it will stop at Donald’s insults, or maybe our congressmen will have fistfights on the floor of the House like in Taiwan.
Whatever happens, I expect in six years, the conservative media is going to look a lot different. Either the people there now will change and grow more aggressive and angry, or a new media will rise to take their place and feed the rage of the new, more K-selected conservatism. By the time the collapse comes, the movement will look totally different, and it won’t be taking shit from anyone.
I expect Donald will help that process along considerably.
[…] By Anonymous Conservative […]
There would be very few liberals left in America if it was still a place where insulting someone to their face got you socked in yours.
Imagine how few leftist rabbits would still exist if every discussion of policy took place when everyone who had a dog in the fight was present in the room, sitting with a fully-loaded, chambered, on-safe AR15 in his lap?
That’s the kind of debate I’d rather see. None of this back-stabbing, nameless, hiding-behind-the-bureaucracy and sniping from afar bullshit that characterizes modern politics. You want the collective (the government) to do something for someone else and hand me the bill? Say it to my face, try to convince me, and if you fail and the stakes are high enough, accept that I might decide it’s worth my while to blow your head off, knowing that I’ll likely be following you (but at least you’ll be lighting the path ahead.)
OT: Salient mortal stimulus.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/04/01/2234219/futuristic-suit-lets-you-feel-what-its-like-to-be-an-old-man
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Andy Newman writes at the New York Times about an exhibit at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City that lets users walk a proverbial mile in their elders’ orthopedic shoes and experience the stooped shuffle, the halting speech, and the dimming senses of an 85-year old man. It is not a very pleasant experience. An attendant cranks up a fader and your vision dissolves into melty, grayed-out blobs, like a memorably unvivid psychedelic experience, more knobs twiddle, and your hearing is subsumed in a fog of tinnitus, muffling and distortion. Loaded with hardware and a computer, the suit itself weighs 40 pounds, distributed as uncomfortably as possible. “It’s going to get much worse,” promises Bran Ferren, the suit’s inventor. “You haven’t lived.”
According to Newman, in just 10 minutes, the aging suit induced a remarkable amount of frustration, depression and hopelessness. There are entire realms of wretchedness attendant upon owning and operating an 85-year-old body that the exhibit does not even touch upon. Comprehensive sagging, internal and external. Pain in places you did not know could hurt. Difficulty urinating. Difficulty not urinating. Watching your friends die off. Watching yourself become irrelevant, an object of pity or puzzlement if acknowledged at all. By allowing a younger generation to feel the effects of aging firsthand, the suit provides a newfound perspective that hopefully inspires a conversation with loved ones about getting older so, collectively, family and friends can better prepare for the future. If doing even the most basic tasks of daily living is this much trouble, you wonder, why bother? But it also makes you a little less likely to lose patience and a little more likely to feel empathy with the older people in your life. “My father, Aaron Newman, happens to be 85,” says Newman. “I called him up. I described the treadmill experience and asked if that sounded about right.” “No,” he said. “It’s much worse.”
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As a man (the real kind, with muscles, testosterone, a temper and an imposing physical presence) it is apparent to me that we don’t have a “mid-life crisis,” we have a series of them as we go through successive waves of confronting the inevitability of time and decline. They appear when a life-event (like a layoff) provides a trigger, or when experience accumulates to a notice-threshold that you aren’t the same man as ten years ago.
Our youth-obsessed culture makes it worse, and then add that a slow-motion train-wreck economy, committed to wringing every last nickel out of every last transaction, has every incentive to jettison middle-aged people perceived to be set in their ways and losing steam…well, it’s a perfect storm to heap insult onto the injuries of time.
Wait until all the explicit (Social Security, defined benefit pensions that remain) and implicit (stock market riches, selling the McMansion at peak prices) promises of a dignified aging-decline are soon broken. Will we see millions of aging boomers picking through the trash for a scrap of food? We used to joke about old people eating cat food, but nowadays the cat food is priced like grass-fed beef so that’s not going to happen.
Never have so many people been lulled into a state of utter complacency immediately before a period of utter chaos. No people have been raised so high before the swan dive commences.
You are projecting your hopes on The Donald and you are confusing tactics with strategy.