The enigma that is Donald Trump

Alas, it is going to be at least 25 years before a shrewd and balanced analytical history of Donald Trump's Presidency is produced.  The ones that appear almost within 10 seconds of his departure from office will not be worth reading because most of them will be stuffed full of malice!  He truly is an exceptional man, and I do not apply that word as meaning that he is near to genius.  He is, like most world leaders, a man full of virtues and faults.  In fact, I would suggest that in that respect he is almost Churchillian - now, there was a man of incredible genius - and unbelievable stupidity!

Churchill's main genius lay in his ability to discern, well ahead of the game, who were his country's enemies and who were the friends.  He saw Hitler coming years before anyone else and he also understood Stalin and the Soviet Union and did his best to warn Roosevelt.  Trump's warning concerning China and its malevolence was in the same vein. Yes, 'many a time and oft' he opens his mouth without consulting his brain but in the truly 'yuuuuuuuuuge' things he is spot on. 

China is a menacing enemy - end of!

 

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

Trump has been warning about China for over two decades. He is consistent and has been and is right now. He is fully aware of the three faces of his immediate enemy: MSM, Democrats and China and they are working together as he is their enemy at the moment.

[Scrobs]

True, Whitewall, and add the WHO to your list.

[Glesga]

Whitewall, we do not know yet where this virus really originated from and it could be military. China and the WHO who are the highly paid experts need to provide an explanation. I am not yet convinced it simply originated in a Chinese food market and may have killed my old cousin in a care home Prestwick Scotland. Trump is right to hold the WHO to account. It is getting like Monty Python here in the UK Care Homes. Bring out the Dead!

[Whitewall]

Scrobs, Jimmy...here you go:
https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/the-u-s-just-canceled-funding-for-the-who-and-its-about-time/

[Bob]

Gosh, we sure are lucky. No one else in America ever noticed China is a threat. "Exceptional" is damning with faint praise. The president is alpha and omega. He has made eighteen holes-in-one in a single round of golf. Take that, Kim Jong Il with your measly five.

[Loz]

Looks like the Don has read the runes right again, and ambushed the MSM and Dems into the bargain for the, oh, help me someone, how many times is it now? ...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/16/release-us-anti-lockdown-protests-break-across-america-featuring/amp/

Armed Americans coming out on the streets to protest about the continued state lockdowns, wanting to get back to work. State governors pooping their pants, and the Don pulling the strings of the mob from above.

All those MSM & Dem jerks who said the Prez doesn't have the power? He does when he reads the mob right. The top of Nolan's chart goes up, round, and joins the bottom when the individual gets power from the top man. It'll now be for the states to compete for the attention of the citizens again. Ooooh look Bob, the virtuous circle of competition! A Condefederation's the best, but a Federation will do. Keeping states and the federal centre honest and jumping to it. Wish we had some of that going on over here to shake the paralyzed, effing useless, centralised autocracy into effective action.

Cue state governors all of a sudden deciding that the Don was actually on the right track all along - and the gentlemen with the Armalites loitering outside their offices!

Otherwise this could get very interesting. May not even need Godel's Loophole. Simple bullet holes will do.

SoD

[Loz]

For those outside the DT firewall ...

https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/apr/16/armed-protesters-demand-an-end-to-michigans-coronavirus-lockdown-orders-video

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-17/anti-lockdown-protests-on-the-rise-in-the-us/

Lady Liberty, the real power behind the people, has had her arse pinched! And she ain't too pleased 'bout it!

As Malcolm Pollack famously quoted recently from Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings" ...

If you don't work, you die.

Lady Liberty knows that one off by heart.

The three layer "Federation plus Liberty" neural network of the US system ...

1st estate: Prez
2nd estate: States
3rd estate: Lady Liberty and the people

... will survive this as the non-linear swirl of activity between these neural layers settles on an optimal course of action that balances Covid death with Copybook Heading death.

The EU and states of Europe will follow suit in their Confederate system.

But Blighty? The Centralist of the pack, with a dead man walking and a bunch of non-entities as the sole executive? A neural network with only one neuron - and a failed neuron at that?

Like a single processor, single core computer with the single core broken. You can press Ctrl-Alt-Del all you like but you won't get a reboot.

SoD

[Whitewall]

China is a "menacing enemy", but at the moment their communists are smarter than the West's communists. That won't last unless we give in to China's blackmail and bluster.

[Loz]

I've got no confidence in this sketch ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY6hfu6e9-s

They even knew it in the age of black and white TV!

SoD

[Bob]

SoD,

I fully support mob rights to defy social distancing, but it has more to do with Darwin than Nolan.

[Whitewall]

Now we read that the Zips are revising up the deaths in Wuhan by 50%. Well, that's a start anyway. They are ducking and covering and lying while the world can plainly see what is going on. A Commie has gotta Commie.

[JK]

Well I'd earlier sent this in email to a couple of you but seeing Bob's up to his usual 'Handwaving Freakoutery' ...

https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/the-covid-19-boogaloo-opus-51b1c1b860cd

I'd maybe ought emailed you too Glesga but for whatever reason I failed to take down your address back when I was on David's 'Emailed Funnies List' of recipients.

[Bob]

"national civil war"

And I'm freaking out?

[JK]

No Bob, the part about 'no (single) politician [or Trump] being solely blameworthy/praiseworthy for the mess. It's the way government [of, for, and by the people] works'

That part.

[Bob]

Yes, JK, lots of political flunkies are involved too. Trump is the head of the administration, though, and he always tries to take credit for anything that goes right, even if he had nothing to do with it or it's totally made up, like the US having the "best testing in the world".

[JK]

Testing Bob, part of which is to expose deficiencies no?

Have deficiencies not been exposed Bob?

Is it Bob that you'd have it, "Trump is personally responsible for creating the actual testing mechanisms" as well as whatever it is your understanding of a president's responsibilities are as well? Does your understanding comport with what's in sections one, two, and three, of Article Two of the US Constitution Bob?

Anything specifically having to do with the President's *handling of the pandemic crisis you'll be contacting your representatives about which you'll be expressing your hopes for an Impeachment Round #2?

In what Bob has Trump's handling of the executive responsibilities as enumerated for the pandemic response been derelict? In your own words please, adhering to the confines of Article 2 of course.

[Bob]

JK,

There's plenty in the real news, but you think that's the fake news, so there's no point. I'm not a constitutional lawyer either, so any opinion on constitutional grounds is beyond my purview. A web search using "trump constitutional failure" and "Trump constitution" will keep you busy for quite a while. One of the first things to come up in the first wording is from the Indiana Law Journal, which puts it in broad terms:

"This Essay argues that democratic culture in the United States is increasingly antisocial, and may become so to a degree that the American constitutional system cannot accommodate. President Trump’s election is a harbinger of this constitutional failure. As Part II explains, Trump’s hostility to the sustaining norms of the constitutional system reflects the ascendancy of a fundamentally antagonistic and hegemonic approach to democratic politics. The rise of this political culture is enabled by technological changes that have diminished the role of intermediaries in public life in ways that have contributed to political polarization and social balkanization."

https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol93/iss1/7/

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bob,

The existing U.S. Constitution is of a type one would expect of a reasonably socialized culture, but its politics are approaching those of a post-conflict society.

John Adams, 1798:

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

President Trump's election was not, as quoted above, a "harbinger" of social breakdown in a post-Constitutional America, but a reaction to it.

Benjamin Franklin, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had created:

"A Republic, if you can keep it."

Place your bets.

[Bob]

Malcolm,

The Constitution was designed to be a living document, and it has adapted and grown with social change since 1798. The change that Trump represents is an aberration in that it's counter to the fundamentals of democracy. He lost the popular vote by 3 million ballots. It could be argued that the electoral college is democratic by virtue of its being part of the Constitution, but that's diminishing the meaning of the word to a specific mechanism. Minority presidents of the past haven't been so otherwise hostile to the democratic process or norms of political and legal behavior.

The author above is right about "political polarization and social balkanization". Outlets like Fox News might as well be the Ministry of Truth from Orwell's 1984. Social media often splinters attitudes and views. However, similar things have happened in the past, and reality eventually makes itself known to the majority. After times of great stress America has always regressed to a political average, though usually not exactly the same one as before. Change is inevitable, failure is not.

[JK]

Bob?

Given the present circumstance you'd perhaps agree that the sentiment, Fuck off, distance thyself from me! isn't, so much a total disagreement with 'your opinion' of what Article 2 actually says but rather, a public service announcement?

At any rate Bob, would you have it the various states have no autonomous responsibilities to the respective states' citizenry pursuant to the 10th Amendment to wit:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

We've actually Bob albeit in another context, covered much of this same ground before though of course I'll not be expecting you to acquiesce that in those arguments (2nd Amendment) the end of which must necessarily be the same?

Of course not Bob, I couldn't possibly expect consistency from the likes of yourself where the concept of federalism is concerned.

"The change that Trump represents is an aberration in that it's counter to the fundamentals of democracy."

Let us review Bob as you've above alluded to (of your own) the 'electoral college.'

"Trump represents an aberration that is counter to the fundamentals of democracy."

Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Benjamin Franklin when inquired of by by Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia (wherein the convention was held) ... 'Well, doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy?' reputedly replied immediately "A republic, if you can keep it."

An "aberration counter to democracy" Bob?

Well I should hope so.

[Bob]

JK,

I have no idea what you're getting at. Of course federalism is built into the Constitution. Point out where I wrote it isn't. Should I believe from your closing statement that you're anti-democratic? It would explain your love of Big Brother.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bob,

Such a fetish for this "democracy"! Look at your response to JK: "Should I believe from your closing statement that you're anti-democratic?" We can almost hear the basso profundo of Darth Vader: "I find your lack of faith ... disturbing."

Lord Vader would quickly have had his gauntlet on the throats of the Framers themselves, for they feared nothing more than this "democracy" you seem to regard as the summum bonum of American civic life. They had read their Polybius (most of them, in the original Greek), and they had learnt the chastening lesson of the classical world: that simple majoritarian democracy -- which Franklin is said to have described as "two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner" -- is a buttered slide to mob rule, anarchy, and then, inevitably, tyranny.

In the movie business there's something called "retconning", defined as follows:

revising (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events.

Here you are, then, retconning the Constitution with this breathtaking comment:

"It could be argued that the electoral college is democratic by virtue of its being part of the Constitution, but that's diminishing the meaning of the word to a specific mechanism."

If this could be argued, I'd like to know how. The word "democracy", for the excellent reasons mentioned above, appears nowhere in the Constitution, and the Electoral College was devised specifically as a way to temper and dilute democracy while avoiding the separation-of-powers difficulties raised by the idea of having Congress select the President.

As for Donald Trump as an "aberration": he is the duly elected president of the United States, elevated to office by that half of the traditional American nation who rightly have felt despised and marginalized for a long time now by their globalist and "progressive" overlords, a scornful and condescending secular priesthood who occupy, by opprobrium, intimidation, and whatever means are necessary, the commanding heights of media, academia, popular culture, and the hulking edifice of the unelected administrative state. Donald Trump was rightly seen by these millions of American "Deplorables" as their last hope against a leftist juggernaut that sought to trample into dust all of the founding norms and traditions of the American nation, to throw open the borders, to distend and distort the Constitution into gelatinous goo, and to crush all resistance by a combination of judicial activism, executive fiat and suffocating social ostracism. Trump's legions of supporters understood that the First and Second Amendments, those great bulwarks of liberty, were under increasingly withering assault; they had to look no further than Canada, Britain, and Europe, where the people are forcibly disarmed and criticism of government policy is now enough to land you in jail, to see what lay ahead if the eight-year catastrophe of the Obama administration were to be extended by re-installing those despicable grifters the Clintons.

"Democratic norms", you say? For daring to take on this mighty Cathedral, and -- shockingly! -- capturing the White House, the upstart Trump has been the subject of a continuous conspiracy of what can fairly be called regicide, beginning with the former administration's bringing to bear the power of the FBI, the intelligence agencies, and the FISA courts (on a fraudulent basis) to spy on his campaign and to entrap members of his team. Following on that was the years-long charade of the Mueller investigation, followed by a ridiculous (and obviously doomed) attempt at impeachment, while the media throughout did everything they could to whip up a hateful frenzy. Even now, in a national crisis that would in any other era have made America put aside its squabbles and unite against a common foe, it is clear from the press briefings, media coverage, and the remark of his opponents in Congress that the real enemy is not the Wuhan Red Death, but that orange man in the White House.

It is to Trump's credit that he has not cracked or crumbled under this relentless personal assault, and this cataract of false charges spanning years; I'm sure nearly anyone else would have. But to suggest that it is Donald Trump who is "Orwellian", and not the former administration and its fawning Blue media who set all of this in motion -- now thatis the sort of thing that we might expect from the Ministry of Truth.

[Bob]

You're entitled to your opinion, Malcolm.