The Ratcatcher
I’m going to keep posting this now and then, just as a reminder. This is not about Trump-fever in particular—it’s about what’s led to it, and where such feelings can lead in the very worst-case scenario. Trump, Sanders, or a person unknown can channel the feeling described here and ride it to power.
The following is an excerpt from Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free. The book, first published in 1955, is an exploration of Germans’ attitudes in the period leading up to WWII and including the war and its immediate aftermath. It features interviews with ten “typical” Germans, conducted a couple of years after the war’s end, and offers extraordinary and often relevant insights into how it was that Hitler came to power and stayed there so long.
Here is my general discussion of the book and its author, who was a man of the left. To understand the following excerpt, it is helpful to know that for the purposes of the book, Mayer refers to the ten interviewees as his “friends”:
National Socialism was a repulsion of my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government—against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving. It was the final fruit of the common man’s repudiation of “the rascals.” Its motif was “throw them all out.” My friends, in the 1920’s, were like spectators at a wrestling match who suspect that beneath all the grunts and groans, the struggle and the sweat, the match is “fixed,” that the performers are only pretending to put on a fight. The scandals that rocked the country, as one party or cabal “exposed” another, dismayed and then disgusted my friends…
My friends wanted Germany purified. They wanted it purified of the politicians, of all the politicians. They wanted a representative leader in place of unrepresentative representatives. And Hitler, the pure man, the antipolitician, was the man, untainted by “politics,” which was only a cloak for corruption…Against “the whole pack,” “the whole kaboodle,” “the whole business,” against all the parliamentary parties, my friends evoked Hitlerism, and Hitlerism overthrew them all…
This was the Bewegung, the movement, that restored my friends and bewitched them. Those Germans who saw it all at the beginning—there were not very many; there never are, I suppose, anywhere—called Hitler the Rattenfé¤nger, the “ratcatcher.” Every American child has read The Pied-Piper of Hamlin. Every German child has read it, too. In German its title is Der Rattenfé¤nger von Hameln
That’s why for me the single most important attribute in a candidate is his/her devotion to the principle of preserving individual liberty, the foundation on which this country was built.
Tybalt not withstanding… or is it “King of Cats”? katso? casso? putz… i guess the vagaries of italian insults is lost…
Should i point out that Trump is not a malcontented impoverished knothing message runner of a failed war, failed state, revenged of the french and so on..
the same anger lead to ronald reagan… duh.
so basically your stooping low to anyone who is not on the left is a nazi… good going… but did you relize that is what your programming is leading to? after all, no one in this case has even written my struggle detailing the craop they hate, and you have yet to read his two books which contradict the stuff the press and even you have said..
Algeimeiner
Donald Trump Donates Over $100,000 to Israeli Emergency Rescue Service
Trump has been a vocal supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. His daughter, who converted to Judaism, is married to real estate scion Jared Kushner.
yeah.. If hitler had a daughter, she would convert to judaism… cause Marxists are capitalists who love jews…
Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism in 2009, is married to a Jewish man, observes Shabbat and keeps a Kosher diet
the more this goes on the lower you go neo…
sad… really sad…
Do you keep shabbat neo?
Shabbat is the most important ritual observance in Judaism. It is the only ritual observance instituted in the Ten Commandments. It is also the most important special day, even more important than Yom Kippur. This is clear from the fact that more aliyot (opportunities for congregants to be called up to the Torah) are given on Shabbat than on any other day.
An excellent point about the attitudes of the people who see Trump as a savior.
Hitler came to power based on the idea that he was a man who would get things done. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela used the same appeal to the citizens’ desires for “action.”
Ben Shapiro talks about this at the Daily Wire:
“………..he represents Democrats’ caudillo-like view of executive power. When Trump speaks, he routinely talks about singlehandedly imposing his view of the world from the Oval Office. He talks about “winning” for particular constituencies. He will “get things done.” He won’t be all talk. He’ll use the power of the government for you.”
http://www.dailywire.com/news/3380/trump-revolution-real-and-its-threat-constitution-ben-shapiro
To those disgusted with the “do-nothing” Congress and the “weak-kneed” RINOs, this has a strong emotional appeal.
So, there are others who see the same things that you see, neo. Even Mark Levin has gotten off the Trump bandwagon after Trump’s Saturday night repetition of the left wing talking points about OIF and 9/11. We can only hope that the scales will fall from enough eyes to prevent either a Trump or a democrat Presidency.
the USA Freedom kids – singing a ditty to the tune of “Over There,” the World War I standard
Cowardice
Are you serious?
Apologies for freedom–
I can’t handle this!
When freedom rings–
Answer the call!
On your feet!
Stand up tall!
Freedom’s on our shoulders.
USA!
Enemies of freedom
Face the music
Come on, boys–take ‘em down!
President Donald Trump knows how
To make America great
Deal from strength or get crushed every time…
Over here…
USA!
Over there…
USA!
Freedom and liberty everywhere…
Oh, say can you see
It’s not so easy
But we have to stand up tall and answer freedom’s call
USA! USA! USA!
We’re the land of the free and the brave… USA…
USA!
The stars and stripes are flying
Let’s celebrate our freedom
Inspire, proudly, freedom to the world
Ameri-tude…
USA!
American pride…
USA!
It’s attitude, it’s who we are
Stand up tall…
We’re the red, white, and blue
Fiercely free, that’s who!
Our colors don’t run, no sirree…
Over here…
USA!
Over there…
USA!
Freedom and liberty everywhere…
Oh, say can you see
It’s not so easy
But we have to stand up tall and answer freedom’s call!
This is an intra-party dispute so OF COURSE there’s more discussion about it here than the obvious (on this blog) shortcomings of Obama.
Deflection (and a lame one), personal attack, topic-changing. Typical Trump Fan.
Trump debates like an inarticulate 7th grader. Hillary will annihilate him if he becomes the nominee.
Trump is a symptom of mass dissatisfaction with the status quo. “…when representation fails, demagogues thrive, promising to serve as something more than a mere representative – something more like a living embodiment of the people’s will.” – Damon Linker
The difference between myself (and others who think like me) and Trump supporters is that while I fully agree that the status quo is horrible, I don’t believe in magical savoirs. I never have.
Trump supporters seem to attribute all sorts of amazing qualities to the object of their ardour. They truly believe he can magically fix things through the sheer will of his personality.
Which really comes down to: who is acting on their own and who is controlled by others? Who is true to his word and who is not? Who will actually accomplish what he says?
There is a reason politicians have gotten a reputation for being liars: they will say and do anything to get elected.
We all must choose the candidate we find more truthful. The most honest. That’s about all we can do. Because that is the person who is truly vested in serving the American people more than themselves and more than their donors and more than the lobbyists.
I warmed to Trump over the primary season but he lost me at the last debate. Guess I’m back to Cruz.
But I’ll vote for Trump if he’s the Republican nominee because the main problem of your post is this: most Americans don’t care about individual liberty. That’s what you simply don’t get.
All the immigrants pouring into this country are not coming here for Liberty, they’re coming for handouts or jobs. The vast majority of college students don’t care about Liberty, they want speech codes and restrictions. Millions and millions of Americans continue to use Facebook and Twitter even though they come right out and say they will restrict speech they dont like, and the public doesn’t care. The press lost any semblance of impartiality two decades ago.
I could give one example after the other.
Liberty means sometimes failing and suffering the consequences of your actions. And the vast, vast majority of Americans feel there should be no consequences of their actions, that they should never be judged, and that they have the right to take away the livelihood of anyone who goes against the latest leftist cause.
When bakers can be run of out business for standing up for their religious beliefs, and only a small minority says anything bad about it, then you know Liberty has left the building.
The electorate doesn’t care.
In his important memoir of growing up in Germany between the wars, Sebastian Haffner describes the brief period (during the Stresemann chancellorship) when political & economic stability was sufficient to allow people to return to their private concerns:
“The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.”
BUT, this return to private life was not to everyone’s taste:
“A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.”
and
“To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
In America today, we have a very significant number of people…SJWs and the like…who are used to having “the entire content of their lives delivered gratis by the public sphere.” Such people are most unlikely to place a premium on individual liberty; they are too busy either circle-dancing or trying to find a circle in which to dance.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42473.html
ArtfldgrsGhost tells us what Trump is not; he does not tell us what Trump is. Since Trump, himself, has said that he will change as the process goes along (for convenience?), I don’t think anyone truly does know what he will be.
Nonapod grossly overstates the current situation. Horrible? I would agree with frustrating, or worrying; but, my situation is far from horrible. I doubt the description applies to anyone on this forum. Probably not to anyone who supports Trump for that matter.
Whatever– you paint with a very broad brush. Sure, you describe a large portion of he Democratic base,, including those in the country illegally. But, the focus at this point is on the Republican primaries; I do not believe that your assertion that people don’t care about liberty applies to those who will select the Republican nominee. Granted there is always the danger that the fringe could create what is known at sea and on the sea shore as a rogue wave.
Much of the rhetoric bouncing around this primary season, and leading toward the general, is running wild. I think that is what is dangerous; it can lead to serious misjudgements along the lines of what Neo has provided for our consideration
I wish in principle, that I could disagree with ‘whatever’s’ take on the majority of the electorate not caring about liberty but I can’t. Perhaps its more a case of they don’t care about the liberty of those who disagree with them. But there is no liberty when its only for those ‘approved’.
A case can be made, that the percentage of today’s electorate that truly cares about liberty is exactly the percentage who favor Cruz above the other candidates. If so, that’s not nearly enough to preserve liberty.
whatever:
You write: “most Americans don’t care about individual liberty. That’s what you simply don’t get.”
Ah, but that’s what I simply DO get. Why else would I have written this post, with that last paragraph?
I realize that this blog has a small number of readers in the large scheme of things, and that I only reach a tiny fraction of people. But if I didn’t actually “get” what you seem to think I don’t get, I would never have felt the need to issue the warning in this post.
In fact, the lack of caring about individual liberty is something that disturbs me very very much. I’ve written before about the lack of love of liberty among liberals: here. But it has taken the success of Donald Trump on the right to convince me that there are a lot of people, perhaps even a majority, on the right who don’t value it that much either. What they do is pay lip service to it.
Another quote I’ve been very fond of, and have quoted on this blog over and over, is from Dostoevsky on the subject of liberty. You can find it in this post on liberty and the fact that so many people do not value it.
The closest parallel for Trump Fans is Obama Fans.
They all want their own personal Jesus to champion them against the world. They want a Leader in the sense of someone they can follow. They all BELIEVE they’ve found The One and will not be talked out of it with reason and logic and citations to authority. That kind of thing is for establishment pussies. The object of their desire has brayed sweet nothings in their ears. No one can come between them. 2 gether 4 ever. Dissonant noise is dismissed with a barrage insults. I’m as tired of Trump Fans, the big squalling babies, as I am of the status quo.
The Republican Party is nearly as riddled with self-centered morons and self-seeking cronies as the Dems. It’s a disgusting and dispiriting realization. I mean, I never assumed the Reps were pure by any means. I just thought there were some basic fundamental principals (viz., the Constitution that we all go on about) that most everyone recognized, at least eventually. Wrong. The fact that he comes from a career outside politics is of no matter; Trump is the status quo, Trump is the establishment. The establishment is to blame, but so is the electorate. This is turning into a pitiful display.
Artfldgr:
Read the post. I made it clear that I’m talking about a state of mind that can lead to tyranny, either of left or right, and that it’s not about Trump, it’s about the dangers of voting for someone for the purpose of throwing out “the whole pack” and “the whole kaboodle,” and replacing them with an untested demagogue who is in love with power.
Whoever that untested demagogue may be.
Trump is not a Nazi in any way shape or form, nor is Sanders for that matter (and he’s a lot more “tested” in the political arena).
I have been posting this excerpt from Mayer’s book periodically for years, long before Trump ever entered the fray, and therefore it is not primarily about Trump, it is about something I’ve seen building and approaching for years, that could take many forms (Trump is just one possible form).
Trump could end up being great. I see no evidence for that, but that’s something on which reasonable people might differ—without the need for insults. I have not insulted you, nor have I insulted Trump’s supporters. So there’s no need to accuse me of doing that. But that’s the direction in which you went on this thread, coupled with several insults towards me.
In the first paragraph of this post, I wrote the following to make it clear that I was not singling out Trump or saying anyone was Hitler:
Not about Trump, but about a phenomenon within the electorate that can go many ways, but sometimes can allow a tyrant to take over—in the worst-case scenario (that worst-case scenario would be, of course, someone like Hitler). In the next part of the sentence I wrote that the phenomenon could lead to someone—for example, someone we don’t even know the name of at the moment (“a person unknown”) becoming that tyrant. And after the quote, I caution that the most important lesson is the following: “the single most important attribute in a candidate is his/her devotion to the principle of preserving individual liberty, the foundation on which this country was built.” That because I believe that remembering that will be the best protection against tyranny from anyone, whatever guise its clothed in.
That you can came back with things such as:
However, not only do I not think that Trump is a Nazi, and have made that clear (and have said it in previous posts and comments, too), but in the present post I also included Sanders in my list of possible candidates for tyrant. Sanders is not only not a Nazi, but he is most definitely on the left, so in that sense your comment made no sense as an interpretation of what I was saying.
I will repeat, just to be as clear as possible: what I am saying is that conditions such as we have now in terms of the electorate’s frustration and anger can lead to their forgetting about the importance of liberty, and to electing a strong man of any persuasion (left or right or even somewhere in-between) who will go further down the road to tyranny. And as a “worst-case scenario”—and because I think it’s a good description of such a state of mind in the electorate, I included that quote from Mayer, and explained exactly why.
I have no trouble with arguments backed up by facts, although there is a problem with too many comments and/or too long comments. We’ve been through that before. But gratuitous insults (particularly ones based on things I have not said) are absolutely not okay here.
I do not want to ban you, as I have said (and demonstrated) many many times in the past. But I will remove comments in the future that contain this sort of bashing. Supporting Trump and arguing his good points are both fine; but these kinds of insults towards me are not.
America could be about to experience a run of bad luck.
AMartel:
Yes, it has been a very disillusioning time since this past summer.
I have watched these feelings of rage and impatience build over the years. I have argued over and over against them, long before Trump came into the picture. I knew they existed, for sure, but I think I was unaware of how widespread they are on the right—or, rather, how far a lot of people are willing to go to indulge them. But I always knew that people are people, subject to the same weakness, the same need for a magical leader to lead the way, the same problems with the demands of liberty and the corruption inherent in politics, and the difficulty of dealing with disappointment and the need for patience and hard work to reach goals.
People are people. Left or right. Neither party is the cerebral one and the other the emotional one.
Artfldgr:
One thing I forgot to add is that Trump’s daughter’s conversion to Judaism—of which I have been aware for quite some time—is completely irrelevant, because I regard her as an individual. I also, for what it’s worth, regard Trump as a friend of Israel, and I have never given any indication to the contrary.
By the way, I have read a great deal about Trump and his life, including his family, his many interviews over the years, and his life story.
However, I do have something to say on this more general point you wrote (which has nothing to do with what I think or said about Trump, since he is not Hitler, not anti-Semitic, and not anti-Israel): “yeah.. If hitler had a daughter, she would convert to judaism… cause Marxists are capitalists who love jews…”
It happens that family members of rabid anti-Semites can sometimes not only like and support Jews but can indeed convert to Judaism. Again, let me be clear that to me this is completely irrelevant to Trump, who is not an anti-Semite. But there is the story of Goering’s brother, which I wrote about here, a man who helped save many Jews and is being considered for Vad Yesham. There is also the Islamist terrorist Moussaoui’s sister Nadia, whom I wrote about in this post. From an article about her:
They are not the only examples in human history. They are just two I happen to have written about. So family members are often very very different in terms of belief systems, including anti-Semitism.
I repeat, however, that to me this has nothing to do with either Trump or his daughter, because Trump is not anti-Semitic.
I will also repeat that it was certain aspects (anti-libertarian or statism in particular) of the rise of Nazism I was referencing in this post, not any tenets of Nazism such as anti-Semitism. Not to mention the fact that Sanders, a Jew who is neither Nazi nor anti-Semite, was on the list of potential offenders I offered.
In my 2013 post “Dangers of “A Plague on All Their Houses,” I referenced Neo’s earlier post on this subject and also cited Erich Maria Remarque’s novel The Road Back, which is largely about the loss of idealism and social trust in the years following World War One…although it is set in Germany, the same factors were operative, if to a lesser degree, in the other European belligerent countries.
One of the characters in the story is Ludwig Breyer—a serious aspiring intellectual as a student, a dedicated and responsible officer in wartime. A few years after the war’s end, he is shattered by the feeling that it was all for nothing:
They told us it was for the Fatherland, and they meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry.—They told us it was for honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes..They stuffed the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism…And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can’t you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it!…The youth of the world rose up in every land believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other.
One could do a present-day riff on this speech: “They told us it was for the environment, and they meant the handouts of taxpayer money to crony capitalists. They told us it was about improving education for the poor, and they meant protecting the privileges of incompetent administrators and teachers’ union…etc”
In the book, Ludwig Breyer’s despair drives him to suicide…and there were doubtless many real-life veterans who came to similar ends. Others, though…among veterans but also among those who had been too young or too old to fight..attempted to recapture the 1914 sense of idealism and unity through involvement in extremist politics of one band or another…and we know how that ended.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/40509.html
Principles.
I should have been more clear: I don’t assume that people are any less peopley because they’re left or right but Reps have always been at least loosely tethered to governing principles rather than what is politically expedient. Casting off from that is a new thing. The highly imperfect adults have left the room.
But it has taken the success of Donald Trump on the right to convince me that there are a lot of people, perhaps even a majority, on the right who don’t value it [individual liberty] that much either. What they do is pay lip service to it.
I wonder what the number of today’s Republicans is who came over to the party as Reagan Democrats, or are the children of those people? Much of their political sense may still be that of Democrats, and so could help explain this less-than-wholehearted embrace of the value of individual liberty.
I see Sanders, Rodham-Clinton and Trump as ALL hailing from the “get big government EVEN BIGGER school.”
The ONLY fellows with the slightest bone of Conservative principles are Cruz and Rubio.
( I’m uninformed INRE Carson. )
The Democrats — the Left — generally — is infatuated with Taylorism.
Talorism applied to society was portrayed in “Metropolis” and “Modern Times.”
Taylor viewed craft workers as best employed as cogs of production.
Wrapped into that world-view is Tabulation Grandiosity.
If an activity can be tabulated — then it can be managed — and justifiably so.
THIS is the well spring of 20 Century Socialism — and Top-Down management autarky — taking to corporate extreme in “Rollerball.”
The self-styled elites of that dystopia viewed their fiefs as benevolent — while autarkic enough that they need not bend to internal nor external pressure — votes or economics.
Bernie Sander’s world-view is of such a type.
Rodham-Clinton is merely footsteps behind Bernie… though there can be little doubt that she rages against “The Man” and ALL men.
After decades of the Clenis — what else ?
&&&&&&
Trump doesn’t fit the tyrant profile.
Whereas Barry Soetoro scores BELOW Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Napoleon, et. al.
The kicker with Trump is that he’s no Conservative — and is VERY likely to run an administration that echoes Andrew Jackson in so many ways it will amaze.
1) Figure on Trump crossing swords with Big Banks and Wall Street.
2) Figure on Trump entirely re-aligning the two parties.
There’s a TON of “Sulla” in Trump — which is on display as I type.
&&&&&
I’m also SHOCKED at the G A P S in Trumps worldly knowledge.
I’m reading that he did not know of the American nuclear defense triad concept. Good grief. Is that true ?
I MUST conclude that — virtually across the board — Donald is as green as grass in foreign affairs — NATO, trade, DoD, global commerce — the works.
For in all of those spheres — real estate development counts for naught.
I DO figure that Trump would build, build, build, build — like a maniac.
The building trades see that already — and are thinking twice about not voting for Trump.
STILL, the feeble votes of the building trades will IN NO WAY pull deep blue states into contention.
I can’t see ANY matrix where Trump can hang onto Romney’s electoral votes and then pick up Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida or ….
Whereas I CAN see Cruz or Rubio making BIG inroads into the Latino vote.
I CAN’T see the Mexican faction EVER warming to Trump.
I deem them essential in Texas, Nevada, Arizona… they might put New Mexico into the GOP column.
The Latino vote might even put California in play. Blacks have largely fled to Georgia.
Cruz’s H1b position might even warm Asian hearts.
Trump would surely lose California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and probably Nevada and Arizona — plus New Mexico.
Sheesh.
The man is dead meat in November.
blert:
One of the many many things I see wrong with a Trump nomination is that I believe it would practically guarantee a Clinton victory.
Economic autarky (fantasy) is embedded in the zany notion that politicians can over rule the wage market — and stipulate $15/ hour for flipping burgers — while NOT suffering any economic ‘blow-back.’
ALL of Socialism has that EXACT same market arrogance built into it.
You’ll also note the same impulse drives their economic models — there tabulations — which invariably zero down ALL externialities.
Bernie Sanders takes this to the limit – – as expected for a True Believing Socialist.
The really sad part is that Trump has hijacked a process that was finally beginning to channel the outrage of middle America, that 40% of the citizenry that self-identifies as conservative, into a bottom-up transformation of a corrupt and ossified Republican party into one that actually believes in its own platform. As Mark Levin stated on multiple occasions, we actually have this year a genuine conservative to support who is as close to Reagan in philosophy as we are going to see in our lifetimes in Ted Cruz.
The Tea Parties were on the right track when they were the inspiration for the unprecedented electoral tsunamis in 2010 and 2014 that saw the GOP gain over 900 seats at the state and local level. Given two more election cycles, these new politicians would begin to percolate upward to the national elections and push out the incumbents and a real Conservative Party could emerge.
But a perfect storm against this is now in progress. The election of an actual Marxist in 2008, the millions of illegals he allowed in to threaten our way of life, and the refusal of the GOP to fight against him, blew up the patience of middle America, who are no longer willing to wait another election or two. I can’t really even blame them either.
Now a celebrity demagogue has captured this anger and will end up hurting the country with it. Cruz would have been unstoppable if all that energy was behind him.
geokstr:
Absolutely. This is what is making me the most frustrated. I saw this year as a wonderful possibility for the resurgence of conservatism. And it was. But it has been co-opted by Trump. And the phenomenon of self-sabotage has come from the right, not the left, because I do believe that minus Trump, Cruz would be getting their votes.
It is one of the most frustrating and ironic things I’ve ever seen in my life, politically speaking.
It was something I saw at the outset, and it puzzled me. This is one of the first posts I ever wrote on the Trump phenomenon. It was back in early August. Please read it.
Well, that’s a depressing post and book excerpt, neo!
It may be this is one time when those invoking Godwin’s Law are not overstating things.
Hey! You either read my comments on Breitbart before I started coming to this site and plagiarized them, or you read my mind or something. Cruz/Fiorina was my dream ticket back then too.
😉
Whatever the case, you must be my long lost twin from another set of parents, only the way you express what we think is much more thoughtful and elegant.
I agree with you both. In order to value political and economic liberty you have to want to be able to do something rather more profound than to diddle and be diddled.
When a brainless hedonism and the gaining of acceptance and inclusion and validation by others are the primary values of a population, when they can only feel social embarrassment and social shame, as victims say of the crime of “slut shaming”, or “fat shaming” or whatever, but never moral guilt or a failure of virtue, they, as many before me have pointed out, have ceased to even be moral in any sense western man has heretofore recognized.
Men used to take pride and satisfaction in being free to hoe their own row. Now they take it in being “valued” and esteemed just as they are. Being esteemed even ranks as one of the most important factors in social life as envisioned by theorists like John Rawls. And when was that, 40 years ago?
Bernie hopes to be elected on the backs of a crowd that proclaims his most important qualification is that “he cares about me”. Not long ago it was someone who felt their pain.
Can, for the third time, you really give a shit what befalls people like these? “twitter girl pout”
I suppose I could come up with something equivalent for “males” but I don’t want to get even more nauseous .
These are Americans? Naw …
After Walker dropped out I turned towards Cruz/Fiorina in no particular order and from the moment the donald announced I smelled a dead rat. So what? What is important is investing your time and money to support the candidates of your choice. (Unless it is the donald 😉
PS: If neoneocon turns into Ace of Spades where “first” is a badge of honor it does not bode well.
An excellent post. I am sharing it on my own site. thank you.
Some brief thoughts:
1. Of the current candidates, Cruz seems to be the most generally pro-liberty, pro limited government. This does not mean his position will be the most popular.
2. It’s still early in the primary process, and we’ll have a better idea of things by March 1st, Super Tuesday.
3. Trump might do worse the longer he goes on. Absent that, Trump can be knocked out politically by co-opting his issues, and by having a couple other candidates drop out (including Rubio).
4. If Trump is elected President, he will push his issues, and blunder around a bit, reacting to circumstances. Sanders will do much the same if he is elected. The underlying system of the country is resilient enough for either one.
5. If Clinton is not indicted (or the equivalent) for the e-mail server, then that will be a significant marker of the decline of the rule of law.
6. The country has gone through a lot worse: the Civil War, the Great Depression, the unrest in the 1960s.
7. Comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany never work out well. All too often, it seems to muddle the issues, and result in unclear thinking.
Thomas Sowell just endorsed Sen. Cruz today:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/02/16/tragedy_and_choices__129669.html
Tipping point? Scalia’s death, and the implications thereof.
Donald is entertaining. His advantage is that he is his own attack dog. Romeny won the first debate and kind of stopped while Barack started attacking. Donald Trump is so much better with the media. He is also so much better at a negotiated position. I listened to the debates and the republicans start with a detailed, reasonable position and get creamed because the democrats start with a riduclous position and move from there, as if they were both reasonable. Donald starts at a ridiculous position so there is somewhere to go to.
Donald will be fine as President depending on who he hires. Does he hire smart and talented people. The personnel decisions will be the key. I think it is feasible that he will improve the way the government operates. We should not expect that he will know everything. On the other hand, I am not happy he repeats democratic bs talking points about GW. Oh, I think he will hold people accountable more quickly than GW. Rumsfeld should have been fired before 2006. Donald would destroy Hillary in a debate because he would saw what we knew that she is corrupt and incompetent and has not done a good job at any job she has held. Anyway, Cruz is probably the best candidate at this point. Cruz, Rubio would be a strong ticket. Jeb is a disaster and has been worse for the GOP. He sounds like a war monger. He is under-cutting Republicans with his money and making the democrats stronger. Donald is at least forcing the democrats to take positions that alienate their white working class and union base. Anyway, just a thought
A caller finally pushed Rush Limbaugh (who must be feeling weary from his 27-year battle) to clarify why he has been, shall we say, somewhat tepid in his support of Ted Cruz. He has said explicitly that “Ted Cruz is the closest thing to Ronald Reagan that we’ll see in our lifetime.”
BUT:
He was also dumbfounded that people shrugged off Trump’s 9-11 “truther” rant. I think he’s feeling his limitations: I would say also, he must know how successfully the Left has ghetto-ized, encysted him, walled him off from Undecideds and Liberal Birdbrains, who are very strongly conditioned to Never listen to That Man.
Our huge problem, as Vaclav Havel noted, IIRC, is that so many of our citizens are so far gone that they would vote for Hussein Obama in the first place. And again.
There seems to have been evolutionary advantage to our species at some time in believing in a Messiah no matter how nutty a candidate for the position is. We have had a Corsican fascist, deranged wall paper hanger, left-wing pompous charlatan and now a reality TV show star. Apparently any freak can fit the role of savior.
As for Americans supporting freedom; contemporary Americans will lend their support to whichever candidate or ideology feeds their self-esteem. They apparently cannot accept that the duty of the state is not to keep one from feeling bad. Apparently this type of freedom can be provided by a messiah. America risks sillying itself to death.
One of the many many things I see wrong with a Trump nomination is that I believe it would practically guarantee a Clinton victory.
——————–
Unfortunately, as you’ve also noted, the threat is that if he doesn’t get the nomination, he’ll go third party, and still guarantee a Clinton victory.
And nagging at the back of my mind is that little bit of info about the last phone call he made before he announced his candidacy. It was to the Clintons.
What did they talk about? I’d very much like to know.
Oh, I think he will hold people accountable more quickly than GW. Rumsfeld should have been fired before 2006.
What an idiot. Fire Rumsfeld, who had already offered his resignation, while keeping the traitorous pack over at the State Department…
This is the kind of strategic thinking that thinks a Savior is what they deserve. Like Merkel’s CDU + SPD coalition, it’s designed by the puppet masters to a higher order.
As for Robert, he doesn’t know anything about the Left’s strategic decisions in Iraq to begin with. Who is he, then, to tell us that they ‘Know’ something about political candidates these days.
I used to believe that we Americans were an extraordinary lot of people. Now I firmly believe that we are rather ordinary. Perhaps even subpar. Yet we DO have an extraordinary form of government. It’s a heritage and one that we seem hell-bent on squandering.
Tragically contemporary America deserves Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Oh well, this way the children will learn.
Frankly I think a Bernie Sanders presidency will be funny.
One other comment. Saturday night does not seem to have harmed Trump too much in the SC polls. People should look at that and think a bit.
One other comment. Saturday night does not seem to have harmed Trump too much in the SC polls. People should look at that and think a bit.
Oh, I believe a lot of us have seen those and we’re thinking plenty.
What I’m thinking is that an electorate that can send Obama to the White House twice is capable of anything. Like many of you, this frightens me. I don’t want to be sitting here parroting “inconceivable!” like some second coming of Wally Shawn, but that’s the emotion I feel this morning. Since I heard about Scalia, our mala suerte dogs my thoughts.
Neo, your quote from the book in your other post is eerily similar to how the Trumpers rationalize anything Trump says or does.
” None of my ten friends [the interviewees], even today [1955], ascribes moral evil to Hitler, although most of them think (after the fact) that he made fatal strategical mistakes which even they themselves might have made at the time. His worst mistake was his selection of advisers–a backhanded tribute to the Leader’s virtues of trustfulness and loyalty, to his very innocence of the knowledge of evil…
Having fixed our faith in a father-figure…we must keep it fixed until inexcusable fault…crushes it at once and completely. This figure represents our own best selves; it is what we ourselves want to be and, through identification, are. To abandon it for anything less than crushing evidence of inexcusable fault is self-incrimination, and of one’s best, unrealized self. Thus Hitler was betrayed by his subordinates, and the little Nazis with him….
“You see,” said Tailor Schwenke,…”there was always a secret war against Hitler in the regime. They fought him with unfair means. Himmler I detested, and Goebbels, too. If Hitler had been told the truth, things would have been different.” For “Hitler,” read “I.”
Interestingly it’s the people who think the least about public issues who respond to Trump. They know things are bad but know little about why. They figure its only a few bad actors (If only Stalin knew….) who keep the system from working well. So Trump will shake things up, fine. But the same lack of interest in public affairs leads them not to carefully vet Donald. They accept at face value his proclamations of business genius. This seems to be the only qualification required, yet Trump is really a mediocre real estate developer at best and astoundingly poor at anything outside of urban real estate business. HIs great talent is getting his name spread around.
Teddy Roosevelt did the same thing, but he was made of better stuff (and accomplished/risked much more). Huey Long was cruder than Donald but was in the Great Depression so his impact was greater. Beware the great men. Bring me quiet competence like Coolidge.
blert – I disagree with you on Hispanic voters. Trump will trot out a bunch of Hispanics who have worked on his jobs, who will say, in Spanish, what a great boss he is. Which will result in a lot of Hispanics voting for him, or not voting, which amounts to the same thing.
Rush is 100% correct — a majority. or at least a substantial minority of the American people have had bred out or indoctrinated out of the notion that you should think for yourself and do for yourself. Trump is not a Nazi, but he is a Strongman, and that’s what many people are looking for. Every time I hear his crowds shouting “Trump! Trump! Trump! I hear “Duce! Duce! Duce!”
Richard Saunders: Poor Richard! Is that you?
Richard Saunders:
Something I’ve noticed on many many blogs are commenters whose comments amount to the following, in its entirety: “Go Trump!”
Like cheerleaders, that’s their contribution.
Neo:
After confronting these cretins for 6-7 months on Breitbart, I find “Trump2016!” to be even more common.
Plus that they reserve their most scornful, venomous comments for other Republican candidates, mostly Cruz, with an occasional criticism of Hillary, Bernie or other Marxists almost as an afterthought.
Give me a break, Richard. Whose name should they shout at a campaign rally? ¡Jeb! ¡Jeb! ¡Jeb!?
If you guys really think that Trump supporters don’t love liberty and just want a strongman, then you truly have your heads in the ground. Trumps #1 selling point has always been immigration. What you don’t seem to understand is that open borders is the death of liberty. That is the existential threat we face right now. I really question your wisdom if you don’t get that point.
@ boxty – I see no evidence that it’s an existential threat, nor even close. In Europe, with a higher percentage of worse refugees, worse elites, and no experience of assimilation, it might be becoming an existential threat. Yet even they are only on the path.
Illegal immigration is bad and I don’t like it, but there’s a lot of ruin left in us yet. Therefore, extreme measures and rhetoric are not called for.
Lurch – let me just find a place to put these loaves of bread down and I’ll answer you.
boxty – anything that can be fixed without our troops getting killed is not an existential threat. Immigration can be fixed with a couple of fences, better computers, and more border patrol agents. Hillary Clinton can be fixed by putting her on trial and sending her to prison. ISIS can’t, a nuclear-armed Iran can’t, Putin can’t, China can’t, North Korea can’t. Get the difference?
This was the Bewegung, the movement, that restored my friends and bewitched them.
In other words, the cultural transformation (“The Movement” against “The Man” = all the rascals) that wrecked America in the 1960s has been reborn as Donald Trump?
AVI: If we continue to allow open borders then the Democrats will have a permanent majority and America as you’ve known it and all the liberties you hold dear will be dead. Free speech? Dead. Second Amendment? Gone. Presumption of innocence? Not any more. You will never see an end to Obamacare or partial birth abortion. The list goes on. See California for an example of what open borders will mean for you.
Boxty:
I agree with you about the effects of open borders, but CA isn’t a great example because they went over to the Dark Side a generation ago. Even open borders per se are not the greatest danger, it’s making the invaders citizens and giving them the right to vote.
Note how Cruz’ rejected amendment to the Gang of 8 was political anethema to the gang and its proponents because it denied a path to citizenship, and therefore also the 20-30 million reliable new Democrat voters that would make this a one-party country.
The Marxists are well aware that the Obama regime has pissed off a lot of people so they’re desperate for those votes. The death of Scalia has put us in even greater danger, and watch for extreme pressure from the Marxist Leviathan to seat an Obama nominee. It’s another possibility for them to get at those votes even if they lose in November.
As a California native (I live in LA County), I can tell you that California is very odd. And I don’t mean in a “Those liberals sure are strange!” sort of way. Maybe it’s the amazingly good weather. Maybe it’s something else. But the voters as a collective whole sometimes seem schizoid.
It’s hard to explain.
boxty:
You don’t seem to understand that a person can be against immigration and not have a particle of interest in liberty.
Trump loves Kelo. He wanted Fox to ban Rich Lowry and the FCC to fine him when he felt Lowry had said something mean about him. He blamed Pam Geller for provoking the attack at her free speech movement cartoon contest. He is generally interested in wielding executive power and in big government.
Trump’s focus on limiting immigration has to do with jobs (the economy), crime, and with keeping US culture stable. Not with liberty.
I was re-reading the Book of Deuteronomy the other day and came across the description of the disagreement between Moses and the Jews. This was when they complained about leaving the food and security of Egypt behind to be ‘free’ to wander and starve in the desert. The desire for security over freedom for most people seems to be a part of us.