The October surprise is no surprise
An October surprise timed to maximally hurt the Republican candidate is no surprise at all. It is so predictable that the term “October surprise” has become commonplace.
In is no news, either, that the MSM tries to elect the Democrat. No news at all.
In the case of Trump, it was easily seen that he was the candidate the MSM and the Democrats wanted Hillary to face, because he was the weakest candidate. So as soon as they saw his candidacy had some legs and promise (which took a couple of months, because at first they found him a laughing stock), they did what they could to get on board temporarily and build him up, with the near-surety that they had more than enough ammunition to tear him down once he was safely nominated. Oh, the beauty of it!
If you think that’s a case of 20/20 hindsight, it’s not. Nor did it take 20/20 vision to predict it in the first place. It was easy. Here’s what I wrote in December of 2015, in a post entitled “Does Trump own the media or does the media own Trump?” [emphasis mine]:
So who’s using whom?
Rush Limbaugh says that Trump has the media frustrated and wrapped around his little finger:
…[T]hey can’t take him out. They can’t stop covering him. They can’t humiliate him. They can’t embarrass him. They can’t diminish his support. They’re powerless, and this has them in a panic. The media that can make-or-break anybody cannot touch Trump, and every time they try, all they do is make him bigger. They can’t explain this. They are frustrated to no end, and so are both political parties who rely on the media to be the great equalizer in all of this…
There’s no question Trump is getting more coverage than anyone else, by a huge margin. YUUUGE! So perhaps Limbaugh is right, and Trump is having a good laugh on a media that can’t do a thing about him except his bidding, and is instrumental in getting him more and more attention even though they don’t want to do it.
But here’s an alternate theory, one I happen to ascribe to.
I think the media knows that Trump is the story of the election. He’s exciting, people are entertained by watching him. So they get something out of covering him—readers and viewers. Remember, though, that the vast majority of the MSM is on the left, so much of what they do is with the goal of directing their readers and viewers to what’s so dreadful about Trump, and of energizing Democratic voters so that, if Trump’s the nominee, voters feel they must vote for the sane person—who would be Hillary—even if they don’t much like her.
I have believed from the very start of Trump’s campaign that the MSM…would very much like Trump to be the Republican nominee. They believe very strongly that, if nominated, he will lose, and that his chances of losing are greater than that of certain other candidates such as Rubio (polls bear that out).
I think they are correct, although of course I don’t know for sure. But more importantly, they think they’re correct. So for them, covering Trump is win/win. They get ratings. And although they’re not trying to destroy him—not for now—they dearly want him to be the nominee, and they’re confident they can destroy him later, or that he will self-destruct with the majority of Americans.
They might be right or they might be wrong. But they think they own him in the sense of using him to fit their purposes, not the other way around.
It’s instructive look at the comments section to that December post, too.
Another way in which the MSM orchestrated all of this was described by me in another old post that I wrote a few weeks after the first one and entitled “The hype about how Trump could win: what are the facts?”:
I doubt the motives of the NY Times or Politico or other left-leaning periodicals when they continue to say he will do well against Clinton, in the absence of evidence that he would do any better against her than other Republican candidates, and the presence of evidence that he would actually do worse against her than they would.
It’s also curious to me that none of these articles seem to actually analyze the polls to come to their conclusions. I have looked at the polls, and continue to do so, and have come to the conclusion that, at least so far, they indicate that Trump would be the weakest candidate of the GOP frontrunners in a head-to-head against Clinton…
I can’t escape the idea that the liberal/left press is pushing a Donald Trump candidacy because they feel he’s actually the weakest candidate.
Much of that post of mine analyzes the polls and compares what they actually indicated (no good news for Trump in the general, if he were to become the nominee) versus what the MSM would have had you think they indicated (“Trump has a really good chance of winning the whole thing!). I wrote other posts about that as well, but my voice (and that of others agreeing with me) was drowned out by the tsunami of propaganda from hopeful Trump supporters and the more Machiavellian MSM who were promoting the idea too.
Not that I expected my voice to not be drowned out. I’m not crazy; I know how large or small my audience is (although I love you guys; I really do). And although there were other, louder voices than mine saying much the same thing I was, they were drowned out too, in the wave of Trump-supporters’ hopes, trust, anger, gullibility, frustration, and probably a host of other things as well.
What prompted this post of mine today? This article by Joe Cunningham at RedState, entitled “The Disgusting Media Sat on Sexual Assault for a Partisan Victory”:
Sixteen women as of now have come forward to say they were sexually assaulted by Donald Trump. Sixteen. It is an avalanche of absolutely bad news for the Trump campaign, and it is far too close to the end of the cycle to recover from it. The Trump campaign is finished. However, each and every one of these cases is years old. The tape that showed Donald Trump talking to Billy Bush, the very tape that started this avalanche, is itself more than a decade old. Some of the stories of Donald Trump are older than that. But, we are only now hearing about it. Wikileaks seems to have provided an answer as to why, as well: The collusion between the Media and the Clinton campaign.
I use the term “collusion” on purpose here. While not exactly the proper use, it’s about the closest I can come to describing what’s going on here. The Media is not supposed to be friendly with political campaigns. Their relationship can be ”“ and should be ”“ cordial, but it should never be in bed with one side and actively trying to destroy the other. And, of course, we all know which side is which in this scenario. The Wikileaks releases verify for us what we really already know. The Clinton campaign has relied heavily on not only favorable, but dictated of certain political events in order to orchestrate their victory.
The Media withheld stories about sexual assault until it was convenient for a presidential candidate.
Let me repeat: no surprise, because that’s what the term “October surprise” signifies, and that expression was not coined yesterday.
And it’s interesting to read this comment at neoneocon from “Cornhead,” written back in December of 2015:
Jeb Bush and his super PACs would do the GOP a real service if they rolled out the dirt on Donald.
Just saying Trump is a bully and that he can’t insult himself to the Presidency doesn’t move the needle.
Jeb is an idiot.
Well, Jeb calculated that targeting the others would weaken them, and that he could pick off Trump later or that Trump would self-destruct. Also, he didn’t want to draw more of Trump’s fire than necessary, because he knew how dirty Trump would fight. The others had much the same strategy until it was too late; Rubio tried a bit of the direct attack and it backfired on him.
No one in the GOP dug up the Trump sexual allegations, though. Perhaps they were afraid it would make them look low. Perhaps they tried and just couldn’t find the information because Democrats were guarding it till the right time. Perhaps…
And yes, as I wrote yesterday, the MSM and Democrats would have tried to work some sort of similar propaganda against any other GOP nominee at a carefully selected and strategic time. But none of them were anywhere near as vulnerable as Trump.
[ADDENDUM: I also recall that during the primaries many Trump supporters argued that Trump had been impervious to MSM smears and would continue to be so. Many of us responded that this argument was a case of confusing the primaries with the general, and that the dynamics in the general are different. That argument was dismissed, but so far that is what has been coming to pass.
But I don’t discount the possibility of a black swan—or two or even three of them—before this election is over. Right now, however, I would describe Trump’s chances of winning as very, very, very, very distant.]
[ADDENDUM II: Oh, and CNN’s president Jeff Zucker gave me a sarcastic chuckle when he said that “it was a ‘mistake’ [for CNN] to air so many Trump rallies ‘and let them run’ in 2015, giving the candidate an unfettered platform.”
Riiiight Jeff, of course it was a mistake. Mistaken like a fox.]
Once you know the game is rigged, only a fool keeps playing it. The Left thinks that if they disenfranchise half of America there will never be any personal repercussions.
The French revolution of 1789 becomes more understandable every day. That didn’t go well and neither will this.
So tell me again why we shouldn’t vote for Trump. How much longer will we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the most venal and power mad among us?
What half of America? All the people who are not Democrats and do not support Trump or only reluctantly support him are part of the other half? The 38% who supported Trump got played as did the RNC by the media and by Trump. Who is the bigger “mark?”
Also, consider that DJT is much more of a life long Democrat than a Republican. The game could be even more rigged than most people could possibly imagine. Bernie was clearly a lame stalking horse. How about DJT?
Irv Greenberg:
Funny, I hadn’t noticed anyone telling you to not vote for Trump.
Remember the “vote your conscience” phrase? If your idea is that voting for Trump is the best course of action, then by all means do so.
Problem is, at least in my opinion, his election would not stop the manipulations, but even more importantly he’s not getting elected. He simply does not have the support.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean anyone had told me how to vote. I was just referring to the fact that many of the comments spent an awful lot of time giving reasons why Trump was such a terrible candidate and would be a terrible president, with very little, or at least a lot less, analysis of Hillary in the same light.
It IS a binary election. We will get one or the other and the real question is not ‘how bad is Trump’ but which one would make the least bad president and do the least amount of damage to the country in the next 4 years.
We are born with a liberal outlook. We are tempted by a liberal culture. Some of us live in Democratic societies. Trump discovered his principles and exposed what lies beneath. Better late than never.
Anyway, silence the messenger, presume guilt. Pro-Choice politics. Off with his head.
Also, I’m not ready to give up until the votes are counted. The odds were strongly against Brexit but there was a strong hidden vote that no one would admit to the pollsters. Hope springs eternal?
The Left thinks that if they disenfranchise half of America there will never be any personal repercussions.
Indeed. As I’ve stated before, an awful lot of the deplorables in red states simply regarded DJT as a brick through the window, or the last chance to “vote your way out of this”. Some idealistically believe that he’d fix things, but I’m finding a whole lot more that simply regarded him as a warning shot. They don’t like to say it directly, but if you dig a little, it’s there.
The stuff that’s leaked out in the last couple of weeks (not the locker room episodes, the other stuff that will never see mainstream coverage) reinforces the sneering contempt for flyover folks that was always suspected, but never reinforced.
Even if there is a true black swan event, or that the polls are missing much more than we know, I don’t believe it makes a material difference at this point. 40% of the population will not simply roll over and accept the edict of the the other 40%, while the remainder just looks on in abject horror.
Strap in and hold on…
I’ve wondered since the day Trump came down that escalator about just how much of his decision to run for president was because of his hatred of Jeb Bush. And then how much of Bush’s decision not to go after Trump in a really big way but rather to focus on Rubio had to do with his own feeling of being betrayed by Rubio.
The world is in dire need of true leadership, and instead we get this monumental pettiness.
OM,
The ‘half’ to whom I refer are those who did not vote for Obama in 2012.
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty” Thomas Jefferson
We are very close to that point.
It is certainly true that the mainstream media promoted Trump, believing that Trump was the easiest candidate to beat in a general election.
However, it would have been fairly easy for Republican primary voters to have avoided nominating Trump simply by adhering to a few simple rules:
[1] Never vote in a Republican presidential primary for a candidate who has donated to a Democrat presidential candidate (Hillary Clinton 2007) or a Democrat US Senate candidate (Harry Reid 2010) within the last 15 years.
[2] Never vote in a Republican presidential primary for a candidate who praises single payer health care as practiced in Scotland or Canada in the Republican presidential debate (2015).
These rules are especially important when applied to a candidate who has never held elective office before.
If someone were to make the mistake, as Trump did, of donating to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007-2008, donating to Harry Reid’s US Senate campaign in 2010 but were to later claim a change of ideology (“I used to be a Democrat, but now I am a Republican. I used to be a Progressive-Leftist, but now I am a conservative.”) the smart thing for voters to do would be to say, “run for a lower office first; run for Governor or US Senate; we will take a look out your performance and we will see if your announced conversion to conservative ideology is real.”
Without gullible Republican primary voters, the mainstream media would not have been able to have been successful in nominating Trump.
Now that we are in the general election part of this election cycle, it is best to adhere to the Hamilton rule:
“If we must have an enemy at the head of government,” Hamilton said in exasperation, “let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.”
http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/24/ill-take-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/
“In other words: Better to lose to a true enemy whose policies you can fight and repudiate, rather than to a false friend whose schemes will drag you down with him. This is a painful choice, but it also embraces realism while protecting the possibility of recovery in the future. The need to live to fight another day is why conservatives should adopt a Hamilton Rule if, God forbid, the choice comes down to Hillary and Trump.”
Neo said:
“Rush Limbaugh says that Trump has the media frustrated and wrapped around his little finger:…”
Rush Limbaugh has been the biggest disappointment for me. I can understand the leftist media promoting Trump and pretending he was getting the best of them, but Rush is supposed to be on our side.
Spiral said at 4:53PM:
“In other words: Better to lose to a true enemy whose policies you can fight and repudiate, rather than to a false friend whose schemes will drag you down with him. This is a painful choice, but it also embraces realism while protecting the possibility of recovery in the future.”
The problem with that approach is that our true enemy will admit so many hostile Muslims into our country that the demographics will be unalterably changed.
@Neo – looking back at your prior article, and the comments section (as you suggested) looks like parker and Cornhead also “called it” the same way, and a couple others came close (e.g. Eric, and perhaps others I missed), but the rest were way off.
I had similar concerns / suspicions even earlier. Sen Claire McCaskill’s brag was a huge eye opener which should have foreshadowed how this might well be at play. If it is as we suspect, this is a grander version of that same strategy.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/todd-akin-missouri-claire-mccaskill-2012-121262#ixzz3ibJVE3rv
@Dennis – agree, but Rush was a disappointment from well before 2012, afaiac. He was a principal leader in the “RINO!!!” cheer over the primaries that soured several on voting in 2012.
If you’ve ever led a project with a large number of people, Rush is like the smart a$$ in the corner who won’t lead anything nor go the extra mile to contribute but always has a comment like he knows better, often after the fact.
He’s shown himself to be in it for the ratings, despite what he claims or folks want to believe.
Heard him once, briefly, in these last few weeks and he was pulling out all the stops to make the case for trump – binary choice, you are voting for Hillary by not supporting trump, etc…
Would have liked if he was making that same argument in 2012, but he was far less emphatic, and animated that is for sure.
Dennis:
Rush is on the side of Rush, period. And always has been.
He’s never been my cup of tea, but then talk shows are not my cup of tea.
Here’s a post I wrote about the role of Limbaugh and others in this debacle, here and here.
Trump was a train wreck from the start. Those who believe he had an epiphany in Trump Tower are wishing and hoping.
A lot of people in this space and elsewhere, including GB above, are making dark predictions of civil war or half the country in unrest due to this election.
I don’t see that happening. The country is not going to be split in two. If Trump loses big especially, this won’t happen.
Here’s what’s already split in half, and where all the unrest will be – in the GOP.
The country will see what it always sees – a peaceful transfer of power, presumably from Obama to Clinton (unless something really extraordinary happens between here an 11/8). The alt-right thugs are going to do whatever they do but they don’t have anything near majority support in this still good country. Most of us will mourn what might have been (I’m already in that state, regardless of who wins).
We’re also going to hear the word “rigged” about an infinity times between now and 11/8 (and beyond). Propaganda and battlespace prep for a loss. It’s loser talk.
I don’t doubt the Democrats colluded with the press by holding back October surprises until now. But we knew that would happen and a lot of us predicted it. Didn’t matter to the true believers. The press had it easy this time around – Trump just gave them all the material they needed.
By the way, Neo – you are incredibly prescient. More people should listen to you. If only they had.
GB:
Given that it seems that most voters are not satisfied with either HRC or DJT what will be the spark for the great conflagration that leads to liberation (and freedom)? And where will the masses carrying the pitchforks (or icky AR47s /jk) come from?
After all the burn-it-all-down crowd has to have more than just true-Trump believers and the alt-right, or the Black Lives Matters (BLM) mob. Now that BLM is a group with some burn-it-all down chops. Hope the two factions of burn-it-all-downers can keep their targets straight; not to easy to burn down rubble and ashes, Although chlorine tri fluoride will burn pretty much anything (look it up).
I was doing some research for a different topic, but you might look up The Battle of Sugar Point, and The Battle of Athens. Then there was the recent standoff with the feds vs. the Bundy clan.
Richard Aubrey,
I know about the Battle of Athens. One of my uncles came back from the Pacific and was not amused by how the cronies hijacked the election. A Garand in hand is a persuader.
Also, Leech Lake is not far from our family cabin.
“garand in hand” love it. Wish I could get one of those, although my ideal is an M1 carbine.
My wife and I were traveling through northern MN when we came across a historical marker about the Battle of Sugar Point.
Seems the Native Americans backed the feds down, a number of US soldiers were killed, and, iirc, the last MoH for the Indian Wars was awarded for that fight.
Happened in 1896.
Hadn’t heard about it.
FWIW my forecast is Hllary will win and there will be no civil war. The US will become a cross between the sclerosis of Europe and the one-party rule of Mexico.
Eventually all the financial ponzi schemes sustaining the game blow up and it’s game over man. Followed by a huge reboot of the system into who knows what.
Trump is a symptom of our sickness, in no way a cure or even a palliative.
I think Hillary will win a poisoned chalice and Republicans will be grateful they weren’t in charge as things start falling apart.
If Hillary wins and republicans keep the house, Ryan will be ousted as speaker and either a serious conservative will take his place or there will be a complete split in the party and Pelosi, or whoever replaces her, will be the first speaker from the minority party. If republicans lose the house then the same split will happen and Ryan will be out as minority leader.
Irv: I don’t follow your scenario or characterizations.
Why is Ryan ousted when Hillary wins and the Reps keep the House?
Seems to me the Trump faction loses power and people like Ryan end up looking OK as a relief from chaos.
Those who go on about “serious conservatives” yet supported Trump look like dangerous fools and lose having say in much of anything.
And that’s what Trump supporters deserve IMO.
Trump was never a viable candidate in the general election unless Hillary was indicted or a vein in her head exploded or the Muslims nuked Wall Street.
So now Republicans face the worst of both worlds. They bet on Trump even though they knew he was a despicable person who reveled in his despicableness publicly and was not really a conservative.
This might have paid off if Trump won, but since he won’t win, Republicans lose the election, all the ghastly Hillary stuff proceeds apace and Republicans will have to live down supporting the Trump dirtbag against all the fine prinicples Republicans in the past proclaimed.
If Trump loses, the freedom caucus will blame the loss on Ryan for not supporting him and will absolutely refuse to vote for him as speaker. Ryan got in because the freedom caucus refused to vote for Bosehner when they had a much larger majority than they will have if Hillary wins. They ousted Boehner for refusing to use the power of the purse to stand up to Obama. They feel Ryan has been no better.
A serious conservative is one who wants the republicans to win to stop the leftward movement of the country. If Trump wins the conservative house can force him to toe the line and they would do to him what they never did to Obama and wouldn’t do to Hillary.
Irv: I don’t know what to say. Everything you just wrote sounds like wishful thinking to me.
One of us is out of touch.
And this is one of many problems, at least for me. A fair number of other Republicans/conservatives now sound as crazy to me as posters on the Daily Kos.
I don’t say this as an insult. I’m saying I don’t know what to do.
A friend of mine with a philosophy degree tells me that there are impasses in philosophy which are called incommensurable. Two sides have opposing positions but because their positions are based on radically different premises and perceptions it is difficult or impossible for the two sides to communicate, much less settle anything.
I don’t think you have a feel for the level of disillusionment for conservatives. We held our noses and voted for the moderates McCain and Romney even though they had very poor conservative records.
Obama was elected and the republicans said they couldn’t do anything without the house. So we voted in a republican house in a record rout.
They still did nothing and said they needed the senate so we gave them a republican senate. They still did nothing.
So, for the first time in history, a speaker was ousted by his own party. Moderates refused to vote for a conservative so we held our noses and put Ryan in. He did nothing but complain he needed the presidency.
They they tried to put in another moderate candidate and we refused and insisted on a conservative. Even though their moderate had lost they still refused to get behind a conservative. So they split the vote so badly that Trump became the nominee.
Even though it was their refusal to accept a conservative that got us Trump they refused to support him and are now trying to put a democrat back in the presidency.
The frustration level of conservatives is now beyond anything that any party has experienced before. Conservatives believe, rightly or wrongly, that this will be the last opportunity to save the country from destruction, possibly from without, but definitely from within. Four more years of open borders and selling out to the mid-east tyrants will guarantee that, if we still have a country, the democrats will rule it until it either collapses or has a revolution from within.
That’s why we’re willing to vote for so flawed a candidate as Trump.
huxley:
Well, they always said the Republican Party was a BIG tent.
Now we see that is.
Or was.
I sincerely do not think the republican party will survive this election in its current form. It may split; it may reform; it may just dissolve, but it won’t survive the way it is. I hope for reform but I expect a split. What a waste.
Irv:
First of all, most of the posters here are long-time conservatives. So they have quite a feel for how conservatives think and how they feel, since they are conservatives themselves.
By the way, I happen to be conservative too, and have been for about 12 or 13 years.
What’s more, I’ve written for years about this topic, and predicted in 2012 that the Republican Party was going to tear itself apart.
I happen to believe that a lot of the frustration is the result of an realistic belief that certain impossible things should have happened despite their impossibility. What’s more, a lot of it is based on ignorance (as an example see this) and impatience, and some of this has been whipped up by certain bloggers as well as so-called “conservative” talk show hosts for their own purposes, mostly ratings (see this).
Does that sound harsh? Perhaps. But that’s the way it looks to me. I understand it, but I see it as self-destructive and short-sighted.
I do think you are a little harsh in your evaluation of the motives of many of us. We genuinely think that if the house refused to fund Obamacare but passed bills funding each department separately, as the system was designed, several things would happen.
The government would shut down for a time. The democrats and the news media would rail on and on and put all the blame on the republicans. The people would demand that the republicans give in.
But if the republicans stood firm and refused to fund things that go against their principles and the people believed that they would not give in then the people would turn against the president and the democrats and demand that they at least not veto the bills for the other departments.
At the next election they might throw the republicans out but I really think the people would come around if the economy started to show good results and healthcare did not crash as predicted.
We may very well be wrong but that is our sincerely held belief based on our analysis of the situation. You may not agree with our analysis but I can promise you that we have the good of the country and its people at heart.
We sincerely believe that if we don’t return to the constitution this nation cannot survive. And given the economic power of this country, if we fail, the whole world will suffer.
That may seem overly dramatic but it’s our honest analysis of the country and its future.
Irv:
I didn’t say, or mean to imply, that you weren’t honest and sincere in your belief. I was responding to your suggestion that I didn’t understand it.
Despite having some understanding of it (I’ve been reading these complaints for at least four years, and probably more), I think that it is unrealistic, and fails to take into consideration the political repercussions of what you wanted to happen, something the members of Congress were definitely thinking about. But the truth is that it was only a minority of Republican voters who wanted the GOP to do it.
If you want the GOP to be more conservative, then the remedy is to elect more conservative representatives. But so far it just hasn’t happened, not because there is some nefarious plot or failure of the GOP members of Congress to do what is obviously the best thing to do, but because conservatives don’t control the party. And they don’t control the party because they don’t have the numbers to do so. A lot of conservatives want why they want, and ignore the political realities, and think if they just want it enough it should happen.
Neo – I have read your blog for years and have even contributed to your calls for support. I think your treatise ‘A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change’ is a classic and I have touted it to a number of my friends.
I have never commented before yesterday because I’ve just always enjoyed reading yours and a couple of other blogs and discussing things with my wife.
However, like many folks, this election has me very fearful for the future of the country. I hope I’m wrong in my fears but I just can’t convince myself I am.
Regardless I’ll continue enjoying yours and your readers comments.
Irv:
Well, I hope I didn’t scare you off from commenting!
I can’t see the future, but I share your deep deep concern for the future of our country (and the world, for that matter).
I do feel somewhat like I’ve watched it coming for years, tried to counter some of the unrealistic demands of the right, and of course I haven’t been able to change a whole lot. It’s like a tragedy slowly, slowly unfolding, that I watch and cannot do a thing about.
So in a way we’re all in the same boat; it’s just the details that are different.
I thought Hillary Clinton was very beatable. I still think she was. And when Trump entered the race and within a month or two gained considerable traction, I saw the danger and feared he would be the agent of Hillary’s election. Every vote for Trump during the primaries felt like a vote for Hillary in the general. Very very frustrating.
Big Maq:
“a couple others came close (e.g. Eric, and perhaps others I missed)”
One thing I got wrong was I thought Trump’s sales-/pitchman experience would be a greater strength.
Neo – I’m not scared off; I just think we’ve reached the ‘agree to disagree’ point in this discussion. We can return to it in 3 1/2 weeks or so when conditions have changed one way or the other. Thanks for your patience with a long time reader but a very new commenter.
IMHO, Donald Trump is not “the agent of Hillary’s election.”
James Comey is.
Mr Comey laid out a convincing case for indictment in the first thirteen minutes of his speech on July 5, 2016. Then he threw it all away. Subsequent to that speech, numerous additional incriminating details have surfaced, all of which must have been known to Comey as he spoke.
A day prior to Comey’s announcement, Bill Clinton spent a half hour on the tarmac with Loretta Lynch, “talking about grandchildren.” Immunity was granted for no reason to Hillary’s aides who would have been criminally liable, enabling them to ignore subpoenas from Congress. Cheryl Mills, while herself under investigation, was allowed to be present, and to act as Hillary’s attorney, when the FBI interrogated Hillary. The FBI agreed to destroy Cheryl Mills’ laptop after investigating it. Hillary’s techies acid washed the e-mails on her server, upon instructions from Hillary’s attorneys, after those emails had been subpoenaed. Barack Obama was emailing Hillary on her home-brew server, using a pseudonym, while publicly proclaiming that he didn’t know about it until he read it in the papers.
You may quibble about the details in my rendition, but you know the essential truth of what I’m saying. “The Fix Was In” long before the votes were taken. Don’t expect the deplorables to roll over this time.
God only knows how many thousands of men have died for the sake of this great country. I can only hope and pray that at least a handful of FBI agents have the courage and the integrity to go public with what they know.
“So now Republicans face the worst of both worlds. They bet on Trump even though they knew he was a despicable person who reveled in his despicableness publicly and was not really a conservative. … and Republicans will have to live down supporting the Trump dirtbag against all the fine prinicples Republicans in the past proclaimed.” – huxley
If we put ourselves in the dems shoes, and our objective was to poison the conservative movement, with the hope of causing a major setback for years to recover from, if not destroying it, this couldn’t have been better designed.
Sadly, it only works because there is a receptive audience for it – not unlike the BLM followers OM speaks about.
Like Bill said elsewhere, and a sentiment Spiral spoke about, an election landslide would be a strong refutation of that minority element, allowing for a visible differentiation to be made between what conservatives stand for and the ideas that trump represents. With clinton in the WH, there will be a common “enemy” to rally against.
trump may succeed, for a while, in claiming the election was rigged, the establishment stabbed him in the back, etc, etc.. But that will wear thin as it is “loser” talk. There will be a fringe element who will cling to that. They need to.
The “conservative” media will have to make a choice – continue to court the fringe element as (too) many are today, or recognize the poison that trump was. I don’t think they will have the same audience anymore, unless they do turn off on trump. Watch for rush to thread that needle, and others will follow.
The rest of us will have to figure out how to become one of Eric’s described activists to get this back on track. Oh, and turn off our radios, or change the channel too.
ALSO, DON”T FORGET: Vote GOP down ticket. We need to retain the House and Senate to stave off some of the worst that clinton might do.
“One thing I got wrong was I thought Trump’s sales-/pitchman experience would be a greater strength.” – Eric
No worries. Though we may not agree 100% (who ever does?) you have a LOT more right, IMHO.
I think there is something to the “activism” you’ve been prodding us with. Synonymous with “Liberty is a Responsibility” in my view.
.
It is difficult to discern how much is his salesman strength vs pure name recognition and image from his public persona.
If he loses, and loses “big”, his “brand” will be significantly diminished, maybe even “toxic” in certain markets.
IMHO, Donald Trump is not “the agent of Hillary’s election.”
James Comey is.
They both are. But consider for a moment a conservative running against HRC right now with a clean past (what would they pin on Rubio – parking tickets?) – instead of the current Trump 24×7 we would have media space for a skillful conservative spokesman to be hammering HRC. The Democrats think they are above the law and they are getting away with it because of Trump sucking all the air out of the room.
Regarding the veiled threat about what the “deplorables” will do… you know what? Screw them.
Thinking way back, was John Brown (Kansas and Harper’s Ferry) a deplorable? No he was insane; a burn-it-downer before his time. The goal (ending slavery) was just, the method was not.
Continuing..
I’m tired of hearing about how “angry” Trump supporters are. I’m tired of their threats. Ooh, save us! The angry, angry Deplorables are going to get us!!! Why? Because they are angry ! Unspecified consequences to come! Maybe even world war 3 or civil war 2! Run away!!!
If anyone should be angry, it’s people like me. We didn’t ask for Trump, didn’t want him. Trump supporters insisted and look where we are. Worst candidate, worst election in our history, possibly the end of the Republican party.
Nice going.
Bill:
Did you mean to say “Let them eat cake?”
Bill:
I have a mixture of anger and grief about it. Some of this started for me in 2012. If you look back on this blog, you’ll see that I spent a ton of time defending Romney against charges from the right that he was an elitist snob who stole people’s money rather than a capitalist who created something. And that Obamacare was really just Romneycare. I kept refuting those arguments (here’s one post that was typical; see also this, but there are plenty more). Mostly to no avail, although I believe that in the end many of those people did vote for him when push came to shove on election day.
But it was in 2012 when it really was driven home to me that, in their rage, a certain segment of the right was out to destroy the GOP (see this, for example). It’s also so interesting to look back and see some of the arguments (from people who this year supported Trump even in the primaries, when there were other choices) about being tired of voting for “the lesser of two evils.” As if Romney was “evil” just because he wasn’t 100% as conservative as they wanted! And now some of them not only chose Trump, but are telling everyone else they must vote for an abominable person AND a non-conservative because he’s the lesser of two evils.
As I said, I’m angry, too. But my anger focuses on Trump himself, a narcissist who doesn’t realize his limitations and doesn’t care. He’ll be fine if he loses—he’ll still have his money and his beautiful wife, his businesses, his books, and more admirers and celebrity than ever. My anger also focuses on talk show hosts and news people who praised him to the skies and convinced gullible people he was not only acceptable as a candidate but a winner, and convinced them to confuse the primaries with the general. I’m angry at the alt-right activists who flowed to all the blogs posting lies about people like Cruz and Rubio and Fiorina, lies that gullible people believed. It was venomous. I’m angry at supposed conservative spokespeople like Ann Coulter, an early Trump shill. I’m angry at candidates like Kasich and Jeb Bush for not dropping out earlier (Kasich hates Trump now, but his persistence in the race helped enable Trump to win, and Kasich did it, as far as I can see, because of his own narcissism).
There’s a lot of anger to go around, but mine focuses on so-called “leaders” who proved to be hypocritical self-serving narcissists themselves. I probably already knew that, but not the extent of it, and this year the consequences are very very dire.
Biq Maq:
“I think there is something to the “activism” you’ve been prodding us with. Synonymous with “Liberty is a Responsibility” in my view.”
It’s basically and essentially competition.
Realistically, looking back, was there ever a time when there wasn’t a reason for some group or another to be angry about something wrt our politics / political system, and all that surrounds it?
What matters is what one does with that anger.
trump, sanders, blm are all counter-productive outlets for someone’s anger.
But, like the California Gold Rush, those who actually became rich are the ones who are supplying those many who dream of easy riches, unrealistic as their dreams were.
It is time we started stepping back from our anger, look for other “leaders” to listen to and support, getting a wider perspective than a confirming echo bias.
We need to diversify our input to get a fuller picture, and set our expectations accordingly, rather than blindly follow what we are being told by anyone. Sometimes their view isn’t the only one to understand.
https://www.123rf.com/photo_33890957_two-mannikins-arguing-whether-a-number-on-the-floor-is-a-6-or-a-9.html
Said it before: Evan Thomas, once of Newsweek, opined that the media give the dems 15% in the general.
That reverses a spread of 36-64 if you take it from the 64 and add it to the 36. Clearly, in elections, that won’t happen exactly, but it will reverse a large spread, much larger than most states’ results.
He later modified it to 5%.
That reverses a spread of 46-54.
In the first case, if the correction is applied to all states, Obama loses in 2008, having won Vermont and DC for a total in the electoral college of 7 votes.
He doesn’t do so badly with the 5% applied across the board, but he does lose.
Point is, this isn’t the result of a couple of October surprises. It’s part of the atmosphere. It’s not October, it’s 365 days a year, year after year.
Another picture you can download and print. It has an explanation of the concept.
http://www.witsprogram.ca/pdfs/schools/media-resources/is-it-a-6-or-a-9-poster.pdf
Neo:
“I’m angry at supposed conservative spokespeople like Ann Coulter, and early Trump shill.”
With my hobby horse, the “supposed conservative spokesperson” who shills for Trump whom I’m angry with is Laura Ingraham.
When Jeb Bush tripped on the Megyn Kelly “knowing what we know now” hypo regarding the OIF decision in May 2015, Ingraham was the ‘conservative’ pundit who immediately pushed loudly and most aggressively for JEB to disclaim Bush’s OIF decision, which JEB soon did upon a series of debilitating pratfalls.
(Of course, the blame for JEB’s critical strategic error goes first and foremost to JEB for trying to skirt the inescapable controversy instead of applying his wonkish reputation directly to re-litigating the issue to clarify the justification of the Iraq intervention at the foundation of the public discourse.)
JEB’s error of disclaiming the Iraq intervention, which set the bar for American leadership in the post-Cold War era, as a “mistake” disqualified the GOP proper – not only JEB – on national security and essential executive leadership.
JEB’s error, compelled by Ingraham, set the stage for Trump, who adopted the Russian/Democrats/alt-Right/Left false narrative of OIF, which JEB effectively stipulated with his error, as Trump’s keystone premise and crowbar into the GOP.
Cap’n Rusty
Bill:
Did you mean to say “Let them eat cake?”
Not in the least. What I meant to say is what I said. The reference you just quoted has nothing to do with this.
I’m tired of being threatened and lectured by these people who have nothing but their anger and destruction. They have screwed the pooch this election. That’s on them. Neo’s comment above represents my thoughts very well.
Look, I know that the majority of Trump voters (including you) are good salt of the earth people. But this election is a disaster. At a minimum their leadership and their candidate and his prostitutes in “conservative” media need to lose all credibility.
@Bill – “screwed the pooch” – only ever seen that used in context of “being lazy” – perhaps it is what you meant by it (e.g. looking at trump as a shortcut), but coming from you it is a surprise turn of phrase that gave a chuckle – thanks!
Big Maq – I’ve always used it as a slang for “royally screwed up”. I’ve probably been wrong all this time.
I need to step away. Listening to part of that Trump rally really depressed me and hearing Trump basically inciting violence through his incessant and careless talk of a “rigged” election has gotten me into a sour, ungracious mood. Need to regain some perspective.
@Bill – me too in some ways.
But, if you watched “Blue Blood” (one of the few TV shows with some conservative values) last night, the Police Commissioner (Seleck) tells his Police Officer son (who is upset with the “wrongs” he sees) that sometimes one has to put these things in an internal wooden box and nail it shut (and he sometimes does have to go looking for that box and the nails – i.e. it can be easier said than done).
Now that trump looks to self destruct, prefer to look forward and figure out how to rebuild. And, no doubt, his losing antics will plant mines in the field to do so.
But, first thing is first … we have to encourage folks (even remaining trump supporters) to still come out and vote GOP down ticket to have something in place in Congress that can hold clinton back somewhat.
Similar points to Neo’s made here about the completely predictable timing of last week’s oppo dump on Trump:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/why-did-the-media-wait-so-long-to-go-after-trump/article/2004886
Molly Hemingway on “why the lockstep partnership between the media and the Clintons is bad for America”:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/10/13/lockstep-partnership-clintons-media-bad-america/
I took a look at the comments on Neo’s December post and noticed that Trumpsters like K-E and PatD had a lot to say then, although they are rarely heard from these days. They and their cohorts are as guilty as the media in creating this Godzilla of a GOP nominee.
Well, in fairness K-E and PatD could have been broomed or simply given up on the ship here.
They could have gone to ConservativeNuthouse or Trumpbart, or Gatewayplunder.
CV:
If I recall correctly, PatD did not go willingly, although many others did.
PatD was a well-meaning person, I think, but ultimately ended up acting very troll-like.
I recall from “The Right Stuff” the other astronauts saying Gus Grissom “screwed the pooch” when his space capsule filled with water and sank into the ocean before it could be recovered. Luckily Grissom himself was rescued.
A serious conservative is one who wants the republicans to win to stop the leftward movement of the country.
Irv: So one would think.
If so, however, the conservatives who backed Trump were clearly not serious since he was never a viable candidate to win the general election, and his defeat will leave the Republicans as the party of crazy hypocrites for nominating him.
The GOP will split into two factions blaming each other. Meanwhile America will lurch further to the left and it will be even harder for the GOP to stop it.
Good plan, boys! Funny how that worked out. The people who claimed they were most concerned about leftward movement have insured we will get it in spades.
Nothing that is happening is a surprise.
Unintended consequences for some.
Now Obama gets to zing Republicans with:
You claim the mantle of the party of family values, and this is the guy you nominate.
As galling as it is, Obama is absolutely right.
What can Republicans say they stand for after nominating Trump?
Yeah Huxley, so much for ‘family values’. The gop is dying from the BIG C, the cancer of the donald. Oh well, a new broom will sweep clean.
How foolish I am!
Republicans stand for $25 red baseball caps which read “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
shop.donaldjtrump.com/products/official-donald-trump-make-america-great-again-cap-red
What more could you ask for?
Not for nothing is the GOP called the stupid party
Undisciplined, unprincipled, hypocritical, without a viable strategic thought in its head.
Well, if nothing else this election has been eye-opening
Exposed many of the stars of conservative media as the ratings whore hypocrites they are
Exposed many so called prinicpled conservatives aa frauds. I’m looking at you Ted Cruz. You endorsed a man who made fun of your wife’s looks and accused your dad of involvement in the JFK assassination. That told me everything I needed to know about you.
Exposed the religious right and a significant portion of American evangelicals to be idolaters at the altar of R politics rather than citizens of a more enduring kingdom.
Maybe we’ll learn from this but I’m not too optimistic.
Bill: Re: Cruz, Jonah Goldberg offers a story he heard that Cruz’s top donor, Robert Mercer, is a big Trump guy as well and Mercer put the screws to Cruz to endorse Trump or else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mercer_(businessman)
I don’t know if that helps but like the joke in “The Right Stuff”:
What makes the rockets go up?
Funding!
Bill (and neo): Yes, I lost much of what little faith I had in conservative talk show hosts in this election cycle.
Rush is a force and a far more intelligent man than the left will credit, but he’s one of the people who has pushed the “Republican’s won’t fight” meme for decades and thereby kept his listeners all angry and riled up at their own side.
Now we’ve got a Republican candidate who “fights” and he’s going to get clobbered by the weakest, most horrible Democrat candidate in the modern era.
I’m not expecting any fervent Trump voters to learn from this.
You know there is nothing stopping you from going out and donating all your goods to the poor and feeble, apart from the fact that you obviously don’t want to. And that you like a nice comfy orderly compassionate conservatism which has the government doing lots of things for the people you want done for, which a government cannot do unless it violates the principles you supposedly espouse.
Other than all that you are right on target.
DNW: For a guy who says he doesn’t mean to be snarky, you sure do it well.
Huxley:
Other than everything he said, he was right on target. He is so often misunderstood, and misunderestimated. It’s a tragedy really. /s
Maybe some of those who find the political choices dissatisfying and the candidates so unprincipled, should start a new party. To hear them talk millions would instantly flock to it.
What these principles might be is of course open to debate. But certainly first and foremost it should be that the Principles Party endorses principles! Having principles should obviously be their first principle.
Now you may ask, what are principles exactly? How are they formed and why? And, what are they in aid of? But this is not a question the principles party need answer, because the main principle is not concerned with the metaphysical importance of principles, but rather in announcing that one is adamantine in adherence, vociferous in exclamation, and purest of intention with regard to whatever those principles might be.
For the compassionate conservative this has traditionally presented something of a problem. The classically liberal republican principles and the natural law and rights assumptions regarding the individual which formed the suppositional structure of the polity, are not precisely aligned with Federal social safety net policies of the compassionate conservative.
In fact they are in opposition in many respects, and this leaves the compassionate conservative essentially trying to lift with one hand what he is holding down with the other, and cursing the invisible man behind it all.
So it is best all around if we forget those nonnegotiable principle terms with clear definitions, which will inevitably lead to these demonstrably intractable problems. Specific principles to be avoided are principles like constitutionalism [government of strictly enumerated and limited functions and powers], republicanism [government as a res publica], natural rights [legal inferences drawn from the teleology of man], and the rule of law [political and legal actions taken according to the legislation of a self-governing population rather than at the discretion of a man]; and concentrate on some other principles instead – such as having principles in the first place.
And the most important personal principle should obviously be not some, say, ideal of liberty or law to be sought as well as it might be given the circumstances, but a flamboyant vocal consistency which is sure to socially impress.
But given that, what then is the most important social principle for the compassionate conservative? Why, compassion, of course. In fact, “compassionate conservative” is something of a misnomer. The term which most accurately represents this man is not “compassionate conservative”, but: “Conservative Compassionist”
What it is that makes this brand of compassion dispenser conservative, is that he is for government dispensed compassion in only some cases, but private compassion in others.
And this splitting of responsibilities is what makes the compassionate conservative so different from the compassionate progressive, and so very special.
For the progressive, unlike the conservative, wishes the government i.e., the functionaries inhabiting public office, to be unlimited in both its dispensation of compassion, and in its power to appropriate the necessary means to effect these life effort transferences.
Whereas the very different compassionate conservative, or conservative compassionist, firmly believes that the government’s [the functionaries] ability to appropriate the life energies of some citizens, in order to compassionately dispense them to others, should have some limits based on … something. On a principle of some kind no doubt.
But what exactly this principle is, we are not informed. It might have something to do with religion, or it might not. It’s hard to say at this point.
Perhaps once the Party Of Principle is formed and gets up and running, all that can be worked out.
I said I was not being sarcastic when I referred to sensitive and feeling conservative types.
In order to be real sarcasm, it includes an element of irony,
There was nothing ironic in the characterization. I was not for example doing something the equivalent of mockingly accusing a man of being over generous who I thought was really stingy.
Now, if your sense of terms tells you that mere disrespect for a sincerely held position or mockery of it is adequately described as “sarcasm”, then I suppose you will disagree. Shrug.
The least you might say about all this is that it gives OM reason to live another day …
DNW:
Actually, you were indeed being sarcastic. You are using much too narrow a definition of the word, which does not necessarily include irony.
However, huxley didn’t say you were being sarcastic in the first place. At least, if he did, I can’t find where he did it. He said you were being snarky. “Snarky” is not the same as “sarcastic,” although it can include it.
Many of your comments are both sarcastic and snarky, although certainly not all. Now, neither sarcasm nor snark are crimes, and especially not so in online discussions. So why deny them if you exhibit them?
Don’t feed the trolls.
Too narrow. The one I was taught.
Such as,
Or
Or
Or
And yes I read the Wiki footnote.
@DNW – You say you are not being sarcastic. Fine – be legalistic. But you are still, evidently, mocking, one way or the other. Just another “misinterpretation” for the rest of us. Par for the course – everyone else’s fault.
.
You’ve posed some hypotheticals, such as saving (or not) bill c and hillary c from drowning in their car in a river.
You lump responses to your questions into the “compassionate conservative” label, and then strawman and mock that.
At the same time, you refuse to engage in the more practical questions of how you think we ought to get from point A to your point B. WTHey!?
.
Then you, again, want to get into a metaphysical debate, and by implication an epistemological one too.
Nothing against that, per se. But, for comments on a blog, that is a rabbit hole.
If you want such a discussion, better to start your own blog and invite comments.
If not, why not point us to the philosopher that best represents your world view, and let us read that – avoiding all the strawmanning and mockery?
That is true. Huxley did not say that I was being sarcastic.
Huxley stated that I had denied meaning to be snarky: ” For a guy who says he doesn’t mean to be snarky …”
But I had not denied meaning to be snarky. I had denied meaning to be sarcastic.
Therefore, either Huxley was making what he said up out of whole cloth, or he inadvertently used the term “snarky” instead of “sarcastic”.
I assumed that he would have meant “sarcastic” if his memory had not failed him, and was not intending to say something false.
I corrected him on what it was that I had actually denied.
To be plainspoken about it, I don’t even have a clear idea of what “snark” is supposed to be. We were never taught that in classical rhetoric class.
How pleasing to find the protoIndoEuropean root *twerk– laying in the weeds of the lexicographer’s explanation of sarcasm.
DNW:
Yes, the narrow definition is the one I was taught, too.
But as I said, it’s incorrect, particularly as the word is used these days, and too narrow.
What’s more (as I already pointed out), huxley didn’t use the word—you did. He said “snarky.” And for some reason you translated that to sarcastic, which he did not say, and then you used too narrow a definition of that word.
Mockery is mockery – be it snarky or sarcastic or whatever.
We all do it from time to time. Out of fun or frustration.
Use too often and it is becoming a tool.
As I have mentioned several times before, your unwillingness to quote properly, and your relentless indulgence in false attributions and characterizations, makes discussing anything with you counterproductive.
You wish to surrender; and want to start planning life in the barracks now.
I and numerous others have instead argued for pursuing a marginal victory which offers some possibility of subsequent in-process corrective action as better than either nothing or worse. And I have listed the practical legal steps that are in principle available. You wave off both the idea that it is a marginal victory, as well as the idea that it can be improved: thus in effect yielding all administrative power to the enemy for another four to eight years.
But then it is not clear that you do consider those who have consciously undermined the rule of law, and instituted the social contract deal-breaker of Obama Care as political or moral enemies.
All I know about you, is that both you and Bill would: 1, sacrifice the rule of law on the altar of sympathetic “administrative discretion”; and 2, you would like to talk about how the problems which have been brought about in the first place by the implementation of your preferences, can ultimately be solved without violating your sensibilities.
This strategy of yours seems to me to have about as much chance of achieving anything productive as does your grabbing yourself by the belt and attempting to lift yourself up into the air.
Anyway.
neo: Thank you for your numerous painstaking posts detailing how the far-from-perfect Republican leadership has not totally rolled over for Obama, as is the standard narrative for some on the right.
I’m usually at loss when that comes up because I know refuting it requires a fair amount of tedious research and laying of groundwork and even if all that work is undergone it is still a cumulative argument subject to the quick eyeroll and the snap comeback, “So?”
And on that narrative of failed Republican leadership, Trump was nominated.
Well, then either our teachers pointed a distinction that was not current, or the pointed to one that was respected in received English.
And either the use has more recently changed or it has not.
And if it has changed, then either the general sense of Americans as to the meaning of the word has improved in specificity, or it has not.
And if it has not … then “feelinz” and shrug.
Neo,
It is the proposition that controls.
He said I denied being snarky: DNW denied being snarky. [meaning to be]
I did not, in fact make the denial he claimed I made.
I denied being sarcastic.
Thus: I did not deny X, as he asserted, I denied Y, instead.
Therefore I generously assumed he meant to say “Y”.
or the[y]
DNW:
Yes, our teachers were using the definition current at the time in academia. However, I think the word had already passed out of that narrow usage. And no, this isn’t about feelings, it’s about how definitions of words change according to usage.
Plus, my point is that huxley did not say you were sarcastic. And yet you spent a great deal of time in your response to him defining the word and attacking it, as though he had used it. He did not; you did.
So if you wanted to address the “snark/sarcasm” confusion, you should have pointed out you didn’t deny snark, you denied sarcastic.
However, your comments are often both sarcastic and snarky. Which, as I said, is hardly a crime, and really a commonplace in internet discussions. So, why deny it? I really don’t understand what your motivation for denying it is.
And you say you didn’t learn about “snark” in classical rhetoric class. Well, so what? Do you only use words, or understand words, you learn about in classical rhetoric class? Somehow I doubt it. I assume you are a native English speaker, fairly well-integrated into our society, who knows a certain amount of slang and also has access to the internet and dictionaries, and can divine the meaning of a commonplace word such as “snark.”
And not this sort of Snark, either.
““At the same time, you refuse to engage in the more practical questions of how you think we ought to get from point A to your point B. WTHey!?” – Big Maq
As I have mentioned several times before, your unwillingness to quote properly, and your relentless indulgence in false attributions and characterizations, makes discussing anything with you counterproductive.” – DNW
Come now. Yet another round of he said, he said.
You merely offered a non sequitur.
http://neoneocon.com/2016/10/12/the-burn-it-down-crowd-seems-to-be-getting-its-wish-2/#comment-1773424
In effect, avoiding the whole set of questions, and the point.
“neo: Thank you for your numerous painstaking posts detailing how the far-from-perfect Republican leadership has not totally rolled over for Obama, as is the standard narrative for some on the right.” – huxley
Seconded!
As Bill said, this election cycle has been enlightening.
I was there in the 2012 cycle, but still find it disturbing the degree of reversal in the positions of many.
Only reinforces the idea that while the MSM is influential with their left leaning bias, the bias of “conservative” media is just as bad. There are too many on both sides that will too easily shill to their receptive audiences. Not really surprising if one looks at their incentives.
Still, there are those on either side that could be trusted to give a more “honest” take than others. The trick is finding those gems, and diversifying our media consumption.
Man, this is … interesting …
He did not outright say I was being anything. Instead he said I had denied meaning to be snarky. Are we agreed on this?
His proposition was that I had denied meaning to be snarky. Thus he said: ” For a guy who says he doesn’t mean to be snarky …”
So the question is: Was DNW accused of being snarky, and did DNW respond by saying that ‘I did not mean to be “snarky” ‘?
The answer is that as far as I can see, no one accused me of being snarky. If I was I did not comment. But I was instead accused by you of being sarcastic. And I issued a denial.
The denial was directed no,t as Huxley asserted, at being snarky, but at meaning to be sarcastic.
Instead of saying that Huxley was lying, I simply gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he meant to say “sarcastic” since it was that, which I actually denied.
Now this formulation of the denial, is a very basic matter of logic, and yet for some reason seems to be missed entirely.
I was accused by huxley of the wrong thing. I assumed he meant better. But we are fixated on an accusation never leveled, and a denial never made, as I merely tried to correct his error.
Very odd.
And yet you spent a great deal of time in your response to him defining the word and attacking it, as though he had used it. He did not; you did.
Never, ever, feed a verbose troll.
OM:
Well, DNW has never been a troll prior to this, so I’m trying to reason with him.
DNW:
(1) Why deny being snarky or sarcastic, when you’ve been both?
(2) Why not answer my question about “classical rhetoric” and how we learn word definitions?
(3) Here is what huxley wrote, “For a guy who says he doesn’t mean to be snarky, you sure do it well.” When you quoted him just now, you left out “you sure do it well.” “You sure do it well” is calling you snarky, it is saying you were snarky because you “do it well.” No, he did not use the exact words “You were snarky, DNW.” But he is saying that you were, and very clearly at that.
(4) You’re the one who mounted the defense of yourself as not having been sarcastic. But unless I missed something in this thread, no one had called you sarcastic in the first place. I don’t have all day to plumb the depths of this, but I can’t find anyone in this thread saying you were sarcastic, and your focus on the word is truly puzzling.
(5) The word “snark” is more inclusive than the word sarcasm, not less. So, when huxley used the word to designate the thing he thought you had denied—“snark” or being “snarky”—it could be effectively argued that huxley included sarcasm rather than excluding it. And no, you hadn’t previously denied “snark” by that name, but it is a general word to designate “an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm.” Note the inclusion of “sarcasm” in that definition.
(6) You say that I had accused you of being sarcastic? (I assume you meant me when you wrote “you” in the statement, “I was instead accused by you of being sarcastic. And I issued a denial.”). But I only wrote that you were sarcastic AFTER you had denied being sarcastic. I was responding to your denial, which came before my accusation. As far as I can tell, you went on and on about not being sarcastic when no one (including me) had made any such accusation on this thread (and I don’t remember such a discussion having come up previously, either, although I certainly don’t have total recall for every exchange we’ve ever had).
I’m kinda tired of it all – “I told you so,” or the “We saw this coming,” or whatever. We are here now. Trump won fair and square. He is the Republican candidate. He is far and away the most practical and conservative of the two who can win the white house. He is an outsider who will shake up the old boys. It is quite simple – vote Trump, get your friends to vote Trump. Vote Republican down ticket, but the important thing is to vote Trump.
Coulda woulda shoulda is history and not to be changed. We are here now. Trump will be a good President and seriously has the potential to be a great President. He was not my first through fourth choices, but we are here now. Cut the noise and the ego salvaging speculation; grow up; the two options are clear. Life is like that and adults know how to deal with the less than perfect. Choose. .
“grow up”
Aren’t we also supposed to “put our big boy pants on”?
I don’t get this line of argument from Trump supporters. This is a dumpster fire.
I’ll crystallize it for you. I don’t vote for sexual predators.
“Choose. .”
I did that a long time ago. I’ve been NeverTrump since the moment the dude rode down his gold-plated escalator and called Mexicans rapists.
I’m going to vote for Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn.
Guaman:
And I’m tired of people telling us to suck it up and deal with it, when they are at fault for putting us in this mess and couldn’t have cared less about the obvious fact that Trump was a loser in the general.
He is not losing because of blogs like this, either, and if every reader here voted for him (and by the way, most will do just that) it would not change a thing.
We told you so, and you didn’t listen. Maybe you are the ones who need to grow up and face the reality of what you’ve done.
Guaman:
Oh, and one more thing I’m tired of—Trump supporters handing us this sandwich made of horse manure to eat, and telling us to shut up and eat it when we note that it smells and will almost certainly make us sick.
is there a difference between a Trump supporter and “anybody but Hillary”?
I’ll bite… The trump supporter implies one has a positive case for trump, while the “anybody but clinton” holder is open to choose anybody other than clinton.
Couple that with a locked in view that we HAVE ONLY a binary choice, and that’s how we end up on this railroad.
Richard Aubrey:
Yes, as I’ve written before, I differentiate between the early Trump supporters in the primaries, who supported him when there were plenty of alternatives, and the reluctant Trump supporters who only are “NeverHillary.”
The former I have a big beef with, especially when they threaten, insult (“get over it”; “put on your big boy pants”), and try to coerce those who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump into voting for him. The latter I have no beef with, except when they join the former in doing those things to people who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump.
When I write “Trump supporter” without any qualifiers, I am meaning to refer to the first group, otherwise known as “fervent Trump supporters” or “rabid Trump supporters” or “early Trump adopters” or the like. The others I tend to designate as “reluctant Trump supporters.”
The two groups tend to be very very different.
Neoneocon says to DNW in part,
It doesn’t take any time to plumb, Neo, and you did not miss anything in this thread.
That is because the issue was not originally in this thread, but was imported into this thread as a trolling reference by Huxley; who then mistakenly substituted “snarky” instead of “sarcastic” as the mood which I had earlier denied.
The original accuser, and the source of Huxley’s obviously botched trolling reference, was in fact, you.
I replied to you in part,
So, in terms of trolling – and since apple polisher Number One has framed the matter as such:
Huxley was attempting to troll me in this thread by referencing an accusation, or a characterization, made by you and a denial made by me in another thread: by importing it here.
But Huxley blundered by getting the exact terminology wrong. I nonetheless recognized what he was trying to say and do – after all his mention of my denial pegs the particular event – and responded appropriately: reminding him that even in correcting for his blundering reference, the substance of the intended accusation was still off base.
So, now I see that a major part of the misunderstanding here is that you did not realize that Huxley had attempted to import an accusation (identifiable through the characterization of it as “denied”) into this thread from another thread.
You were instead trying to reference it here.
And you probably had also forgotten that you had characterized by remarks about sensitive conservatives as “sarcasm”, and that I had denied (as Huxley acknowledged) it.
So, I would take it that the mystery as to the origins of the original “sarcastic” reference, and Huxley’s subsequent blundering attempt to reintroduce it in this thread, is now all cleared up?
Now that the origins of Huxley’s botched reference are clear, you don’t really want to go through this too, do you?
In any event it will have to wait till tomorrow.
Later …
So Huxley is the problem. How convenient.
It is so predictable that the term “October surprise” has become commonplace.
Technically, didn’t that originally have some relation to Marxist revolutionaries?
In effect, avoiding the whole set of questions, and the point.-B
Some people just don’t want to talk about things. I’ve noticed that over the years, as people’s attitude towards me have varied.
It’s pointless trying to get someone to talk about a subject they don’t want to talk about. They may not tell you why, but their attitude or behavior makes it obvious. And it is also obvious online that there’s not much you can do about it. Their resources and intellectual content are theirs, by right, and unless they wrote on some blog of theirs, you can’t get it from other sources easily.
The internet is less of a Shakespear word trading project as it is a market place of the free exchange and trade of personal resources, merit, and content. In summary and conclusion, trying to talk to people that don’t want to talk to you, just wastes both of your time here.
if we still have a country, the democrats will rule it until it either collapses or has a revolution from within.
Mission accomplished for the Left, Ir.
That’s why we’re willing to vote for so flawed a candidate as Trump.
Which is why you have already lost, Ir. Trum and to a lesser extent Clinton, is already an admission of civil war 2. Thus it’s pointless talking about peaceful elections, as that isn’t what people are planning for.
Even if Trum delays or halts the open borders issue of the Leftist alliance, do you think you can keep him in power forever until the Left dies of boredom? Even under Republicans, the Left’s power was Unmatched and Uncontested. So Trum’s only potential future is presiding over the run up to CW2. The American people cannot keep him in power forever to delay the inevitable. Thus war it will be. And since war it will be, your “elections” are meaningless.
This becomes less a marginal victory and more like a Pyrrhic victory.
If you want the GOP to be more conservative, then the remedy is to elect more conservative representatives.-Neo
No, the remedy is to use 4th generational warfare to hijack the GOP from the top down and the bottom up. It’s what the Left did to the Demoncrats. The other option is to burn down the GOP E and start all over, but there’s all kinds of reasons why foreign Alt Rightists and pro Russian consortiums would prefer that option. People for elections, think fighting harder is going to be effective. But as Ir pointed out, fighting harder didn’t produce better results from a patriotic stand point at least.
People need to think global, act local. Fight smarter, not harder. Also, if they aren’t cheating, they aren’t trying. The rules for war, are not the rules for peace.
Taking a personal responsibility to spread the faith or culture of America, would be more effective, even, than political elections. Instead of missionaries converting people to Christianity in Africa, which included the Muslims there, Americans would do the same for each other.
Exposed many of the stars of conservative media as the ratings whore hypocrites they are
You say that like it’s something new in terms of information. For someone like me that’s seen all of this since 2007, either in general or specific scope, it’s hard to imagine or put myself into your shoes any more. Although the Republican stuff, I gained more insight into after 2008, not because of Obama, but because of GOp reaction to Palin. Which, surprisingly, is also the same for VoxDay. It appears VoxDay and his crowd wasn’t originally aligned with the Democrats who went Trum because Trum was Democrats. VoxDay and his followers were the former Republicans and conservatives who felt betrayed by the GOP. Although VD will decry ever calling himself a conservative, as he appeared more like a libertarian, which makes him closer to Glenn Reynolds in pov. Problem with libertarian evangelical zealots, though, is that they can’t do much to influence large organizations and sometimes that doesn’t square well with their beliefs about cultural superiority.
Exposed many so called prinicpled conservatives aa frauds. I’m looking at you Ted Cruz. You endorsed a man who made fun of your wife’s looks and accused your dad of involvement in the JFK assassination. That told me everything I needed to know about you.
Cruz said to vote your conscience, and he followed up his preaching by struggling with his conscience and finally deciding on Trum.
Just because that doesn’t line up with your utopia, Bill, isn’t his problem, but yours. The problem with all totalitarian wannabes and other foolish humans, is that you think you have some kind of Dominion status and right over other humans.
If Cruz was pressured into giving in by his donors, that would be a point against him, but not because you think you’re self righteous Bill.
Exposed the religious right and a significant portion of American evangelicals to be idolaters at the altar of R politics rather than citizens of a more enduring kingdom.
For someone that isn’t involved in religion, either theological debate or hands on, that’s quite a gross lack of detailed conclusion you got there. Maybe I have it wrong, but the impression you give Bill isn’t someone who is working with his own hands to create God’s Kingdom or even the Kingdom of America. It’s a comfortable, American dream like, existence, that is no less a bubble of confirmation bias than California or fake liberal enclaves are.
There are many religious factions, just under the label of Jesus Christ, in this nation. Yet you haven’t covered even one of them in sufficient depth, to be capable of rendering judgment upon them. I see no reason why you are standing in a position to do it to the other branches.
Huxley was attempting to troll me in this thread by referencing an accusation, or a characterization, made by you and a denial made by me in another thread: by importing it here.
You’re probably overthinking things. But even if that was the case, the correct response would be to challenge Huxley directly by asking him, not assuming, whether he was making an argument from another thread again.
From a neutral observer’s perspective, all Huxley said was that you were snarky. The past was still in the past. But if you summon it up, without talking about it, it’s you who is making erroneous assumptions now.
Communication only works if you actually confront issues directly, rather than “talking around things” like you are afraid of each other.
DNW:
Yes, thanks for clearing up the mystery of your reference, which was to that earlier thread.
But despite your denial of sarcastic intent in that thread, you certainly were being snarky, a word which (as I have indicated in this thread) contains sarcasm under its umbrella.
And here is the definition of “snarky”:
As you can see, “snarky” is a more general word than “sarcastic,” but it includes it.
More to the point, your denial of sarcasm (or your denial of having the intent of sarcasm, if you want to get technical) in that thread was actually a denial of any sarcasm in the following comment of yours on the thread [emphasis mine]. It was the one to which I was referring when I had said “Ignoring the sarcasm…”:
Now, you can deny any sarcastic intent all you want. No one can read your mind. But that is a sarcastic comment AND a snarky one. I believe that this was part of the point huxley was trying to make.
Your denial is extremely unconvincing.
Actually, I still don’t know what you’re so fired up about. You denied sarcasm in that earlier thread, which seems to indicate that you also denied snark—unless, of course, you are willing to say that you are in fact snarky but not sarcastic (by your narrowly traditional definition of sarcasm, although as I’ve indicated above I believe you were sarcastic even by your narrower definition). Are you saying that huxley had no right to characterize “sarcasm” as a form of “snark”? That he is to be accused of “trolling” for using the more inclusive term “snark” rather than the more narrow one “sarcasm”? Or are you saying your comments didn’t and don’t demonstrate snark or sarcasm?
And is this really such a big deal, when the definition of “snark” includes “sarcasm”? All of us sometimes use sarcasm and snark, especially on blogs.
Here is your original denial of sarcasm in that thread:
Sounds very snarky to me. “Bleating”:
You snarkily insult people with great regularity, and you often use sarcasm (and that one time you denied the intention of using it, you were using it as well). It doesn’t help your arguments. Why not let your arguments stand on their own, and cut the snark and the condescension? You have plenty of things to say and you would be listened to and respected more if you did that.
“I am meaning to refer to the first group, otherwise known as “fervent Trump supporters” or “rabid Trump supporters” or “early Trump adopters” or the like. The others I tend to designate as “reluctant Trump supporters.”
The two groups tend to be very very different.” – Neo
I’d add one more category, a third group … “trump converts”.
They might not have been an original supporter, but are as strenuous in support of trump and as excusing of trump as any “original trump supporter”.
Years ago I was ticketed in Houston, Texas, for driving with an out of state license, having lived there just over the time limit for having one replaced.
As in many states, the License Bureaus or Secretary of State offices are reminiscent of urban Post Offices, the ne plus ultra of a thronging fulminating lumpen-proletariat immigrant service hell; and I had been delaying in hopes of finding a suburban location that was more convenient.
In any event a court appearance was either required or I noticed a problem with the charge, and showed up in court. The officious little bailiff read the charge, “Driving on an expired Texas registration (or plate or some such) ” and informed me that I could plead guilty and pay a fine or I could plead innocent and they would arrange a trial date.
I began to say “not guilty, but …” and was interrupted by the court flunky who informed me I was not allowed to say anything other than the plea. I began to reply, and was threatened with contempt.
I looked at the cop who had been friendly and even helpful, and then at the judge, and said “the problem is the charge” … at which point the His Officiousness went ballistic threatening to lock me up, and the judge intervened telling everyone to calm down.
The judge said “We want to hear what he has to say”. I then told him that I had never had a Texas license: therefore the charge was impossible. But that I freely admitted I had been in need of transferring the registration … that was all.
He summoned me to the bench and asked to see my driving papers. I showed him that the driver’s license and registration were changed, the insurance was in order, and he remarked that he was extremely impressed that it had been accomplished the day after.
The judge found me guilty of something or other, but waived all costs and fines except for $30.00.
I went to the seats and shook hands with the grinning cop, exchanging some pleasantries, and the bailiff began shouting for order.
You have to get the charge right, in order to convict. Or under the system we used to have, and which was even then sagging under the weight of discretion, you were supposed to.
That doesn’t quite apply to every situation in life, but it’s something to bear in mind.
You are welcome Neo.
Well, if irreverent and disrespectful in tone, especially toward relatively abstract classes of persons or institutions such as “Mr. Sensitive” or “Precious” (the Compassionate Conservative Republican Party) then I suppose I was engaging by that standard which I do not myself accept, in some subcategory of snark.
And I suppose a charge of “snark” a relative neologism seems less ridiculous than a charge of disrespect; which is more likely to elicit howls of derisive (“snarky”, then?) laughter, than feelings of chagrin from the ostensible perpetrator.
But this is all too too, as they say.
Regards,
DNW’s problem is that his thoughts are unconventional enough that it doesn’t fit into the normal English vernacular, whether the dictionary denotation definition or the connotative definition of various words. So when he tries to strain new and unusual words together, to convey his personality and unique outlook, it often looks wrong to other people.
But by all means, it may very well be true that the actual intent was a different one. That is of course, the problem when using your own talent to create a different vernacular, of the same language. It is a similar, though larger problem, than the Brits asking Americans where the loo is.
DNW Says:
October 18th, 2016 at 10:49 am
DNW’s use of English there to tell a story makes perfect logical sense and structurally, it is rather well done as well. So the issue isn’t lack of English expertise, rather it is too much of it, when conveying personal thoughts.
For people that are constrained by the English language, even at the maximum proficiency standards, they’ll often have simultaneous parallel thoughts going on at once when writing. Thus they sometimes condense it into complicated wording or phrasing, or like Art, uses a surrogate link and text others have written. To them, it is all of one piece, to other people it’s 5 fragments barely attached to each other at times. Or the same 5 ideas repeated different ways.
The problem is when the user himself doesn’t realize he is doing so, or perhaps they don’t want to disconnect their brain’s parallel processing and only think like average or sub average humans would, using One Track at a time.
And I suppose a charge of “snark” a relative neologism seems less ridiculous than a charge of disrespect; which is more likely to elicit howls of derisive (“snarky”, then?) laughter, than feelings of chagrin from the ostensible perpetrator.
Your problem DNW is confirmation bias. Since everything only makes sense to you from inside your IQ and internal analysis, whenever you allow yourself to imagine someone has “trolled” you, true or not, it hijacks your brain, your logic turns off and your emotions take over. But to you, it feels perfectly normal. You are not normal under those conditions and you do not think with 100% of your logic, thus you become incapable of self assessing.
Which is why in chess as well as in rhetoric or logic, being in firm control of one’s imagination of perceived slights as well as directly confronting it with probes and questions if such a perception is indeed perceived, fixes the issue more than talking around it using your Customized Vernacular, DNW.
For you to do as Neo Neo suggested and using a different style, you would have to change your thinking process. Which is not easy, even for those who have mastered a single language.